Touchstone Tarot

The Touchstone Tarot is Kat Black's follow-up to the Golden Tarot, and it carries the same love of Baroque portraiture that made that earlier deck so striking. The figures here look directly at the viewer with an intimacy that is unusual in tarot illustration, as if the archetypal characters are regarding you personally rather than occupying some distant symbolic space. Black works in digital collage, drawing from the rich tradition of European oil painting, and the result feels at once ancient and strangely immediate.

This US Games edition has beautifully gilded golden edges and comes with a 108-page illustrated guidebook covering card meanings, spreads, and art references. The deck also includes the Happy Squirrel card, that mysterious extra card that tarot readers will recognize as a playful tradition in its own right.