Deck Review: Wild Eden Tarot

It’s time for my occasional TarotCake diversion into the world of mass market decks, and here we have the latest offering from the ever-reliable Lo Scarabeo: the Wild Eden Tarot. I was a bit on the fence about whether to get this deck, but it kept stalking me across my Insta feed until I eventually succumbed – and I’m glad I did. It’s an intriguing deck: at once raw and highly stylised, balancing an almost primal energy with a carefully curated aesthetic. It certainly won’t be for everyone, but I’ve found myself enjoying it a lot.

It’s a collaboration between illustrator Gloria Pizzilli and cartomancer and Tarot educator Alice Mastroleo. Their vision is of an “untainted, primordial” Eden – a “lush and vibrant nature… teeming with life” – and Pizzilli’s artwork fully embraces that idea. Humans and animals mingle almost as equals, often in intimate, instinctive ways, while the distinctions between human and beast, masculine and feminine, fireceness and vulnerability become bewitchingly porous. As Pizzilli puts it, she enjoys “playing with the opposing forces of bellezza (beauty) and bruttezza (ugliness)”, an idea that has fascinated her since childhood.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, is a very, very naked deck. Hey, it’s set in the Garden of Eden, they hadn’t discovered self-consciousness or sewing needles yet! More specifically, it’s a very boob-y deck. Even more specifically, it’s a very areola-y deck. Which means it’s gonna be an absolute nightmare trying to promote this review across the great pearl-clutching kingdoms of Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. ARGHHHH! NO! NOT FEMALE-PRESENTING NIPPLES! WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!

There’s no male full-frontal nudity though, which is a bit… disappointing? I am an equal-opportunities pervert, haha. No, seriously, I do think the human body is beautiful and in a deck that so clearly celebrates it, it feels a shame that some parts of our anatomy are deemed more aesthetically pleasing than others. Breasts and vulvas are beautiful, but penises are too. Also, they’re a frankly masterful feat of hydraulic engineering. Praise be to the penis! Atm the deck is giving slight S1-S4 Game of Thrones vibes – titties titties everywhere, and not a drop of cock. Anyway, I digress.

The guidebook describes the deck as a “merg[ing]… of spirituality and carnality”, adding that “nudity is not sexualised, it is a return to a freedom that you lack in everyday life, removed from the constraints that clothes have represented for human beings over the centuries.” And I do like the nakedness. It’s naked in every sense of the word: raw, instinctive, free of judgement and free of shame. These bodies never feel like objects to be looked at so much as expressions of people who are completely at ease in their own skin. The effect is less voyeuristic than graceful – an exploration of what it might mean to exist without self-consciousness, in a state of grace.

It is worth noting, though, that the cast is almost completely lacking in body diversity. Personally, that didn’t bother me as much as it might some readers, or as much as it might bother me in other decks. If I spent my days running through forests with panthers like some sort of middle-aged Mowgli, I’d probably be considerably less plump too. Alas, I’m a city girl, built for comfort not for speed 😉.

Artistically, it feels very retro – and a little bit sci-fi. Not modern sci-fi, but the sort of futuristic aesthetic sci-fi people imagined in the 1970s. It also feels unmistakably comic book-y, which makes sense given that Pizzilli’s father, from whom she learnt to draw, was a cartoonist. The visual style specficially put me in mind of the fantasy comics of the 1970s and the superhero comics of the 1990s and early 2000s – there are definite echoes of Heavy Metal and Darkchylde in its combination of sensuality, wildness, and mythic imagery – albeit reimagined through a much cleaner, flatter, more contemporary illustrative style. Pizzilli herself has said that she “never los[t] her interest in fumetti (comic books)”, recalling how her father took her to comic exhibitions as a child. Even then, she says, “I did not want to draw Barbie. I always tried to distort or put some exaggerations in the faces.”

Despite the fact that Pizzilli teaches anatomy for artists, the figures themselves are highly stylised rather than anatomically realistic. Much like Pamela Colman Smith‘s own wonderfully expressive drawings (which I have learnt to love after our rocky start!), Pizzilli prioritises movement, emotion, and silhouette over precise anatomy. There are very few lines and almost no unnecessary rendering; the confidence of the artwork comes from what is left out as much as what is put in. It’s an economical style, full of loose, assured pen strokes that make the whole deck feel super dynamic and alive.

Crucially, while the deck is aesthetically beautiful – and yes, the bodies are very fit and very nakey – I don’t think it’s actually trying to be pretty or sexy in particular. It’s trying to be visceral. There’s a huge difference. Almost every card feels intensely physical. Bodies touch, hold, climb, run, breastfeed, kiss, fuck, sleep, bite, and curl around one another. Everything is about bodies existing in space and in relation to other bodies, whether human, animal, or botanical. You don’t simply see these figures; you almost feel them. I think that’s one of the reasons the artwork reminds me so much of comics. Comic artists are obsessed with gesture. A single pose has to tell a story, convey an emotion, establish a relationship. Pizzilli clearly thinks in much the same way; her figures aren’t anatomical studies so much as expressive bodies in motion.

The end result is something like a cross between manga, pulp fantasy comics, and a medieval Book of Genesis, and I am here for it!

The Deck: Look, Feel, and Finish

As I said, this deck is from Lo Scarabeo, so it’s decently put together – they have a rep to protect after all! It comes in a sturdy two-part box with a lift-off lid. Now, personally, I’m not the biggest fan of two-part boxes because I’m a clumsy apeth with the reaction times of a coral reef. I reach out to take one off the shelf and… whoops-a-daisy, cards all over the floor, lol. Gotta remember to grab it from the bottom! But that’s very much a me-problem, the box itself is good quality.

The cards are standard Tarot size and feel a little stiff and powdery. They’re in that slightly annoying limbo where I don’t really want to riffle them (because goodbye pretty card faces), but they’re also not quite broken in enough to shuffle as smoothly as I’d like. Give them a few readings, though, and I reckon they’ll loosen up nicely. Also, as you can see from the first picture below, they were kinda bowed when I first unpacked them. I’ve had this with a few mass market decks recently, yet it seldom seems to happen with my indie decks.

The accompanying guidebook is bilingual (English and Italian) and gives brief descriptions of the traditional RWS meanings for each card, even when the symbolism on the card itself doesn’t necessarily match up.

Each suit is represented by an animal: leopards for Wands (fiery speed!), sea creatures for Cups (watery!), birds for Swords (airy!), and insects for Pentacles (earthy!). It’s a simple but effective visual shorthand that helps tie the whole deck together.

The cards absolutely fizz with energy. In an interview with Communication Arts, Pizzilli describes herself as “a very chaotic woman” who isn’t “so good at doing calm things,” and it def shows 😂. This is a very active deck. Almost every card is in motion. Despite that dynamism, the deck never feels visually overwhelming, thanks in large part to Pizzilli’s restrained colour palette. “I am not so good with colours,” she jokes, “so I use only three.” By working variations of just a handful of hues throughout the deck, she creates something that feels remarkably cohesive. However wild the compositions become, there’s always a strong sense that every card belongs to the same beautifully imagined world.

Greatest Hits: My Favourite Cards from the Wild Eden Tarot

The Magician is both cool and visually gratifying. I love how the concept of as above, so below is made almost literal here by the plumage of the bird taking flight echoing the petals of the Bird of Paradise flowers growing from the ground. And I am super digging the MASSIVE HANDS. They are, after all, the Magician’s primary tool: the power you need to shape your life is already in your hands.

I also love that the Magician isn’t controlling the bird, they’re releasing it. The macaw(?) erupts upwards from their crossed wrists, almost as though inspiration has become something alive that can no longer be contained. It feels as if the Magician is acting less as a creator than as a conduit, channelling something wild and vital into the world rather than bending it to their will. And, for a card that’s so often about conscious mastery, I like that this Magician’s eyes are closed. They’re not concentrating on the bird – they’re trusting it. The magic here feels intuitive rather than controlling, almost shamanic.

And, lol, the Empress card is basically the Empress turned up to 11. The RWS has wheat. Pizzilli looked at that and went, “No. MORE WHEAT. MAKE HER DISAPPEAR UNDER THE WHEAT.” I love it tbh, the card feels almost engulfed by fertility, especially with the rabbits featured – themselves prolific shaggers! I also get the feeling she’s still breastfeeding possibly all of those kids and, wow, I am in absolute awe of any woman who can boob more than one child at once. Just the one is exhausting. But one of the most amazing, mind-blowing things about female bodies IMO is that they can actually adapt milk production to make different kinds of milk for newborns and toddlers who are tandem feeding. Which feels very Empress. She’s not just dispensing some generic “mother juice”; she’s giving each child exactly what they need.

There’s also something refreshingly honest about this version of the Empress. So many decks stop at pregnancy, as if that’s the pinnacle of motherhood. Pizzilli instead gives us the glorious chaos that comes afterwards: the feeding, the carrying, the constant demands, the feeling that everyone wants a piece of you. It’s messy, exhausting, frazzling … and v. beautiful.

Given the card’s roots, many Hierophants are concerned with religious/spiritual institutions – churches, temples, doctrine, tradition, teaching. Pizzilli’s card is much more interested in what religion actually feels like. The raised hands of the congregation don’t simply reach towards the Hierophant; they appear to almost lift him up, as though his role as spiritual guide is created by the community itself. Suspended between earth and sky, reaching into the storm, he becomes a kind of pontifex in the original Latin sense: a bridge between humanity and the divine. He isn’t commanding the heavens so much as channeling them. There’s something ecstatic about the image, reminding me less of formal religion than those moments of collective transcendence – whether in a Pentecostal revival, a Sufi ceremony, or a crowd at a rock concert – where individual identity dissolves into something larger than ourselves.

Strength is a fairly straightforward interpretation of the card, but it’s beautifully done. Unlike the RWS image, where the rather prim and proper maiden appears to be gently taming the lion, this feels much less like civilisation mastering the wild, and much more like one animal interacting with another. She’s wrapped around him with complete trust, scratching his jowls almost like another member of the pride grooming him. In the world of the Wild Eden Tarot, humans aren’t separate from nature; they’re simply another species within it. This works for me because the Strength card has never really been about taming lions – it’s about taming ourselves. Pizzilli simply reminds us that we don’t have to stop being animals to do that.

The Cups suit in the Wild Eden Tarot is super visually pleasing, I just love that bright, vivid blue against all the pinks and reds and corals. The Ace is particularly visually arresting, with its brilliant red fish (which reminds me a bit of the Page of Cups’ tradiitonal fish, peek-a-booing out of his cup to surprise him). Here, though, the symbolism feels even more primordial, and very ‘birth’y. The shell becomes both cup and womb, while the fish seems to burst forth from it like a newly awakened emotion surfacing from the depths of the unconscious – the birth of feeling itself.

The Three of Cups is one of my favourite compositions in the deck, it’s just lush. However, I’m still not 100% convinced it’s that Three of Cupsy (if anything, it puts me more in mind of the Three of Pents or Four of Wands). It feels less like a carefree dance with friends and more like an acrobatic routine – where every movement depends on complete trust and cooperation. But I guess that kind of works, as the figures here are literally supporting each other’s weight. That is emotional support, just expressed physically.

Pizzilli’s Four of Cups immediately made me think of The Little Mermaid – not necessarily Disney’s Ariel (though that too, lol), but Andersen’s original melancholy mermaid, forever longing for a different life. She pines for the world above the waves to such an extent that she becomes blind to the treasures and freedoms of the ocean itself

Then in the Eight of Cups, we get the Four’s antithesis – leaving the safety of the shore to wade out into the open sea. From a design perspective, I also just love the sheer amount of negative space in this card, how the figure seems so tiny, being swallowed into the great blue expanse of the ocean. It really captures the enormity of stepping away from what we know and setting out towards something unknown.

The bright red fish from the Ace makes another appearance in the Page of Cups, once again bursting unexpectedly from a shell (fishy’s face has something of the sperm whale from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about it 😂). Where the RWS Page seems almost dreamily bemused by his unexpected visitor, Pizzilli’s Page is absolutely delighted, holding it joyously aloft. He’s like a child who has found something extraordinary in a rock pool and desperately wants everyone to SEE THIS RIGHT NOW!! It’s a lovely expression of the Page of Cups’ emotional openness: curiosity, wonder and a willingness to be surprised by whatever bubbles up from the depths.

The Knight of Cups, meanwhile, is wonderfully louche. I assume he’s supposed to be blowing his conch, but he looks more like he’s necking booze from it while reclining naked on the back of a giant ray 😂. And tbf that rather suits him. The Knight of Cups is our great romantic and sensualist, surrendering himself wholeheartedly to feeling and experience – although at his worst he can become a little drunk on his own emotions. Unlike the purposeful knights of the other suits, this one doesn’t seem particularly interested in directing his journey at all. He’s quite content to let the current carry him.

The Five of Swords has big ‘getting to the top regardless of who you have to tread on’ energy (and just makes me think NAKED AMBITION – literally, lol). I also think it’s really interesting that the figure doesn’t look angry or smug – she’s almost serene, purposeful. It’s like she doesn’t even notice the people she’s climbing on. And in a way that’s even colder and crueller. They’re not enemies she’s defeating; they’ve become stepping stones. It captures that particularly ugly form of ambition where other people’s suffering barely registers because you’re so fixated on your own victory.

The brid too, flying upwards even as it loses feathers – literally, pieces of itself – in the process, is very: yes, you won – but what did it cost you?

The Pentacles are represented by insects, which gives us a magnificent stag beetle on the Ace (I bloody love stag beetles). The golden, crystalline pentacles they grasp throughout the suit have been interpreted by some readers as pollen, and I can certainly see it. Pollen is basically Pents distilled. It’s material, tangible stuff, but it’s also potential: the raw substance through which plants reproduce, fruit forms, seeds develop, and abundance perpetuates itself. And unlike money, its value is entirely embedded in the natural ecosystem. In this Eden, pollen arguably is wealth.

Another cool stag beetly bug shows up in the Knight of Pents. Stag beetles ar just excellent Pentacles animals. They’re incredibly earthy things: their larvae spend years underground in decaying wood before emerging as these almost ridiculousy grand minature armoured creatures. There is something extremely Pentacles about years of slow, invisible development in the earth eventually producing something tangible.

The Five of Pentacles gives us a kind of dragonfly-by (sorry), with five dragonflies sailing overhead laden with golden pentacles, while the figures in the pond reach desperately towards them. There’s no shortage of abundance in this Eden – but the problem that remains is who gets access to it.

The Ten of Pents makes the idea of family support very literal, lol, with the new generation standing on the shoulders of those who came before. There’s a real ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ energy here: the people at the top can only reach as high as they do because they’re being physically supported by those beneath them. But it doesn’t feel particularly hierarchical; bodies and plants weave together into a single structure, with abundance distributed throughout. It’s a lovely image of the Ten’s intergenerational legacy – the security we inherit, the foundations we build upon, and what we in turn provide for those who come after us.

Overall, I think the Wild Eden Tarot is a really interesting deck: strange, sensual, visceral, and absolutely bursting with life. It won’t be for everyone – I mean, it’s very very nakey, and quite retro in many ways. But Pizzilli’s loose, confident lines and gloriously physical bodies give the whole deck a sense of movement and immediacy. You can pick up a copy of the Wild Eden Tarot from most online retailers – e.g. Oneness Emporium – for approx. £30.

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