The Kuan Yin Oracle Deck: A Review

On April 13, 2015August 22, 2019 By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, oracle deck33 Comments

Kuan Yin Oracle Deck - 01 Box Cover

The Kuan Yin oracle deck by Alana Fairchild with art by Chinese painter Zeng Hao caught my attention as soon as it came out on the market. It’s published by Blue Angel, an affiliate partner with Llewellyn. I wanted the deck for Zeng Hao’s breathtaking artwork and also because it’s Kuan Yin.

Both my paternal and maternal grandmothers venerated Kuan Yin and so did my husband’s maternal grandmother. My mother has an altar in our home for Kuan Yin. When I was little and afraid of the dark, not wanting to go to sleep, crying out for mommy, my mother would come in to my room and tell me to recite this mantra that included Kuan Yin’s name, which would keep me protected. Kuan Yin is the energy I invoke any time I seek protection or personal fearlessness. I never really thought of her as the “Divine Feminine,” but okay I can work with that interpretation.

(As a practicing Buddhist who has studied at monasteries since the age of ten, I’ve literally never heard Kuan Yin associated with the “Divine Feminine” until white people got involved. Just saying.)

Kuan Yin Oracle Deck - 06 Pick a Card

To kick off this review, let’s start with a divination for you. Look at the three cards above and choose one, left, center, or right. Be receptive to what message most needs to be conveyed to you right now. Hold that thought. Continue reading “The Kuan Yin Oracle Deck: A Review” →

Golden Tarot of Klimt: Deck Review

On April 5, 2015April 5, 2015 By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, tarot, tarot symbolism27 Comments

One year in high school I had a spiral bound day planner I bought at a museum gift shop that featured Klimt’s artwork. I carried Klimt around with me everywhere that year and afterward, cut out the full-color prints that appeared in the day planner, framed and placed them around my room. An art poster print of “The Kiss” was hung up in my bedroom through my adolescence and young adulthood. Currently in the halls of my day job office hangs a really nice framed print of “Adele Bloch-Bauer I.” [Also, tell me it isn’t just me– is there or isn’t there something very Nine of Pentacles about that painting.]

Like many artists of his time (Pamela Colman Smith included), Klimt was influenced by Japanese block art. Klimt’s art is bold, sensual, deeply ornate yet symbolic, and iconic of the Art Nouveau and Symbolist Art movements, with mystical tendencies. His art was controversial for its time. Klimt would have been about 50 years old around the time Waite and Smith created their tarot deck.

The Klimt Tarot or Golden Tarot of Klimt by Lo Scarabeo and Llewellyn is one of the most well-done collector’s art deck I’ve seen. There on the box cover you see one of Klimt’s iconic paintings, “Judith I.” The cards are 2.5″ x 4.6″, which fits comfortably in my hands and the smooth texture on the cardstock renders the deck very easy to shuffle and fan for reading purposes. There isn’t much to the Little White Booklet (LWB), as the text in there is short and sweet, and in those few pages, is packed with 6 language translations.

On the side of the box pictured above, the top image is from one of my favorite paintings by Klimt, “Medicine (Hygieia),” which so perfectly appears on The Magician card in the deck. While more and more decks are moving to China for printing and manufacturing, these decks are still made in Italy. The box and packaging is finished beautifully and is part of what renders this deck such a rewarding collector’s item. It was first published in 2005 and the brainchild of the Bulgarian-born Atanas Antchev Atanassov. Continue reading “Golden Tarot of Klimt: Deck Review” →

“A Sea of Calm” Mandala Oracle Deck

On March 31, 2015March 24, 2015 By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, oracle deck8 Comments

A Sea of Calm is a self-published 52-card mandala oracle deck by Fiona Stolze. I got a deck from the second printing and just love the artwork. In true contemporary oracle deck form, each card features a keyword or phrase, which can be applied to the divinatory exercise at hand. The deck has a calming, soft energy with exquisite mandala art by Stolze. These are paintings on silk printed onto borderless cards with captions like “Embracing the Divine Feminine,” “Thy Will Be Done,” or “Synthesis.”

The cards are a good fit in my hands, at 2.75″ x 4.75″ and altogether make for a rather slim deck, so it transports easily alongside a tarot deck. The deck description on Stolze’s website notes that the deck is ideal for meditation and contemplation.

Mandalas are, in a nutshell, an art form intended to express the artist’s perspective of the universe, or a certain part of the universe. Religiously, they’re used to help establish sacred space. Thus, an oracle deck of mandala art would be ideal for practitioners who use tarot or oracle decks in meditation. I’d imagine they’d work pretty well, too, for work on the astral plane.

Continue reading ““A Sea of Calm” Mandala Oracle Deck” →

The Intuitive Tag | Part 1

On March 26, 2015April 29, 2015 By benebellIn cartomancy, divination, personal, tarot13 Comments

intuitivetag

This one seems interesting. It’s a tag that’s been circulating video blogs, but since I don’t do those, I’ll write out my responses instead. Please also consider participating and, in the comments section, link me to your responses. Also, be sure to share with the blogosphere using the #IntuitiveTag.

I’ll be completing the intuitive tag in various parts. Here’s Part 1.

Share your first paranormal experience that comes to mind.

The first one that comes to mind happened about five years ago, no, maybe even more years ago than that. Know that I have a strange affinity with “11.” It recurs throughout my life and I, like a handful of others, always seem to glance over at the clock when it’s 11:11 exactly.

At the time of this occurrence, the address number of the condo that Hubby and I lived in was 109. The condo next door was 111. We had just moved into this condo, so I was not yet familiar with the neighborhood. In other words, hadn’t one clue where the nearest hospital was.

It was evening, a weeknight. Hubby was still at work and I had just gotten home to start preparing dinner. I had oil heating up in a wok and was chopping up the eggplant to be fired up in that wok. Meanwhile I was yapping away on the phone with my sister.

I lost track of the stove and FOOM! I turned around to see where the sound was coming from and oh my @#$%ing the wok was on fire. The flames were 3 feet high and melting the microwave that was situated above the stove.

“Gotta call you back,” I muttered to my sister on the other line. Then I dropped the phone and panicked.

In a state of panic, I couldn’t think straight. In that moment, it made more sense to me to try to run the flaming wok out of the house into the parking lot than it did to simply try to get it in the sink. I think it’s because I recalled watching something about putting water on a fire and the fire getting bigger, I don’t know, I’m just making excuses now. Anyway, in the moment, I grabbed the handle on the wok and dashed for the front door.

Continue reading “The Intuitive Tag | Part 1” →

Review of Tarot of the Holy Light

On March 20, 2015May 8, 2023 By benebellIn astrology, cartomancy, deck review, divination, tarot, tarot symbolism25 Comments

The Witches Tarot: Deck Interview (and Review)

On March 2, 2015May 16, 2015 By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, divination, tarot12 Comments

Witches Tarot 01

I totally swiped this deck interview idea from Kate at Daily Tarot Girl. Read her blog post about it here. I was gifted the Witches Tarot, a deck created by Ellen Dugan and illustrated by Mark Evans. It’s a Rider-Waite-Smith based deck with photographic digital art that is a near seamless blending of realism and fantasy.

The cards are 2.75″ x 4.60″, a typical size for tarot, though perhaps a smidge smaller, which means they shuffle great in my hands, fan out just beautifully across a tabletop, and are very easy to work with. It’s published by Llewellyn and has a pretty standard Llewellyn/Lo Scarabeo cardstock quality. For an RWS tarot practitioner who likes modern digital art, the Witches Tarot would make an incredible workhorse reading deck.

Witches Tarot 03

The cardbacks are so pretty. There’s a galactic vibe to it and at the center, the triple goddess symbol, with the waxing crescent, full moon, and waning crescent moon. The backs are not reversible, however, as one edge is reddish and the other bluish. I’ve opted not to read with reversals when using this deck.

Now, without further ado, let’s interview the Witches Tarot with Kate’s suggested questions.

BENEBELL: What is your main mission or message in this world?

WITCHES TAROT [WT]: Page of Swords

The page is represented by a tall, thin teenage boy on a green plain. He wears a talisman with a hawk around his neck. This card, per the Companion guidebook is about thinking quickly and active decisively. However, use wit, not brute force. Per the traditional attribution of the card, that of messages, the hawk symbolizes messages. What an appropriate card to respond to the question with! In the Witches Tarot deck is embedded Ellen Dugan’s message, a message about her belief systems, her traditions and how she has integrated those traditions with the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, and a quick and natural wit about the deck’s style that will attract its followers.

Continue reading “The Witches Tarot: Deck Interview (and Review)” →

Tarot and Socioeconomic Class: My Thoughts After drawingKenaz

On February 27, 2015May 30, 2025 By benebellIn cartomancy, divination, opinion, personal, professional tarot, tarot, tarot community, traditional witchcraft13 Comments

Thorn Mooney recently shared her thoughts in her vlog, “Paganism, Tarot, and Class.” You really should watch her video first before reading onward, but to give background for my thoughts here, I’ll try to recap.

Mooney talks about witchcraft as a practice occurring lower down on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a practice that is more concerned with practical applications, like talking to the dead, love spells, money spells, or getting jobs. She uses the phrase “real world, tactile, necessary things.”

Those who endeavor into the esoteric or metaphysical, she says, are more concerned with self-actualization, per Maslow’s hierarchy, which is at the top of the pyramid. They’re working through long-term emotional or spiritual concerns, striving to be their best selves, and can endeavor with these concerns because their basic physiological needs have been met.

She then talks about how all that translates in her professional tarot readings. She has found, per her own experiences, that those who request readings from her online tend to ask about issues relating to purpose in life, spiritual direction, meaning, connection to deity or deities, which she acknowledges are very “important,” but “not critically important in the sense that, oh, ‘I might be evicted from my home tomorrow'” important.

::nods:: I get that.

In contrast, reading requests she gets from the shop she works at (i.e., in-person readings, I presume), clients are asking questions like “I don’t have any money to afford a lawyer and my ex-husband has filed for full custody of my kids and the court hearing is tomorrow. What is going to happen? Am I going to lose my kids?” or “My child is physically ill and we can’t afford healthcare. What do you see happening to us?”

“I am obviously not qualified to offer legal or medical advice,” Mooney remarks, “and yet I am repeatedly put in the position where I am asked to provide input, and technically [that input] is not from me, it’s from the cards, but that’s a really blurry line.”

Mooney continues, describing the nature of these lower-level-per-Maslow’s-hierarchy questions as “gritty,” noting that it’s rare for someone in that context to be asking her about finding higher meaning in the world.

And Mooney hypothesizes that it’s tied to socioeconomic class.

Continue reading “Tarot and Socioeconomic Class: My Thoughts After drawingKenaz” →

New Faces of Tarot: BuzzFeed Article

On February 26, 2015May 16, 2015 By benebellIn cartomancy, divination, professional tarot, tarotLeave a comment

I wrote a Community Post on BuzzFeed about the Millennial generation of tarot professionals. I reached out to my arm’s length network of both tarot professionals and the professionals of other industries who seek the counsel of tarot professionals.

In retrospect, I regret not having interviewed male tarot readers. I will have to make up for that in future work that I do, somehow. Considering other recent articles on tarot, like “The Tarot Card Reader” in the New York Times blog or [the not as recent] “Psychics: The New Therapists?” that BuzzFeed published two years ago or the interest in The Atlantic about fortune-telling and the law, I do believe the practice of tarot is on the verge of a new phase.

Well, it has been for some time, with the interest in the intersection between tarot and psychology, spearheaded by folks like Art Rosengarten, Katrina Wynne, Kooch and Victor Daniels, among others.

Now Millennials are really making tarot trendy, from The Wild Unknown tarot deck garnering a ton of attention from the fashion blogosphere to tarot being taught as a creative writing tool in MFA classes.

For the longest while, whenever tarot made an appearance in Hollywood film, it would be ominously. Some of the depictions I’ve seen in recent years have been, at the very least, neutral, and on a few occasions, in a manner that tarot professionals would find much more agreeable.

Please join in the discussion on tarot in the comments section below the BuzzFeed article, direct link here.

Deck Review of the Tao Oracle Cards by Ma Deva Padma

On February 24, 2015May 16, 2015 By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, I Ching, oracle deck, tarot28 Comments

I’ve fallen in love… with the Tao Oracle deck by Ma Deva Padma published by St. Martin’s Press. This is the I Ching oracle deck. It’s a deck of 64 cards based on the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching Book of Changes. Padma’s paintings are emotional, textured, and fully expressive of each of the hexagrams they represent. A quote from the artist: “The evolution and creation of my paintings is sparked by a deep and intensely personal journey into the realm of the subconscious — the kingdom of archetypes and the home of mysterious symbols.”

The deck is beautifully packaged in a sturdy high-gloss box. It comes with a 310-page perfect-bound guidebook that contains the author’s personal interpretations of the 64 hexagrams. St. Martin’s Press really out-does the more popular tarot and oracle deck publishers du jour. I cannot praise the quality of this deck enough.

Continue reading “Deck Review of the Tao Oracle Cards by Ma Deva Padma” →

A Review of the Efflorescent Tarot

On February 21, 2015May 16, 2015 By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, tarot23 Comments

Efflorescent Tarot Review 00 Intro

The Efflorescent Tarot is a self-published deck by artist Katie Rose Pipkin that you can order through Etsy. It comes in two options, colored as shown in this deck review or black and white. View all card images, in both black and white and color at Pipkin’s website here. The deck name could not be more appropriate, because the artwork here truly represents the efflorescence of Pipkin’s extraordinary artistic talent. I have a particular weakness for ink-drawn decks and the Efflorescent Tarot is an incredible demonstration of the medium.

Efflorescent Tarot Review 01 Box Exterior

The deck comes in a white box made of thick cardstock, which is relatively sturdy but not indestructible– by the time my order reached me, there were already a few minor dents in the box. A full-color reproduction of the Ten of Pentacles appears on the lid. I love Pipkin’s rendering of the Ten of Pentacles here.

Efflorescent Tarot Review 02 Only Explanation Card

There is no little white booklet and the only introductory material that accompanies the deck is that single card you see in the above and below photos. That’s all you need, really. The Efflorescent Tarot is a Rider-Waite-Smith-based deck and if you’re familiar with RWS, you’ll read just fine with this deck, no explanations needed.

Efflorescent Tarot Review 03 Packaging

I would not call the deck a clone, however, because Pipkin does deviate from traditional RWS imagery in a few of the cards to give her own interpretive spin, like the Ten of Pentacles on the lid that you see above and also in a few other cards, which I’ll mention later. All card images are available for your viewing pleasure on Pipkin’s website here.

Continue reading “A Review of the Efflorescent Tarot” →

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Category: cartomancy