Deck Desire Strikes Again

There I was, minding my own business, trying to find out something for a customer, when BAM! I walked into this. I have long been aware of the Alchemical Tarot but although I found it intriguing, I didn’t much like the big borders. But now…now, I’ve laid eyes on this Art Edition and life will never be the same. The colours! The card! The thin borders! The wooden box and beautiful blue backs!

 

Alas, it is not meant to be. At $330 it is way, way out of my league, so I must move on and learn to live without it.

Perhaps this will help. The Tarot of the Saints is perhaps not as…shall we say…elegant as the Alchemical Art Edition, but it IS lovely and I am constantly compelled to learn new things so it would give me a chance to explore the stories of the Saints. Plus, it’s much more reasonably priced.

Actually, the thing that most intrigued me about it was something I read in this review by Nellie Levine. She includes an extract from the book about the Queen of Staffs card, which starts: “St. Genevieve, the young shepherdess, stands with her crook and her lamb.” My beloved Vacchetta uses the same image for its Regina di Bastoni (Queen of Wands), though whether it is meant to be St Genevieve or whether either tradition influenced the other, I don’t know. But it does give me the perfect excuse to buy the deck. Research purposes, you see?