An A-to-Z Survey of Divination Decks: Part 4
Posted By Jade on September 2, 2009
After a long wait, here’s the P – T of our list of divination decks:
- Pomo Tarot: A post-modern tarot deck by Brian Williams, the creator of the Renaissance Tarot. A fully pictorial deck, the images are simple watercolors based on famous works of art. The four suits have been “updated”: bottles (cups), money (coins/pentacles), guns (swords), and TVs (wands/clubs). Williams has also “updated” the court cards as Man, Woman, Boy, and Girl. Many of the Major Arcana have also been renamed to reflect the post-modern theme. For example: Wheels (Chariot), Idiot (Fool), Mom (Empress).
- Quantum Tarot: A photographic collage deck by Christopher Butler & Kay Stopforth, it uses a variety of images to capture the essence of the sub-atomic world. Originally published as a 22-card art deck, there is also a 78-card version available from Amazon.com.
- Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg: A 78 card, fully-pictorial deck begun by Russian artist Yuri Shakov and completed by another unknown Russian artist after Shakov’s death. The artwork on this deck resembles traditional Russian miniature paintings and depict scenes of Russian fairy tales. The colors of the deck are rich and vibrant, particularly because of the deck’s black background. Some cards’ imagez seem based on the RWS (Rider Waite Smith) deck, but many others divurge greatly.
- Stairs of Gold (Tavaglione) Tarot: An Italian deck by artist Tavaglione, The Stairs of Gold Tarot is useful for anyone working with Elphas Levi’s magickal systems. The card names are in Italian and each card depicts several correspondences, including Hebrew letter, Sanskrit letter, Kabbalistic path, playing card suit, astrological and elemental glyphs, and more. Only the Major Arcana are pictorial — the Minors are simple “pip” cards.
- Tantric Dakini Oracle: Created by Penny Slinger & Nik Douglas and originally published as The Secret Dakini Oracle, this 65 card divination deck uses photographic collage to illustrate Tantric ideas. Though the cards are numbered 0 to 64, they do actually break down into 22 cards (cards 0-21) that correspond to the Major Arcana of a traditional tarot deck and 40 cards (cards 22-61) that correspond to the Minor Arcana “pips” (no court cards), as well as three addtional “timing” cards representing the past, present, and future.
That’s the end of part four. Next time, we’ll finish up the list with decks U – Z.
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