Description

• Cards: 78 cards
• Size: 7cm x 11.5cm
• Booklet: Hand-made zine guidebook, written and illustrated by Ayshe-Mira, available as an add-on here.
• Storage: 12cm x 7cm x 4cm cardboard box
• Cardstock: 250gsm, brown risograph printed, giving them their authentic, hand-made, hand-cut feel

The Earth Mother Magic Tarot Deck is a hand-drawn, intersectional feminist tarot deck for queer women and femme non-binary people. The intention of Earth Mother Magic Tarot is to empower women and femme people in the face of an adversary world, to celebrate queer love, and to embrace raw feminine power through an intersectional representation of femininity.

The characters in the deck are depicted through a female and queer gaze, as a statement against the mainstream symbolic violence that is wrought upon women through their representation in ways that would appeal to the male gaze. My representation of women aims to give them the power and self-confidence with which to feel at home in their bodies, in the many shapes and sizes in which they exist, without the demonisation of natural and common features such as body fat, body hair, cellulite, stretch marks and scars.

The Earth Mother Magic Tarot calls upon the Mother Earth archetype, illustrating a queer utopia where women and femmes live in harmony with and as a part of nature, in the absence of capitalist consumerism and of the patriarchy. The focus on anti-consumerism is reflected in the making of the tarot deck, as the cards are all manually printed and handmade by the artist. The tools used to make the tarot deck are ethically sourced wherever possible, with a focus on sustainability. The deck is also entirely vegan, approaching non-human animals as our companions in the Earth rather than as commodities or as beings to be oppressed and dominated by humans.

Care instructions

Due to the cards being risograph printed, 250GSM was the thickest paper I could use without damaging the printer, and the cards are therefore thinner than average tarot cards, so should be stored and shuffled with care. Since the cards are all printed, cut and packaged by hand, slight imperfections such as misalignments in printing, slightly frayed cards or small bends or marks in the prints should not be considered as faults in the deck, and should instead be understood as qualities that make the decks unique as individual art pieces.

The zine

If you choose to purchase the zine: The Earth Mother Magic Tarot Zine is a guide to the symbolism behind the cards in the Earth Mother Magic Tarot Deck. The zine is illustrated, with the text being complemented with the tarot artist’s original fine-liner illustrations. It includes overarching meanings and elemental correspondences of each of the four tarot suits, detailed upright and reversed meanings of each card, as well as in-depth descriptions of the underlying symbolism and imagery of the illustrations.

In the zine, you can find information about the making of the tarot deck, as well as advice about using the tarot cards and ideas about understanding the tarot through a queer lens. It provides three tarot spreads: one for exploring queer love, one for healing, and a spread for the full moon. And there is also a list of ideas for questions to ask the tarot surrounding themes of self-exploration, mental health, family, friendships, love, sex, career and finances.

The zine has been printed on off-white recycled paper, 13cm x 18cm in size, and 56 pages. They are bound by hand using a kettle-stitch bookbinding technique, and come safely packaged in a brown compostable envelope. They are handmade with love, so slight defects or imperfections in the printing or stitching should not be taken as faults in the zine.