Calling all witches (whether costumed for the big spooky holiday or otherwise). This deck is just what you’re spooky season has been missing. A modern tarot deck may strike you as an oxymoron; according to Robert Place in The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, the cards developed in northern Italy in the early fifteenth century. But, in 2022, this Late Middle Age practice has become as commonplace as waking up and checking your Co—Star horoscope app. Many use tarot cards as a sort of pocket-sized spiritual therapist — or, as R29 writer Elizabeth Gulino describes it, “The cards are less about predicting the future than about providing guidance around how to best cope with things that crop up day to day.” This brings us to The Modern Witch Tarot Deck: a diverse and contemporary take on the old-school Rider-Waite-Smith version that boasts a rare 4.9-out-of-5-star rating and over 19,000 reviews on Amazon. Illustrated by comic-book artist Lisa Sterle, the cards are brimming with everything from iPhones to LGBT+ themes and POC representation that its impassioned internet following calls beautiful and validating. After purchasing The Modern Witch from ESP, a spiritual store in Williamsburg, NY, I quickly became a dedicated member of its stan club and decided to investigate its viral online success even further.
