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Faery Wicca
Tarot Deck
Dearlin, Einter yee not eento these cerds lessen ye be knowin the language of Eire, fer they be fraught with fer too many consonants und not so much oonderstandable English. The Faery Wicca presumes that your Wicca derives straight from Laurie Cabot and that you have an incredible working knowledge of concepts such as the Four Cities of the Tuatha. I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person and as an 18 year veteran of Tarot reading, I don’t feel like I’m a slack in that department. My daughter is often the one to review new decks for the Digest, but she took one look at these and said, “Mom, these are out of my league.” I had to confess that I wasn’t sure I was in their league either. I don’t require that a deck follow the traditional Rider-Waite progression and representations for each card in order to have them talk to me. I enjoy diversity in decks, but this one was just far too complicated insofar as its little book was concerned, to wade through without some serious use from a highlighter and tiny bookmarks. The book was very difficult to decipher. It’s quite small and thick, so even though there is good information in there (wonderful, in fact, in some places), it’s physically difficult to maneuver. Were it saddle bound in a 6x8” size or otherwise managed into a more user-friendship shape, it would likely be much more enjoyable. I hope to explore this deck again should a larger volume on the cards themselves be released. Each card seems to have a good bit to tell, but the interpretations are lost in this difficult-to-follow and navigate little book. Let me say that the illustrations are absolutely beautiful and the energy and thought that has been invested into assigning them to each card and meaning is quite obvious. I especially love the inclusion of the “Gift of the Faery” cards, which are four additional cards, “Apple Branch,” “Crane Bag,” “Hazel Wand” and “Holy Stone,” used for many different purposes, such as to link yourself to a particular area of perception or a certain element. They are a wonderful and thoughtful addition. Some of the minor cards do not contain much detail in their illustrations, which leaves them a bit unwelcome to speculative psychic play. Beyond that, the cards themselves are quite lovely and well done. It’s just that damned book. The thing is, and I’m only fully realizing it as I write this review, the cards are wonderful. The text in the book is difficult to follow if a person is not well-versed in Celtic lore (I’m running at about 60% on that one – higher than average, but not high enough to wing it yet) and is greatly hampered by the inconvenient size. Again, if a large sized, user and Diva friendly version of the book is released, I will be all over it and would likely use the deck for readings. The saddest part is that this deck is very worthy of further and deep exploration, but dammit, that book…
Review by Delena Rasbold |
