Deck Review: Blood Moon Tarot

Exciting news: another beloved out-of-print indie deck is going mass market later this year. Once a hidden Kickstarter treasure, now stepping into the mass market spotlight, the Blood Moon Tarot by visionary artist Sam Guay has been picked up by US Games and is set for release in December 2025*. You can pre-order it here. (*or possibly earlier? Some sites seem to have it available from this month!)

After a fairly lengthy design period, the original indie version of the deck came out in the summer of 2021, and was quickly one of those unicorn decks that everyone wanted, but that was very hard (read: pricey!) to find. I was OBSESSED and got the whole shebang (Tarot cloth, original watercolour of one of the cards, massive hardback coffee table companion book – given y’all know I tend to scrimp on Kickstarter accoutrements, this speaks volumes about how much I love Guay’s art and vision!)

The creator Sam Guay was already well known in card-nerd circles for their illustrations for Magic: The Gathering, and they bring a similar complex, intricate, RPG-adjacent aesthetic to the Blood Moon Tarot. This is art that feels like lore. It’s a transporting deck – the kind you can get lost in, or that might gently pull you under when you’re not looking.

Guay writes:

“The New England forests that raised me were more than a gathering of trees, they were haunted by the looming presence of something green and unnameable… The roots of those dark woods settled within me.”

That eerie presence – natural, ineffable, shadowed – pulses through the deck. Guay’s work explores “the tangles of our relationship with nature, transformation, and the strangeness of our world,” and the Blood Moon Tarot feels like a walk through a strange forest from a dream remembered at dawn: symbolic, slippery, beautiful, haunting. It makes me think of Stardust by Hoagie Carmichael:

“And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart…

Sometimes I wonder why I spend
The lonely nights
Dreaming of a song.
The melody haunts my reverie…

The nightingale tells his fairy tale
Of paradise where roses grew.
Though I dream in vain, in my heart you will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love’s refrain”

‘Stardust’ by Hoagie Carmichael (Carmichael/Parish)

There’s something of Arthur Rackham, Sulamith Wülfing and Brian Froud here too – that illustrated fairytale quality that blends wonder with threat. The kind of imagery I remember from battered old childhood collections of Anderson and Grimm that were too strange to be comforting, but too beautiful to put down. Shadowy woods. Tense branches. Something dark and delicious watching you. Stories that teach you the natural world is not all dormice and song birds, but a dangerous beast, a wild beast, red in tooth and claw. But also a fascinating beast, and, best of all, one that’s curious about you too. And how wonderful to tame it!

Guay has said they created the deck through deeply personal experience and introspection, even using sensory deprivation float tanks to access their interior landscapes.

“I’ve always been drawn to the idea of using symbolic art to invoke introspection and to aid in reconsidering our approaches to the many difficulties of life… I’ve wanted to make a tarot deck using my personal experiences as a filter for the iconic imagery and interpretations.”

It shows. This is not a distant, esoteric Tarot. It’s visceral. Intimate. A little wild. The archetypes feel like dreams seen from underwater, or a fairy ritual witnessed through the branches of an enchanted forest you’ve sneaked into.

The Deck: Look, Feel, and Finish

The original indie edition of the Blood Moon Tarot that I’m reviewing here comes in a sturdy box with a magnetic closure – solid and satisfying, not that thin, bendy stuff. The cards are thick, matte, and beautifully balanced: they don’t cling together, but they don’t slide away from each other too easily either. No poker-table flinging here. They feel just right in the hand: not too large, not too slippery.

The card edges gleam with a golden honey shine in the light, and the artwork, rendered in watercolour, has a rich, layered texture that feels both handmade and mythic.

But for those who missed out the first time, the US Games edition also looks genuinely lush: a linen finish, burgundy edges, gold foil accents, a hardcover guidebook – and best of all, no borders! Grrrrr, the no borders means I’m gonna have to buy it again, because it looks loads better without them IMO. Still, I can’t be too salty about having to buy it twice, because I went full loot goblin during the Kickstarter and got all those amazing add-ons, inc. my one-of-a-kind print, that I wouldn’t have got if I’d just waited for the mass market.

The deck comes with the full 78 cards (in the RWS tradition) but with some tweaks: the most major being the remapping of the four suits.

Wands becomes Skins, which I think works really well. Skins are the things you shed as you grow and transform. They link neatly to lizard imagery in the RWS, but feel more intimate and tactile.

Cups have become Songs, which again works, as emotions are so closely connected to music. Love songs, heartbreak ballads, wordless melodies that catch in your throat. These cards feel felt.

Swords becomes Dreams; a brilliant reframing. Dreams are mental landscapes: thought, vision, worry, inspiration, and, yes, nightmare. The final cards in this suit carry that surreal, anxiety-pricked edge beautifully.

And finally, Pents are reimagined as Honey, possibly my favourite reinterpretation. Honey is gold, natural, and made through hard work and community building by Comrade Bee – and I always think of the Pents as the grafters of the Tarot. Honey is also thick and slow, rich and nourishing. A perfect metaphor for materiality and abundance.

The Blood Moon Tarot doesn’t just depict archetypes, it builds a world. Lay the Minor Arcana cards side by side and you’ll see: they form a continuous mural, each suit unfolding like a strange fairytale landscape. Some readers report finding the deck too dark or scary, and they’re not wrong, exactly. Reading with this deck feels like sticking your head through a hole in the hedge and finding yourself in another realm. It’s not always safe, but it is always alive. Sometimes the woods are lovely, dark, and deep… and sometimes they’re DARK and DEEP. You know what I mean 😂. The cards embrace that duality – the sunlit glades and the shadowy grottos. That’s life, and it’s also the Tarot.

Anna Felixidocious put it beautifully in their review of the indie deck:

“I find myself wishing there was a narrative or a text that held the narrative. What I mean is I wish there was a series of fantasy books that went along with the deck that tied these beautiful characters, these queens and kings, the singers and honey-dipped figures. Who they are and where they come from and the names of their lands and the names of the rivers.”

Yes. Exactly that.

And let’s talk about the hands. There are LOTS of hands in this deck, and I love them. They are exquisite – delicate, expressive, almost reverent in their gestures. In a world overrun by AI’s cursed tangle-fingered monstrosities, we stan an artist who can draw real hands. Hands that hold. That point. That tremble. That reach. This is the work of a human with deep feeling and incredible skill – and it shows.

Greatest Hits: My Favourite Cards from the Blood Moon Tarot

Here are some of my favourite cards from the Blood Moon Tarot.

First up we have the Empress, often seen as one of the more straightforward cards in the Tarot: fertile, nurturing, abundant. But there’s more to her than just blooming gardens and literal motherhood. She represents the patience and care required to nurture anything into fullness – not just babies, but relationships, ideas, creative work, or communities. Her energy isn’t limited to biology or traditional femininity. You don’t need to be a mother to “mother.” At times in your life, regardless of your gender or choices, you’ll be someone who offers care, guidance, or strength: to a project, a person, a part of yourself.

The Blood Moon Tarot calls to the most prolific of all mothers, the Queen Bee: “Bees are nourished by the hive and go out into the world, returning with pollen to create honey. The Empress is the queen bee, the jewelled fruit, the keeper of abundance, and she generously shares that magic with us”. She is the source and the sweetness. The Empress teaches that nourishment is power, and that care, when offered freely, becomes its own kind of magic.

I love the Emperor in the Blood Moon Tarot, partly because Guay shares my ambivalence about traditional “masculine power” archetypes. Rather than leaning into rigidity, dominance, or patriarchal authority, Guay reimagines the Emperor as a solid oak tree:

“Difficult to sway, impossible to move… a fortress… providing thousands of creatures shelter from storms and predators.”

This Emperor isn’t a general or a king on a cold throne – he’s a protector, rooted, dependable, and quietly immense. His power isn’t about control, but holding space. In a deck so full of emotional and mythic nuance, this grounded, sheltering version of masculine energy feels not only refreshing, but fitting.

The Lovers card in the Blood Moon Tarot almost made it to the coveted “favourite” spot in this deck. Everything about this image is chef’s kiss: the overripe apple with its keyhole wound, the lush greenery, the moths circling like gentle omens, and the breathless, almost-kiss between the figures. It’s intimate, and very romantic.

Sam Guay writes:

“To say that The Lovers card is only a symbol of love would be oversimplifying things. The card is about finding something that seems so perfect that you’d be willing to trust your gut over facts and deviate from well-made plans.”

They go on to share the story of the Morgan’s sphinx moth, a creature whose existence was predicted long before its discovery. A flower with a nectar chamber so deep that no known species could reach it prompted the theory: there must be something designed to match it. And years later, that very moth was found – with a proboscis just long enough to pollinate the flower. As Guay explains, “sometimes, what’s meant for you is improbable. Illogical. But real. Something within you recognises it before your mind can catch up.”

That’s the Lovers in Blood Moon: not just about romance, but resonance. About finding the thing, or the person, or the path, you were built to meet.

I really love this image of Strength, melting the blade of a sword with their hands, though their hands still bleed. The artist and creator Sam Guay writes, “where others hide behind suits of armour, she bravely bares her heart”. There’s this amazing commenter on Aeclectic Tarot (Thirteen) who also speaks to this idea that showing this kind of (inner) strength is not without pain. She talks about how Wang in The Qabalistic Tarot likens Strength to a Vestal Virgin tending a sacred flame. Fire is a terrifying thing – burning, destructive, all-consuming – all too easily able to spark out of our control. But somewhere along the way we lost our fear – but not our respect – for fire. With will and intelligence, we came to understand its nature and make it our tool. Similarly, we can direct and make good use of our passions, but only if we’re willing to see them as a natural part of us, sacred even, like the Vestal Virgin’s flame. The Blood Moon’s Strength card is not a card of brute force, but of fierce, vulnerable will.

The snake of the Ace of Wands (Skins) almost forms the ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail. It’s an ancient symbol of eternal return, regeneration, and creation through destruction. It’s life feeding life, endlessly. The Ace of Wands, traditionally, is raw creative force. The spark before the flame. Passion before form. Energy with no name yet. It wants. It begins. The shadow side here (the Ace is the seed of the Ten after all, and the Ten of Wands is a bit of a bummer!) is the concept of desire as a loop. The more you chase it, the more it becomes you, but also the more it consumes you. Passion is sacred, yes, but it’s also hungry. Creation requires fuel. And sometimes, we are the fuel.

This is the ecstatic terror of beginning something that might burn you alive – and doing it anyway.

The Two of Wands (Skins) shows us a figure with snakes coiling around their ankles, binding them in place. What once sustained you now confines you. You feel the fire rising, but your feet won’t move.

“I came to a place where my path split in two. My will was pulled in both directions, and my feet were bound in place. A snake wound itself around my ankles, circling again and again until I made my choice.”

This isn’t a passive crossroads. It’s restless. The card pulses with the need for escape. For movement. For fire. The snakes aren’t enemies, they’re symbols of transformation, of skins yet to be shed. But until you act, they trap you. The only way forward is through. The Two of Wands is often about potential, planning, looking beyond. In the Blood Moon Tarot, it’s more urgent. You’re not just daydreaming about adventure – you’re kicking free and running for it.

I initially read the Nine of Wands (Skins) as the snakes having silenced your voice. It’s like the ‘last stand’ of the RWS, the same idea that the fire that once sustained you has now almost burnt you out… but there’s just enough left for you to keep on keeping on, hoping that one day you’ll be able to make yourself heard again. Guay’s take is a bit more hopeful. They write, “I was nearly done shedding my skin, had nearly completed the magic of transformation. Weariness and doubt came over me, but I focused my will and endured to complete the change.” This card honours the strength it takes to keep going, even when your voice shakes, or even fails you. Even when transformation hurts.

The King of Wands (Skins) here is kind of terrifying. He’s the ruler not of calm command, but of burning presence: peeled-back, all nerve and bone and glowing heat. He meets your gaze with exposed skull and fire leaking from his eyes. I immediately thought of T.S. Eliot:

Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

From ‘Whispers of Immortality’ by T.S. Eliot

The King of Skins is desire that knows it’s temporary. Power that burns even as it rots. Charisma laced with the knowledge that everything turns to ash, eventually. This isn’t a card of soft masculinity or patriarchal benevolence. It’s closer to ritual fire, to sex and sacrifice, to the part of you that knows how to lead because it’s walked through death and come back luminous.

He’s the skull beneath the skin, and the flame still licking behind the sockets.

This Ace of Songs (Cups) is haunting and delicate. A strange, not-quite-heron feeds from a coiled mollusc – a symbol of inner depth, protection, and spiralling growth. Behind it blooms an enormous open lotus, serene and radiant. The symbolism is rich: the lotus grows from deep, claggy, muddy waters and rises unstained to the surface. This mirrors the emotional territory of the Cups suit perfectly, the realm of feelings, relationships, and emotional depths. Beauty and insight don’t come from avoiding these depths. They come from emerging through them.

This theme runs through Cups in the RWS deck too – you’ll find lotuses decorating the Page of Cups’ doublet (doublet? jerkin? medieval hoodie? whatever it is, it’s got flowers). The Page of Cups is a gentle, dreamy figure, the antithesis of cynicism. He’s curious and open-hearted, and the lotus pattern on his clothing hints at why: like the flower, he’s grown through emotional mud and now stretches toward light and beauty.

This Ace of Songs offers that same invitation: to feel, fully and bravely. Even – especially – when the feeling is raw, or strange, or sad. To let emotion spiral, deepen, bloom.

The figure is blindfolded by human hands, overwhelmed, with moths fluttering around their face. Moths often represent transformation or soul messages, but here they also suggest confusion, attraction to the light/danger, or the ghostly pull of something unseen.

Guay writes:

“Fog rolled in and wove its pale fingers over the landscape so that all was concealed. Yet when I came across a tree or stone they were clear in the dark, as if my eyes were wide with shining moonbeams seeing what they could not observe in the light of day.”

This is a card of displaced seeing, where the potential for clarity exists, but is turned inward, tangled. Like the Pale Man, we hold perception in our hands… and yet we might still choose silence.

The Three of Dreams (Swords) might be the most viscerally disturbing image in the whole deck – and also one of the most brilliant. Forget bloodless heartbreak. Here we have dream-dogs with razor teeth, their snouts to your scruff, ready to tear through the fabric of the self.

The composition is also exquisite: the figure’s curled elbow forms the sharp point of the classic RWS heart – but there are no swords piercing it from without. Instead, the pain comes from within. Guay refers to the razor-wolves as “strange beasts with unblinking eyes and a taste for sorrows.” They ask, “Is this pain trying to protect you from further harm – like the pain your brain uses to make you pull your hand away from a candle flame? Or is it a pain that feeds on you for its own survival?” The card effectively conveys the idea that it’s not external betrayal that has hurt you, it’s the mauling you’ve received from your own thoughts.

The trickster Seven of Dreams (Swords) here is a masterclass in illusion. The figure is cloaked in moth wings and peacock eyes, draped in natural camouflage and theatrical display. You don’t know what’s real and what’s a glamour – and that’s the point. The figure reminds me of the Mothman from the game Wildermyth (amazing, you should play it!) Moths are the original illusionists. Their wings mimic bark, eyes, leaves, or even snakes. They don’t attack, they deceive. This ties directly into the Seven of Swords: evasion over confrontation, disguise over brute force. Guay asks, “is illusion always a negative thing or are there times when it can be your companion?” And that’s the heart of it. Sometimes illusion is survival. Sometimes camouflage is kindness. Not every untruth is treachery, sometimes, it’s strategy. Or even grace.

In the Nine of Swords (Dreams) the razor-toothed nightmare wolves from the Three return – only now, they’re not merely circling. You’re right in their jaws. Even the eyes that bloomed across the Two, the seeing-without-seeing, the Pale-Man-perception, are useless now. Vision doesn’t save you. Awareness doesn’t soften the bite. Guay writes, “So I grew my own lidless eyes, my own sharp teeth, and lost myself howling with those cruel beasts.” This is the terror of the Nine of Swords – not fear of what might happen out there, but the fear that you’ve lost control of your own brain. The thought spiral that devours reason. The sleepless hours where your own mind becomes predator.

The Queen of Dreams (Swords) is literally clothed in perception, her robe a swirl of eyes, always watching, always knowing. Her third eye gleams at her brow, offering insight that cuts through illusion. In one hand, she holds a skull. Not as a symbol of fear, but of familiarity. She’s seen death, held it, learned from it – and the wisdom she carries is shaped by that brush with impermanence. She’s not cruel, but she’s not here to comfort. She’s here to see. And yet, despite all this steel and clarity, she wears a moth-winged cloak and a moth-antler crown. Thought, in this deck, is never static. It’s ephemeral, fluttering, impossible to pin down. The moths remind us that even sharpness can flutter. Even logic can move in moonlight. Even swords can whisper.

This Queen is seer, sentinel, survivor. She does not look away, and she will not let you forget what she’s seen.

In the Blood Moon Tarot, the Ace of Pentacles (here renamed Honey) appears not as a coin or a seed, but as an almost overripe pomegranate, its skin flushed and split, feeding a bee at its core. The bee links us immediately to the idea of community, sweetness, and labour. As Guay writes, “it is the hard work of our hands and the ritual of our planting and harvest. It’s the transformation of sunlight into the sweet taste of honey.”

But the pomegranate is where the real mythic weight lies IMO! It’s a fruit of fertility and death, of hunger and consequence. And it roots this card in the deeper soil of the Empress and High Priestess. The Empress rules the realm of growth, sensuality, and the natural world. The pomegranate, full and lush, is her signature fruit, a symbol of life bursting with potential – very appropriate for the Ace of Pents. The High Priestess, too, is linked to the pomegranate, especially in the RWS deck where the veil behind her is patterned with them. It connects her to Persephone, who tasted the fruit of the Underworld, and was changed forever. So when we see the Ace of Pents as this split, glistening pomegranate, we’re not just seeing abundance. We’re seeing threshold. A fruit you can’t un-eat. A sweetness that costs something. A gift that marks a beginning, but also carries the whisper of descent.

The Two of Pents (Honey) is just so pretty! It’s def one of deck’s most visually serene cards – a soft, balanced image that hums with quiet rhythm. It captures the gentle dance of labour and rest, of knowing where to place your energy and when to step back. Guay explains, “I learned from watching the bees where there is work to be done. They visited each open flower and did not dally with the late-bloomers. They would open in time, but until then there was much else to be done.” It’s a lovely reminder that balance isn’t just about juggling, it’s about discernment. About pacing yourself. About recognising what’s ready to bloom now, and what can wait. In a world that demands we hustle for everything (hello late stage capitalism!), the bees offer a softer wisdom.

The Five of Pents (Honey) here doesn’t show frozen doorways or locked churches. Instead, it gives us fruit rotting on the vine, something once full of promise, now turned sticky-sour and stagnant. The bees linger, hoping for sweetness, but find only disappointment. Even nourishment has betrayed them. Guay writes, “Winter arrived early, wrapping its cold fingers around the trees. Soon all that remained of the summer was worm-eaten, and home felt miles away.” It’s a card of material sorrow, of the body tired, the shelter locked shut, the support no longer available. But there’s something quieter and more aching here too: the loss of faith in what once sustained you.

The Blood Moon Tarot is in my Top Three All Time Decks, so obvs I’m gonna not hesitate to recommend it to every witch and her cat. It’s available for pre-order in the UK for £44, which is a lot for a mass market deck, but I def get the feel this deck is going to deliver quality-wise.

.

.

.