When I checked out my Tarot.com horoscope this morning, I also noticed the tarot card of the day, which was the High Priestess from the Cosmic Tarot. It had been awhile since I looked at those cards, so I took a look at the deck there (they have pictures of all the cards of quite a few decks; you can do readings there, too, and choose any one of probably two dozen decks to use). This deck is really beautiful, and it might be one that I would like to have for my collection, but I'm not sure it would be one that I would use for readings.

The reviews at Amazon seem to indicate that a lot of people do use it for readings. It's just that the few cards that I looked at, while beautiful, didn't have the same imagery that I'm used to, the traditional imagery. For instance, I looked at the Four and Five of Cups, since I was writing about them last night.

Maybe if I was more of an expert at the cards, it wouldn't matter, but as you can see here, in the Four, all of the cups seem to have the same weight, i.e., in the traditional decks there are three cups in the foreground and one being offered separately, so the meaning (at least to me) is more clear. If you are familiar with the traditional meanings, I suppose it's obvious that the individual in the painting is experiencing apathy, but the position of the cups don't give any clues.

In the Five, the meaning is obviously grief, but all five cups are overturned. Certainly the traditional meaning could be applied, i.e., that once the immediacy of new grief has passed, there will still be things to look forward to, the basis for happiness still exists, but it's definitely not apparent in the card as it is in most decks, with three cups on their sides and two still standing.

Anyway, a beautiful deck, but I mention the differences for the benefit of new readers who may be considering various decks to purchase. For someone unfamiliar with the tarot, a good first deck is probably one of the more traditional ones, at least until the meanings are more firmly in your mind. I'll show some of those decks in an upcoming post.