Tarot of the Abyss

Tarot experiences, like any other, begin as shapeless and void as the abyss. As we evolve and develop our relationship with the cards, we move from dark chaos to an ordered, illuminated cosmos. In both the Major and Minor Arcana, Ana Tourian has created a beautifully nuanced tarot deck designed to mirror the journey of the soul through the universe. Includes 80-card deck with two alternate cards, and 148-page guidebook.

Ana Tourian is an artist, illustrator and art director. After years of working in a creative agency she was called back to sculpting and illustrating. She is the creator of several internationally acclaimed tarot and oracle decks. Ana is an avid tarot lover and has been reading the cards for over twenty years.  She lives with her two children, her husband, and her dog, Charley in New Jersey, where she enjoys hiking.

What Customers Are Saying About Tarot of the Abyss

I’ve been excited about Ana Tourian’s Tarot of the Abyss for quite a while now and followed its development from pretty early on. The illustration work here has this dark and complex fairytale aesthetic, which tells the origins story of Light. Check out what Tourian did there with Key 12: The Hanged One. You are the hanged one. We’re seeing the world through the first-person point of view, and we’re suspended upside down. That card back design is just beautiful. I love everything about it.
In the companion guidebook, which is very meaty, Minor Arcana card entries are given equal treatment to Major Arcana card entries, which is something that automatically earns brownie points from me. =) What delights me the most about this deck is following Tourian’s path of reasoning for how she illustrates each tarot card’s key concepts, like in the Two of Swords. The faceless woman balances in her hands two contrasting jester masks (representing two different, contrasting aspects of ourselves that we want to present to the external world), and she kneels atop the two crossed swords that are the emblems for this pip card.
Tarot of the Abyss is the kind of deck you’d reach for when it comes to deepening exploratory work through the nether regions of your own mind. It would also make for a great professional reader’s workhorse deck because the art gives you so much to draw from.
This is an 80-card deck where there are two bonus cards: an Alternative version of the Three of Swords and one for the Ten of Swords. Whereas the Alternative Card version draws its meaning from the numerology of the number 3, the Triad, and the element Air, which is of the mind. So here, the Alternate Three of Swords is about growth and expansion of the mind– multiplicity of the ways you see and understand knowledge. The Book of Thought that the three swords are pierced through suggests an unlocking of those pages. The words floating off the pages toward the figure represents living knowledge.

When you study the play between black and white, positive space vs. negative space in Tourian’s art, you know you are looking at works of mastery. There is a diversity of textures and such volume that you don’t miss the color at all. Her implied lines (the drama in the negative space) vs. the actual lines of her pen strokes are dynamic, which is why these illustrations feel alive to you, why you think there’s such momentum and flow. Tarot of the Abyss is a stunner, one that you will find yourself reaching for when you are lost, disoriented, or trapped in chaos and desperate for a visual of that Path of Light. Magical, mystical, and satisfyingly witchy in its aesthetic, U.S. Games has absolutely knocked it out of the park with this one.
—Benebell Wen, Author & Reader
benebellwen.com

Specs

• Size

 80 cards, 2.75”x 4.75”

• Language

 EN

• Author

 Ana Tourian