DruidCraft Tarot: Meeting of Wicca and Druidry

A while back Lisa, Dani, and Dustin of Three Fat Readers talked about the DruidCraft Tarot, and that inspired me to chat about the deck here in a blog post. This isn’t a deck review. It’s me sharing my personal experiences with the DruidCraft. Another reason I wanted to go out of my way to post this is as a bit of a passive-aggressive defiant response to a recent “most influential” or “best of” publication on contemporary tarot decks where the DruidCraft Tarot by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm, illustrated by Will Worthington was noticeably missing from that “best of” list. Like… whut?!

This was one of my go-to public reading decks from back in the day. When I was in my 20s, I did countless parties and social events with the DruidCraft. Some of the cards in these photos are going to be upside down because I wanted to show you my copy of the deck straight out of its tattered old box and I read reversals with the DruidCraft. What you’re seeing here is the exact order, upright and reversed, that the cards were in the very last time I used them… which was about a decade ago.

Click on photos for high-res, close-up viewing.

The premise of the deck is to be a synthesis of Wicca and Druidry, to express a path that the guidebook calls “The Old Ways.” The deck is also inspired by the Golden Dawn, which united “many of the disparate strands of the Western Magical Tradition . . . A quantum leap in the understanding and application of the Tarot occurred thanks to the stimulus of the Golden Dawn, and so we have drawn on this in The DruidCraft Tarot Deck for its intrinsic worth, and for its historical connection with the evolution of Druidry and Wicca” (cited from the guidebook).

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Tazama African Tarot by Abusua Pa

The Tazama African Tarot by Chiria and Bjorn Franklin with art by Sagara Wanjagi is beyond luxe. It comes in this rose petal velvety matte box, the cards are that rose petal velvety matte finish, and it’s got stunning accents of gold leaf. The first thing you’ll notice is the intricate layers of detailing on the box design, and we’re just getting started.

It’s a classic Rider-Waite-Smith deck with no barrier of entry when it comes to learning how to read with these cards. The cardstock is really thick, with a good weight to the deck. Incredible attention to detail is devoted to production value, and it shows.

Psst… per the guidebook, the artist says her favorite card is the Wheel of Fortune. Also, the first three cards she started on are The Magician, The High Priestess, and The Empress. These are fun-to-know tidbits that give you a more sentimental insight into the deck.

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Kosmos Oracle Deck by Carmen Bello

The Kosmos Oracle by Carmen Bello was published earlier this year and so far it’s flew a bit under the radar. And I’m not entirely sure why, because it’s a marvelous, delightful, and very accurate reading deck. The namesake comes from the Greek term Kosmos to indicate the universe as a harmonious, orderly system, a deck that will help you to regulate Chaos.

There’s a 1970s pivot-of-change aesthetic here, or at least that’s what comes across to me. The 70s was this decade of social progress in the form of civil rights and sexual revolution, individualized spiritual awakening, both coups and efforts at decolonization in many of the developing nations, genre fiction getting a spike in the publishing industry, and the hippie subculture.

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