Star Trek has moved into an entirely new frontier with the upcoming launch of Star Trek Tarot.
Star Trek Tarot
A new company named Telekiad has unveiled a brand new licensed line of Star Trek Tarot decks. The decks are the culmination of years of research and collaboration, matching the 78 ancient Tarot cards one-to-one with 78 classic original Star Trek episodes, with the two-part episode “The Menagerie” counting as one. (The unaired pilot “The Cage” is represented on two bonus cards.) Tarot experts have helped to hone the deck’s entire design to honor each card’s centuries of layered meanings and its many traditional and modern associations.
Star Trek Tarot “The Moon” card with art from “The Menagerie”
Professional artists have created original Star Trek imagery and graphics for each card in a style that is a respectful representation of every original episode’s chosen scene and appropriate for a Tarot deck. Professional card printers ensure the highest casino-quality cards.
“I came up with the idea to match the 78 Tarot cards with the original 78 aired Star Trek episodes because it was a Tarot deck I wanted,” said Telekiad Lead Designer Mark “Adam” Baum. “We realize that Star Trek and Tarot is an unusual combination, far from obvious, but it works surprisingly well with incredible depth to the card matchings.”
Hikaru Sulu from “The Naked Time” adorns the Star Trek Tarot Ace of Blades card
Star Trek Tarot is available in three distinct packages. The base 80-card deck with storage box retails for $29.55. You can also get the same deck with a 120-page paperback tutorial for $39.95.
Star Trek Tarot deck with instructional book
There is also a special limited edition set with 80 plastic cards, a hardcover version of the tutorial, and a custom box that retails for $59.95.
Limited edition Star Trek Tarot set
Telekiad is also offering a special mini-deck for Star Trek: The Animated series with 22 cards for $19.95. There is also a limited edition set of the TAS mini-deck available with all-plastic cards for $29.95.
Star Trek Tarot TAS mini-set
The Star Trek Tarot decks are available for pre-order today at StarTrekTarot.com. Orders received by September 30th will ship in early December.
Keep up with Star Trek merchandise news and reviews at TrekMovie.com.
Oooh. Those are nice.
2020 seems a very courageous year to be looking into the future, no matter how lovely the cards.
Actually, Tarot is definitely not my thing, but these are so wonderfully done that I’d be willing to consider them just for the art.
More, I really appreciate how TAS is featured, and treated as an integral part of the TOS era. Well done.
Well, sure… why not!?
Side note: Am I crazy or am I seeing a Shatner/Pine fusion of the two pictured as Kirk? I mean, it’s clearly not 100% one or the other and might even have a hint of Cawley in there.
Sanity check:
… oh wait, it’s just the “toddler approved quality” affect CBS weighs all ‘Trek merchandise against before licensing it. If it looks too good, no way! Only sub-par stuff for our beloved fans.
Mhee.. too much TOS.
Tarot cards. Really? Not enough merchandise available for the underserved Trek seance audience? Will the Trek Ouija Board be ready by Xmas?
My DS9 Tear of the Prophets Magic 8 Ball says (shakes) “Outlook Not So Good”
Don Carter Mystic Fortune Teller Machine – A Penny for your Future!!
The hand belongs to Mr. Don S. Carter, male member of a honeymoon team on route across the Ohio countryside to New York City. In one moment, they will be subjected to a gift most humans never receive in a lifetime. For one penny, they will be able to look into the future. The time is now, the place is a little diner in Ridgeview, Ohio, and what this young couple doesn’t realize is that this town happens to lie on the outskirts of the Twilight Zone.
Rather odd, but the renderings on them seem nice. This falls under my annual “Oh No, people know I’m a Trek fan, I hope they don’t get me this as a gift,” category.
Ha, ha Danpaine, I thought the same thing hoping my friends who know I’m a Trek fan don’t buy me this.
However, I must admit the artwork is some of the most beautiful Trek art I’ve ever seen.
Just for the record (and for those comments below), Tarot decks originated for, are simply used for, certain games in certain parts of Europe. Four suits of fourteen cards each (there’s one extra face card in each suit), plus twenty-two special cards. That’s it.
In the countries that didn’t play those games, they came to be used for “magic.”
That said, these are all very nice and very imaginative. But why 78 plus two special Cage cards? Why not have two cards for The Menagerie, which gets you up to eighty?
Well, I’ll give them this: Star Trek and tarot cards are both entirely fictional.
Exactly. I find this insulting to the intelligence of people, yet alone, Star Trek fans. Tarot is an absurd superstition backed by zero scientific evidence. Another example of magical thinking that has absolutely zero logic and is part of religious nonsense that plagues humanity. It’s not harmless “fun”. It is corrosive non-evidence-based thinking. Ha. “Thinking”. Can the absurdity of these superstitions and religious thinking even be called that? Spock is vomiting somewhere right now as this blight has overwhelmed even his logical thinking and he’s doubled over in disgust.
I don’t often evoke GR in positive ways, but this is one that there is no way he would have approved, no matter his lust for cash. This is antiTrek in literally one of the worst ways, you might as well sell a TREK ouija board (though I guess THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK practically qualifies for that already.) You might as well sell OZ-style Red Shoes and claim they’re Sulu’s off-duty wear.
I can’t bring myself to say I’m appalled, but that’s only because I now reserve that word for Mitch McConnell and the other lower forms peeing gasoline on the world’s fires.
Picard (and any rational intellect) would not approve.
“Horrifying… Dr. Barron, your report describes how rational these people are. Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the dark ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? No!”
– Picard, “Who Watches the Watchers”
Roddenberry would’ve considered these apocryphal no doubt (unless there was a buck to be made for Lincoln Enterprises… no doubt ;)
Tarot cards? Seriously? The low number of comments here is indicative of low interest – and that is reassuring. Non-scientific, irrational, superstitious, non-evidenced-based thinking and beleifs are something that Trek, across multiple episodes and multiple series, has eschewed, rebuked and chided. This is the most non-Trek product I’ve laid eyes on as it is antithetical to the very ethos of the series with its precepts of rationality and logic. There can be no positive future that Trek envisions as long as we cling to the dark-age superstitions anchoring us in the past.