Customer Reviews

Beginner's Guide to Tarot

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The art style of Caselli has been a favored one for me. I checked out his art in the illustrated guide to Bullfinch Mythology, Legends of Charlemagne*. This deck emulates Rider-Waite workalikes---I might say the coloring is softer than a U.S. Games Rider Waite Smith (RWS) deck and is similar to Mary Hanson's Universal Waite (UW). To me the illustrations have finer lines, a richer contrast of colors and wonderful details than the RWS and UW. The Two of Swords pictured on the cover is a nice example. The back cover had a glimpse of a Hermit card that looked intriguing to me. After looking at the deck one evening, I was quite pleased. Not a 'treacle tarot'--- the so-called negative associations are calmly presented, the energy of knights are quite appropriate to their suit. I could use this deck to read for others.

The book suggests a new way of studying the majors---I tend to prefer Justice is eight and Strength is 11, based on Marseilles ordering. The book with this deck suggests that the historical Visconti and other decks were taken into account when these cards were designed. The designs of the majors are inspired and closer to 15th century Milanese Visconti and 18th century Marseilles styles. (Juliet Sharman Burke notes this on page 6 of her 2004 text called Tarot Workbook: Featuring the classic Sharman-Caselli deck.)

Juliet Sharman-Burke's Mastering the Tarot uses a comparative style when she describes decks: she includes the Visconti, Brian William's Renaissance Tarot and the Arthurian Tarot with Miranda Gray illustrations. When I look in the courts of the Sharman Caselli deck, I seem to find the softness of Miranda Gray's paintings, although Caselli's work seems more dynamic to me.

The cards are 4.75 x 2.75 inches. They are packaged in two small cardboard pockets in a fold-out flap attached to the back of the book. I had to snip the boxed flap off to make the softcover book easy to carry around.

I would recommend the book as a nice addition to the set and quite easy to read. Sometimes I like to travel with two decks and do a comparative reading for fun. I found a softly colored, nonstandard deck such as Trevisan's Tarot of the Renaissance as a pretty comparison to use with the Sharman-Caselli Tarot.

*Bullfinch is a popular children's summary of mythology. I don't recommend the illustrated Bullfinch as the best summary of Western mythology--but I do enjoy Caselli's illustrations.

I bought this book/deck on a whim, and I have thoroughly enjoyed them.

I read the book and studied the cards during a vacation week, and I was thrilled that at the week's end I was able to give a pretty good reading to my wife without having to open the book (much) to interpret the cards she'd drawn. The cards themselves are beautiful and colorful, and the pictures are very evocative... you are led to the interpretation quite easily by the action of the card.

The explanations of the four suits are very well written, and I feel strongest in the numbers (ace to nine) in the four suits. That said, I wish there had been a little numerology, so I would have a better sense of the number on its own right, rather than depending so heavily on the picture. The court of the suits (page, knight, queen, king) are a bit more difficult, and I still am struggling to understand the essential difference between a queen and king.

The cards of the major arcana (fool, emperor, moon, etc) are subtle, and I think the author has done as well as one could hope, given that each card only gets two pages of text.

All in all, you get 78 handsome cards, less than 200 pages of text to learn what the cards mean and how to do a reading. It's a great start, and it's not too witchy or womany or fringy for a mainstream fella to enjoy. If you're still interested in learning more tarot after you've read this book, there are many more detailed resources. This book is just the beginning.

For anyone who has ever wanted to learn about the Tarot but felt overwhelmed by all the different cards and books, here is a dream come true. Treat yourself to this very affordable selection, and then begin a surprisingly pleasant journey, guided by the charming and intelligent author, and through the enchanting inspiration of the wonderful illustrations on these very beautiful and energetic cards. Tarot is a friendly experience, and here is a true friend for life.

I must say that when I first received this deck I was disappointed. It was the first time I looked up how you can return a purchased item. I had ordered it online after having seen images of the cards, and loved the art. However, when I held them in my hands, they looked, and felt, really cheap. The cards' quality is not good, and although the images are indeed very attractive, they lose a lot of their beauty because the cards' material itself is cheap. The same goes for the book. It looks more like someone's notes bound together at any photocopy shop.

Unfortunately, the packaging is not practical at all, either. The cards are packed in two stacks at the back of the book, which is a long, foldout flap. Once you remove the cards the first time, you have to improvise as to how you are going to store them (I had to use 2 rubber bands), and you have to cut out this huge flap with scissors, in order to be able to use the book.

Anyway, after this first disappointment, I decided to give it a chance, and use the deck with the book's instructions. The deck is a very attractive variation of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, very artistic and full of symbolism. The back of the cards doesn't have any pattern or drawing but is a striking magenta color, in my view rather incongruous with the soft colors and lines of the cards.

I was surprised to see that the content of the book is actually great! In many cases, the standard book that comes with tarot decks is not worth to even leaf through. That's not the case with this one. I think that if you are a complete beginner, this is an absolutely wonderful book and deck to introduce you to the tarot and its symbolism in a simple, and still not superficial way. The author illustrates each card, describing it and explaining the symbolism and then gives simple and insightful divinatory interpretations. The cards themselves are full of deep symbolism, and the book explains every single detail. The images were designed very carefully and nothing on them is random.

With this book and deck one can build a good, solid foundation on tarot, before moving on to more advanced decks and books (such as Rachel Pollack's or Mary K. Greer's books).

So, if you can get past the cheaper quality, and only if you are a beginner, I would definitely recommend this as one of the best starter decks and books I have seen.

The Sharman-Caselli Tarot is a fantastic deck for beginners. The images are based on those in the Rider-Waite deck, but have much more psychological and artistic depth. Since the images correspond to those in the Rider-Waite, the beginning tarot student will have no trouble using the cards in this deck with any number of books on Tarot. The images are also quite evocative, and lend themselves well to study and meditation. The apparent simplicity and pleasing colors of the images give way to subtleties of detail and symbolism that strike a good balance between suggesting meaning and leaving room for interpretation.

The book that comes with the deck is a good introduction, but tends toward the overly optimistic side and doesn't go into great depth. It's fine for starting out, but you'll want to supplement this deck with other books about Tarot, such as Rachel Pollack's Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom.

Have bought other books as well but this seems to be easy to follow and it makes things interesting. The deck is very nice. I'm very glad I purchased it.

"The tarot images work on an unconscious level; they are like mirrors reflecting knowledge buried in the deepest realms of the mind. That dark, unconscious part of the mind contains knowledge that the conscious mind is unaware of, and the tarot acts as a bridge between the two, using the archetypal nature of the imagery to feed information from unconscious to conscious mind." - From the book

My first introduction to the Sharman-Caselli Tarot deck was through the innovative Tarot Workbook by Juliet Sharman-Burke. Using large, uncolored imagery from the Sharman-Caselli deck, readers are invited to color in the images according to their own associations, as well as record relevant symbols that seem to stand out and journal spontaneous associations.

I then moved on to My Tarot, which is an actual uncolored version of the Sharman-Caselli deck. Because I have carpal tunnel syndrome, I chose not to keep that deck, but I was hooked enough on the imagery to look for a bona fide version of this particular Tarot deck.

I stumbled onto The Tarot Box published by Barnes and Noble, which happily included the Sharman-Caselli deck--but it was only a mini-version, with cards measuring approximately 3 ¼ x 2 inches. Surely, I thought, there must be a full-size version of this deck!

So as I searched Amazon.com, I found the Beginner's Guide to Tarot--which contains a full-size version of the Sharman-Caselli deck. YAY! Mission accomplished!

While I was thrilled to (finally) get my hands on these 4 ¾ x 2 ¾ inch cards, I was surprised to find a first-rate 192-page companion book accompanying the Sharman-Caselli deck!

I often get emails requesting recommendations for book and deck sets geared towards absolute beginners. Unfortunately, there's not many out there. Now, I can confidently recommend the Beginner's Guide to Tarot deck and book set.

For those unfamiliar with this particular deck, the Sharman-Caselli Tarot is a full-color deck based on the Rider-Waite tradition. Besides the lovely coloring, what I like most about this deck is the incredible amount of movement and expression among the figures.

For example, The Chariot careens right towards the viewer (look out!), and the guy in the Lovers card scratches his chin in what appears to be indecision (or maybe he's afraid to say the wrong thing and tick off one of the ladies beside him!).

If you like no-frills card backings, these are absent of any symbols or artwork--but plain it is not with a vibrant magenta hue with a thin silver inner border!

One unusual aspect of the glossy soft cover Beginner's Guide to Tarot is the "packaging": the companion book covers are stiff, and the end part extends beyond the book itself, loosely wrapping itself around toward the front. What I ended up doing was cut the back cover right along the crease, making it a (now) perfect book for reading and storing on the shelf (it would have been difficult to do either with the unusual packaging.)

The companion book features an abundance of useful information, including a solid introduction to Tarot and bi-color reproduction of each card with diagrams pointing out relevant symbols and their meanings. Also provided are each card's theme, elemental association, explanation of the imagery and a thorough treatment of the divinatory meaning.

In my estimation, the Beginner's Guide to Tarot is not only a fantastic set for those new to Tarot, but also contains a great reading deck based on RWS imagery. The Sharman-Caselli deck imagery teems with life and an array of possibilities, while the companion book is both engaging and instructive. Highly recommended!

(To see 12 images from the Sharman-Caselli deck, visit the Reviews--Decks section at JanetBoyer.com)

Janet Boyer, author of The Back in Time Tarot Book: Picture the Past, Experience the Cards, Understand the Present (coming Fall 2008 from Hampton Roads Publishing)

This is a nice RWS type deck (with a few deviations). It is done is soft pastels and easy to look at and to read. The book that accompanies it is also well done and easy to read. The big problem is the card stock used. It is very flimsy and the cards bend easily. They should have put more condsideration into this, as it cheapens the cards and makes them hard to really work with.

I was looking forward to this deck/book set, because I have a mini edition of the Caselli deck which I love because of the illustrations.

And it is, indeed, a very visually pleasing deck. However it has one big drawback, in my opinion: it is made of that kind of card stock that doesn't seem to like being shuffled.

People moan about US Games Systems for various reasons, but y'know what? They've been in the playing card business for many decades, and they know how to make a card deck that is more easily shufflable. Tarot card makers should take into account the *purpose* for a deck is to be shuffled and used, not to sit on the shelf and look pretty. Unless you're using it for a meditation deck, but even then, there may be some shuffling going on.

I can kind of tell that this is going to be the kind of deck that shows wear and tear fairly easily.

The book is what you'd expect from a package of this type, an illustration of the card and two pages of meaning per card, with three spreads thrown in, very little else.

And the packaging is the kind where the book is *part* of the box that holds the cards. Once you cut this off to make the book easier to hold open, you have no place permanent to store the cards, so get a bag or make your own box. Sometimes this isn't a deal breaker, but for some of us it can be irritating.

Not the *worst* deck/book package in the world, but you can tell not a whole lot went into the production of this. It actually might be more of a disappointment to beginners.

A better Tarot Christmas gift might be a copy of Rachael Pollack's Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot and a The Rider-Waite Tarot Deck. A little more expensive, but a good value for beginners.

This was my first Tarot deck. The book is wonderfully written to help the new user. The artwork on the deck is beautiful. After a couple of years, I gave the deck to a friend to learn. I now find I miss this deck and have purchased it again along with the workbook. I would highly recommend this deck to either a new user or and experienced reader.