I love black and white decks and I love pen and ink illustration. So it is no surprise that the Wandering Moon Tarot by Australian artist and tarot reader Rachael Jean is right up my alley. This deck was gifted to me by the artist, whose art style I absolutely love.
By the way, you can’t tell from these photos, but the card back design is holographic, and when it catches the sunlight at just the right angle, it glitters! Super magical!
Working with solid outlines and pointillism while commanding white (or negative) space with finesse, Jean’s compositions are clean, always with strong focal points, and expressive. There are a couple of bonus cards in this deck, and The Wanderer, pictured above, is one of them.
Here, a “solitary traveler of the cosmos sits upon a planet’s surface, looking up and gazing at a crescent moon. This figure is surrounded by universal energy and cosmic love.” This card reminds you to stay grounded and present, appreciating the moment. Also, look at the chunkiness of that companion guidebook! It’s co-written by the artist Rachael Jean and Marion Kirk.
As tools, there are two types of tarot deck illustrations I like to make sure I have in my collection: the first is when each card illustration feels like a complete and comprehensive universe, and perhaps might be considered “busy” with all the detailing, and the second would be a deck like Wandering Moon, where each card’s illustration feels like anatomical parts of a sentence, or thought, the way signs and symbols would appear to you in a crystal ball.
And because of that minimalist aesthetic, with each card more likened to a glimpse into a crystal ball, Wandering Moon Tarot is fantastic for large multi-card spreads from the Celtic Cross to in-depth 15-card readings. With all that white space, this is one of those decks you could really customize with your own pen and ink additions, if you wanted to.
benebell wen 