Tarot cards are trendy, and Dior had already said it months ago

Vicki Noble, who with Karen Vogel created the Motherpeace Tarot Deck in the late 1970s, had not kept up to date with some of the most recent events that have rocked the global community of card-reading enthusiasts.

But when Maria Grazia Chiuri , the artistic director of Christian Dior, called to propose authorizing the use of her Motherpeace Tarot deck in the creation of a fashion line for the house, both Noble and Vogel ended up saying yes. Both said they had decided that it was a good way to breathe new life into their now 40-year-old paper creation.

About six months after the Dior show in Santa Monica, California, sales of the Motherpeace Tarot deck had skyrocketed, up 263 percent from the same point the previous year, according to Stuart Kaplan, CEO and owner of US Games Systems, one of the world's leading publishers and distributors of fortune-telling cards.

A look at the cruise look proposed by Dior in its 2018 collection

Ms. Noble said: “I feel like it’s a new wave, and we should try to catch it.”

Tarot deck sales are up 30 percent globally this year, just as they were up 30 percent a year ago in 2016 from 2015. These significant increases are considered real surges, the biggest in a market that has been nearly flat for the past 50 years, according to Lynn Araujo, director of publishing and corporate communications for US Games Systems. The publisher sells hundreds of thousands of decks each year, including the Motherpeace Deck, the popular Ryder Waite deck, and 123 other original decks of all kinds.

The Tarot boom is not a scenario that came as a surprise to Libby Edelson, a senior editor at Harper Collins. In 2015, a unique, original, and innovative Tarot deck called The Wild Unknown Tarot caught her eye. Featuring drawings of plants and animals rather than traditionally human beings, the deck quickly gained a devoted following, and sales skyrocketed with each reprint. Edelson was able to purchase the rights to the deck and the User's Guide from the author, and watched as the two publications climbed to the top of the best-seller lists.

The Wild Unknown Tarot deck released today by Harper Collins.

“There’s a whole new wave of tarot now,” Kim Krans , the author and designer of The Wild Unknown Tarot, tells us. “People are saying things like, ‘I’m going to quit my job and become a full-time professional tarot reader.'” Krans attributes her success to Instagram, the social media platform on which she once posted individual images from her deck, and what she calls tarot’s incursion, like crystals and yoga and meditation equipment before it, into mainstream fashion and home decor boutiques rather than the dusty recesses of occult shops.

“Until now, the idea of ​​Tarot has been associated with this image of a girl in a closet behind a neon sign asking if you want to come hang out and see your future,” Sasha Graham, a tarot reader and author, told us. “That’s changed. Wicca and New Age spirituality of the Feminine, especially in the political climate of the United States, has recently had its moment of notoriety and influence. And Tarot has been a big part of that.”
And what could be more current and trendy today than crowdfunding?
In fact, projects for new Tarot decks have been constantly growing over the last 5 consecutive years, according to what David Gallagher, the senior director of communications for Kickstarter, told us. In 2013, there were 37 projects proposed for direct funding by the reading public. In 2017, they rose to 88, and include special decks conceived and addressed to the most diverse audiences and communities of users.

Cristy Road , a Cuban-American illustrator, is the founder of a Tarot deck project called The Next World Tarot , which launched on Kickstarter in December 2015. Inspired by her friends and close acquaintances, the deck features images of gay couples, disabled people in wheelchairs, women wearing hijabs, minorities of all kinds, the poor, and the elderly, among others, all set against a dystopian landscape.

The Sun card from The Next World Tarot deck.

“We want to find ourselves in our decks, and we want our decks to tell our stories,” Ms. Road wrote on her tarot project page. “ My stories are about the struggle to break the systemic oppression of Power, to reclaim our Truths, and to be fully available to the scrutiny and evaluation of the people and groups that support us, and in doing so, to reconnect with your own body that you may have lost due to trauma or the brainwashing that society subjects you to.”

Lindsay Mack, a tarot reader and teacher in Brooklyn, told us that she has seen far more clients who have sought her out in an attempt to reconnect with their true purpose in life than clients who simply want to know their fate in advance.

“ Tarot is very trendy today, but the amazing thing is that people are coming to ask questions that are obviously the result of deep and deep thought, sometimes even well beyond their apparent possibilities,” Ms. Mack told us. “Contrary to popular opinion,” she continued, “and in total contrast to the traditional image of the fortune teller in front of the crystal ball, Tarot has never actually been a tool for predicting the future,” she told us. “Tarot is a Mirror,” she said. “It is an invitation to dwell on understanding the present.”

Fabrizio Piola

*A version of this article appears in print in the October 26, 2017, New York edition, Page D8, under the headline: “Tarots Trendy? Even Dior Says Yes.”