Is Tarot a scam?
Back when I used to do TikTok, there was a common type of comment that would come up on my videos. They would say tarot is a scam and they're just trying to get your money. And often when they would be making these complaints, they would be citing things like Miss Cleo or the Psychic Friends Network. And you know what? Knowing what we know in retrospect, we're not beating that charge. Those were indeed scams. And the world of divination arts is indeed plagued by scams, many of which affect the folks who are trying to get into the divination arts themselves.
The thing is, the scam is usually not what you think it is. It's typically something different. And in fact, the scam I'm going to be talking about today has very little to do with pretending to be a wizard from Jamaica and everything to do with ripping off customers. We'll be discussing today how to identify that scam, how to avoid it, and what you can do about it. So sit back, relax, and join us as we explore the art of divination.
What a scam actually is
Welcome to The Art of Divination Podcast presented by Artisan Tarot. I'm your host, Z. Mann Zilla.
On this episode, we'll be discussing how to avoid counterfeit tarot decks. And I suppose this is the part where I apologize for the clickbaity opening that I used, but trust me, I am going somewhere with that. You see, those comments I used to get about tarot being a scam were often about calling out tarot readers for performing some sort of a scam, like the entire purpose of the scam was to trick people into thinking we had time wizard powers or something.
The thing is, when I think of scams, what I'm thinking of is somebody that is doing something they shouldn't be doing to try to trick people out of money, and more to the point, they're doing that because the scam nets a greater reward than the work that would be required to get the money otherwise. Scams are not naturally occurring forces of nature. There's a reason that they happen, and that reason is often profit of some sort or a reward, a specific reward that they're hoping to attain for those efforts.
So when I saw these comments that were citing Miss Cleo in the Psychic Friends Network, that made me realize that a lot of the folks leveling this criticism didn't really understand how the scam worked.
How the 900-number scam worked
See, when somebody engages in a tarot reading, this is a consensual business transaction. The reader tells you what you're gonna get for your money and then gives it to you, and you give them the money. That's not a scam; that's just how small businesses work. The thing with services such as those that Miss Cleo provided or that you would get from Psychic Friends Network is that those costs weren't upfront. A lot of times they'd offer you a free sample reading, but you were calling on a 1-900 number, which was charging you, you know, three, four, five dollars a minute. And the nature of the reading that they would give you was one that was specifically designed to keep you on the phone as long as possible.
That was the actual scam. So the lesson I take from this is that getting to the root of whether or not something is actually a scam depends on you understanding what it is that the scam artist expects to get out of you and how they expect to be able to extract more money from you in a way that's not presented up front. They're trying to trick you out of that money.
The real tarot scam today
And there is a very real tarot scam going on right now, a grift that is very popular. But the victims of this scam tend to be folks that engage with the divination arts to a point where they're getting into it themselves. They're going out, they're buying their own decks and they're obtaining their own guidebooks.
And in the process of doing this, scam artists are finding vulnerabilities in that process to take advantage of you. So that's what we're talking about today. Specifically, the tarot scam in which somebody gets you to buy a counterfeit deck.
What's the harm in a knockoff?
Now, the main reason I wanted to frame it like this is because when it comes to counterfeit decks, there are even seasoned tarot readers that see this and go, well, what's the big deal? What's the problem with buying a so-called counterfeit deck? We live in a world where people save money by buying the knockoff versions of products. I mean, I myself have like six box fans in my apartment, all of which have different phony baloney business names on them, but they are physically identical. It's very clear that somebody just worked off of a basic template and just slapped whatever name would get them on an Amazon seller's page. And why do I own these knockoff counterfeit box fans?
Because they're box fans, and I was looking to save money on box fans. I'm not trying to spend a luxury price on something that's become more and more necessary as the summers get warmer. The thing is, I also have personal opinions about how this attitude shouldn't apply to things that are created artistically. Artists should get paid for the effort that they put in to create these products that we love so much.
So obviously, I've already got a problem with counterfeit decks existing just based on this. And if that's where the scam ended, I wouldn't be doing an entire episode about it. There's a lot more to talk about here, and we're gonna get into it.
My own counterfeit deck
Now, usually this is the part where we play the music, and I segue over to some history, and I would start telling you about the history of scams, but this particular history lesson need not go back that far. The history we will be discussing is mine, my own experience with purchasing a counterfeit tarot deck. And it all started with two things I really enjoy: tarot and The Golden Girls. Back in 2023, I wrote a well, we'll call it a book, but I wrote a book called Thank You for Reading This Spread: A Renegade's Guide to Golden Girls Tarot Reading. And I'm not going to put a lot of hype or big ups on this one here. I self-published it. It's a PDF that's available on my Itch page.
So if you're interested in checking it out, that's where you can find it. But I was inspired to write this after an experience I had getting my hands on a copy of The Golden Girls Tarot.
Why I love the Golden Girls
Now, you have to understand, I'm a huge fan of The Golden Girls. It all started when I was younger, and I'd be playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. And there was a common joke that would be made in the gamer circles back then that the four Golden Girls match up with the four basic character types of Dungeons & Dragons. Having never seen the show, I decided to watch an episode just so I can get the jokes.
And then after that, I watched another and another, and I've basically been hooked. Of course, watching these episodes, I also happened to make my own observation that the Golden Girls also match up with the four suits of tarot. Blanche is a perfect avatar of the Pentacles. Rose reminds me of the Cups; Dorothy reminds me of the Swords; Sophia is totally the Wands.
Finding the Golden Girls Tarot
So imagine my delight when I'm idly flipping through Amazon one day, just keeping an eye open for interesting tarot decks, and I happen to see that there is a Golden Girls Tarot produced by a company called Smith Street Books out of Australia. And what do you know? It is not even one of those cheap gimmick decks. You know the ones, the ones that they only really do the Major Arcana and maybe the royals, and then the pips are all done Marseille style. I call it lazy pips. No, this was a complete 78-card, fully illustrated deck that took the time to actually illustrate all of the pips, and it did so with the exact same mappings that I had in my head. Obviously, I placed that order immediately, and the price was great.
I want to say it was something to the tune of like $20 or less. I can't call the page up right now because it has since been delisted. That's a bit of foreshadowing for you. And a few days later, got my cards. They came in this little tight pink tuck box, poker-sized cards, and I pull the cards out, and I love the art, right? I mean, it's gorgeous art because it's the Golden Girls and all the poses they're taking and all of the like royals and Major Arcanas and everything that they're representing: it's all just flawless. The Golden Girls Tarot deck is the best tarot deck that I cannot recommend to you.
The QR code trap
See, as lovely as the art was, I did have a hard time identifying a couple of the people in the cards. And this deck didn't come with a guidebook; it was just the cards. And I figured I got sort of a budget version of the deck, and that's why it didn't come with the guidebook. It did, however, have a QR code on the pack itself that I could scan to go get the guidebook.
So I scan the QR code, it takes me to a site that has the PDF of the Golden Girls Tarot guidebook. I download this guidebook and it is itself a two-page PDF, and the second page just says that, you know, due to changes and updates, the new guidebook is now located at this PDF repository and gives me another QR code to scan. Call me suspicious if you must, but I was starting to smell a rat.
But I decided to see this through, and so I scan the code, it takes me to this PDF repository, and a page comes up, starts asking me to make an account. It won't let you download anything off of this thing unless you have an account. And don't worry, you can get a free trial of the service that this repository is offering. You just need to provide some credit card information up front. They will ping you to put in a $1 deposit just to make sure that you're giving valid credit card information, but don't worry, it's a free trial. You'll get your dollar back.
Well, I immediately shut the page. None of this felt like it was right. But then I thought, well, geez, I gotta warn other people, right? I figured the warning would come better if I had a screenshot. So I went ahead and scanned the QR code again to reopen the site, and a different site came up.
It was still calling itself a PDF repository; it was still offering a free trial to a service that also required me to submit some payment information. It was basically the same deal, but a completely different site. And that's when I realized what was going on here. This was some sort of identity theft scam.
Spotting the counterfeit deck
That's when other little things started to occur to me, like how the cards themselves felt very thin and cheap. And the artwork didn't look quite right, like it was being squashed into a different aspect ratio. I had to really look. I'm a glasses wearer. I don't like to wear my glasses all the time, so you know I don't always spot this stuff right away.
And as I started my investigation to see if I could find a copy of the actual guidebook somewhere online, I started seeing pictures of the real Golden Girls Tarot deck produced by Smith Street Books. That deck comes in a hard two-layer box with a hinged cover. What I had received was a small tuck box.
Furthermore, the genuine cards were actually tarot-sized cards, and looking at pictures of the art, I was just amazed. I could actually tell who some of the characters were that I couldn't tell from my own copy of the deck. Plus, the colors were just more vibrant, and the general presentation was better. Also, the real box had a proper ISBN barcode on it, where my box only had the QR code.
And I know this is petty, but I'm gonna add it. The genuine box has a really funny little message on the front that says a view of your future from the Lanai, which is just adorable. My tuck box didn't even include that information. I didn't even get that little bit.
A guidebook that never existed
Well, obviously, I still want the cards, and I want the genuine article along with the guidebook, so I'm looking around for where I can get an actual copy of these cards, and it turns out they're completely out of print. Smith Street Gifts removed them from their website. I don't know if this has anything to do with Disney acquiring the Golden Girls IP or not, but I'm just speculating at that point. Eventually, though, my journey led me to Chantel de Sousa, the artist that actually worked on the Golden Girls Tarot, and she's very, very nice, and I highly recommend you check out her artwork. She's got a lot of it online, definitely worth checking out.
But she informs me that Smith Street never actually made a guidebook for the Golden Girls Tarot. And that's when I started to put the pieces together. These scam artists had figured out that, first off, the actual company is not gonna actually be making any more of these Golden Girls decks. So they have this wide open space to fill this gap. I mean, people are just gonna not want Golden Girls Tarot cards, especially ones as good as these were. I'm serious, when it comes to mappings and stuff, the Golden Girls Tarot is just really great at what it does. It's easily one of the best gimmick decks I've ever used. And again, can't recommend it because you can't get the genuine article anymore.
It is a rare item. Pretty much everything that's out there now that's Golden Girls Tarot is knockoffs. And furthermore, because people knew that folks would want these Golden Girls Tarot cards, but that a guidebook never existed, they would go looking for a guidebook, and they latched onto that to create this scam that would eventually lead to credit card theft and identity theft.
And there it is, like I was saying before, the key to spotting and identifying a scam is to identify what it is they're actually trying to get out of you. What you have to understand is that counterfeit decks are providing a vector for other scams to happen. And frankly, it's an inferior product. Let's talk about that.
Why counterfeits are an inferior product
Now, here's the thing: the Golden Girls Tarot is not the only counterfeit deck that I own. To date, I have about four in my collection right now. I'm not proud of this. I don't use most of them except for research purposes. I do still use the Golden Girls Tarot. Part of it is because I'd really love to get my hands on a genuine one, but I just haven't been able to find one in a price that I can afford. Again, they're basically collector's items right now.
But I figured we could take a moment to discuss some of the other reasons you don't want to get your hands on a counterfeit deck. The main one being that the cards usually feel flimsy in some way or just really poor quality.
What makes a well-made deck
I remember talking to Will over at Artisan Tarot and trying to put words to why it was I felt that these cards just didn't feel right. And he took the time to educate me on what he looks for when he's making decks for Artisan Tarot. For example, what he looks for is 310 GSM, that's grams per square meter paper. It's a thicker cardstock that does allow some flexibility while you know still being stiff enough to be used as cards, and then these cards would then be finished with what's called a linen finish.
This results in a sturdy card that can be riffle shuffled many times, while the finish allows the cards to easily slide back and forth on top of each other without wearing down over time. A lot of the gloss and matte finishes that are on cheaper cards tend to break down a little quicker or get sticky more quickly.
These are very much the considerations that result in a more expensive deck, but one that you're gonna have for a longer time. And of course, scam artists and counterfeiters don't really care about that part. They are investing in the cheapest, thinnest cardstock that they believe they can get away with. They're already stealing the art, so they aren't really caring about prices of art in that aspect. And since they're not communicating directly with the artist, there's nothing stopping them from using the cheapest printing method possible. One of the counterfeit decks I owned was a counterfeit of the Witches Tarot by Ellen Dugan. I have since gone out and purchased the authentic deck, which is how I can confirm that this deck is supposed to have a much larger box with a full-sized guidebook and some of the most vibrant and beautiful artwork on the cards you will ever see.
By contrast, the knockoff version's blues look closer to purple, and everything's all just washed out. And again, they tried to fit it onto poker-sized cards, so everything's all squeezed and compressed in the wrong directions. It's just not a good deck. And of course, none of them come with guidebooks. Instead, they have a QR code where the ISBN barcode should be, and you click on that, and well, we discussed what happens there earlier. It's a long, frustrating path, and at the end of that yellow brick road is identity theft.
So consider all of that on top of potentially getting your important information stolen, on top of not getting the guidebook that in some cases is vital and even more vital if you're dealing with inferior art, which a lot of these have, on top of the original creators of the decks not being compensated, and on top of rewarding publishers who prey on the perceived gullibility of tarot aficionados, you are also getting inferior merchandise. At least my phony box fans work just as good as every other box fan.
How to spot a counterfeit
So those are all what I feel are great reasons to keep an eye out for counterfeit decks. And let's go into what you should be looking for specifically. Now, one of the things I'm gonna stress right off the bat is this isn't just an online-only problem. At least two of the counterfeits that I ended up with came from brick-and-mortar stores.
So purchasing your product from, you know, your local esoterica shop is not a guarantee that you're going to avoid this. So, anyway, here are some things for you to look out for. Number one, it is very common for these counterfeit decks to use poker-sized cards rather than full-size tarot cards. It's very rare for the counterfeits to be tarot-sized. Again, realize we're dealing with people that are looking to cut corners, to spend as little as possible. The less you put in and the more you get out at the end, the better. Second, these knockoff decks will typically use a QR code in place of the ISBN barcode. And that's not just for the reasons we outlined, although it does open you up to that problem.
The thing is that oftentimes they are just doing that because they know you're going to be looking for a guidebook, and to keep you from looking any further, they're sending you to their resources. So a poker-sized deck with a QR code instead of a barcode, and it's in a cheap tuck box, that's almost certainly a dead giveaway that you're dealing with an inferior counterfeit deck.
Buying online
If you're purchasing online, and I want to stress again, you might have noticed from the story that I told you that I got my counterfeit cards, my counterfeit Golden Girls cards, off of Amazon.com. And they aren't the only online retailer encouraging this behavior, but, you know, they're among the biggest right now. So a couple of things to keep your eyes open for when you're buying online. First off, if the seller has just a weird phony baloney name, usually in all caps, it's always a random jumble of letters that looks like they dropped mice on a keyboard to name their business, or if the product description is an overlong series of words that almost read like keywords, these are huge red flags that you are dealing with counterfeit merchandise.
Another detail to keep an eye out for: oftentimes sellers who are just trying to push some product onto you won't tell you anything about the artists or authors who worked on the deck at all. I'm sure part of this is so that they don't come up in any searches, but yeah, you know, in general, one way to avoid getting scammed by a counterfeit deck is to just look up the deck that you're shopping for, you know, independently, preferably off of the publisher's own site. Not only will this get you pictures of what the deck is supposed to look like, but it will also provide product dimensions.
So you can see, for example, is it supposed to be a full-sized tarot deck? If so, why are the cards I'm looking at right now poker-sized?
Etsy and AI decks
Now I do want to slip in an extra word about Etsy, because I'm gonna say up front I've bought a couple of unauthorized fan decks or small-run decks that were made by creators that are very lovely, and I absolutely adore them, and I use them a lot in my own practice. On that same token, I've had a lot of problems with Etsy sellers that are trying to turn over counterfeit merchandise. For instance, we talked about Miss Cleo earlier.
Well, there's folks that are trying to sell the Miss Cleo Tarot Power Deck, an actual deck of cards that she was selling in the early 2000s, and they're selling them for $30 and above for an unopened pack. The thing is, you can find unopened packs of the Miss Cleo Tarot Power Deck for under $8. And they are the genuine article. On top of that, another problem I've run into is I would love to get my hands on a copy of the tarot from Cyberpunk 2077, and you can find people that are trying to sell that, but they're trying to sell it for like 60 bucks, and it's a majors-only deck, and CD Projekt Red never actually produced that tarot deck, so that whole thing is just IP theft through and through.
And on top of that, there are Etsy sellers that are reselling counterfeit decks with all of the descriptions we talked about before. So, what I'm gonna say there is: if you're on Etsy, buyer beware. I'm also gonna throw in a quick word about AI decks. Now, while technically AI decks are not counterfeit decks, unless it's a counterfeit of an AI deck, but who cares? The thing you have to keep in mind is that the reason people use AI in the first place, among other reasons, is to keep costs down.
So imagine having all the benefits of keeping your costs low and none of the risks of stealing someone's IP. So if you suspect that a deck is AI, I would also avoid that because that does leave you vulnerable to a lot of the same scams.
What you can do about it
So we've talked a lot about how to identify counterfeit decks. Let's talk about what we can do about it. And obviously, the next chapter starts with a bit of shilling. Just to get it out of the way, yes, I know that I'm talking to you on The Art of Divination Podcast presented by Artisan Tarot, and you can buy all the great stuff that they make at www.artisantarot.com. And of course, when I say that, you are gonna naturally assume that I am shilling because I'm being paid to.
But I assure you this bit of shilling has more to do with vengeance because I have caught other companies out there selling counterfeit knockoff versions of the stuff I sell. So here's the compromise. I am gonna tell you full-throatedly and from the bottom of my heart that all the decks that are sold at Artisan Tarot are authentic decks and books that are either published by Artisan Tarot or that are purchased directly from the artists and publishers who produce them.
And if you don't believe me, go ahead and do the research for yourself, which is a thing you should be doing with every seller anyway. Now, what happens if you actually find an example of somebody selling counterfeit merchandise? Well, when it comes to brick-and-mortar shops, I can advise just a wee bit of tact. Go ahead and do what I do, which is go ahead and take one of those decks up to the counter, let them know, hey, it looks like you've got some counterfeit merchandise here. You might want to look into that.
This gives the shop owners a bit of a chance to save face, and you know you're educating them on what is a problem. And obviously, if they continue to sell counterfeit merchandise after clearing through that particular stock, that's when you can take things to the next level and start leaving your bad Google Maps and Yelp reviews, right? When it comes to online retailers, though, I am far less afraid of a confrontation. I will go ahead and one star right away and list in the one-star review what it is I had a problem with.
In fact, it's also a great way to see if you're dealing with counterfeit or AI decks, is you know, go to the reviews, click on the one-star, see if there's a lot of people complaining about those things. And when it's an online retailer, you can also report the storefront, report bad sellers. Now, in the case of a lot of things that are counterfeited, say from myself, I've also found that there are also independent websites that are basically just all counterfeit stuff. And all you can really do at that point is warn the community about them.
Passing the knowledge on
Tarot has a lot of great traditions about passing on knowledge. One of my personal favorites being the old adage about how you're not supposed to buy your first tarot deck, you're supposed to get it as a gift. And while I don't think that this is mandatory, I think it's a nice tradition. And the reason why is because when you gift somebody their first tarot deck, you are also taking responsibility for their first steps on their tarot journey. You become part of the provenance that leads them to their tarot understanding, and as such, that includes the knowledge that they get. And important to that knowledge is how to identify when you're buying a bad deck, a counterfeit deck, or a deck that can rip them off or all three.
Because let's face it, this isn't going to be their only tarot deck. Eventually, they're gonna experiment; they're gonna want to get fun decks or gimmick decks or decks that have artwork that speaks to them more closely. And when they are ready to start making those purchasing decisions, you want to give them the tools to make smart, responsible decisions that also show respect for the artists and the publishers and the writers and everybody that puts in all of this hard work to contribute to their craft. And besides, wouldn't it be nice to push back against that big reputation of gullibility that haunts us?
Because remember when I told you about those comments I used to get when people would cite Miss Cleo and the Psychic Friends Network, the biggest complaint was always that they prey on gullible people. They scammed my grandma out of a bunch of money, or they ripped off my uncle from a bunch of money. They just scam gullible people. Again, a fundamental misunderstanding of how the scam actually worked. And also, I would personally include that maybe if you called your grandma more often, she wouldn't be paying somebody four bucks a minute just to have somebody to talk to, but that's another topic for another time. The point is this: there is no inherent gullibility in tarot, and the way we can reinforce that is to inform one another of the facts.
We can keep each other safe; we can keep each other educated; we can reinforce good ethics when we're dealing with what is a craft. Tarot is a form of art, an art of divination, and an art is only as good as how we treat our artists. And if that still doesn't convince you, then let me put it to you like this. If you're still buying the knockoff decks, it's probably for the reasons I buy my knockoff box fans. It saves you money. You save a couple bucks. And maybe you don't care that that couple bucks you're saving equates to tens of dollars that are being taken out of the pockets of the people that actually made those things.
But what you're really doing is you're supporting and enabling scam artists while at the same time getting your hands on an inferior product that you're just gonna have to replace anyway. It's also kind of a Vimes Boots theory thing going on there. So consider that when it comes to counterfeit decks, saving a couple bucks is gonna cost you a whole lot more than a couple bucks.
Closing and where to find us
This has been The Art of Divination Podcast, presented by Artisan Tarot, publishers of both historical and modern tarot decks, and your one-stop shop for all things metaphysical. Look for many of the items we discussed today, the real versions and not the counterfeits, at www.artisantarot.com. As for myself, I've been Z. Mann Zilla, and you can find more about me at www.Pandangit.com. I wish all of you the best of luck on your own divination journeys. Happy reading, and thank you for your time.
