Title: The Inner GEMS Tarot
Price: $55/ £37
Artist: Leela Victoria
Dimensions: 2.75"x4.75" (70×120mm)
Publisher: Self Published
Date: June 2021
Style: Bright, Afro Centric
Hype or Drag: Verdict at the end
I follow a lot of people on Instagram, up and coming artists, witches, Druids, Professional Tarot readers, Healers, Shamans, Deck reviews, Astrologists, Magical people etc.
This is the best way to keep myself aware of any new and up and coming decks, talented readers and also have yourself known in spiritual circles.
I stumbled into this artist and was immediately blown away by the beautiful imagery featuring beautiful African faces.
So i promptly made an order when the deck was released.
The box
(Card Stock: 330 GSM black core card stock)
The box is 2 parts, extremely sturdy with a lovely soft silky finish. No issues here.
The colors are a bit in your face and i didn't take it as a warning.
No guide book - I'll come back to this later.
The cards
First impression is that these cards are extremely thin, and it warns of this on the website but I wasn't prepared for exactly How thin. The texture is very weird, slick but sticky and not at the same time. So If you are looking for something durable that you can use for clients I would not recommend if you want longevity. These are not durable.
They bend a lot, it feels like paper.
Imagery
Where to start? What can I say? Do i write a long blog? What do I do?
This is very awkward.
Truth be told I am majorly disappointed. I had a phone call from my friend when the deck arrived with them, they were majorly upset about it. "How can i review it?" They told me "This is the worst deck I've ever seen".
I'm not one to agree with everyone so I still had a hope, but no. This is genuinely not what I thought i had ordered.
For this discussion I am going to compare some of the cards against the Smith-Waite Centennial Edition.
The fool - So firstly what about this card is actually a good representation of The Fool? You can't see anything!!!!!
I am lightly on the Autistic spectrum but this presents itself in Hypersensitivity to visuals and sounds (amongst other things) and I get by. But I can't actually bear to look at that card because it makes me feel physically sick.
It's not the only one either
The Magician - The only way we can identify this is the magician is because of the vague figurine in the typical shape and infinity sign. No suits which convey a key meaning
The Moon card - It's a terrible experience. The image is barely eligible and I can barely see it. More eligible on insta but still garish. This is one card that simply does not translate well from digital art to card.
The high priestess - This card is not too bad but again, the color scheme is such that you can't connect. However on Instagram its much better. Some of these cards just do not translate to print, it's as simple as that.
The Heirophant - Now introducing Indigenous faces. But in the usual mish mash and can clearly see, gaudy style.
The hanged man - Reminds me of something out of the Lord of the Rings 70s Animation.
I'm a big enough fan of LOTR to know that this is Bilbo Baggings house in the Shire.
Because there is no guide book for newbies they will be clueless when it comes to this card so will have to work on Intuition.
But also, newbies wont know what correlates to this card
Which is essentially Judgement.
There are other cards I can drag but at this point I'm basically trolling.
Conclusion.
For myself this deck isn't the experience I needed from Tarot. Whilst I respect the confidence to make it loud and colorful (we all know i love a colorful deck) this is genuinely painful to look at.
The cards don't translate to print well, some not at all. It's not user friendly at all so I can't even gift it to anyone, no one can use it to learn.
The nice cards are still too bright, or a mishmash of themes.
Or just bad photoshop.
To be honest I bought this because on Instagram it came across as a really inclusive deck.
But the reality is that the artist has used brown faces to sell the deck, nothing more.
These are all the brown faces in the deck
1. For years New age spirituality has often taken from other cultures. This is no exception in the sense that in order to sell this deck and drum up interest, the artist has just taken brown faces from wherever to make a deck appealing. This is not the only time I've seen this.
2. Lessons learned - When viewing work online REALLY look into the artists page. Don't just look at a few photos or buy into the mailing list. It was only after I had got this deck that I went back to the page and looked through everything. Also the artist herself is not Afro Centric, or aligned with any creators that would lead me to believe that she supports equality etc.
And I can't shake the idea that the faces used, were to just sell this deck. Nothing more.
There are so many of them that simply don't tie up.
People don't have money to throw away for decks that are low quality. I could have bought Fantome which was running in Kickstarter at the same time.
As a Tarot reader I can't use it, and as someone who is neurodivergent just looking at some cards make me physically ill.
I don't like to drag a deck to death, I prefer to find something positive, but I cannot. And I believe you all need to know.
Artists! Leave Tarot alone if you don't read it yourself. Or use Tarot readers to test it out before you publish.
Drag or Hype - Its officially the worst deck in my possession. 👎🏻
Looked bad to me from the first corn-ball image of the black woman’s face on the yellow background. It might be cute if it weren’t so cynically mercenary: $55 smells like greed to me. V
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