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Tarot Decks and Beings and Creatures meet at exactly one point in this atlas, through Tarot of the Divine, a 2020 deck built to set the traditional seventy eight card structure against a different world folklore, deity or fairy tale on every card. Its one connection into beings and creatures is a wolf.

A Global Deck, Card by Card

Tarot of the Divine's own record sets out its method: it keeps the traditional tarot's structure and sequence while drawing its imagery from cultures across the globe rather than a single tradition, illustrated by Yoshi Yoshitani and published by Clarkson Potter in 2020. The atlas's own relationship note is direct rather than inferred: Fenrir is confirmed as one of the deck's own named Minor Arcana inspirations from Norse myth, the deck's stated method, one tradition per card, landing on Norse legend for at least this one.

A Story About a Promise, Not a Monster

Fenrir's own record is far more legally minded than modern retellings suggest. He is a wolf of Norse myth, one of Loki's children by the giantess Angrboda; the Prose Edda tells the binding in detail, the gods raising him, finding him growing beyond safety, and failing twice with ordinary fetters before the dwarves make Gleipnir from six impossible things. He agrees to test it only if a god will put a hand in his mouth as surety, and Tyr does, and loses it. At Ragnarok he breaks loose and swallows Odin, and is killed in turn by Vidar. The atlas's own record is explicit that this is a story about an oath given in bad faith and the price paid for it, which is the figure a 2020 deck built on world folklore chose to stand in for one card of the Minor Arcana.

Where To Read More

• Tarot of the DivineThe deck whose only bridge into beings and creatures is this one figure
• FenrirWolvesThe wolf named directly as one of the deck's own Minor Arcana inspirations