Tarot of the Holy Light - Black & White Edition

A long, long time ago (so begin many fairy tale  - but this is more of a love story) I received and blogged the original Tarot of the Holy Light and click I fell for it! (you can find my post about it here)

It was, and still is a great deck deep, mystical, esotheric but without feeling heavy or threatening, during chats with the lovely Christine Payne-Towler I discovered there was an earlier ediotion of the deck in black and white in booklet format, and in a very limited printrun of only 150 (and yes off course I have it)! When posting my blog-post on Facebook, it sparkled quite  the attention and desire with people, what is always nice - the feeling you can at the same time share your love for something with others and at the same time giving a warm feeling and exposure to the artists who created it.
Somewhere in that Facebook thread the possibility was mentioned of a black and white version, liked by many both on the public as on the creators side.

Fast forward a few years, and yes it has finally materialized - a first (very limited) black and white version of the Tarot of the Holy Light is in my possession - and hopefully in those of many more who share my warm feelings with this deck.

There are many differences between this and the colored deck, some subtle others less. First there are the cards themselves a bit smaller than the color print and without the textured card-stock, but once again a good quality one. As these are the images as created before they did the coloring they are not all identical, some small details in some, some lines, ornaments missing, some line work more or less drawing the attention, so it's fun to seek the differences - what is less easy than I thought at first - and to  add to the clarity and readability the titles are now below the image instead of within it.

A curious thing about the first print-run of 50decks is that although it was printed in b&w there is a blue line around the 2 of Disks - so this printing will be allowed to go out with this peculiarity. As Christine said: " Perfection is for ninnies!", and it makes those an extra bit special!

Interested in the deck, contact Christine & Michael through their website, they will be eager to help you (and for those wondering if the deck is to deep or complicated there is an entire book with lots of  information available) 

Dante Tarot (Tarot of Dante's Divine Comedy) by Vera Sklyarova & Alexander Razboynikovym

I recently obtained a new Russian deck by prolific deck creator Vera Sklyarova, this time in collaboration with the artist A.Razboinikov.Published end of 2011 this is a fairly recent addition to the Russian subdivision of my collection, and as with miss Sklyarova's previous creations published in a very good quality set, with book in Russian (sadly, because I'd love to know moere about how she made her connections between the deck and Dante's work..) .

As with all her decks this one is themed and this time she used the Divina Comedia (an epic Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, the work written in the first person, tells of Dante's journey through the three of realms of the afterlife namely Hell, Purgatory (guided by the Roman poet Virgil), and finally Heaven (guided by Dante's personification of the perfect woman Beatrice).

The structure and imagery follows closely the book, so you need to know it or at least have the book close to you to grasp the deck and what the artist is saying in these 78 cards, the major arcana follows closely the WCS structure, the minors, as with all of miss Sklyarova, follow a more liberal, personal interpretation, guided by her own experience and the used theme.

The Holy Card Tarot

Many people think Christianity and tarot do not mix, well this is a very extreme example they do, you have to know and recognize many many saints. Every card in this deck is the depiction of a saint

Patty Gallagher made her deck entirely out of  holy card images ranging from classical art to anonymously created religious art that so many of us recognize and have a both vintage and religious look and feel.A great deck for those wanting to combine a Christian background with tarot.

The homepage for the deck is here