Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen Tarot
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 David Berkowitz or Richard Ramirez, both of whom claimed to have killed under Satanic influences.