The Liberation Tarot emerges as a transformative and collaborative creation within the divination community, designed to serve as a powerful tool for those inspired by revolution and collective healing. Conceived over four years by a diverse collective of over thirty artists and writers from across the globe—including the United States, Canada, France, Brazil, Palestine, and Mexico—this 79-card deck and its accompanying guidebook represent a significant departure from traditional tarot structures. Organized and curated by artist Elicia Epstein, with a guidebook penned by poet emet ezell and featuring insightful essays by renowned thinkers adrienne maree brown and lawrence barriner II, the deck is rooted in the belief that magic is an essential instrument for both personal healing and broader social change.
The foundational philosophy of the Liberation Tarot is to challenge and dismantle the norms of the able-centered, capitalist, heterocis-normative, white-supremacist patriarchy. It follows in the lineage of other radical projects such as Slow Holler, The Collective Tarot, and Next World Tarot, seeking to arm its users with a renewed vocabulary of power. By doing so, it aims to strengthen the capacity for radical, revolutionary, and abolitionist dreaming in a world often described as tired and extreme. The deck explicitly eschews conventional hierarchical cards like the Emperor or the Knight, which are often associated with rigid power structures. Instead, it introduces non-hierarchical cards that honor revolutionary concepts and figures, such as the Crone, the Healer, the Rebel, and Accountability. This intentional re-imagining of the Minor Arcana provides a framework for understanding power, responsibility, and community in a new light.
A core tenet of the Liberation Tarot is its profound commitment to inclusivity and the redefinition of visual representation. The artwork intentionally features figures with bodies of all shapes and sizes, colors, genders, ages, and abilities. This deliberate visual diversity is not merely aesthetic; it is a political and spiritual act designed to elaborate a vision of collective liberation and co-resistance. As noted in the guidebook by adrienne maree brown, the cards are vibrant and suggest a worldview that decenters humanity while giving up nothing of our miraculous nature. This approach allows users to engage with the tarot in a way that reflects a more holistic and accepting reality, moving away from exclusionary archetypes.
The creation of the Liberation Tarot was a large-scale collaborative effort, bringing together the talents of artists and writers such as INVASORIX, Eva Wu, Cole M James, D. Wright, As They Lay (Karryl Eugene and Abdu Ali), Charmaine Bee, Petra Floyd and Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, Katie Kaplan, and Cassie Thornton, among many others. This collaborative model itself reflects the deck’s anti-capitalist and community-focused ethos. The project emphasizes sustainability, healing, and slowness as being just as critical as production and active power-wielding. The deck’s organizer, Elicia Epstein, encapsulates this sentiment by stating, "How can I make art that is not just about the thing, but that is the thing? I think this deck does that. It is not about revolution; it is revolution."
From a practical standpoint, the Liberation Tarot is a 79-card deck that comes with a rigid box and a guidebook. A unique feature noted by reviewers is that each Major Arcana card includes a poem recommendation, adding a layer of literary and artistic depth to the divination experience. The cards are printed on good quality card stock with an attractive matte blue edging. The guidebook provides card descriptions crafted by poet emet ezell, offering users a pathway to interpret the cards' revolutionary symbolism. The deck is designed to be a tool for personal and collective storytelling and meaning-making. It encourages users to commit to the radical act of dreaming, helping them to uncover and dance with their own inner knowing. As adrienne maree brown articulates, "The Tarot cannot show me anything I do not know, but it can help me uncover and dance with my knowing… With a practice like Tarot, we are liberated from isolation into a conversation we can have with ourselves and that which is beyond ourselves, even when we appear to be alone."
The cards themselves are designed to facilitate this journey. For example, the Fool card, as interpreted by artist D. Wright, captures the "glorious, fearless naivety" of the card, with the message, "we can trust our feet, even when we don’t know where we’re going." This re-interpretation of classic archetypes through a lens of trust, intuition, and non-hierarchical growth is central to the deck’s purpose. The Liberation Tarot is not just about reading the future; it is about actively participating in the creation of a more just, equitable, and liberated world, starting from within the individual and extending outward into the community. It serves as a reminder that in a tired and extreme moment, new tools are needed to help us remember our power to dream and to act on those dreams.
The Revolutionary Philosophy of the Deck
The philosophical underpinning of the Liberation Tarot is deeply rooted in social justice and spiritual activism. The project was born from the conviction that magic is an essential tool for healing and social change within communities. This belief system posits that the act of divination, when stripped of its traditional patriarchal and hierarchical baggage, can become a revolutionary practice. The deck is explicitly framed as a tool for those working towards collective liberation, bridging the gap between the spiritual and the material. It is designed to help users re-write the vocabulary of power, moving away from language and imagery that reinforces oppressive systems and toward a lexicon that supports radical dreaming and abolitionist thinking. This approach is not merely symbolic; it is a practical effort to create new frameworks for understanding our place in the world and our capacity to effect change. By focusing on concepts like accountability, healing, and slowness, the deck challenges the capitalist emphasis on constant production and instead champions a more sustainable and holistic approach to personal and collective growth.
A Tapestry of Inclusivity and Collaboration
One of the most striking features of the Liberation Tarot is its collaborative and inclusive nature. The project brought together a collective of more than thirty artists and writers from diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds, including the US, Canada, France, Brazil, Palestine, and Mexico. This global collaboration ensures that the deck is not a monolithic vision but a rich tapestry of perspectives. The artwork is a testament to this diversity, consciously avoiding the narrow representations often found in traditional tarot. Instead, it showcases a wide spectrum of humanity, including individuals of all body shapes and sizes, skin colors, genders, ages, and physical abilities. This visual language is a powerful statement in itself, creating a space where users can see themselves reflected and can engage with archetypes that are not confined to ableist or Eurocentric norms. The anti-capitalist ethos extends to the project’s structure, where the well-being and compensation of the artists and writers are prioritized, reflecting a model of sustainability and mutual support that mirrors the deck’s core messages.
The Divination Practice: Beyond Traditional Archetypes
The Liberation Tarot offers a unique approach to the practice of divination by fundamentally restructuring the traditional tarot archetypes. The Major Arcana, instead of focusing on figures of established authority like the Emperor or hierarchical roles like the Knight, highlights revolutionary concepts and figures. Cards such as the Crone, the Healer, and the Rebel re-center wisdom, care, and resistance as core principles of the spiritual journey. The Minor Arcana also follows this non-hierarchical model, with cards focusing on elements of cultural and spiritual change. This reframing allows for a divination practice that is less about predicting a fixed future and more about exploring possibilities for growth, accountability, and transformation. The guidebook, with its poetic interpretations, encourages users to engage in a dialogue with the cards, using them as a mirror to uncover their own wisdom. The inclusion of poems for each Major Arcana card further deepens this introspective process, blending literary art with spiritual guidance. This method of reading the cards helps to strengthen the user's intuition and their ability to dream radical dreams, even in the face of challenging social and political realities.
Conclusion
The Liberation Tarot stands as a significant cultural and spiritual artifact, offering more than just a method for divination. It is a comprehensive project that embodies a philosophy of collective liberation, radical inclusivity, and transformative magic. By replacing traditional hierarchical figures with revolutionary concepts and ensuring its visual representation reflects the true diversity of humanity, the deck provides a powerful tool for personal reflection and social change. Its collaborative creation and anti-capitalist structure further reinforce its message of sustainability and community care. For spiritual seekers, homeowners, and individuals interested in holistic living, the Liberation Tarot offers a unique pathway to engage with deep questions of power, identity, and purpose. It serves as a reminder that the act of dreaming and the practice of magic can be potent forces for healing and revolution, both within our own lives and in the wider world.