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Deck Review: Austin Osman Spare Tarot
One for the collectors and the Tarot-history enthusiasts is the Austin Osman Spare Tarot, which you can currently order via the publisher’s (Strange Attractor) website for £35. Being a skinflint Trying to control my Tarot addiction in a sensible manner, I only forked out for the deck when I backed the project on Kickstarter, so I didn’t get the accompanying book, Lost Envoy: The Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare, or the AOS Tarot Sourcebooks (How to Tell Fortunes by The Cards*, by Rapoza (1906), a key source for Spare’s Minor Arcana attributions, and The Tarot, by S. L. MacGregor Mathers (1888) from which he assigned his Major Arcana meanings). This…
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Deck Review: Grounded Wisdom Tarot
Another Kickstarter-backed deck that recently arrived with me is the gorgeously detailed Grounded Wisdom Tarot. The deck was designed and drawn by Gabby Morris, who takes a “polymathic approach*” to their projects, blending art and design with nature and ecological futures. (*My little ADHD magpie brain perked up at this inspired phrasing! My new goal is owning my own scattergun approach to knowledge by calling it ‘polymathic’! 💪) Morris’ website is full of really cool stuff from her Master’s project and subsequent work – it’s kinda chemistry-meets-cooking-meets-conservation-meets art & design-meets-am dram, and is well worth checking out. The deck not only has lots of crossovers with my own myriad interests…
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Deck Review: Fat Folks Tarot
I feel like I’ve been waiting aaaaaaages for this deck (its Kickstarter campaign finished on 01/02/23), so I’m very excited to finally have it in my chubby little paws. It is, of course, the second (and final) edition of the Fat Folks Tarot. The creating team note that, while Tarot is “meant to depict the entire realm of human experience”, many people have been left out of the imagery in traditional Tarot decks, including fat people. Historically, as one of the co-creators, Cassandra Snow points out, when we see fat people in Tarot they are associated either with “gluttony or motherhood”. And that’s it. That’s all we get. So here…
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Deck Review: Gourmet Tarot
One of the most recent additions to my collection is this little cutie, the Gourmet Tarot by Scribalist (with illustrations by in-house artist Gumeaw). I got it via backing the Kickstarter campaign, but you can pick it up for £55 via Etsy [edited to update dead links]. The deck aims to “blend… the timeless wisdom of Tarot readings with the universal language of food“, and I was immediately struck by the really thoughtful matching of traditional Tarot symbolism with foods from around the world. There’s definitely a South East Asian vibe to a lot of the foodstuffs (the creators are based in Bangkok), but with classical dishes from Italy to…
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Deck Review: Tarot of Echoes
I’ve felt thoroughly spoilt this year with the release of not one, but two, decks by(/with the involvement of) the incredibly talented Ana Tourian (on top of news of a mass-market Bonestone release :-)) I’ve reviewed Ana’s deck with Claire Duval, Le Tarot Arthurien, here, and in this post I’m going to talk through her recent solo deck, the Tarot of Echoes. I love all of Tourian’s decks. I think her art style is perfectly suited to the Tarot – it just clicks together. Bonestone is my all time ride-or-die deck, and now Tarot of Echoes is right up there. It’s a really beautiful, thoughtful, wonderful deck, and I wholeheartedly…
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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…
