Any Tarot Deck/s that Actually REPELS You or Creeps You Out?

[Misterei]

Have YOU ever gotten or seen a deck that viscerally repelled you? I don't mean just "nah, it didn't resonate". I mean like, "Eww. Gross, Get it away from me!"

 

To explain:

I recently got sent a deck by mistake. I tired to return it to the vendor but they never sent the return postage label -- so I finally just opened the package to have a look.

It's the Tarot Ocsuro.

While I appreciated some of the artwork, the deck itself repulsed me. I found myself with a visceral negative reaction to some of the motifs the artist used [WHY the criss-cross bandages over nipples???]

 

I understand the deck is supposed to be a Shadow deck. I got no problem with Shadow work and go to my Triunfi Della Luna when I want that sort of thing.

 

But I had such a strong sense of ICK-factor to Tarot Oscuro. Hmmm. I wanted to burn it, but I will give it away. I'm sure someone somewhere wants it. [dm me if you do]

 

I've shared before that Sola Busca seriously CREEPS me out. I only keep a copy for historical value. Apparently I'm enough of a history nerd that even a strong creep factor won't make me get rid of a historic deck 😉 

 

Anyway we spend a lot of time sharing the decks we love [which is a good thing] but I'm curious if others have any strong negative reactions to decks.

 

Edited March 28 by Misterei

[Chariot]

For me it's the Deviant Moon Tarot.  You have NO idea how many times I've nearly bought this deck.  I appreciate it.  I appreciate the humour. I appreciate the thought that went into it.  The artwork is fantastic.  So what's not to like?  I dunno ...but I just can't feel comfortable with the idea of owning it.  Just can't.  It feels as if it would attract bad luck to me.  Can't shake that feeling.  I struggle to even watch a flip-through of the deck all the way to the end.  I've done it, but all the while I felt like an articulated lorry with the brakes on, skidding reluctantly downhill to a no-good finish.
 

And yet, I really like owning the Trionfi Della Luna deck by the same artist.  I haven't read with it, but I intend to at some point.  I have it out in front of me now.

Go figure!  🙂

Edited March 28 by Chariot

[Misterei]

1 hour ago, Chariot said:

For me it's the Deviant Moon Tarot. 

I know what you mean. Deviant Moon doesn't actually repel me like the decks I mention--but I never bought it as much as I like Valnza.

[Rose Lalonde]

I'm the same with Deviant Moon.

I also have issues with the Röhrig. The art is dynamic and well executed, and it's as Thothy as I like, but something slick and 'plastic' about the content puts me right off. Cards were painted in the 90's but look like the 80's to me. Nudity is fine, but things like a single floating breast next to the face of a Queen and the Devil - just no. The Empress leaves me cold. I think it comes down to me getting that 80's Reaganomics vibe from my middle/high school days. 

Edited March 28 by Rose Lalonde

[katrinka]

Any of those LS decks with the cheap, scratchy "art":

https://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/lo-scarabeo/

https://www.holisticshop.co.uk/products/scarabeo-universal-tarot

 

etc. They look unfinished, like the "artist" spent under an hour on each card. If that.

[Ferrea]

I really dislike looking at the Deviant Moon images. Even though I get the humour of Trionfi della Luna, it doesn't work for me either.

I checked a flip through of the Tarot Oscuro on Youtube. Had to exit at Justice. Awful.
For me personally, "shadow work" doesn't require terrifying, trippy images of deformed people.

The Sola Busca (in my Il Meneghello version) I find rather thrilling. I love the colours, the dripping testosterone, the nonchalance. I totally get that one (Peter Mark Adams) could theorise it also served to illustrate the homoerotic preferences of the commissioner. Though, I'm not sold on the grimoire story. Of course, you only see what you know. But I do know that it's the very dynamic of conspiracy theories that the deeper you dig, the more confirmation you get for what was suspected to be true. And I suppose Adams dug really deep.
To me it’s a radical, alchemical deck.

[Esclarmonde]

Deviant Moon repelled me as well. Maybe not creeped out, but it's definitely not my type of deck. But the deck that I found really disturbing and unsettling is the Giger tarot. I actually held the cards and looked through them, and I think they could give some people nightmares. And although I do like darker decks (though not exclusively), I think the Giger would be a bit much. 

[FindYourSovereignty]

7 hours ago, Misterei said:

I've shared before that Sola Busca seriously CREEPS me out. I only keep a copy for historical value. Apparently I'm enough of a history nerd that even a strong creep factor won't make me get rid of a historic deck 😉 

 

 

I let this one go for this reason. And I have a serious collection of decks, imo, but I didn't even want it for the historical value.

 

6 hours ago, Chariot said:

For me it's the Deviant Moon Tarot.  You have NO idea how many times I've nearly bought this deck.  I appreciate it.  I appreciate the humour. I appreciate the thought that went into it.  The artwork is fantastic.  So what's not to like?  I dunno ...but I just can't feel comfortable with the idea of owning it.  Just can't.  It feels as if it would attract bad luck to me.  Can't shake that feeling.  I struggle to even watch a flip-through of the deck all the way to the end.  I've done it, but all the while I felt like an articulated lorry with the brakes on, skidding reluctantly downhill to a no-good finish.
 

 

Ditto

[dancing_moon]

I have ambivalent feelings about Patrick Valenza's decks. The art is superb, but I find many of the images distractingly distasteful - it probably says more about me than the images in question, though 😆 Oddly enough, I'm OK with Sola Busca - it just seems bizarre and inscrutable to me like the Voynich manuscript.

 

Another deck that comes to mind is the Wild Unknown. It has a certain charm, but the weird color accents on black and white, and the backgrounds filled with black lines make it look depressing - it kind of reminds me of animal corpses in the snow.

 

I'm fascinated by how we're all different like that 🙂

[Natural Mystic Guide]

Some of the cards in the Mary-El Tarot repel me.  The Deviant Moon creeps me out.  I had a strong negative reaction to the Gaian Tarot when it arrived.  I had to send it back.  The Chrysalis deck pisses me off because it tampers too much with the basic structure of Tarot yet it's such a hyped up deck.  The Dreams of Gaia Tarot pissed me off too.  I had loved the art, but the basic structure of the Tarot seemed arbitrarily tampered with.

Edited March 29 by Natural Mystic Guide

[Nemia]

My tolerance for even not-so-perfect tarot decks is pretty wide - I totally agree on the Lo Scarabeo Tarot, a real disappointment. Obviously, the artist had a brief (combining Marseilles, Thoth and RWS - an interesting idea) and just painted pretty young girls in nice poses. Competently done but without any, any depth. Nevertheless, I trimmed the deck and it works pretty well as take-along in a tin. 

 

There are however decks that I had to let go. 

 

The Jungian Tarot - wow, those robotic figures and dead eyes. It was a nice set with an intelligent book, and I could stand the weird pips, but I couldn't stand those frozen faces. So creepy. 

 

  

 

Then there was the Art of Life Tarot. 

 

I'm an art historian and love art deeply, so this should have been right up my alley, don't you think so? Yeah, I thought so, too. 

 

  

 

This deck combines famous works of art with a kitschy display frame (okay, you don't have to use that) and well-known words of wisdom. To be honest, I thought the creator simply looked up famous quotations containing the keywords associated with the cards. Some of the majors were well-chosen (the Magician), while others were really, really a stretch. And the creator never went far from the well-known, well-loved Modern Art classics. 

I struggled with this deck because instead of getting anything from this deck, I argued with the cards: why van Gogh here? Come on,  you can do better? Not another van Gogh! Why not Vermeer's Woman with Scales for Justice? etc. And then adding those pedestrian words of wisdom! 

 

A deeper issue: art has its own power. You can't squeeze art into tarot or tarot into art simply by taking a masterpiece and declaring: now, that's the Justice card, of the Nine of Pentacles. There is more work to do. Kat Black did it, Hildegard Hinkel did it. There is even a certain ruthlessness necessary - approaching a timeless work by Giorgione and telling the guy: now I'll cut you out and you'll play your role in my tarot deck. And the art mostly goes along with it. Somehow, in the Art of Life, it didn't work at all for me. As quickly as it came into my home, it had to go. It may work for others, but not for me. 

 

To be continued! 

[DanielJUK]

I would go with the Deviant Moon as well. However, life isn't all nice and pretty things, art can challenge us and creep us out and repel us, just like the dark things we sometimes have to face in life. It's wonderful art that is repulsive and creepy and unnerving. I have to say that I don't own this deck or any of Patrick's and I can't decide if I want to or not. Sometimes it is good to be unsettled by art and I think it's probably one of the best decks at getting to our shadow side, that dark version of ourselves. I have had 4 readings from it by friends and partners in exchanges here and often I didn't choose that deck but they did for me and honestly it was such an important message for me each time. It made me uncomfortable and there were big truths but I needed to hear it. So the deck does exactly what it's purpose is for. Maybe I will get one, one day for shadow side readings. Sometimes we need to feel uncomfortable.

 

However decks that repel me and don't meet their purpose and this is often the most heated contentious topic on this forum (and many communities), so I am hoping I don't regret mentioning this 😆🤦‍♂️. AI decks. AI is still something in flux and I can't say I will always hate AI decks but currently they always seem so bland. For me, a deck doesn't need to have historic links or meet tradition, you can make it however you want but the symbolism needs to mean something. I am a reader of symbolism, that triggers my intuition. I love reading or finding out why the artist decided to include that symbolism or not use that symbolism. With AI, it's just a mess of merged in images. Everytime I look at AI deck images, I get nothing from the symbolism, it has not been chosen by a person and it's soulless. Like I say, this opinion could change in future but for now, they utterly repel me.

[katrinka]

2 hours ago, DanielJUK said:

AI decks.

Those crossed my mind too, but I just don't consider them Tarot decks, or art. Even bad art. Bad art can be fun, look at MOBA. Somebody took a brush and tried to paint something. But AI is just writing prompts and getting a picture scraped from other peoples' art.
It just doesn't count for anything.

Edited March 29 by katrinka

[FindYourSovereignty]

3 hours ago, DanielJUK said:

It made me uncomfortable and there were big truths but I needed to hear it. So the deck does exactly what it's purpose is for. Maybe I will get one, one day for shadow side readings. Sometimes we need to feel uncomfortable.

 

The deck that I moved on, but feel I sometimes want again is Ceccoli Tarot for this very reason. People around me really pushed the Mary El tarot as a must have deck for shadow work. I don't resonate at all with the art. I am not going to ever feel comfortable using that deck for a reading. In the Ceccoli Tarot, I really actually like that art and know I can read with it, but it triggers me. Another deck I feel this way about is the Madhouse Tarot.

 

And any deck that is going to give me nightmares, like the XIII by Nekro or is simply gross or disrespectful, doesn't work for me either.

[Nemia]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - even though it's off-topic - I've done quite a bit of shadow work. As a rule, I always use a neutral or positive deck, NOT a dark deck. A dark deck can turn any reading into a shadow reading, anyway. If I want to know more about my shadow, I'll take a gentler deck that tells me the truth without hitting me over the head with it. (I don't know the Mary El, and while some cards are impressive, there are some dealbreakers for me.) So if you're looking to do shadow work -  maybe try a deck that isn't all gloom and doom. 

 

I like the Deviant Moon, it's full of crazy humour and sarcasm, and that's sometimes what I need. For me, it reads unexpectedly well. Somehow, it also lifts my mood. Its dystopian landscapes and weird figures remind me of the medieval Dance of Death, and I'm fine with that. 

 

Why did I let go of the Hudes Tarot? It was difficult to find when I strolled with some local tarotists into a tobacco shop in Tel Aviv that had sold decks in the past, and had some left. I was really excited to see it and bought it on the spot. I loved the melancholic faces and especially the Death card is one of the best I've seen. 

 

 

The faces btw remind me a bit of the Aquarian Tarot, which I like very much. 

 

So everything was hunky-dory, as my British friends would say. I was even happier when I discovered that there were star maps in the background and started to look at how these star maps were connected to the cards. 

 

There was no connection at all. She had used the star maps as a generic background, just like the maps. I really tried to make sense of it all, and maybe I should have given it more time and dug deeper, but I couldn't find any connection. 

 

I've been studying and teaching art and art history for many years now, and there is one characteristic in good art: nothing is there just for decoration. A truly great artist will put nothing into a work of art just to fill the background. Just as an engineer wouldn't simply add a screw where none is needed, an artist shouldn't simply take something so meaningful like star maps and use them to fill the background. For me, the stars are symbols and witnesses of the Divine, and my respect for the art and these cards dropped until I couldn't work with them any more. So I swapped them on AT. 

 

Irony of fate: I swapped the Hudes for the Wildwood, and I can't work with that deck, either. I don't even know why. Simply a case of no connection. Since then, I have learned. I shouldn't have given up on the Hudes so quickly, and among all the decks that I let go (not many anyway), I should have kept it and understood its character. 

 

The coloured version of the Tarot of the Holy Light - I really tried to like that deck but I still think it was a mistake to colour them the way they did.  

 

 

The cards are amazingly rich - alchemical and esoteric prints from the Renaissance and Enlightenment. If such prints were coloured back then, it was done by water colour with graduations of tone. But here, obviously, they used a computer program to colour the collaged prints. Together with some parts of the book, this went against my grain. I swapped this deck, and again, oh irony - what was I thinking? I swapped it for the Kitty Kahane whose style is a bit too garish for me (although she has some really interesting details in the cards). And the book is so bland - it doesn't go together well with the Kitty Kahane at all. However, I kept the Kitty Kahane, and I use it sparingly - sometimes, it's just what I need, like a pink lipstick that I use rarely but when I do, I do. 

 

Well, the Tarot of Holy Light was released in black and white, and I LOVE it. It's a wonderful deck. 

 

(The Terra Volatile also uses prints, albeit newer ones, and they are coloured very gently - that's a feast for the eyes). 

 

I'm an INFJ (yes, I have taken all the tests and repeated them over the years - I'm a consistent, 100% INFJ), and I guess this is my version of the INFJ door slam. Once it's over for an INFJ, that's it. And this is not always a good thing. 

 

There are so many tarot decluttering videos, many people find it easy to let a deck go. I hold on to things, so if I let a deck go, it means I truly couldn't make it work. I'm happy that others love those decks. They're all very good, and my reasons mean nothing to others. 

 

It's best to curate my collection BEFORE buying a new deck, I know. But that's how we learn...

 

 

 

 

 

[Lovebird]

Probably the lunatic tarot.. Some of the cards anyway because others are very nice too look at 

[gregory]

I love Deviant Moon. The deck I really find unpleasant is the Ma’at. I can’t get on with it at all, and it makes me feel quite ill. I’m away just now, but there is also a very nasty French one….

Edited March 29 by gregory

[RunningWild]

On 3/28/2025 at 12:09 PM, Misterei said:

Have YOU ever gotten or seen a deck that viscerally repelled you? I don't mean just "nah, it didn't resonate". I mean like, "Eww. Gross, Get it away from me!"

 

I’m with the anything AI crowd.  That aside, there was one deck a potential creator made ages ago and tried to gain approval for on AT.  It was one of the only times on that forum that I ever voiced a strong opinion about a deck.  It was, in my opinion and those of other members, pornographic.  I am not put off by nudity.  I am put off by male dominance with bdsm overtones.  It wasn’t even art.  I can handle creepy stuff just fine.  Sometimes I embrace it.  I adore quirky stuff.  It makes me laugh.  

 

The couple that tried to convince the community of the legitimacy of their deck was made to find a different community.

[gregory]

The Tarot de Mars. DEFINITELY NFW and - well, pretty much NF anywhere........

 

Definitely deserves a spoiler tag: look at your peril.

 

Spoiler

https://www.lederniercri.org/produit/faucompre-quentin-tarot-de-mars/

 

[RunningWild]

54 minutes ago, gregory said:

The Tarot de Mars. DEFINITELY NFW and - well, pretty much NF anywhere........

 

Definitely deserves a spoiler tag: look at your peril.

 

  Hide contents

https://www.lederniercri.org/produit/faucompre-quentin-tarot-de-mars/

 

 

It certainly is a strange looking thing.

[fire cat pickles]

I kinda like it 🫣

[Esclarmonde]

Not my type... I don't even find it creepy, it's just not something I'd like to have.

[xTheHermitx]

nothing has ever creeped me out, like instilling fear of negative things happening to me;

 

but the Crowley Thoth deck was sort of a disappointment when I first got it. It seemed too "trippy" to me, and the artwork is often times sort of "corny" looking. 

 

I do think some decks border on nudity/sexuality for shock value's sake, and I personally think that is sort of corny as well

 

I waffle between thinking that the Hermetic Tarot is cool, or that it is really brutal and ugly....

 

I actively avoid anything anime, cartoonish, "based on movies" based on pop culture, etc. etc.  I just can't take those kinds of decks serious. I can't take those kinds of things seriously either....

[dancing_moon]

On 3/29/2025 at 2:10 PM, FindYourSovereignty said:

Ceccoli Tarot

Oh yes, and this one, too. Just too unpleasant for me to look at.

[katrinka]

3 hours ago, dancing_moon said:

Oh yes, and this one, too. Just too unpleasant for me to look at.

In a way, the characters remind me of little girls in pageants. Kind of a Jon Benet Ramsey vibe. <shudders>

Of course this perennial favorite is worse. Sorry to post it yet again. It's just sooooooo bad in every possible way!
 

 

Edited March 31 by katrinka