The first thing you notice is that no one is looking back at you. The cards of The Wild Unknown Tarot show animals, trees, bones, and stars, but never a human face. This absence is not an accident. It is the deck’s central argument: that the archetypes of the tarot live in the natural world before they live in us.
The Wild Unknown Tarot is a 78-card deck created by artist Kim Krans, first self-published in 2012 and later released by HarperCollins in 2015. It follows the standard Rider-Waite-Smith structure but replaces human figures with animals, plants, and natural symbols rendered in black ink with selective color accents. The deck includes a companion guidebook written by Krans and has sold over a million copies, making it one of the most commercially successful independent tarot decks of the twenty-first century.
Where the Deck Came From
Kim Krans began drawing the deck in 2008 during a period of personal upheaval. She had studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and worked as a painter and illustrator, but the tarot project emerged from a private practice rather than a commercial ambition. Krans has stated in interviews that she drew one card per day without planning the full sequence, allowing each image to emerge from the previous one. The process took roughly four years.
The deck was first printed in a small run of 500 copies in 2012 and sold through her website and select boutiques. Word spread through social media and tarot forums. By 2014, the deck had developed a cult following, and HarperCollins acquired the rights for a mass-market edition released in 2015. The commercial edition included a revised guidebook and a slightly larger card size. The deck has since been translated into multiple languages and remains in continuous print.
That origin story explains why the deck feels like a single sustained vision rather than a curated collection of images. Each card is a diary entry, not an illustration assignment.
How the Animals Carry the Archetypes
The Wild Unknown departs from the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition most visibly in its treatment of the Major Arcana. The Fool is a wolf pup standing at a cliff edge, unaware of the drop. The Magician is a fox holding a wand, surrounded by the four suits as animal tracks. The High Priestess is an owl perched between two pillars, her wings folded in the shape of a crescent moon. The Death card shows a snake shedding its skin, the old pattern curling away from the new.
Every major arcana card replaces a human figure with an animal whose behavior mirrors the card’s traditional meaning. The effect is not decorative. It forces the reader to think in terms of instinct, cycle, and biological fact rather than personality or morality. The Devil is not a horned figure with a captive couple. It is a goat tethered to a post by a rope it could easily break. The message is the same: you are only trapped by what you refuse to leave.
The Minor Arcana uses natural objects. Cups are chalices, wands are branches, swords are feathers, and pentacles are stones. The court cards are animals arranged in hierarchy: the Page of Wands is a lizard, the Knight is a tiger, the Queen is a lioness, the King is a stag. The suits progress from the smallest creature to the largest, suggesting a movement from potential to authority.
The color palette is restrained. Most cards are black ink on cream stock, with one or two accent colors per suit. The Cups use a deep blue. The Wands use a rust orange. The Swords use a pale gray. The Pentacles use a muted green. This restraint means the color that does appear carries weight. The red of the Ace of Wands is not a background detail. It is the event.
Reading Without Faces
Readers who work with The Wild Unknown often describe a shift in how they approach a reading. Without human faces, there is no projection of emotion onto the figures. The animals do not smile or frown. They simply are. This makes the deck particularly suited for readings that focus on underlying patterns rather than surface outcomes.
Many practitioners use it alongside the companion guidebook, which Krans wrote in a direct, almost spare style. Each card receives a single page: a keyword, a short description, and a reflection question. The guidebook does not assign reversed meanings, leaving that decision to the reader. Some readers ignore reversals entirely with this deck. Others find that the black-and-white imagery makes reversals more legible, since the composition inverts rather than merely tilts.
In practice, the deck’s muted palette and matte finish require soft lighting to read clearly. We have found that candlelight works well, as the black ink absorbs rather than reflects the flame. The cards shuffle easily despite their thickness, but the matte surface shows wear quickly. This is not a flaw. A well-used Wild Unknown deck carries its history in the scuffed edges and softened corners. The white borders gray with handling. The corners round. The deck becomes physically softer over time, which mirrors what happens to the reader.
How It Compares to the Tradition
The deck that The Wild Unknown is most often compared to is the Rider-Waite-Smith, and the comparison is useful but incomplete. Both decks follow the same structural system: 22 Major Arcana, 56 Minor Arcana, four suits, court cards. Both assign the same traditional meanings to each card. But where the Rider-Waite-Smith deck uses narrative scenes with human figures, The Wild Unknown uses single animals in symbolic poses. The effect is closer to a bestiary than a storybook.
Among independent decks, The Wild Unknown shares DNA with the Linestrider Tarot and the Prisma Visions Tarot, both of which also prioritize natural imagery and hand-drawn aesthetics. But The Wild Unknown predates most of the indie boom and remains the benchmark for artistic tarot decks that maintain structural fidelity to the tradition.
It is not a Marseille deck. It does not attempt to reconstruct historical forms. It is a modern deck that uses modern visual language to access the same archetypes. The pip cards of the Marseille tradition show only the number and suit, leaving the reader to supply the meaning. The Wild Unknown gives you an image but refuses to give you a human story. The result is a middle path between the abstraction of Marseille and the literalism of Rider-Waite-Smith.
What People Get Wrong
The most persistent misconception about The Wild Unknown is that it is a beginner deck. Its popularity outside the tarot community has led many to assume it is simplified or watered down. It is not. The deck requires the reader to know the traditional meanings of the cards, because the images do not always illustrate those meanings directly. The Five of Cups shows three fallen cups and two standing, but the image is abstract enough that a novice may miss the emotional content. The Ten of Swords shows a single feather pierced by nine others, but the sense of finality and betrayal is not immediately readable without context.
A second misconception is that the deck is exclusively for nature-based or pagan practice. The animal imagery leads some to assume it is a Wiccan or druidic deck. Krans has not positioned it within any specific religious tradition, and the guidebook avoids any reference to ritual or deity. The deck works as well for a secular reader as for a ceremonial magician.
A third misconception is that the lack of human figures makes the deck unsuitable for relationship readings. In our experience, the opposite is true. The animal archetypes bypass the reader’s assumptions about gender, age, and appearance, allowing the relationship dynamics to emerge more clearly. The Two of Cups shows two wolves facing each other, their breath mingling. No one needs to ask which wolf is which person.
FAQ
Is The Wild Unknown Tarot based on the Rider-Waite-Smith system?
Yes. It follows the same 78-card structure, suit system, and traditional card meanings, but replaces human figures with animal and natural imagery.
Does the deck come with a guidebook?
Yes. The commercial edition includes a 208-page guidebook written by Kim Krans, with keywords, descriptions, and reflection questions for each card.
Is The Wild Unknown suitable for beginners?
It depends on the beginner. Readers who learn best through visual intuition may find it accessible, but the deck assumes familiarity with traditional tarot meanings and does not illustrate them literally.
Why are there no human figures in the deck?
Kim Krans has stated that animals allowed her to access the archetypes without the baggage of human representation, and that the natural world carries its own symbolic language that predates human culture.
The Wild Unknown Tarot occupies a rare position in modern tarot: it is both a commercial success and a genuinely innovative work. Its influence can be seen in dozens of decks that followed, but none have replicated its particular balance of simplicity and depth. For a broader look at how tarot decks are structured and how to choose one for your practice, see our guide to tarot decks. The animal symbolism that runs through the deck connects to a longer tradition of zoomorphic archetypes in divination. And for readers who want to work with the cards directly, our guide to reading tarot intuitively offers a method that pairs well with Krans’s approach.