In 2014, Adriene Jenik felt called to contribute to the climate change conversation in a meaningful way. The Arizona State University art professor, who grew up with a professional psychic mother, turned to the “guidance system of the tarot.” It took her two years to develop her own tarot deck, crafting each card out of agave paper and recycled cotton and linen, hand-drawing a unique symbol on each and adorning them with plant-based pigments. She began using the ECOtarot deck to perform free “climate future readings” – personalized predictions about the shifts in our environment and how they pertain to our individual futures – at local farmers markets and eventually via Zoom. “The thing about the tarot that’s really beautiful is that it shuffles your thoughts and your regular patterns of thinking,” she says. “What’s exciting in this context is that people have their shtick. What the cards do is they crack that open a bit, and it makes for different kinds of associations and a very deep exchange.” In 2019, she proliferated her practice by creating a reproduction of the original ECOtarot deck, available for purchase through ASU’s Connect Center. Jenik acknowledges the complex range of emotions surrounding the climate crisis and the “ecological grief” that we collectively carry. “Sometimes people sit down and immediately start crying. It’s taken me by surprise.”
ECOtarot card deck
$40
theconnectcenter.asu.edu/ecotarot-deck
