MEDICINAL TAROT

A 78-card deck created by hand from paper and flora.

A DECK BORN FROM WONDER & EXPLORATION

I began creating this deck for myself in March of 2025. At the time, I had no plans to share it with the world. I was in the midst of sudden illness and change, and creating Medicinal Tarot became a refuge—a place to create in the midst of loss, and to feel alive even when much of what I loved had become inaccessible to me.

For a year and a half, I immersed myself in the visceral joy and challenge of making images that spoke to me in a language beyond language. The practice became a kind of meditation: a familiar refuge that brought me comfort and joy while continually surprising me with images that seemed to reveal themselves as I made them.

I spent countless hours pouring myself into these images, and they nourished me.

MADE INTUITIVELY, BY HAND

Each of the images in Medicinal Tarot began as an original, hand-cut paper collage.

I cut individual pieces of paper from pages of books and magazines, often images of nature, and assembled these collage pieces onto a shape. I made one card at a time, usually without knowing exactly what the finished image would become.

The process was slow, tactile, and intuitive. Some cards took many hours to complete. I followed what caught my attention, allowing the images to emerge through the making.

FROM COLLAGE TO DECK

After a year and a half of making the original collages, Medicinal Tarot became a physical deck.

The first edition was printed locally in Tucson and finished by hand in small batches. Seeing the images together in deck form—something that could be shuffled, held, and returned to—was its own kind of discovery.