Visiting Spirit Halloween is definitely and October tradition for me. I like meandering around looking at the popular costumes for the year, and checking out props, masks, and weapons. My absolute favorite section is the small home goods display at the front of most Spirit Halloween stores. I can pick up all my spooky home decor needs like dish towels, table runners, and black magic fleece blankets. I like to be warm when I’m casting spells! 😉 The big find for me this year was the Spirit Halloween Tarot deck.
The Deck
I’m pretty sure the Spirit Halloween tarot deck actually debuted in 2018, but this was the first time I’d ever seen it. As a tarot reader, I’ve started collecting decks to review and at $7.99 this deck is a steal! It is a full 78 card deck and is comprised of mythical creatures and spooky scenes. The cards came randomized, so I put the entire deck in order to make sure no cards were missing. We were good to go.
You can tell the artist spent time picking creatures to align with the card or suit meanings. Some of those choices are bizarre. There is no little white book to go with the Spirit Halloween tarot deck, so understanding what the artist was thinking is purely speculative. I contacted Spirit Halloween customer service twice asking who the artist was in hopes that I’d be able to interview them and discuss their process, but they never got back to me. Oh well, the review must go on!
The Major Arcana
The major arcana cards are probably the best thought out in the whole deck. I went through each one and was able to loosely connect the creature with the traditional card meanings with only a few exceptions. It was interesting to see that the Spirit deck went with the original Marseilles tarot placements for justice and strength, rather than the Rider-Waite-Smith placements, so don’t think your deck is misprinted if you’re more familiar with Rider-Waite-Smith.
My Top 5 Major Arcana Cards and 1 Oddball
- The High Priestess- Fortune teller. Seeing as a lot of tarot readers I know identify with the high priestess, I thought that was a clever nod.
- The Hermit- Yeti. Okay, I loved this one. I thought the yeti representing being alone and soul searching was clever, especially since people only ever seem to find tracks in the snow and never the creature.
- The Wheel of Fortune- Inquisitors. The scene on the card depicts a man being tortured by inquisitors. He’s tied to a Catherine Wheel and is being roasted alive. This card usually represents life cycles, good luck, or a turning point, but they’ve taken the wheel literally here. I think it’s cool for a Halloween deck.
- The Moon- Werewolf. YES! Werewolves are amazing, and are the perfect fit for the moon, a card that has historically indicated madness or lunacy. Lunacy, luna, the moon! Today the moon still represents illusions, fears, and the subconscious, but I like to see it more as heeding the call of the wild, or getting in touch with your wild side.
- The World- Ouroboros. Absolutely perfect choice! The Ouroboros symbolizes the cyclical nature of the universe, and seeing as the world card is both completion and new beginnings, this was spot on.
- The Star- The Tooth Fairy. Why?! What does the tooth fairy have to do with anything? Is it just the star on her wand? When I think of hope, faith, and renewal, I don’t think of the tooth fairy.
The Minor Arcana
This deck does a pretty solid job trying to keep with the themes of fire, water, air, and earth for the suits wands, cups, swords, and pentacles. The swords have the most bizarre mythical creature choices, some of which are featured below, while the wands and cups have the best. I think my only complaint is that many of the monsters don’t fit with the meanings of the cards, but what do you want? It’s just a fun deck and it will keep your reading sharp since you won’t be able to rely on the traditional images to help you read.
Conclusion
The Spirit Halloween tarot deck is well done and super fun. I’m spending way too much time trying to puzzle out why each monster was chosen for its card, but I’m enjoying it. I think it might even be fun to create deck specific light and shadow meanings for each card based on the mythical being. I fully realize that would change the card meanings- but hey- tarot is supposed to be fun. Go buy this deck!
I just bought these cards and have no idea what they mean I can only guess. I’d love to hear from you and maybe you can help me.
I can! When you first start to learn tarot, I recommend starting with a Rider Waite Smith deck. Most beginner books utilize the imagery of the RWS deck to teach tarot meaning and symbolism, so that’s the deck to learn on. Once you learn the basics, you can branch out to more obscure decks. With the Spirit Halloween tarot, some of the art choices make sense, and others are just bizarre when you consider the traditional meanings of the cards. I plan on writing an update on this deck soon. If you like, I do Facebook lives at 7:45pm CST and I’ll be using this deck tonight.
I’m a day late and a dollar short, as usual- but today was the first time I’ve seen the Spirit deck at my local store! So yeah, I bought it. If you don’t already know how to read, this aint the one to start off with! It is fun, though. The Lisa Frank Pegasus especially tickles me, idk why.
I just bought the Halloween deck…
Do u have a book or the meanings it’s a great choice but I need help
Hi! I’m so sorry that I’m only now getting back to you. Spooky season has been busy. As far as I know, there is no book that goes with this specific tarot deck. I would LOVE to partner with Spirit Halloween and write one for them. My best advice for you is to purchase a tarot for beginners book and start there. I have several suggestions in my post “Reading Tarot- Where do I start?” Thank you for your comment! Let me know if I can be of any further assistance!
Here’s the artist of the cards
https://www.makeplayingcards.com/sell/marketplace/fantasy-world-tarot-deck-in-color.html
Here is a great explanation of the deck:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKXiA-PAXsE
Well … to me the deck makes a lot of sense. I can work with it.
I’ve got a much harder time with the RWS for there are many issues related to Victorian/Edwardian culture … that still haunt us today.
I have a deck of the sun here cards and I was wondering why do I have two of the knight of wands? I have two nights in this whole deck and I’m just wondering if you have any input on that
My guess would be that you have a misprint. How many cards do you have total? There should be 78. Maybe you have an extra!
I just got this deck today, and while I love the look and vibe of these cards, some of them have me baffled. I do think that perhaps the Unicorn/Pegasus could relate to the 8 of swords by representing being stuck in fantasy, or not seeing the truth for what it really is because you can’t get past what you WANT to see. Just a guess, though.
The alien could represent 3 of swords by the 3 UFOs and alien being some sort of invasion of your psyche, emotions or surroundings.
I’m stumped on the angel, though. I’m going to go with what you said, and just assume that this angel is a complete A-hole.
I’m actually stumped by quite a number of these, but comparing each card to a traditional deck makes finding my own correlations a lot of fun, and it’s almost like rediscovering tarot.