Morgan's Tarot (1970)

A friend asked me for a card reading recently. I told her I wanted to use Morgan's Tarot for the reading, but once she sees this funky, hippie, psychedelic deck from 1970, I don't know if she'll be pleased or horrified. It's one trippy little deck!

This tarot deck, affectionately known as "the 70s counterculture tarot," is a black-and-white deck designed for exploration into the deep recesses of the psyche.  It's definitely weird, definitely groovy, and definitely grabs you! 

Instead of the traditional 78 cards, this deck has 88 cards.  It is, in fact, a very nontraditional tarot deck.  There are no major or minor arcana, the cards do not have numbers and do not seem to have values above or below each other.  Each card is to be taken for what it is.  A lot of the meanings require a sense of humor, or at least, the ability to laugh at oneself.  Many of the cards seem absurd on the surface, until you realize they are accurate metaphors for the meaning of life itself.  Images can be anything from a simple line drawing of a circle, to a complicated landscape drawing, complete with clouds.  Details are used only where necessary to enlighten the reader.

The cards themselves are standard in size and are printed on flexible card stock which is comfortable to shuffle and handle.  The edges are smoothly finished.  The images are all in black and white, and the cards are coated lightly with a sheer gloss finish.  The back design is a reversible pattern from Buddhist culture called a Yantra.  On my deck, it is printed in golden ink, though I've seen another deck that had a fuchsia print.  It's interesting that the design is reversible, since this deck doesn't use reversals.  Just the nature of the Yantra, I guess.  Words appear sort of hidden in the back design, so that in reality it is not perfect when reversed, but you can't tell from looking at them quickly, so I don't count that.  It's more like subliminal messaging or something.  Backward masking, heh. 

This deck was reprinted in 1984, and by the time I started collecting decks around 2004, they were sold out everywhere and it was very hard to find one. I was beginning to think I'd never find a copy, when a friend told me to try a particular online vendor in France. Polishing up my high school French, I surfed over there and searched ... and sure enough, they had the Morgan Tarot listed and in stock! I used a French dictionary to help me through the website's checkout, and a few weeks later, it arrived. And ever since then, I started getting French email spam! Lucky me, bilingual spam. Too bad it isn't advertising email for the website I used; I can't remember the name any more, and at least knowing the name would make the spam slightly useful!

Luckily for all of you just discovering Morgan's Tarot, a new reprint was made last year, and it should be easy to find a deck in one of Salem's shops. And no French spam!