This is one of these decks you either hate or love. Which probably makes it a typical Battersby & Aguilar production. They – kind of – have a track record of releasing decks that conjure up some heated debate. Their Twisted Tarot Tales recently came out. Heated debate: check, love & hate: check. If the curiosity is killing you, or you are yet undecided to which team you belong: read along.
Say you’ve just ventured your first few steps onto the Tarot de Marseille path. Perhaps you’re coveting one of those Top 9 decks or an Ancient Italian. But how to read Tarot de Marseille? Specially for The Queen’s Sword Paul Richard – worth decades of tarot & Marseille knowledge – shares his secrets on how to become a TdM-expert in 7 ways!
Tarot Mysteries; Rediscovering the real meanings of the cards has been out there for the better part of the 21st century. Red Wheel/Weiser has just reprinted Jonathan Dee’s book and state his tarot guide stil has something new to offer in the sea of Tarot books. So, let’s see if it indeed does that.
It’s always hard to review a deck that has both great plus sides as well as huge downsides. The Russian/Ukranian Agni Roerich Tarot is such a deck and in order to know if this is truly a Tarot you want to put on your wish list, you better read all the plusses and minuses. Russia is known for its great writers and painters. Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) definitely belongs on that list. The Russian painter, inspired by Shambhala (a mythical Buddhist kingdom situated in the Himalayans), traveled around and used both of these inspirations in his artwork. There are several museums dedicated to his artwork, but the best known is in New York. Roerich is often seen as a ‘Symbolist’, so it wasn’t that surprising a Ukranian publisher – name not mentioned anywhere, other than the author Svetlana Traskovskaya – ended up creating a tarot deck from his work. Pre-made tarot-art Designers of Oracles make frequent use of existing paintings and pictures. They add a theme or thought to it and with a bit of luck you have an excellent divination tool. I think in as many occasions that it works, it fails too. And for a tarot deck this practice…
Sometimes I think I am on social media too much, but then I find a gem like this and think ‘Nah…’. The Filligree Tarot is a Disney-look deck without the cloyingly sweet overlay and -hopefully- meanings.
From what I have seen so far Teo Hoble, the artist behind the “work in progress”, really tries to embed the deck not only into a decent tarot system (RWS), but makes the court cards more approachable by depicting them as their ‘possible job’ or…
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