African America Tarot

This deck is terrific, a wonderful resource to begin learning about African culture and history. Each card has an image from African traditional religions, myths, or history. The gods, goddesses and myths illustrated on the cards are taken from cultures all over Africa. The associations with African Americans are shown in smaller line drawing on the cards. For example, the 9 of Swords shows Uhlakanyana, a "dwarf demon sworn enemy of mankind" (from south African lore). It shows him from behind, standing on a hill with swords raised in each hand (The RWS shows a woman sitting up in bed, her head in her hands, as if crying in despair). The divinatory meaning, according to the LWB is "nightmare, terror, looming danger. Desperation, remorse," which is similar to Waite’s meanings, "Death, failure, miscarriage, delay, deception, disappointment, despair." The added image in the upper right corner shows a scene from the life of Garett Morgan (1877-1963) who invented a precursor to gas masks, a type of hood that is credited with saving the lives of workers under Lake Erie in 1916 in a tunnel filled with poisonous gas fumes after an explosion. He also invented the traffic signal. 

This deck is close enough to the RWS to be used by anyone for divination. The Hanged Man departs the most from the RWS, showing a sitting, blindfolded man under a sky full of eyeballs. The LWB calls this "The Observer," revealing that this is an initiation ritual, including such divination meanings as self-sacrifice, dedication, and mysticism, matching Waite’s ideas. 

This deck is superb for general divinations, meditation and past life regression to Africa and ideal if you are fascinated by African culture, this would be a great deck to use. If would also be good for professional Tarot readers with clients who are deeply interested in Africa and valuable to help guide people in learning more about African myth and legend as well as the many contributions in all areas of human endeavor that have been made by African Americans.

With knowledge comes understanding; with understanding comes tolerance. Using this deck to begin a study of Africa and African-American contributions may help lessen racism, and that may be this deck’s greatest gift.