Hey Katrin, how are you up there in Edinburgh today? It’s *weathery* down here in mid-Wales for sure: threatening to rain at any and every moment, strong gusts keeping everything moving. The colours are vibrant against a grey sky backdrop. And I’m cold today. Have got snug on the sofa with a blanket and spread your deck out beside me. 

Thank you for your lovely scene-setting description of the weather – it’s very grey here too, and I can feel the urge to retreat inwards and work on new ideas…

Could you introduce yourself (however you’d like!) to the LRT community?

Hello! I’m Katrin, or Kat for short, and I’m the creator of the Katrin Blackwater Tarot! I’m queer, poly & genderfluid. I’ve been a big fan of Little Red Tarot from years back, when I first became excited about tarot for personal use. When I started researching decks that already existed along themes I was interested in for my own art, LRT was a place I looked to for more unusual decks! 

I just pulled the Goddess of Wands (the King in RWS) from your deck which feels such a fitting representation of the entire deck: sitting comfortably in their power, drawing on the wisdom of the ages, dripping with the connectivity with their fire. The entire deck has this deep feeling for me of stepping into my power – even in the traditionally ‘harder’ cards of the suit of Swords, for example, which often feel much more disempowered to me in other decks. How would *you* describe the character of this deck, and is there a card that best represents it for you?

Ooo that’s an interesting pick! Yes, like the Emperor card, the Goddess of Wands is sitting comfortably exuding her fiery energy – she makes me think of the kind of girl you encounter at a party who is just holding court, like she’s in her power, she’s the lioness and everyone knows it. It makes me so happy when I hear that people find the deck empowering, because that was one of my main hopes for it going out into the world! For me, I think the card that represents it best, and is also probably my favourite card, is The Magician. It was one of my favourites to draw, it has all the suits of the tarot and the elements around her, and she’s just an absolute badass honestly. I would also say a close second is The High Priestess, which was the first card I drew (one of the few first cards that I didn’t redraw later after the many years of the deck evolving). It kind of sparked the idea for the whole deck, and is based on a photoshoot I did with a good friend (who appears in the deck many times..) 

The deck draws from Celtic traditions, and on queer, sex positive, feminist culture. Could you tell us the origin story of the deck and a little more about the inspirations it draws on?

This deck was really born from those first couple of cards I drew – The High Priestess, Justice, The Hanged Man – the themes and the concept really came together with those three. Though I wasn’t thinking about it being a whole deck at that stage, I was just drawing designs I liked and realizing people were really responding to them. As the desire to design a whole deck grew, I knew I really wanted to create a deck that was feminist, but also had queer relationships in it, and was sex positive with several very kinky cards, and with a polyamorous Lovers card. The sex positivity was a thing I had really wanted to represent, and it felt like kink was a big part of that too. I was also becoming interested in Scottish folklore, and the Celtic festivals, and was getting involved with Beltane Fire Society. It felt important to bring some of that in: the Justice card is based directly on one of our May Queens, and I redrew my Death card after I embodied the Cailleach for our Samhuinn festival, wanting to put Her energy into it. A lot of the cards are based on real people, close friends who inspired me, performers in my community etc. I wanted to represent different kinds of bodies, different expressions of femininity, different types of relationships and I wanted it all to feel like when reading the deck, you could use the Rider-Waite key meanings of the cards but frame them through these depictions of empowered women doin’ their thing. In many ways the deck helped me too; after finishing designing it I realised I was gender-fluid, and I joke with people now that I released all my femme into the deck. It definitely reflects the person I was 5 years ago, but I’m immensely proud of it and it brings me so much joy at market stalls hearing from people who’ve just instantly fallen in love with the designs. 

It feels like an inherently and deeply political deck: though perhaps anything with such expressly feminist values does at this moment in time. Does it feel political to you?

I think it does, yes! There’s a feeling of women living for themselves, in the way they want, empowering each other to do the same – for example, the Three of Pentacles is one I point to a lot for this – it’s a card traditionally about hard work, teamwork and collaboration. I wanted my card to specifically to show people doing different kinds of performance, in a sex work context – emphasising with this particular cards’ built in meanings that SEX WORK IS WORK, and it is hard work.  

I’d love to know a little about how you came into this work. Have you always made art, or was it something you came to later? Has tarot always been a part of your life and art?

I have absolutely always made art: art classes in school, even up to A-level, were like break time for me. At university I was much more focused on photography and film than drawing and painting, but after graduating I went travelling for a while and took up illustrative drawing for fun. Eventually, after I got back to Scotland and had a string of rough cafe jobs, followed by a really really bad bicycle accident that left me wanting to reprioritise, I decided it was time to try and make art for a living – and here I am today, doing this full time! 

I (unsurprisingly) had a classic teenage Willow-crush-induced Wiccan phase, mostly spent cross-legged in a corner of the local Waterstones hunched over their one floor-level half-shelf of ‘magic and spirituality’ books (I still mourn for the original Buffy tarot that never got finished). My interest in tarot came back around in my late 20s, and the first deck I got as an adult was The Wild Unknown, by Kim Krans, and it is still one of my favourites (though I use her Archetypes deck more often now). I became interested in tarot again at a stage in life where I needed guidance – finishing university, the uncertainty around what was next – I always used it as a psychoanalytical tool, rather than for divination, as a kind of framework to help make connections and come to conclusions. I think of it like the alethiometer in His Dark Materials: putting your mind in a certain state of open receptiveness to making connections. I also believe in synchronicity, and I think attaching meaning or magic to things that feel meaningful or magical to you is a powerful way to experience the world. When I first started designing my deck with all its female characters, I was taking inspiration directly from real powerful women in my life – not all the cards are based on real people, but enough are that it felt like a grounding energy to the whole thing. 

I love to know how others work: your workspace, what materials you use, what music you have on. Could you share anything of your creative practice?

When I was first designing the cards way back, really when I started my art business, I was working at my huge desk in my old flat, looking out over a copper beech tree opposite. I mostly work with pen and ink, and with watercolour these days. I’ve always been a messy worker, so there’s always brushes and paint and half-drunk cups of tea everywhere (frequently with brushes in them – yes I’ve drunk my paint water by mistake too many times!). I shamefully often have TV on when I work, but really it’s just to have voices to listen to (usually some YA fantasy series that I know inside out). Music can get a bit much sometimes, and I have tinnitus so I can’t paint with silence either. When I do listen to music to paint to, it’s usually folk music: people like Fay Hield, The Furrow Collective or folk fusion like Niteworks, Valtos. Sometimes I like to put on what I call euphoric femme pop, like Florence and Aurora, to feel really motivated. 

Is there a card that is particularly meaningful to you at the moment?

I’m gonna say that the Sister of Wands feels pretty meaningful to me today, because I just went for coffee with the person who inspired the card, and I’m really excited about our own respective adventures in the future!

Love this. And is there anything else you’d like to share about your tarot practice, this deck, or anything else, that you haven’t had a chance to mention yet?

I’ll share some details about the deck as an object, if I may! The design on the box is of a forest: trees frame the edges and the text floats between them. On each side is one of the suits. I see your journey experiencing the deck as walking through this forest, and the suits are there like tools to take with you. When you open the deck, you see black cards, and when you pull one the crescent moon peeks out. I designed the back of the cards intuitively – it represents many things to me. It’s a pool of black water (see what I did there) in the middle of a forest; it’s ripples in a scrying bowl; stars wheeling overhead or reflected in the pool; also the triple goddess – the two crescent moons and the circles in the centre as mother, maiden and crone, guiding you through the readings you do with the deck. In this way I think it has a kind of dreamlike layered symbolism, through which you interpret your meanings.

The last thing I’ll say is about tarot practice, which is that I think there is A LOT to be said for reading blind, ie. not looking up the meanings of a card, and instead intuitively letting the imagery on a card feed your imagination, and letting feelings and meanings come to you from that! It’s one of the many reasons I don’t have a book with my deck – I want the experience of reading it to feel intuitive and personal, to let the images conjure up whatever feels right to you. 

For this I’ve done a characteristically chaotic 5 card pull from 5 of my card decks. I used one of mine as a lead-in card. I pulled the Ace of Wands from my deck, for inspiration and new growth. I then pulled 8 of Stakes from the Buffy deck, for unlocked potential and progress; the Ten of Pentacles from The Wild Unknown, for generosity and fulfilment; Owl from the Green Wheel Oracle, for finding direction through challenges and keeping sight of your goals; and then, hilariously, The Mentor, from The Archetype deck, for a teacher, a sage. I laughed out loud at the two barn owls, although it doesn’t surprise me; ever since I played the Cailleach in the Samhuinn festival as a Cailleach-oidhche gheal (literally translating to ‘white old woman of the night’), or barn owl, they have followed me, appearing at unexpected times. This reading gives me a lot of hope for my artistic development in the year to come! 

And a random extra… we’ve been collating pieces from the community on their reflections on the Wheel of Fortune, as the ‘tarot card of the year’, and I wonder if you have any thoughts on this card, and whether you relate it to this year at all?

The Wheel of Fortune card in my deck has a character holding a fire shield – it’s based on a real shield prop made for a Beltane festival up here – by strange coincidence, and I didn’t know this at the time I drew it, the person who carved the central wooden boss with celtic knotwork is now my current (very talented) partner! The card feels very relevant for me this year, as the wheel turns us into brighter days with Spring on the horizon – the world feels very bleak in many moments these days, but the wheel turns as it always does, and destinies change.