Regarding the Card Threads

[EmpyreanKnight]

There are three main sources that cover the actual Shadows cards which I will use in this study group. Any additional ones that I eventually find will be posted in this thread.

 

The first is the hardcover book in English that is included in the kit released by the Ukrainian publisher, Deluxe. It's entitled Tarot Of Shadows: A Companion and it was written by Irina Ilyina and V. Ad Veritatum. It's based on the Russian book written by Vera Sklyarova herself entitled таро теней комментарии, which I covered HERE. About the English book, I'll post the divinatory meanings here, but if I do include the text on the various cards themselves, these would only be snippets.

 

Regarding the English kits, there are two versions. These are the gray box Classic and the silver box Special. While the latter is decidedly more premium (and therefore pricier), the content of the actual companion books for both sets are actually the same content-wise as far as I was able to ascertain.

 

This is what the Classic looks like:

 

 

Our second source is the book included in the Russian red kit that I discussed HERE. The book is entitled таро теней, which is just the name of the deck in Russian. It was written by Vera Sklyarova. I'm going to include the original Russian text in each card thread along with a reasonable translation, just for reference. Again, this is a pic of the kit:

 

 

The card descriptions in the LWB of the Russian red box deck published by Ankh are actually just parts of the fuller text included in the aforementioned book.

 

Our third resource are various web sites, forums, and articles which are mostly in Russian. Shout out to the Школа Лизы Чёрной site since it's truly informative. I have to say tho - there's a ton of threads out there discussing the deck in detail, tho again they're mostly in Russian. There are also some highly instructive videos online too - thank heaven for YouTube's awesome tool that not only captions whatever's said in a video, it also automatically translates them into English. It's not quite pristine but it's serviceable so I'm not complaining.

[EmpyreanKnight]

The deck is decidedly unusual. It's a system unto itself, and while it leans quite far from the established meanings of the English school of Tarot as exemplified by the Golden Dawn system, the deck still reflects them albeit darkly. I feel that exploring the corresponding GD/RWS/Thoth meanings would more fully flesh out each card. I would only touch on these tho, posting those sections which I deem relevant.

 

With this, in each individual thread I'm going to post excerpts from the following books, all of which are available for free online:

 

For the Golden Dawn system, I used the Book T by MacGregor Mathers and Harriet Felkin. A copy is available from the Hermetic Resource Site, and may be directly downloaded HERE.

 

For Rider-Waite-Smith meanings, there's the iconic Pictorial Key To The Tarot by Alfred Waite. The book can be viewed from the Sacred Texts website. Check it out HERE.

 

For Thoth/Thelemic meanings, the Liber Θ (Book Theta) by Frater James Eshelman is available from the Thelema site. It may be downloaded HERE.

 

There may be some available free versions of these books that have better formatting or presentation. These may of course be used too, as long as they don't break copyright laws.