A quick look at The Wisdom Seeker’s Tarot by David Fontana, published by Watkins.
This deck comes in a rather nice slipcase box, with a ribbon to remove the inner ‘drawer’ box that holds the 78 tarot cards and 80 page guidebook.
The Wisdom Seeker’s Tarot by David Fontana
The cards are quite thick and are not very flexible, they have a shiny finish but they are not overly slippery.
The Major Arcana is bright, and slightly cartoon-like, but the Minor Arcana in this deck let it down for me. It’s a pip deck with illustrated backgrounds, but the background images are recycled on a few cards of each suit, with no obvious reason as to why that particular background was used for that number.
In this deck, Wands represent the element of air, and Swords represent the element of fire. However the Wands are mostly red in colour, which I personally represent with fire, and the Swords are in yellow, which to me is the colour of air.
There is a fair bit of nudity in this deck, and very little racial diversity, which might put off a few people.
The 80 page guidebook is printed in colour throughout. It starts with a bit of Fontana’s background, a history of the tarot, a look at the world of symbols, and a guide to getting started and working with the tarot.
Then it begins the Fool’s Journey and a look at each of the Major Arcana cards. Each card has a question to ask yourself when you work with that card, for example The Emperor asks “How does the Emperor’s power manifest itself in me?”
Each of the numbered Minor Arcana and the Court cards are grouped together, so all the Aces are on the same 2-page spread, the twos are all together, as are the Queens, and so on.
As you can see in the last photo, there is some damage to my Queen & King of Pentacles, which is a little disappointing with a brand new deck, but does make it a great candidate for trimming.
I’ve not long acquired this deck and I have yet to actually use it, so I’m afraid I cannot comment on how it reads for me yet.
As I do not have the earlier printing of this deck, The Truth-Seeker’s Tarot, I am glad I now have this deck in my collection, if only so I can enjoy the Major Arcana. But due to the rather confusing Minor Arcana, with it’s seemingly random background image choices, and (IMO) mismatched elemental correspondences/colours, I doubt I’ll be drawn to use this deck much. I am also glad I waited until it was below £10 to pick up my copy, as I’d be even a little disappointed if I’d paid full price for this deck.
The Divination Dragon 