The Playful Heart Tarot is the sweet and gentle medicine we need right now. Reminiscent of children’s book illustrations, Kitten Chops or Zaara has created a therapeutic tarot deck for all ages.
The cards are printed on 340 gsm black core cardstock with a micro linen finish. That means they shuffle beautifully. There’s enough yield in the cardstock for any type of shuffler, but the micro linen gives your deck resilience.
I’ve found Playful Heart Tarot to be a surprisingly powerful and effective deck in inner child exploration, specifically to help calm anxiety or anger, to rekindle happiness and overturn emotional apathy, and to quiet that self-criticism or self-sabotage.
The deck comes in a rainbow foil tuck box and I love that it’s produced in Taiwan.
The package comes to you sealed with a sticker stamp: “All things wonderful are readily available.” I just love all the attention to detail and extra touches Kitten Chops as thought of when putting this deck together.
A 78-card deck, the Playful Heart Tarot also includes 4 bonus cards, which the free downloadable guidebook explains. You can scroll through the guidebook, provided below, to get a sense of the aesthetics and point of view of the deck.
Click to access 8c0ef-playfulhearttarotdownloadablebooklet2019.pdf
For instance, take a look at the card meaning and messages provided by Zaara for the Four of Wands.
This is about enjoying the fruits of your labor and savoring in what you have right now. There are also messages about making sure you’re not over-eating or pushing yourself to unhealthy levels.
When I say “inner child work,” I mean that Playful Heart Tarot facilitates your reflections of what it was like to look at the world through the lens of a child, through observing the adults in your world back then, and to connect all of that to what your takeaway lessons were on love, on trust, and most important of all, your sense of self.
The free guidebook walks you through some basic inner child work, like journaling, meditating on affirmations, art therapy, and learning to engage in an inner dialogue through the cards. The inner dialogue helps you to “parent” yourself, or to implement a more proactive plan of nurture and self-care.
In entry for The Chariot card, for example, there is a bulleted list of journaling prompts. When this card comes up, think about how much of your life philosophy is flying by the seat of your pants, without any plans, and how much of it you’re actually planning out. Is that proportion of planning vs. spontaneous action working for you?
The deck comes with bonus cards, such as the two you see in the above photo. “Your inner child lives in your innermost, deepest heart space,” writes Kitten Chops. Do not abandon the dreams you had as a kid; do not reject that inner child’s needs. Do not abuse that inner child– do not engage in self-sabotage.
Mixed media art on watercolor paper, working with traditional Japanese watercolor techniques, layered with colored pencil, markers, and crayons.
The card captions were then hand-lettered by Zaara. Every facet of this deck supports its motto: “Cuteness is my sacred space.”
Another great use of this deck is telling bedtime stories to children. Get co-creative with kids. Pull a string of cards and together, co-create a story out of the images. Playful Heart Tarot is perfect for all ages.
When cards from the Suit of Pentacles keeps showing up in your personal readings and inner child work, here’s the affirmation to recite for yourself:
Embracing all the gifts I have, I invest in my life’s work with zest! I call on you to manifest sweet abundance, health, wealth, success! All we create with fortitude, I cherish with gratitude.
It is echoing that dialogue between present day you and inner-child you.
The Page of Pentacles illustrated here is a fox spirit, someone who is warm, loving, and eager to learn. When this card shows up, reflect on the following: Are you a bit too fixated on what money can buy? Are you too cool for school? Figure out the real reason for the choices you’ve been making.
What you might not notice upon first impression, though I’m sure you can intuit it, is the harmony expressed between the human, animal, and spirit worlds. That’s what endears me the most to Playful Heart Tarot.
Every card illustrates a part of Inner You. When reading with Playful Heart Tarot, the present day you is the querent, and the tarot reader or spirit answering your questions is your inner child. That inner child presents divinatory messages to you in the way a child would know how: through whimsical, innocent illustrations, and that’s what Playful Heart Tarot is all about.
These cards will inspire you to listen to your inner child, to stop rejecting that inner child, to not abandon him or her, and to shelter that child from the world’s abuses, and most important of all, abuse of the self or self-sabotage.
The Six of Swords is about a situation that didn’t work out as you had hoped, and now it is time to move on. The Queen of Cups is a reminder to listen to your inner voice, to be more creative and intuitive, and heck, maybe it’s even the simplest message of advice: take a nice, nourishing and spiritually cleansing bath.
When you have a question and the card you pull is the Queen of Pentacles, think about why the inner child would draw this picture to show you in response to your question. Per the guidebook, this is Queen Mama. Here is a patient caretaker. Here is nourishment. Give yourself a break from meaningless drudgery and overwork.
Parents are going to love connecting with their children through the Playful Heart Tarot. Let a child pull one card and invite him or her to tell a story from the picture on that card. If you want to hear the Voice of Spirit speak to you, just listen to what that child says. There is no wiser tarot reader than the child interpreting the signs and symbols of these cards!
You’ll see the bonus cards in this deck pictured above. You can mix them right in with the traditional 78 or set them aside for specialized specific-intent readings.
Uplifting, cheerful, and serene, Playful Heart Tarot by Kitten Chops will rekindle your child-like wonder for the world around you and renew that innocent curiosity.
This isn’t about being overly light with the tarot, or not taking it seriously, but quite the opposite; Playful Heart is about restoring your faith and optimism in the world and all the promising potential it holds for you, about restoring your faith and optimism in yourself, and all the promising potential you still possess.
benebell wen 
I really wanted this deck but the cheapest non tracked shipping to the UK plus customs charge are as much as the price of the deck itself, same with the kickstarter edition. It’s a shame because it’s so beautiful.
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