The Crow Tarot deck was originally self-published in 2018. It was subsequently released in a mass-market version by U.S. Games in 2019. Although I purchased the U.S. games version a while ago, I didn’t start to work with it until this week. The deck features digital collage artwork by Seattle-based artist MJ Cullinane.
Crows and ravens are the characters in each of the cards. In the 86-page booklet that comes with the cards, Cullinane wrote that, as an artist, she finds herself mesmerized by crow’s feathers. She writes, “When the sunlight washes over their bodies, they appear vibrant and iridescent, as shades of purple, deep indigo and soft caramel play in the light. Then, poof - in an instant the bird will turn pitch black as if creating a hole in space before my eyes.”
Her goal was to create a deck that honored crows and ravens, and to do so in the style of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck imagery. This was because she wanted both beginning and experienced Tarot readers to be able to use the deck easily, rather than have them have to learn an entire new system of symbolism.
My daily reading for November 25th.
In the booklet, Cullinane mentions that crows hold grudges, never forget a face and warn their young about potential danger by passing down knowledge through “stories”. I became aware of this many years ago after watching a documentary film by Nature called “A Murder of Crows”, which I recommend. The clips from the documentary about facial recognition and passing down information to their young are a little strange out of context since it involves researchers putting on masks, climbing up trees to scoop out the young birds, banding them and then going back years later to see if the younger birds react to the masks. Instead, I’ll include the entire video here in case you’re interested. (Edited to add: video no longer available.) The documentary illustrates the crows’ high intelligence; one segment shows Caledonian crows using tools, something that the researcher says only three species (aside from humans) are known to do: chimpanzees, elephants and Caledonian crows.
My daily reading for November 23rd.
MJ Cullinane won two International Tarot Foundation’s 2019 CARTA awards for Best Tarot (Crow Tarot) and Best Tarot illustrator (MJ Cullinane for Crow Tarot).
My daily reading for November 22nd.
This is not a sponsored post; I just like the deck. You can purchase it on Amazon or via the creator’s website.