The Everyday Enchantment Tarot

The Everyday Enchantment Tarot was designed with three main intentions. Firstly, to create a deck that a modern audience could find more accessible. Secondly, to connect people with the everyday magic available to us all but often overlooked. And thirdly, to highlight our interconnectedness and to promote inclusivity at all levels. Put simply, this deck aims to connect us with ourselves and the world around us and the extraordinary nature of both. It uses everyday relatable scenarios to do so.

The Everyday Enchantment Tarot Deck

The Everyday Enchantment Tarot encourages us to take a fresh look at how we view ourselves and others. Ideas for the ways and means to so is present in the cards. Consider The Hanged Man above. Rather than begrudging the time spent at the bus stop the boy has found peace by taking a different approach to the situation. He realises that getting aggravated isn’t going to change or improve anything in anyway. Simple yet true. Imagine taking that approach into the scene on the Temperance card. Rather than shutting down and judging, they could seek to understand each other instead. Maybe they aren’t so different or maybe they are and what that means is relevant. Everyone has something to offer if we take the time to consider their position and to consider our reactions to them and what it is we are actually reacting to. Furthermore, what does the lady see that they don’t?

The deck follows the typical RWS definitions but the way the cards are illustrated makes it easier to find our position within the image. I appreciate traditional imagery, modern imagery, and much that falls in between. Each have their strengths and weaknesses. I love the approachability of The Emperor and I can very much relate to The Hermit. I have both a German Shepherd and a ginger cat and I’m surrounded by books so I know that scene well. However, as much as I relate to this portrayal of the card I also very much relate to the more traditional versions and the additional layers of meaning they convey. I feel they are important especially since I don’t believe they are represented elsewhere.

The real strength of The Everyday Enchantment Tarot though is its ability to hone in on a meaning that is recognisable to whoever looks at the card. My ambition is to show people that tarot is a pictorial representation of the situations and people we encounter in our every day lived experience as well as a reflection of our inner aspects. A deck like this provides a clear demonstration. It also offers us insights, suggestions, and viewpoints we may not have previously considered.

The 6 of Wands suggests that for anyone to “win” they are likely to have had to face some hurdles. It also reminds us that success takes time and effort. How many people really are overnight successes? When we buy into that belief our thinking becomes tainted in so many ways. We can question our own lack of success, we can envy someone without contemplating the amount of work they put in to getting where they are, or we can wish to emulate someone’s success without actually wanting to put in the work. Thus we may well not actually want what we think we do.

I believe that for the most part we can be whatever we want to be. People often challenge that statement with things like, well I’d like to be a rock star blah blah blah and yet would they? Do they play an instrument? Sing? Sit in their room writing hundreds of songs knowing only a couple will become hits? Are they willing to live life on the road away from family and friends? To do gigs in less than glamourous locations for less than glamourous pay just because they are driven to perform? Are they willing to put in the hours and hours and hours of practice necessary? To do the promo tours? To have people that can’t do what they can do tell them what they “have” to do?

I’ll stop, but I will return to my original idea. I believe we can be what we choose to be but I think that sometimes we can feel we need to aspire to more because of successes judged against the so called success of others. I think this card can remind us that much goes into success and hopefully in turn remind us to think of that and whether the work inspires us as much as the potential end result. After all, we spend more time doing the work that crossing the finish line.

The 8 of Wands cleverly represents many meanings generally associated with the card in a simple image. News, a move, overseas travel, fast movement – it’s all there – which shows that The Everyday Enchantment Tarot can be used however you so choose. It can be used for divination, contemplation, meditation or as a tool to connect you with your intuition. The choice is yours. When I look back at the 6 of Wands for example, it reminds me of running hurdles races at school. I remember being quite good and, more importantly, I don’t remember being scared of falling. Now I’d be much more hesitant. Now I imagine my trailing leg hitting the top of the hurdle and the pain and embarrassment I’d have to endure when I came crashing down. This adds another message for me that, having surfaced, I really need to consider.

But, less about me and more about the cards. The Everyday Enchantment Tarot is a very inclusive deck. People of various ages, abilities, nationalities, appearances and sexual preferences are depicted. Nevertheless, even though the creator claims the deck also represents different body shapes, I don’t find that to be the case. The only slightly larger person I noticed was on the 5 of Blades and that is not a positive image. Granted everyone is not rail thin, but in a deck aiming to showcase broader society, I feel this particular aspect could have been given more attention. That being said, for the most part Poppy Palin has done a wonderful job depicting a wide variety of people undertaking a wide variety of activities without it feeling forced.

I have trimmed my cards and yet, at 8 x 13cm, they are still quite big. Originally they had that same thick border that you see at the base on all sides. That made them way too big to handle and I felt it was unnecessary. If you’ve read many of my other reviews you’d also know I’m a fan of borderless decks. I do like that each suit has a different colour border which is still clear in how I have trimmed them. When laid out in a spread the colour coding makes the number of each suit easy to distinguish without compromising the artwork. They blend in well.

Two of the suits have been renamed. Swords are Blades and Pentacles are Coins. Nothing challenging to unravel there. One thing she has done differently to many decks though is to represent the suit in several ways. Blades are represented by sharp objects such as ice skates, scalpels, a hedgehog, knives and pins. Wands may appear as anything that the creator considered could be used creatively or energetically. Thus, amongst other things, you’ll find candles, a wrench, pencils, placards and sticks. Cups and coins are a lot more straightforward.

I don’t gel with how she has represented a couple of cards though. For me, the 10 of Blades lacks the sense of things being over and/or the worst being behind you. Or just generally the idea that this too shall pass. It could be said that there are hints of these things but for the most part I don’t find the imagery and her description in the book align. Normally when I see the 10 of Swords in regards to myself, I wonder what I’m “lying down” and accepting, if I’m allowing myself to feel defeated and so on. This card feels threatening despite the fact that she suggests it is representative of our own thoughts about danger and perceived threat. I’m sure others will see it differently and that’s great. I wish I did.

My issue with the Knight of Coins isn’t so much that others are laughing at him. It’s that he doesn’t seem to be enjoying the work he’s doing. He’s supposedly taking pride in his work and he’s very focused on his goal but it doesn’t seem to be making him very happy. Instead it appears that having a goal and being prepared to do what’s necessary to achieve it isn’t all that favourable. He’s judgemental and angry which in part she suggests in the book. I have never seen the Knight of Pentacles in that way. He’s the unflashy, reliable, steadfast, and focused knight that puts in the work to get things done, not someone that sees others as less than if they’re not acting like him. Maybe that’s just how I see this, but that’s all I can share.

I have had The Everyday Enchantment Tarot for a few years and when I pulled it out today to write this, my impression was the same. Often I find my impressions change over time but that hasn’t been the case in this instance. I’ll have to sit with both cards and see why they actually bother me. Cards having different slants to what I’d expect usually inspire me, these I have a block against. I know that says more about me than the cards and I’m curious to understand what it is.

The Everyday Enchantment Tarot Book

The 175-paged accompanying book is a pleasure to read. It offers an introduction that actually focuses on introducing the deck. This might seem logical and very much what you’d expect but many books don’t do this as well as has been done here. She follows this with some thoughts on how to use the deck. Strangely, this section doesn’t include any spreads. The only suggestion she makes in this regard is to position the cards in a circular pattern. Although she does offer some specifics for a clockface type spread, they are prefaced with “coulds” and “cans” rather than “position x signifies …….”. For me they are one and the same yet I am aware that, especially when starting out, more concrete direction can be important. If you were to flick through this book to find spread layouts, you wouldn’t find any. And, whilst I enjoy reading through the books that accompany my decks when I first get them, I’m aware that many people don’t actually read them so they wouldn’t find any spread information at all.

Not every one is a fan of reading and that’s fair enough. For those people not keen to read two pages of text for each card, she has provided a “Cards at a Glance” section for the Major Arcana with each card also having a text box that provides keywords and correspondences. I find her correspondences interesting. They are not just astrological and elemental. She aligns some mythologically as well. No correspondences are offered for the Minors, and to be honest I’m surprised that since she included mythological figures with some, she didn’t do so on the others. Also I wonder how in keeping this addition is with the theme of the deck overall.

Be that as it may, I really love the way the information is presented. In describing the image of each card she explains all the details and shares how they echo the RWS image. Then she tells the story of one of the people in the card in their own words. For example, The Knight of Blades story begins, “Let me tell you what I think. This girl’s reasonably pretty, but her make-up’s tacky – her blusher too dark and badly blended, her lip-liner is too obvious, and those fake eyelashes … I mean honestly!” and it continues in this vein. This is followed by the card meaning, “The motor-mouthed Knight of Blades may think he’s telling us something in our best interests, but he can end up sounding rude or cruel. This isn’t his intention; he just tells it as he sees it – which is how he thinks it is,” and it continues. Taken together, the story and the meaning form a complete picture. The same attention is given to both the Major and Minor Arcana.

This is a modern deck that invites you to enter into the story of the card. It asks you to consider how you think, feel, see and react to the card. Who are the characters to you and what are they wanting to share? I believe all decks invite us into their world – this deck makes it easy for us to do so.