German re-print of Lisa Hunt's Fairy Tale Tarot - canceled for now

[Nemia]

Should there be others who, like me, wait impatiently for YEARS to see a re-print of Lisa Hunt's Fairy Tale Tarot..... in whatever language... well, here is some information. 

 

I have had my beady eye on the website of the Arun Publishing House for some years, and they keep saying: soon available again! I even wrote to them some two years ago and they answered very nicely, yes, they'll publish a new edition of this popular deck. German would be great for me (native language), but even for English-only speakers, German is easy to understand since it's quite similar to English. And the pictures speak for themselves. 

 

When I last checked it, there was a new message. As a result of increasing prices for paper and energy, the calculation would make this deck expensive, ca. 80 Euro. And so decided not to print it. 

 

I'm disappointed though I understand their reasons. I just wanted to update here so the information reaches more people. 

 

[FindYourSovereignty]

Thank you, @Nemia. I have been waiting for this as well. 

[midrena]

 

Sorry about that, @Nemia, that's really disappointing when you've been looking forward to it for quite some time. 😞 Also wow that price... 😞

 

I have some happy news though, if you are okay with an English reprint when it's available. Lisa Hunt announced on her Instagram a while ago that US Games will be reprinting the Fairy Tale Tarot. I can't find the specific post at the moment but there was also an update in January this year where she wrote, "Many of you have asked me about the status of the republication of The Fairy Tale Tarot. The material has been submitted to the production team at US Games. I have no release date available at this time, but I will let everyone know via social media when I know more. Thank you so much for your support and enthusiasm for this deck."  https://www.instagram.com/p/CnCoij4u4DW/?hl=en

Edited May 23, 2023 by midrena

[MuninnMissinHuginn]

Is Fairy Tale Tarot different from the Fairy Tail Lenormand?

[Nemia]

Oh, happy news! Of course I'd love to have that deck in any language, I love Lisa Hunt's art and the way she sees the world and the tarot. 

 

And a tarot deck is different from a Lenormand, yes. I have the Fairy Tale Lenormand but for a Lenormand deck, frankly, the art doesn't play a big role. That's why I personally get much better readings with tarot. 

 

[Teemu]

Hi,

 

yes, all Arun Tarots are postponed, most noteably the german version of the Wildwood Tarot 😪

[Nemia]

I'm happy to see that Lisa Hunt is preparing a new release of the Fary Tale Tarot! Details on her website - it will probably be available next autumn. 

 

Dancing the happy dance right now! I LOVE her art and the way she understands the tarot. 

 

Release Announcement

Announcements

Feb 12

I’m happy to announce that The Fairy Tale Tarot will be published in Fall 2024 by US Games Inc..

 

[FindYourSovereignty]

Thank you for sharing. I’d like to get this deck. 

[Natural Mystic Guide]

3 hours ago, Nemia said:

I’m happy to announce that The Fairy Tale Tarot will be published in Fall 2024 by US Games Inc..

Thanks for letting us know.  I have been vacillating on purchasing the Inner Child Tarot by Mark and Isha Lerner -- which uses fairy tales for inner child work.  Are you familiar with that deck and if so, how do these two compare?

[Nemia]

I have the Inner Child Cards, and as it was among my first five or seven decks, I'm connected to it. I embroidered a beautiful bag for it on silk that I painted myself, and it has accompanied me for many years. I have strong memories with it, and I appreciate a lot about this deck. Which makes it difficult for me to be objective. 

 

The cards are very large, and I trimmed off the white border to make a bit easier to handle. The colourful borders of the suits and majors are beautiful and set a strong atmosphere, so they're a definite plus for me. The majors are assigned to fairytales intelligently and with a deep, basically affirmative approach to tarot. The often-feared "negative" trumps are not so dangerous after all. This allows you to use the deck with children. I remember my little daughter really loving the deck. The World card will always remind me of my little daughter spending time on my bed, playing with the deck and discovering treasures on the cards. 

 

The minors are weaker, they're RWS transported into a whimsical world of gnomes and fairies. 

 

The art is very colourful, sometimes a bit too much so, and a bit of a mixed bag. There are some cards that are simply not done that well. It's also a very Christian-themed deck and some motifs are a bit over-used for my taste. 

 

I went out into the pale morning light to take some pictures of the deck. 

 

        

 

I keep it in a crochet bag, together with the old embroidered bag that has become too fragile to use. 

 

     

 

Peter Pan as Chariot - works for me. The Big Bad Wolf as Devil - if the Wolf was a bit more threatening, it would also work for me as Devil. You might argue it's not really there, it's just the tree and that the wolf has no real form. But to make it work as Devil, there must be something magnetic about it, and that's missing here, the wolf is simply ridiculous. He's depicted better in the Three Little Pigs, a good idea for Judgement, but why use the same fairy tale twice? They could have found a stronger image for the Devil. It should have been Little Red Riding Hood's Wolf - but then, Little Red Riding Hood is the Fool. 

 

I have the feeling they could have given it a bit more thought. In so many fairy tales, you have the temptation to do something wrong. Rumpelstiltskin might have worked - the temptation to promise anything. Short-term win with long-term loss. 

 

 

The Eight of Swords is a very strong card, full of atmosphere. Like Peter Pan/Chariot, among the better-made cards of the deck that speak to the imagination. 

 

   

 

The court cards have been renamed: Child, Seeker, Guide and Guardian. I'm a bit lukewarm about that. In a child-oriented deck, one might argue that going with the traditional parent-child relationships might have been better. If you want to mix the genders, great, so make one suit two fathers, another suit two mothers, another one single parent or step-parent, whatever. Child, Seeker, Guide and Guardian are a bit bloodless for me. But the Little Prince as Child of Wands is very cute and the mermaids in the Cups suit a bit too cute for me. 

 

Then the Christmas theme - used a bit too extensively for my taste. If you're not from a WASP background, or let's say the Christian Anglo-Saxon sphere, those stockings won't do much for you. 

 

   

 

And if you didn't get enough Christmas vibes, there's Santa Claus for you. 

 

 

And I regret to say, he's painted badly. Those tiny hands. Hands are difficult and this one is bad. This Santa Claus doesn't have the strong old hands I'd like to see. You can also see the technical difficulties with depth. The artist simply filled in the colours here, there is no depth and very little atmosphere. For me, this card really doesn't work. 

 

 

And if this is supposed to hint at Chanukka, well, the candles are the wrong number and that's just sloppy. Okay, maybe it's simply seven for the seven days of the week. 

 

 

This is imho the best card of the deck, although the hands are again a bit over the top - but there is true expression and a good idea that's in keeping with the theme of the deck. And my daughter just loved this card so I love it, too. 

 

  

 

Wishing Upon a Star is a nice card but it's not a fairy tale. I really wonder why they didn't take Star Money (idiotic name in English, the German Sterntaler is soo much nicer). Well, it's among my favourite fairy tales ever and if I could be one person in the world of fairy tales, it would probably be Sterntaler, the girl who gives away everything and is rewarded not by humans but by the celestial forces themselves. However, the Wishing Well with its orientation towards the future may have been a better choice. It's a lovely card anyway. 

 

And here are some pictures of my old embroidered bag. I painted the silk and embroidered it with the suit symbols. 

 

          

     

 

In spite of my criticisms, this one of the decks I truly love. 

 

I don't have the Lisa Hunt deck but I love her art, and it's far more competent than the Inner Child art. Her colours are more muted, the watercolour is a medium better suited to the fairytale theme, and I have wanted this deck for ages. I have three other Lisa Hunt decks (Ghosts and Spirits, Shapeshifters and Pastoral) and love them all. 

 

In both the Inner Child and Fairy Tale deck, there is a lack of ethnic diversity. This has become a thing only recently - one really wonders why but that's how it works, the tarot-reading public noticed it before the artists did. You might say that the world of Western fairy tales, most of them based on the Brothers Grimm, simply reflects the worldview of German, Italian or British peasants sitting together spinning and telling tales through long winter nights and that they didn't see many non-white people or none at all. Depicting Rapunzel as PoC wouldn't have worked, maybe. 

 

In the Inner Child cards, there is a card from Thousand and One Nights, and that's nice. Integrating non-Western fairy tales was not the topic of this deck, so I go with it. For ethnic variety and truly international fairytales, the Tarot of the Divine would be the deck of choice. It's very beautiful and I guess Jung would have loved it. Unfortunately, it's one of the counterfeit decks I stupidly bought on a platform I learned to avoid which spoils my joy in it. I'll buy the real thing as soon as I can afford it again. 

 

Hope that helps! 

 

 

[Natural Mystic Guide]

41 minutes ago, Nemia said:

Hope that helps! 

The card images that you share, Nemia, and your balanced comments are exactly what I needed.  Aesthetics is my number one criterium in deck selection... so I was waffling in my opinion of the Inner Child deck because of that.  A Christian themed orientation just does not work for me.  I don't mind a little of it mixed in with lots of other things.  I think that what this does is show how there is a need for a 'fairytale' themed deck that draws from many cultures that works well for inner child work.  So your link and remarks brought me reconsider the Tarot of the Divine.  Maybe this is the right deck for my purposes.  Thanks so much for taking the time to respond here, Nemia.

[Nemia]

I'm glad to hear that! Look into the Tarot of the Divine, it's very thoughtful and multi-cultural and rich.