UPDATE: The original campaign missed its goal by a few hundred dollars. So the designer decided to relaunch today on December 1st and to ask for some shipping costs in order to decrease the amount necessary. Funnily enough, he now reached that amount within days and has gone over the original goal. If you missed the original campaign and just discovered the Vudu Tarot (note: also renamed The New Vudu Tarot) or the Espiritismo Tarot surf to Kickstarter and find your pledge. You will have until January 1ST.
Watch these pages for a review!
Original message:
Sometimes readers complain there aren’t any non-caucasian decks out there. While that isn’t completely true (think of all the cat decks!) and Tarot Garden could supply anyone with quite a list of decks that include people of color it is a fact there aren’t a lot of mainstream decks that are racially diverse.
However 2015 is seeing the birth of two of those decks. First there was the quite controversial Ghetto tarot and now the Kickstarter pages are supporting pictures of the Vudu Tarot.
Designer and professional tarot reader Monroe Rodriguez Singh created his new comic style deck for exactly that reason: he was saddened but emboldened by the lack of African inspired tarot card decks and representation of those traditions in new age society and wanted to show images and cultural references coming from his knowledge of traditions. While, of course, still making it beautiful and art-worthy. The Vudu Tarot is inspired by Afro-Caribbean culture and mythology, but also has its fair share of Catholic influenced characters.
All the 79 cards (there’s a wild card) will gold foil accents on the faces of each character. Afro-caribbean pictographic ceremonial drawings are featured in the background, that will have elemental coloring as well. In some of the pledges people can choose to become on of the Tarot cards in the deck or get their own vector. Monroe Singh also created a similar style deck with the name Espiritsmo. The characters and cultural inspiration are different here. If you’re interested: it can be found in the same campaign.
Despite having created a tarot deck that’s immersed primarily in Haitian and Dominican culture, Singh is convinced the deck can be used and appreciated by diviners and lovers of beautiful artwork no matter what their beliefs or traditions. And there’s also a possibility to obtain an eclectic deck as one of the separate or combined rewards that is immersed in several traditions. Similar but not the same.
