Ophidia Rosa Tarot Deck by Leila+Olive

This season is all about introducing you to the decks I love, the ones I rely on, and the ones that have shaped my tarot practice. 

Today, I’m talking about the Ophidia Rosa Tarot by Leila + Olive. I followed the artist online for years, and when I saw them teasing images of this deck—botanical, moody, hand-drawn, and unapologetically natural—I was immediately drawn in. I ordered it as soon as it was released. It’s floral, intuitive, shadowy, and deeply symbolic. But it’s also one of the more enigmatic decks in my collection.

Unlike many of my tarot decks, the Ophidia Rosa Tarot didn’t come into my life through a shop or a moment of serendipity... I found it online. I was following Leila + Olive on Instagram somewhere around 2019 or 2020, and I remember seeing a preview of the artwork: matte illustrations, botanical borders, coiled serpents, mushrooms, vines, petals. It was instantly magnetic.

But reading with it? That was another story! This deck speaks quietly. Symbolically. Poetically. It does not hand you the interpretation, it wants you to meet it halfway. You have to come in already knowing the tarot or be willing to sit with ambiguity. 

The Ophidia Rosa Tarot is one of the most artist-driven decks in my collection. Everything about it is informed by botanical symbolism and the language of plants.

Style:

The Ophidia Rosa Tarot carries a soft, botanical, witchy aesthetic—matte card-stock, muted golden edges, and delicate linework. The coiled snake on the card backs sets the tone for a deck that feels earthy, mystical, and rooted in plant magic.

Structure:

This deck follows the traditional Rider–Waite–Smith system. The major arcana use standard names and Roman numerals, and the four suits remain intact. The guidebook is intentionally sparse, offering only short poetic lines rather than explanations, so it’s best suited for readers who rely on intuition or already know the tarot archetypes well.

Imagery:

Every card is built from simple botanical illustrations—vines, blossoms, stems, mushrooms, and serpents. Wands appear as branches, Pentacles often as mushrooms, Swords as thorned stems, and Cups implied rather than literal. The imagery is symbolic, minimal, and atmospheric, inviting you to interpret rather than be instructed.

What I use it for:

The Ophidia Rosa Tarot is a deck I reach for when I’m craving something intuitive, poetic, and atmospheric. Because the guidebook is sparse and the imagery leans metaphorical rather than literal, this deck shines in practices that invite spaciousness and contemplation.

It’s a deck that asks you to sit with it, breathe with it, and let the meaning rise on its own time. If you love symbolic or herbal imagery, this deck feels like opening an old garden gate and wandering inside.

What I don’t use it for:

This isn’t the deck I reach for when someone is brand-new to tarot or feeling overwhelmed. The imagery is beautiful, but it’s subtle—there aren’t clear cues for beginners, and the booklet won’t walk anyone through the cards in a structured way.

The Ophidia Rosa Tarot is gorgeous, but it’s not a starter deck. You bring more of yourself into the reading than the deck gives back—and for intuitive readers, that’s exactly what makes it so magical.

💭 Today's Tarot Pull:

From Ophidia Rosa Tarot deck by Leila & Olive, I pulled the Five of Cups (Upright) - “Growth to the sun, too high to hold on.”

This card reminds us that disappointment isn’t failure—it’s information. Sometimes something stops blooming not to punish us, but because we’re meant to plant ourselves somewhere new.

Reflective prompts on this card:

• What emotional story am I ready to set down, even if it feels tender to release?

• What am I gripping too tightly that might be healthier to let go?

• What expectations have grown “too high to hold on”?

Ways to Connect & Support

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 Ophidia Rosa Tarot Duck by Leila
and Olive. Whether you're a seasoned tarot
reader or just starting to explore, this podcast offers
daily insights, intuitive messages, and practical advice

(00:23):
drawn from the cards. Each episode is designed to help
you connect with your inner wisdom, find clarity in your
decisions, and tap into the energy of the universe.
TuneIn every day, Monday throughFriday, for fresh perspectives,
empowering guidance from the tarot as interpreted by me.
If you love the show, the best way to support it for free is by
listening daily, leaving a view and subscribing or following in
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(00:46):
you can get my free 2025 five card tarot spread I created just
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And I know we're getting into the end of 2025 and, you know,
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But also I think it'd be super interesting to do the five card
spread now and kind of look backon your year to see like, what

(01:06):
was I going through? Like, what did I want to tell
me? And then what actually happened
and what do I think aligns with that?
And I think this is a bit of a teaser here or a spoiler or a
excitement, but I'm going to actually, I think go through my
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(01:27):
We'll get real meta on the situation.
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(01:49):
So if you're interested or know someone that might be a good
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Or you can e-mail me [e-mail] if you
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On December 7th, celebrate the glow of the full moon with me

(02:12):
and my colleague Izzy for the evening of connection,
Reflection and ritual. We meet at Thresholds Collective
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moon together, and tickets for the December 7th event are up
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minute event, and then, yeah, it's really fun to do that
together. So I would love to see you

(02:32):
there. You can find the links for any
of these offers in the show notes or on my website,
camilleisaunders.com/everyday Tarot, in addition to the images
of the cards I pull on each episode.
All right, welcome to Season 19,where I'm talking about
different decks and how to use them.
If you haven't listened to my other seasons yet, you can check
those out. I just wrapped up my season 18

(02:54):
on color magic. So if you're interested in an
introduction to to color magic or in a particular color and you
want to know what you know, it'smagical days of the week or
correspondences. It has checked out that season.
And like I said, right, we're now into season 19 where I'm
talking about different decks and how to use them.

(03:14):
And today I'm talking about the Ofidia Rosa Tarot deck by Leela
and Olive. So the style of deck, it is a
tarot duck. Where did I get the duck?
I this is one of the few decks that I bought online when they
were advertising for it. I, I guess I would have been

(03:35):
probably in like 2019-2020 around that time.
I follow Leela and Olive on Instagram.
I know. So if you like the look of this
deck, you can check them out there.
They're at Leela, olive.com, LEILAO live.com.

(03:55):
Okay, it says this came out in 2017.
Interesting. So maybe I got my first tarot
deck all the way back in like 2016.
This is very interesting. I didn't realize this because
I'm pretty sure I got this one. Like I remember them advertising
it on their Instagram and seeingsome of the imagery for it and
being super excited for it. This deck is a lot more.

(04:17):
It's like the style of it sort of imagery wise is like matte.
So it's not glossy. It does have like yellow or
golden gilded edges, but it's not shiny in that way.
It's like a matte color. Again, if you listen to my color
Magic season, we talked about yellow versus gold or grey
versus silver. So it doesn't have that metallic

(04:39):
aspect to it. The deck box and the back of the
cards are black and then they have kind of imagery, almost
like perhaps hand drawn imagery of a snake that's coiled.
And then we see kind of like vines with flowers both around
the snake as it's coiled and then along the edges.

(05:03):
And then if you look at the front of the cards, you see
there's like a black border, very like natural, almost like
how a wand often looks in like the wand suit where it's like
kind of obviously a stick. It looks like that.
They do use Roman numerals for their numbers.
Like this is wands and this is the seven of wands.
So we see the seven in Roman numerals at the top and the

(05:25):
wands at the bottom. I said where I got the deck.
Any changes from the writer? Wait, Smith?
I don't think so. I'm actually not like wildly
familiar with this deck, even though I've had it a long time.
It is not my favorite. I love the imagery of it.

(05:46):
It's very cool looking. And when I tabled at Tacoma
Pride this year, like where I had stuff about the podcast to
promote the podcast and I was pulling cards for folks just for
free, like one card drawings foranyone that was coming by.
I also had tarot card crafting there, which was super fun where

(06:07):
I had all my supplies. So I'm just kind of looking
through right now about the Major Arcana cards.
But a lot of people were drawn to this deck, which is how I
felt at the time as well. Like seeing it online.
It says the Evita Rosa is an intuitive tarot, a tool for
guidance, transformation, and wanderlust in the natural realm.
It's designed by Nicole Rallis, and like I said, it's from

(06:31):
leelaolive.com. Yeah, so like I said, it's a lot
of botanical images. There are a lot of snake
imagery, like the magician is the Uroboros snake, like the
snake eating its own tail. There's often flowers or sort of
botanical things on almost all of the cards.

(06:54):
They use mushrooms for the pentacles suit.
So I guess that's one aspect that's not traditional from the
writer Wade Smith is that their interpretation of like wands are
very like natural stick like pentacles are shown in the form
of mushrooms. Let's see just looking through

(07:16):
here. The swords are are unclear, but
a bit more like not sticks, but like stems of a plant, I
believe. Yeah, like here's one that's
like a Peony or rose stem. It is very cool and hand drawn
looking. So it's a lot of like, I don't

(07:39):
really know what's made of, but like, like, like pen drawings.
I would say on paper, let's see.I know that the suits are
supposed to be kind of differentseasons of the year.
Some mushrooms would probably belike fall season perhaps.

(08:01):
Yeah. They are still selling this one
on their website. They have multiple ducks or a
lot of ducks now. Actually, the Afida Rosa's on
sale, probably because it's an older one.
They have a botanical tarot, Pythia Botanica Oracle,
botanical tarot deck made an Oracle.

(08:22):
OK, that one's sold out and add or beat a tarot.
So if you like the art on this and I'll show you know, whatever
card I pull and I'll show the tarot deck box, it might be a
good one to check out. I would say so if we, you know,
so the imagery, like I said, dark, I would say sort of floral
and botanical for sure. I just say dark because the back

(08:44):
of it is black. The box is black.
It does have a cool vibe to it, I feel like.
So yeah. The it's not always obvious on
the cards, like on a wands card,like they don't necessarily do
the like OK, there's 3 cups. So there's three cup shaped

(09:04):
things on the card. Like they don't really do that.
The Major Arcana ones are probably some of my favorite
ones, but yeah, the So what I like to use it for is like you
could use it for anyone that's very familiar with tarot.
It has very short and sweet interpretations.
So occasionally I might have used this deck on the podcast

(09:25):
when I pull my card at the end if I just wanted something like,
like I said, like short and sweet.
Where did I put the deck guide book?
It's just like a fold out. So here it is.
It's just like a paper, a almostlike a piece of paper that's
been folded in half and then in half again.
So like in fourths it is laminated.

(09:45):
So it's not going to like crumble on you or anything, but
so I'll go ahead. Yeah.
So it has pretty short and sweetinterpretations.
I'll just pull a card briefly right here.
Oh, I pulled the magician one. OK, so you just kind of go and
look at the, you know, we're in the Major Arcana here for the

(10:07):
magician. It says one the magician all is
before you, a cycle of voice you've already begun, but before
you a choice. So they have these kind of like
limericks, I don't know, haikus,short poems.
I don't know exactly how they explain it.
I was going to see if they said here it says it's a duck.

(10:28):
Something more intuitively tangible was born of the tarot,
where even the faces of the moonand the mysterious Serpentine
movements of creatures in the garden brimmed with the power
for prophecy, contemplation, redemption and a quest.
There's always something growingin our hearts, transforming
ourselves and our vision from the soil to the stars.
So yeah, if you're very familiarwith the tarot, you want a

(10:49):
pretty botanical duck. You like the imagery, you're
looking to expand your collection again, you're
familiar with all the suits and things and that kind of thing.
Like great. If you are new to tarot, I would
not recommend it because it has very limited.

(11:12):
Like the deck guidebook is not really a guidebook.
It's just like a single piece ofpaper that's folded.
They don't really give you any guide to the cards.
They just give the sort of shortlike to like a stanza poem
basically. So I wouldn't use it if you're
looking for like familiar imagery, like there's very
little that's familiar about it.Again, maybe like I think I just

(11:36):
saw like the world. Nope, that wasn't even the world
one. But yeah, I would say like it's
it's pretty unique. And if you're looking for like a
lot of depth or a detailed tarotdeck guidebook, like would not
recommend this one. Like I said, it doesn't really
have any changes from the Rider Waite Smith style like in format

(11:57):
or in structure. So again, like no real big
changes there. You can get the deck on their
website still, that's where I got it.
And I do like their imagery and how they speak about the tarot
personally, though, again, like it's not my favorite.
I feel like it's, even though I know a lot about tarot now, I

(12:18):
still will pull it and be like, I've no idea what that means
because I don't really find their guidebook to be very
helpful. Like it's interesting, but I
feel like I I have to know aboutthe card itself already before
I'm going to like understand. If I'm going to understand the
card at all, I have to have knowledge going into it.

(12:38):
It also like the like I said, the wands, the pentacles, like
the suits, there's like not a lot of consistency throughout.
Like I said, the Pentacles were mushrooms, but like they're not
because this Pentacles card has no mushrooms on it.
So yeah, you've been warned. Like I said, I like it.
This is like probably my only deck that I'm like meh about.

(12:59):
I've actually like tried to giveit away to people, but whenever
I do that, I sort of get like sad about it or I'm like, oh,
maybe I so, you know, maybe one day I'll come back to the stack
and be like, Oh, I totally get it now.
It's very I would say you have to be intuitive to understand it
because or be very in touch withthe duck because I don't feel

(13:20):
like it it gives a lot information wise or like it's
not giving you a lot of guidancein words.
You have to get that I would sayfrom the imagery or from, you
know, your own vibe about it andlike, you know, maybe that is
what you're looking for. So it would help in that way.
Yeah, I think those are all the categories that I like to talk
about. Let's see what message the deck

(13:42):
has for us today. Maybe I'll say like, how can I,
how can I get get to know this deck or learn to like this deck
or do I need to learn the to like this deck?
What's what do I yeah, what, what, what is there for me in
the future of this deck? All right, I pulled the five of

(14:05):
cups. So we have emotions and we have
conflict is what I would say forthe five of cups immediately,
which, you know, fair says growth to the sun too high to
hold on growth to the sun too high to hold on.

(14:26):
I feel like the vibe is yeah, like I'm trying to understand
something that like too hard, right?
Like I'm I'm trying to like grasp too hard to something or
umm, right. It literally says too high to
hold on, right. Like, so if you think about

(14:46):
something growing towards the sun, like in the image, they
actually have like a plant that has like blossoms, like with
flowers, and blossoms are falling off of it.
It almost looks like foxglove, which is interesting.
So yeah, I guess that's the other thing that personally I
don't love about this deck is that they have no descriptions
of what plants are on the imagery.

(15:09):
And to me, I imagine the artist put intention into what plants
they're using. Like if this is foxglove, I'm
like, oh, that gives me more information.
Foxglove is, I don't know, protective boundaried like a
strong plant. Using medicine can also be
dangerous or like it's a sedative, so it could stop your

(15:31):
heart, for example, but also canbe used in other ways
medicinally. So it's like it rides the edge
of how you can use it. Whether it's helpful medicine or
harmful, it depends on your intent.
And so again, if I think about cups and fives, we're in the in

(15:53):
between, we're in the liminal, we're in the like, there's some
maybe inner turmoil or emotionalturmoil.
And that is like a little bit about how I feel about these
cards where I'm like, I'm kind of conflicted.
Again, if I think about 5 of cups and like perhaps if this is
Foxglove, yeah, I feel like it'slike you're trying too hard.

(16:18):
And so maybe that's, you know, maybe I am and I just need to
use this deck more and see see what interesting messages comes
to me. But we shall see.
So, yeah, if you want to check out this fascinating deck that
I've talked about and you're like, I'm intrigued, Camille, or
like, I want this deck. Oh, there's a poem on the inside
that says pedaled pedals filled with water, cupping the dew,

(16:40):
hold the power to tip and feed us the moon.
That's very cool. I like that.
But yeah, if you're interested, I'll link to the Afida Rosa Tara
deck by Lela and Olive. You can also check out their
larger website that has they talk about like the origin of
some of their decks and like their own origin.

(17:01):
It's an art brand that's foundedby illustrator, author and
floral designer Nicole Rallas. So again, I'm like, I imagine
there was like plant intention the way into this deck and
that's why I'm like a little, I'm like, I want to know more
though, personally. So I know they have a botanical

(17:22):
deck, so maybe that one is like a little more labeled if that
was something that I wanted. But I have a different botanical
deck now that I'm into. So.
But yeah, you can check it out. I do love the art.
It's very beautiful. So there is that going for it.
Yeah. So thanks for the tarot decks I
talk about will always be in theshow notes and on my website, if
you like to look at them or purchase them.

(17:42):
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
[e-mail] with your thoughts, questions and
more. All right, see you soon.
Bye. Bye.