Tarot Deck Review - Mystic Faerie Tarot by Linda Ravenscroft & Barbara Moore

I am not the sort of person who usually likes the lighter Tarot decks on the market (lighter in mood or in color); I am also not the sort of person who ever buys a Tarot deck without having researched it and read thoroughly its reviews on aeclectic.net. However, I bought the Mystic Faerie Tarot deck and book set by Linda Ravenscroft and Barbara Moore on total impulse (before I realized it was a full moon!) and I could not be happier with my purchase.

First let me say that the colors on my printed set are richer by far than the washed-out colors I see in the scans on this site. Don't get me wrong, the art is watercolor after all, but the scans to me look to be overexposed, and the card art is stunningly beautiful. The borders are gold ink, which I thought was a really nice touch.

The box seems pretty solid for a folded paper tarot box, but I don't know yet how it will hold up over time. The gold organza bag for the cards is lovely and the perfect size--not so small you can't properly draw it closed or easily get the cards in and out; not so big the cards shuffle themselves around or get bent in it. The size of the book was a very nice surprise--I hate having to flip through the tiny booklets that come with most decks, and they're a pain to keep open when you're trying to read them. The Mystic Faerie Tarot companion book is the same size as the big box the whole set comes in, I would guess (but haven't measured) about 8x5 inches. It's a sturdy paperback with a nice, shiny, color-printed cover, and the text inside does not require a magnifying glass to read. Each card is printed at fully size or nearly full size before its accompanying text in the book, but they are all in black and white.

This purchase was a bit of a leap of faith for me, because (like I said) I hadn't heard of the deck, read reviews, or researched it at all, and the pictures on the box only showed major arcana cards, so I was a little afraid that the minors might not be fully illustrated. It felt right, however, so I bought the set, and was beyond pleased to find that not only are the minors fully illustrated with scenes, they might be my favorite thing this set has to offer. Let me explain.

Each suit of the minor arcana is designed around a faerie tale specific to that suit. The suit of Wands (represented by actual wands) tells a tale of enterprise, two faeries who embark on an adventure in search of a phoenix; the suit of swords (represented by rose thorns) tells a story of a magical blue rose and the faeries who care for it; the suit of cups (represented by water lily flowers) follows a nymph and an elf (two fae of different races) through their trying romance; and the suit of pentacles (represented by actual pentacles) follows a fae woman who, unable to find her village after getting lost in the forest, starts over on her own and is befriended by mice. The four stories do not all have strictly happy endings, which I did not expect from a faerie deck, but they do all have pretty much universally applicable morals, and they can be applied to the world of humans realistically. Sometimes it seems as if the meaning of a minor lines up with the Rider-Waite meaning of that minor, but I do not think this is the case across the board.

What this faerie tale layout means for the minors is that, because they are essentially illustrations to a story, they will be pretty difficult to read if you have not read (or do not remember) the faerie tales; happily, the stories are short, sweet, and easy to read. What I'm saying is you SHOULD read this companion book cover to cover, and you should do so before trying to read with the cards, which is not something I recommend with most companion books (or booklets, rather).

The concept of the deck as a whole, and the artist & author's stated reason for creating a faerie tarot deck is roughly this: the fae are in perfect balance with nature, which is (or should be) our goal as humans; but we are humans, not fae, and that is not something we can ever completely achieve. However, the fae can teach us what the ideal is, and how we as humans can come closer to achieving that, how we can live in better (if not perfect) balance with nature. This concept is incredibly well executed.

As the daughter of a doctor and a scientist, I have days where I begin to feel skeptical even about the Tarot (these days are rare and this always goes away, but still, they do come). It speaks to the quality of the concept and execution of this deck and book set that not once in my reading of the book or the cards did I feel the least bit silly taking and giving advice from faeries.

Now for the majors. The majors are also beautifully illustrated in rich watercolor and exquisite detail. There is a Priestess instead of a High Priestess, a Priest instead of a Hierophant, and The Hanged Fae instead of The Hanged Man. The meanings in this deck are slightly different than traditional Rider-Waite, so DO read the book first, but they make an immense amount of sense and will be easy to remember. My favorite cards from the majors in this deck are Strength (numbered 8, not 11), the Tower, The Moon & The Sun, and Judgement. This deck's Strength rides a dragon, which is related to the dragon in the story for the suit of wands. In this Tower, the structure is being taken over by nature in ALL directions, and the book offers one of the best explanations for the Tower I have ever read. The Moon & Sun have a beautiful parallel structure (both are represented by women fae whose hair becomes the orb they represent, and the book offers a beautiful explanation for this parallel structure that may change the way I read with other decks. The same sort of parallel structure thing happens with Priestess and Priest, and it is also really well done). I feel that the Judgement card in this deck is particularly strong because of the description offered with it in the book--judgement is a card that has always been difficult for me to relate to on a personal (rather than a bare mathematical understanding of the meaning), but this book makes it easy. This is the case for the whole deck--the cards are stunningly beautiful, and the book makes them ten times better by fulfilling your other four or five senses so that the meanings are forever linked in your imagination and memory. The slight twists on traditional card meanings which make them more appropriate to the world of the fae make them, I think, more relatable to me as well.

The court cards use Knave instead of Page, so you have: Knave, Knight, Queen, King. These run very true to traditional tarot meanings with each suit governing a particular part of human experience, and each rank possessing a certain level of maturity and experience in that realm.

The introduction to the book provides a really good basic understanding of Tarot and even introduces a few things that were good for me to hear again. At the end of the book are included a few original spreads, and I am especially interested to try Acorn to Oak (designed to show the best way to accomplish a goal) and the Birthday Sunflower Spread (meant to be read yearly and provide a general overview).

Overall, I highly recommend this deck for children and tarot beginners (the symbolism is easy to understand and really well explained in the accompanying stories and descriptions, and the stories will make learning the tarot easier and more fun) as well as for more experienced readers looking for a refreshing new perspective on tarot.

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I wrote this review for its original appearance on Aeclectic.net

Tarot Deck Review - Gilded Reverie Lenormand by Ciro Marchetti

 The Gilded Reverie Lenormand by Ciro Marchetti is a stunningly beautiful, very solid, digitally-painted deck. The cards are 2.75 by 4 inches, bigger than poker size playing cards (2.5 by 3.5 inches), but not by much—and they are incredibly thick. The 36 cards together stack up to almost an inch. I think this is really nice. The cards have enough give that I believe they could be shuffled the way one shuffles playing cards, but I can't honestly say I've tried it—I prefer not to bend the cards I read with, personally. The gilded edges on the cards are absolutely stunning. I've heard some people refer to gold borders on these cards--this is incorrect. The borders are just as shown in the pictures here on Aeclectic: they fade to black. It is the edges of the card, the actual sides of the stock, that are gilded, not the border. That is to say, the gilding is on the third dimension. The gilding is more beautiful in person than I imagined, and is very reflective. The only downside to the gilding is that straight out of the box it is helping my cards stick together a little more than I would like them to for ideal shuffling. I assume this will fade with time (it's gotten better just over the past day or two), so I'm not worried, but I thought I should mention it.

There is also gold in the color printing on the cards' fronts (the numbered circle, playing card suit and number, and filigree corners) and backs (the circle and filigree ornamentation), but the gold on the faces of the cards is well-done photoshop artistry rather than gold ink or gold leafing. The whole of each card (front and back) is very glossy, but the gold-colored parts are no more shiny/glossy/reflective/etc than the other parts. In one final attempt at clarity, the gold on the faces of the cards, just like all the other imagery on the faces of the cards, is made up merely of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK).This is impressive rather than disappointing.

The card backs are perfectly reversible except for the (C)2013 US GAMES copyright text that appears only in the lower right corner. The backs have a beautiful, deep red, diagonally-checkered design that pairs beautifully with the same design in goldenrod tones on the inside of the box. The box, by the way, is one of the better examples of packaging for a deck (Lenormand, Tarot, or otherwise) that I have ever seen. It's a very sturdy cardboard box with magnetic closure that opens like a book. The paper used to print the box artwork has a smooth, leathery feel that I'm just about in love with. The cover of the box has a version of Marchetti's artwork for the Birds card, and the box (unlike the faces of the cards) DOES have gold foil accents on the birdhouse, lace border, the “G” and “R” in “Gilded Reverie,” et cetera. The box is exactly the right size to hold the cards, the 48-page LWB (Little White Book), and nothing else, which I think is perfect. There's no cardboard support inside for the sole purpose of taking up space, which is good because it means there's no cardboard support to get smushed and let your cards move around all over the place. This is also good because it means the box is small enough to fit comfortably in even a rather small purse or a large clutch.

The included LWB is good enough for most purposes—I'm certainly totally happy to accept it instead of a full-size book, the tradeoff being the beautiful, condensed packaging. It starts with an introduction by Tali Goodwin, followed by a note from Ciro Marchetti. Each card description has a short vignette (some of them with some rather poorly-written rhymes, but I'm willing to ignore that) written in the first person from the card's point of view (by Rana George), followed by a further description written by Tali Goodwin. The vignettes and descriptions have been edited and approved by Ciro Marchetti to reflect his personal feelings on the deck. Here, as an example, is the text for card 1, The Rider:

“I am always bringing news, look around me to see what it includes. I might be coming to visit or bringing you some changes. I am fast and always on the move. If you see a negative card close by, you will probably not enjoy the reply.

“The Rider of the Lenormand brings news. It is the first card and announces new things. In the Gilded Reverie deck, we behold a dreamy female Rider who sits astride a carousel horse; the horse who in fairy-tale stories is the conveyer of messages. She may even be Iris, the Greek messenger of the Gods.

“The fastened messenger bag across her shoulder may be suggestive of additional messages for different destinations along her night's voyage. In her hands she grasps a white envelope, a letter that is out of the bag and ready to be delivered for the current reading. The carousel is the ideal metaphor, as this card is a new cycle being initiated and an ending of the old state. The ups and downs of the carousel also symbolize the magical flight that powers this messenger to its destination. Freed from the ever revolving 'merry-go-round of life,' whose circular motion is also defined by the laws of physics as acceleration, our rider symbolically reflects the pace and speed of information by which our lives are increasingly affected.”

The LWB finishes with three spreads, each with an accompanying sample reading: the “Simple Nine-Card Spread” by Tali Goodwin, “The Fortune-Telling Day Spread” by Tali Goodwin, and “The Chocolate Bar Spread” by Rana George. The Nine-Card Spread is particularly useful for readers just getting used to Lenormand, and The Fortune-Telling Day Spread is meant to help you track and improve your reading accuracy with daily readings each morning. The Chocolate Bar Spread is one of those spreads that seems totally valid and sensical except that I can find not a single explanation for what it has to do with chocolate, so the whole thing ends up feeling kind of odd to me. You may find this useful or endearing—to each his/her own. Should you be unsatisfied with the included LWB, a 140-page .pdf companion book in full-color is available for purchase and download on Marchetti's own website ($1.50, www.ciromarchetti.com). I have not purchased it, but am likely to do so soon.

One final note on the LWB—this would normally be a note about the cards, but the cards themselves are only numbered, not named, so the names of the cards only appear in the LWB. For the cards that sometimes vary in exact name, I give their names here: card 9 is “Flowers,” 11 is “Birch/Broom,” 20 is “Park,” 22 is “Choice,” 28 is “Man,” 29 is “Lady,” and 30 is “Lilies” (plural). Now for the actual cards!

The art on the cards is absolutely gorgeous. I am not partial to digital artwork, and while much of Ciro Marchetti's other work is objectively beautiful and well-done, I don't feel drawn to it or necessarily like it. This deck is different. There is something more traditional, I think, about the basic imagery in this deck, that makes for something very beautiful when that traditional imagery is treated the way Marchetti has done. The images seem simultaneously to pop off the surface of the cards and to lie behind the surface of the cards, as if in a diorama or behind a window. Someone else said these cards almost appeared to glow as if they were lit from behind. It is true.

A note to those who rely on the playing card correspondences on Lenormand cards: card 18, the Dog, is incorrectly attributed in this deck to the 10 of Spades, rather than the 10 of Hearts. The 10 of Spades is also (correctly) attributed to card 3, the Ship. I am given to understand that future printings of this deck will have this corrected, but if this bothers you greatly, you may want to hold off for now and wait for a later printing. I personally am not bothered by this small error, and I find it rather endearing that the error occurred on the Dog, so loyal and eager-to-please. I have actually let the knowledge of this error color my impression of the dog card and the way I interpret it in readings, and I like that. It could also make for a very interesting interpretation if and when both 10s of Spades show up in combination.

The illustrations on each card are very detailed, in addition to being very beautiful. The Clouds card, 6, is a particularly great example of this, with the bright half of the clouds being dotted with soaring birds, and the dark half broken with lightning striking the tree of the previous card. What this has meant in my readings so far is that while the key to reading these cards is usually in being very literal and reading right off the surface, the layers of imagery underneath can also contribute meaning when the top layer isn't quite enough. For example, behind the Key (33) sits a birdcage which houses a rose; and the Child (13) contemplates a storybook from which blooms a castle, a rainbow, a doll, a ball, a spinning top, and several blocks, which display the letters CM and GRL—standing for Ciro Marchetti and Gilded Reverie Lenormand. You might guess from this that Marchetti has hidden his initials (CM) in every card, and you would be correct.

On top of being very detailed and very beautiful, this deck is very enjoyable and easy to read. I have performed several successful readings for myself and others since receiving this deck, and I look forward to a long journey together.

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I wrote this review for its original appearance on Aeclectic.net

Standing Up For Stargirl

If you are reading my blog and you haven't yet read Stargirl and its sequel, Love, Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli, then go read them and then come back and read this. They are very quick reads, so that's a totally manageable request. This is a copy-paste of a review I wrote on Goodreads of Love, Stargirl, because I disagreed with what some other reviewers were saying. IT HAS SPOILERS!!!

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I'm writing this review to stand up for Stargirl.

A lot of other reviewers seem to have really hated this book [Love, Stargirl] in comparison to its predecessor, Stargirl. The main reasons I've read for this are that, first, the whole point of Stargirl written from Leo's perspective is that Stargirl Caraway is mysterious, ethereal, and otherworldly, and therefore a sequel written from her perspective spoils the magic and mystery; and that, second, If Stargirl is supposed to serve as an example of what people should strive to be, then she oughtn't to spend so much time moping over her ex-boyfriend, Leo.

I picked up Stargirl and Love, Stargirl to read because I'm starting a part-time job as English teacher to two of my friend's homeschooled children (that's two children, not two friends, the apostrophe's in the correct place), and I was looking for a selection of enjoyable reads that were both low-level and well-written (an astonishingly rare combination), and Stargirl came up on someone's list. I started reading it (and its sequel) via the Amazon "Look Inside" preview, and the first time they omitted a serious chunk of text I went out to the used bookstores, bought both, and read through them immediately. The books are VERY well-written without being too SAT-word heavy for 7- and 9-year olds to get through easily (I hope!). The reader picks up interesting, odd facts about mockingbirds, solstices, weather patterns, and rat breeds if he/she is paying attention, which is one of my favorite things in books about particularly knowledgeable characters. All the characters in Love, Stargirl (as in Stargirl) are entertaining, and each is likable and charming in his/her own way.

I was attracted to Stargirl at first for I think a different reason that the publisher expects most people to be. The promotional writing on Amazon indicated that readers would be mystified by Stargirl and relate to/align themselves with Leo, who has to choose between Her (Stargirl, a shining beacon of love, light, truth, and adventure) and Them (the rest of the MAHS student body, motivated only by passing fads, rules for popularity, and basketball; in other words, victims of the human psychological condition). However, I relate very closely to Stargirl. I was never homeschooled like she was, but I was never properly a part of any clique at school. I spent my entire schooling up to late high school with few to no close friends, because I would rather be forming relationships with books. Somehow, towards the end of high school, my confidence and sense of adventure blossomed, and the following quotes about Stargirl Caraway could easily be direct quotes about me:

"Several times in those early weeks of September, she showed up in something outrageous. A 1920s flapper dress. An Indian buckskin. A kimono. One day she wore a denim miniskirt with green stockings, and crawling up one leg was a parade of enamel ladybug and butterfly pins. "Normal" for her were long, floor-brushing pioneer dresses and skirts."

“Throughout the day, Stargirl had been dropping money. She was the Johnny Appleseed of loose change: a penny here, a nickel there. Tossed to the sidewalk, laid on a shelf or bench. Even quarters. 

'I hate change,' she said. 'It's so . . . jangly.'

'Do you realize how much you must throw away in a year?' I said.

'Did you ever see a little kid's face when he spots a penny on a sidewalk?'"

"She saw things. I had not known there was so much to see. 

She was forever tugging my arm and saying, 'Look!'

I would look around, seeing nothing. 'Where?'

She would point. 'There.'

In the beginning I still could not see. She might be pointing to a doorway, or a person, or the sky. But such things were so common to my eyes, so undistinguished, that they would register as 'nothing' I walked in a gray world of nothing.”  

I wanted to read these books because she and I had so much in common, and there are things she is better at than I am, and things I'm better at than she is, and I wanted to learn from her, and I wanted to read the story of someone who was so much like me. As you can imagine, I was pretty disappointed in Leo over the second half of Stargirl, but Stargirl herself was never disappointing to me.

Okay, now that I've given you my background info, I'm going to actually address the complaints about Love, Stargirl, that other reviewers have expressed.

Stargirl is not mysterious. She is not an alien. She is not superhuman. She is not any of those things. She is, just like Spinelli insists via his Wise Old Man, Archie, totally human--more human or at least more in touch with her humanity than most of the rest of the book's cast, in fact. She is very in touch with her own humanity and the earth on which she lives, and with the humanity of those around her. She's adjusted her habits accordingly, and is generally better at being selfless than most characters and most real people are. She's certainly better at it than I am.

If Stargirl is a real, regular, non-mysterious human just like you, as becomes rather more clear in Love, Stargirl, if you weren't paying close enough attention to Stargirl and Archie in the first book, then Love, Stargirl should be a beacon of hope. It is a glimpse into the inner workings of the mind of someone who actually cares about humanity and living each day to its fullest. This is actually amplified by the fact that she spends the first part of the book moping over Leo, about which others have complained.

Every bit of Stargirl's struggle with her feelings for Leo is real. When you are a person who loves as easily and as deeply as Stargirl does, that love does not go away easily, and it shouldn't. You don't have to stop loving someone to move on to the next part of your life. I think most people today, when they are broken up with (pardon my dangling preposition), even if it was with someone they were really crazy about, someone who was maybe a really great person, they try to demonize the ex-partner. That's really not necessary, and often really detrimental to our personal growth. Stargirl isn't exactly Miss Psychologically Healthy as she doesn't-even-try to get over Leo in the first two thirds of the book, but even then she understands and implements something that most of us don't: she can be upset with Leo for turning his back on her, and recognize that he doesn't deserve her, while still realizing that his weaknesses and faults do not make him a bad person, and while still loving him despite those weaknesses and faults.

Even worse, the other thing that many people do when they're broken up with, if they don't demonize the ex-partner, is that they turn against themselves. I've seen friends after a bad breakup insist that it was all their fault, pick apart every conversation over the course of the whole relationship to find some little thing (or collection of things) they said wrong to steer the whole 'ship astray, or insist they're too fat, or stupid, or ugly, or somehow were never good enough for the other person in the first place, even often when it's perfectly clear to uninvolved third parties that this is not the case.

Stargirl also does not do this. I was a little disappointed in her when she became Susan in the first book, but when she decided to be Stargirl again, she never looked back, and had no regrets. She recognized that becoming a better person and becoming a different person are two different things, and she should only have to do one of them. Leo wanted her to become Susan, a DIFFERENT person. Stargirl just wants to be a better Stargirl, which is the challenge she faces in Love, Stargirl. She never blames herself for Leo turning from her, which is good. She DOES let herself become a little unhealthily obsessed with linking her happiness to Leo's presence (in his absence), but any of you who have been through a similar experience cannot tell me that her misery is unrealistic. And, in the end, we come to a thematic conclusion. There's no point spending all that time mourning Leo's absence, because Leo is yesterday and maybe tomorrow, but he's not today, and TODAY is today, and there's only one of those each day, and they all become yesterdays so quickly, and once a today is a yesterday there's nothing you can do to change how much of it you spent moping or mourning and how much of it you spent joyfully.

The climax of the book is the Winter Solstice sunrise, something you really can only see once a year, and the way Stargirl set it up, maybe only once in a lifetime. Stargirl almost gave up on it, and was afraid that no one else would want to live for today enough to be up on a snowy hill before sunrise... and then pretty much every character in the book showed up, including Betty Lou the agoraphobe (who usually lives in some combination of yesterdays and tomorrows, but was the very person to give Stargirl the advice from the Buddhists about living today) and Charlie (who spends each day at the cemetery with his wife who is buried there, reliving all his yesterdays with her; even Charlie the yesterday-man is convinced to go see this sunrise).

In summation, if you're disappointed because you found out Stargirl is a regular human being who's just a few steps ahead of the rest of us, you shouldn't be, you rather should see that as a hopeful sign that you, too, can improve as a human being; and if you're disappointed that she mopes over Leo you should recognize that she's a lot more healthy about moping than most people are and that in fact the whole point of the book is that she stops moping over Leo when she realizes that she's supposed to live today for today.

The end.