Customer Reviews

The Robin Wood Tarot

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

There are good sides and downsides to this deck. Let's start with the positive first.

- Based on Rider-Waite imagery, which is what most books explaining tarot are based on. The basic format is the same, but the artist put her own version and twist on it. This makes this deck very beginner friendly.

- Tastefully conceived. There is nudity, but tasteful.

- More 'artistic' than Rider-Waite decks, in my opinion, because you see more emotion on the figures' faces. Sometimes the Rider-Waite deck comes across as pictures of stick people, and at times, like rough sketches. The Robin Wood deck is more emotive, colorful, and clean. It seems more professional and 3-D.

Now, onto the downsides.

- Almost every person depicted is blonde. Not to say I have anything against blondes, but it gets redundant.

- There's a "Ken-and-Barbie" feel to it. Sometimes, it just seems 'cartoony.' Like other reviewers have cited, it's very happy-happy.

- The imagery is very defined, so those seeking more abstract imagery would do well to pass this deck up.

I would suggest this deck to those who are beginners at tarot because this is a very friendly, Rider-Waite based deck. I used this deck along with the Goddess Tarot deck when I first started out and it was very helpful. I needed the imagery to be approachable and friendly enough to sort of 'hold my hand' as I learned the tarot.

I would not, however, suggest this deck to those seeking more abstract or "impressionist" images. For those looking for something different, this is just a cleaned up, more vibrant version of Rider-Waite. As of now, I am using the Margarete Peterson deck, but my Robin Wood deck still sits fondly on the shelf, and I do go back to it from time to time, because the images are very clear in their intent and depiction.

There is a lot to like about this deck. The illustrations are colorful and clear, and Robin Wood has kept the symbolism of traditional Tarot decks while still managing to make her deck unique. I particularly appreciate her interpretation of the Death card, which I feel more strongly represents the true meaning of the card as one of change and renewal while still reminding the reader that there can be no rebirth without death.

This is a deck that speaks pretty well to me; however, I have noticed that after time, my connection to these cards isn't as strong as it used to be. For some time, I haven't been able to put my finger on the reason, but after reading the reviews on the deck, I think it has to do with the main negative that I've noticed: the faces in the deck, despite its pagan leanings, do look overwhelmingly WASP-y. And, as one reviewer put it, the deck has a distinctive "shiny, happy people" look. To me, it's a mistake to play up only the positive aspects of paganism/Wicca, as these cards do. To do so ignores an important fact: Nature does indeed nurture, but she also destroys. For that reason, more mature readers and collectors may find this deck rather weak, as I have discovered I do. Not to say that it still doesn't speak to me; it just doesn't do so with the power of other decks.

This is definitely my favorite deck. The artwork is excellent, colorful, and expresses the meanings very well. Wood has done a good job of adapting the deck for use by Pagans. Let me voice my one complaint first though; for some reason she has kept the Pope as the image on the Hierophant card. This has negative connotations for many Pagans and is not in harmony with the rest of the deck. As a result it stresses the negative rather than the positive aspects of the card. A High Priest or Elders card would have better expressed the positive aspects of the Hierophant. That aside though, the rest of the deck is very good. Some of the cards are virtually the same as the Rider-Waite deck (such as the Hermit and the Sun card) while others are completely different but express the same meaning in a better way. Among the best original cards is the Devil. No ugly, horned, goatish embodiment of evil here, just a very vivid and easily understandable expression of bondage to material things and feeling trapped. The Magician is another favorite, showing a mature and self-confident man wearing a stag antlered headdress and magically controlling physical manifestation (he holds the Cosmic Lemniscate in his hand). The Judgment card deserves special mention since it does away with the tired imagery of Gabriel blowing his trumpet and souls rising from the grave. Instead we see a cauldron of fire from which arises a perfected spiritual body, while a phoenix rises in the background. This perfectly expresses the true meaning of the card in terms of pagan imagery (probably derived from alchemy, but we are also reminded of the Cauldron of Cerridwen). The Minor Arcana are equally well done; most are similar to the Rider-Waite deck but are more elaborately drawn than Pamela Coleman Smith's images. The court cards are especially good and in many cases the figures are portrayed in more active poses than in some other decks. In summary, I'd say this is an excellent deck for beginners since it corresponds very well to the Rider-Waite meanings which appear in so many books. Yet the deck remains very useful for more advanced readers due to a wealth of symbolic imagery and colorful, expressive artwork. An excellent companion book for this deck is Tarot Plain and Simple by Anthony Louis which uses this deck to illustrate the cards.

There are people who collect Tarot decks for the artwork, and people who only buy decks to use. I tend to do both, and have a colection of over 30 decks. The Robin Wood Tarot is one of the few in my collection that is both admired for its artwork, and in regular use as a reading deck.

This deck is overtly Pagan, and will probably not suit anyone who likes Christian imagery in their deck. All of the images are close enough to the "standard" of the Rider-Waite Tarot, to be read without difficulty for anyone familiar with that deck. This deck uses swords=air, wands=fire symbology.

The best book on tarot reading in general to go with the deck is "Tarot, Plain and Simple", which uses illustrations from this deck. Robin Wood's own book, "The Robin Wood Tarot, The Book" is a better choice for finding out the details behind why certain cards are depicted the way they are, and is very interesting reading in its own right, but is not as clear on basic divinatory meanings, or basic Tarot reading.

Some of the notable card imagery in this deck:

The Magician: The Magician is depicted as a Wiccan High Priest, wearing a crown of antlers, but still wearing the traditional red and white and with all the familiar symbology.

The High Priestess: Unquestionably a Wiccan priestess, with her Dianic crown and pentacle necklace, she is depicted in a familiar way, with much the same symbols as would be expected, but outdoors.

The Heirophant: Robin Wood's disatisfaction with organized religion shows clearly in this card (for more details, please read her book) and is unusually negatively aspected.

All of the minor arcana are fully illustrated, and very clear. Note to the modest, there is some realistically depicted nudity in this deck, although very tasteful.

No one deck will ever suit all people. The deck that speaks to you, may not speak to me and vice versa. I can only say that I have found it of use *to ME* as a good deck to read from, and hope you find it likewise.

If you like Robin Woods artwork, then this deck is worth collecting for the art alone, and I can also highly recomend going to her website, to see and buy more of her prints. She now offers machine embroidery patterns, as well as doing a great deal of work on computer graphics, and fonts, and sells disks of these ready to use.

Blessings and Peace

A previous reviewer felt that some detractors of this deck are put off by its pagan perspective. I don't believe that is the case for most of us; in fact it is the watered-down quality that irritates so much. You feel that the wiccan beliefs, or the tarot, are not being portrayed with mature power and passion. The images are a cross between the Sunday comics section (Prince Valiant-type heroes and busty beauties) and a Jehovah's Witness leaflet, with joy and wholesome love glistening in every eye. The people are relentlessly white and blonde. It is a very unsophisticated palette, but apparantly it appeals to many. For me, there are vast, uncharted existential realms that are not even touched upon by these images, and I find the art shallow and annoyingly hard to take. I couldn't even handle the book that uses this deck for illustrations, even though it is supposedly a fine work on the tarot. To each his own...

I'm a relative rookie to the world of tarot; the Robin Wood deck is my second deck. The first was a gift, a deck along with an introductory book, enough to teach me about this quite interesting world of what some view as a tool for prophecy, others simply as a delving deeper into one's own psyche. I probably fall into the latter group, based on my personal belief in our inner wisdom, and tarot as one way of tapping into a keener sense of what that voice of inner wisdom is telling us. If nothing else, it fascinates and tickles the imagination.

As the first deck I received was a gift, I had no choice in the design. It was a deck incorporating "discs" instead of "pentacles" (as this one does), its design much less artistic than this one, also one using various religious as well as astrological symbols, pretty much covering all bases. The Robin Wood deck seems much less based on religious symbols, more, perhaps, on paganism, or even a kind of nature worship. I do think, however, that one gets from tarot what one brings to it, eye of the beholder, so to speak, and so if the reader comes to the cards with a faith of any sort, so be it. That is what appeals to me about tarot... it speaks in my own voice. The clean lines and clear, bright images of this deck appeal to me. Although some portray darker and more shadowy images, as life does, none appear entirely bleak. It is something of an optimist's deck, I suppose, but that is also a positive for me, where it might not be for someone else. Life is how we see it, the perspective and attitudes we bring to it, open to our own interpretation. We may well be given a dark and painful set of circumstances to deal with... but we can either allow ourselves to be beaten by them, or rise to the challenge.

As a necessary accompaniment to this deck, I purchased "Tarot, Plain and Simple". It is what the title implies. I recommend purchasing both together.

For me (and I can't stress how much of a personal choice this is), this was a good deck to choose, as it "spoke" to me in its uncomplicated but pleasing to the eye images where others do not. I highly recommend handling a deck first, looking through it card by card, prior to purchase. I expect, if this continues to interest me, I will eventually move on to more complex imagery, but for now, I found the Robin Wood deck good for my expanding but still novice understanding of tarot.

Unlike an earlier reviewer, one of the things I like best about Robin Wood's deck is that all the people have personality, and not all of them are young and beautiful. Troubling cards have troubled people and some of the cards have slightly disturbing pictures. Some of the people are old, some young, some happy, some sad, some greedy, some triumphant...one thing that I love is that each person has a distinctive expression, and you can tell what they are thinking just by looking at them. This deck is also a lot more interesting to look at than the Rider-Waite Deck--Robin Wood, although she sticks mostly to that traditional style, has made each card distinctively her own. What I love in a Tarot deck is when you can look at a card and have an idea of what it means without looking in a book to help you, and you definitely can do that with this deck.

I expect this deck appeals to many people, judging from the number of copies I've seen around. In its favour, the colours on the cards are bright, and the deck is well-printed. You don't have to squint to see what's going on in the pictures; they're not blurred (a pet peeve of mine). The scenes portrayed on the cards are pretty, too, albeit in a highly conventional way.

But...after you've looked at the cards for a while, you'll realise nearly all the people figures are blond, white, and happy. They look like pseudo-medieval Barbie and Ken dolls, if you can wrap your head around that idea. Much of the traditional tarot symbolism has been removed, which would be fine if there was something to take its place, but there isn't. The deck is vapid. Even the supposed 'Wiccan' connection is of the 'flowers-and-bunny-rabbits' variety.

I give Wood credit for coming up with one of the most interesting Devil cards I've seen. It depicts a man and a woman tied to a chest of treasure that they're trying to pull out of a cave - with no success. A very apt comment on our times, though it is incongruous with the overall feel of the deck.

Aside from that card, this is too much of a 'shiny happy people' deck, and lacks the depth that should be inherent in tarot. I could forgive this if it was meant to be a whimsical deck, like the Halloween, Phantasmagorical, or Wonderland tarots, but it isn't. As a serious tool for either reading or meditation, it falls far short of its goal.

The Robin Wood tarot is largely a Rider-Waite-Smith clone, but if you're looking in that direction, you can find better. This one just doesn't hold up.

The deck contains a fair amount of nudity, but it's quite inoffensive. Possibly a good deck for teenage girls, but I'd not recommend it for anyone over age 16, owing to its shallowness.

As I do in all my reviews of tarot products, I'd like to first assure the reader that I am not what you would call a regular practicioner of the tarot. I collect and use the cards as a hobby, to provide perspective when I am facing a difficult decision, or simply to relax. When I first got involved in the tarot, it was shortly after I had finished reading the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, and I wanted to investigate some of the things discussed therein. Since Crowley had been mentioned several times in the writing, I gravitated towards the Thoth deck, and it very nearly scared me away from the hobby entirely. While I can now appreciate some of the symbolism of the art in that deck, it's certainly a little too intimidating for the beginner to pick up and try to learn. Fortunately, I didn't give up, and the next deck that I tried was the Robin Wood. I can't say enough good things about this deck. There are two reasons why there are so many tarot decks in print--the first is that there is a group of people who collect them, and that market is apparently substantial enough to support prices. The second reason, however, is that many people have a hard time finding a deck that "speaks" to them. This deck is that one for me, and, I think, for a lot of people. The imagery in this deck is clear and the illustrations are done exquisitely. Relating to this deck shouldn't be a challenge for anybody. If even a person like me, who is so put off by the overly pagan influence in the tarot, can relate to these cards, which confess to a certain degree of pagan influence, I think just about anybody should be able to find something for themselves in this deck. This is a wonderful pack to start with, and one that has enough maturity to stay with a person for their entire life. That's not to say that there aren't a couple of problems that might come up. For one thing, if you're thinking about reading for clients, you may want to avoid this deck for those more sensitive to nudity. While all are tastefully done, there is a pretty fair amount running about in the deck. The coloring on the images also does tend to lean a little in the positive direction, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. There have been a couple of objections by reviewers here regarding the more positive feel of these cards, in fact, but I don't think there's any real grounding in that objection. The traditionally negative cards still hold all the negative imagery and connotations--the three of swords is basically a redrawing of the original Rider-Waite design, and the ten of swords loses none of its threat either. Overall, there's really not much of a downside to this deck, from what I can tell. I can shuffle the cards easily, and they've held up well for me, both materially and in utility. This deck, in my opinion, is a must have for any novice reader of the tarot, and a welcome addition to any more advance user's collection.

The best deck for beginners... easy to read... painted by a High Wicca Priestess... just fantastic! Full of surprises and a lot (and I mean a lot) of little surprises on each card... must look for them though. Take the time to study each card in order, their design, their colors, their signification to you... and enjoy!