Mr. Dawkins, I see... a great selection event in your life within 7 days

September 27, 2010 11:56 AM

Looking to indulge your interests in both cartomancy and science? Check out the Science Tarot Deck. (FB link) [Previous decks] Via

The normal tarot suits have been remapped as follows:

Cups - Beakers
Swords - Scalpels
Pentacles - Magnifying Glass
Wands - Bunsen Burner

Of course, I'm partial to this one. My other favorites:

Endosymbiosis as the Ace of Cups
Natural Selection as Judgment
Molecular Bonding as the Three of Pentacles
Carl Sagan as the Queen of Cups

posted by benzenedream (11 comments total)

Given this allow me to say for my first time: eponysterical.
posted by Hactar at 12:04 PM on September 27, 2010

I look forward to seeing the practice of drawing inspiration from randomly selected descriptions of scientific principles be derided as medieval woo-woo con-artistry!
posted by hermitosis at 12:06 PM on September 27, 2010

Wow, this is really neat. Thanks for sharing this. I also loved Carl Sagan as a story teller, how appropriate.

I'm having a hard time getting to all the cards in the deck through the links, but the top card in this link, Shroedinger's cat as a fortune teller is also neat. Or maybe it is neat because you can see the skeleton of half the cat.


posted by Wolfster at 12:08 PM on September 27, 2010

Sagan is fairly clearly the Queen of Wands. It's in the URL twice and he's holding a flame.
posted by lumensimus at 12:10 PM on September 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

I had to venture a guess at what "cartomancy" might mean. I came up with the revival of dead maps. Turns out I was wrong, but that would have been interesting.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 12:17 PM on September 27, 2010

It's a very pretty deck, and the concepts and art seem well-chosen. I especially like that benzene-ring card! I think they'd have been better off if they'd hewed just a bit more closely to tradition, though. Nothing about wands/cups/swords/pentacles is necessarily anti-science, and substituting them for "scientific" items which are comparatively meaningless seems like a loss, at least to me.

That said, I'm sure it'll speak to someone, and that's really all that's required.
posted by vorfeed at 12:22 PM on September 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

I came up with the revival of dead maps.

Zombie Northwest Passage and Zombie El Dorado hunger for brrrraaaaains!
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:22 PM on September 27, 2010

Surely you mean beaaaaaaaarrrrrrings?
posted by lumensimus at 1:04 PM on September 27, 2010 [2 favorites]

Nothing about wands/cups/swords/pentacles is necessarily anti-science, and substituting them for "scientific" items which are comparatively meaningless seems like a loss, at least to me.

The science-y replacement all appear to convey roughly the same symbolism; perhaps the wand could've been replaced by some sort of measuring device, or maybe a laser.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:42 PM on September 27, 2010

Oh man, this is so quantum. Probably.
posted by Decani at 3:03 PM on September 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think the suits are well-represented, with the exception of the magnifying glass. The traditional suits are symbolic of the magician's tools which he uses to exert force and control his environment, and the magnifying glass is more a tool of passive discovery, rather than active manipulation. Perhaps a petri dish, instead?
posted by malocchio at 3:25 PM on September 28, 2010