Horror Tarot

Horror Tarot was published by Insight Editions in 2022, with text by Aria Gmitter and Minerva Siegel and artwork by Abigail Larson. It draws on vampires, ghosts and other horror figures from folklore, popular culture and film, bringing them together in a pack of tarot cards.

Above: The Sun’s clown has the look of Pennywise from Stephen King’s It; The World suggests Cthulhu from Lovecraftian literature. The Six of Cups is a child portrait with black eyes and red tears.

The Sun and The World point towards familiar horror figures without naming them on the cards. The Six of Cups uses an unnamed child with black eyes and red tears, showing the broader horror scenes alongside those allusions.

Tarot’s modern life extends beyond its early use as a game and its later association with divination. Insight Editions’ tarot catalogue places packs alongside established fan cultures, selling them to both fans of the source material and tarot readers. Its Disney Villains and The Lord of the Rings packs put established characters on tarot cards. Horror Tarot has no single franchise behind it, drawing instead on a shared repertoire of horror monsters and stories.

Above: The box front has red Gothic lettering and white spiderwebs on black.

The front names the deck and guidebook. A hand holding a dagger appears at the upper left. A werewolf howls at a full moon in the lower-left corner, while three hands raise castle-shaped cups in the lower-right.

Insight Editions invites readers to “add an element of horror” to their tarot experience and calls the set “the perfect gift for the horror fan or tarot enthusiast”. The cards do not name individual characters, but some allusions are easy to recognise. The Sun recalls Pennywise from Stephen King’s It, and The World suggests Cthulhu from Lovecraftian literature, while other scenes use broader horror types.

The pointed black frames make each card a narrow Gothic window. On the Six of Cups, a girl in a white dress holds the cups against her chest, her black eyes streaked with red tears. Larson describes this kind of imagery as “a mixed-media approach to dark fantasy and gothic romance”, made with pencil, ink, watercolour and Photoshop.

Insight Editions packages the 78 cards with a guidebook of meanings and simple readings. The cards have a red patterned back .