Tarot Decks
Six widely-cited tarot decks — reviewed for symbolism, beginner-suitability, and reading style. Each entry covers the deck's history, what it does well, and which practitioners it suits best.
- Rider-Waite-Smith The Rider-Waite-Smith deck, first published by Rider & Co. in 1909, is the most widely used tarot deck in the English-speaking world. Pamela Colman Smith's fully illustrated pip cards changed how tarot is read and taught.
- Tarot de Marseille The Tarot de Marseille is a family of woodblock-printed decks tracing back to seventeenth-century French and Italian card-makers. Its non-illustrated pip cards and stylised Major Arcana are the basis of the European tarot tradition.
- Thoth Tarot Designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris between 1938 and 1943 and first published in deck form in 1969, the Thoth Tarot encodes Crowley's Hermetic and Thelemic system in dense, geometric imagery.
- The Wild Unknown The Wild Unknown, written and illustrated by Kim Krans and self-published in 2012 before wider release, replaces the human figures of the Rider-Waite-Smith with animals, plants, and natural forms rendered in a spare ink-and-watercolour style.
- Smith-Waite Centennial Edition Released by U.S. Games Systems in 2009 to mark the centennial of the original Rider-Waite-Smith publication, the Smith-Waite Centennial Edition reproduces Pamela Colman Smith's artwork in muted, antiqued tones taken from an early printing.
- Modern Witch Tarot The Modern Witch Tarot, written by Vera Greentea and illustrated by Lisa Sterle and published by Liminal 11 in 2020, reimagines the Rider-Waite-Smith with an all-women cast in contemporary dress and an explicitly inclusive visual approach.