Aquarian Tarot

Title: Aquarian Tarot

Artist: David Palladini

Price Range: £14 / $19 - £19 / $29

Dimensions: 6.99 x 3.18 x 10.16 cm

Publisher: US Games

Date: Originally published 1970

Style: Art Nouveau & Art Deco

Hey folk, it's been a hot minute hasn't it!! My apologies things are a little bit intense my end so my review writing has had to slow down for the meantime. Heavy studying to become a qualified teacher, and unfortunately the loss of my best friend Katherine of 22 years. 

So I'm trying to get back to normal now, please bear with me. Thank you for staying and to my new followers thank you for joining.

So, I LOVE Art Nouveau and Art Deco. They're both two of my favourite art styles, with their thick lines and definitive (Sometimes dramatic) styles. Naturally I've got my eye on a few different decks, Aquarian was one of them! 

Whilst I'm always on the hunt for Diverse decks, I still appreciate the art of certain times because I understand the world was what it was at the time. Context is everything. 

Box

I got the tin version! I quite like it, sometimes the boxes can get a bit bashed so this suits me fine. 

I will say that I expected bigger cards, I thought I'd ordered bigger cards.... Alas I got the teeny tiny ones. But hey we've all been here with my buying mistakes so it's not new. 

Because they are small they've actually become my travel pack, very handy for any time I need a quick pull. Quite a few times I've read people at work using this pack, and it's because they are so portable and in a tin. 

Cards

These are standard quality cards, very easy to shuffle for small hands like mine. 

I do love the style because they're solid color schemes, sometimes Art Nouveau can be whimsical but these are very much in your face. 

They have a trippy 70s quality and you can tell this with this use of color. 

Most of the Major Arcana is good, i especially like these cards, which are pretty much my favorite. 

The Star especially is absolutely my favourite card of the deck. 

All very striking and I love it. 

Moving on to cards from the Major Arcana

One thing I noticed is that on the cards that can be negative, they carry a very atmospheric background that really helps to carry the feeling of the card.

The tower blew it out of the water on this. 

However! I have a small issue, it's not massive and its not me nit picking, i just find it funny.

It's the faces... 

Just look at them

I feel like the front facing faces let the awesome artwork down.

Side facing absolutely fine

But what is this, i feel like it's an afterthought.

This one is the worst one

I feel like it's such an afterthought that some of them just don't match the deck. And they're a little samey, and it's ok to be shit at faces trust me I'm absolutely shit at drawing.. But that's when you get help. 

Never have i ever seen such a sad looking Magician. He's asking himself why me? 

These are ok but you see the same faces throughout the deck. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion I actually really like this little deck. I wouldn't want it in a full size version, I feel I wouldn't appreciate it quite as much.

In my humble opinion it's not a beginner deck, because some of the imagery is up close and you can't really see what they're doing.

 These cards have different meanings but that is lost, because they look pretty similar. 

The meaning is completely lost here, how do we know the character is surveying landscape? We don't. 

Again, whilst we can see they're carrying a lot how do we know how heavy they find it? 

However, despite all that I still love this deck, its typical of esoteric imagery in the 70s. 

I'd prefer if it was a bit more multicultural, but this dude can't even draw faces 🙈

I'll leave you with this one, the entire suit of Wands is Phallic and i expect this was on purpose 👀