The Housewives TAROT

By Paul Kepple/Jude Buffum, Headcase Designs  

A Domestic Divination Kit                                                                 

I recently spent an enjoyable weekend at the Toronto Pagan Conference. I took along my newly acquired Housewives Tarot deck, thinking I would have some time to study the deck. I was so delighted with the deck, that I was showing it to anyone and everyone who stopped by!

The deck was designed by Paul Kepple and Jude Buffum, from Headcase designs. They have used pictures from ads and magazines from the 1950s to create collage images for the cards. They obviously had a lot of fun designing the deck. The deck comes in a 50’s style recipe box, complete with recipe dividers for the instruction book and the major and minor arcana. The instruction book outlines the story behind Marlene Weatherbee a.k.a. Madam Marlena. The story describes how the Tarot guided her to domestic success rather than providing a gateway to damnation.

There are card descriptions and divinatory meanings provided, in Housewives’ quirky style, and instructions for several Tarot layouts including the Martini, Dinette and Clothesline of Life spreads.

The card images themselves are wonderful! My favourite is definitely The Devil.

Represented as an iced devil’s food cake on sensuous legs, complete with horns in the icing, the card alludes to many of the vices that it usually warns of, i.e. alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes. But these wacky designers have taken it one step further (which I suspect is their own devil coming to the fore!) by adding a few vices that I hadn’t considered, such as processed cheese spread, instant coffee, tinned luncheon meats and TV dinners, all of which should certainly be included in a card about unhealthy indulgences!

The Seven of Cups, the card of choices, depicts seven cocktails, surely taken from the paper placemats that were so popular in the 50’s and 60’s that highlighted the various mixed drinks available to order.

Temperance, the great harmonizer, is symbolized by the Sunbeam Mixmaster, blending a dough mixture of joy, sorrow, anger and justice.

The images in the deck are very clever and imaginative. Except for one or two cards that I didn’t quite “get”, I found the deck adhered fairly closely to the classic Rider Waite Smith divinatory representations, and definitely kept a smile on my face, with their quirky interpretations. I highly recommend the deck for collectors. 

For a sample of this wacky deck, go to www.housewivestarot.com. The website offers a past-present-future Tarot reading, secret recipes such as divination eggs, desktop goodies to download, a brief introduction to domestic divination, the legend of Marlene Weatherbee, and an option to purchase the deck online.

Witchy Woman can be contacted for her schedule and charge for Tarot readings and Tarot questions about her work and reviews through this site. Just go to the contact button on the front page.

Tarotist: Witchy Woman