If Florence Farr was the High Priestess of Tarot meditation, Moina Mathers was its visionary artist. As the wife and magical partner of Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, she brought the Golden Dawn’s complex system of correspondences to life with her art. Trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, Moina had the rare ability to translate occult theory into visual form, turning abstract symbols into living, breathing imagery.

In the Golden Dawn, precision mattered. Every colour, every gesture, every placement in a Tarot design had meaning — linked to astrology, the Hebrew alphabet, the elements, and the Tree of Life. Moina’s illustrations followed this exacting code, ensuring that the cards were not just beautiful, but ritually correct. In her hands, the Tarot became a visual spell: layered with intent, vibrating with the energies it represented.

Moina’s contribution went beyond illustration. She understood that the visual impact of a card could alter the reader’s state of mind, making it easier to connect with the archetypes and forces behind the symbol. Through her work, she ensured that the Golden Dawn’s Tarot was more than a deck — it was a magical instrument, precise enough for ritual and powerful enough for transformation.

Here’s an image sketch of Moina Mathers as the High Priestess Anari, performing the Rites of Isis in Paris in 1899. This artwork vividly captures her presence as an occultist and artist — merging theatrical expression with mystical ritual. 

Though no full surviving deck by Moina is known to exist, scholars — and even the Golden Dawn itself — confirm that she provided original designs for their Tarot and ritual art.  

I think the disappearance of Florence Farr’s Tarot work — especially given how recent and well-documented the Golden Dawn era was — can be explained by a tangled mix of politics, secrecy, and very human drama.

The Golden Dawn’s secrecy culture

The Order wasn’t just a club of mystics; it was an organisation obsessed with oaths of silence. In their hierarchy, knowledge was a currency, and those in power guarded it fiercely. While divination had its place, meditation and “inner work” were considered a higher rung on the spiritual ladder — and Farr’s visualisations with the Tarot were innovative, even radical. It’s possible her work was deliberately withheld from wider circulation to keep it “within the temple,” never intended for public hands.

Internal rivalries and factionalism

By the 1890s, the Golden Dawn was splintering. Disputes over leadership — notably between MacGregor Mathers and other senior members — turned bitter. Farr, as a woman with significant influence and a fiercely independent intellect, would have been both admired and resented. If her Tarot material was caught in the crossfire of those rivalries, it could easily have been sidelined, lost, or even destroyed by those who didn’t want her legacy to outshine theirs.

Gender dynamics of the era

Farr’s artistic and spiritual genius unfolded in a time when the work of women — especially in occult circles — was often undervalued or attributed to male colleagues. The fact that we have surviving decks from Waite and Crowley but nothing tangible from her suggests her contributions may have been quietly absorbed into “collective” Golden Dawn teachings, with her name removed from the credits.

4. The fragility of unpublished work

Unlike the 15th-century decks that survived because they were printed and distributed, Farr’s Tarot work may never have been published in any durable form. If her cards existed only as hand-painted originals or ritual sketches, their survival depended entirely on personal safekeeping. A few misfortunes — a move, a fire, a family not valuing her occult work after her death — and the artefacts could vanish completely.

5. The possibility of deliberate erasure

If her methods diverged from the “orthodox” Golden Dawn system, there’s a real possibility they were intentionally excluded from the canonical material to maintain consistency in the Order’s teaching. In that case, Farr’s Tarot could have been locked away in private archives — or destroyed — to prevent dilution of the “official” tradition.

In short — it may not be one single cause, but a blend of jealousy, politics, secrecy, and the precariousness of unpublished art that explains why a woman of Florence Farr’s calibre left behind no surviving deck, even though she worked in an age when others’ creations endured.

Here is image just let’s imagine how her painting could look like… ❤️