The Gilded Tarot Deck Review by Misha　

     Ciro Marchetti is known for his own style of deck creations that are unique to him. I have to admit that his past decks have been too “dark” in a lot of their images for me to use when doing face to face readings. Upon receiving this deck I had the thought of having to limit this one as well for over the phone readings only; boy was I wrong.

     You have to be careful when opening this box or you will end up tearing it or at the very least attempt to open it the wrong way as I first did. It is packaged in what appears to be a standard box, so I was attempting to lift open the top of it, to no avail. It took me a few attempts in my anxiousness to realize that it in fact had to be flat and the lid lifted.

     The colors are bright and vibrant and done in such a way as to draw you into each card. The Magician is the first card that did pull me in. The eyes of The Magician are as if he is looking out of the card and through you to your very soul. The High Priestess is different then what is normally seen because she is not seated between the two pillars. In the Gilded Tarot, The High Priestess appears to be a ballerina that is easily floating above the water in her graceful dance. There are two pillars behind her along with the evening sky and big crescent moon. The Hierophant is stepping out of a stained glass window that gives the appearance of being in the universe with a planet depicted in the background sky.

     For the minor arcana I have to say that the cups stood out the most to me. I am not sure why that is, perhaps because the cups seem to be the happiest and cheerful suit of the four minor arcana suits. In the cups even the sadder, less pleasant cards are almost uplifting.

     Pentacles are usually portrayed as round and in this deck when I view them shields is what came to mind. Ciro has chosen for the pentacles to be in the shape of pentagons with a smaller pentagon in the center of the main one.

     On the top center of each card is a colored oval that is framed in gold. For the Major Arcana they are colored black and the Roman Numeral for each is written in the center. I have to say that the colors chosen for some of the minor suits has me mystified. Wands I am sure is suppose to be red, but is more of a bright fuchsia. With the colors being so prominent I would have expected a bright fiery red. The suit of cups has be scratching my head because the color used is orange. Cups being the water element one thinks of the color blue, at least I do. Blue is actually found on the suit of swords. The color of the sky since swords is the air element, at least I think anyway. Pentacles is also obvious as that suit is green.

     The deck comes with two extra cards that shows a spread on each one. The Celtic Cross Spread using 11 cards is on one and a 5 card Daily Spread is on the other. The little white book is done simply with to the point meanings both upright and reverse for each card. The back of the lwb is shown the past, present, future spread as well as The Daily Spread found on the one extra card.

     This follows the tradition of Rider Waite with the exception of The Hanged Man being renamed The Hanging Man. This change in the name fits the card as he is not motionlessly hanging upside down. In this deck you find you upside down and in motion therefore the name change does fit. The Gilded Tarot will brighten up any reading with it’s vibrant colors and can be read by any level reader.

The Gilded Tarot

By: Ciro Marchetti

Published by: Llewelyn

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Dreaming Way Tarot Deck Review by Misha

       The newest deck from U.S. Games is Dreaming Way Tarot by Rome Choi. My initial impression was that this was an Irish theme deck from The Fool dressed in mostly green and the pastel green background of the box. I found myself surprisingly drawn to it, even though green is the color I most dislike. The design on the back of the cards does nothing for me however. The back is not the pretty pastel but instead is a dark green with a bit of odd design to it. The deck itself follows the Rider Waite tradition and has a young feel to it. I see this deck being a deck to use for the young clients and used by lots of younger readers.

     Going through this deck I felt a sense of confusion, are the images suppose to be dreams? Are the images sleepwalking? What exactly is this deck about? Let’s get out the Little White Book and get some answers. The only answers that the lwb held was that Rome’s belief of the Majors is that reversals are not opposite of uprights. With this deck the majors in reverse are different degrees of the upright meanings.

      I found myself wondering with some of the cards if the characters portrayed were in fact sleepwalking; such as Strength, Hermit, Death, 2 of pentacles, page of wands, 8 of cups, and page of swords are just some examples. The facial expressions and the overall feel of a lot of the cards left me wondering if they are in a trance.

      There were other cards that have left me completely confused as to what they are trying to portray. Facial expression and feel of the cards do not match up what the lwb has to say. The Lovers and the Four of Wands made me wonder a lot of things and for me it was not matching up with what the lwb has to say. The Star is an example of what appears to me as a state of confusion by the woman dumping her pitchers. It’s as if she is just doing this action without any understanding of what is going on. The Ten of Cups shows to me a family at the end of the day exhausted and worn out, as opposed to being happy, peaceful and joyful as are some of the keywords from the lwb. Seeing The Page of Cups had the words to the song “I’m a little teacup” pop into my head; with her teapot tied to her head. I can’t even imagine why the cup is being filled from a tilted teapot tied to her head. Aren’t the flying fish portrayed enough of a distraction?

      Going through this deck multiple times left me wondering if the creator just couldn’t quite decide on fairytale, dreamy, Irish or impish and so incorporated a little of all of it in this whimsical deck. I will have to work with this one and really see how it does with readings before determining if I will be using it or not. If there was some sort of explanation to things supplied in the lwb I feel this deck would be better understood as to why things are portrayed the way they are. Possibly the point of this deck is for each of us to get our own opinion of what is going on. It is titled Dreaming Way Tarot and dreams are always up for personal interpretation.

 Dreaming Way Tarot

By Rome Choi

Published by U.S. Games

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Witches Tarot Review

By Misha

     From the size of the envelope that arrived from Llewellyn , I was sure it was a newly released book. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Witches Tarot and the illustration immediately had me in a hurry to open it up and see this deck. I was so anxious to get it open that I dropped it on the ground and since it landed standing up, the bottom of the box and it’s corners are now squished.

      It contains a 312 page book which is why it’s in a large box. The cards themselves are packaged in plastic only. This means if it turns out to be a deck I want to use regularly I have to now purchase a tarot bag to put them in. You simply can’t travel to do readings with lose cards or with a box this large, it doesn’t work. I am not sure other then to save money why the deck was not packaged in its own smaller box or come with a bag.

      As I start to go through the cards one by one I know this will be a deck that will get a lot of use. You know the expression “Never judge a book by it’s cover”; this is a case of never judge a tarot deck by it’s name. With the name Witches Tarot you would probably expect this to be for Wiccans/pagans and witches with lots of obvious symbolism that the majority of clients, especially Christian clients would be uncomfortable seeing preventing a lot of usage. You wouldn’t be more wrong and the average person would not have any idea that this was a witches deck especially since it will be put in a bag nobody will have to know, they won’t see it’s name. I see no reason why anyone would be offended by this deck at all or any of it’s illustrations.

     Going through the deck I start to realize that instantly my eyes are automatically being drawn to a specific thing/area in the illustrations. In a lot of the cards I notice that clothing seems to be more colorful and that is where my eyes go with the initial glance. A few examples of this from the majors are The High Priestess, the Empress, The Emperor (except it’s the 2 children and not the Emperor himself), The High Priest, there are plenty of others especially with the court cards.

     Did I say The High Priest in the above examples? Yes I did and that was not a typo; Ellen Dugan has changed the names of some of the majors. Those changes are as follows: High Priest (Hierophant), The Wheel of The Year ( Wheel of Fortune), The Shadow Side (The Devil), Judgement (Karma). The newly named cards all made sense to me except for The Wheel of The Year, which I had to look up in the companion book. The explanation made sense and I would have gotten it on my own if I took the extra time to think about it. If one knows basic Wiccan beliefs the changes to the names makes full sense. If someone knows nothing about Wiccan beliefs I don’t think it would even enter their mind that a witch deck is being used. The illustration on the box that got me so excited is The Moon card.

      The Lovers card was the first one that got my attention first, with the lovers in shilhouette with an angel in the sky faded and her hand reaching out to the couple. The only card that stands out as being Pagan is The World card with the Green Man portrayed in it. The Moon caught my eye already from the box. Eight of Cups was another one because of it’s soothing relaxing nighttime scene at the edge of a beach. There is a dolphin that has popped out of the water as if to say hi to the young lady on the sand.

     The 5 of swords was one that I paused because at a quick glance it could be mistaken for the 3 of swords. The points of the 5 swords are gathered right at a dragonfly’s head and flying around the swords are 5 glowing fairies. The book explains that one is having feelings of embarrassment and what one feels humiliated about is just an illusion.

        This deck follows the traditional Rider Waite and is a great deck for beginners to learn and everyone that enjoys the Rider Waite style. The design on the back of the cards also matches my theme for the most part. It also allows for reversals as they are the same regardless of how they are turned. I thought that this deck would be one of my halloween decks; I couldn’t be more wrong. It is a deck I will enjoy using year round.

Witches Tarot

Ellen Dugan

Illustrated by Mark Evans

Published by Llewellyn

You can see a visual of the book and deck and also hear Isaac Grant’s video review here

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