Beautiful Creatures Tarot | J R Rivera & Jasmine Becket-Griffith

Let’s just get something sorted, right away: If you like large liquid eyes and cupid’s-bow mouths, you are going to love this deck.  If you don’t, well, loving it is going to be a big ask. Think ‘The Crying Boy’ painting meets Crowley 🙂

Published by Schiffer, the author of this deck is J R Rivera and the artist is Jasmine Becket-Griffith.

So let’s look at the size of these cards.

They are quite chunky in the hand – I couldn’t fit four of them abreast on the scanner (just under 13cm tall and under 9cm wide).

They come in a really lovely quality Schiffer presentation box along with the 151-page accompanying book.

All the cards – including the Majors – are in the same darkly kitsch style that you see here in the Court Arcana.

In the book by Rivera, each card is depicted as a full page B&W illustration, with a page devoted to interpreting the card in question.  Each card has an opening statement of selfhood.  For example, the Virgin of Earths says: ‘I have analyzed that going forward will help you cross the finish line.’

Her Keyword, Endurance, is provided followed by a paragraph description of what you can see in the card.  Rivera then outlines the traditional tarot archetype of the card and what she might mean if she pertains to a situation.

The Minor Arcana are fully illustrated, but they are not RWS clones by any means – if you deborder the cards, you might struggle to know which image represents which card.

The cardback design lends itself to reversals and Rivera includes reversed insights in the accompanying book.

Many of the Majors are renamed, but none so differently as you wouldn’t know from the title who it was.  For example, The Swinging One, is clearly this deck’s version of The Hanged Man and shows a Fragonard-inspired girl on a swing… Death is Transformation…. The Tower becomes The Unexpected.

Rivera and Becket-Griffiths have included two additional cards.  The first, intended to be used as the sitter’s significator is – You Are One.  The second ‘The Supernatural’, intended to be used for the sitter’s situation.

The book also has a handful of spreads ranging from a single card reading to the 7-card Family and Hereditary spread.

What do I think of the deck?  The width of the cards might be tricky for small hands and the style might turn some people off, thinking it too cutesy.  If this deck was a cake, it would be a Hallowe’en cake – a dark chocolate with a sweet centre 😀

I think that the court cards are great – all the visual clues you need to remember which astrological sign is associated with which card (as long as you can remember which card name is associated with the traditional one!) and ideal for someone who is starting work using astrology with their court cards.

Do you use it?  Tell me what you think of it?