*Please Note* This will be an image-heavy post, and might not be the best to view on a mobile device.
Since I have a bit of free time tonight, I figured I'd finally come on here and do that tarot review I was talking about a few weeks back.
I don't really remember when I first became interested in tarot, but I've always been a bit curious about it. It wasn't until I was in high school that I really took an interest in it though, at which point my dad bought me my very own deck. He used to let me look through his cards sometimes when I was a kid, so I think I was kind of intrigued by them at a young age (pretty sure he had the Tarot of Marseilles set). My dad also had (and probably still does) a small stone collection, which may also be where I get my love of stones and crystals, but that's another story.
Anyway, my first tarot deck was a used copy of the Rider-Waite Tarot. It wasn't a deck I would have ever gone out and bought for myself, but it was neat to have cards of my very own. As I started to look at them more and more, I knew wanted to get a nicer set of cards - something I actually enjoyed looking at. I think the first deck I bought myself was the Morgan-Greer Tarot. While I enjoyed working with them, the more I worked at the pagan shop the more tarot cards I saw, and the more I realized I might want a different set. That's the unfortunate trap you fall into being pagan and working at a pagan store - you want to buy everything in sight. So, naturally, I now have 3 decks, and I could easily have more.
The ones I currently have are the Hanson-Roberts Tarot, the Robin Wood Tarot, and The Shadowscapes Tarot. As you can probably guess from these decks, I'm a bit of a traditionalist. I'm still not very confidant in my ability to read the cards myself, so that's the biggest reason I'm sticking with more traditional decks, but the Shadowscapes Tarot was so pretty I couldn't help but buy it. I'm hoping that with the Hanson-Roberts and Robin Wood decks I'll be able to learn the cards well, and then I'll be able to move on to more artsy cards and still be able to read with them no problem - and maybe even get new layers of meanings from them.
So on to the photos!
So the Robin Wood Tarot is the deck on the left, the Hanson-Roberts Tarot is the one in the middle, and The Shadowscapes Tarot is on the right.
I pulled the 3 of cups from each deck so you can get a feel for the differences between them. It's really easy to see how different the Shadowscapes tarot is from the other two. It's a lot more elaborate overall, and uses vastly different imagery from the traditional decks, but I think that everything on that card is there for a specific reason, and because of that, I think that deck has a lot to offer aside from just being pretty.
Here's the details of the cards:
Shadowscapes Tarot
Hanson-Roberts Tarot
Robin Wood Tarot
So I also wanted to show you some of the cards I often look at when I'm choosing a deck, because I find it very interesting how each deck interprets these specific cards. Here's the overview shot:
And here's the detailed images of each *Please Note* Some of the images may be PG-13:
Shadowscapes
Robin Wood
Hanson-Roberts
Shadowscapes
Robin Wood
Hanson-Roberts
Shadowscapes
Robin Wood
Hanson-Roberts
So from these it's pretty easy to see the big differences between the more traditional decks and the more artistic one. Because of this, I think it's easy to see why someone struggling at trying to learn the meanings of the cards, like myself, would be better suited at trying to start off with more traditional images and then moving on to the more pretty cards.
Overall, my favourite of the 3 decks would have to be the Hanson-Roberts. I really enjoy the coloured pencil shading, as well as the physical size of the cards. I find them to be similar to the size of a deck of playing cards, which helps a lot when you have small hands and are trying to shuffle or, are just a clumsy shuffler (like myself).
I also bought the Robin Wood tarot at the same time as the Hanson-Roberts deck because I was having a hard time deciding between the two. The overall images are very similar, but are slightly different stylistically.
I was going to decide between the two decks by going through and making two piles - one for the cards I liked, one for the cards I didn't - and from there, I'd count each pile and go with the one that had the more "likes". The problem with that was that by the time I'd gotten through each deck, the "likes" and "not likes" piles from each deck had the exact same number. So, I ended up getting both.
I don't often use the Shadowscapes tarot because I find it really hard to read, and I think that's only because I'm still familiarizing myself with the cards in general. I love the art work though, more so than any other tarot deck I've come across. I especially like her choice of the Phoenix as the image on the Death card, and the way she ties the suits together with a common theme and colour scheme. I think that once I know more, that will likely end up being my favourite deck.
I also feel it pertinent to say that I didn't mean to choose the most menacing of cards to compare these decks, but these cards (Death, The Devil, and the Hanged Man) are all pretty loaded in terms of their meanings, and I thought it would be interesting for you to see a side-by-side comparison as to how each person represents them.
So yeah, the Hanson-Roberts is the winner in my books, because of the art style and size, but the Robin Wood follows closely behind (because the cards are larger and although I enjoy the art style, I prefer the look of the Hanson-Roberts), with the Shadowscapes following behind in third place, only because it's not exactly the easiest to read when you're starting out (I find).
I hope you've enjoyed seeing some different tarot cards. Now that you know some of the criteria I use to choose my decks, maybe it will help if you're thinking of picking up a new one? Happy tarot-ing!
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