Deck Review: Jessup’s Magical Tarot Deck

In time for Halloween, I want to spend some time with the fabulously witchy & kitschy Jessup’s Magical Tarot Deck, which is equal parts spooky and fun, and thus pretty much the perfect Halloween deck. Plus, with its gorgeous oranges, yellows, faded greens and inky blacks, it has a wonderfully October-y seasonal palette.

The deck is the creation of Karli Jessup, an artist and witch based in Saskatchewan, Canada. Formally trained in printmaking, Jessup’s work plays around with the boundary between commercial and fine-art printing – something that very much comes through in the deck’s distinctive retro aesthetic. She also owns and operates Jessup’s General Store, a shop selling clothing, accessories, and prints. And – very cool – the name isn’t just part of the vintage branding: it’s an homage to her great-grandparents, who ran the original Jessup’s General Store at Touchwood Siding, Saskatchewan, during the 1940s.

And OMG, I have been obsessed with Saskatchewan for a couple of decades now, much to the bemusement of Canadian friends. I’ve flown over it on my way to Vancouver and had my little nose pressed to the glass. It’s so completely different from rolling, green, damp, mild, densely populated England: this great stretch of prairie flatland, field after field after field, huge skies, and extreme winters that want to bite your face off.

I think my fascination originally came from reading an incredible old story from the 1920s about a trapper who was cornered and mauled by a pack of wolves, despite reportedly managing to kill six of them before they overwhelmed him. Obviously, this is a horrible story – poor guy! – but, coming from a country where the wildlife is almost entirely benign, I’m perpetually both terrified and awestruck by just how red in tooth and claw Canadian nature can be.

So, much like my wildly romanticised version of 1950s-60s America (as I rambled on about in my Ever Ahead Tarot review), I also have a wildly romanticised version of 1920s Canada. I blame Hollywood! I’m fully aware that the reality of this kind of hard-scrabble life on the fringes of the wilderness was probably, for the most part, utterly shit. But it’s difficult not to be seduced by the rawness of it: the vastness, the isolation, the brutal weather, the sense that nature could genuinely kill you. Which means the fact that Jessup’s General Store is named for an actual family general store in rural Saskatchewan makes the whole deck extra magical for me.

The art style is gloriously retro, and the deck v. much has that LOOK! AMAZING! NEW! visual vocabulary of mid-century advertising. The limited colour palette of faded coral/salmon, mint, yellow and powder blue paired with the thick black outlines, and bold typography make the cards look like they’ve been snipped from 1950s magazine advertisements.

There’s a definite Hanna-Barbera flavour to it too – The Jetsons, Wacky Races, and, perhaps most of all, the animated opening credits of Bewitched. It’s kitschy, playful, and knowingly vintage rather than dogmatically period-authentic: a sort of atomic-age witchcraft aesthetic.

The Deck: Look, Feel, and Finish

The deck comes in a tuck box, and as y’all know, I don’t love the tuck. But this is a pretty solid one, and, crucially, you can actually get into it without ripping the tab (decks which basically necessitate ripping the tab to shreds like my cats trying to get at the Dreamies are one of my absolute pet hates!)

The cards themselves are glossy. Like, really, really, really glossy. You could ice skate on them. I think this is probably a bit of a Marmite choice – some people are going to hate the shine – but personally, I don’t mind it. The coating gives the cards a bit of protection, and they slide against each other really nicely. I know the current trend is for that lovely soft-touch matte finish, and yes, it feels very fancy, but my GOD those cards can stick together. It’s nice to have something I can actually shuffle!

There’s no guidebook included, but these are pretty straightforward cards, and they have keywords printed directly on them, so I don’t think you’re going to be completely lost without one. The Jessup’s General Store website also points you towards general online Tarot resources like Biddy Tarot if you need a bit more help. I initially thought, hey, that could be me! And then I remembered that I’ve only managed to write deep dives for 20 of the 78 cards, so… a way to go before the lil baby blog is gonna get name-checked, alas, haha.

The Minors are pip-ish, rather than fully illustrated scenes, but I think it works pretty well. They’re not completely abstract: there are some lovely little visual hat-tips to the traditional RWS meanings scattered throughout, so there’s still plenty to latch onto if that’s the system you’re used to reading.

The suits have also been given a kitschy witchy makeover: Candles replace Wands, Cauldrons replace Cups, Besoms replace Swords (Air, because you fly on them!), and Bones replace Pentacles. It’s a cute conceit, but also an intuitive enough set of substitutions that I didn’t find myself constantly having to translate them back into the traditional suits in my head.

Greatest Hits: My Favourite Cards from Jessup’s Magical Tarot Deck

I really like the exposed brain here, suggesting that our mind is our greatest magical tool: this is where the magic happens! The Magician is all about our ability to take an idea, a desire, an intention, and make it manifest in the material world. There’s a definite mind-over-matter quality to this image; as within, so without, as much as as above, so below. What exists first internally – thought, imagination, will – can be brought forth into external reality. The magic isn’t something bestowed upon us from outside; it’s already sitting there between our ears.

Visually, I really like the Emperor as a phrenology head. I have a bit of a thing for phrenology heads, lol – I have one in my study at home, another in my office on campus, plus a couple of phrenology-head bookends. But it’s also a really clever image for the Emperor. Phrenology takes the extraordinary complexity of the human mind and attempts to divide it up, label it, categorise it and impose a nice, neat, comprehensible order upon it. That’s very Emperor.

Of course, phrenology is also complete bollocks. The brain doesn’t work as a collection of discrete little parcels, each neatly responsible for one particular character trait or function; it’s a messy, sprawling, interconnected network. So I see it as a reflection on the Emperor’s shadow side too: the danger of becoming so enamoured with systems, rules, and categories that we start trying to force a complicated world into boxes it simply doesn’t fit.

I’m not sure I totally dig the dollar signs though. I get it: the Emperor is practical, materially grounded, concerned with security and worldly success. But I don’t necessarily see him as mercenary, a man whose entire brain has been colonised by capital. Money can certainly be one of the tools with which we build stability and exercise power, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all of either. To slightly misappropriate Sam Smith: I don’t have money on my mind, I do it for the love! I I did lol at the traditional ‘a picture of good health’ at the bottom of the neck being switched for ‘a picture of good wealth’ though.

I love the two skulls for the Lovers. I’ve written before in my Lovers deep dive about the relationship between love and death, which we can also (kinda) see in the traditional RWS imagery, if we squint at it. Adam and Eve’s Tree of Knowledge ultimately gives them knowledge of their own mortality: they learn that they will die. And this ties in well to the central message of the Lovers card. Philosophers like Martin Heidegger have argued that it is precisely our awareness of death that allows us to live authentically: once we understand that our time is finite, the choices we make with it really matter. And the Lovers is, fundamentally, a card about choice. Who do you love? Who do you choose? Who do you want to spend your one wild and precious life with? These two have apparently made their decision. Till death do us part? Pfft. Not even then!

I absolutely love this weird grumpy little mer-owl Hermit! I’ve written before about why owls work so beautifully for the Hermit: they’re traditionally associated with wisdom, but they’re also silent, watchful, solitary creatures who can see in the dark. As Mary Oliver wonderfully described them, they have “lamp-eyes” – perfect for a card classically illuminated by the Hermit’s lantern. I don’t think there’s specifically an owl-fish cryptid in mythology, so I see the fish tail as symbolic of water. The owl belongs to Air (Swords), the realm of thought and knowledge; the fish belongs to Water (Cups), the realm of emotion, intuition, and the subconscious. So if it did exist, presumably this strange little beast could navigate both the darkness and the depths, seeing what is hidden from everybody else – v. Hermity.

I find this Nine of Wands (Candles) incredibly visually satisfying. All nine candles are burning brightly, but look at all that wax, dripping down over the text. They likely can’t keep up this blazing display of light and spirit forever, it’s costing them too dearly, literally consuming them. But for now, it’s beautiful and defiant – there is a light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not (yet) overcome it.

And the cobwebs on the Four of Swords (Besoms) made me laugh. Rest, said the Tarot – and apparently they took the instruction very seriously, and perhaps stayed resting a bit too long! R&R is very important, but at some point you have to pluck up your courage and get back on the broom before you web over.

The Six of Swords (Besoms) are the polar opposite: these little guys are very much on the move, complete with adorable feathery stork wings. There’s also none of the heaviness, the sadness or uncertainty that can accompany the traditional Six of Swords journey here. And I think these cards give you a pretty good sense of the deck as a whole. Jessup’s Magical Tarot is an overwhelmingly positive, light-hearted deck. It tends to emphasise the lightwork of each card, finding the humour, hope, or possibility even in traditionally difficult places. That makes it enormous fun, but you do need to be in the mood for it. If I wanted a deck to do some difficult self-work with, this probably wouldn’t be my first choice. On the other hand, if I were reading for a bunch of non-Tarot people at a Halloween party? 100%! It’s witchy without being intimidating, the imagery is immediately accessible, the keywords make reading with it v. straightforward, and the whole thing has a playful spooky-season energy.

I really like the peacock feathers on the Queen of Swords (Besoms) card, particularly their distinctive “eyes”. The Queen of Swords is perceptive and discerning: she watches, notices, sees through bullshit. Those multiple watchful eyes therefore feel very appropriate for a Queen associated with intelligence and objectivity. The red rose is more unexpected, but I rather like that too. The Queen of Swords sometimes gets flattened into this cold, emotionless bitch, but obvs intellect and feeling aren’t mutually exclusive. A red rose brings love and passion into the picture – but, crucially, a rose has thorns. There can be softness here, but there are boundaries too: treat her carelessly and she can still draw blood.

I really like the Six of Pents (Bones), which appears to show a collection of shed milk-teeth. And what could be more give and take than the strange little economy of the Tooth Fairy 😂? We willingly surrender our teeth to this weird little mini witch who sneaks into our bedrooms at night, and receive something in exchange. Traditionally, that’s coins under the pillow, but there’s a bigger exchange happening too: we lose our baby teeth and our adult teeth grow in to replace them.

I love that as an image for the Six of Pentacles because it makes material exchange feel cyclical. Things come to us, things leave us; we acquire and relinquish. Even the physical matter of our own bodies isn’t really ours to hoard forever, instead we shed it, replace it, grow, change. Losing a tooth as a child can be exciting rather than frightening because we understand that this particular loss is necessary: we’re making space for something new. It’s part of our lives on this earthly plane – matter moves, bodies change, we give, we receive, and the cycle continues.

I really like the Page of Pentacles (Bones), firstly because I just think it looks very cool. But it also captures the Page of Pents beautifully – this is the student of the Tarot deck: curious, analytical, eager to understand what makes things work. They want to examine, dissect, take things apart and strip them down to their bare bones (quite literally, in this case!) so they can understand how they function as physical things. But I also can’t help seeing this as a little callback to the Page of Cups and their famous fish. But while the Cups Page’s fish is alive and wriggling, the Pents Page is less interested in the wonder and whimsy of the fish, and more interested in its anatomy! And I like this for both Pages. One asks what might this mean?, the other asks how does this thing actually work?

And my favourite card in the deck is the Fool! This is such a cute, retro-kitsch card, I adore the little bird leg poking optimistically out of the top.

The egg is a perfect representation of new beginnings, creation, the start of a journey; as well as innocence, and, yes, foolishness. The unbroken oval of the egg also mirrors the number ‘0’, and Rachel Pollack points out that the number zero is like an egg, full of life, getting ready to hatch. Or as Ebeggin puts it, The Fool is “the Zero, the cosmic egg from which anything and everything can hatch.”

I particularly like that Jessup’s egg has already started hatching. The chick is committed now, it can’t retreat back into the safety of its shell, just like the RWS Fool can’t step back off that cliff edge. One you start to hatch that’s it – you have to find out what comes next. And here we go!

Overall, Jessup’s Magical Tarot is just a really fun deck. It’s witchy and kitschy and gloriously retro, with loads of clever little visual ideas tucked into what initially look like very simple illustrations. It’s definitely a deck that tends to look on the bright side – if you’re after something to do some deep self-work with I prob wouldn’t opt for it. But for playful, accessible readings, particularly with people who don’t know Tarot terribly well, I think it would be fab. You can buy the deck from Jessup’s General Store here for £27.

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