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Holding a deck of Enchant cards is like holding magic in the palm of your hand. Produced to accompany The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic’s class Enchant, a five-week course on fairy tales and folklore with a touch of science, the cards can be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in the enchantment of fairy tales. Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman, the founders and creators of The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, have put together the perfect deck of fairy tale themed cards to guide their students through the highs and lows of everyday life.
Enchant cards are beautifully crafted of smooth, silky card stock that slides across your fingers. Each card has a soft lilac hue and a shiny silver edge that immediately transport your mind to a sacred space of contemplation. When you pull a card from the deck and flip it over, you will see the name of a fairy tale character along with a short description of how the character functions in their tale, advice for emulating the character’s best qualities, and a question that helps you ponder how tale’s deepest meanings may resonate with your life. For example, the Cinderella card first explains how Cinderella has spent her life being good and sacrificing her own desires to fulfill the needs of others before asking readers “What one wish can you give yourself today?” The descriptions found on each card will inspire you to rethink fairy tale narratives and discover everyday magic in the world around you.
The deck of Enchant cards features characters from many well-known fairy tales like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Rapunzel,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” but you will also find characters from more obscure tales like “Tatterhood,” “The Crane Wife,” and “Fitcher’s Bird.” The cards also feature characters easily forgotten like the 13th fairy from “Sleeping Beauty,” and antagonists like Baba Yaga and Mother Gothel. The deck will help you ponder old tales through new lenses, discover new stories, and understand the depth of characters who have often been painted as simple villains. Those familiar with Tarot may shuffle the cards and pull one to guide them through the joys and challenges of the day, while others may simply allow the cards to stimulate deep thought about the folklore that shapes and reflects their lives. Writers and visual artists can use the cards as inspiration for formal projects or informal drafting, and creative souls can pair the cards with the Enchant: Journal, a workbook designed to help readers come up with “marvelous, strange, and wonderful ideas.”
I love sifting through my deck of Enchant cards as I think about my favorite fairy tales. I plan to use the cards to help me to teach my fairy tales classes and inspire me to write new fairy tales of my own. A deck of Enchant cards holds endless possibilities, and they are a must for everyone looking to enchant their everyday lives with fairy tale magic.
You can find the Enchant: Journal here.
You can learn more about The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic by joining their FREE Everyday Magic Challenge here.
And, you can sign up for The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic's Enchant 2024 class here.
Thank you to my Fairy Godmother, Kate Wolford, for gifting me a deck of Enchant cards!
Kelly Jarvis works as the Assistant Editor for The Fairy Tale Magazine. Her poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review, Mermaids Monthly, Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, A Moon of One’s Own, The Magic of Us, and Corvid Queen. Her short fiction has appeared in The Chamber Magazine and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers. She can be found at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/