Astarte Goddess of Desire Dark Pagan Tarot

November 1, 2026

There is a particular kind of tarot reading that most decks are not built for: the reading where you already know the polite answer, and you want the true one. The polite answer about a relationship is that love conquers all, that patience will be rewarded, that everything happens for a reason. The true answer is often messier, more specific, and more useful. The Astarte Goddess of Desire dark Pagan tarot is built for the second kind of reading.

That invitation is worth accepting carefully. A deck that goes deeper will show you deeper things, and deeper things are not always welcome news. But they are usually the news you actually need, if you are asking about love or desire with any seriousness. A deck that only tells you what you want to hear is not a reading tool. It is a mirror that flatters, and flattery, however pleasant, does not help you decide anything.

A dark Pagan framing, and why it matters for love readings

The dark Pagan framing of this deck is not a style choice pasted on top of a generic love deck. It shapes what the deck is willing to show. Pagan here, in the deck's own framing, points to an older, earthier way of looking at love: desire as a natural force, not a problem to be solved or a sin to be confessed; the body as part of the reading, not an embarrassment to it; longing as something to be understood and worked with, not something to be cured.

Dark, in this framing, points to the willingness to include what is usually excluded: jealousy, possessiveness, grief for a love that ended, longing for someone who is not available, the ache of wanting to be wanted. A conventional love deck often edits those out, or softens them until they are unrecognisable. A dark deck leaves them in. That is not cruelty. It is completeness. A reading that includes the difficult parts is a reading you can trust more, because it is not hiding anything from you, even to spare your feelings.

If that framing speaks to you, this deck will feel like home. If it does not, if you want your love readings gentle and reassuring above all, this deck will feel confrontational, and you should choose accordingly. There is no virtue in using a deck whose framing you resent. The right deck is the one whose world you are willing to enter, shadows included.

Affection, love, and desire in a relationship reading

Affection may be strong while desire has cooled. Desire may be intense while love, in the sense of steady commitment, has not yet formed. Love may be deep while affection, in the everyday sense of warmth and tenderness, has been neglected. A reading that lumps these together will tell you the relationship is either good or bad, and most real relationships are neither, or both, in different places.

A useful practice is to ask about each one separately, in separate readings or separate positions, rather than asking one big question about the relationship and hoping the cards sort it out. Ask: where is affection in this connection right now? Where is desire? Where is the deeper love, the part that endures? The cards will answer more precisely when the question is precise, and the pattern across the three answers will tell you more than any single grand answer could.

This is also a kindness to yourself. It is easy, when a relationship is struggling in one area, to conclude that everything is wrong. Seeing that affection is present even while desire is low, or that desire is alive even while a practical difficulty is pressing, gives you a truer picture, and a truer picture gives you a fairer basis for deciding what to do. Tarot at its best does not simplify a relationship. It clarifies it, and clarification is more useful than simplification.

Reading abstract cards for the heart

Abstract art and the heart are a natural pairing, because feelings often arrive before words do. You feel a pull, a warmth, a tightness, a distance, and only later do you find the sentence for it. An abstract card works in the same order: image first, feeling second, sentence third. That order is worth respecting. Do not rush to name what a card means. Sit with what it feels like first.

When you draw a card for a question of the heart, notice the body before the mind. Does the image feel warm or cold in your chest? Does it feel open or constricted? Does it pull you in or push you back? Write that down in plain words. Then ask what in your love life feels that way. The body is often honest before the story you tell yourself has had time to edit itself, and with questions of desire, that early honesty is precious.

Then, and only then, bring in the tarot as you understand it. What position is the card in, what question did you ask, and how does the image's feeling fit the question? If the feeling and the question do not fit, do not force them. Ask whether you asked the wrong question, or whether the card is answering a question underneath the one you asked. The underneath question is often the real one, and a deck like this is good at finding it, because it does not give you a ready-made scene to hide behind.

Longing that is not returned, and other hard cards

Some of the hardest readings with this deck will be about longing that is not returned, or not returned in the way you want. Those readings deserve a particular care. First, believe the reading's shape rather than arguing with it. If card after card shows distance, coolness, or a door that is not opening, that pattern is information, however unwelcome. Arguing with a pattern does not change it. Seeing it clearly is what allows you to decide what to do about it.

Second, turn the question back to yourself, where your power actually lies. Instead of asking what the other person will do, ask what you need, what you are willing to accept, and what step honours your own dignity in this situation. Those are questions the cards can answer usefully, because they are questions about you, and you are the person in the reading whose choices you control. A reading that leaves you waiting for someone else to act has left you powerless. A reading that shows you your own next step has given you something real.

Third, give a hard reading time. Do not act on it in the heat of the moment, and do not dismiss it in the heat of the moment either. Write it down, leave it for a day or two, and read it again when you are calmer. Hard readings often soften on a second look, not because they become reassuring, but because they become specific. Specific is actionable. A specific difficulty can be addressed. A vague dread cannot.

Desire as a guide, not a master

A deck named for a goddess of desire invites a particular attitude towards desire itself: neither worship nor shame, but attention. Desire, attended to, is a guide. It tells you what you value, what you miss, what you are drawn towards, and what you are afraid to want. Desire, obeyed blindly, is a master, and it will lead you wherever it pleases, including places you would not have chosen on reflection. The difference between a guide and a master is attention, and a reading is a form of attention.

Use this deck, then, as a way of attending to desire rather than obeying it. Draw a card for a longing, and ask what the longing is pointing to, what it needs, and what it costs. Sometimes the answer will be that the longing points to something worth pursuing, and the reading will help you pursue it well. Sometimes the answer will be that the longing points to a deeper need that the particular object of desire cannot meet, and the reading will help you turn towards that need directly. Both answers are gifts, though the second may not feel like one at first.

This attitude is also what keeps a desire deck from becoming a tool of fixation. Reading the same question over and over, hoping the cards will change their answer, is not attention. It is fixation wearing attention's clothes. If you find yourself asking the same question repeatedly, put the deck down for a while, and ask a different question: what do I need apart from this answer? That question often breaks the loop, and the loop breaking is itself an answer.

Who this deck is for

This deck is for the reader who wants to ask about love and desire without being protected from the answers, and who is drawn to a dark Pagan framing that treats desire as natural and worthy of attention. It is for the reader who is willing to read abstract art slowly, to notice feeling before naming meaning, and to keep love, affection, and desire distinct in their questions. It is for the reader who suspects that the polite answer is not the true one, and who would rather have the true one, even when it is difficult.

It is not for the reader who wants certainty about another person, or for the reader who wants every love reading to end in comfort. No deck can give you certainty about another person's heart, and a deck that pretended to would be lying to you. What this deck can give you is a clearer view of your own heart: what you want, what you actually want underneath that, and what step, if any, is yours to take. For the reader who wants that clarity, this deck has a real and lasting place.

Revisiting an old reading

Desire changes, and a reading about desire should be allowed to change with it. A reading that was true six months ago may no longer be true, not because it was wrong, but because you have changed, or the situation has changed, or the longing itself has changed shape. Revisiting old readings with this deck is therefore a practice worth keeping, not a sign of indecision. Take out a reading from months ago, read your notes as if they belonged to someone else, and ask: what in this reading is still true, what has changed, and what did I miss at the time because I was not ready to see it?

That revisit often shows you something the original reading could not: the arc of a longing over time. A desire that seemed urgent six months ago may now seem quiet, or it may have deepened into something steadier. A relationship that seemed stuck may have moved, slowly, in a direction the reading hinted at but you did not yet recognise. Seeing that arc helps you judge your current longing more fairly, because you can see it as one point in a longer story rather than as the whole story. And it teaches you something about this deck too: how its abstract images read differently at different points in your life, which is itself a lesson in how desire, and reading, both change with time.