A tarot deck inspired by white witchcraft incorporates the principles and symbolism found in the practice of white witchcraft into the traditional tarot cards. White witchcraft is a term used to describe a type of magical practice that focuses on using magic for positive purposes, such as healing, protection, and guidance. It is often associated with the Wiccan religion and pagan traditions. The tarot deck inspired by white witchcraft typically consists of 78 cards, divided into two major categories: the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana cards represent significant life events and spiritual lessons, while the Minor Arcana cards depict everyday situations and experiences. In this tarot deck, the Major Arcana cards are imbued with symbols and imagery related to white witchcraft.
LS It’s an inclusive feminist deck. Most of the people I know that practice witchcraft are women, or nonbinary, or anything but the white men that adorn the majority of the cards in the traditonal Rider-Waite-Smith deck. We have an incredibly diverse world, so much more than we see represented in a lot of popular media; I wanted to create characters within this deck that reflected the readers and their friends, figures they could relate to or aspire to be. I wanted the figures within these cards to feel like they could be part of your coven today.
Whether or not trionfi were originally produced independently of standard playing cards, their function, when added to the pack, was to act as a suit superior in power to the other four a suit of triumphs, or trumps. Gr 3-7 A guide to chakras, crystals, herbal plants with healing qualities, the meanings in dreams, palm-reading, and more; the author finds magic everywhere and explains it in accessible language that also offers readers a springboard to do more research.
In this tarot deck, the Major Arcana cards are imbued with symbols and imagery related to white witchcraft. For example, The Tower card may feature a white witch casting a spell to cleanse and purify a situation, while The High Priestess card may depict a wise white witch channeling intuitive and spiritual energies. Similarly, the Minor Arcana cards incorporate white witchcraft imagery in their illustrations.
In conversation With Lisa Sterle, Creator Of The Modern Witch Tarot
Lisa Sterle is the creator of the Modern Witch Tarot, a new inclusive tarot deck inspired by modern witches. Charlotte Richardson Andrews (The Culture Witch) had a chat with Lisa about her tarot journey and her new inclusive deck.
Cunning Folk Congratulations on creating such a beautiful deck. Is it safe to assume you identity as a modern witch? And if so, could you speak a bit about your practice?
Lisa Sterle Thank you, and yes I’d consider myself a modern witch. As far as my practice goes, I actually mainly only practise tarot at the moment. It was the first thing that got me into witchcraft.
CF How did you first discover the tarot?
LS I think I first ran across tarot in high school, and I’m thinking it was probably through some witchy movie or YA book that I discovered it. I didn’t get my own deck and start reading myself until college; I had a few friends that regularly practiced tarot and looking through their decks was instantly fascinating and inspiring. I totally felt it calling to me right away. My first deck was the Thoth deck.
CF You say in the instruction guide to the Modern Witch Deck (MWD) that you began making this deck during a time of professional and personal (creative) gloom. Could you elaborate?
LS Yes, it’s a bit strange of an origin story. I was working a dead-end graphic design job that was draining away my passion for art and my faith in humanity. I was 100% burnt out and felt totally unappreciated and uninspired; I felt like my art hadn’t really gone anywhere new for a while. I didn’t know what to do. So the Ten of Swords was really calling to me during this really bleak period of my life. And like sort of this divine spark, I had my idea for the first card of the deck. The fact that I was able to transform a really bleak and negative period of my life into something positive is one of the things I really love about this deck and it speaks to my general mission with art.
CF Would you say the MWD helped you to course correct?
LS For sure. This deck was one of the projects that allowed me to go full-time freelance and my art has taken on such a new life creatively ever since. I’m so grateful for it.
CF The instructions feature a foreword by (New York fiction writer) Vita Ayala. How did you cross paths?
LS I first worked with Vita on a creator-owned comic back in 2018 called Submerged. They are a supremely talented writer and we really bonded on a lot of shared interests and similar creative inspirations when working on that comic. I really admire Vita; they are driven, super smart and inspiring as a creator. When it came time to figuring out who would be writing the foreword, I knew they were the perfect choice and they did an absolutely beautiful job. I couldn't be happier.
CF Now to the deck itself: did other tarot artists inspire you? If so, who and why?
LS Pamela Coleman Smith’s art was a big influence. There’s something about her bold, graphic style that has always spoken to me, but it really wasn’t until this deck that I really tried to explore it.
CF Alternative tarot decks have been around a while now, but the first one that really spoke to me as a queer millennial was Cristy C. Road’s Next World Tarot. Are you familiar with this deck?
LS I am not, but I’ll definitely be checking it out. I love getting deck recommendations.
CF I’m guessing you drew on pre-existing scholarship when it came to researching tarot symbols and archetypes. What/who were your go-to tarot books and experts?
LS I had a big stack of different books that I’d reference for each card design as a refresher on the different ways to interpret each deck. The books I went to most often though were Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack, and Modern Tarot by Michelle Tea.
CF In total, how long did the MWD take to craft?
LS I’d say about four months to design and illustrate all the cards I think.
CF Talk me through the creative process. Did you work in the way that you’d normally create art? Or did you add tarot-adjacent practices into the mix? For example, did you ever experiment with meditating, divination or fugue states in order to divine which directions to go in art-wise?
LS My process didn’t differ too much from my normal way of working. I’d usually focus on a card per day, and spend time with the card itself. Studying the art in the Rider-Waite-Smith and other decks; reading up different interpretations and getting as deep as I could into the symbols and context. The whole while I’d be jotting down ideas and really trying to get to the heart of what I felt was most true about the card. From there it was sketching and layout time, where I’d take what notes I’d jotted down and focused on filtering those meanings through a modern filter. Then came a fun part, where I’d do fashion and style research and figure out the characters and personalities I’d be crafting for the card. All in all, it was actually a super fun and relatively painless process.
CF What medium(s) did you use? Were the images created digitally, by hand, or a mixture of both?
LS This deck was all digital, though I do make an effort to add an organic, traditional looking feel to my digital artwork. I do my sketching in Procreate on an iPad Pro, then I finish the inking/colouring and everything else in Photoshop on my desktop.
CF One of the first things that drew me to the deck when I came across it on Instagram was the palette you’ve used. Can you talk a bit about the hues and tones you chose to work with, and the meaning behind them?
LS Figuring out the colour schemes was one of my favorite parts of working on this deck. I definitely wanted it to be bright and eye-catching, with a mix of pastels and bright, saturated colors. I think it also has a vaguely ‘90s feel. My goal was to make sure all the cards looked great next to each other in a spread, so I had to have some strict rules for the palette to make it feel cohesive. One odd rule is that I almost entirely omitted the ‘standard’ blue hue, and everything that would have been blue is now shifted to mint. All yellows are more golden. Green is mostly absent unless it’s a teal. I also wanted each suite to have it’s own color scheme that visually ties it to its element. So Cups has a lot of mint/blues and pinks for water, Wands has a lot of golds and reds for fire, etc.
CF The MWD has a very glossy finish, and, when stacked, is rather wide and heavy for my rather small, thin hands – much wider than my Morgan Greer and Rider-Waite-Smith decks. Was this an intentional design choice?
LS Yes, mostly. The publisher and I hoped to have cards that felt quality, so we didn’t want anything too thin or small. We decided to do a larger-sized deck so that the art can really shine, and that was the case with the glossy finish as well; colors print more vibrantly with a glossy finish. But as someone who also has small hands, I understand the difficulty! I have to cut the deck and shuffle in smaller piles, which works. But maybe we can do a smaller sized deck in the future as well.
CF There’s a very clear commitment to diversity in regards to the way figures and archetypes are both named and depicted in this deck – from people of colour and plus size figures, to queered, androgynous archetypes and same-sex couples. You’ve also flipped some of the gendered cards – for example, The Magician (I), usually a white guy, is a young woman of colour, the King of Cups looks like a cis woman and The Hanged Man (XII) has become The Hanged One. Why was making this deck inclusive important to you?
LS It’s an inclusive feminist deck. Most of the people I know that practice witchcraft are women, or nonbinary, or anything but the white men that adorn the majority of the cards in the traditonal Rider-Waite-Smith deck. We have an incredibly diverse world, so much more than we see represented in a lot of popular media; I wanted to create characters within this deck that reflected the readers and their friends, figures they could relate to or aspire to be. I wanted the figures within these cards to feel like they could be part of your coven today.
CF You’ve employed unmistakably modern imagery in the cards – for example, The Fool (0) is listening to an iPod-type device, while The Chariot (XII) is riding a motorcycle. Were you ever worried that modernizing the cards might date them, perhaps detracting from their traditionally timeless occult qualities?
LS I think attempting to create ‘timeless’ art is a sort of a fool’s errand. Sure, I’d love my work to persist through the decades, but that’s not really up to me as an artist. I can only try and create what feels true to me right now.
CF As well as updating the imagery of cards, I notice you’ve also updated some of its more traditional symbols around. The pomegranate print we usually see The Empress (III) wearing has transformed into a lemon print in your deck. What was the thinking behind this?
LS That was a nod to a particular musician that inspired that card in a big way.
TAYLOR, Carole. Astrology: Using the Wisdom of the Stars in Your Everyday Life. DK. 2018. ISBN 9781465464132.
Gr 6 Up–An excellent beginning guide to help learners visually grasp the sometimes daunting overlay of things to interpret, such as zodiac signs, houses, ascendants-descendants, and aspect patterns, as well as the casting and reading of birth charts. Infographics and basic information about sun and rising signs make this book browsable. Includes an index, a glossary, and list of additional resources.
The suits, traditionally represented by Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles, may be reimagined to suit the theme of white witchcraft. For instance, the Cups suit may be replaced with Chalices, representing emotions and intuition, while the Pentacles suit could become Crystals or Stones, symbolizing abundance and the earth element. The interpretations of the tarot cards in this deck are influenced by the principles of white witchcraft. The reading of each card takes into consideration the positive intentions, spells, and rituals associated with white witchcraft. The aim is to provide guidance and insight in areas such as relationships, career, spirituality, and personal growth. Using a tarot deck inspired by white witchcraft can provide individuals with a tool for self-reflection, divination, and connecting with their intuition. By incorporating the principles of white witchcraft, this deck seeks to embrace positive energies, foster personal growth, and offer guidance that aligns with the values and beliefs of white witchcraft practitioners. Ultimately, a tarot deck inspired by white witchcraft merges the ancient wisdom of tarot with the positive intentions and symbolism of white witchcraft, creating a unique and empowering tool for spiritual exploration and guidance..
Reviews for "Exploring White Witchcraft Rituals with Tarot Card Spreads"
1. Samantha - 2 stars - This tarot deck may claim to be inspired by white witchcraft, but I found it to be lacking in depth and substance. The imagery and symbolism were generic and didn't provide much insight or guidance during my readings. Additionally, the guidebook that came with the deck was vague and didn't offer clear explanations or interpretations of the cards. Overall, I was disappointed with this deck and wouldn't recommend it to anyone serious about tarot.
2. Michael - 1 star - I was excited to try out this tarot deck as a practitioner of white witchcraft, but I was thoroughly disappointed. The artwork on the cards felt amateurish and lacked the depth and beauty that I was expecting. The card meanings were also vague and didn't align well with traditional tarot interpretations. It felt like the deck was trying too hard to be different and ended up losing its essence. I would not recommend this deck to anyone who is looking for a serious and reliable tool for their spiritual practice.
3. Rebecca - 2 stars - As someone who has been studying and practicing witchcraft for years, I was intrigued by the idea of a tarot deck inspired by white witchcraft. However, this deck fell short of my expectations. The artwork was underwhelming and lacked the elegance and symbolism that I appreciate in tarot decks. The card meanings were often confusing and didn't resonate with my own understanding of white witchcraft. Overall, this deck felt like a missed opportunity to create something truly special for practitioners of this craft.
4. John - 1 star - I found this tarot deck to be nothing more than a gimmick. The claims of being inspired by white witchcraft felt like a marketing strategy rather than a genuine spiritual tool. The artwork was uninspiring and lacked the depth and symbolism that I look for in tarot decks. The card meanings were shallow and didn't offer much insight or guidance. I would not recommend wasting your money on this deck when there are plenty of better options available on the market.