Tools of The Tarot

It started over 20 years ago…

I used to carry around a Rider-Waite tarot deck in a velour cloth. One of my friend’s chastised me because my tarot deck wasn’t being stored in a natural fiber! I was shocked! Why would it matter if my mass-produced tarot deck was clothed in a machine made cloth?

The mass-production part didn’t bother but it did get me thinking about the deck I was using and the troubles I had with the iconography. The Rider-Waite tarot deck has never really represented how I read tarot. As a reader - I don’t read the future, I read the present – which I find infinitely more useful.

Too often, I would find myself making excuses because the iconography of the deck didn't match the words I was speaking or even my own personal belief system. So I decided to design my own deck. My goal in designing this deck was to create a minimalist point of view – one that would allow more flexibility in the way people read and interpret the cards.

Personally, I only read with the 22 cards that make up the Major Arcana as this creates a much more focused read. This means for every deck I own, I have 56 out of 78 cards sitting in a drawer unused. For my deck I was going to design it to be 'complete' with only 22 cards.

From an iconographic standpoint I wanted to focus less on the people, the bodies, and the faces and focus instead on the "tools of the tarot" – the sword, the cup, the staff, and the pentacle. The Tools of the Tarot tries to create a visual balance. These 4 tools are spread equally across the deck and all 4 tools are depicted on both the Magician and the Death cards.

After I designed the iconography, I went down a long and difficult path of making the deck from scratch by casting paper pulp into 3D molds – resulting in oval cards with raw edges and the images embedded into the paper itself. I then sealed each card with a blue paint.

The color blue is very important. I tried other colors during testing but blue just seemed to have the right vibe. The 'original' deck can be seen in the Action Shots. Note: This deck is NOT for sale.

It has been a great tarot deck and everyone loves it. Over the years it has held up very well (except for the occasional blue-paint touch-up). Of course that everyone always asks if they can buy the deck – or if I can make them one.

Recently, I was doing a read and once again someone asked to purchase my deck. I explained the story about how I designed it, how I built it, and how it wasn’t for sale.

He said that he didn’t care about the hand-made paper – it was the minimalist iconography that he wanted. I returned to my original sketches and designed this new version!

This new deck has the identical iconography of my original deck and uses a burnt paper motif with blue backgrounds (in homage to the original). In addition to the 22 cards of the Major Arcana I have added 4 information cards.

The information cards include a visual & textual explanation of the Celtic Cross layout including some sample dialogue, keywords for each of the 22 cards in both regular and reversed positions, and advice on how to perform reads with this deck.

Lastly, I have included a card that indicates your ownership of the deck and when it was first used. I feel it is important that the deck become ‘yours’ and the best way of doing so it to mark it as such. The date is there because when I talk to people about their tarot decks they always ‘guess’ as to how long they have been using the same deck – and I figured why not make that part of the deck itself.

I hope this deck brings you years of enjoyment and many good reads!