Hip Chick Tarot - hand-painted cards with suits as areas of life
Not every tarot deck keeps pentacles, cups, wands and swords. The Hip Chick Tarot by Maria Strom renames the four suits as Earth, Feel, Create and Think. That makes the cards more direct to read: you see straight away whether it concerns a physical question, an emotional pattern, a creative impulse or a mental challenge.
Strom painted all 78 cards by hand. The style is clear, figurative and focused on feminine diversity. No Renaissance archetypes, but images that translate contemporary situations into tarot symbolism.
What you see on the cards
The cards are larger than standard (89 x 127 mm) and have a matte-gloss finish. The back shows a bright blue field with a daisy design. The front varies in colour and composition but maintains a consistent style: figurative, warm, direct.
The Major Arcana follow the usual sequence, from Fool to World. The Minor Arcana are divided across Create (Wands), Feel (Cups), Think (Swords) and Earth (Pentacles). Those translations are not only in the guidebook, they are also on the cards themselves, which speeds up working with them.
The symbolism is accessible. Where a classic RWS deck refers to medieval tools or biblical scenes, Strom chooses recognisable objects and postures.
About Maria Strom
Maria Strom is an artist and tarot reader from Athens, Georgia. She encountered tarot at fifteen and from that point developed a practice that combines painting and card reading. The Hip Chick Tarot is her attempt to create a deck that does not treat the feminine experience as an exception, but as a starting point.
Specifications
- Number of cards: 78
- Card size: 89 x 127 mm
- Finish: matte-gloss
- Card back: bright blue with daisy design
- Language: English
- Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
- ISBN: 9780764354922
- Artist: Maria Strom
Questions we often get
Do the traditional suit names still appear anywhere on the cards?
No. The cards use only the new names: Create, Feel, Think and Earth. If you want to use the traditional designations, you need to remember which suit corresponds to which yourself.
Does the symbolism differ strongly from a Rider-Waite-Smith deck?
The structure is the same: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana. The imagery is different. Where RWS refers to historical and Christian symbolism, Strom chooses contemporary, woman-centred scenes.
