The RainShadow Tarot

The RainShadow Tarot - hand-cut collage tarot from the Olympic Mountains

A rain shadow is a meteorological fact: mountains block incoming clouds, leaving one side of a range lush and wet while the other stays dry and sparse. Claire Mack lives in exactly that kind of rain shadow, on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, and built this deck around that image.

The RainShadow Tarot is a 78-card deck rooted in the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition. Every image is assembled by hand from original paintings, clippings from second-hand books, and decorative paper. Autumn Hesse contributed as co-author.

What you see on the cards

The images are collages: layers of texture stacked on top of each other, sometimes recognisable as fragments of old illustrations, sometimes absorbed into painted surfaces. The handwork is visible. This is not clean digital illustration; it is paper with a history.

The colours follow the theme. The wet and dry sides of a mountain landscape alternate in warm and cool tones throughout the deck. The contrast is built into the image.

A different approach to reversed cards

The creators made a deliberate choice about how this deck handles reversed positions. Rather than a separate reversed meaning for each card, the deck asks you to look at what is simultaneously present: light and shadow, wet and dry, familiar and unknown. That maps directly to the rain shadow as a metaphor.

This approach asks something of the reader. You are not working from a fixed list of 'if the card is upside down, it means this.' You look at the whole of a moment.

Place this deck next to a classic RWS deck and compare the same card side by side. The structure is familiar; the execution is something else entirely.

About Claire Mack

Claire Mack is a painter and mixed media artist. She lives among tall evergreens and mossy forests near the coast of the Salish Sea, surrounded by two mountain ranges. Nature, esoteric study, spirituality and philosophy are ongoing threads in her work.

She began making divination decks in 2016, working entirely by hand: painted grounds, hand-cut paper, fragments from second-hand books, all assembled in her studio. The guidebook included with this deck runs to 112 pages and is printed in full colour.

Specifications

• Number of cards: 78
• Guidebook: 112 pages, full colour
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9781922574770
• Box dimensions: 90.5 x 140.5 x 44 mm
• Packaging: hard cover box
• Finish: gold-foil stamping on cover
• Author: Claire Mack
• Co-author: Autumn Hesse

Questions we often get

Does this deck follow the classic Rider-Waite-Smith structure and symbolism?
Yes. The RainShadow Tarot is built on the RWS system, with 78 cards in the standard arrangement. The symbolism is recognisable, though the collage technique makes the visual result very different from a classic RWS deck.

What language are the cards and guidebook in?
Both are in English. Card names appear in English on the cards themselves. The 112-page guidebook is also in English.