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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Lovely Deck Really., July 3, 2004
This review is from: Witchy Tarot (English and Spanish Edition) (Cards)
This deck is really focused on the concerns of young women. Although you can read for young men with it as well. The Images are very color full. The Ladies Lovely and the Gents quite handsome. There is a lot of unapologetic "wish craft" going on in this deck. The conventions of the Waite deck have been basically tossed out, and the artist has taken the maximum creative license with the images and themes. She is however quite talented, and it is no great challenge to read a spread intuitively from her well drawn images. Which is just as well as the LWB is all but worthless. The deck is a wonderful exercise in comparative Tarot. Older/ more experienced readers will discover challenging new visions of various cards. Also beautiful interps of familiar themes. The 6 of Broomsticks (Swords) is my personal favorite presentation of that theme. The courts have been changed radically. The Pages are the Celebrations, the Knights the Moons, the Queens the Goddesses, and The Kings have been replaced with the Trials. I think the Kings are the Artists greatest coup. Laura has really captured the Shadow side of the benevolent Patriarch depicted in other decks. After working with this deck you will never see the Kings Rx quite the same again. This deck looks like a light weight at first glance, but its not. Its actually a beautifully realized, if very personal vision of the Tarot.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent art, worthless LWB, August 23, 2007
This review is from: Witchy Tarot (English and Spanish Edition) (Cards)
You've got to have a bit of a sense of humor and not take yourself too seriously to enjoy the images on this deck. Very colorful, it's sort of a cross between manga, especially influences like Kiki's Delivery Service, and the witches from Charmed. There is no mention of Wicca anywhere. There is some effort to appeal to modern teens, especially girls. Some witches carry cell phones & backpacks and they wear trendy outfits. Some card meanings mention things like getting good grades, email, teachers, and boyfriends. Many other cards have rustic, timeless settings.
Contrary to another review here, I find nothing salacious about the images. Sure the girls frequently wear belly shirts and "body conscious" clothing. There's the occasional thong strap peaking out of pants. There's little that you might not see at the mall. There's one card (6 of Flames) where a woman wears only underwear, her clothes piled next to her but she is bent over and hides herself with her arms. Another card (Moon of Broomsticks) has a naked witch holding a ritual by herself in an old temple. But again her body is actually covered in crucial spots by her long hair. I have many other decks with fully naked people on multiple cards that never get called obsene. I'm not sure what makes this deck different. The objectionable image with the garter belt that is referenced in another review is on the Lovers card. Per an often traditional image of the card, a young man stands between two women. One hugs a book to her chest. The other in a sexy pose exposing her thigh and garter belt. It is quite common for this card to mean the choice between lust and more spiritual love and this card fits that meaning.
My biggest problem with this deck is the folded sheet of paper that here is in place of the usual little white book (LWB). I don't know what language this was originally written in or how many translations it's been through but, for many cards, the LWB is useless. This is especially true with the Minors. Often the meanings have nothing to do with the images. Finally I sat down with this deck as well as some other tarot decks and books and created by own LWB and now the deck is much more user friendly.
I do like some of the variations on the usual Rider-Waite theme. The suits are changed to broomsticks, boulders, flames, & cauldrons. The court cards become celebrations (Beltane, Lammas, Samhain, Imbolc), moons (waxing through new), goddesses (Holda, Morrigan, "Ecate", & Bona Dea), & trials (such as initiation). The Majors use the traditional names but not always the traditional images. Instead they center on one of 7 each of witchy tools, plants, or animals, with occasionally bizarre results. For example, the Emperor becomes a large witch's hat. The Devil is seperate from those groups and is called Leonardo, for no particual reason. There is a mistake in the deck where the actual Strength card is number 8 but in the LWB it's number 11, as in the Marseilles deck.
My advice for the deck is to similarlly be prepared to create your own LWB or just perform readings using the images on the cards only. Because of this, I would not recommend this deck for beginners. But if it appeals to you, the art is fun and often different, if not a little trippy. (ex: the Ace of Caultrons has a witch kissing an extra large toad, and feeding him from a large cauldron of spagetti. Why? I don't know!) It's worth trying out if you aren't looking for a Rider-Waite clone and you want something with a more modern setting.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a fun deck, August 11, 2005
This review is from: Witchy Tarot (English and Spanish Edition) (Cards)
Even tho I had my reservations, I really like this deck. The colors are very pretty, which is something high on my list for me to like a deck(one reason I hated the Rider-waite deck, bleh colors!). I'm a purple lover and theres plenty of that in this deck. I also find the images pleasing. They are your basic cartoonish looking images but they do have depth to them. One thing I'm sure some would hate about this deck, for the most part all the witches are young, thin, cute, and have on cute clothes(and pointed hats) But I think its kept from being too trendy in that all the scenes are outdoors with the witches being in harmony with nature. I for one like seeing witches pictured as being pretty versus the age old ugly green faced purple haired cackling hags. There are a few crones in the deck, respectfully done as 'wise women'. And in all the scenes when theres a house or building, its very rustic looking which I like. This deck does border very slightly on 'fluffy bunny wicca' on some cards at least, but it balances it to the point where I think its just having a little playful fun with 'magic'. I personally don't like taking things too seriously when taking a walk on the 'woo-woo' side ;)
Now, the things I don't like about the deck. They have changed the suits in the minor arcana(boulders,flames,broomsticks, and cauldrons), which doesn't bother me, but usually in such suits like say the 3 of broomsticks, you'd see a scene with 3 broomsticks. Not so in this deck, there is only 1 of each item in each scene, which is a problem for me because in many of the cards, even tho its a card for the flames, it would still have rocks that can be percieved as boulders. Hence I always have to look a the title at the top of the card to know not only which number but which suit it was. For instance, the Trial(King) of cauldrons card has a cauldron, but also a ring of boulders and 2 flaming fires. And the card Goddess of broomsticks doesn't even have a broomstick in it. A minor irratation. So if your most familar with decks that stick close to the Rider-Waite images, you might have a bit of trouble reading this deck. You pretty much have to throw everything you know about that deck out the window and look at this one with fresh eyes, which isn't a bad thing IMO. Why have 4 different decks that all read the same way, mimicking the same old images?
And of course the 'book' that comes with the deck is your typical worthless folded bits of paper stapled, with contradicting one word adjectives describing the card. This 'book' also lists a second title for each card that is supposed to describe it like the witches dance or witches kiss, ect. This descriptions are fairly contradictory in my eyes, but what to expect when these little acompanying 'book's are almost always worthless. It also features a 13 card spread(too many in my opionion) called the Circle of witches.
Even with the above complaints and irratations, I still really like this deck. It has a very playful vibe. If you want to have some fun with your tarot readings this would be a good deck.
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