Witchy Tarot [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.

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.

On the one hand, the artwork in the Witchy Tarot meets the high expectations I have for any Lo Scarabeo deck. The images are beautiful, with minor but forgivable exploitative tendencies. (Most of the characters on the cards look like escapees from Charmed, but that's forgivable in a deck aimed at the "teen witch.") While at first I found the proliferation of pointy Wicked-Witch-of-the-West hats a bit silly, again, it is entirely forgivable in the context of the deck. This is intended to be a Tarot for relatively young readers.

Unfortunately, that's where the deck falls down. The imagery is so far from standard that I generally have to think carefully to see how the image fits the card; in some cases I still haven't figured it out. A deck this odd can be a useful tool -- but not for new readers.

I also found the "sameness" of the characters somewhat bothersome. Aside from a handful of exceptions the characters in this deck show less ethnic and chronological variation than Abercrombie & Fitch models. Virtually everyone is early twenties, female, Caucasian and sexy. Even if they wished to keep to the "idealized sexy witch" trope, a handful of women in their thirties, more African-Americans and SOME representation of other ethnic groups might have been nice.

An experienced reader looking for a very idiosyncratic deck focused on feminine sexuality and relationships could get good use out of this. But newbies? No. I'd never consider using this deck in readings myself. About the only thing to recommend it for young readers is the lack of visible nudity (the sole nude figure is covering herself with her hands), but I'm not sure someone who can't handle artistic nudity is ready to begin reading Tarot anyway.

As noted, however, the art is excellent. There is a very good market for a collection of 78 skillfully-executed occult-themed portraits of beautiful young women, after all.

The deck I usually suggest for beginners is the The Robin Wood Tarot, which has easy-to-read imagery that is a close variation of (and improvement on) Rider-Waite and doesn't have the sappiness of the Hanson-Roberts Tarot Deck.

The Sensual Wicca Tarot Deluxe has primarily traditional imagery with a Wiccan slant, much more varied characters, and similarly cheerful and friendly artwork, and would be a better choice for learners who don't want to go the Rider-Waite clone route.