Tarot with Karma Steele
A deck. A language.
A living practice.
Explore Ad Astra, the companion book, and classes that help you read the cards through image, archetype, and context.
From the first image that speaks to you to the connections that bring a reading into focus—there is a place to begin.
Pre-order Ad Astra on Kickstarter →Learn with Karma
Ad Astra · Now on Kickstarter
From the shadows to the stars.
A tarot deck born from more than three decades of reading, teaching, and exploring the language of archetypes. Created by Karma Steele, Ad Astra invites you to meet the images, recognize the patterns, and bring awareness to the choices before you.
The artwork and visual language are established. Your backing helps carry the project through final proofing, printing, and production into a physical edition you can hold.
Pre-order Ad Astra on Kickstarter →
A selection from the Major Arcana. Tap any card to see the artwork larger.
The Minor Arcana
Four suits. The texture of everyday life.
Cups, Swords, Wands, and Pentacles give form to the emotional, mental, creative, and material dimensions of experience. Begin with the Aces: four ways to meet a new possibility.
The companion book
Ex Umbris Ad Astra:
The Architecture of Tarot
The deck and book grew from the same body of work. The book explores how tarot works: the structure beneath the symbols, the relationships between cards, and the role of the person doing the reading.
It brings a lifetime of study and teaching into a companion for readers who want to understand the language and develop their own practice.
Explore the deck & book rewards →The story behind Ad Astra · Karma Steele
The deck I spent my life trying to find.
Ad Astra is a 78-card, image-activated tarot deck born from more than three decades of reading, teaching, and studying the symbolic language beneath tarot. It grew alongside Ex Umbris Ad Astra: The Architecture of Tarot, the companion teaching book for people who want to understand how tarot works.
Tarot became part of my life when I was a single mother looking for a way to support my family. A friend was reading for a tarot hotline, and I decided to try. The Egyptian imagery in my first deck spoke to me like a second language. Other decks left me translating. That difference became a question I would follow for decades: what makes an image speak?
I collected decks, studied their imagery, compared interpretations, and kept notes. Astrology, archetypes, teaching, and journals reaching back to 1989 became part of that investigation. When I began gathering the material into a study guide, I found an entire body of work waiting to be brought together.
The guide grew into handouts, workbooks, slides, a workshop, a Learning Lab, and a learning library. The book gave that work a structure. Then the teaching called for images of its own.
A twenty-year dream
“THIS is something I can teach from.”
I had wanted to create a deck for twenty years. Every deck I worked with gave me something, but I kept searching for images that held the movement, symbolism, and relationships I wanted to teach.
I began making visual mockups, working from specific ideas about the symbols and the direction and posture of the figures. I expected a collection of images that would need to be coaxed into belonging together. Instead, a world began to emerge.
When I saw that the cards could carry what I had been trying to express, I cried. A long-held passion was becoming something I could put on the table and teach from.
Why Ad Astra?
Ex umbris ad astra — from the shadows to the stars. For me, tarot is a language of awareness, transformation, and choice. Even an ending can hold the beginning of an alchemical change.
The image opens a conversation. You recognize something, become aware of a pattern, and participate in what comes next. That is the heart of this deck: imagery that invites recognition, and a practice that leaves room for your own choices.
Meet the cards · in Karma’s words
The High Priestess
She comes! She is the High Priestess, the walker between worlds, she translates for us all things esoteric, the wisdom keeper. She has her scrolls, and her healing drums. Her open body positioning displays a master at work, her body in perfect alignment, vulnerability without sexuality she breathes in the Aether and transmutes for us. The gong, her Herald, she is not heard, she is felt.
— Karma Steele
Read the Priestess update →Bring the first edition into the world
Pre-order through Kickstarter.
The deck’s artwork and visual language are established. The campaign is the bridge to a physical edition: final proofing, print preparation, physical proofs, manufacturing, packaging, and fulfillment.
The planned deck includes 78 cards in standard tarot size, a custom box, and an included booklet, with gold gilded edges planned for the edition. The larger companion teaching book is a separate part of the project, with room to explore the architecture and practice of tarot in depth.
Choose the reward that suits you on Kickstarter, where you can see exactly what is included, estimated delivery, shipping information, and production updates. Your pledge supports the first print run; this is a crowdfunded project still moving toward production.
These displays let you explore the artwork and the world of Ad Astra. Final printed color, materials, and finishing will be checked through physical proofs.
Learn tarot with Karma
The deck is a language.
Learn its grammar. Develop your practice.
Bring a deck you connect with, a journal, and your curiosity. Start with the Architecture of Tarot workshop, then go deeper through four weeks of coaching, demonstrations, questions, and reading practice.
Start here · Live on Zoom
Architecture of Tarot
$49
Sunday, October 25, 2026
2–3:30 p.m. Mountain Time
Explore archetype, element, number, and context. Notice what arrives and begin recognizing how cards speak together.
One live workshop, with replay access after the recording is ready.
Workshop details & enrollment →
Go deeper · Four weeks live on Zoom
Tarot Learning Lab
$197 for all four weeks
Tuesdays: October 27; November 3, 10 & 17, 2026
6–7:30 p.m. Mountain Time
Develop your reading skills through live coaching, practice, Q&A, and demonstrations with the decks students bring.
Includes access to your cohort recordings as they become available.
Learning Lab details & enrollment →Prefer self-paced study? Workshop replay ($22) and recorded Learning Lab ($111) are planned after the first live sessions have been recorded and prepared.
A language you can learn to see.
A figure’s posture, a direction of movement, a symbol repeated across cards: these are openings into a reading. The deck, book, and classes belong to the same practice of looking, recognizing, and making connections.
How the artwork was made
Karma developed the concepts, symbolism, prompts, selections, revisions, composition, borders, titles, sequencing, and curation. AI tools supported the visual rendering. Read the campaign’s art-process disclosure for the full account of how Ad Astra was created.
Keep exploring
Your tarot learning library.
Begin with the free study guide
Explore the Major and Minor Arcana, court cards, spreads, and practical ways to build your reading skills.
Open The Alchemy of Tarot →Stories, cards, and ongoing study
Visit Karma’s Substack for tarot writing, learning resources, and the ideas behind this evolving body of work.
Explore Karma on Substack →Already a student? Go to your student account.