I opened up my Tarot of White Cats this morning and pulled out The Hanged Cat Man card. This deck is very interesting--at first glance it's whimsical, childlike, maybe silly. But it's really very clever. The usual, traditional symbolism of the Rider-Waite deck is there, but rendered using cats instead of humans. A friend of mine bought this deck for me as a birthday present last year, and it was really a gift of love, because he doesn't care for (and actually, actively dislikes) any except the most traditional tarot cards. The Old English deck is about as far out as he's willing to go.

On the other hand, as far as I'm concerned, the weirder the better. Not necessarily for reading--my favorite deck for reading is still the De Angelis Universal Tarot--but I have a growing collection of odd and unusual--and some very beautiful--decks. The first deck I ever bought was the Da Vinci. I bought it because I thought it was beautiful--and it is--but it isn't very well suited for reading, at least for me.

As I learned more about tarot, I found that I liked decks that were based on the traditional tarot symbolism and meaning, but that express that symbolism in playful or otherwise different or unexpected ways. I also discovered that I preferred decks that kept the traditional suits for the minor arcana, i.e., Cups, Swords, Wands, and Pentacles (or Coins). In the decks that don't use this arrangement, I can never remember which symbols correspond to the traditional ones; The Tarot of the Dead, for instance, uses Pistols, Pens, Coffins and Reels (like movie reels), and I have no idea without looking at the book what they mean.

Another whimsical deck is the Halloween Tarot. I had to have that one, even though the suits are called Imps, Ghosts, Bats and Pumpkins. I never really intended to use that one for readings, I just loved it. Another one that I had to have was the Housewives Tarot. Another friend bought that for me; I keep it at work so that I always have a deck there, but one that's pretty non-threatening and not very esoteric, just in case anyone would find it unsettling.

In the White Cat deck, the Fool is, of course, a dog--getting ready to walk off the cliff, with a tabby cat clutching his ankle, trying to keep him on solid ground. The Ace of Wands is wonderful, too, showing a white cat using the wand as a scratching post. Another of my favorites is the Nine of Swords, with the cat in bed with his face in his hands.