The Happy New Year Tarot - Review

[Tom]

I wanted to write a review of this deck before January is over, it's the Happy New Year Tarot.  These cards used turn of the century New Years Day postcards.  I bought the deck off Esty's and it was from an independent vendor.  The cards come with a felt green tarot bag (no box).  It does not include a manual.  If you buy the deck the author sends you a link for an e-book that can apply to any Tarot Deck, it's not specific to why they chose what images to represent certain cards.  Some seem to have a correlation, others not at all.  Krampus as the Devil seems appropriate--but I'm at sea as to most of the relationship to RWS meanings  Each card has a name of a tarot card on the bottom of it.  The card stock is of high quality and sturdy, but they can be a big on the slippery side.  The backs are appropriately wintery.   I did a sample reading which I will post under the readings forum.  To be honest, though the images are cute and beautiful, and I love the nostalgia of it all, I found the deck difficult to read.  You could interpret them intuitively, but everyone seems so happy.  It's hard to associate two cherubic children standing next to a fence post as The Tower, for instance.  In my reading I read the cards both with traditional RWS meaning and intuitively--the message was essentially the same.  I read with reversals and shuffled them together from end to end to mix the cards for upright or reversed meaning--all the cards I pulled were upright.  I guess that says something positive to say about the message.

 

I think this is a good collectors deck, but I don't think it's a good practical deck for divination.  I thought it would be fun to use between Thanksgiving and the end of January--but It's a bit of a struggle.  Other holiday decks are created with variations of RWS meanings reflected in the images.  Being a glutton for punishment, I ordered the Happy Holidays Tarot--which covers the major holidays with these post card images.    

 

The bottom line is I will enjoy looking at them, but I doubt I will read with them.  To emphasize what I said earlier there are better nostalgic holiday decks with the real essence RWS meaning on the market to use.

[Tom]

A Sample Reading Using The Happy New Year Tarot

 

The Winter Is Here Spread

 

Card One:  The Dark: What needs to be released at this time is the Six of Wands

 

The Six of Wands is the victory procession, in this context what needs to be released is my not wanting to move forward into Winter.  Intuitively the Angel ringing the News Day Bell shows that New Years comes after the winter solstice and I have to accept winter.  Winter is an especially hard time of year for me, the short days and inclement weather.  This winter has been especially gloomy, just making things a bit harder to bear.   I need more sun.   I just need to accept that and proceed.

 

Card Two: The Light: What will be reborn in my life is the Five of Wands.  I can't find a very good explanation for this card as it is a card of competition and conflict.  What needs to be reborn is what I need reborn every winter, to hold my own.  Intuitively from the image of the children and accepting the movement into the New Year holds promise for them and I should loose sight of the fact that even in winter there are positive things--the traditional tarot meaning suggests I should enough the interplay of the season.  The combatants are, after all young people--in all likely hood they are enjoying the interplay.

 

Card Three:  A Message of Hope from the Universe:  The Wheel of Fortune.  The seasons are cyclic and the winter will pass and instead of being down about it, I should look with anticipation to when the spinning of wheel brings me to spring once again.  I think that the clock represents the idea of the Wheel of Fortune with it's ups and downs well.

 

Clarification Card:  These cards seemed to a bit murky in their meaning:  the Seven of Pentacles--waiting for things to bear fruit.  Intuitively the mother holds her young child (a symbol of new life) with joy.  The rebirth of world in spring will bring many beautiful and growing things, it's the world renewing itself again.  The dormant seeds of spring will blossom.

 

As I said in my review of the deck this reading was a struggle and very cryptic to me.  The way I read the cards is the only way I could relate them to my life.  I will stick to my own personal interpretation because no one knows me better than myself.  Time marches forward.  I wonder if I asked this question with a RWS deck or clone if I would have gotten less muddled answers.  I thought about doing another reading with a "normal" tarot deck, but what really is the point?  It's true I need to accept winter and hold out for the joy of spring. It's a pretty deck for nostalgic reasons, but it's hard to correlate it's imagery to the RWS meanings and that makes it hard for me to coax answers out of it.

 

If you have this deck could you please comment about what your reading experiences with them have been?  What is your general impression of the imagery?  See my review for more sample cards--some seem to hit the nail on the head, but not others for me at least.

[Chariot]

I see what you mean about this deck, and wonder how on earth they would have fitted in 'swords' etc.  Would it make sense to just use the major arcana cards for a 'year-starter' reading ...maybe just for fun. At parties?  

[Tom]

@Chariotthat sounds like a good idea.  Next year I'm buying a vintage style Christmas deck with similar pictures that use RWS correlations. 

[DanielJUK]

I have brought @Tom's sample reading, which was in a different thread, into this thread as it will work best here, the review and sample reading together 🙂 

[Luned]

The vintage style is very nice but you’d certainly need to have a LOT of source material to choose from to have any chance of making a workable deck, so it makes sense that it was difficult to execute. I’m quite interested in the vintage Christmas-themed one you mentioned, @Tom, which one did you have your eye on?

Edited February 8, 2024 by Luned

[Tom]

@Luned it's this one, did at Esty's:

 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1572961860/the-vintage-christmas-tarot-by-hattie

 

They did a good job with the card correlations.  I should have bought this deck instead of the Yuletide Tarot, which is contemporary. They did a great job of creating convincing turn of the century Christmas card looks with it still meaning something when I look at it 

[Luned]

Oh, that Christmas deck is indeed stunning.