New Tarot Cards!

I went on a tarot shopping spree yesterday.

I was going to apply for the JLPT exam and since Powerbooks was on sale, I decided to take advantage of that and got me some pretty decks. I visited every bookstore I knew that carried New Age stuff: Powerbooks at Trinoma and Greenbelt, Fully Booked at SM North, and National at Glorietta. I even took advantage of the Customer Service Counter and had them phone other branches so I'd know what Tarot cards they're carrying. Sadly, the other branches carried almost the same decks, so in the end I ended up buying the Tarot of Mermaids at Trinoma. I was disappointed that none of the decks in my list were sold in any of the stores, but I made sure to pay a visit to Netopia to see for myself if any of the decks were worthy of purchase. The only 2 that caught my eye was the Mona Lisa tarot and the Mermaids one, but I opted for Mermaids because the Mona Lisa tarot is darker.

I don't regret the purchase. The watercolor paintings of the mermaids are absolutely breathtaking, even though I'm not big into mermaids. However, I have a few quibbles with Lo Scarabeo: I don't like much the font they used, The dark blue borders and dark blue at the back of the cards totally ruin the effect, and the digital droplet-like background on the horrible blue border is totally cheesy and unimaginative. What's more, why did they stick to the regular "Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles" when the LWB and the illustrations themselves show "Oars, Shells, Tritons, and Pearls"? Looking into amazon reviews, I think I may have found the reason for the horrible dark blue frame: it was originally teal/dark green-blue (which would've suited the paintings much better) but maybe Lo Scarabeo was playing cheapskate and/or their printers and color mixers were stupid! Grrr...

On my way to the MRT station, I passed by Natio Glorietta and to my surprise, I found a Beginners' Tarot Kit in the New Age section! And National never stocks up on Tarot cards (except those horrible Marseilles-type ones). It comes with a book, an organza bag and the Universal Tarot, which made it irresistable (all for 895) for me so I shelled out the money (even though I could get it on discount if I bought it 2 days later. Classic impulse buy, LOL. My perfect R-W-S tarot is still the Universal Waite, but the Universal Tarot is a good alternative. It copies RWS very closely but has softer, better watercolors and better outfits. My quibbles with it though, are the muscular and heavy set and angular male faces (woe the Pages! - they're not innocent kids anymore) and the 7 of Pentacles with a man showing obvious dissatisfaction, when the original was more of bored/neutral.

I wasn't sure how reading with my two new decks would be like (would they connect to me?) but I took them on a test drive and to my surprise, BOTH were very readable. Though looking at individual cards of the Universal Tarot disappoints me somewhat, they look really good spread out. And since they're basically R-W-S clones, very highly readable. The Mermaid Tarot, too, were kindly and gave me good advice, telling me to open up my heart, have confidence, and study them diligently - they will tell their secrets to me :) After that, the horrible dark blue border didn't bother me so much anymore.

Another good thing: I found the Osho Zen book at Fully Booked! It was totally unexpected and it was the last copy, so I had to grab it. I was tempted to get the runes, too, but thank goodness I didn't. I'll devote myself to Tarot first, and if ever I dabble with the runes, I'll make sure I make them by myself. It's a PROMISE!!!

All in all, a very satisfying shopping day. My New Age collection is getting bigger and better :)

My decks:

1. Robin Wood Tarot
2. Osho Zen Tarot
3. Tarot of Mermaids
4. Universal Tarot

5. Faeries' Oracle

I'm still glad that I had Robin Wood for my first deck, because I still think it's the best of what I currently have, and very friendly to the beginner. Though technically Faeries' Oracle was my first deck - I need to study it!