-
Deck Review: The Craft Felt Tarot
The Craft Felt Tarot is warm, joyful, and irresistibly tactile. Made from photographs of hand-crafted felt designs, the cards feel like a hug from a slightly psychic teddy bear. Bright, bold colours and rich textures bring familiar RWS imagery to life in a way that’s comforting rather than confronting. This is Tarot softened, without being dumbed down.
-
Deck Review: Figuratively Speaking Mermaid Tarot
Beneath its beauty, the Figuratively Speaking Mermaid Tarot is surprisingly sharp. Familiar archetypes are reimagined through marine life: anglerfish lanterns, siren songs, sunken treasure - creating metaphors that feel fresh yet deeply Tarot-literate. This is a deck that understands liminality, shadow, and desire, and isn’t afraid to let its waters run dark.
-
Deck Review: The Magic Pantry Tarot
Beneath its playful surface, The Magic Pantry Tarot is smartly symbolic. Eggs, broth, mushrooms, and coffee map onto Tarot archetypes in ways that feel intuitive once you see them, though sometimes delightfully abstruse at first glance. Best suited to readers already familiar with Tarot, it rewards experience with wit, insight, and a lot of satisfying “aha” moments.
-
Deck Review: Far-Out Tarot
This is a deck you don’t just read, you visit it. The Far-Out Tarot creates a sense of permission: to pause, to retreat, to be thoughtful rather than decisive. It won me over completely, offering Tarot as care, imagination, and psychological shelter - a place I genuinely want to return to again and again.
-
Deck Review: The Ex-Lovers Tarot
This deck understands love as something that doesn’t simply switch off. The Ex-Lovers Tarot reframes heartbreak as part of the Fool’s journey, honouring connection, loss, and personal growth with warmth and clarity. Whimsical without being shallow, it invites compassion: for past selves, former lovers, and the imperfect ways we keep loving.
-
Deck Review: Nigredo Tarot Deck
This is one of the most personal and emotionally resonant decks I own. The Nigredo Tarot doesn’t soften the work of shadow integration, but it approaches it with empathy and intelligence. Best suited to self-reflection rather than performance reading, it’s a deck that asks a lot - and gives just as much back.
-
Currently on Kickstarter: Figuratively Speaking Mermaid Tarot Deck
UPDATE: Since writing this post I’ve received my copy of the deck; you can read my review here. Backing this new deck was a no-brainer for me, as I love artist B. Miller’s Tarot and Tarot-esque paintings on Instagram (especially since she drew this Tarot card style Karlach from BG3, I would DIE for a hand painted BG3 Tarot deck, be still my beating heart), and I also already own their first (huge, sprawling!) Tarot deck, the Figuratively Speaking Tarot (which you can buy here). The Figuratively Speaking Mermaid Tarot is an absolute beaut, featuring all of Bee’s gorgeous watercolour artwork and more thematically consistent than its predecessor (I love…
-
Deck Review: Austin Osman Spare Tarot
One for the collectors and the Tarot-history enthusiasts is the Austin Osman Spare Tarot, which you can currently order via the publisher’s (Strange Attractor) website for £35. Being a skinflint Trying to control my Tarot addiction in a sensible manner, I only forked out for the deck when I backed the project on Kickstarter, so I didn’t get the accompanying book, Lost Envoy: The Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare, or the AOS Tarot Sourcebooks (How to Tell Fortunes by The Cards*, by Rapoza (1906), a key source for Spare’s Minor Arcana attributions, and The Tarot, by S. L. MacGregor Mathers (1888) from which he assigned his Major Arcana meanings). This…
-
Deck Review: Grounded Wisdom Tarot
Another Kickstarter-backed deck that recently arrived with me is the gorgeously detailed Grounded Wisdom Tarot. The deck was designed and drawn by Gabby Morris, who takes a “polymathic approach*” to their projects, blending art and design with nature and ecological futures. (*My little ADHD magpie brain perked up at this inspired phrasing! My new goal is owning my own scattergun approach to knowledge by calling it ‘polymathic’! 💪) Morris’ website is full of really cool stuff from her Master’s project and subsequent work – it’s kinda chemistry-meets-cooking-meets-conservation-meets art & design-meets-am dram, and is well worth checking out. The deck not only has lots of crossovers with my own myriad interests…
-
Deck Review: Fat Folks Tarot
I feel like I’ve been waiting aaaaaaages for this deck (its Kickstarter campaign finished on 01/02/23), so I’m very excited to finally have it in my chubby little paws. It is, of course, the second (and final) edition of the Fat Folks Tarot. The creating team note that, while Tarot is “meant to depict the entire realm of human experience”, many people have been left out of the imagery in traditional Tarot decks, including fat people. Historically, as one of the co-creators, Cassandra Snow points out, when we see fat people in Tarot they are associated either with “gluttony or motherhood”. And that’s it. That’s all we get. So here…
