Tarot
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Gaian Tarot
The Gaian Tarot is a contemporary Earth-based tarot deck that focuses on “the healing of the Earth and of the self.” Some cards feature people, some creatures, and many combine both. The people on the cards are for the most part really easy to relate to. Even if you haven’t directly shared the same experience, you can imagine what they may be thinking and or feeling – love, joy, sadness, enthusiasm, wonder, peace, strength, knowing, connection, overwhelm, calm – they’re all to be found within the cards. This deck doesn’t deal in abstracts. The paintings are almost all people, scenes and elements the deck creator, Joanna Powell Colbert, has encountered…
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Moonology
If you feel an affiliation with the Moon then these cards are for you. Yasmin Boland, the deck creator and author of the guidebook is an “award winning astrologer, moonologer, and bestselling author and it shows in Moonology. You can tell that she is both passionate and knowledgeable about the material she shares. The watercolour artwork is as stunning as it is soothing, making these cards feel supportive and nurturing to work with. The Moonology Cards As you can see, each borderless card features a beautiful image. The colour palette ranges through purples, teals, greens and blues with some muted oranges and reds for the fire signs and some gentle…
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Universal Celtic Tarot
The Universal Celtic Tarot encourages you to tap into the ancient Celtic wisdom that celebrates Nature. It wants you to recognise and rekindle the connections that may have been forgotten, ignored, or dismissed as life became busier and busier. Rather than letting that happen the creators wants people to immerse themselves “in an atmosphere that makes all kinds of magic possible and quite natural.” And they succeed. The Universal Celtic Tarot is stunning. Some of the cards in this deck rank with some of the most beautiful I’ve seen. The Universal Celtic Tarot Cards As you can see the artwork on this deck is magical. I bought this deck after…
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Anna K Tarot
The Anna K Tarot sheds much of the esoteric symbolism of the Rider Waite system it is largely based on. Instead it encourages users to consider what is happening on the card in conjunction with the emotions the people are expressing. If you’re after a deck that provides clear, straight-up answers, the Anna K Tarot is perfect. This deck took ten years to create and it seems that in that time Anna K spent a lot of time thinking about what each card meant to her and then depicting that particular meaning. It’s a great deck to be able to reach for if you’re feeling particularly scrambled. For example the…
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Tarot of the Hidden Realm
The only thing that saddens me with the Tarot of the Hidden Realm is that I cannot capture the beauty of these cards in photographs. The images are so much more earthy than the camera shows, more alive, more real, just more. When I first saw this deck I thought it was stunning but I wondered how I would work with it because I read by creating stories out of what I see. I needn’t have worried. Julia Jeffrey’s close up and personal paintings make this an incredibly intimate deck. It doesn’t offer the scenes that most decks do and yet as the inhabitants of the Hidden Realm share their…
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Golden Tarot
The Golden Tarot uses digital collages of artwork from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance period. Looking through this deck is like walking through an art gallery – a pleasure for some, me included, not so much for others. Kat Black, the deck’s creator, wanted “to widen the audience for artwork of an under-rated and little known art period,” 1200 – 1500 AD. She chose not to use any commonly recognisable works in order to showcase pieces people may well not be familiar with. In other words, there’s no Botticelli, da Vinci or Michelangelo. Although, for me, as I flick through the cards there is something familiar about them.…
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Viceversa Tarot
I bought the Viceversa Tarot because I was interested in the idea of the back view of the card. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover I really like the front view too. Unfortunately I only have the tuckbox version. Having already purchased mine, I discovered that a kit with a full book written by Lunaea Weatherstone, author of the guide book for The Forest of Enchantment also exists. I enjoy her writing style so I would have liked to have the complete kit but oh well. If I find someone who loves this deck as much as I do I might gift it on and replace it with the…
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Tarot of Mystical Moments
I first saw the Tarot of Mystical Moments on a Minnow Pond Tarot’s YouTube video and then it seemed to pop up on a few things I was looking at so I decided to take a closer look. I have over fifty tarot decks so even though I see a lot of cards that appeal to me, I am focused on only adding decks to my collection that are different to anything else I own. This one fits the bill. Catrin Welz-Stein collages together old paintings, photographs and illustrations to create a distinctly feminine deck, that although based on the Rider Waite Smith system, offers some interesting points of difference.…
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The Ultimate Guide to the Rider Waite Tarot by Johannes Fiebig & Evelin Burger
The Ultimate Guide to the Rider Waite Tarot encourages you to consider what each symbol in a tarot card represents, and as the name makes clear, in this instance they are applying this approach to the Rider Waite tarot deck. The Ultimate Guide follows a very basic layout. It begins with “10 reasons for writing this book” and continues with the 10 this or that throughout. To be honest I was a bit childish in my initial rebellion to reading the section titled, “The 10 most important rules for interpretation” because I baulk at the idea of rules in reading the cards. However, I was pleasantly surprised and found I…
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Understanding the Tarot Court by Mary K Greer and Tom Little
Understanding the Tarot Court, seeks to take readers from seeing the court cards as two-dimensional figures with simple characteristics through to knowing them as richly complex personalities. As the authors claim, “The purpose of this book is to make the court cards come alive, and to give you a deep familiarity with the cards and their possibilities.” To do this Understanding the Tarot Court begins by providing an overview of both the different ways the court cards cards can be interpreted in a reading and a breakdown of the suit and rank associations, before encouraging readers to take a guided meditation to meet the court in a non-threatening way (at…
