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The Provincetown Tarot

@ptowntarot

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78-card deck exploring Ptown history and culture thru the timeless lens of the Tarot 🌀✨🌊
Also me: @benwazical (personal)
@brotherbenwa (more art)

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For the prolific and inspiring @lovepaulrizzo_ who turned 40 this week 💖🌈

Card of the Day: PAGE of WOOD

Inspiration · Discovery · Creative spark

The Page of Wood represents curiosity, enthusiasm, and the excitement of new creative beginnings. This card encourages experimentation, playfulness, and trusting inspiration even before a clear plan has formed. It is the energy of possibility: bold, restless, and eager to explore whatever captures the imagination.

This card is inspired by Paul Rizzo, a distinctive local character in the town’s great spirit of authentic eccentricity. Known as much for his distinctive personal style as for his artwork, Rizzo moves through town in cutoff jeans, sock garters, vintage frocks, and capes, embodying Provincetown’s spirit of joyful self-invention.

Through paintings and sketchbooks overflowing with imagery of Provincetown and vintage gay erotica, Rizzo approaches his subjects with endless fascination and childlike wonder. The Page of Wood reminds us that creativity begins not with mastery, but with excitement, curiosity, and the courage to follow inspiration wherever it leads.

Provincetown Tarot complete decks available at ptowntarot.com by @ptowntarot

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6 days ago

Festive announcement: I’ll be back in Ptown selling Ptown Tarot decks and prints this upcoming Holly Folly (Dec 4-6) at the Gifford House holiday market. Also selling framed individual cards from this first printing - only one of each available.

Makes a perfect gift for so many folks on your list: the Ptown-lover, the tarot enthusiast, hell even the second-home-owning part-time resident in your life would LOVE this for their Airbnb.

Supplies are limited! Likely to sell out this holiday season. If you can’t make it to Holly Folly, you can purchase decks online at ptowntarot.com or DM me directly for a Venmo purchase.

Thank you to everyone who has supported this project so far!

@gifford.house
@visitptown
@brotherbenwa
@benwazical by @ptowntarot

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13 days ago

Card of the Day: XII the HANGED ONE

Suspension · Surrender · New perspective

The Hanged One asks us to pause, release control, and see our lives from a different angle. Whether chosen willingly or forced upon us by circumstance, periods of suspension can reveal truths we were too distracted to notice while rushing forward. This card encourages reflection, patience, and the reassessment of values, habits, and desires that may no longer serve us.

Provincetown’s iconic Lobster Pot restaurant opened in 1943. Here, in huge tanks, captured lobsters exist in a strange liminal state: suspended between freedom and capture, motion and stillness. Removed from their natural environment and caught in temporary stasis, they evoke the uncomfortable but transformative pause embodied by the Hanged One.

This card asks us: what becomes visible when movement stops? Sometimes growth requires surrendering momentum long enough to reconsider the direction in which we are headed.

Provincetown Tarot decks available at ptowntarot.com or DM me for direct Venmo purchase. by @ptowntarot

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14 days ago

Card of the Day: TWO of SHELLS

Partnership - Mutual Devotion - Harmony

The Two of Shells represents emotional connection, reciprocity, and the powerful bond created through trust and affection. Whether romantic, creative, or platonic, this card speaks to relationships built upon mutual support, admiration, and genuine understanding.

This card honors the “Hat Sisters,” partners John Michael Gray and Tim O’Connor, beloved icons of the Provincetown scene for over 30 years. Known for their towering handmade hats and exuberant camp fashion, the pair became fixtures at local events and AIDS fundraisers for more than three decades after first meeting in the summer of 1984.

Together in both life and art, the Hat Sisters embodied joyful partnership and visible devotion. The Two of Shells reminds us that love becomes most meaningful when it is shared openly, creatively, and without apology.

Decks available at ptowntarot.com by @ptowntarot

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22 days ago

Please welcome Benwa Kramer @ptowntarot + @brotherbenwa to the collection!

Bio:

My artistic career began in the theater, having earned a BFA from the University of the Arts and graduating from the Second City Conservatory ( Chicago). After years upon the stage, I pivoted to visual arts in 2017 when I moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts. There, under the artistic moniker “Brother Benwa,” I found a richly fertile and supportive community of artists, invigorating my studio practice and providing numerous opportunities for inspiration and exposure. My work has become known for its colorful, whimsical approach to various media, including acrylic collage, murals, printmaking, costume construction, and nightclub installations, My inspirations include queer culture, esoterica, and psychedelia.

During the COVID lockdown of 2020, I took up learning the tarot in earnest, which led to the conception of the Provincetown Tarot, a 78-card deck exploring the rich history and culture of Cape Cod’s historic art colony. In 2024, the Treadwell Gallery (Ptown) hosted an exhibition of full-color, hand-painted and hand-pressed white-line woodblock prints from the deck’s Major Arcana, This style, developed in Provincetown in 1914-15, is considered the first American printmaking method. After years of anticipation, the Provincetown Tarot was completed and published in 2026 to great acclaim.

Statement in pinned comment! 📌 by @ptowntarot

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23 days ago

Card of the Day: XV the DEVIL

Excess · Temptation · Self-imposed bondage

Wouldst thou like to live deliciously? The Devil represents temptation, indulgence, and the seductive pull of excess. This card speaks to the pleasures and distractions that can liberate us briefly while also threatening to consume us entirely. Addiction, obsession, vanity, and escapism all live within the Devil’s domain, but so too does uninhibited joy, erotic freedom, and the ecstatic release of abandoning shame. The challenge lies not in denying desire, but in recognizing when desire begins to control us.

A seasonal playground built upon fantasy and reinvention, Provincetown has long embraced indulgence in all its forms. The Boatslip Resort’s legendary Tea Dance is a daily spectacle of flirtation, performance, intoxication, and queer revelry, where beauty, chaos, and abandon intermingle beneath the afternoon sun.

This card depicts a Tea Dance queen in full delirious glamour: frock askew, cigarette burning, Planter’s Punch spilling across the boards as poppers fumes rise around him. Beneath the deck, the infamous Dick Dock churns with clandestine desire. The Devil reminds us that pleasure can be transcendent, but also asks: do we remain in command of our appetites, or do they command us?

Provincetown Tarot decks available at ptowntarot.com by @ptowntarot

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a month ago

Card of the Day: NINE of GRASS

Anxiety · Obsession · Sleepless nights

The Nine of Grass represents mental anguish, spiraling thoughts, and the exhaustion of living too long inside fear. Anxiety feeds on isolation, guilt, and uncertainty until it begins to eclipse reality itself. This card warns against suffering in silence and losing perspective within the endless echo of one’s own mind.

Substance use and overuse has long shaped the culture of Provincetown, from its early days as a lawless sailor refuge, to its role as a Prohibition-era hub for rum-running, to the wild parties of mid-century bohemians and the hedonism of today’s tourist class. Provincetown has long offered escape, pleasure, and self-destruction in equal measure, blurring the line between liberation and collapse.

The isolation of the Outer Cape deepens these contradictions. For some, winter brings healing and solitude; for others, it magnifies loneliness, addiction, and despair. The Nine of Grass inhabits that sleepless psychological landscape, where fear grows largest in darkness and silence. by @ptowntarot

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a month ago

Card of the Day: SEVEN OF SHELLS

Choices; Fantasy; Illusion

The Seven of Shells represents temptation, fantasy, and the overwhelming flood of possibilities that can cloud clear judgment. Dreams and desires may feel intoxicating, but this card asks us to distinguish genuine opportunity from illusion. Not every glittering option leads somewhere meaningful.

In summertime, Provincetown becomes a carnival of endless invitations. A walk down Commercial Street means constant flyers, shouted promotions, and competing promises of pleasure: drag shows, ghost tours, lobster dinners, dance parties, psychic readings, and more. This tradition, known locally as “barking,” remains an essential part of the town’s theatrical economy.

Even legendary performers join the crowds after tea dance hoping to capture the attention of wandering tourists. The Seven of Shells lives in that dazzling overstimulation, where every possibility feels exciting and choosing just one can seem almost impossible.

The Provincetown Tarot complete deck available at ptowntarot.com by @ptowntarot

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a month ago

Card of the day: 4 of Grass

Rest, Retreat, Recovery

The Four of Grass is a card of withdrawal, rest, and deliberate pause. It reminds us that exhaustion cannot be solved through force, and that clarity often arrives only after stepping away from noise and obligation. Recovery is not avoidance, but preparation for what comes next.

This card draws upon Provincetown’s two local campgrounds, Dunes’ Edge (founded in 1960) in the East End, and Coastal Acres (1967) in the West End. Both have resisted decades of development pressure while offering a relatively affordable option for overnight visitors. Nestled among trees and dunes, the campgrounds offer a quiet, rustic refuge from the constant movement and spectacle of Commercial Street.

During the busy summer season, these spaces become small temporary communities unto themselves. The Four of Grass reminds us that retreat is not isolation, but a chance to reconnect with ourselves away from distraction and excess.

The Provincetown Tarot complete 78-card deck available at ptowntarot.com by @ptowntarot

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a month ago

In my experience thusfar the deck has proved extraordinarily responsive and readable. Check out this killer spread I pulled tonight for the Pisces Lunar Eclipse. Please share your pulls from the Provincetown Tarot and tag us!

8.27.26 by @ptowntarot

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2 months ago

The Provincetown Tarot launch party at @gifford.house was a smashing success. So many people came out to get a deck (or 3, or 5!), to hear myself and @tangle_made talk tarot and the project, and to get a free reading from the fabulous @abbearonson at @cazimi_modern_tarot . We also raised $2000 for queer kids at @summerofsass ! This project has been over 5 years in the making and it feels surreal, proud, and thrilling to finally share it with the world.

I’ll be popping up around ptown throughout this week to sell, and you can purchase decks through www.ptowntarot.com.

@ptowntarot by @ptowntarot

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2 months ago

Just one more reason that Provincetown is so freakin’ amazing! 🔮 Congratulations to our friend Benwa @benwazical on the launch of his Provincetown Tarot @ptowntarot! And, if you happen to be in town on a Monday, stop by our tarot club at the library from 2-4…all are welcome! ✨

Provincetown: Always in Season
#tarot #thegaslampptown #provincetownluxury #modernvictorian #boutiquestay taken in Gifford House Inn by @ptowntarot

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2 months ago