The Vampire Tarot by Sue Lloyd

When I first ordered the Vampire Tarot I was nervous that it would turn out to be just another novelty deck.
I already owned the The Fantastical Tarot its sister deck, and loved working with it because of its colourful and vibrant interpretations of the tarot.
I though it would be interesting to work with the two decks together. I wondered if because they were designed by the same artist, Nathalie Hertz, there would be a connection between them, a heightened energy when used together in spreads.
So when they finally arrived I couldn’t wait to open them!
The Vampire Deck is amazing. Firstly the cards themselves are high quality. They are a comfortable width for ease of handling. The background edge is black which is effective in highlighting the pictures. The back of each card is a blood-red and black freehand design. Each face has a red border and on the left and right sides, a border of skulls and leaves. At the top of the Major Arcana are Roman numerals and each card has its name at the bottom – the Sun or Seven of Swords. Unlike many decks these are fairly simply laid out. There are no Hebrew letters, runes or astrological symbols.
The vampires depicted on the cards are powerful, sometimes scary and sometimes strangely attractive. I’d like to point out that I’m not normally into the sexy vampire thing, but actually in these cards you forget the Dracula myths and get drawn into the archetypal aspects of each card. Justice for example is a vampire woman holding a set of scales in her left hand and a sword horizontally above her head with her right hand. She has a necklace of crystals and her wild hair is black and streaked with white. She is primitive, stark and uncompromising.
Not every card has a vampire on it. None of the cups have but they are still visually enticing and somehow it’s as if the vampires are just waiting in the wings, ready to step into the picture.
The colours and pictures are raw, brilliant and sometimes very uncompromising. Right from my first spread I felt as if I was stepping through a window into my own psyche. One of my favourite things is that each vampire has a distinct face. They are all individuals. This is especially noticeable and valuable in the Court cards. I’ve been working with Mary Greer and Tom Little’s book Understanding the Tarot Court
Their approach works heavily with Jungian archetypes and the personality of each Court card. The Vampire Tarot is an ideal learning ground for this.
I’ve used this deck in many different spreads and for different questions. Personally, I find they work best in areas where I’m exploring my own motivations and lessons I need to learn. Though not a spiritual deck, I do find that they highlight aspects of my character which I need to strengthen or where I need to exercise caution if I am not to play out a painful lesson.
And yes, I have used them along with the Fantastical Tarot. The spreads have been complex and usually weighing up two distinct choices. Each time the energy between the decks and the way the individual cards balanced against each other gave a very powerful reading.
I would say that this deck is best used by someone who is a pretty confident reader. There aren’t a lot of clues to each card’s meaning in the traditional sense. But for me, that is one of the big attractions. The Vampire Tarot is a very instinctual deck and I love it!

by Sue Lloyd All Rights Reserved 2007

Sue Lloyd is A Theta Healer who can be found at: Theta Healing Scotland

Nathalie Hertz's New Tarot is the Faeire Tarot...looks good!