It's another useful starter deck, relying on the traditional symbolism as used in the Rider Waite deck. The illustrations are generally more detailed with strong use of colour though the overall images remain roughly the same. It has the traditional Queen, King, Knight, Page lay-up for Courts and makes strong use of floral and foliage images. Rods are oak staffs, the Ace of Swords has both the red and the white rose growing from the crown the sword penetrates, the Four of Cups sports a beautiful Green Man image and Disks are, by and large, bursting with growth.
The outstanding card of this deck for me image-wise is the Ace of Cups - a dove rises behind a glowing golden goblet which is held by a hand emerging from cloud. Beneath this is a lake into which water flows from the goblet and a water lily stretches bud and seed pod towards the chalice.
At a personal level I much prefer the modern slant placed on traditional symbolism and I like Bill Greer's artwork very much. The thing which in my opinion lets this deck down is the poor quality of the twelve page instruction sheet. A beginner would certainly need more information than is contained here in order to start reading the cards. However that said, if you employ the method of simply looking carefully at the images on each card you can certainly learn a great deal from this deck.
Review by Jan
