Tarot Deck Review

Black Violet Tarot

by Heidi Phelps

Publisher: Rockpool Publishing

80 Card Deck & 176 Page Guide Book

Release Date: June 4, 2024

 

 

 

The Black Violet Tarot: 80-Card Deck and Book, by Heidi Phelps is a beautifully drawn black-and-white tarot deck which is one of the most original and innovative tarot decks I have seen in a long time. As someone who has been creating a collage-style deck of her own for several years now, I have been collecting images of every card of tarot for over fifteen years – I have almost 600 images of The Fool alone – to inspire my own creativity and because I simply love the artwork of the Tarot. Not all Tarot decks have great artwork – some decks feature images that I think are pretty bad artwork – if you can even call those images artwork – and I really have to wonder how on earth did they ever get published. But the Black Violet Tarot isn’t one of these decks – the artwork is gorgeous. As someone who can’t draw to save her life, I really admire the drawing of this tarot. While Phelps doesn’t say she used the “pen and ink” technique of artwork – which I love and I so wish I could do – these cards look like they were done using that form of artwork. They are beautiful and stunning.

The story of how Heidi Phelps created this deck is quite compelling. She calls it a “labor of love” (Phelps, 2). Phelps writes that she created the deck while her mother was dying of cancer, and she was pregnant with her daughter – “It was simultaneously the happiest and saddest time in my life” as she “navigated the two extremes of joy and grief at once”. (Phelps, 2).

I can understand this. My own mother has just been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus and I am the grandmother of a 20-month-old girl-child who is the light of my life but whom I barely see. In the last four years – since the start of the COVID pandemic – I have lost over a dozen friends, including my very best friend in the entire world. Most of my family has moved out of town and my son and granddaughter live twelve hours away by car and a good half a day if I fly since there’s no direct flight from where I live to where they are. It’s not easy being far from those you love and not easy being all alone as you age.

The truth is – the balance of life and death is a tough one to reconcile and art is the best way to deal with this. I learned at an early age that art is the best way to deal with most of life’s problems.

I have a bunch of tarot decks and I love all of them. I generally choose a tarot deck for its artwork but also because it “speaks” to me. I’m not sure I would have chosen this deck if I had just seen it on a shelf in an occult store or online, but it was sent to me to review, and as I read the book that came with it, looking at all the cards and using it, I have to say that I have come to really love it. This deck is designed for creative people and to enhance one’s creativity. There are decks that are meant to help you with your love life and decks that are wholly spiritual and there are decks that help you with your mundane life – and of course, there are decks that cover all these bases. But the Black Violet Tarot is all about creativity and how to grow in your creative life and how to make your creative life more fulfilling. As a writer and an artist and a musician, I really love that.

I had never heard of Heidi Phelps but that’s par for the course nowadays. There’s so many young artists and creators out there and it’s not easy keeping up with all of them! But luckily, there’s Google and I found her easily. She has an Instagram account and of course I started following her. If you want to check out her Instagram page, the link is here https://www.instagram.com/modernlovedc/?hl=en . Phelps also has her own web page, which is also worth checking out; the link is here https://www.heidiphelps.art/.

The deck is published by Rockpool Publishing and like all Rockpool tarot and oracle decks, the deck comes in a lovely boxed set, containing the deck of cards and the book.

I remember years ago when Tarot decks came in cheap cardboard containers – just like playing cards – and you were told to keep the cards in a satin or velvet cloth, but with these boxed sets, that isn’t necessary anymore. The box it comes in is perfect for keeping the deck clean and safe from psychic harm. Like all Rockpool tarot and oracle decks, the cards are made of high-quality card stock, with a beautiful glossy purple edging on them.

The cards are a little over four and a half inches long and two and a half inches wide. They shuffled easily but since the cards were all in order – the Major Arcana Cards going from 0 The Fool to XXI The World and the Miner Arcana cards – which Phelps calls “pips” – all in order by suit and number – I did what we used to call “52-card pick-up” when we were kids – tossing a deck of cards on the floor and then rushing to pick up as many as possible and whoever had the most cards won – it was the easiest way to mix the cards up. But it took me a long time to get them totally disordered and ready to use. The first few times I laid out the cards in a spread, I got cards that were in from the same suit and in their original order and had to reshuffle and try again. I did this more than a few times!

The cards are all drawn in black and white – they are quite striking in their lack of color. Some of my favorites are:

 

There are two additional cards, which are unnumbered – Ghost and Coven. These two cards have the ability to add much greater depth to a reading, although Phelps admits that the Coven card is quite alike the Three of Cups card, with its message of “Sisterhood”, but the Coven card has a much more serious vibe than the Three of Cups, which I always thought a card of sisterly celebration.

She includes three spreads in the book – they were all new to me and they are all geared toward enhancing your creativity. I loved them from the start! I know I’ll be using these spreads over and over again – with the Black Violet Tarot or with one of the other decks in my collection.

The first one I did was the Daily Inspiration Spread. About this spread, Phelps writes, “This spread will spark everyday creative magic” (Phelps, 8). She adds to “feel free to modify” the spread as needed for your own creative needs and to “add more cards for clarification, additional depth, or to dig into specific aspects of your creative possibilities.” (Phelps, 8). I love that she doesn’t set her instructions in stone, knowing that we all might have to improvise sometimes to find out what’s really going on. I’ve never had a problem with tweaking tarot spreads to get a better answer to whatever question I was presenting to the tarot but I know some people need permission to do this kind of thing.

The other spreads are called “Weekly navigation”, which is a seven-card spread and “Project kick off”, an eight-card spread. I did both of them, recording them both, as I did the Daily Inspiration spread, in my divination journal. I have dozens of these journals now, going back almost forty years.

It didn’t occur to me at the time I was doing the “Weekly navigation” spread but you could easily pick out your cards and leave them in a safe place – perhaps on your altar – and each morning, turn another card over for that day’s navigational pointer. Hey! – that’s not a half-bad idea! – I just might do that this coming week! It’s a great spread that can be done each and every week – perhaps it’s meant to be. The seventh card is the outcome/lesson which asks, “What lesson did you learn that you can take with you into next week?” My Card 7 was the Ace of Pentacles, reversed. Instead of the traditional meanings, “the evil side of wealth; prosperity without happiness; dependence on physical pleasures for happiness”, which is what the “Little White Book” that came with my Rider-Waite Tarot deck, Phelps gives a bit more nuanced view of the reversed Pentacles Ace. Like I have read in other places, she acknowledges that the Ace of Pentacles indicates a blockage in cash flow and overall material abundance but the reason for this is a “lack of readiness to seize opportunities” (Phelps, 91). She advises the reader to assess goals and to “examine whether your current path aligns with your long-term ambitions.” (Phelps, 91). This was so spot-on with my own personal situation that I was quite taken by storm. I also thought that to make this Ace turn upright, I needed the other Aces in the deck to work with – to get a proper start to achieve my dreams. I may be elderly but I still have dreams!

I also did a Celtic Cross with the Black Violet Tarot. The Celtic Cross is probably my favorite tarot spread – it’s certainly my go-to spread – the one I use most of the time.

I have to say that I really love the Black Violet Tarot and I am so happy that I was given a chance to work with it! I will be using this deck for many years to come! I hope that Heidi Phelps continues to create tarot decks and other forms of divinatory decks, because I for one will be looking out for any new work she may have! If you are into the tarot, tarot art, or simply good art, Heidi Phelps is the artist for you. The Black Violet Tarot is more than proof of that.

References

Phelps, Heidi. Black Violet Tarot. Summer Hill, New South Wales: Rockpool Publishing, 2024.

“Little White Book”. Stamford, CT: U.S. Games Systems, INC., 1971.

https://www.heidiphelps.art/

https://www.instagram.com/modernlovedc/?hl=en

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About the Author:

Polly MacDavid lives in Buffalo, New York at the moment but that could easily change, since she is a gypsy at heart. Like a gypsy, she is attracted to the divinatory arts, as well as camp fires and dancing barefoot. She has three cats who all help her with her magic.

Her philosophy about religion and magic is that it must be thoroughly based in science and logic. She is Dianic Wiccan but she gets along with a few of the masculine deities. She loves to cook and she is a Bills fan.

She blogs at silverapplequeen.wordpress.com. She writes about general life, politics and poetry. She is writing a novel about sex, drugs and recovery.