Myths & Legends Tarot

Myths & Legends Tarot is a 78-card tarot designed and illustrated by Taylor Bryn, an illustrator based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. First launched on Kickstarter in May 2022, it reached $7,173 from 98 backers, short of a $62,000 goal. Bryn relaunched the pack five days later with a $25,000 goal. That campaign closed in July with $39,880 from 513 backers. The 78-card pack reviewed here is this funded 2022 edition; a later second edition adds two cards.

Above: Four stages in the making of the Lovers card, based on the doomed lovers of Greek myth.

The four panels show the Lovers card moving from a watercolour ground and black pen lines to colour added with paint pens. Bryn finishes each image with Posca paint pens and Sakura Pigma Micron pens.

Myths & Legends Tarot is Bryn’s fourth tarot, after The Dog Tarot, The Cat Tarot and The Ocean Tarot. Bryn says the Empress is the card with which she has “traditionally started work”. Here, the Empress is Bloody Mary, Mary I of England and Henry VIII’s daughter. In the legend, a person sits before a mirror and repeats her name three times to summon her.

Above: Bloody Mary appears in the mirror as the Empress.

Bloody Mary appears within a candle-lit mirror in the Empress position. The mirror and candles draw on the legend, while the seated figure follows the tarot card’s Empress design.

Bryn writes that she initially wanted the pack to “lean more towards horror”. She found that a horror-only subject was too narrow for the tarot’s archetypes and widened it to stories from many traditions. The Emperor is the Headless Horseman, a figure found in American, Irish and Scottish folklore, while Justice is Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead. The table below names the source for all 78 cards.

The wider subject also changed Bryn’s approach to the artwork. She had first planned an autumnal watercolour palette, but writes that “Fantastical creatures demanded a fantastically colored landscape.” She then finished the watercolour underpaintings with Posca paint pens and Sakura Pigma Micron pens. Fine black hatching fills the figures and backgrounds. The four Minor Arcana suits use the same black linework throughout.

Bryn follows Rider-Waite-Smith and Morgan-Greer layouts, using their poses and arrangements for the artwork. It changes the two cards’ Major Arcana numbers: Justice is VIII and Strength XI, instead of Strength VIII and Justice XI.