Deck Review: The Slow Tarot

I’m going to try to intersperse reviews of my new(ish) decks with deep dives into some of my old favourites, otherwise I worry I’m never really going to spend quality time with them again – which feels a shame when they are, after all, my beloveds! So here we have one of the very first indie Tarot decks I ever bought: The Slow Tarot by San Francisco-based artist Lacey Bryant.

As a baby Tarot collector (I hadn’t even realised at that point how deep the disease would spread, lol), I spent a looooonggggg time deciding which deck to buy as a personal favourite to accompany the Morgan Greer I had learnt on. The thing that really caught my eye with the Slow Tarot, and made it stand out above hundreds of others I considered, was the atmosphere of it. The use of oil painting gives everything this rich, vintagey, deeply cosy feeling that immediately appealed to me, because vintage + cosy is absolutely my jam. But there’s also something slightly kooky and surreal running underneath it all too, which keeps it from ever feeling merely quaint or old-fashioned. And then, of course, there’s the sheer level of technical skill on display. Oil paints are not an easy medium to work with at the best of times, let alone for an entire 78 card deck!

The Slow Tarot was originally a personal art project – a “labour of love” – that spanned more than six years, with Bryant creating an original oil painting for every single card in the deck. You can feel the ‘slow’ness of the Slow Tarot in the finished work, in the sense that every image feels genuinely dwelt in. Considered. Lingered over. The deck in turn then invites you to pause, to sit with the imagery, and to spend time reflecting on the deeper meanings and archetypes within the cards.

I think part of why it works so well is that Bryant is clearly both a Tarot enthusiast and a very talented artist. Many decks lean one way or the other: either the symbolism is clever but the art is kinda mid, or the artwork is gorgeous but the creator’s understanding of Tarot as a symbolic system feels a bit shaky in places. Here, though, you can have both! ¿Por qué no los dos? As Bryant explains, “it was important to me that the cards work at 2 levels- with an immediate emotional response as well as a deeper level of symbolism that can be discovered with further exploration. In this way I wanted to bring in both the novice and the seasoned tarot aficionado.”

There’s also a very particular kind of nostalgia running through this deck that very much resonates with me. Bryant has said that she’s “fond of creating depth [in her art] by placing small objects quite large in the foreground, floating at times as if the space around things has substance.” She describes these items as “discarded objects found on the street, small trinkets, anything that has sentiment and story attached to it.” I think the deck’s reverence for objects is what really spoke to MagpieBrain here, as a dedicated hoarder, ahem, collector, of objets d’art. As Mr TarotCake, who has had to help me move house three times, will confirm: I love bits and bobs, and I have a lot of them, lol. Car boot sales and vintage markets are basically my natural habitat, anywhere I can get my paws on old junk. Tiny mysterious objects, faded photographs, odd little trinkets with no obvious purpose except that somebody, once upon a time, cared enough about them to keep them.

And the Slow Tarot has that same appreciation for ‘stuff’, a sense that objects can become emotionally haunted; saturated with memory, symbolism, and atmosphere. Bryant writes of her art more generally, “I could imagine a mind as a landscape with bits and pieces strewn about like forgotten memories. I’ve been interested in how certain objects trigger memories, not necessarily personal ones, but even collective memories of stories and archetypes that form a hidden language that we all know without knowing.” Which feels very Tarot to me! Tarot works through exactly that kind of symbolic shorthand: objects, gestures, colours, tiny recurring motifs that somehow bypass straightforward visual interpretation and speak instead to the subconscious. A tower. A lantern. A cup. A key. A wilted flower. None of these things literally mean what they often do in the Tarot system, and yet collectively we nevertheless recognise their Tarot meaning instinctively, almost before we can articulate why. The Slow Tarot leans hard into that dreamlike symbolic language, where memory, archetype, and material objects all blur together a little at the edges.

Bryant has said she is inspired by both Balthus and Dorothea Tanning (among others), and I can see the parallels, both stylistically and also with the way that ordinary domestic spaces in her art start to become suddenly strange. That connection to surrealism feels especially apt given Tarot’s own relationship to the unconscious. In his 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism, André Breton argued that art should liberate thought from rational constraint and access the subconscious through dreams, intuition, and automatism – the spontaneous creation of images outside deliberate logical control. And IMO Tarot often works in a remarkably similar way. Even for a cynical old social scientist like me, a reading is rarely a purely rational exercise. Meaning emerges associatively, emotionally, symbolically. Images spark memories, intuitions, strange connections, half-buried fears and desires. Symbols seem to “speak” before we can fully explain why.

Which is why The Slow Tarot feels so effective to me as a reading deck. It understands that Tarot is not merely a coded system to be intellectually deciphered, but also a visual and emotional language that operates through atmosphere, symbolism, and subconscious recognition. Like surrealist art, it invites you to sit with ambiguity rather than rushing to resolve it.

The Deck: Look, Feel, and Finish

The Slow Tarot is a substantial, beautifully produced deck physically as well as artistically. The cards are printed on fairly lightweight 310gsm linen cardstock with a slight texture that gives them a good ‘hand feel’, though I do wish they were slightly less flimsy. Nevertheless, the flexibility makes them easy to shuffle, and mine have held up remarkably well considering how often I’ve used the deck over the years. The deck comes housed in a sturdy two-piece box, along with a small paper guidebook.

Visually, the deck uses coloured borders to distinguish the suits, with each one tied loosely to its elemental association: fire, water, air, and earth reflected through the palette choices. There was apparently quite a push from Kickstarter backers back in the day for the deck to be fully borderless, but Bryant and publisher Modern Eden instead opted to slim the borders down rather than remove them entirely, feeling that full bleed printing would compromise the integrity and composition of the paintings. The framing gives the images a slightly curated, gallery-like feeling that suits the deck’s fine art sensibility, but, you know me, I am a big fan of borderless decks, so… Espec as the Aces are completely borderless, and they are absolutely gorgeous. Removing the borders gives them this luminous, expansive quality that really emphasises their role as pure elemental potential entering the deck. They feel open in a way the other cards (deliberately?) do not. But I still wish the whole deck was borderless. (Also: I notice the newest edition seems to have slightly brighter, sharper colour contrast than my beloved third edition. Which is also making me jealous, lol. But no, I must be strong! I cannot justify buying second copies of decks I already have, haha).

Greatest Hits: My Favourite Cards from the Slow Tarot

The deck starts off very strong with this stunning Fool. I love a Fool who says ‘I will’ with their whole chest!

“Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
The one who has flung herself out of the grass…
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”

From ‘The Summer Day’ by Mary Oliver

A fair few of my Tarot decks show a bounteously pregnant Empress, but what I particularly love about the Slow Tarot Empress is that she appears to be post-partum, and actually looks like she has given birth (ah hello jelly belly, hello worn out boobs 😭!) And is that a red sheet she’s sitting on (like the sensual red cushions in the RWS), or is she nourishing that wheat field with her own blood? Again, she looks worn. The fruitful mother of thousands, but also one of us, of the earth, earthy.

And then, naturally, I went down one of my infamous rabbitholes trying to figure out what that little bird is tucked away in the front right of the frame. I reckon maybe a common nighthawk, a little crepuscular bird that lays clutches of exactly two speckled, greyish-marble-like eggs directly on open ground. Rather than aggressively defending the nest, nighthawks tend to rely on camouflage, their cryptic colouring allowing them to disappear almost completely into the landscape. If disturbed, females have been observed performing elaborate distraction displays to lure predators away from the eggs. It fits with Bryant’s worn-out muma version of the Empress. A ground-nesting bird protecting fragile eggs through concealment rather than dominance feels very different from the traditional regal, Venusian Empress imagery. It reframes fertility not as glamorous abundance or divine perfection, but as something instinctive, bodily, and more vulnerable. Instead of a crowned queen enthroned above nature, we get life sheltering itself in the grasses.

The Slow Tarot’s Hierophant has all the trappings of organised Christian religion, but such a humble, kindly face and posture – Bryant is such a clever, nuanced artist! Here we can really see the Hierophant as the ‘bridge maker’ (pontifex) who unites outer experience with inner illumination. For me the doves and the pigeons show that this unifying force is love (of which the dove is a classic symbol), and that love is open to even us lowly sky-rat pigeons, not just the pure white pedigree doves, haha.

Then I also love the way Bryant nods toward the Eden imagery of the RWS Lovers card. In the traditional card, Adam and Eve stand between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, with all the symbolism of temptation and self-awareness that entails. Once eaten, the illicit fruit from the Tree of Knowledge gives humanity not just moral awareness, but free will: the ability to choose, to rebel, to shape our own destiny. In that sense, Eve’s bite of the apple can be read less as a “fall” than humanity’s first act of self-determination. But obvs Adam and Eve are also punished – cast out of The Garden – as a result of munching the apple. The Slow Tarot seems to lean into this bittersweet reading. Here, the couple’s house – their Eden, perhaps? – appears to be burning behind them. Choices have consequences and knowledge can change things irrevocably. But despite the destruction, they still choose one another, bound together willingly by gossamer-like threads. Which gives the card this deeply human feeling: love not as innocence preserved forever, but as something chosen knowingly in the full awareness of loss, mortality, and uncertainty.

imagine the very first marriage a girl
and boy trembling with some inchoate
need for ceremony a desire for witness:
inventing formality like a wheel or a hoe

in a lost language in a clearing too far from here
a prophet or a prophetess intoned to the lovers
who knelt with their hearts cresting
like the unnamed ocean thinking This is true

thinking they will never be alone again
though planets slip their tracks and fish
desert the sea repeating those magic sounds
meaning I do on this stone below
this tree before these friends yes in body
and word my darkdream my sunsong yes I do I do

‘The First Marriage’ by Peter Meinke

As a cyclist myself (also often with a basket full of books just like Bryant’s figure!) I absolutely adore bike imagery, but when I first got the deck I wasn’t really sure how cycling tied to the traditional meaning of the Chariot card: willpower, determination, force. She just looks like she’s going for a chilled out evening ride here! But then I realised while riding a bike seems so easy once you know how, the mastery is actually hard. How many times do you topple over before you finally find the perfect balance? Then suddenly you are propelling this unlikely looking scrap of metal forward, by holding your body in equilibrium and willing yourself forward. Once you learn to ride a bike, you can appear languid, relaxed almost, precisely because you are in control. Just like when you are sat within the energy of the Chariot.

Then all the little details here are just beautiful: the compass round her neck, her bike light shining into the gloaming. Steadfast and true, eyes on the prize.

I also love the giant moth fluttering in the foreground here, which is unmistakably a luna moth (Actias luna). The cool – and grim! – thing about luna moths is they don’t have functioning mouthparts: once they emerge from their chrysalis, they cannot eat (as the poet Sean Nevin writes, ‘They are, like desire itself, born without mouths‘). They live for barely a week, existing entirely to move, mate, reproduce, and continue onward before burning out. Which feels v. Chariot-coded: the card is all momentum, propulsion, forward motion, urgency. It’s ambition with the throttle pushed hard to the floor. And that energy can be exhilarating, but also unsustainable. Bakara Wintner has one of my favourite descriptions of Chariot energy: “it takes a toll on the body, enables the workaholic, and threatens burnout. It is jet fuel in a lawnmower engine. Use sparingly for triumph and success.” And the luna moth carries some of the same tension as Wintner’s jet fuel metaphor. It’s beautiful and purposeful and driven entirely by instinctive forward movement – but also fleeting.

The Wheel of Fortune here leans hard into the idea of gambling: the coin toss, the roulette wheel, the spin of the slots. Which makes sense: after all, Lady Luck – Fortuna herself – is the unofficial patron saint of gamblers. But note how Bryant gives her Fortuna a cheeky little wink as though she’s fully aware she’s about to ruin somebody’s day while blessing somebody else’s. Because that’s the catch with gambling. No matter how the wheel spins, the house always wins. And as Sinatra once sang, Lady Luck has a habit of “wandering all over the room and blow[ing] on some other guy’s dice”!

I love Bryant’s interpretation of the Tower here. Instead of a literal tower struck by lightning, we get a painstakingly constructed house of cards collapsing in real time, destroyed (possibly?) by the very person who built it in the first place. I like the visual metaphor – a house of cards looks impressive while it’s standing, but it is also fundamentally fragile, one wrong movement and the whole thing comes down. And here, instead of waiting for the inevitable collapse to be caused by outside sources, Bryant has her figure choosing consciously to bring the structure down themselves.  Which gives the card a very different emotional energy; less “random disaster sent by fate,” more the terrifying moment where you realise something in your life has become unsustainable and decide – despite the fear – to stop pretending otherwise.

Jennifer Cownie & Fiona Lensvelt discuss these moments when we might actively welcome the Tower’s destructive force: “Sometimes you are done – finished, fin! – with something. Sometimes destruction can be positive… The Tower… can represent a moment of phenomenal courage and conviction, the act of seeking out the truth of something, and the relief that you feel when you find it, when you are able to be honest with yourself and the world”. I’ve definitely had readings before where I’ve wanted to say to clients that the healthiest thing they can do in a situation is just knock the bloody house of cards over themselves before it collapses on top of them anyway! I think the black cat in the foreground adds to this version of the card’s ambiguous message: sometimes good luck comes disguised as bad luck after all.

And a gorgeous nautical interpretation of the Star. Bryant’s image of a woman sailing through a dangerous storm shifts the card away from passive wishing towards the idea of navigation: of trying to find your way through darkness by keeping sight of something steady and luminous. Hope here is not naïve optimism or a magical promise that everything will automatically work out. Instead it’s orientation, a point to steer toward, a possible safe harbour glimpsed far off in the distance. As the wonderful and sadly defunct Aeclectic Tarot site put it, stars are “possible futures… cool and distant. Yet if you keep one in sight, it can guide you to your destination, no matter how far away it is.”

I adore Bryant’s Sun card, a little girl almost disappearing into a huge tangle of sunflowers, reaching upward toward the light with this sense of total absorption and wonder. It captures something essential about the Sun that I think can sometimes get lost beneath all the usual “success! joy! positivity!” keywords. Many Sun cards feature children partly because the card reconnects us with qualities we tend to lose somewhere along the exhausting road to adulthood: openness, curiosity, playfulness, trust in the world, the ability to experience joy without immediately analysing or qualifying it. Children throw themselves into life with a kind of wholeheartedness adults often struggle to sustain, and they’re not afraid of experimentation or failure. And the Slow Tarot really leans into that feeling of wonder. The child here looks tiny compared to the towering sunflowers around her, but she’s not overwhelmed, she’s enchanted; she’s completely immersed in the sensory joy of being alive in the world.

Feathers carry associations with flight, ascension, and rising upward, which chimes with the lightwork side of the card – answering your true calling and becoming the person you’ve always aspired to be. The feather also inevitably evokes imagery associated with many modern Judgement cards (as well as beloved by many Justice cards): the feather of Ma’at from ancient Egyptian mythology. In the Hall of Judgement, the hearts of the dead were weighed against Ma’at’s feather by the jackal-headed psychopomp Anubis in order to determine whether they were light and unburdened enough pass on to the afterlife. It’s a powerful symbol because Ma’at’s test is not really about perfection or moral purity, but about truth and alignment: whether you can honestly bear the weight of your own choices, your own life.

Here the feather is woven into her hair, while her hands hover over her chest as though she is about to extract and weigh her own heart. The guidebook describes Judgement as the moment when “the triumphs, failures, sins, and acts of kindness that the Seeker has collected are weighed against their hearts and the scale is their own self worth.” In Bryant’s card, you are both Anubis/Ma’at and the heart. You judge yourself.

But, importantly, we are not dead yet! The reckoning inherent in Bryant’s card is not external, rather it’s an invitation to consciously look back over your life and choices and ask: who have I been, and who do I want to become? There is still the chance for change.

I adore Bryant’s treatment of the Cups suit. Rather than matching goblets or ornate chalices, the Cups are depicted as a motley collection of bright, chintzy vintage teacups, which I love. My Crazy Grandma collected chintz, so it occupies a very fond corner of my heart, and seeing those floral patterns scattered throughout the suit immediately gives the deck an extra layer of warmth and nostalgia for me. It also feels v. appropriate for the deck. Cups govern our emotional lives, our relationships, memories, and feelings, and there’s something really personal about a collection of mismatched teacups. Unlike a ceremonial chalice, a teacup is an everyday object. It carries associations with comfort, hospitality, conversation, family, and the small rituals through which affection is expressed. In the Slow Tarot, Cups becomes less about grand romantic gestures and more about the ordinary ways we care for one another: sharing stories around a kitchen table, putting the kettle on for a friend who needs cheering up, drinking tea from a cup that belonged to someone you loved.

The Five of Cups reminded me of the old adage: there’s no use crying over spilt milk. Except here, I think there very much is. The card does such a good job of capturing a child’s terror of a precious thing, broken. Especially when I consider what might be meant by those shadowy figures outside in the rain, half glimpsed through the window. Bryant’s drawing reminds me of how genuinely devo I am when I break a treasured object, especially one that belonged to people who went before me and are now much missed. Lots of my objets d’art remind me of people and occasions, and if they break I’m not just sad I don’t have the actual physical thing any more, it’s the loss of that receptacle of memories, that tactile, visual prompt, that connection to a beloved person or a joyous time. People often say, “It’s just stuff.” And, objectively speaking, they’re right. Like, obvs in a fire I’m going to save the Tarotcupcakes and the cats before I save the vintage teacups, haha, but that doesn’t mean the loss of the teacups wouldn’t really hurt. Objects become vessels for meaning. They accumulate stories. They hold pieces of our lives. And I think Bryant understands that. The grief in this Five of Cups isn’t about monetary value, it’s about attachment. About the painful realisation that beautiful things, beloved things, might not last forever.

In the Eight of Cups, we see the traditional imagery of a figure walking away from – in this case – a pile of absolutely enormous teacups. They’re so cool and so incongruous in this ruggedly rural landscape. And they’re big, which I think works well for the symbolism of the card – sometimes the things we’re leaving behind are huge: a 20-year long career, a marriage, a homeland, a faith. The Slow Tarot’s Eight of Cups acknowledges that significance. Walking away doesn’t mean the thing was worthless, quite the opposite. Often we leave because something mattered hugely, but no longer fits the person we are becoming. I also love the vee of geese flying out of the frame. They’re the classic migratory birds: travellers, wanderers, creatures who understand that sometimes survival depends on moving on.

The Nine of Cups here has big Nine of Pents vibes, and I love this for her. A grandma with all her treasures, souvenirs of a life well lived, enjoying her memory scrapbooks, her beloved cat. It reminds me of the line from the Squeeze song: the past has been bottled, and labelled with love. The Nine of Cups is often called the “wish fulfilment card”, but Bryant’s version feels less like getting everything you ever wanted and more like looking around one day and realising that, somehow, you already have quite a lot to be grateful for.

The teacups forming the rainbow above the ‘detached house with a white picket fence and 2.4 kids playing in the garden’ dream are just SO CUTE, I can’t! This would’ve been the painting I’d have bought, I think, if I’d been lucky enough to attend the original exhibition. There’s a warmth and optimism to it that makes me smile every time I look at it. It’s sentimental without being saccharine, whimsical without being silly, and a lovely depiction of the joy that can be found in ordinary domestic life.

I also love the Knight of Cups on his stunning merhorse, which looks like a true seahorse/horse hybrid in the most pleasing way. It def has that surrealist dream logic vibe. I wasn’t sure what to make of the giant daffodil blooming in the foreground, but given I am always a little wary of the Knight of Cups as being a bit of a player, my mind immediately went to Narcissus (the flower’s botanical name is literally Narcissus!), which introduces a slightly shadowier layer perfect for the Knight of Cups. The card can absolutely represent romance, artistry, emotional openness etc. – but also projection, fantasy, idealisation, falling in love with an image rather than reality. Knights are motion cards, and the Knight of Cups in particular can sometimes chase emotional fantasy more than grounded truth.

The Slow Tarot’s King of Cups is crowned in seashells; and I love his floral shirt undone to the navel, his rolled up jeans, his anchor tatt. He has Big Fun Uncle Energy, lol. He treats his throne lightly, sprawled across it, feet still in the water. For all his wisdom, he never seems to have entirely grown up. This is the gift of this King: he’s comfortable – comfortable with himself, comfortable with his emotions, comfortable with the tides of life.

I spent a long time pondering what all the apples bobbing about him in the water might mean. Apples carry centuries of associations with knowledge, temptation, maturity, and consequence – from Eden to Snow White to Avalon, by way of countless fairy tales and myths. For the King of Cups, the apples can suggest emotional wisdom that has been earned, not naïve innocence. This is someone who has already eaten the metaphorical apple. They know grief, desire, regret, longing – and have learned how to govern themselves through it. Apples also have strong mythic associations with sacred kingship and the Otherworld through Avalon (“the Isle of Apples”). That lends this King of Cups a slightly mystical, Arthurian, fisher-king quality. Though he may look jolly, he’s also the ‘wounded healer‘ archetype – using his deep empathy and rich life experience to counsel, heal, and guide others.

I love Bryant’s interpretation of the Two of Swords as a fencing match – the set up reminds me of that old Gladiators event where contestants try and knock each other off a pedestal with those giant q-tip things 😂! Balance here is both an art and a necessity; one small slip and you dash your brains out on those rocks. (And speaking of those rocks, they look verrrry similar to the two rocky islets we see in the RWS card, and I love little easter eggs like this in a deck!)

What I really like about the choice of illustration for this card is just how, well, Swordsy, fencing is. Fencing is controlled conflict. Ritualised opposition. Precision rather than brute force. And unlike, say, the Five of Wands’ chaotic squabbling, fencing is intimate and cerebral. You have to read the other person constantly, predict their movements, hold your nerve. One false move and you expose yourself. There’s also something slightly performative and elegant about fencing that fits the suit of Swords nicely. Swords are associated with intellect, rhetoric, debate, logic, verbal sparring. Fencing almost becomes physicalised argument, two minds testing each other’s position without ever fully closing the distance. And in Bryant’s painting, neither side has won, neither side has yielded, we have that same tense stalemate we see in the RWS card. Although they might look different at first glance, the Slow Tarot captures that same feeling of being caught between two competing positions, weighing each carefully, unable or unwilling to commit to either one. The match continues, the blades remain crossed, and for now at least, balance is everything.

I LOVE that the four swords in Bryant’s card are being used to create some shade in an otherwise punishingly hot and hostile looking landscape. The buildings in the background look damaged, perhaps even bombed out – which would explain all that rubble. And while birds haunt this deck as a whole, the sheer amount of them circling in this card’s distant skies look like carrion birds circling the ruined city. There’s very much a… not post-war, but post-battle vibe. And this fits with the idea of the Four of Swords as stepping back from the fray, a brief moment of respite before returning to battle, the exhausted person taking a breath before facing a difficult situation again.

A gorgeous Six of Swords. In your small boat, following the albatross, dawn breaking on the horizon where the lighthouse has been guiding you safely out of the dark danger of the nighttime ocean. The hardest part of the journey is over. Hold your nerve. The harbour is now in sight. In maritime folklore, albatrosses were revered by sailors and often believed to lead ships to safe passage. The sight of an albatross overhead was considered a sign of fair winds and good fortune, a reassuring presence amid the uncertainty of the open sea. Most famously, of course, the bird appears in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where its fate becomes bound up with luck, guilt, and redemption. Here it’s def in lucky mode!

I love the Seven of Swords as a sneaky ninja assassin, his clothing seemingly made of the starry night, stealing out the window with an armful of blades. (It reminds me of the Lubanko Tarot‘s version too, though that one is even more sinister). And as a cat-lover I obvs also enjoy the lil white kitty watching him sneak. Cats are liminal creatures in symbolism: independent, elusive, intelligent, hard to fully know or control. They move quietly, watch from corners, slip between spaces unnoticed. Cats are also famously associated with curiosity and self-interest – they do what benefits them, often without concern for their human owners servants. Which again fits the Seven very well. The card is often about acting independently outside collective rules or expectations, sometimes cannily, sometimes selfishly.

The Page of Swords perfectly captures both the joy of childhood games of sword-fighting and that exhilarating moment when you first discover your own brilliance, your power to wield your mind like a rapier. The realisation that ideas can be weapons, that words can cut, persuade, defend, and challenge.

The Queen of Swords is very much the old wise war widow here, in her armour and mourning blacks. A shaft of light falls directly across her face, emphasising the illuminating power of her own wisdom. Her falcon may be blinkered, but she is not. And then there’s that massive bee! Unlike moths and butterflies (which often show up in my decks for the QoS), which carry a more dreamy/transformation energy, bees are purposeful. Efficient. Sharp. They know exactly what they’re doing. And of course there’s also their sting. Bees are not aggressive for the sake of it, but they will defend themselves when necessary. The Queen of Swords often gets unfairly flattened into “cold woman with sharp tongue,” but at her best she represents hard-won discernment and emotional boundaries. Someone who has suffered enough to recognise when protection is necessary. Like a bee, she does not sting constantly, for that would cost her dearly (I am still vaguely traumatised by the fact that honeybees essentially disembowel themselves if they sting a human!) – but neither is she defenceless.

And then there’s her husband, the war vet. Scarred by his experiences, in this case quite literally. But though he still clutches his sword, the air behind him throngs with doves, the birds of peace. This is a man who understands conflict, but who also understands the value of laying down arms. I also like his weathered, broken sword – perhaps a sign that he has learned that intellect alone cannot conquer every problem life throws at us. And that wisdom comes not from remaining untouched, but from surviving the battle. The white carnation on the steps in front of him softens him slightly. It reminds us that wisdom is often rooted in grief, tenderness, or survival; that clarity often emerges through sorrow and endurance rather than emotional detachment.

The Ace of Pentacles here isn’t represented solely by the coin at the centre of the image, though that is obviously the focal point of this lovely little ‘still life’ type card. It’s also reflected in all the other little trinkets and pocket detritus scattered around it – the material opportunities and possibilities fate frequently offers up to us. There are the gambler’s dice, suggesting unexpected windfalls and lucky breaks. The marbles speak to momentum, movement, and the chance to set something rolling. The keys hint at insight, access, and doors waiting to be unlocked. The ring evokes wealth, commitment, and things of lasting value. The candle offers illumination and guidance. And the rose reminds us that some of the richest opportunities life presents have nothing to do with money at all, arriving instead in the form of love, passion, beauty, and connection.

Likewise, I love the pile of knicknacks that populate the Ten of Pentacles. Family photographs, treasured objects, souvenirs, heirlooms – all the little bits and pieces that accumulate over the course of a life and eventually become a family’s history. I will admit, however, that my first reaction to the enormous snake curling among them was a slightly bewildered “whaaaaa?”, lol. However, I guess in folklore snakes are often associated with hidden treasure, sacred knowledge, ancestral places, and guardianship. Long before dragons started hoarding gold, serpents were protecting valuable things. Seen in that light, Bryant’s snake is possibly meant to represent a guardian spirit watching over the accumulated wealth of generations. I like this perspective, because it means the Ten of Pents is not just “look at this lovely stable family life,” but “everything inherited has a history attached to it.” Treasure and responsibility intertwined.

I love the enterprising little Page of Pents, hard at work at her front yard lemonade stand. Visually, arghhh, I love it – look how the lemon half she’s holding to her eye becomes almost indistinguishable from the old fashioned golden doubloon type coins Bryant has been using as her pentacles. The card is all about potential, and Bryant seems to be suggesting that value isn’t always something you find – sometimes it’s something you create. The humble lemon becomes a source of income, a business venture, a lesson, an opportunity. When life gives you lemons, the Page of Pents sees an opportunity to hustle some lemonade!

The Knight of Wands is generally ‘adolescent’ energy – the fire of fire – and Tarot knights are often depicted as young people. But I like that this one is one of those ageing rockstar types, who has absolutely no intention of settling down, growing sensible, or giving up adventure or life on the road. This is somebody who will be riding off into the sunset until the wheels literally fall off! A storm appears to be brewing in the distance, but he doesn’t seem remotely concerned. If anything, I suspect he’d find the danger exciting. That’s very Knight of Wands energy: the conviction that the next adventure is always worth chasing, regardless of the risks. (And the lizard on his motorbike is just chef’s kiss).

The Slow Tarot has been one of my favourite decks for years, and spending this much time with it again has only reminded me why. The artwork is stunning, obvs, but plenty of decks are beautiful. What makes this one special is the thoughtfulness behind it. Every card feels considered, created by someone who genuinely loves Tarot. Bryant understands that the cards are not just illustrations but stories, archetypes, memories, dreams, and questions. Her paintings invite you to linger, to notice details, to follow strange little threads of meaning down unexpected rabbit holes. Appropriately enough, it is a deck that rewards slowness, which is a lovely thing in a world that often asks for speed and instant results. A poor life this if, full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare. The Slow Tarot gently asks us to pause for a while, make a cup of tea in a chintzy old vintage cup, and spend a little longer looking.

You can buy it from the Modern Eden Gallery website here for £38.

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