Local lore leads to Nova Scotian-inspired tarot deck

Local author and tarot reader Ellen E. Sutherland releases Nova Scotia inspired tarot cards.

Author Ellen E. Sutherland’s Jamie Poole Book series is based “everywhere, anywhere, all at once.” But her latest project, a tarot deck based off the historical science fiction series, has a strong Nova Scotia connection.

“If you are not familiar with tarot, that’s okay, because the tarot deck is based on Rider-Waite. If you’re familiar with Rider-Waite and then the tarot deck will work for you. So, I’m very excited to share that with everybody,” she says.

Sutherland received a tarot deck for Christmas in 2019 and, when the pandemic hit, she focused her attention on the cards.

“We were home, we were isolated. We had incidents here in the news that were happening and so I turned to tarot. My stepmother-in-law is a tarot reader, has been for ever. Her mother taught her. She’s from Indonesia, the old style of using it,” she says.

Sutherland says her tarot cards were inspired by the objects and places that shaped her, including her home – Nova Scotia.

“It is beautiful and I want to show it off to people,” says Sutherland. “I use local scenery – Peggy’s Cove, Blomidon, a lot of things out in the Valley – and just felt like it fit with the tarot deck. You sit there and you can study it. It’s a meditative tool. That’s why I wanted to make the cards pretty too, because if you’re going to meditate on something, you want it to have beauty and that made so much sense.”

Creating her deck based in a world where Nova Scotia is a predominant feature also made so much sense.

“I’m the one that created the very first time travel themed tarot deck, and I thought it fit perfectly because you’re looking at past events, you’re trying to understand how that impacts the present and how that might impact the future,” says Sutherland.

“Now, with time travel, we have a multiverse and, you have many options for futures.”

Keeping her entire tarot deck local was important to Sutherland.

“The reason I printed it locally is because it just made sense,” she said. “I knew that the printer that I went with could do projects to specs. Each card is made one at a time, cut individually. So, there’s a lot of care and curating going into this deck that you wouldn’t get with a mass-produced deck.”

Care was important to her, as much as breathing intention into a deck is.

“I want the very best experience possible for you with this tarot deck, because to organize your thoughts you need every tool possible. This is one tool in your toolbelt,” says Sutherland.

For those who are new to tarot, Sutherland has added learning tools to the deck.

“There is a small, printed guidebook in the box, and this just has the basic Rider-Waite interpretation for each of the cards,” she says.

For those who want a more immersive experience, Sutherland has created a larger guidebook that can be purchased separately.

“It has the descriptions of each of the pictures including some details on where the pictures were taken, if they were real places and then description of Jamie Pool, the main character and what’s going on and the Rider-Waite interpretation at the bottom,” she says.

In addition to featuring Nova Scotia with her tarot cards, Sutherland also wove the province into her book series.

“I use the Citadel and told the story of a soldier. I use the history of the children that came from England during the war and told the story about some of the more interesting parts of World War II in Halifax, with the spies and the submarines,” she says.

“I wanted to showcase this area and really let people around the world know what we had here.”

Sutherland’s tarot deck was finished the beginning of April and she says it’s everything she wanted it to be.

“I felt like I’d finally put in paper what I had seen in my head for so many years,” she says. “I’ve been drawing since I was 12, and it was a slightly humbling moment to see it and know that it had come to life, and I couldn’t wait to share it with everybody else.”

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