Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen Tarot

Cannibal murderer Alexander Pearce depicted as the Nine of Cups.

The Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen Tarot is an upcoming 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 is due to be published by Bloodstone Studios in summer 2022 after a Kickstarter campaign. An accompanying book, titled Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen, containing full biographies of the personalities featured in the deck, is due to be 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 David Berkowitz or Richard Ramirez, both of whom claimed to have killed under Satanic influences.