Elemental Heights Tarot Deck

The deck is vibrant and colourful, linking closely to the four elements of water, air, fire and earth. The backdrops will make it immediately obvious which element the card represents.

The EH Tarot consists of:

• 22 Traditional Rider Waite Smith style major arcana
• Additional Majors (Prudence the first cardinal virtue and Kleio, the goddess muse of history) and these will be fully explained in the booklet.
• 56 Traditional minor arcana, although as in the Thoth tarot, we have changed the Pages to Princesses, and the Knights to Princes.

The major arcana follow the traditional Rider Waite Smith imagery with some room for artistic licence, and experienced tarot readers should recognise each major without even seeing the title.

For the minors we have taken a slightly different approach, and here we have moved away from the familiar RWS imagery. To create the minor cards, we carefully allocated each card to a particular pole/aerial artist. We gave each a description of the card’s generally accepted meanings in the form of several keywords for each card. Tarot readers will be familiar with these keywords, and we will list them in the accompanying book so people can see what was intended.

The pole/aerial artists were asked to consider those keywords to create a move to perform for the card that reflects those meanings. We also gave the performers advice on art colour theory to aid in their choosing of costume colours to best represent the card.

The deck can be read in a number of ways;

• Each card can be read in the traditional manner with the generally accepted meanings and keywords associated with each card. These keywords are printed in the accompanying booklet.
• Link to the elements. Stylistically, the look and appearance of each card relies heavily on the relevant element the card is associated with, enabling readers to more easily include the elements in a reading.
• The EH tarot is vibrant and colourful, and the colours in the deck are not there by accident. All performers were given a chart of art colour theory, so the costume colours are all informed choices intended to communicate some aspect to the reader. The accompanying booklet will contain our notes and observations on colour theory. Please note that colour theory varies around the world and differs between regions and cultures. We have based our observations on Western art theory which will differ in some areas to other regions and cultures.
• We wanted each card to work as a piece of art celebrating the skill, beauty and strength of the performer. Consequently, we have deliberately kept other imagery and symbolism to a minimum so as not to distract from the performer. We believe that this will not represent an issue to the tarot reader, who can use the accepted keywords as mentioned above. However, it also gives a new and exciting opportunity to read the ‘performance’ The pole and aerial artists are trying to communicate their vision through their performance. This can be used for the reading, and we will go into this in some detail in the accompanying booklet explaining how the body language can be used to create an exciting way to read.
• This is an unapologetic photographic deck of real people. Real beautiful individual people. We have deliberately NOT photoshopped anybody in the deck. What we have done is a ‘natural edit’ No airbrushing, no changing of body shapes, no removals, no additions. You are seeing real natural people. So you can now also read each card as if you are drawing on your knowledge of the person performing in that role. In the accompanying booklet, we will print the given name for the performer, and a little bit of information about them that they are happy to share. This will enable the reader to consider the performer as a unique individual, and to bring aspects of their personality to the reading should they wish. 

The deck will be 126mm x 88mm, which is a little taller and wider than a traditional tarot deck size.