Deck Review: Liberation Tarot

“The Tarot cannot show me anything I do not know, but it can help me uncover and dance with my knowing… With a practice like Tarot, we are liberated from isolation into a conversation we can have with ourselves and that which is beyond ourselves, even when we appear to be alone”

adrienne maree brown

Any deck that features contributions from the amazing adrienne maree brown (I use her writing with my Criminology students *all* the time) instantly gets my attention, so I was very excited to see the Liberation Tarot Deck come up on Kickstarter and backed it straightaway. The deck is now for sale on most online stores, or through the publishers, PM Press, for £42. The Liberation Tarot is a collaboration project from a collection of artists and writers, and describes itself as being “in the lineage of projects like Slow Holler [and] the Collective Tarot” – hell yes! It’s a deck very focussed on inclusivity and radical change, aimed at “strengthen[ing] our muscles of radical, revolutionary, and abolitionist dreaming”.

“At the foundation of the project is the belief that magic is an essential tool for healing and social change within our communities. Tarot decks specifically have been used for hundreds of years as a mode of personal and collective divination, storytelling, and meaning-making. In reworking the traditional arcanas as an activist tool, we seek to rewrite the visual vocabulary not only of the Tarot, but ultimately of community, power, and the landscape of our world”

Elicia Epstein

Since the deck arrived, I’ve been in two minds on it. It’s so smart and clever, and I love the ethos behind it, as well as a lot of the editorial decisions (changing P/K/Q/K to Student, Rebel, Healer, Crone; Justice becoming Accountability, The Emperor becoming The Establishment etc.) I also love that it was developed collaboratively, and that Epstein, who acted as a kinda Project Manager, acknowledges that collaborative work is hard (like many things in life it would be a lot easier sometimes to just do it yourself), but, ultimately, also the most satisfying kind of work you can do. Amen sister. To this extent, the mix of random art styles is a key part of the functioning and philosophy of the deck, and I’m here for that. As Epstein notes, “while other decks are often unified in their aesthetics and colour palette, our deck embraces unconformity… [this enables us to] reflect the unique choices and approaches of each artist, allowing for multiple points of entry for a reader“.

But I don’t really like some of the art – the very modern, hyper bright, collage style (Flowers/Pents) and the two tone cut-outs (Blades/Swords) just aren’t my bag of tea. When I first opened the deck, I really liked the Majors (multiple artists contribute an assortment of cards, and the mixed styles works well), but the four Minors are created by an artist each, and I found some of the suits just too “much” of a style I don’t gel with.

However, the more I work with it, the more I appreciate how smart the thinking behind even the images I don’t particularly like is. So it’s really grown on me. And if you like radical practice (like me) *and* the modern découpage style, you’ll LOVE this deck!

“How can I make art that is not just about the thing, but that is the thing? I think this deck does that. It is not about revolution; it is revolution”

Elicia Epstein

The Liberation Tarot is a 79 card deck, comes in a rigid box with a small, lightweight guidebook, and, you guys, *each Major Arcana card has a poem recommendation* included – LOVE! The cards are printed on good quality card stock, and the matte blue edging is attractive. The deck really is inclusive – a lot of its imagery doesn’t include humans, and, where they do feature, they’re very diverse (lots of fat bodies here, which I am big fan of!) adrienne maree brown notes this in the guidebook, stating “the cards are vibrant and suggest a worldview that decentres humanity while giving up nothing of our miraculous nature“. Despite some of my reservations about the art style, you can see from the sheer volume of favourite cards I’ve picked out that there is lots about how the creators have interpreted the cards that really speaks to me.

A VERY strong start for the Liberation Tarot, as I love the first six cards. d. Wright’s Fool does a great job of capturing the glorious, fearless naivety of the card: “we can trust our feet, even when we don’t know where we’re going“. Then The Artist (in place of The Magician) is so pleasing to look at – I love how the central figure is a drawing whereas the self portrait he has drawn is ‘real’. To me this conveys both the ‘magic’ and the practicality of The Magician: however strange or hard or unlikely an idea is, it can be done. But only if you pick up tools and put in the work to make it a reality.

My (academic) research focuses a lot on sex work, and on how the stigma around sex work contributes to the violence that sex workers face in their everyday lives, so I particularly love the Whore card (in place of the High Priestess) by Charmaine Bee. The imagery is very focussed on water, reflecting the waters of our intuition: “Get to water.. Let the Whore seduce you… you’re right where you need to be. Are you listening?“

I really like the re-imagining of The Hierophant as ‘Ancestors’, and this image of an octopus floating above the fossilised tracks of a slowworm. As the guidebook explains, “the ocean floor, the octopus, and the ancestral worm create an evolutionary dance across water and land… from above and below, the Ancestors remind us that wisdom is an inheritance to cultivate“. The Hierophant asks us to seek guidance, and embrace the wisdom passed down to us from those who came before. As Thirteen writes on the Aeclectic Tarot website, “remember where you came from: the traditions of your foremothers, the lessons of your faith, and you will know how to survive this crisis”.

The re-imagining of The Emperor as ‘The Establishment’ also works for me. The guidebook reminds us that this card serves to invite us to “take stock of the systems [we’ve] both built and been born into. What’s working? What’s not working?” The message of the card is not always about an oppressive force acting upon us, but rather about our need to find our own Emperor-like qualities within us in order to succeed: self-discipline, organisation, and taking responsibility for our own lives.

And finally, I like The Hanged Man portrayed here as The Chrysalis. For the transforming caterpillar, what looks like a period of total inaction and inertia is actually a time of fundamental (and wonderful!) change. “Unexpected. Upsidedown. From the outside, it may appear as if you have gone belly-up. Trust the generative stasis. You will know when the time comes to emerge“.

I just love how happy and joyous this Sun card is (and her limb segmentation looks a bit like a tardigrade – so cute!) The guidebook reminds us that The Sun “commands us to evaluate our impact and the fullness of our presence. In what worlds do we facilitate growth and light? In the same breath, stay wary. You are and are not the centre of the universe“. I like the replacement of Justice with its “counterpart” card, Accountability: “[which] is an invitation to find your many selves and walk them home. Commune with them. Assume the perspective of an ancestor. What do you have to say back to you?”

The Nine of Pents (Flowers) is the single Tarot card I most aspire to in my own life, and, even though I’m not the biggest fan of the art style, I love the vibes of this one. The vineyards at sunset, and the wine glass / hour glass, showing that it has taken time for us to reach the point where we can sit back, relax, and enjoy (very literally!) the fruits of our labour. As the guidebook says, “at the other end of discipline is the delight of satisfaction. Drink up“.

The suit of Spirals (Wands) is by Elicia Epstein, and their art style is definitely my favourite of the various contributors. I like the compass (indicating direction, steadfastness) and snail (indicating the importance of taking our time when deciding how and when to act) imagery in the Three of Wands (Spirals). And the galaxy on the Crone of Spirals (King of Wands) is stunning. The guidebook explains that the Crone “knows precisely how best to wield change under any circumstance… Build what is yours to build. Say what is yours to say. Teach what is yours to teach“.

And I’m surprised I don’t see more knives-behind-the-back imagery in Sevens of Swords (Blades), as it’s very effective! The choice of a kitchen knife here illustrates that the Seven is a card about resourcefulness as well as deception, “using what is closest to hand“.

Really gorgeous symbolism in the Six of Blades (Swords). The balloons she’s harnessing to float away on are made out of knuckle dusters, “serv[ing] as a reminder that the journey toward collective joy and ease is not passive“; and the baby growing in her belly demonstrates that this “struggle is not always external: at times the work looks like laying in bed, days on end, flexing the muscles of gestation“. Taking this time to move towards a better future is in itself a restorative process: “we can be carried on waves of song and starlight. We can heal all the way“.

I love the Crone of Blades (King of Swords) with her fan made of knives, and the Four of Blades (Swords) with its depiction of Konda and Ikakalaka swords. The guidebook quotes the artist, theologian, and founder of The Nap Ministry Tricia Hersey:

“I took to rest and naps and slowing down as a way to save my life, resist the systems telling me to do more, and, most importantly, as a remembrance to my Ancestors who had their DreamSpace stolen from them… This is not about fluffy pillows, expensive sheets, silk sleep masks or any other external, frivolous, consumerist gimmick. It is about deep unravelling from white supremacy and capitalism”

Tricia Hersey

As you can see from this review, despite my tepid feelings about some of the art styles, this deck has been really transformative in terms of the fresh insights and understandings it has given me. I really recommend it for re-invigorating your Tarot practice and helping light that Wands-y fire in your belly once more! You can buy it from the publisher here.

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