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Deck Review: Liberation Tarot
“The Tarot cannot show me anything I do not know, but it can help me uncover and dance with my knowing… With a practice like Tarot, we are liberated from isolation into a conversation we can have with ourselves and that which is beyond ourselves, even when we appear to be alone” adrienne maree brown Any deck that features contributions from the amazing adrienne maree brown (I use her writing with my Criminology students *all* the time) instantly gets my attention, so I was very excited to see the Liberation Tarot Deck come up on Kickstarter and backed it straightaway. The deck is now for sale on most online stores, or through the publishers,…
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Deck Review: Solara Occulto Meliora Tarot
The out-of-print Solara Occulto Tarot has been on my wishlist for aaaaaaages. I occasionally spot a secondhand one on one of the Tarot trading forums, but they’re £££. So it was with great excitement that I saw the artist and creator Amanda Spicer was funding a second edition on Kickstarter! The second edition is largely faithful to the first, with some changes here and there (the borders are gone – hooray, I’m a big fan of borderless images – and the cards are a bit bigger). You can now pick up a copy of the Solara Occulto Meliora deck on the artist and creator’s website for $97 (Canadian; about £56) (Oof! Still less than a…
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Deck Review: The Universal Folk Tarot
I’ve been waiting for Anita Iverarity‘s Universal Folk Tarot to come out for aaaaaages, and I’m so happy it’s finally here. I’ve always been a big fan of Inverarity’s art style, as evidenced in their gorgeous Universal Folk Oracle, but Oracle decks aren’t really my thing (with a few notable exceptions), so I was so excited to see this beautiful Tarot deck in the works. The art reminds me, stylistically, of the art in one of my favourite books as a kid, In Search Of Unicorns, illustrated by Wendy Hall (I can find out literally nothing about Hall, btw. It’s like she illustrated this one awesome, quirky, darkly odd little…
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Deck Review: The Colorays Tarot
The Colorays Tarot by Nathalie Besnard is a joyous little deck with some really smart, yet prosaic, ways of conveying traditional RWS symbolism. To this extent, it reminds me a little of the Everyday Enchantment Tarot. It’s also an AI deck, which I realise is a whole can of worms! I only have 2 AI decks (this one and the Älvdansen Tarot) , both of which, imo (and according to the creators), have involved the creators really refining and editing the original AI images to make them into something meaningful and credible. While there are certainly ethical issues with how AI scrapes/collects/plagiarises its data, I think there’s a big difference…
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Deck Review: The Ink Witch Tarot
The Ink Witch Tarot by Eric Maille was on my wishlist for a while, but never made the “ok, I’ll buy it” cut. I knew it was a deck that got a lot of love in the Tarot community, and I thought the art was very accomplished, but I’m not really in to (largely) monochrome decks, and so always felt a bit luke-warm about it. Then I saw the Two of Wands card on someone’s Insta and was like “huh, that’s such a smart interpretation”. I looked at a whole deck flip through on YouTube and thought a lot of the artwork was super interesting in its take on the…
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Deck Review: The Light Seer’s Tarot
The romance novel plotline for my relationship with The Light Seer’s Tarot did not start with a classic meet cute and InstaLove, but was much more a case of enemies-to-lovers! Very early on in my Tarot journey (when the ADHD blackhole-pull of deck accumulation was at its most ferocious) I was intrigued enough by the deck to buy a really cheap copy on eBay. I bought it mainly because it’s such a popular deck that I felt it would be worth me exploring a bit (to see what all the fuss was about), not because I felt a particular connection to it per se (unlike my intense, violent, love-at-first sight…
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Deck Review: The Gentle Tarot
I’m almost done re-writing and uploading my old deck reviews to the blog (two to go after this one!), and it seemed like a really appropriate time to post my review of The Gentle Tarot by Mari In The Sky (the publishing house of creator and artist Mariza Ryce Aparicio-Tovar), as the second edition is shortly about to launch on Kickstarter (pre-launch link here). A quick note to say that the second edition looks fab, and: NO BORDERS! I love borderless cards, so if the deck appeals to you, I’d hold out and order the second edition. I’m sure you could get all sorts of extra goodies too, as the…
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Deck Review: Ostara Tarot
One of the first decks I bought (after a vintage Morgan Greer deck) was the Ostara Tarot created by the four-illustrator team of Krista Gibbard, Eden Cook, Julia Iredale, and Molly Applejohn. It’s a really gentle deck, and was largely pretty beginner friendly. Also, one of my cats (Cat Stevens) became oddly obsessed with it, which I take as a good sign, given how discerning kits are. The below photo was taken after I extracted it from his thieving paws (those gilt edges are not claw friendly!) I photographed this deck with the beautiful wisteria that I lovingly planted and nurtured in my old garden (I love living by the sea,…
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Deck Review: Broken Mirror Tarot (5th Ed.)
Ah, the Broken Mirror Tarot… This deck, created by Sengia, was the first deck I ordered and didn’t imediately love (and the first Kickstarter Deck I had Backers’ Remorse over once it arrived!), and, after having it in my collection for two years, and working with it a fair bit, I’m still largely ambivalent about it. To start with, there is nothing particularly adventurous about any of the symbolism in this deck – it’s a pretty faithful RWS clone. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, I have plenty of RWS clones that I adore, including literal frame by frame re-craftings (like Jamie Sawyer’s stunning 1909 RWS Sawyer’s Redux Edition).…
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Deck Review: The Journey Tarot Deck
I’ve been a big fan of The Journey Tarot Deck by Teagan Michael Turner ever since its inception (you can see me raving about it on Kickstarter here and here), and now it finally exists in the physical world (and in my collection :-)) it does not disappoint. I will say off the bat that this is a pretty pricey deck, probably one of the more expensive ‘new’ decks in my collection (we won’t mention the painful amount of money I’ve spent acquiring some rare secondhand OOP gems, looking at you Bonestone!) However, you can tell the money has gone on the excellent production values (the box really is a…
