Our tarot deck — a modern Marseille house style
Every card on this site is drawn in our own hand: a bold, minimalist take on the Tarot de Marseille. It is a deliberate design choice, not a shortcut — and once you know how to read it, the style does something illustrated decks can’t.
Why we drew our own deck
Most tarot sites lean on the 1909 Rider–Waite–Smith images. We chose a different path for three reasons. First, originality and honesty: our art is ours, drawn from scratch, so nothing here is borrowed or traced. Second, the tradition itself — the Marseille pattern is the oldest widely printed tarot in Europe, the ancestor most modern decks descend from, and reading it connects you to five centuries of practice. Third, craft: every card is drawn as clean vector code, so it stays razor-sharp at any size, prints perfectly, and looks consistent across all 78 cards.
Bold minimalism, on purpose
The Marseille tradition never illustrated its number cards with little scenes; it used arrangements of the four suit signs — wands, cups, swords and coins — and left the reading to structure, number and symbol. We keep that spirit. Our cards strip each image back to its essential signs in strong woodcut lines and a small, warm palette. There is nothing decorative to hide behind: you read the bones of the card.
This is the opposite of the Rider–Waite habit of packing every card with narrative detail. Both approaches are valid, and we explain the difference in our Rider–Waite–Smith and Tarot de Marseille histories. If you’re used to illustrated minors, our style asks a little more of you at first — and then rewards you, because you learn to read from principle rather than from a memorised picture.
Our palette
Four colours and a strong outline, echoing the mineral pigments of the old Marseille printers. The restraint is the point: colour carries meaning here rather than mood.
How to read our symbols
A handful of signs recur across the deck. Learn these and you can read most of the imagery on sight:
Guidance, hope, and a light to steer by — strongest in The Star.
Emotion, the unconscious, and renewal — the element of the Cups.
Duality, a threshold, a choice between opposites — as in The High Priestess.
Completion, wholeness, a cycle fulfilled — the frame of The World.
Clarity, vitality, truth made visible — the blessing of The Sun.
Mystery, dream, intuition and the half-seen — the mood of The Moon.
Fire — will, drive, creativity and action. The suit of Wands.
Water — love, feeling and relationship. The suit of Cups.
Air — mind, truth, conflict and clarity. The suit of Swords.
Earth — money, body, work and the material world. The suit of Pentacles.
Each Major carries its number in Roman figures — its place in the journey.
Madder-red inside iron ink — our frame on every card, a nod to the old printers’ keylines.
The same signs, every time
Because the deck is drawn from one consistent system, a symbol means the same thing wherever it appears. The water under The Star is the water in the Cups; the sun over The Sun is the light hidden behind The Moon. That internal consistency is the quiet advantage of a single-hand, code-drawn deck — and it makes the whole 78 easier to learn as one language rather than 78 separate pictures.