The Light Seer's Tarot

Amazon stock photo

Title: Light Seer's Tarot

Artist: Chris-Anne

Price Range: $21.50/ £15

Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.51 x 13.34 cm

Publisher: Hay House 

Date: 3rd December 2019

Style: Boho, Colorful and Diverse.

I'm so gutted.

I wrote a really good review and blogspot decided to wipe it All before I could publish it... So this is the Light Seer review take 2!!!

Everyone has this deck, the reviews on Amazon are astonishing actually. 4.8 ⭐ out of 5 which is really impressive, that's 8347 of them. Only 2% negative. (But those seem to be about its first release and criticize the card stock etc) 

Box

Very good, as usual because its Hay House so I don't expect anything less. 

Box is very durable and smooth mat quality which I love.

Even the detail on the interior is on point. 

Guidebook

The guidebook is standard, it is a good learning tool so anyone can pick up this deck and learn. 

Yes it does include reversals, but the meanings are categorised as such:

Light Seer - Upright 

Shadow Seer - Reversal

The artist states that this deck is supposed to be a journey about light and dark. 

Photo unapologetically stolen from the Internet. 

Whilst I'm happy that it includes the full meanings I don't agree that it was right to use the phrase "shadow seer". Not all reversals are negative for a start, take 10 of swords for example. It is one of the most negative cards of the whole deck, its one card I judge decks on because I like to feel a sense of absolute dread as I look at the card. I'm not kidding!! 

Upright - Deceit, betrayal, loss, painful endings etc etc

Reverse - Recovery, Regeneration, Resisting the inevitable etc. 

Are those all negative? Not at all, there are multiple discussions around the connotations of language and how they affect people in the world. Dark, Shadow, etc, are often words which are associated with impurity or evil. Including people of color. 

I'm going to come back to the 10 of swords later, because I'm not finished. Hang onto that train of thought

Cards

Firstly, the cards are of the same quality as the box. Significantly a world away from the Amazon Critique of the first print. Durable, nicely finished and thin enough to shuffle but not so thin you can't bend them about.

The imagery is a rework of the Smith-Waite deck, and includes most symbolism from the original esoteric work. 

One of the best Death cards I've ever seen.

I like this interpretation of 8 of Wands, often a card I feel gets overlooked.

One of the nicest Ace of pentacles ever, which makes me really feel the earthly connection 

With a Continuous theme through the suit.

A great depiction 

The Swords is all based around Ravens as a theme

Although I must say, this is not my favourite depiction of this card. But it is one of my favourite cards usually.

All of the Queens

Please take a moment to appreciate one of the best cards of the deck. This is a real Queen, she's lovely. 

Kings, all very handsome

Inclusive 

I was pleasantly surprised to see a couple of East Asian Archetypes

Although they all have swords or wands so being a little stereotypical. 

Dark Skinned representation, which is rare to see. 

However, I have noticed a few things that for such an inclusive deck aren't sitting right with me.... 

1. Eurocentric features on most of the people of color. Take the King of Wands as a prime example. 

2. All similar body types, no one curvy or short etc nothing different just all aesthetically pleasing. Even though some of the men have grey hair they're depicted as total hunks. 

3. No Queer men, at all. Which I found really odd because it Incudes a Queer female couple. 

4. Some POC are set as Archetypes that are Tropes or Stereotypes. Such as 9 of Wands. The Strong Black Woman is actually damaging trope for black women, as it absolves vulnerability. Case in point, none of the POC women are in vulnerable roles within the deck. Equally all the Black men in the deck are in roles that can be construed as domineering. 

Even the Queen of Pentacles is the practical Queen, the Working mother who is still independent. 

Queen of wands is fiercely independent, full of confidence etc. 

The current 10 of Swords 

10 of Swords Controversy 

Which brings me nicely to this card. 

After a mooch online this came up! It turns out that this is a reimage, the author had to change it because... Well see for yourself.... 

Here we have a black woman depicted with scars on her back, indicative of being whipped. 

Not one person thought to themselves that this was not OK, neither the author or Hay House. 

To be honest I had no words when I saw it. I saw various reviews and a lot of White tarot readers were moaning because they felt the card shouldn't have been changed, and people of color were becoming "too politically correct" etc. The thing is there are still people alive today who were born into slavery in the Americas, hell there was one plantation where people were only freed in the 1960s because they had no idea that they were free. Imagine if they saw it. 

Stuff like this carries trauma, both personally and ancestrally and it is incredibly insensitive. The fact that it didn't occur to either the artist or the author that it could be perceived as horrifying is worrying. (What people will do to sell) 

Also, something happened which I really did not expect, it turns out that this art isn't so original. 

I saw this on Daily Om as an advert which popped up on my feed, which reminded me of this card

Uncanny, even down to the pattern on the board. By the way the new 10 of Swords is the same woman.

Then!! I accidently found ANOTHER one, again because Facebook suggested it to me. 

I thought where have I seen this before? 

Looks uncannily the same as 4 of Pentacles.... 

(Also I noticed she's near a Slum, come on!!!)

I do not have the time to scroll on Daily Om and find more examples of clear plagiarism. I wasn't even looking for these but due to the invasive nature of Facebook AI, it did me a huge favour and suggested them to me as adverts. 

Now all I wonder is how much of the deck is original art work. 

In Conclusion

Well I've gone from really loving this deck to disliking it.

There is no doubt that the artwork is gorgeous, but it's teeming with implicit bias, stereotypes, plagiarism, tropes, eurocentricity, no queer men at all, no one full bodied. 

Is this deck inclusive at all? 

A few people of color are thrown in to make it seem inclusive but they are heavily Eurocentric. Out of 78 cards there are only 17 with a person of color on the deck in some fashion. Which makes sense since I realised that a lot of it is quite possibly plagiarized, from models. Which are usually euro Centric. 

This deck is a good learning tool, i will say that. The depictions are representative of the meanings, nothing is really lost.

It would be great for young girls who want to learn, but not necessarily great for BIPOC people or LGBTQ+. 

I feel it appeals to a certain type of reader, Some of the jargon is harmful, especially since the world is trying to move away from this stuff, and improve. 

All of that, coupled with the rework... For diversity sake this is a drag. 

I'm selling my deck ASAP!!