Joanna Powell Colbert’s Gaian Tarot

Like Lisa Hunt, whose mythic art I featured last week here, Joanna Powell Colbert is also a tarot deck creator. Her magnum opus is the Gaian Tarot, whose progress I have been following for several years on her sensitively written online journal. This journal also details her life on a small island in the Pacific Northwest, which sounds soothingly idyllic to this overscheduled city dweller. She lives there in a dream house built of hay bales and art. Whenever I visit her blog, I gain a sense of catching my breath, if you know what I mean.

Joanna writes that “The Gaian Tarot celebrates the living Earth and those who seek to live in harmony with Her.” Accordingly, the art for the deck is filled with numerous reminders of the profound beauty of the natural world.

The cards are drawn in the painstakingly-detailed medium of colored pencil. It’s a technique that requires many, many hours of patient loving labor.

Right now, the major arcana of the Gaian Tarot have been finished and labor on the minor arcana is underway. When all is finished, Joanna intends to have the entire work published. In the meantime, a first edition of the Gaian Tarot major arcana was produced and quickly sold out. However, due to popular demand, Joanna has made a second edition available for purchase. The art is also available on archival-quality limited edition prints.

In these times of climate change and Katrina-style storms, the message behind The Gaian Tarot is more important than ever: Take care of Mama Earth, and she will take care of you.

If only more politicians in Washington could heed this wisdom!

All art in this post © Joanna Powell Colbert. All rights reserved.

• No Responses
• Comment Feeds