Throughout my girlhood I was a huge, huge fan of Sailor Moon. In a past posting, I shared how I named my violin Darien/Tuxedo Mask. Darien during practice, Tuxedo Mask during performances. And one day a friend mentioned that there exists a thing called the Sailor Moon Tarot. Predictably, I bought it within minutes of learning of its existence.
Although I’ve had this deck for years, I never got around to doing a write-up about it. Finally here it is: the Sailor Moon Crystal Tarot, Major Arcana.
The card backs are… well… because it’s a Sailor Moon tarot deck, it’s forgiven.
Is that Toei Animation sticker geniune or fake? Argh. The only way for me to verify for sure (maybe? allegedly.) is to peel that sticker off and examine its adhesive backing to see if it bears the official watermark. But I don’t want to do that because this is a collector’s deck for me. I really don’t want to tamper with it more than I have to.
EDIT: Apparently, it’s not a fake. Toei Animation did officially license a Sailor Moon Crystal 25th Anniversary Celebration limited edition run of tarot cards, Majors only, published out of Taiwan. That’s why all the text on here is in Traditional Chinese, rather than Simplified Chinese. Ahhh.
This deck is Golden Dawn astrology-based, sorta… -ish… The manga and its cartoon adaptation, if I may say so, has always been weirdly occult. Like if you see it, you see it, and you won’t ever be able to unsee it.
So here, for instance, in modern astrology The Fool card is often associated with Uranus. So Sailor Uranus is featured on Key 0: The Fool card. By the way, about Sailor Uranus, if you aren’t a Sailor Moon fan. In her civilian disguise, she wears masculine presenting clothes. And in her initial storylines, there are dialogue exchanges to the tune of, “What a handsome boy,” etc. Later on in the narrative, it’s revealed that Sailor Uranus is transgender. By the way, the lore around Sailor Uranus was set way back in the 1990s. So none of this is a recent thing.
Continuing on, Key 1: The Magician corresponds with Mercury. Here, The Magician is represented by Sailor Mercury. Sailor Moon is, well, the Moon, and so she’s The High Priestess. Key 3: The Empress corresponds with Venus, and there you see Sailor Venus. And on it goes.
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