Deck Review: The Tempest Tarot Deck

I hesitated before buying the Tempest Tarot Deck, as it’s a little too Pippish to be ‘fully me’, but, in the end, the gorgeous and intuitive art won me over. I’m also a nautical girl through and through. It was me and Mr TarotCake’s lifelong dream to live by the sea, and two years ago we made it a reality when we moved to sunny Southsea. We now live about a 12 minute walk from the beach, and I cannot tell you the wonders it has done for my mental health!

There’s something about the sea – its limitless possibility, its hidden depths and luminous horizons – that makes everything feel a little easier, a little less hopeless. Our local stretch isn’t even that picturesque (think: faded Victorian seaside town, once glamourous but now down at the heel, a bit built-up, with all the cheesy ‘charms’ these towns have: rickety pier, amusement arcades, overpriced icecream, a pirate ship ride), though we’ve got some wilder coastline a short drive away. But I love it. I love it. And when a deck like this arrives – wind-lashed, water-streaked, a bit tempestuous and a bit enchanted – well. Of course I had to give it a go.

The Tempest Tarot is the baby of Maisy Bristol, the founder of Tarot by Maisy, a professional Tarot reader and astrologer. She began reading Tarot twelve years ago, after discovering “an old, ratted Rider-Waite deck” lying around the house, “the corners were worn, the box’s lid was missing… it was obviously well-loved by someone – and I was immediately fascinated.”

Maisy launched her online Tarot business via Etsy while studying here in the UK, unsure if virtual readings would land: “So I started by pricing my readings low. And by ‘low,’ I mean practically giving them away. I was like Oprah: ‘You get a tarot reading! And you get a tarot reading!’”

You can tell this deck was designed by a jobbing reader, someone who works with the cards day in, day out, and knows how to get a clear message across without faff or fluff. There’s a real confidence in the symbolism: no bells, no whistles, no trying to reinvent the wheel. Just clean, well-chosen imagery that lets each card speak its truth – direct, grounded (oceaned?), and totally readable.

“This deck is meant to draw you in. It’s supposed to appeal to your senses. When you use this deck, I want you to smell the ocean, feel the spray of the waves on your face, taste the salty sea on your tongue…  I want you to feel the danger lurking within our skeletons. But I also want you to feel the sense that myths may not be so “mythical”— and above all, anything is possible.” 

Maisy Bristol

So why the nautical theme? For Bristol, the ocean is “a mystical place… a place of purgatory,” where reality slips and the magical seeps in. “When you sail out there – and I mean, really out there – everywhere you look, you see the horizon… no land, no life near you.” It’s an “in-between space, smack dab in the middle of the Earth and the Heavens,” and that, she says, is where “the magic happens.” The sea brings “revelations, illusions, hallucinations, epiphanies” – just like Tarot, which she sees as a tool to “connect you to the Divine.”

Bristol also makes a clear symbolic distinction between land and sea, tying them to the deck’s gendered energy: “That’s why… the Emperor is represented as a captain of the ship whereas the Empress is represented as a goddess of the sea.” It’s a familiar polarity: the material as masculine, the mystical as feminine. While gender in Tarot is always a bit of a minefield, I do like that the RWS (for all its problematic binaries) often frames ‘feminine’ energy as the path to peace or spiritual connection. Take the Lovers, where the man gazes at the woman, and she gazes at the angel – it’s the feminine that acts as the bridge to the divine. That’s something this deck picks up on nicely: the sea as sacred, intuitive, and alive with deeper knowing. Womblike. Abundantly feminine.

And then there’s the name: The Tempest Tarot. I can’t help but think of Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, where the unnamed island on which all the action takes place acts almost like the Tarot’s journey through the Major Arcana – a liminal space outside time and “real” society, where characters confront archetypes, undergo trials, and return changed. It’s a microcosm of the psyche. Like the Fool setting off with a bindle and a dream, each soul shipwrecked on Shakespeare’s shimmering isle is changed by the experience. By the time they leave the island, none of the characters are the same. Power is rebalanced. Wrongs are (partially) righted. The old world crumbles, and something new is offered in its place (O brave new world!). Just like the Major Arcana, The Tempest isn’t linear. It spirals, it circles back, it deceives – and yet, underneath all the confusion and storm and spectacle, there’s a pattern. A current. A journey.

So, it’s a great namesake for a Tarot deck!

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

From ‘The Tempest’ by William Shakespeare

The Deck: Look, Feel, and Finish

Visually, the Tempest Tarot is a very muted deck, sort of murky ocean coloured – you’re very much down in the depths here, not in the sunlit shallows! The palette is all misty greys, washed-out blacks, and ocean-bleached blues. Even the above-water scenes have that sun-faded, salt-streaked feel, like driftwood or old sea maps left too long in the light. It’s very minimalist in its composition, with a fair bit of white space, esp. on the Minors, relying for effect mostly on the quiet pull of the ink-drawn illustrations themselves.

The art loosely follows the RWS system, though the Minors lean Pippish, which isn’t usually my thing (I’m a detail glutton, MORE IS MORE, lol!). But there are clever touches: for example, all the Pages are mermaids, which beautifully captures that vibe of youthful curiosity and emotional in-betweenness.

The Tempest Tarot is a full 78-card deck, with standard-size cards (measuring 2.875” x 4.875”). It comes in a fairly sturdy tuck box: still a tuck, so not indestructible, and as y’all know I’m not the biggest fan, but decent enough to survive regular handling. The cards themselves are also pretty deec, printed on a smooth, flexible cardstock that feels satisfyingly bendy in the hand. They’re easy to shuffle, whether you riffle, overhand, or just do your own chaotic shuffle dance like the majority of my querents 😂. The accompanying booklet is a compact black-and-white guide that covers the essentials: a short intro to the deck’s concept, general notes on reading, a few spreads, and brief but insightful meanings for each card.

Treasures from the Deep: My Favourite Cards from the Tempest Tarot

The Fool in the Tempest Tarot isn’t some chap on a cliff’s edge, he’s a lone sailor in a tiny boat, charging headlong into a storm. The sky is dark, the lightning is striking, and still he sails, full steam ahead (yes, I’m aware of my mixed sailing metaphor, lol). There’s fear here, yes, but also wild faith. Bristol explains, “if he gets through it, he will be successful and can prove all the nay-sayers wrong.” It’s very Nat King Cole: ‘There may be trouble ahead… but let’s face the music and dance‘. Because sometimes the beginning of the journey looks like madness, but turns out to be courage in disguise.

Much like in the RWS, the Magician in the Tempest Tarot is our first introduction to the four suits – which have cleverly morphed into a spyglass, grog, booty, and a cutlass. It’s a smart, subtle piece of pirate appropriation (pi-propriation, if you will 😳🤪), and I am very much here for it. A compass also makes an appearance, its directional arms echoing the classic RWS Magician’s pose: as above, so below – but now with a maritime twist. These are your tools: vision, sustenance, treasure, defence. Everything you need to make your great voyage of discovery. They’re laid out before you, now it’s up to you to set sail and turn that potential into reality

Strength appears as an anchor, and it’s a brilliant choice. Grounded, solid, capable of holding firm even when the storm rages, an anchor’s power is wildly out of proportion to its size. Its symmetry, too, is striking: a visual reminder of the balance we must find within ourselves. Between lion and maiden, instinct and restraint, passion and clarity. Strength isn’t about force; it’s about being rooted. When we’re anchored, we’re safe. We’re steady. We’re not adrift in a sea of uncertainty and self-doubt; we’re home.

Justice appears as a compass, an elegant and intuitive choice. It immediately evokes the idea of a moral compass – that quiet, persistent inner voice nudging us toward fairness, integrity, and truth. At its centre, the scales weigh the sun and the moon, symbolising the need to balance clarity with intuition, light with shadow, reason with feeling. And like the two pillars in traditional Justice imagery (Mercy and Severity) this compass reminds us that real justice isn’t rigid. It navigates. It considers. And it points us, always, towards what is right, towards what is light, even when the night is dark.

The Star is an interesting one, because to me it looks like treasure spilling from a sinking ship. Which obvs feels more like a loss than a blessing. But then again, maybe that’s the point. The hope here isn’t in what’s visible, but in what might one day be found. The treasure’s still out there, just waiting beneath the surface for someone with enough heart, drive, and ingenuity to rediscover it. It’s not gone. It’s just hidden. Like faith, or healing, or the slow return of self-belief after a storm.

The World is mapped out as a tangle of shipping routes and latitude lines, elegant and intricate. It has that satisfying “journey’s end” feeling: the mission logged, the cargo delivered, the path traced from port to port. You made it. You arrived. But of course, the real twist is this: just when you think you’re done, you realise there’s still more to discover. The edges of the map don’t mark an ending, they open into something vaster. Because the world is always bigger, stranger, and more astonishing than we think. Completion isn’t closure – it’s the beginning of the next great voyage.

The Ace of Wands in the Tempest Tarot is a sailor’s spyglass. It’s a classic symbol of seafaring vision – looking ahead, scouting horizons, seeing what others can’t yet see. A flash of inspiration, a bold new direction, the first glimpse of something stirring on the far-off horizon. But, like all Aces, it’s not a promise, it’s a possibility. You have to pick it up. You have to put your eye to it and choose to see. The future’s out there, sure, but this card reminds us that potential means nothing unless we’re willing to seek it out.

The Six of Cups shows two children playing at pirates with wooden swords, and it’s adorbs. Nostalgia, innocence, imagination – all the classic Six of Cups vibes are here. But it also carries that undercurrent of shadow I always find to be present in the best versions of this card. What are war games, after all, but early rehearsals? We train our children (especially our boys, sadly) to play-fight, to brandish swords, to dream of glory on the high seas – but pirates weren’t just cheeky rogues, and swords aren’t just toys. It’s all very cute… until it isn’t. The Six of Cups invites us to reflect on what we pass down: not just the joy, but the cultural scripts we don’t always question (you can take the girl out of Criminology…)

The Tempest Tarot’s Five of Swords is rendered as a broadside cannon blast – explosive and dramatic. It evokes those great naval battles where victory came at enormous cost, with ships sinking even as they dealt devastating blows to the enemy. This card carries the same caution: beware that the price of your triumph isn’t too high. Winning isn’t always worth it if you’re left drifting among the wreckage.

The Six of Swords with its little dinghy heading out of a quiet grotto into the bright is really beautiful. The past lingers in the cave behind, but the promise of something better glows just ahead.

The Nine of Swords features spreading squid ink, a perfect metaphor for anxiety. It’s a cloud of darkness descending to make the way ahead murky, hard to navigate. Our own thoughts becoming muddled and confused, as we become so anxious that we are unable to think clearly anymore. As Bristol writes, “it starts as a small ink splatter. But in the wading ebb and flow of the sea water (our minds), the ink is carried, stretched, and shifted throughout our entire mental capacity.” This is the card of sleepless nights and stormy minds – when worry doesn’t just visit, it fills the room. The trick, perhaps, is to remember: ink settles. Water clears. But only if we stop stirring.

At first glance, the Five of Pentacles feels bleak: a wrecked ship, broken and rotting on the shoreline. But there’s something almost luminous in the way the coins hover above the ruins, like echoes of possibility. Yes, this is a card of hardship, loss, and being cast adrift, but also of hidden resilience. There may still be treasure in the wreckage. All is perhaps not quite lost, it just might take a shift in perspective, or a little faith, to see what remains.

The Tempest Tarot isn’t a flashy deck, and it might be a bit too minimalist for some – I was on the fence with it myself before buying. But beneath its muted tones and sparse lines lies something steady, deep, and quietly enchanting. It’s a deck for those who know the sea isn’t always sparkling, and that, sometimes, the real magic happens in the fog and in the wreckage. If you’re willing to set sail, it’ll guide you, compass in hand, spyglass raised, into the heart of the ocean inside.

You can buy it from most major retailers and a few indie outlets for about £17-£25.

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