Wow. I don’t use that word lightly when it comes to tarot decks, but I said it out loud after unboxing the The AlcheMystic Woodcut Tarot by D. W. Prudence. Prudence had asked me to do a review on his deck and the title sounded interesting enough to make sure I got a copy. I tested this deck a little longer, so if you’ve been cruising the web in search of a TQS-original on the AlcheMystic…sorry!
Alexandre Musruck is one of the better known names in the Lenormand world. The reader behind Angel Cartomancy self-published his The Art of Lenormand Reading – Decoding powerful messages in 2016 and was recently picked up by Schiffer Books/Red Feather for a mass market reproduction of said book, including a deck created of the accompanying Lenormand examples. This review comes in two parts, the book and the deck. First up: The Alexandre Musruck Lenormand Oracle Cards. When Musruck wrote his book before the initial publication in 2016 he didn’t – like so many authors need to do – want to ask permission from a designer or publisher to use their Lenormand pictures and pay a fee. He decided to create his own deck, one with 36 cards he eventually not just used as examples, but also published under the name The Classic Lenormand. In the YouTube video where he announces his Schiffer contract he talks a bit about the adapted version in 39 cards (the regular 36 + an extra man, woman and child) that came to be The Alexandre Musruck Lenormand Oracle Cards. Musruck has been reading Lenormand since his teenage years. He’s probably its biggest (self-proclaimed) fan and…
If you want you can even use the happiest, most colourful tarot deck for shadow work, but a deck specifically made for doing so could work better. The Spirit Within Tarot by writer and tarot reader Steven Bright is a good example of that. This tarot from the Schiffer/Red Feather stall is supposed to present the shadows in your life, past, present
This review almost didn’t exist. Last year my planning was pretty full each month and a stay on Crete led me to skip a few pages in a certain publisher’s catalogue. Luckily I was later on convinced that it was “all about the review itself and not the date it was published”. That means you’ll get to read an article on The Star Tarot deck after all and myself would not have wanted to miss it for the world!
A good vintage year, that’s what they say when a particular year of harvesting grapes produced many a good & potentially classic wine. I would almost say that 2017 could be called a good vintage year in tarot terms, with a lot of excellent decks seeing the light. No deck as marked however as Beth Seilonen’s Guardian Tarot. And if marked should get the connotation of striking and outstanding too, I
