Deck Review: Grounded Wisdom Tarot

Another Kickstarter-backed deck that recently arrived with me is the gorgeously detailed Grounded Wisdom Tarot. The deck was designed and drawn by Gabby Morris, who takes a “polymathic approach*” to their projects, blending art and design with nature and ecological futures. (*My little ADHD magpie brain perked up at this inspired phrasing! My new goal is owning my own scattergun approach to knowledge by calling it ‘polymathic’! 💪) Morris’ website is full of really cool stuff from her Master’s project and subsequent work – it’s kinda chemistry-meets-cooking-meets-conservation-meets art & design-meets-am dram, and is well worth checking out. The deck not only has lots of crossovers with my own myriad interests and hobbies, but my husband has a PhD in Ecology and works as a local government ecologist – so I know a lot about ecology by osmosis! All this made the deck a must-have for me from the outset.

Each card offers questions that spark holistic, regenerative design thinking and offers us a way to consider how ourselves and our designs connect back to the earth.

Gabby Morris

The deck explores how the Tarot archetypes fit with nature, and especially with soil (Morris’ specialist area), and it’s super smart and complex. I’ll unpack this more throughout the review, but, in short, I think this deck is far too abstruse to use for reading for others – even for a confident reader I don’t think it offers a querent enough ways in to see themselves in the cards – but for self-reflection it’s a corker.

The deck comes in a simple but attractive lidded box, with a small colour guidebook. The guidebook shows an image of each card, a basic description of the card meaning, and then what it means in terms of soil/creativity and project design (so, perfect if you’re using Tarot to self-reflect on current or up-coming projects). It also has a selection of symbols which indicate what point in the ‘cycle’ that card’s energies are helpful (before, beginning, during, at the end, after). The cards are a good texture and thickness for shuffling – they don’t have that thick lux feel some have, but they’re sturdy and practical – and cardbacks are a nice simple stone blue. Think a no-nonsense design to match a no-nonsense deck!

The artwork is a sheer delight. It’s inspired by 20th century modernist farming posters, and is so gorgeous I’d like many of the cards as prints to put on my wall. The four suits have been re-imagined as four soil-related elements: Fungi (Pents), Microbes (Cups), Leaves (Wands), and Minerals (Swords). Morris explains that she chose Fungi to represent Pentacles because mushrooms etc. “draw… [their] essence from the earth, and embody themes of security, reliability, and the material aspects that ground us”. Cups are Microbes because “microbes play a pivotal role that often goes unnoticed, much like the nuanced emotions and connections symbolized by the Suit of Cups in traditional Tarot”. And Wands become Leaves because “leaves emerging from the soil’s nurturing embrace, symbolise the fiery zeal of growth, the push for new life from the earth’s bed. This suit captures the dynamic energy of sprouting ambitions and the organic drive towards sunlight”.

Now, when I first backed the deck, Swords were re-imagined as Microbes. This changed shortly before the deck went to print, with Morris explaining: “It’s taken a lot of time to get [the cards] to where I wanted them and there have been some changes, I removed the Protozoa from the Suits and that was incorporated into Microbes – I wanted them to feel distinctly different but also fit the soil. Protozoa just didn’t feel like it fitted the suit, now we have Minerals and it’s great”. She explains that “minerals aptly take on the role of the swords, symbolizing the clarity, action, and intellect that guide us through life’s challenges”.

Now, I completely see where Morris is coming from, and I can also see, looking at the original card design (sorry for the poor photo quality, the only picture of the old Protozoa design is from the Kickstarter page), that Protozoa was probably a bit too similar to Microbes, both visually and thematically. Butttttttt… I have to say, I’m not really feeling this change. Two reasons.

Firstly, for me, minerals and rocks are intrinsically linked with the suit of Pents. I just have too many other nature-themed decks that have traded Pents for Stones etc. that the association feels right and natural to me, and it’s jarring to imagine minerals as Swords.

And secondly, I just don’t like the art style for the Minerals suit as much as the rest of the deck. Protozoa were just soooooo beautiful (if a little close to Microbes), whereas Minerals have a slightly blocky, cut-out-y, collage-y feel which, to me, doesn’t fit with the rest of the deck as well (and isn’t a style I’m that wild about generally speaking). Obvs this is quite a personal reflection, and others might love the change!

Much as I love the art style, I also find the Minor Arcana cards a bit tricky to read from. Within each suit, the cards aren’t hugely visually different from each other, and the numbers/titles are very small and discrete (if you look at the above images you’ll see the tiny white numerals at the bottom of the cards). Additionally, unlike some pip decks (or even playing cards), it’s really hard to quickly count the number of leaves/fungi/minerals etc to ascertain which card you’re looking at (it takes me at least 5 seconds to count the 9 fungi stalks in the above card, for example). This is the reason I probably wouldn’t use the deck to read for others – it’d slow me down to read from it, and even if I got really proficient with it, I’d be reading alone. I personally like it when a querent is able to look at an image and intuitively chime in with their own observations.

Having said all that, the deck feels to me like it’s designed for self-reflection anyway. It’s a deeply internal deck, concerned as it is with the layers of life beneath our feet, and the messages around growth cycles and spiritual nourishment feel very personal.

And the Majors! I’m now going to gush a bit about my favourite Majors, though all 22 of them are superb so it was hard to pick!

First up, I love this chunky, healthy earthworm as the High Priestess. Anyone who gardens knows that earthworms are a key signifier of soil health, even if much of what they do is unseen. But they’re always there, beneath the surface, enriching our lives and ensuring our survival. As the guidebook explains, earthworms represent “the mystery and magic beneath the surface”.

The Emperor as bedrock is inspired! As a feminist I struggled a bit with The Emperor when first coming to Tarot, and focussing on the card’s message of strength and stability, of providing a secure foundation so that others might flourish, has really helped me come to appreciate it. The Emperor is, in many ways, the ‘sturdiest’ card in the deck (and certainly for those who take a numerological approach to Tarot), so the idea of the card as ‘bedrock’ really resonates. Jessica Dore points out that The Emperor is the 4^th card in the Majors, and four is associated with grounding, like the four corners of a house. She suggests that the Emperor’s message (or at least part of it), is to take that strength and sturdiness and apply it when times get tough: “make your body into a house when you feel afraid. A house whose walls can withstand many, many things, the joys and the terrors, with thick oak floors sturdy enough to bear the weight. See whether, the next time you feel overwhelmed with a feeling or thought pattern that’s telling you to do something that will betray your own interests, you can be still. Even if it’s just for five minutes. That’s how you practice power”.

Finally, The Chariot here is instead ‘The Irrigator’. Not only does the river flow forward with The Chariot’s drive and energy, but showing this body of water specifically as a nourishing flood plain also focuses on the concepts of “control, flow, the ability to direct growth [and] balancing resources”.

Strength here becomes ‘The Root’, demonstrating the card’s anchoring power, its tenacity and resilience; and The Hermit becomes ‘The Mulch’, emphasising the messages of “regeneration, introspection, protection, [and] recycling of life”. The Devil is portrayed in The Grounded Wisdom Tarot as an invasive species, and in my head this is  definitely my husband’s arch nemesis, Japanese Knotweed. Just as the creeping tendrils of our own bad habits are hard to extract ourselves from, and our destructive behaviour patterns are difficult to root out, so invasive species like Japanese Knotweed are extremely tricky to eradicate. Causing chaos on the local ecosystem, they damage building foundations and impede water flow. The Devil indeed.

The Moon and The Sun are both gorgeous in this deck. Simple and to the point, we have a moonlit garden for The Moon (“unseen growth, cycles, mystery, the power of rest and regeneration”) and a sunlit field for The Sun (“growth, energy, positivity, life-giving power”).

If you’re looking for a deck for some reflective work (or to guide you as you work through a specific project or endeavour) then I def recommend the Grounded Wisdom Tarot. It’s available from Morris’ website for £38.50.

Just as traditional Tarot illuminates the complexities of human experience, the Soil cards reveal the intricacies of our relationship with the land – each card a poetic, insightful metaphor for ecological, design, and personal transformation

Gabby Morris

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