Using a New Tarot Deck

It’s strange for me to consider that I’ve been doing Tarot for over a year - close to two, now that I think of it - and the Rider Waite deck has become my favorite. Though I’ve misplaced my first deck somewhere at my mom’s house (A tiny pocket size tarot that cost me $5), not counting that one, I now own three decks. The first deck is the Thoth Tarot, which was given to me by some friends who found it in a room they were cleaning out, the second my Rider Waite, and the third the new deck which I mentioned in my last post - the Manga Tarot.

I’ll admit - when I first unwrapped it, I was a little tentative. A Manga based tarot? My first instinct was that it would be sort of cheesy and childish - for me, other decks using a ’manga’ theme are usually just fad decks, cashing in on people who enjoy anime and Japanese comics. In my opinion, most of these look terrible because it’s not truly manga style art but imitation, and cheap looking to boot.

However, as I looked through the deck, my excitement grew. Though this art doesn’t look precisely ‘manga-ish’ (in fact the work of an Italian illustrator), and while the images and symbols chosen for each card are perhaps more blunt than the traditional deck, they are still very well thought out.