Distant Past Tarot

The Distant Past Tarot deck is an art collage deck, created by Jae Larson, formerly known as Jeri Totten, and was originally sold through her Etsy shop. Today, you can purchase it at Make Playing Cards.

It used to be available in different sizes:  poker, tarot and large size. I have the smallest size (poker), and the images are perfectly clear and easily readable. The new version is only available in tarot size.

My version’s cardstock quality is excellent: flexible cards that are easy to shuffle, with a matte, smooth finish.

Card backs are fully reversible with a double arch motif that returns on some of the cards. Three double arches seem to lead to infinity in an illusion of depth. A light sparkles in the middle.

The cards are borderless, and since their backgrounds are similarly designed, they’re easy to read. Laid out next to each other, they form a “story board” which lends itself easily to a narrative, intuitive reading style.

The deck comes with a number of extra cards that present the information usually contained in a LWB: information about the deck and the artist, keywords for the major cards and all minor suits and cards, and two original spreads (the Distant Past Spread and the Past/Present/Future Spread). 

Since the deck follows the RWS tradition faithfully, you can start reading with it right away. This is certainly a perfect beginner’s deck: non-threatening, beautiful and accessible.

The artist explains that she created this deck for her young daughter, and she changed the “dangerous” cards accordingly: the Hanged Man is titled Awakening, Death is Transition, and the Devil Materialism. I don’t usually favor such changes that are supposed to make the tarot more palpable, but in this deck, the gentler images still allow us to read them in their traditional meaning. Transition is an especially lovely card; a beautiful grey-white horse awaits us beyond an archway.

The whole deck is simply beautiful. It doesn’t try to hide that it’s collaged and doesn’t try to give us coherent, unified images – instead, the foreground figures seem to inhabit a dream world. As mentioned above, the backgrounds are coloured in blue and turquoise hues.  The suits themselves are not colour-coded, unlike many other decks, but it’s easy to understand and appreciate the artist’s decision. The whole deck is harmonious, and the scenes melt into each other seamlessly.

The suits are Wands, Cups, Swords and Coins. The card titles are written in a clear unobtrusive font on a scroll at the bottom of the card. The suit symbols are consistent from card to card: green wooden wands, beautifully decorated silver cups, swords with a wing-like decorated grip and fleur-de-lis pommel, and golden coins with a pentacle. They stand out clearly – again, making the deck really easy to read. If you have two cards from the same suit next to each other, the suit symbols form patterns.

The court cards are Pages, Knights, Queens and Kings. The royal status of the Queens and Kings is made very obvious by elaborate crowns and gowns. The Knights are accompanied by horses, and the Pages are children. The Kings are middle-aged or above, they could be the Pages’ grandfathers. So the court cards are status cards and less obviously family cards than in other decks, which is in accordance with tradition.

The art chosen for this deck stretches from Renaissance (Botticelli, Raphael), Baroque (Anthony van Dyke, Peter Lely), Rococo, Neo-Classicism, Biedermeier (Philipp Hetsch), academic artists (Lawrence Alma-Tadema, William Bougereau)  and Pre-Raphaelites (Evelyn Morgan, Frederic Leighton)  – in other words, the academic tradition of Western painting from the 16th to the 19th century. 

Most of these artists depict reality and idealize it at the same time. They want to portray faithfully the person or scene in question but without exposing or criticizing it (the way modern art does). They don’t portray reality but transcend it, showing it in its best light to preserve it for memory.

For some years, modern art dominated viewing habits, and pre-modern art was marginalized as bland, conventional or merely technically brilliant. Over the last decades, they have been rediscovered and re-evaluated.  Popular websites like Art Renewal reflect the public's love for this art. 

Most of the artworks chosen by the artist are not too well known - which makes her choices so great for tarot – you get the “look” of the past without immediately recognizing the queens and princes on the cards. This is not an art postcard deck, it’s a real tarot deck. And since the “handwriting” of each artist doesn’t dominate the image, the reader can focus on the card’s message.

Most cards are quite busy with animals, flowers, draperies and background scenes, which adds to the atmosphere. You need no symbol book and no esoteric knowledge to interpret them. These images evoke feelings. 

The Distant Past Tarot is not only a great beginner’s deck; it reads well for experienced readers, too. Querents who have problems with nudity or find some cards intimidating will appreciate this deck’s gentler approach. But this deck in no way compromises tarot or dumbs it down. It is beautiful, coherent (which is not easy to do in a collage deck), intelligent, and very clear in readings. The poker-sized deck is ideal for carrying around in your bag for readings on the go. It's a pleasure to work with or look at.