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Dog decks. I loathe dogs - and please don't tell me how lovely they are; I was bitten as a small child and have feared them with good reason ever since. Two owners who told me (as an adult) that THEIR dogs wouldn't hurt a fly saw their dogs go for me and one of those bit me to the bone. I own the odd exception to this: the 22 Arcani I Cani del Mondo for Il Meneghello. And this one . Sometimes standout art will win out. Angels. Decks with "agendas" - Akashic springs to mind. Ones with colouring so psychedelic they make me go cross-eyed (some of DV';s spring to mind). Any involving Indigo children.....

Interesting. I watched the same Ethony YouTube video this morning. I have to say, I am in almost total agreement with all of her choices! I make a couple of exceptions when it comes to Animal Decks—but they ARE exceptions. I really dislike animal decks that are anthropomorphic ...either dressing the animals up in human clothes (I hate that in real life as well) or assigning them with human-generated stereotypical characteristics ...foxes are sly, etc. I own one cat deck ...only one ...that really does understand cats and the behaviours depicted in the cards are very applicable to classic RWS meanings. It's The Cat's Eye Tarot. I find it usable. One category of decks that I was originally drawn to, but have changed my mind about, are any 'classical artist' decks—decks depicting artwork by famous artists, but compiled into a tarot deck by other designers. I remember delightedly buying the Breugel tarot and the Arthur Rackham tarot, but was disappointed that the artwork chosen for both just didn't reflect the tarot meanings. Nice picture gallery ...but.... I have given both of these decks away, and I don't buy these kinds of decks any more. (Exceptions would be decks that are actually designed to BE tarot decks by the famous artists themselves. Salvator Dali did that. So did Ferenc Pinter ...I just acquired the Pinter deck, and wow. But both of these artists were mindful of tarot when they designed the decks ...at least the major arcana cards.) I am also extremely irritated by any deck that depicts (especially female) figures in ethereally wispy dancer poses. This is horrendously common. Do deck creators think tarot wisdom is all about females floating around, garments flapping, stretching out arms to the sky? Apparently many do. Even a few deck creators whom I like a lot do this occasionally. Ciro Marchetti, is one example. He makes magnificent decks, but there are always a couple of cards that make me gnash my teeth at wasted opportunities. He gives us that magnificently grounded, mischievous Fool in the Tarot Grand Luxe deck (my favourite Fool of all time), but then follows up with a vapidly gorgeous Temperance floating angel, reaching mindlessly to the starry heavens holding two cups. Why? I am not attracted to Manga decks or to Witchy/Halloween-y decks or to 'dark' decks, where every image is either deliberately frightening or downbeat. I'm not actually attracted to any 'theme' decks in general. Nothing wrong with these, but they're not me. In general, the more down-to-earth a deck is, and the richer the interpretive possibilities are from each card, the better I like the deck. I especially love a deck that gives me a new perspective on the RWS cards. Nowadays, THAT is what gets me to buy a new deck. Some new insight into the cards. The Allcento Tarot, and The Everyday Enchantment Tarot are two examples of new decks with new outlooks on the classic RWS cards.

This is lovely! Thank you for all the great ideas. More scientific connections: homeostasis and equilibrium. And of course the pendulum swing. I never connected it to festina lente, but it makes perfect sense.

When I think about Temperance, one of my favourite major arcana, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Baroque emblem representing the virtue. This is how the allegorical representation of La Temperanza appears in Cesare Ripa's influential Iconologia in the 17th century. Vermeer knew Temperance well, and she shows up on a stained glass window in his painting The Glass of Wine, warning the viewer of the dangers of indulging in alcohol consumption. Temperance, like Justice and Fortitude, have strong roots in a Christian ethos that emphasises virtues and warns of vices (which come in neat sets of seven). So these images connect me to this moral system, although obviously the concept has undergone many changes since then. Temperance is closely connected to the ancient Roman principle of festina lente - "hurry slowly". The dolphin symbolises speed of movement, and the anchor immobility. Combining them means "don't rush, don't stand still - keep the balance". In biology, it's the principle of homeostasis, when all our vital functions work perfectly. In order to do so, we move constantly from one activity to the next. We breathe in, we breathe out. While we live, there is no moment of perfect balance, we always have to go on breathing, our blood moves from lung to heart on its way through our bodies. Keeping all the restless movement necessary to enable life in a perfect balance, never doing too much nor too little, is what Temperance teaches us. Don't go overboard, balance feasting with fasting, movement with rest, and don't let your feelings overcome you until you lose control over your actions. Take on the ideas of others, but keep an independent mind. Cultivate your social life, but balance it with alone time. Don't run after the Zeitgeist and don't become fossilised in your thoughts. It sounds so obvious but it's actually really difficult to do. The virtue of steadfastness, balance, thoughtfulness and self-control leads to health, that's the promise of Temperance. And health means that we're in the best possible shape to deal with life's challenges. Keep going, keep a clear head, balance your humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile) or your doshas (vata, kapha, pitta). Oh well, this sounds all a bit vague and like the advice an old person might give to a younger, like in Cat Steven's song Father and Son. Maybe that's why some people don't really like Temperance. We all want to live passionately at times, want to go overboard, rush into a relationship or a new habit or a new set of ideas. At other times, we feel like doing nothing, seeing nobody, falling into a black hole. Temperance tells us that we may do so, but the pendulum always has to swing back - we have to let it swing back.

Listening to the wise and wonderful Ethony on YouTube talking about this topic, I felt suddenly curious what you all think about this question. What are the decks that you simply feel not the slightest attraction towards? For Ethony, cat and dog decks, angel or demon decks, and space-related decks belong to the genres she can't connect to (among others, listen to her to find out more ;-) ). I found this question really interesting - listening to her while putting my newest cat deck into order before returning it to the Cat Decks collection basket, I pondered why I like them. And what kinds of decks I wouldn't touch. I do own some dark decks that I like, the Deviant Moon and Night Sun Tarot for example, but overall, I'm not drawn to dark decks. Using them for shadow work has always seemed counter-intuitive - it would be too much for me. I do my shadow work with light-to-neutral decks because I don't want too much negative energy all at once. Even for regular readings, I rarely feel the pull to buy a darker-themed deck. My Tarot of Oppositions, which shows light and shadow on the same card, is probably a better fit for my harmony-seeking soul ;-) While I love star-related decks that bridge the modern gap between astrology and astronomy, I have little interest in aliens, star seed topics etc. These decks don't speak to me at all. There are some cute decks I like (one day I'm going to buy the Gummibear Tarot, I know it), too much sweetness is too much for me. I don't like goggle-eyed little girls in provocative poses on my deck, and I don't like pin-up esthetics, male or female. That's what spoils some older Lo Scarabeo decks for me. I want my tarot people to look like real people, not like calendars for all-male locker rooms, thank you very much. I guess most people around here agree with me that AI decks are not a thing for serious tarot reading. Right now, the market is flooded with lovely-looking, samey-samey decks in nice colour schemes - all blue and gold, all red and green or all shimmering pastels. You can hardly tell your Hierophant from your Tower because the cards look all the same. I wonder not only who buys these things but also who can really work with them. Of course, there are artists who work with computer graphics and do amazing things with it - MJ Cullinane comes to mind. For her, the computer is a tool, just like water colours or pen and ink for others, and I'm more than happy to work with them. There is a deeply human touch in those decks that are completely missing in AI decks. (I suspect that these are bought by newbies or just for taking nice pictures to upload somewhere - "feeling witchy today!"). I'm not drawn to novelty decks - all the Disney decks seem pretty but shallow to me, they don't interest me. Decks that lean into Nordic themes are fine, but only if they're not obviously inspired by series that make them all seem like runway models in fur and elaborate plaits. I have some very upbeat and optimistic decks (Good Karma, Good Fortune, Distant Past) that give a positive twist even to more, how shall we call them?, challenging cards, but do so respectfully and leave room for less optimistic interpretations. However, I can't work with oracle decks where each card tells me, "you're fabulous and deserve to be happy, and happy you will be! soon!!!" Maybe they'd work as affirmation cards, but I prefer to take the Sun or Temperance or the Star and write my own affirmations for them. I need light and shadow in a healthy balance because that's how I see life. I don't have to squeeze the last drop of positive energy from a reading - my deck must be able to reflect back sadness, listlessness, stagnation and even self-pity if that's what I'm feeling right now. So not too upbeat for me. The Good Karma Tarot is as far as I can go to that direction. What else? I like the idea of fairies, sylphs and gnomes living in nature, but I have rarely found an artist who can give shape to them in a way that I can connect to. I wish Alan Lee had made a tarot deck, and I like the Tarot of the Secret Forest and the Shadowscapes - the one is earthy and not cute, and the other ethereal and powerful and not cute. But there are many fairy-gnome-magical creatures-decks that are not my thing. These creatures are not easy to see, and sometimes I feel as though many artists who depict them have never seen one. Also, I grew up with the German tradition of fairy tales and folk tales, and the Anglo-Saxon fairies are a bit different. However, ranting about fairies and sylphs I realise that I own quite a lot of such decks and actually like them. I'll admit it. But those I don't like - I really don't like them. So it's a intuitive thing. The Secret Forest is probably closest to the magical creatures I remember from my childhood wandering through a dense and dark German forest (my grandmother lived in such a forest and I visit the place regularly in my dreams). I have no problems with angel decks but I don't feel attracted to the watered-down versions with lots of corn syrup that appear on Doreen-Virtue-style cards. Angels are powerful and should be treated with respect, not turned into spiritual commodities. I'm also very careful with art decks. As an art historian, I don't like it when I see a deck that treats art as a sticker album. Again, like the fairies, if an art deck is done well, I'll love it very much. But if I feel it isn't, I'll feel personally insulted ;-) I like inclusive decks, but I don't like stereotypical representations of ethnic minorities or cultures that the creator doesn't really seem to understand. Obviously, this is a dilemma as most of us belong to one culture and ethnicity or maybe two, so if we don't allow creators to be inspired by other cultures, we get completely monochrome decks. Inclusivity also means different ages and body types. I appreciate very much that newer decks don't shy back from conventional beauty standards and include true diversity, especially when I feel that they have really given the concept a lot of thought. It's a touchy subject. What about Alice in Wonderland decks, Wizard of Oz decks etc that Ethony mentioned? It depends on the deck. If it's done well, I can connect to decks with topics from literature. This is not as black and white for me as the fairies and art decks are. I don't have even one plant-centered deck, and now I wonder whether that's because I simply haven't found one that depicts the flora where I live, or whether the whole concept is not for me. Overly martial or stereotypicall masculine decks also do nothing for me. I also have a problem to connect to many Celtic-themed decks, simply because they interpret Celtic strictly as Irish Celtic. Coming from a place where Celts used to live, on the European mainland, I don't understand why there is no Celtic-Gallic or Germano-Celtic deck - well, maybe there is one but I haven't found it yet. What are your bugbears? Overtly Christian or Pagan decks? Black and white decks? Thoth or Marseilles decks? Steampunk? Comic? Manga? Ceremonial magick? Eastern European and Russian decks? Fantasy and Sci-Fi decks? I'd love to hear your thoughts. What are the deck genres where you simply say: that's not for me.

Hi all! I was snarky (again) about deck creators seemingly not knowing what Temperance means (in both illustrations and guidebooks). My friend immediately challenged me: "So what DOES Temperance mean?" And I stumbled around trying to answer coherently. In delayed response, here are my keywordy ideas on Temperance, expanding from conventional meanings of the cardinal virtue to more esoteric concepts. (I think it's appropriate that some of these ideas are tangled up in my mind with scientific concepts. I'm fascinated by the electromagnetic spectrum because I was middle-aged before I learned that light and heat, and radio waves and microwaves and x-rays, are all on the same continuum.) Meanings of Temperance Everything in moderation (including moderation) Aristotelian happy medium = extremes are bad, in between extremes is good Blending rather than just joining Chemical compounds = ingredients combine to create a third thing different than the original ingredients Alchemy Experimentation, physical and otherwise Physical things are metaphors for spiritual things Continuum Electromagnetic spectrum Please join in with agreement, disagreement, more ideas, requests for expansion, etc. What does Temperance mean to you?

A week ago, I was gifted with the Cats Rule the Earth Tarot, a lovely deck - it's in Dutch, a beautiful language that I can read, albeit not speak. The excitement of getting a new deck into my collection, in addition to the need to get a new Llwellyn tarot calendar for 2027, inspired me to buy two new decks. The Woodland Wardens Tarot by Jessica Roux. I own and love her oracle and the Good Fortune Tarot. So of course I have to complete the set with the Woodland Wardens Tarot, which seems like a link between these two decks. Her art is detailed, gentle and well-observed, but also imaginative. The Mindscapes Tarot by John A. Rice. I love landscape paintings, and I have a subcollection of landscape-inspired decks already (the Flow Tarot, the Landscapes of the Soul, Majestic Earth and Pastoral Tarot which includes figures but puts them in specific landscape settings that really add to the meaning of the cards). The Mindscapes Tarot looks beautiful, and it's done in oil pastels, quite an unusual medium for tarot cards. Ink and watercolour or nowadays computer graphics are much more often used, but oil pastels have weight and depth, and when I look at the pictures, they resonate with me. Let's hope I won't have to wait too much, and I'm very happy and excited. There is no anticipation like deck anticipation!

Oh Pathwalker it's wonderful. You'll love it.

Welcome to the community @Crystalsandcards Glad you found us here from Essex 😀

The Carnival at the End of the World I saw it yesterday the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, but didn't know enough about to buy it. But having had a look online at some of the cards, I have ordered it from them, along with the book. Does anyone here use it?

Good morning, that looks like golden advice, thank you sincerely. I will check if I can join a circle to practice 🙏

Welcome, candys. From someone who also read only for themselves first. The welcomes won't tell you this: online practice works because the other person can't see what you want the cards to say. In a class, you and your partner can quietly agree on a spread and both walk away comfortable. A stranger just confirms it, or doesn't. That gap is the whole value. So don't collect more spreads yet. Watch for the next Reading Circle round (they pair you with a partner on a schedule), and when you post a reading for feedback, ask where you misread it, not whether you were right. The correction is the practice. Personal readings open after five posts, so keep saying hello in the meantime. See you in the circles.

I came across a couple of used decks in very good condition at a bargain price At the top of the picture is a 1986 version of Thoth with 3 Magus/Magician cards. And at the bottom, a Spanish first edition of Tarot Secreto (Eng: Secret Tarot) from 1998. Decks: Thoth & Tarot Secreto

Haha you clearly have more knowledge than those of us that live here. It certainly does take all sorts, chavs and all so far as there is nowt so strange as folk! Hi joyous girl, thanks for the pointer it really is encouraging Hey joy, thanks do kuch Hi Chariot of Scotland :) yes, studying tarot at a twice monthly in person class which is great but the class has been small and I am craving practice with those I don't know to progress. Thanks for the welcome Thanks for the welcome.

Two of Swords, Tarot de la rea The plan is to do my two yoga classes (take not teach) with my out-of-town skin doctor appointment in the middle. All in all, a busy(ish). Not a crazy, run-around-town like a chicken with its head cut off day, but "full schedule" day nonetheless. That would have been a different card. This is a calmer, lower numbered card. I can also appreciate the two-ness of the card. The decisiveness, the decisions or planning for the day had already been made. Now on to implement it.

So... there will shortly be a new oracle deck on Kickstarter called The Magicians Muse Oracle - by Carrie Paris (of Relative Tarot fame). She presented at the conference with 1st copies of this new deck. It is a bit like a cartomancy deck with images from "all the rest of Pamela Coleman Smith's art that is not in the RWS deck", and has it's own system for predictive reading. I'm queing up for that 🙃

It is absolutely stunning. It took me ages to track mine down from another member on Aeclectic.

Welcome, @skrunchpuff. From someone who also read only for themselves first. Eleven years of self-reading is real, and it is also its own box. When the reading is for you, you already know the ending, so the cards tend to get read backward from what you had already decided. You do not notice until someone else sits across from you. That is the day you find out which of your interpretations belonged to the deck and which were just you. It is a good day. Glad you are here.

Welcome @Crystalsandcards ! Welcome to our forum, I'm sure you will find many opportunities to practice here, and also to learn and discuss the cards. Hopefully, it will help complement what you have been learning in class!

Hi @skrunchpuff, welcome to our forum! I hope you like it here! Eleven years is a long time reading... I hope you will share some of your experience with us!

Divinations for Uncertain Days; An Almanac of Birds arrived. Maria Popova is an author/poet who chose a bird from 19th century guides before bed, read its entry and looked at the art, then in the morning created a poem using only words from the entry. I tend to be drawn to certain phrases in a reading. The poems are encouragement to be present, embrace uncertainty, and understand ourselves and others. At times dense, because of restricting herself to 19th century texts, but I like the idea of that. Half the proceeds go to the Audubon Society. My photo's a little blurry, but it’s at her Marginalian site.

Gasp!!! O.M.G. How have I never seen this! The colour! I have never been a kickstarter backer until today - this is my first. I don't really have the money to throw around but this deck looks like it could be the one! Thank you for this. Only 4 hours left. I hope it succeeds. Gosh it's exquisitely beautiful.

Welcome back @Rachelcat!

Here I am! Mondays are getting so busy these days! (I do my reviews and interviews on Sunday, but I don't even have time to post them on Monday!) This week will be Art Deco Fortune Telling Cards. It’s the last of my sibillas to be used as a deck of the week! Published by Piatnik. Instead of a booklet, it has two instruction cards in German. Somewhere online I found an original publication date of 1936. A fun thing about the deck is all the languages. As listed on the box: Serbo-Kroatisch, Englisch, Deutsch, Ungarisch, and Italienisch. I didn’t know Serbo-Croatian was a language. According to Wikipedia, it is also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS). (Ungarisch is Hungarian.) As I did for Arcana Folia, I did a quick analysis. The 52 cards are: 18 people 13 emotions 16 experiences/situations 5 physical things I’m not sure how reading will go with so many people cards. I gave up on G***y Oracle Cards because I couldn’t make that work. We’ll see this week! What is your most important characteristic? message Well, that makes sense! The deck’s purpose is to give messages. What is your strength? journey It’s good at messages about the future. Your weakness? malady It’s bad with health readings. What can you teach me? judge It can help me understand any moral choices I need to make. How can I learn it? thief A fun pair! I can learn about choices but I might have to squint or make stuff up instead of following the letter of the messages given. What will be the outcome of our work together? fortune She’s strewing roses and coins from her cornucopia. Similar to the first card, the deck will be a true fortune-teller for me. I hope so!

I hope it's unchanged (well, border colour isn't, but....) I love that deck.