A non-tarot friend sent me the Wandering Star Tarot by Cat Pierce, the mass market version published by Hay House. This is a contemporary arts deck with keywords, and not just one or two per card, but strings of keywords cleverly integrated into each illustration.

What I find the most impressive about the art is the graphic design. Everything works with everything else in terms of design elements– the colors, the way symmetry and tension work together in the compositions, and Pierce’s linework all come together in harmony.

There are 80 cards– the traditional 78 plus a Yes “The Mother Star” card (an absolutely stunning illustration, by the way– I would love to see merch, like journals, notebooks, coffee mugs, etc.w ith this print) and a No “The Creator” card. You’ll see both in the top left corner above. Oh, that Hermit card is absolutely love. So many of these illustrations are incredible. That Key X might very well be one of my favorite Wheel of Fortune cards.

Continue reading “Wandering Star Tarot by Cat Pierce” →

The Radiant Tarot: Pathway to Creativity is a Red Wheel/Weiser Books publication that came out earlier this year, authored by Tony Barnstone, a professor of English and environmental studies, and artist Alexandra Eldridge. This is a deck project 12 years in the making, “born from working with archetypal images, the universal symbolic language.”

Author Prof. Barnstone set out to create a deck that would be a harmonious balance between verbal and visual, rational and magical. That mission and vision for balance has produced an incredible guidebook to the Radiant Tarot that you’ll be able to use in your studies of the tarot, in general, well beyond this deck. The card meanings Barnstone provides are given through the lenses of the psychology and science of creativity, and “the world’s literary, artistic, and spiritual traditions.”

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For the longest time, I had just the yellow box 1971 Rider Waite deck by U.S. Games and the iconic green box Robin Wood Tarot by Llewellyn. The Robin Wood Tarot, first published in 1991, is — I’ll call it the first and the OG Pagan Otherworlds.

I’d describe this deck as being Celtic and pagan inspired with an undeniable 90s Wicca aesthetic. The version I’m showing here is from the 2011 Nineteenth Printing.

This isn’t going to be a full-on deck review. Instead, this is going to be a photographic walk-through of the cards, and not even in order, because my deck as-is, off the shelf, isn’t in order. However, what I have done for your benefit is put all the cards upright. =) My original as-is order had reversals.

The LWB that that deck comes with places relatively equal emphasis on both upright and reversed card meanings, and with a reversible cardback, that means I read reversals when using the Robin Wood.

The deck took the artist 10 years to complete. I remember how that used to be the norm– tarot deck projects would take the creator up to a decade to finish. These days artists manage to publish full-on deck projects in a matter of months. Nuts.

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The Paper Oracle was published earlier this year by artist Eric Maille, who also created The Ink Witch Tarot. While this is through and through a Lenormand deck, Maille has added a few creative upgrades– 7 additional cards.

There are 43 cards, though the first 36 numbered cards function like any other Lenormand deck. Work with the additional cards at your option. Above you can see the cards in numerical order, and after Card 36: The Cross, we get the set of 7 cards Maille has created, beginning with Card 37: The Non-Binary.

Continue reading “The Paper Oracle: A Lenormand Deck by Eric Maille” →