Airy Wands Tarot
by
Sushila Burgess

A full Tarot deck of 78 cards, with a “Four Elements” theme: it is a companion piece to my first Tarot deck, the gorgeous Fiery Wands Tarot. It has the same mysterious and beautiful Major Arcana, and still has Pentacles corresponding to Earth and Cups to Water. However, in the Airy Wands Tarot, the correspondences of Wands and Swords are reversed, so that Swords mean Fire and Wands mean Air.

The Airy Wands Tarot is now fully illustrated! However, if you used to like the original designs, with their gorgeous tiny decorations of animals, birds, trees, flowers, rainbows and flames, you can still see the original numeric pip cards here.

The Major Arcana has these variations from the Rider-Waite deck: instead of the High Priestess, Juno with dagger, spear and peacock; instead of the Hierophant, Jupiter with thunderbolt and eagle. These variations are inspired by the old medieval deck, the Tarot of Besançon, which has “The Juggler”, “Juno” and “Jupiter” as the first, second and fifth cards. I chose that deck as a model because Besançon is a special place for me — it was the destination of my very first ever journey to a foreign country at the age of 17 — and it seemed as if it was meant to be.

So I started my deck with a picture of a showman, dressed as a harlequin, juggling with fiery clubs or wands. But having come full circle, to the end of the Airy Wands Minor Arcana and back to the start of the Major Arcana, my fiery juggler no longer seemed quite right as the first card of the Airy Wands deck. And so, in the Airy Wands Tarot, the first card is The Magician: he floats like a translucent phantom above the blue mountain tops, his magical symbols hovering around him.