Bonefire Tarot

Bonefire Tarot - hand-painted deck in tattoo flash style

This deck looks like a collection of classic tattoo designs. Bold black lines, clear colours, symbols you recognise from across the room: bones, flames, animals, flowers. No atmospheric blur, just images that make a direct claim.

Gabi Angus-West painted all 78 cards by hand. She draws on the aesthetic of Sailor Jerry Collins, the American tattoo artist considered one of the founders of old-school style, who worked in Honolulu for decades. That lineage means: every mark is there to say something, not just to look good.

What you see on the cards

The Major Arcana shows the familiar archetypes, redrawn in tattoo vocabulary. Death carries a skull, the Star appears among branches and blossoms. Anyone who knows the basic structure of tarot will recognise the cards immediately.

In the Minor Arcana, fixed motifs return by suit. Wands get flames, cups get water and flowers, swords get sharp angles and points, pentacles get geometric shapes. That repetition is deliberate: it helps you build connections between cards in a spread.

The court cards have a clear attitude. No ambiguous faces, but characters with personalities you read at a glance. That makes them easier to interpret in practice.

How to work with it

The guidebook runs to 248 pages and goes well beyond card meanings. It includes three spreads, essays on symbolism and a glossary that explains what each motif can mean. You spot an eagle on a card, you look it up, you read what Angus-West says about it.

The deck offers concrete entry points: which symbol stands out, how does it interact with the cards around it. Readers who want something to hold on to will find it here.

Pick one card and look up three symbols you can see on it. Read the glossary entries and notice which one connects most directly to your question.

About Gabi Angus-West

Gabi Angus-West is an Anglo-Australian artist and author based in Newcastle, New South Wales. She paints, writes and works with divination. Her earlier work includes Tarot Avatara and The Wyrd of Sarah Howard.

In her practice she works with repetition and accumulation as ways of building meaning. That shows in the way symbols recur across the whole of Bonefire Tarot: not at random, but as a system.

Second edition

This version differs from the first. Nine new cards have been added, the texts in the guidebook have been revised and the packaging has been redesigned. The cards themselves have been reprinted at the standard tarot size of 76 x 102 mm.

Specifications

• Number of cards: 78
• Guidebook: 248 pages
• Card size: 76 x 102 mm
• Language: English
• Publisher: REDFeather
• Published: November 2023
• Style: tattoo flash, hand-painted
• Author and illustrator: Gabi Angus-West
• Edition: second edition

Questions we often get

Does this deck follow the Rider-Waite structure?
Yes. The structure is classic tarot: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana across four suits. The imagery is different, the structure is not.

What makes this second edition different from the first?
Nine cards have been added, the guidebook texts have been revised and the packaging has been redesigned. The cards themselves have been reprinted.