Tag: animism

Tarot Deck Personification (cf. Animism?)

On By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, opinion, personal20 Comments
Per usual, random photos of decks interspersed throughout the post to keep visual interest.

Yesterday I was invited to live-chat with the Three Fat Readers and one of the topics that came up was deck personification. You can watch a replay of it here.

The timing of our sit-down together coincided with a greater conversation that’s been trending in our community as of late. Tarot Readings From a Bitch covers the controversy succinctly here and gets the ball rolling by asking the question.

I very much enjoyed ScholarBot’s perspective and explanation for not personifying tarot decks, linked here.

Robyn’s Reflections shares why and how she personifies some decks and not others here.

Lisa and Dawn Michelle chat about deck personification here.

This particular issue recycles in the tarot community every so often, so if you go back five years, you can see this video by Katey Flowers on personifying tarot decks.

Since the opening premise of the tarot deck I created, the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, was to explore and experiment with the concept of animism, I thought I might chime in. To that end, I’d like to separate out the discussion on deck personification and the discussion on animism.

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The Wooden Tarot Deck Review

On By benebellIn deck review, tarot26 Comments

Wooden Tarot - Box and Cards Display

The Wooden Tarot by A. L. Swartz of Skullgarden on Etsy is an animal lover’s dream tarot deck. I love the paintings on wood and found it pleasantly synchronistic that Swartz draws heavily from the concept of memento mori, as do I in certain aspects of my own practice. Swartz’s artwork seeks to express the esoteric dimension of flora and fauna, merging realism and surrealism, and you see that in the illustrations on The Wooden Tarot.

Wooden Tarot - Box

The deck is based on the RWS tradition and while the deck does not come with a companion guide or LWB of any sort, Swartz does note to interpret The Wooden Tarot with any RWS-based tarot book. However, I found that I craved a book keyed specifically to the imagery of this deck, because it really is quite special and distinct from the traditional RWS symbols.

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