Midnight Magic Tarot

Midnight Magic: A Tarot Deck of Mushrooms - 78 cards built around real fungi

This is not a deck that uses mushrooms as decoration. Sara Richard matched each of the 78 fungi to its tarot card deliberately, drawing on the qualities, appearance or ecology of the species. The authoritative, red-capped Fly Agaric is the Emperor. The brightly coloured, impetuous Chicken of the Woods is the Fool. That level of thought carries through every single card in the deck.

Richard is an Eisner Award and Ringo Award-nominated illustrator whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair and British Vogue. She grew up in New Hampshire, where forests and wild mushrooms were simply part of the landscape. That is not a marketing detail. It shows in the work.

What you see on the cards

Every illustration sits against a black background, which makes the colours of the fungi stand out sharply. The palette is naturalistic: many shades of brown, red and white, but also blue, green, purple and bright yellow species. Occasionally an animal, insect or human hand appears alongside the mushroom, adding a layer of symbolism to the image.

The Major Arcana cards have no borders. The black background runs straight to the edge. The Minor Arcana cards carry corner ornaments that vary by suit: yellow and red flowers for Wands, purple flowers for Cups, mauve and orange for Swords, and pale seedpods and wheat spikes for Pentacles. Each card carries the traditional tarot title, the common English name of the mushroom, and its Latin species name. That combination makes the cards usable as a starting point for further research into the fungi themselves.

The card stock is stiff with a little flexibility, finished smooth on both sides with a low sheen. Rounded corners protect the edges during regular handling. Cards separate easily when shuffled.

The guidebook

The 143-page guidebook is written by Richard herself and includes full-colour reproductions of every card. It opens with a genuine warning about consuming misidentified wild mushrooms. That note fits the tone of the whole deck: this is work rooted in real knowledge of the natural world, not surface-level aesthetics.

About Sara Richard

Sara Richard is an illustrator from New Hampshire whose work is inspired by Art Nouveau, Art Deco, funerary imagery and the natural world. Her creations tend toward the macabre and the unknown, balanced with sweetness and sentiment in the tradition of Victorian Memento Mori. Outside of making art, she watches horror films, cleans forgotten gravestones with her mother, and collects possibly haunted curiosities from the nineteenth century.

Mushrooms have been part of her life since childhood. The care with which each species was chosen and rendered in this deck reflects that.

Specifications

• Number of cards: 78
• Guidebook: 143 pages, fully illustrated in colour
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9781507220139
• Publisher: Adams Media
• Publication date: 28 March 2023
• Card dimensions: 70 x 120 mm
• Box dimensions: 89 x 53 x 140 mm
• Finish: Smooth with low sheen, rounded corners
• Packaging: Sturdy cardboard box with lift-off lid
• Author and illustrator: Sara Richard

Questions we often get

Does this follow the Rider Waite structure?
Yes. The Major Arcana has 22 cards in the traditional Rider Waite order and naming. The Minor Arcana has 56 cards across Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles, each with ten numbered cards and four Court cards: Page, Knight, Queen and King. No cards have been renamed or reimagined.

What language are the cards and guidebook in?
Both are in English. Each card carries the traditional English tarot title, the common English name of the mushroom, and the Latin species name. The 143-page guidebook is also entirely in English.