Deck Review: Figuratively Speaking Mermaid Tarot

When the Figuratively Speaking Mermaid Tarot dropped on Kickstarter, backing it was a no-brainer for me, as I love artist B. Miller’s Tarot and Tarot-esque paintings on Instagram, and I also already own her first (huge, sprawling!) Tarot deck, the Figuratively Speaking Tarot (which you can buy here). The Figuratively Speaking Mermaid Tarot is an absolute beaut, featuring all of Bee’s gorgeous watercolour artwork. It’s also more thematically consistent than its predecessor (I love an epic deck, but I’ll concede thematic decks are probably easier to work with off the bat).

The FS Mermaid Tarot constitutes a chonky 92-card deck (the standard 78 card Tarot deck, plus alternative cards for some of the Majors, and some additional special cards), and comes in a simple tuck box with a small black and white guidebook co-authored by Bee and Madeline Crane. The tuck box is… well, a tuck box! I don’t mind them, but they’re a bit flimsy. However, I appreciate that it’s always a cost vs. quality-of-finish trade-off for indie creators, and it’s better to compromise on the box than the cards IMO. My box is a little bit wonky so the lid doesn’t shut fully, plus – just in case you can see it in the photos – it has a print error on it. To be clear, though, Bee offered all of us KS backers a perfect version of the box from a print re-run, and I said I was fine with the imperfect one (because I am, and because I wanted to get my hands on the cards ASAP!) So if you bought the deck you’d have a nicer tuck box than mine. Nevetheless, despite the awesome cover art, I think if you were planning to use the deck regularly you might want to consider moving the cards to a more robust box.

The card stock is good quality, with a slippery gloss finish, which makes the cards easy to shuffle, but a bit ‘slide-y’ to stack. The guidebook gives a brief intro to the deck, and then a couple of lines to explain the meaning behind each card, as well as some key words.

The deck comes with multiple versions of the Lovers card and I love (ha!) these two. In my day-job I research m/m erotica, so I am always here for two burly boys in love. And the Lovers as sea otters is perfect! For those of you who (somehow) don’t know, one of the cutest things about sea otters is how they ‘hold hands’ (also known as rafting) when they sleep. Unlike river otters, sea otters spend most of their time in the water. They eat, sleep, hunt, mate, and give birth in the sea. So to stop themselves drifting away from their group in the shifting ocean currents while they sleep, they will hold hands with their nearest and dearest. This deep, safe bond is a great way to represent the energy of the Lovers card.

The central figure in the Devil card looks determined to drag that treasure to the surface, but his greed might be his undoing. As the guidebook explains, “we think that the thing that will really make us happy is in the chest, but we don’t realise that it is the [very] thing dragging us down”. This is true of so many of the addictive behaviours, toxic relationships, and negative behaviour patterns that the Devil card can often speak to.

The Hermit‘s traditional lantern here is replaced by an organic ‘lantern’, the lure of the angler fish, which is just SO smart, I love it! The guidebook states, “she is a solitary sort of mermaid who lives in the crushing depths of the sea. With only herself and the dark for company, she comes to a deep understanding of both”. But there’s a flip side: the anglerfish’s light is not a beacon. It’s a trap. A false light that draws others in – only to devour them.

So, too, can the Hermit’s path become murky. That quiet space of reflection can curdle into resentment, cynicism, or a sense of superiority. When the Hermit turns inward not to grow, but to retreat from the vulnerability of connection, the lantern flickers. The wisdom turns brittle. And the “truth” they think they’re protecting may just be a carefully lit illusion.

In ‘Wild Card‘, Jen Cownie and Fiona Lensvelt write that it’s no coincidence that The Wheel of Fortune card is often depicted as a the wheel of a ship: “you don’t have to be an experienced sailor to know that travelling by boat means you’re at the mercy of some very powerful elements. Sometimes, when a storm races through your life… you just have to wait it out”. This card is particularly striking, as we see it’s from a ship that has long sunk. Instead of making us fearful or sad though, this should remind us to enjoy fair sailing while we can. Afterall, we can’t control the fates, only our reaction to what befalls us. I immediately thought of ‘Death by Water’ from Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ when I saw this card, which is a very fitting poem for the Wheel of Fortune, highlighting as it does the way fate spins blindly on:

‘Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
                                                  A current under sea 
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
                                                  Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.’

‘IV: Death by Water’ from ‘The Wasteland’ by T. S. Eliot

And then this Sun card is just so wonderfully bright and joyous!

In the Moon the central figure has become the crayfish we traditionally see on the card (e.g. in the RWS). The crayfish is taken to represent intuition, as well as the dark and hidden elements of our subconscious. The analogy between the crayfish and our subconscious works on many levels. For example, those who share my love of eating shellfish (nom nom) will be well aware of the need for crackers to open the hard external shell to get to the delicious sweet meat inside. Humans aren’t much different, metaphorically speaking. We try to appear tough on the outside to hide our sweetness and vulnerability on the inside. In fact, we’ve gotten so good at it, we often repress and hide our emotions even from ourselves. The Moon reminds us that we need to take the time to explore and engage with these dark, hidden memories and feelings, even if the process makes us feel wild or out of control. Jen Cownie and Fiona Lensvelt write that the Moon card in a reading may speak to times when “old memories are dredged up like shipwrecks” and we must reckon with experiences that have shaped who we are without us even noticing.

It’s also worth noting that most crustaceans are able to live on both land and water equally, they’re liminal creatures that freely transit between two worlds. The Moon teaches us that we need to learn to be as comfortable in the dark as we are in the light.

All the Aces in the FS Mermaid Tarot are lost items sunk to the bottom of the ocean and partially submerged in the sandy bed, and this imagery is really striking.

I love how the King of Wands is leaning back and enjoying a fresh lungful of salty sea air. He has taken the loss of his leg (replaced with a ‘wand’ – LOVE IT!) in his stride – it is not in this King’s nature to sit and mope, and nothing will hold him back from living his life to the fullest.

The Three of Wands reminds me a bit of some of the iconic imagery from Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’, and I think that’s perfect for this card, with its yearning for great adventures. And, after all, Ariel does make her dream a reality, just like the Three of Wands suggests we can all do if we plan properly and put the work in (best not to reflect on the fate of Andersen’s OG Ariel, lol).

Up where they walk, up where they run
Up where they stay all day in the sun
Wanderin’ free, wish I could be
Part of that world

What would I give if I could live out of these waters?
What would I pay to spend a day warm on the sand?

‘Part Of Your World’ by Alan Irwin Menken and Howard Elliott Ashman

I have a beloved collection of sea glass (plus one bit of sea china!), so as soon as I saw this beachcomby Seven of Cups I warmed to it. Though it reminds me less of my small and well-ordered collection, and more of the pocketfuls of shells and pebbles my kids bring back from the beach *every time* (we live by the sea and go to the beach at least once a week), to the extent I’m forced to adopt some anti-Seven of Cups energy and be like, “right, you can each pick one thing to keep and take to your room, and the rest is going in the bin!”

When I looked at this Seven of Coins (Pents) card I thought it did a really good job of conveying the idea of knowing when to quit – is it really worth trying to drag that heavy anchor any further? However, in the guidebook Bee and Madeline take the more positive view on the card: “progress is progress, no matter how small”.

And I love the quiet contentment that permeates this beautiful Nine of Coins (Pents).

The Seven of Swords is a tricksy siren singing her tune, with another one swimming up to pinch the bloke’s keys while he’s mesmerised by the first one’s song 😂.

Bee always does great work with her Sixes of Swords. Often in this card – as we move from one period of our life to another – the Swords are still depicted as ‘with’ us (i.e. in the RWS they’re still inside the boat alongside us, so even as we move to calmer waters we’re still bringing all our historical metaphorical baggage with us), but here they’re being dropped to the sea bed as the figure swims towards the light. Sometimes we have to take all our anxiety and negativity, and the endless ‘what ifs…?’ that our thought processes torture us with and just… let them go. Just as the Eight of Cups speaks to walking away from something that has given us emotional satisfaction but has now run its course, so the Six of Swords here can be seen as walking (swimming!) away from ways of thinking that once served a purpose, but have now become counter-productive.

A strikingly sinister Nine of Swords with its circling sharks. The guidebook reminds us that “the threat might be real, or it could be imagined – not all sharks are dangerous. It’s hard to determine whether the sense of danger comes from outside or from past trauma”.

The Queen of Swords with her swordfish, and the King of Swords as a (very buff) shark are both so visually pleasing ☺.

My favourite two ‘extra’ cards from the deck are the creepily wonderful ‘reversed’ mermaid, and the beautiful ‘Unrequited Love’ with its central figure mournfully embracing her wooden counterpart. I’m not sure if these will make it into the general release deck, or whether they’re Kickstarter specials, but I just had to include them in my review because they slap!

This is a really gorgeous deck that’s pretty faithful to the RWS system, and therefore easy to understand for beginners, while having plenty of wry little Easter Eggs for more experienced Tarot users. The one I’ve reviewed here is the Kickstarter edition, but Bee has brought the deck to her Game Crafter site, in celebration of (mer)May – you can buy it for $47.99 (approx. £36) here.

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