Deck Review: The Cards Drawn Tarot

The Cards Drawn Tarot is a clever little deck; tricksy, artfully knowing. It’s kinda hard to articulate, but it feels to me like the sort of deck someone would pull out in a smoky medieval tavern to read for strangers in exchange for a few grubby pennies and a pint of ale. It has an old-yet-timeless feel about it. And this reader in the inn – are they a charlatan? Perhaps. But it also feels like you’d pay just for their company for the time it takes to do the reading, because the way they tell the story of the cards is so enjoyable. This deck is dark in places, yes, but it’s also just really FUN.  Full of mischief and play. It winks as much as it warns. And somehow, that makes the truths it offers land even harder.

As a slightly random tangent, I genuinely feel this deck could have a role in my next DnD campaign as a bard. (Maybe: once per long rest, as an action, you may draw a card from the deck to cast augury without expending a spell slot or resources. The omen may be cryptic, theatrical, or frustratingly sarcastic, at the DM’s discretion 😂).

The creator, Clint Woods, is an artist and designer, as well as a “collector and obsessive“. After my review of the Erenberg Tarot, I genuinely think collectors make great Tarot designers – it’s that magpie’s eye for bright bits of shiny symbolism. Woods describes his art as a way to reveal “truths… buried in the subliminal unconscious,” accessed through “personal reflection and contemplative practice as a daily regimen” – which is, let’s face it, an almost perfect definition of Tarot! So it’s really no surprise that he came to illustrate a smart, complex little deck like the Cards Drawn.

Woods also explains how his art explores “the space between observation, drawing, meditation, and teachings from wisdom traditions, particularly Buddhism” – and this deck is the fruit of that practice. It doesn’t come blazing in with truths. It tends them, like embers. What you find in these cards depends on how you look – and how long you’re willing to sit beside the fire (listening to my now fully anthropomorphised Deck-Bard, lol!)

There’s lots going on in this deck – some of which I’ll attempt to unpack when I run through my favourite cards (buckle up bitchlings – there are a lot!) – but there’s also two over-arching themes I noticed:

Firstly, disembodied eyes drift through the deck like intuitive clouds – watching, dreaming, rolling, grieving, witnessing. They’re not the cold all-seeing eyes of judgment, though. These eyes feel, they respond to what’s going on in each card, making them more about human vision, inner truth, or even collective witnessing IMO. There’s the obvious links between “seeing” and cartomancy / fortune telling, but the eyes floating throughout the Cards Drawn Tarot aren’t *just* seeing what is or what will be – they’re reacting, feeling what’s seen. They become a visual metaphor for intuitive introspection, and for those moments we’ve all had reading Tarot when we can’t unsee what we’ve realised. So, not some judgey Eye of God, rather, a mirror held up to the user: a reminder that reading the cards isn’t just about foresight, but about feeling. That Tarot’s great gift is that it lets us fine-tune the inner eyes we turn upon ourselves.

Secondly, I really dig the use of classic playing card suit icons as the “characters” in each card. It adds to the air of both something old (playing cards being much older than Tarot, at least as we now know it) and the storytelling / play acting of the bard. The clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds here aren’t just symbols; they’re performers, masks, archetypes tumbling across the stage. It reminds me of not just the bard but of the jester: the only one at court allowed to mock the king. This deck might come across as all japes and trickery, but in real life (well, real history) the jester’s ‘jokes’ gave the king a safe outlet for hearing the truth without public shame or political consequences. Like Shakespeare’s fools (e.g. in King Lear or As You Like It), jesters operated outside the rigid social hierarchy, which gave them freedom to observe and comment. Their powerlessness made them paradoxically powerful: they weren’t seen as political threats, so they could say more. The jester acted as a kind of regal conscience, disguised in bells and wit. Good jesters knew just how far to go, and some (like Will Sommers, Henry VIII’s fool) were trusted confidants. Woods’ cards, just like the court jester, hold up a mirror to ego, saying: you are not untouchable; you are ridiculous, human, flawed. The flavour of the whole deck gives me Big Fool Energy – the zero-card, the jokester, the wanderer who exists outside the system but reveals its truth. And of course, in turn, the Fool card is an ancestor of the later ‘Joker’ card that often appears in standard playing cards. Which brings me to…

The Deck: Look, Feel, and Finish

The creator Clint Woods describes the deck as “a passion project… the result of painting 80 original pieces of art that… incorporate both Tarot and the classic 52 card deck of playing cards”. This adds to the deck’s sense of play: the structures of playing cards and Tarot not only overlap here, they also jostle, flirt, and challenge one another.

The Courts in the Cards Drawn are Jack, Cavalier, Queen, King; I feel the re-naming of Knight as Cavalier is another nod to the ‘I’m just joking (until I’m not)‘ vibe of the deck. Cavalier, after all, comes with two distinct flavours: on one hand, it’s a literal term. A mounted soldier, a dashing figure on horseback, just like the Knights of Tarot tradition. But in modern English, “cavalier” also means something quite different: dismissive, flippant, breezily arrogant. Someone who brushes off seriousness with a smile. This deck is just so damn clever! And cheeky! I love it :-D.

The deck itself is small and lightweight. The cards are printed poker-sized and pretty thin and flimsy – but it works! It feels like a cheap, jobbing deck in the best possible way. This isn’t a piece of art, to be admired from a distance without touching. It’s meant to be used, pulled out and put to work in my smoky old tavern! The backs feature a striking red mandala design (you can read me obsessing about the links between sand mandalas and Tarot in my review of the R. Black Tarot), and the deck includes two diptych jokers as well as eight extra cards with interpretations printed on them which act in place of a guidebook. The edges have a blue-black gilding that seems pretty chip resistant.

Woods also speaks about how he drew from Buddhist philosophy when creating the deck, mapping the four suits and the Major Arcana onto the five skandhas: the shifting factors that create the illusion of a stable self. Diamonds/Pents (Form), Hearts/Cups (Feeling), Spades/Swords (Perception), Clubs/Wands (Volition), and the Majors as Consciousness. Woods explains, “even though they are not “I”, they can each provide a gate to enter through to gain understanding”. The fact that this Buddhist framework aligns so seamlessly with the architecture of the Tarot is one of those recurring archetypes I can’t help but marvel at: those deep metaphors that surface again and again across time, culture, and tradition. As if certain truths want to be found, no matter the language or system you’re using to seek them. I really bloody love Tarot, lol 💚.

Greatest Hits: My Favourite Cards from the Cards Drawn Tarot

The Cards Drawn Tarot opens with this amazing Fool, bursting out of an egg. There’s a long symbolic tradition linking The Fool to eggs – perfect little universes of potential. The egg is creation, innocence, and the start of a journey. Its unbroken oval even mirrors the number ‘0’. Rachel Pollack describes zero as 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.” The Fool hatching mid-air as in Woods’ drawing suggests not just beginning a journey, but being born in motion. No nesting, no pause – just emergence and flight all in one.

And then – shut the front door – can we just give a round of applause for the fact that the surprised looking bird who’s just experienced the Fool pirouetting out of an egg and onto its back is a common loon 😂? The loon is a master of two worlds: slipping beneath the surface of a lake with ease, yet awkward on land, just as the Fool moves between realms of sense and spirit, dream and deed. BUT, the bit I think is super clever: the word loon carries madness in its echo, just like the word fool does. Though there’s wisdom, too, in trusting the pull of your own strange song.

There’s warning in the card too, though. In the background, a second bird, wings aflame, plummets past the blazing sun, an unmistakable nod to Icarus and the dangers of hubris. Meanwhile, The Fool gazes, almost entranced, at the rose in her hand. Is she so caught up in beauty that she can’t see the thorns? Sometimes The Fool’s optimism veers toward naivety: all rose-tinted spectacles and blind faith. But maybe she does see the thorns. Maybe she sees them, and chooses flight anyway. Zero doesn’t need certainty. Just the courage to leap.

Then I love this shadowy Magician as a kind of cosmic knitter. I take the threads here to represent the raw materials of reality, or the five Skandahs that Woods talks about: Diamonds (Form), Hearts (Feeling), Spades (Perception), Clubs (Volition), and the Majors (Consciousness). This Magician’s work is not the sleek alchemy of the RWS’s Magician, but patient weaving. This is magic as craft. It’s also a quietly feminist or anti-patriarchal take: instead of the pointed wand, the raised finger, the command, we get a domestic mysticism – magic as making, as care, as slow art.

A beautiful Empress, with a maypole rising behind her, casting her as the lush, fertile May Queen. Her shield resembles one of Dalí’s melting clocks, a perfect reminder that time itself bends to her rhythms. Under her rule, all flora and fauna flourish, but always in their own time. You cannot rush the harvest, or birth, or dusk. The Empress teaches not only patience, but pleasure in patience – the joy of taking your own sweet time. She invites us to slow down, to notice the small, sensual delights that bloom when we stop hurrying and simply be. As Kahil Gibran wrote, “forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the wind longs to play with your hair.” Or as Jen Cownie and Fiona Lensvelt put it: “Good things come to those who wait – but they can come while you wait, too.”

The Hermit here is depicted as Bodhidharma, the 5th/6th-century Indian monk traditionally credited as the founder of Zen (Chan) Buddhism in China. He famously meditated for nine years facing a cave wall at Shaolin and is presented as a figure of severe, uncompromising focus who cut through illusion with silence and stillness. No chill Buddha vibes here, Bodhidharma is more like the wild man of the woods!

He embodies the Hermit’s path: radical isolation in service of radical insight. His cave isn’t a retreat, it’s more of a crucible. A place where delusion burns away. His teachings aren’t about scripture or ritual, but direct experience: going inward and stripping things back, facing yourself without flinching. I like how he’s looking away from his lantern here, towards the infinite whorl of space instead. Bodhidharma’s light isn’t a twinkling lantern – it’s the sudden flash of raw awakening (satori) that Zen points toward.

A fairly traditional rendition of the Tower here, but such a powerful rendition – the card almost quakes with the energy of it.

I can see a lot of Woods’ Buddhist learning in the Judgement card too. The lotus is the ultimate rebirth symbol. It blooms from the mud: beauty from decay. In Buddhist iconography, souls are often depicted reborn in a lotus blossom in Amitābha’s Pure Land.

The Three of Wands here places its three club icons on a chessboard, with watchful eyes floating in the distance, looking to the future. It’s a striking image that reframes this card: not as impulsive fire, but as passion with a plan. This really emphasises the card’s meaning of forward vision, strategic ambition. The Wands, usually associated with drive and instinct, are now operating in an almost-Swordsy world of tactics and foresight. On a chessboard, every piece matters. It’s not just about where you stand now, but where you’re going, and what your next move will cost. This Three isn’t just dreaming of the future; it’s plotting a course, one deliberate move at a time.

I love the Eight of Wands as messenger arrows, mid-flight.

The Nine of Wands as a log trying to keep the fire going in the rain is perfection. The smoking log is what’s left of that bright hopeful spark we saw in the Ace – the stubborn core of willpower. It’s not fresh energy; it’s what’s left when everything else has burned away. The rain is adversity, exhaustion, the outside forces trying to snuff you out. This isn’t about hope or glory. It’s about endurance for its own sake. The fire is down to embers, but it’s still there. This isn’t like the Ten’s collapse under pressure, it’s the moment right before that, where there’s still something to protect. The last stand. The flicker that says: not yet. I can see both lightwork and shadow work in Woods’ image. It can say either: external conditions are hard, but you still burn; or: you’ve come so far, but it’s taking everything just to stay lit.

And then in the Ten of Wands, we see a figure staggering beneath a towering stack of flaming clubs. They’re piled so high he can’t see the road ahead, only the heat, the weight, the pressure. All that drive early in the suit, but now you’re just stumbling about blindly, so overburdened. This is what happens when you carry everything yourself for too long.

In this Knight (Cavalier) of Wands she’s riding a dragon instead of the traditional horse. I see the dragon as a metaphor for her own inner fire: powerful but volatile. She’s not just using fire, she’s trying to ride it, to control it. But the dragon is bigger than her, and maybe not entirely tame… that’s the key. This Knight may be in her element, but that doesn’t mean she’s in control (even if she thinks she is!) The dragon lets her ride… for now. But it’s watching her, waiting to see if she truly understands what it means to wield fire.

There’s a LOT going on with the King of Wands. When I first looked at his club icon, and it’s three ‘bulby’ bits full of steam punk mechanics I was a bit like – huh? It looks like he’s examining how the wand works, what makes it tick, which seems more Swordsy than Wandsy to me! But then I started to see him as a kind of firebrand inventor. A visionary who wants to see how passion and ambition function. Someone who doesn’t just wield power, but wants to understand its mechanisms so he can better mentor others. And that *is* big King of Wands energy – leadership through ingenuity and creation.

And the more I looked, the more I noticed that his triple-headed, mechanical club bears a strong resemblance to vintage ribbon microphones. So the King with his microphone becomes a symbol of the craft of charisma. Instead of the raw instinct of the Knight/Cavalier, we have fire that’s been refined, amplified, designed. This is the kind of king who delivers TED talks and rallies movements.

Then look at this gorgeous Six of Cups as a treehouse, the perfect symbol of both nostalgia for childhood and emotional sanctuary. A beautiful little world built in the branches of memory. This card invites us to return: not to the past itself, but to the parts of ourselves still waiting in the treehouse. Joy isn’t just a memory; it’s a feeling we can still swing into.

A stunning Queen of Cups, crowned in coral and caressing the tail of a giant fish. I love that the mark of her regality is not forged from gold or jewels, but the sea itself. Slow-grown, wave-born – this is a woman shaped by deep waters of emotion and intuition. The fish is a classic symbol of the unconscious, the emotional, the sacred feminine, even the Christ figure. And, importantly, she doesn’t look like she’s trying to catch the fish, just to stroke it, to remind it that she is kin. The focus on the tail specifically – the part that propels fish through water – suggests that, as the nurturer of the suit, she’s attuned to where emotions are going, not just where they are.

The Four of Swords leans into the war-like nature of the suit by placing its resting Spade icon inside a military campaign tent – a brief pause on the field of battle. This isn’t peaceful retreat; it’s tactical rest. A truce, not an ending.

And the Nine of Swords makes powerful use of the deck’s eye motif. Here, almost all the eyes are closed, blinded by anxiety, as the central figure sinks their head into their hands in despair. There’s no clarity, just exhaustion. No vision, only overwhelm. It’s a card that understands how fear turns inward, how the mind becomes its own battlefield.

My take on this Page (Jack) of Swords is a fairly unsympathetic one. The Page here looks like they’re not just wielding their spade/sword of knowledge, but admiring it for its shine. Instead of asking what the sword is for, they’re just focussed on how sharp or impressive it looks. To me this speaks to the shadow of this Page: vanity of thought, when intellect becomes self-congratulatory. Someone who wants to be seen as clever more than they want to understand. Weaponising knowledge for status, not insight. Performative cleverness – polishing their sword but never using it. Mistaking information for wisdom. {cough} academia {cough}

Or perhaps it’s more about youthful naivety – the Page buffs his brilliance like a blade, proud of what he knows, but unsure what it’s for. Either way, it reminds me of the iconic bar scene from Good Will Hunting when Damon’s Will character eviscerates the pretentious know-it-all Harvard bloke who was trying to smart-shame Affleck: “You dropped 150 grand on a fuckin’ education you could’ve got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.” Sorry Page!

And equally, the Knight (Cavalier) of Swords seems to me to lean into shadow work too. Here we have the Knight up in the sky, firing his ‘spade’ lance down through the clouds. He’s depicted as a kind of aerial judge, dispensing justice from afar. The sky is often a symbol of clarity, intellect, “higher” ideals, hence its link to the suit of Swords. But from this far above, the Knight is distanced from the consequences of lobbing his lance. His actions can seem noble, but they lack contact. The image speaks to me of detached “rationality” that’s blind to context or empathy (after all, the Knight’s helmet is almost covering his eyes here). Institutionalised power: the kind that believes itself objective, when in fact it’s just insulated. The courtroom, where those rich old white judges with book-smarts but the least lived experience of hardship pass devastating verdicts on the poor and oppressed. This card asks us: are you acting from principle, or from position? Are you too far removed from the consequences of your ideas? Is it time to get down off the cloud, and not just think, but listen, touch, witness?

The Queen of Swords, on the other hand, is a traditionally somewhat ‘shadow’ card who here gets a lightwork treatment. Woods’ image really leans into the idea of the QoS as a survivor; not just someone cerebral, but someone who has known pain and carries wisdom. Her wheelchair emphasises that wisdom can come through the body, through lived experience, through adaptation. It makes her resilience visible. The Swords suit is often about cutting through illusion, and what better way to challenge societal illusions than by refusing the default image of queenly power as able-bodied and conventionally feminine? This buzz-cut Queen of Swords is still the Queen: her authority is not diminished, just reframed.

In this Seven of Pentacles, the central figure pulls a plant from the earth to inspect its roots, and finds diamonds, tuber-like, nestled in the soil. These aren’t riches that glitter; they’re rewards grown in the dark, earned over time. It’s a moment of pause and reflection: is this what I hoped would grow?

I love this Cavalier (Knight) of Pents as literally manning a plough. He’s such a salt-of-the earth grafter. Woods’ card shows us that not all knights fight. Some sow. Some walk behind the horse, steering the plough through stubborn ground, trusting that with time, something good will grow.

And a striking King of Pents, his face made of bark, his crown a tangle of branches. He is the tree – not just tending land, but of it. His bark looks ancient, weathered: he’s seen the seasons, and endured. This suggests he’s rooted, not reactive. Solid, slow, and wise, meaning that even in the city we see behind him he can become a metaphorical forest others can shelter in.

The deck retails for $45 (about £33). The Kickstarter is finished now, but you can contact Woods via the deck’s Insta if you’re interested in purchasing a copy, and hopefully it will be available through his online store soon.

.

.

.