A Tarot deck is a personal tool to help guide you in your journey. Your choice of deck is also very personal. While I did not feel a connection with this deck or its design, you may fall in love with it. I hope this review will help you in your decision.
My main concern with this deck is the quality of the card stock. Although the thin stock allows for easy shuffling, it also allows for easy wear. The cards without use are already peeling and curling on the edges. I'm not sure how much damage will occur over time, or even if more damage will occur at all. I've never used a deck of this quality.
The guidebook begins with a short introduction and then shares the five unique components of the Clarity Tarot.
You not only know what spirit is trying to tell you but 'how to say it' in a way that is completely unbiased, centered, and supportive of someone who may be needing direction.
2. Easy Yes/No Answers - No one is satisfied with just a yes or no answer, so this deck answers not only yes or no but why the answer is yes and why the answer is no! Someone may find this component helpful, but I, personally, avoid such yes or no question altogether.
As you can see on the Magician, there are no numbers on the card at all. With the mention of 0-21, I assume you are using the original number of the Major Arcana cards. But the fact that the author and artist didn't follow each other on this idea is a problem for me. Also, the technique of laying cards down until you find a Major Arcana Card for a timing question seems unreliable in my opinion.
4. Rich Cultural Images - Tarot is a very old form of divination, and traditional decks hold traditional Old-World biases, especially within the court cards. The idea that this deck is unique because it offers other cultures would have been true at some point in time, but most decks I see now are very diverse in their representation of people throughout the cards.
5. The Design - Kait Matthews has brought together an exquisite combination of colors, symbols and images in a collage that inspires and delights not only you the advisor but your clients as well. The images of the deck are unique and interesting, some more than others. Overall, I do like the images the artist created for the deck. Without the distractions, I believe this would be a nice working Tarot deck.
The author then shares a short section on how to use this deck, which briefly covers the Major and Minor Arcana, ways to cast a throw or spread, and reversals.
Part Two of the guidebook, What's in a Number, is definitely worth the read. This section covers the Minor Arcana, beginning with meanings of the numbers 1-10 and then covers the suits before diving into the individual cards.
The Minor Arcana card section is brief with no images. The short sections cover card title, Y or N, a short paragraph on meaning and gives the keywords that appear on the card.
The Court Cards are then covered with a short introduction into the royal court, and then presents each suit as a separate family in an imaginary neighborhood. Each family is presented as a whole and then as individuals. The individual text includes title, Y or N, a description of the individual and the keywords that appear on the card.
Part Three covers the Major Arcana with a brief overview and then the individual cards, including title, Y or N, meaning, and gives the keywords that appear on the card.
In my opinion, the card meanings are worth looking over in the guidebook, but it would have been nice to hear more about the actual images. The author mentioned the uniqueness of the decks' design, but never mentions in the card section anything about the exquisite combination of colors, symbols and images. If this is one of the components making the deck unique, shouldn't there be some mention of the description of the cards - the colors and symbols chosen to make them unique?
The last part of the guidebook is titled How to Give Awesome Readings. This section covers framing questions, using your intuition and three spreads (The Celtic Cross, Five-Card Yes/No, and a Timing Spread).
A cheat sheet is provided containing card title and keywords. Since these keywords are on the cards themselves, I'm not sure why you would need a cheat sheet.
The guidebook closes with Serving the World, where the author shares her experience of different jobs as a Tarot specialist. In the final words of the author, she mentions videos online to help you learn the tarot, but doesn't give any information about where you might find these.
(Review Product supplied by Schiffer Publishing)
No comments:
Post a Comment