Goddess of Love Tarot Deck by Gabriela Herstik and Illustrated by Julia Popescu

Today, I’m talking about a very specific kind of portal: The Goddess of Love Tarot Deck: A Book and Deck for Embodying The Erotic Divine Feminine by Gabriela Herstik and illustrated by Julia Popescu, who also goes by snakes4hair. This isn’t just a deck; it’s an entire ritual system for working with Venusian energy, erotic embodiment, and the divine feminine in all her messy, sacred, sensual glory.

My Story with This Deck

I didn’t stumble on this deck by accident—I sought it out.

I’d been following Gabriela Herstik on Instagram for years, reading her work on witchcraft, sex magic, and goddess devotion. I’d read her books, seen her sacred slut coven offerings, and watched her lean more and more deeply into Venusian, erotic, and ritual work. So when I heard she was creating a tarot deck specifically centered on the erotic divine feminine, my ears perked up.

The Goddess of Love Tarot felt like the natural next step in her body of work—and in mine.

When the deck arrived, it was immediately clear that this wasn’t “just another tarot.” The book is substantial—closer to a short occult text than a little white booklet.
It felt like being handed an entire love-and-lust-centered magical curriculum wrapped in pink and roses.

This is one of the few decks I use not just as a reader, but as a student and practitioner. I reach for it when I want to reconnect to my own sensuality, creative power, and softness—not as something passive, but as something sacred and potent.

Style:

This deck is unapologetically Venusian. Pink ink, red borders, roses everywhere, statues of goddesses and sacred feminine figures, dolphins, oceans, soft bodies, altars, and lush textures. Even the guidebook is printed entirely in pink, which makes it feel like an object of ritual all on its own.

Structure:

The structure is rooted in the Rider–Waite–Smith system, but intentionally reimagined through a divine feminine lens.

The book also weaves in a wide range of goddess traditions—not just Greco-Roman, but Sumerian, African diasporic, Hindu, Egyptian, and more. You’ll meet figures like Inanna, Oshun, Kali, Lilith, Isis, Mary Magdalene, and beyond. It’s very much a global, intersectional approach to the divine feminine.

Imagery:

Everything leans sensual and evocative: flowing hair, soft curves, lush flowers, water, fruit, silk, and light. Even the borders and color choices feel intentional—reds and pinks that echo flesh, blood, desire, and heart energy.

What I use it for:

This is a deck I reach for when the question or situation is explicitly about love, lust, desire, or relationship to self as a sensual, embodied being. It’s also powerful for creative work and magic that centers the body, pleasure, and Venusian themes.

What I don’t use it for:

This is not my default deck for every querent or every situation. It’s a powerful ally, but it asks for consent, readiness, and a certain openness to the erotic as sacred.
💭 Today's Tarot Pull:

From The Goddess of Love Tarot Deck, I pulled The Empress (Upright).

The Empress in this deck is Venus herself—oceanic, lush, radiant, and deeply in love with the act of creating beauty. She’s the embodiment of pleasure as nourishment, desire as a compass, and creativity as a living, breathing force.

Reflective prompts on this card:

• Where in my life am I being invited to receive more pleasure instead of rationing it?

• What wants to be created through me right now—creatively, emotionally, or erotically?

• How can I soften into beauty, rather than treating it as a reward I have to earn?

• What would it look like to treat my desires as sacred guidance instead of something to apologize for?

Ways to Connect & Support

• Get my⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ FREE 2025 5-Card Tarot Spread PDF⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ + magic straight to your inbox
• Join our last ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Full Moon Circle of 2025

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello and welcome to Everyday Tarot, your daily dive into the
divine wisdom of the tarot. I'm your host Camille, a
Saunders healer, intuitive tarotreader, and professional wedge.
And today I'm talking about the Goddess of Love Tarot, a book
and deck for embodying the erotic divine feminine.
Whether you're a seasoned tarot reader or just starting to
explore, this podcast offers daily insights, intuitive

(00:23):
messages, and practical advice drawn from the cards.
Each episode is designed to helpyou connect with your inner
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(00:43):
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(01:03):
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fit. I'll link the be a guest on my
podcast form to fill out in the show notes.
And if you're local and you wantto meet me in person, you can
join us for our last full moon circle of 2025 this Sunday,
December 7th or will you will celebrate the full moon with me

(01:25):
and my colleague Izzy for an evening of connection,
reflection, and ritual. We meet at Thresholds Collective
in Tacoma the first Sunday of the month to welcome in the full
moon together. So tickets for our December 7th
event are up now and are still available to purchase as of this
recording. So go ahead and check that out.
We would love to see you there, and you can find the links for

(01:46):
any of these offers in the show notes or on my website,
camillesaunders.com/everyday Tarot, in addition to the images
of the cards I pull on each episode.
All right, so welcome to season 19 where I'm talking all about
different decks and how to use them.
Today I am talking about it's got a long name, the Goddess of

(02:07):
Love, Tarot, a book and deck forembodying the erotic divine
feminine by Gabriella Herstick and illustrated by Julia
Popescu, who's also known as snakes for hair, if you want to
find them on Instagram. So this is a collaboration,
right? So we have someone here who was
the author of the sort of deck guidebook and this one I would

(02:29):
definitely consider a book. It has every card, astrological
correspondences, affirmations, journal questions, and sometimes
rituals associated with every card.
So it's a lot more like the sizeof a journal or like short
novel. I would say it's got like over

(02:49):
100 pages in the deck guidebook.It's got quite a long
introduction about the deck itself and kind of how it was
created, what each is about, howto read the tarot, different
spreads, card of the day, three card spreads, life, death,

(03:10):
rebirth. So they've made some spreads of
their own in here and then some spreads related to the deck
itself and a lot of different things.
So it also talks about like different ways to use the tarot
deck, like using the cards as a Talisman, are practicing sex
magic with the cards, are using astrological correspondences of

(03:34):
the cards, just kind of get to know them, keeping a tarot
journal or grimmery and a blessing for that.
Yeah, it's a beautiful. It's the whole deck and book are
all printed in pink ink, which is like kind of incredible.
It's a goddess of love tarot. So it's very Venusian, very like

(03:58):
associated with Venus. It has a lot of pink and roses.
I think we have a like image of the statue of Venus on the cover
here. The back of the deck guidebook
says may the Goddess of love bless you and keep you.
May she guide you deeper into the mysteries of your heart.
May she hold you on your journeyin perfect love and perfect

(04:18):
dress. And may these cards be keys that
you unlock her energy within you.
So this whole thing is like its own ritual, I would say.
So that is the style of the deck.
It is a tarot deck. They do change some things from
the Rider Waite Smith traditional imagery.
So I got this deck. I'll talk a bit more about that

(04:40):
in a second. I got this deck online.
I've been following Gabriella Herstick, Gabby Herstick on
Instagram for a long time. I've been a part of their
Patreon before. They sort of revamped their
Patreon maybe a year or two ago.And now it's a very like it's
its own coven. They call it slot coven, and she
runs rituals every month and hasguidebooks and all sorts of

(05:03):
things. So it's a lot more detailed now.
But when I was kind of in her Patreon previously, it was like
a couple bucks a month. You could participate and she
would kind of run these workshops with her patrons.
She's written a bunch of books, so I have the Sacred Sacks.

(05:25):
I'm sorry. I'm looking for it on my shelf.
Yeah. Sacred Sacks, which is one of
her more recent books. She also did The Witching, the
Elements and a couple of other books.
She's written sort of prolifically, I would say done a
lot of like articles and different things.

(05:46):
Yeah, inner witch, sacred socks,Goddess energy, but witching the
elements and craft. Those are her books.
Like I said, you can find her Gabby herstick on Instagram or
she's got gabriellaherstick.com is her website and it is very
branded as this deck is very pink and red, very goddess of

(06:09):
love. Like I said, she has like sacred
slot Coven now they're a Sox worker and have always been
writing about kind of like witchcraft and then more into
Sox magic. More recently they have a
podcast called Love, Lust and Magic.
So there's a lot of their content to consume.
If you would like to, if you areintrigued by this deck or

(06:34):
anything like that. I really love the deck.
I don't really. I've never seen another duck
that's like this. I love the style of it.
It's very like collage art. It's very brightly colored.
It has a lot of like, it uses a lot of like statues that you
would see in like a museum as the imagery for the cards.

(06:57):
Like I said, it's collage style.So it's sort of like a bunch of
images superimposed on each other.
And Gabriella Herstick her own style like is very collage when
she used to when she makes a lotof her workbooks and stuff,
that's the way that she does it.So I appreciate that the artist
Julia Popescu or snakes for hairon Instagram and I think they

(07:18):
have their own website to reallywent with that style.
But yeah, it's a very like self love deck, very like divine
feminine, right? It's called a book and deck for
embodying the erotic divine feminine.
And it is very sex magic centered.
So right as I get into like whatI like to use it for anything I
wouldn't use it for. I wouldn't use it with people

(07:39):
that like if I'm reading for someone else that are not into
that, that like are not asking about things related to this or
that are going to be like turnedoff by the idea of sex magic or
like the divine feminine. So that's part of it.
The imagery of this deck on the back is like pink clouds.
It's like a sky kind of with pink clouds.

(08:01):
And then we have like a Crescentmoon in the center and it's like
all pink. The border of the on the front
side of the cards is red. Then we have kind of like white
lines on the inside. And then most of, yeah, almost
all the imagery is like red and pink, pink backgrounds, a lot of
roses, like I said, a lot of divine feminine and all of the

(08:27):
cards in here. So some changes from the Rider
Waite Smith deck are that all ofthe cards are coded like
feminine. So any cards that have kings or
the emperor or anything like that, they are all changed to be
feminine cards. So for example, so the Strength

(08:51):
card gets renamed to Lust. Let's see, the Hierophant isn't
renamed the Hiera Duel, the Emperor's renamed to the
Sovereign, the Magician isn't renamed to the Enchantress.

(09:12):
And then like I said, for the instead of knight or page knight
Queen king, we have maiden, witch, Queen, Crone.
So king is changed to Crone, right?
Queen remains the same, Knight is changed to witch and Paige is

(09:35):
changed to maiden. So that's sort of what I mean by
they're all renamed to like be coming in characters, I guess,
or sort of like the feminine divine version of perhaps the
traditional cards. I the other thing I really like
about this deck is that it uses a lot of non So in a lot of

(09:57):
Tarot there's like imagery of like Western gods or like Roman
and Greek, but like not a lot else.
But this deck goes into like Hindu got Egyptian, like talks
about Isis and just like a lot of Aynana Arishkigal who says

(10:20):
Sumerian goddess talks about Mary Magdalene, Lilith, Kali or
Chinamasta. So a lot of gods that maybe
aren't normally talked about ocean is like the the Hanged Man
gets renamed to the hanged 1. So you get a a much broader idea

(10:41):
about the goddesses than like a more, I guess global view of all
goddesses and goddess culture. I was going to see if there was
anything that I wanted to share from the front of the deck or

(11:02):
the guide book. It says the tarot is a portal
into the esoteric. To enter requires trust,
honesty, and vulnerability. Like the Goddess, the Tarot
unfolds at your truest intentionto meet the situation at hand.
This deck is also a gateway to the temple of the Goddess of
Love and Sex. This temple may exist in sacred
spaces around the world, but theonly one you need is the most

(11:25):
sacred one of all, your heart. Work with this deck for all
matters of lust and love. Romance and pleasure are where
the Goddess resides, so you can use it to explore many things.
This debt can be a conduit to the divine, erotic, the living
force of sexuality that permeates the universe.
So yeah, I guess again, if what we like to use it for or

(11:46):
anything, I wouldn't use it for,right?
I would like to use it for things that are related to the
feminine, divine, or relationships or self.
A relationship to self, like love against sex, lust, kind of
anything related to that. And I wouldn't be using it for,
again, anyone that's going to kind of be like triggered by
that language perhaps or maybe like has sexual trauma.

(12:12):
I don't know exactly how I wouldknow this necessarily if I'm
doing a reading for someone thatI don't know very well.
But a lot of the times as a tarot reader, I will have many
ducks out and I will sort of have people pick a duck that
speaks to them. So one way to right, allow
people to kind of like self select a duck that appeals to

(12:33):
them more that they're going to be open to is by literally doing
it off of like the cover of the box or the vibe.
Yeah, again, I like this deck for if you're going to try to
like work with sex magic or you're asking questions about
love or lust or like self love as well.
Because I think this deck is really about that too, and has a

(12:55):
lot of roses on it, which are very like, love and also like
protection, right, Vulnerabilityand boundaries, kind of this
like dichotomy, which I really enjoy.
So yeah, again, if there was someone that like, this was not
my first choice of a duck to usewhen I was giving my dad a tarot

(13:15):
reading, for example, that wouldbe like one reason I might not
use it again. Like, I might allow someone to
choose from like a couple ducks or, you know, 2 at least to kind
of allow them to pick what worksfor them or kind of the vibe.
And people can sometimes just get that from like, judging a
book by its cover, right? Like the boxes all have covers

(13:37):
on them and so that kind of helps as well.
But yeah, I really love this deck.
I love all the like sort of changes from the Rider Waite
Smith traditional stuff because it gets rid of for me a lot of
the ick around some of the cardsand how they are coded as like
masculine, authoritative, that all of those things kind of get

(13:58):
lumped together. And sometimes like again, a
triggering way or for anyone that has trauma, like can be
challenging. So yeah, I love the stack.
It is also a very well used thisbox actually, it's been through
a lot. It has like a an inset in the
box kind of hold the deck more closely, which I appreciate the

(14:20):
the deck or the guide book that's quite long.
Like I said, it's over 100 pages, fits in the box.
The box is larger. It's like maybe double the size
of a lot of tarot boxes. It's like long as taller
vertically. It's like I said, it's more like
the size of an awful, but it hasheld up pretty well.
Although it has like a lot of dents and stuff in it, It's

(14:43):
still it's still got all its color on it and it's protecting
my cards. So I keep all my cards in their
boxes, or at least like I try tobecause I really like the
imagery of the boxes as well versus just having them and like
protective bags. But let's go ahead and pull a

(15:05):
card to see what message this deck has for us today.
I pulled the Empress, Venus herself.
All right, I love this card she's got.
It's like a very like mermaid kind of looking card.
So we pulled the Empress here. Like I said, associated with
Venus, the Goddess and the planet, the Empress is

(15:26):
effortlessly aligned with the promise of the heart and of
pleasure. As Venus, the Roman goddess of
sex, love, lust, glamour, victory and desire.
The Empress isn't just an expression of the Goddess of
love, she is the goddess of love.
Venus sings of pleasure as sustenance, of desires guiding
force, and if beauty is the language of the divine, the

(15:46):
Empress comes up during the fertile moments when the desires
and experiences you seek are theedge at the edge of
manifestation. This is a time of inner
transformation and the joys thatcome with bringing something
into the world, whether this is a creative project or
relationship, a child or a new way of practicing magic.
When the Empress appears, remember to indulge yourself in

(16:07):
whatever desires you to the Venusian current, drape yourself
in delicious fabrics, kiss slowly, bask in nature, buy
yourself flowers, or move your body as you breathe and make
sounds, the Empress asks that you tap into the pleasure all
around. And then there are affirmations,
journal questions, a ritual here.

(16:28):
So I guess I would say maybe theonly other time I wouldn't use
it is if someone's like trying to get a quick reading.
Like you can, of course, like not.
I didn't even read everything that's in the description here
and didn't go through the affirmation or question or
ritual. But it's a very right.
You could have just this deck and that could be like your
whole magical practice, to be honest, like pulling from it

(16:49):
every day. You could do the rituals, you
can learn about the goddesses. You can have affirmations for
the week or journal questions, right?
Like this is a very comprehensive deck and kind of
like experience of Gabrielle Herstick as a witch and like
what her beliefs and kind of like I was gonna say program is

(17:11):
that sounds very weird, but likeher ideology or like how she
likes to explain things. So I do appreciate that.
It's like you can get a lot fromthis and the imagery alone, I
guess like also has a lot of symbols on it.
And like we have dolphins, we have the ocean on here.
We have the Venus symbol, we have Venus the like statue, we
have cupids and pink brightly colored trees and flowers.

(17:36):
Like there's a lot on these cards.
So they also provide a lot of like kind of symbolism and
imagery. But all right, so links for the
tarot decks will always be in the show notes and on my website
if you'd like to look at them orpurchase them.
And thanks for joining me today on Everyday Tarot.
Just as a reminder, the podcast comes out daily Monday through
Friday for all of 2025. You can e-mail me an E at

(18:00):
camilleisoners.com with your thoughts, questions and more.
All right, see you soon. Bye bye.