A reader sat cross-legged on a library floor with two decks spread before her. The Wild Unknown’s black box held cards that looked like ink drawings on heavy stock. The Wildwood’s circular box contained images of antlered figures and green-cloaked women. She wanted to know which one would answer her question and she was not sure either deck would. Both are called “nature” decks. Both avoid the traditional imagery of the Rider-Waite-Smith system. But they come from different worlds, different decades, and different understandings of what a tarot deck is supposed to do.
We keep both in our reference library. We use both. They do not replace each other.
Comparing the Wild Unknown Tarot and the Wildwood Tarot means understanding that one is a psychological mirror and the other is a seasonal compass. The Wild Unknown (2012) strips tarot to its elemental bones using black-and-white linework and animal symbols. The Wildwood Tarot (2011) embeds its cards in an explicitly Pagan calendar year, drawing on British folklore, the Green Man tradition, and the Wheel of the Year. One asks “what do you feel?” The other asks “where are you in the cycle?”
A Short History, in Publication Order
The Wildwood Tarot appeared first. Created by Mark Ryan (author), John Matthews (author) and Will Worthington (artist), it was published in 2011 by Sterling Ethos. Ryan had been a member of the original London cast of Equus and later worked on the 1994 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Matthews is a well-known scholar of Celtic mythology and Arthurian tradition, author of dozens of books on Western esotericism. Worthington had already illustrated the Druid Plant Oracle and The Druid Animal Oracle and his style carries that lineage: figures rendered in muted reds, greens and browns, faces half-hidden by hoods or branches, each card a scene from a forest that feels ancient but not imaginary.
The Wild Unknown Tarot arrived the following year, self-published by Kim Krans through her own company. Krans is an artist and writer based in New York state, trained in drawing and printmaking, who created the deck as an art project before it became a publishing phenomenon. The original edition sold out quickly and HarperElixir picked it up for wider distribution in 2016. Krans’ style is entirely her own: black, white, and a single accent color (red for the Major Arcana, blue for Cups, green for Pentacles, etc.), with no human figures at all. Every card is an animal, a geometric shape, or a skeletal form drawn with fine pen lines against a black background.
The coincidence of their near-simultaneous publication created the confusion that still follows them. Readers discovered them within months of each other. Both were called “nature decks” by reviewers who had not looked closely at either. The truth is stranger: one uses nature as a language for the psyche. The other uses nature as a record of actual seasonal practice.
How Each Deck Reimagines the Major Arcana
The differences begin with the Major Arcana, the twenty-two cards that map the larger journey.
The Wild Unknown keeps the traditional Fool-to-World sequence but replaces human figures with animals and natural objects. The Fool is a wolf pup balanced on a cliff edge, its paw lifted, its tail curling upward. The Magician is a black-and-white spider suspended in its web, legs spread like a sigil. The High Priestess is a moon with a third eye at its center, ringed by phases. The Tower is a struck tree, split open, its roots exposed. These images do not illustrate a story. They illustrate a psychological state. The wolf pup does not represent a journey through the woods. It represents the Fool position itself: potential, risk, the moment before the fall.
The Wildwood replaces the Major Arcana entirely. There is no Fool. There is no Magician. Instead the deck follows the seasonal cycle of the ancient British calendar, beginning with the Green Man (card 0) and ending at the World Tree (card XXI). The Green Man is not the Fool. He is the face of spring pushing through winter bark, leaves curling from his mouth, his eyes dark and patient. The Seer (replacing the High Priestess) is a woman in a blue hood standing at a forest threshold. The Blasted Oak (replacing the Tower) is exactly what it says: a massive tree shattered by lightning, its branches broken, a single red leaf still clinging.
The Wildwood’s Major Arcana follows a narrative arc from birth to death to rebirth that matches the agricultural year. The Wheel of the Year (card X) does not show a zodiac wheel. It shows a circular calendar marked by the eight seasonal festivals: Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lammas, Mabon. The card asks the reader not “what is your destiny?” but “what season are you in?”
The Court Cards: People vs. Presences
Both decks abandon the traditional court titles (King, Queen, Knight, Page) but they do so in opposite directions.
The Wild Unknown uses roles that describe power dynamics: the Ancestor (King), the Nurturer (Queen), the Explorer (Knight), the Seeker (Page). The Ancestor is a stag with antlers like branches, standing in profile, its eye a white dot on black. The Nurturer is a bear with a cub pressed against its flank. The Explorer is a raven mid-flight, wings spread, caught in motion. These are not characters with personalities. They are archetypes rendered as animals, stripped of context, designed to be felt rather than narrated.
The Wildwood uses titles drawn from folklore and early medieval British society: the Bard (Page), the Archer (Knight), the Ancestor (Queen), the Guardian (King). The Bard is a figure with a harp, half-hidden by ivy, standing at the edge of a clearing. The Archer is a hooded woman drawing a bow, her arrow aimed beyond the card frame. The Ancestor is an old woman with a staff, her face lined, her cloak the color of bark. The Guardian is a man in a wolf-skin cloak carrying a spear. These are characters embedded in a specific cultural landscape. They have histories implied by their tools and their postures.
The practical consequence is simple. The Wild Unknown courts work best for questions about inner states (“what part of me is active right now?”). The Wildwood courts work best for questions about roles and actions (“what should I do?”).
The Minor Arcana: Symbols vs. Scenes
Here the decks diverge most sharply.
The Wild Unknown Minors are minimalist to the point of abstraction. The Two of Cups shows two overlapping crescent shapes. The Five of Pentacles shows five coins arranged in a cross, one falling away. The Ten of Swords shows ten blades arranged like a ribcage around a central spine. There are no figures, no landscapes, no actions. The reader is forced to rely entirely on the traditional meaning of the number and the suit, with the visual serving as a mnemonic anchor. A reader who does not know that the Five of Pentacles traditionally signifies material loss will not guess it from the image. The deck assumes a prior knowledge of tarot basics.
The Wildwood Minors are narrative scenes pulled from British folk customs and the seasonal cycle. The Two of Vessels (Cups) shows two figures passing a bowl between them under a full moon, a ritual exchange of drink. The Five of Stones (Pentacles) shows a figure crouched in a stone circle, hands over its face, the stones casting long shadows. The Ten of Arrows (Swords) shows a hunter walking away from a row of ten arrows stuck in the ground, her back to the viewer, the scene suggesting a decision that cannot be reversed. Each card tells a fragment of a story. A reader who has never studied tarot can look at the Five of Stones and feel isolation, exhaustion, the weight of standing stones.
The Wild Unknown is a deck for people who already know what the cards mean and want a clean visual meditation. The Wildwood is a deck for people who want the images to teach them.
The Philosophical Difference
The two decks rest on different assumptions about what tarot is.
The Wild Unknown is psychological. It treats the cards as mirrors of the unconscious, images that surface what is already inside the reader. Krans has said in interviews that she drew the cards as a form of personal divination, a way to understand her own patterns. The deck’s all-black backgrounds and stark white lines create a sense of interiority. These cards do not depict an external world. They depict the mind’s landscape.
The Wildwood is cosmological. It treats the cards as records of a living tradition, images that connect the reader to seasonal rhythms, ancestral practices and the land itself. The deck’s green-brown palette and detailed forest scenes create a sense of place. These cards depict a world the reader is invited to enter, not a world the reader generates.
The difference matters in practice. A reader using the Wild Unknown for a question about career will look at the card and ask “what pattern in my psyche does this represent?” A reader using the Wildwood for the same question will ask “what season of the year does this match, and what work belongs to that season?”
Both approaches work. They work for different people and different questions.
Common Misconceptions
The most persistent error is treating the Wild Unknown as a beginner deck. Its stripped-down imagery looks simple, but simplicity is not accessibility. The deck offers no narrative cues, no human expressions, no contextual scenes. A beginner who does not already know that the Three of Cups indicates celebration will see three overlapping gold crescents and have no starting point for interpretation.
The second error is treating the Wildwood as a “Celtic” deck. It draws on British folklore but its sources are specifically English and Welsh, filtered through the 19th-century Romantic revival and the 20th-century Pagan reconstruction. The seasonal calendar it uses is the modern Wheel of the Year as codified by Ross Nichols and Gerald Gardner in the 1950s, not an unbroken ancient tradition. The deck is a contemporary Pagan artifact, not a historical document.
The third error is assuming the two decks are interchangeable because they both use nature imagery. Nature in the Wild Unknown is a symbolic language. Nature in the Wildwood is a lived environment. A raven in the Wild Unknown represents the Explorer archetype. A raven in the Wildwood is a bird that actually appears in British woodlands and carries specific folkloric associations (messenger, trickster, witness).
FAQ
Can I use the Wild Unknown and Wildwood Tarot together in the same reading?
Yes, but we recommend against mixing them in a single spread. Their languages are different enough that switching between them mid-reading produces confusion rather than depth. Use one deck per session.
Which deck is better for beginners?
Neither. The Wild Unknown assumes prior tarot knowledge. The Wildwood assumes familiarity with Pagan seasonal practices. A beginner who learns on either deck will need a companion book and substantial external study.
Does the Wildwood Tarot follow the Rider-Waite-Smith system?
In broad structure yes (78 cards, four suits, Major and Minor Arcana), but its card titles, suit names (Vessels, Arrows, Stones, Bows) and imagery diverge significantly. The meanings align with RWS tradition but the visual language is original.
Which deck has better card stock?
The Wild Unknown original edition had thin, flexible stock that warped easily. Later HarperElixir printings improved the quality. The Wildwood uses thick, matte card stock with a slightly textured surface that handles well. Neither is considered premium by collectors.
The Verdict We Keep in the Library
We reach for the Wild Unknown when the question is about the self. We reach for the Wildwood when the question is about the world. One draws inward. One points outward. Both belong on the shelf, but they belong in different hands.
The reader on the library floor eventually chose the Wildwood, because she wanted to know not what she felt but what the season demanded. We watched her open the circular box, pull the Green Man from the deck, and set it on the table. She did not ask what it meant. She asked where she was in the cycle.
That is the question the Wildwood answers. The Wild Unknown answers a different one. Between the two of them, a reader can ask almost anything.
For a deeper look at how decks reimagine the Major Arcana, explore our Tarot section. You might also find our guide on the Wheel of the Year in tarot useful for understanding the Wildwood’s calendar structure. And if you want to compare more nature-oriented decks, our glossary of tarot symbols includes entries on the animals and plants that appear in both decks.