Deck Review: The WayHome Tarot

I got the WayHome Tarot after it had sat on my wishlist for a little while. I was a bit uncertain about it, and now I own it I do find it a bit of a mixed bag. I feel some of Autumn Whitehurst‘s art, while gorgeous, is internally incongruent and it gives a haphazard vibe to the deck I don’t always connect to. But there are so many cards where the imagery is so clever that I am OBSESSED. Simple. Perfect. On point. You can tell the co-creator, Bakara Wintner, has a deep affinity with the message of the Tarot, and she has an uncanny knack for making difficult concepts seem straightforward.

The WayHome Tarot doesn’t come with a guide/LWB, but the creator, Bakara Wintner, has written ‘WTF Is Tarot?‘, a sort-of Tarot guidebook, and it includes the same/similar images as the cards. As such, if you buy the book you can simply treat it as a very in-depth LWB! I REALLY enjoyed this book: it’s funny, poignant, approachable. There’s also some weird similarities between me and the author (we both lost our mums at the exact same age and experienced almost identical encounters with them the day after their deaths – super spooky!), so I felt a natural affinity with the text. The only thing that didn’t really resonate for me was I feel she takes an almost exclusively negative view of some of the court cards, that doesn’t really gel with my interpretations. Not a criticism, just it was jarring as up to that point I had felt completely in tandem with the author!

“Dance with the cards. Learn how to let something else take the lead. Be soft under their touch. They are just and only you.

And you. You are allowed to use magic. It is your birthright. It has always belonged to you”.

Bakara Wintner, WTF is Tarot?

I love these card backs 😍! What an asbolutely stunning design, so full of power and hope.

The cards themselves are super slippery, high gloss, and quite thin. I’m not wild about them, but it does mean they’re easy to shuffle. They do tend to fly off a bit if you deal them on top of each other, though, so be warned.

The WayHome’s Emperor is one of my favourite all-time Emperor cards, and I love it even more when paired with the Empress. She nurtures through love, he through logic – both of these things together bringing stability and growth.

The hopefulness in this 9 of Wands is a gorgeous change from the normal “exhausted but hanging on” energy. It’s a beautiful reminder that resilience doesn’t have to be grim. Sometimes perseverance is quiet, luminous, even joyful. A signal in the dark. A wish still burning.

The Wheel of Fortune is such a clever rendition of the idea of both the cycles of fate (ferris wheel) and answering to our higher selves (written in the stars). The ferris wheel reminds us that life is full of ups and downs – sometimes you’re on top, sometimes you’re on the descent – but the big wheel keeps turning. And behind it, the constellation evokes the idea that there’s a bigger pattern at work, even if we can’t always see it clearly.

I didn’t get the Devil card at first, and when I did I was like “huh, this is really fucking meta, and I LIKE it!” All the lights and beauty and fun of the carnival, but those horses are in bondage. This card asks: what are you dazzled by? What are you mistaking for choice, when actually you’re just going in circles? It’s about the systems we decorate instead of dismantling, the pleasures that hold us captive. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. That’s the point. The Devil doesn’t show up with chains – he shows up with fairy lights

The Father (King) of Wands really captures his rampant – yet harnessed, earthed – electrical energy.

Nine of Cups is just lush. I want to be in that moment!

Eight of Swords reminding us that even when we feel the walls are closing in and we’re on our last legs, there is a light that never goes out. This card is often about mental traps: fear, self-doubt, the stories we tell ourselves when we feel stuck. But here, we’re reminded that the light within us doesn’t vanish just because we’ve forgotten how to see it. If we want to escape our self-made prison, all we have to do is remember who we are.

The self sabotage in the Five of Swords here is brutal and perfect. The Five of Swords is often about hollow victory or conflict turned toxic, but the WayHome Tarot’s version pushes it even further, into the realm of self-inflicted damage. It asks: what have you sacrificed in your need to be right, to protect yourself, to survive? The spider should be a weaver, a creator. But here, it’s broken. There’s no gloating victor here, only the grim realisation that sometimes we are both the weapon and the wound.

I love how frequently the Wands are matches in this deck, and the burnt out matches of the Ten are my favourite. They capture that heavy, scorched feeling of carrying too much for too long, the kind of burnout that doesn’t just leave you tired, but spent. There’s something so simple and powerful about it: once, these matches held fiery potential. Now they’re used up, blackened, brittle. You were the spark, but now you’re carrying the char. It’s a quiet reminder that we’re not meant to hold the whole burden alone – and that it’s okay to put something down before you’re reduced to ashes.

The Sun has all the joy and abundance I normally get from this card, but a little hint of the dangers of overindulgence too. Wintner points out that The Sun is benevolent, but also impersonal – it indiscriminately nourishes everything and everyone it touches. Too much Sun energy can leave us perhaps being too rational and too factual (instead of offering the emotional support or quiet reflection someone in our lives might need), or perhaps too optimistic. There’s always a danger of the sort of toxic positivity we sometimes see, or people who are so bright and cheery they ignore the danger lurking in the shadows.

And the Hanged Man perfectly illustrates the sense of slow, painful yet purposeful, metamorphisis. The universe inside the cocoon is stunning. It’s the idea that stillness isn’t stagnation, but a container for something vast and sacred unfolding.

Two Pents to finish up with; nothing can encapsulate the whole ‘teamwork makes the dream work’ motto of the 3 of Pents as effectively as ants, the most team-y-est of all the Earth’s creatures. And I love this close-up image of planting your seeds in the 7 of Pents – now you must wait to see if they bear fruit.

Deck Interview with the WayHome Tarot

1. Tell me about yourself? What is your most important characteristic as a deck?

8 of Cups: This deck is good at helping me to let things go, to give up trying to hold on to or repair a broken thing. It is good at giving the advice necessary to leave situations that cannot be fixed.

2. What are your strengths as a deck?

5 of Wands: Relatedly, this deck is good at helping me to re-evaluated the conflict in my life and the value of furthering it.

3. What are your limits as a deck?

The Wheel of Fortune: OK, very drole, WayHome. I get it. You can tell me to know when to quit, but if I insist in repeating cycles of self sabotaging behaviour over and over, you can’t stop me.

4. What do you require from me in return? How can I best collaborate with you?

3 of Pents: I can best collaborate precisely *by* collaborating. I need to be open to working closely with the deck and listen to it. Success is within reach but will not be achieved alone.

5. What is the potential quality of our relationship?

4 of Cups: Hmmm. Difficult. I guess the above is hard for me? I’ll be a brat and wallow in my misery, ignoring the deck’s sage advice. Worrying! Maybe it just means working with this deck will encourage introspection to fix harmful patterns of behaviour.

6. In what space / with what type of query will you best communicate?

Father of Pentacles: The deck is a kindly father, ready to dispense advice on material and spiritual wealth and success.

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