Original, pretty (or extraordinarily gorgeous), enticing, out-of-the-box, newsworthy & educational. If any of those keywords are applicable to a deck or book that I’ve seen, chances are I want to have it (written about) on The Queen’s Sword. The Falnama Turkish Oracle cards is happily supported by at least one of those terms, which is why you’re reading this. Based
In the Iran and Turkey of the second half of the sixteenth century bibliomancy and pictures for prognostication (TQS: fortune-telling in academic terms) had become quite the popular thing. The Falnama – meaning consulting the sacred or seeking auguries – or otherwise called Book of Omens,
A playing card collector focused on high quality, born in the Indian Himalaya region – visited by Fortune tellers, Sadhus and Holy men on a frequent basis – having a wide network of Indian Tarot readers and a fascination with divination from a young age. Sounds like the recipe for a great tarot deck if such a man would ever try to create one, right? I am not saying it isn’t, but Sunish Chabba’s first try at reaching
In the last few months I felt like two people fighting to write a review. The Game of Saturn, Decoding the Sola-Busca tarocchi by author Peter Mark Adams (Scarlet Imprint) is a tough nut to crack. The Game of Saturn is the first extensive scientific research in the English language on this rather special historical tarot deck, but that is also where my difficulty lay: I am not just a tarot reader. I am a historian as well and both parts of my brain read the book in a different way. After starting over several times I finally decided which course to take and this is the result. The Game of Saturn might just be the most talked about book of the last year in what you could loosely call ‘the historical tarot community’. With his thesis esotericist, tarot reader and professional energy worker Peter Mark Adams delivered the first scientifically charged book on ‘that weird deck’, which also happens to be the oldest surviving complete tarot – and a museum piece at that. Up until now historical tarot readers had scarce materials about decks older than the Waite Smith, and the Sola Busca in particular, and there’s still a lot…
Decks that are based on mythology or different cultures aren’t exactly new. It will ask a lot of a deck designer to find an angle that’ll attract an audience eager to check his or her work out, and be original and consistent at the same time. The American Gods Tarot Majors Only, a newly released and very limited edition tarot (first edition only 25 copies) from the hands of Anastasia Kashian is exactly such a deck. Here’s my review & interview with the designer in one.
