Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen Tarot

Promotional photo showing the Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen Tarot box, deck, and guidebook.

The Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen Tarot is a Tarot deck created by Travis McHenry. The deck features prominent occultists and other spiritual people throughout history, each person is paired to a Tarot card that best exemplifies the lessons from their life and activities.

The deck was published by Bloodstone Studios in September 2022 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. An accompanying book, titled Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen, containing full biographies of the personalities featured in the deck, was released at the same time as the deck.

Criteria for inclusion

When determining who should be included in the deck, Travis used the following criteria:

• If the subject was a killer, there must not be any victims or close family members of victims still alive today.
• The subject should have died prior to the 1950 to avoid potential personality rights issues.
• There must be a spiritual, occult, or magical aspect to their life.

This criteria eliminated most modern occultists, such as Anton Szandor LaVey and Damien Echols. It also prevented the glorification of serial killers like the Zodiac Killer or Richard Ramirez, both of whom claimed to have killed under Satanic influences.

Content

Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen Tarot is laid out like a traditional Tarot deck, with a Major Arcana and fully illustrated Minor Arcana cards. The only deviation from the traditional Tarot system is that this deck contains three different cards for The Lovers. These three variant cards were included to better emphasise the potential forms of love between two people.

• Male-Female Lovers: Eva Perón & Juan Perón
• Female-Female Lovers: Eva Carrière & Juliette Bisson
• Male-Male Lovers: Saints Sergius and Bacchus

Publication history

The first edition of the deck was published by Bloodstone Studios in July 2022 through a successful Kickstarter campaign which raised $39,000. The rights were quickly acquired by Rockpool Publishing and a mass market edition was released in September 2023.

Persons featured in deck

A partial list of people featured in the deck:

Magicians

• Aleister Crowley
• Angeline Tubbs
• Antoine Court de Gébelin
• Christoph Haizmann
• Don Pedro Jaramillo
• Edward Kelley
• Frederick Santee
• Grigori Rasputin
• John Dee
• Lilias Adie
• Marie Laveau
• Margaret Aitken
• Ngongo Lutete
• Nostradamus
• Samuel L. MacGregor Mathers
• Thiess of Kaltenbrun
• Urbain Grandier
• William II de Soules

Martyrs

• Jan Hus
• Joan of Arc
• Nicholas II
• Saint Guinefort

Madmen

• Alexander Pearce
• Jack the Ripper
• Mary I of England
• Matthew Hopkins
• Peter Stumpp
• Richard III
• Vlad the Impaler

External links

• Amazon product page to purchase the deck
• Kickstarter campaign page
• Pitch video for the deck