Londa Tarot

Creator(s): Londa Marks
Date: 1993
Country: USA
Publisher: US Games
Number of Cards: 78+1
ISBN: 0-88079-664-2
Type: RWS
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. IV pp. 401,404




  


Notes:
All cards were oil painted by the artist.U.S. Games  owns the 80 paintings for this tarot deck and they are in their collection of art. The artist once designed costumes and make-up for rock groups.

The depicted people are slender, androgynous and have angular faces. The scenes on each card are a stage with characters presented in a theatrical manner, they all have a title at the bottom and the Majors have a number at the top. Each card is signed "Londa". 

The Minor Arcana images are sometimes based on Waite. The suits are sort of color coded: The people on Wands wear brown clothes and the Wands themselves are brown too, the Cups all have violet/red in the backgrounds, the Cups themselves are golden, the people on Pentacles have green clothes and the Pentacles themselves are golden, the Swords are all blue (the people wear mixed colors) .

There is a title card and an extra card that shows a masked person with the question, "Who are you really?".

The backs show a circled cross in gold on black and are reversible. The lwb that comes with the deck is written by the artist herself, has some information about the artist and an introduction to the deck, it also contains two of Londa Marks' poems.

Merrimack Tarot

Creator(s): Pamela Coleman-Smith
Date: 1961
Country: USA
Publisher: Merrimack
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN:
Type: RWS
Reference: 

Notes:
In principle this is a Smith-Waite deck made as a cheap novelty fortune-telling deck. Each card has keywords for it's meaning printed below the titles to make for easy interpretation. It also has a fold-out paper to show where to place the cards and what each position means.

There is no mention of Rider-Waite-Smith anywhere on the box or in the instructions but the imagery is the exact artwork of Pamela Colman Smith. It is brightly colored and the colour doesn't always stay in the lines.  The back has a brownish tiled-looking mosaic pattern on it and is not reversible. It was printed in Hong Kong in 1961 and distributed by Merrimack Publishing Corp.

Sacred India Tarot

Creator(s): Rohit Arya, Jane Adams
Date: 2011
Country: India
Publisher: Yogi Impressions
Number of Cards: 82
ISBN: 978-81-88479-78-8 
Type: RWS
Reference: artist's page

Notes:
Rohit Arya works and writes in India, and Jane Adams is an artist in the UK; they started to work on the project in 2001, exchanging images and ideas by email.

The Sacred India Tarot combines Tarot and Indian mythology. The Major Arcana depict the archetypal forms of the gods and goddesses of India. Initially, the project was called the Hindu mythology, Tarot, but the name was changed because the cards also draw plenty of Jainism and Buddhism.

The Suit of Staves (Wands) is inspired by the Indian epic Ramayana. The love story of  Shiva and Parvati is shown in the suit of Lotusses (Cups). The Suit of Arrows, based on themes from the Bheeshma episode of the Mahabharata. The author uses arrows instead of swords, because Indian myth is primarily an archer culture, swordsmanship being mythically of no account. The Suit of Disks (Pentacles) depict scenes from the life of the Buddha.


The allocation of the elements to the Cards in the Sacred India Tarot is:

Page - Air

Knight - Fire

Queen - Water

King - Earth

Staves (Wands) - Fire

Arrows (Swords) - Air

Lotuses (Cups) - Water

Discs (Pentacles) - Earth

The deck comes with 4 extra cards. There are two "blessings" cards called Ganesha and Babaji and there are alternative death and world cards.  The accompanying book provides information on the background of the Indian gods and goddess forms. The cards are in a box in the insert, which contains an image of Babaji, which can be pulled out and used as an altar.

Rumi Tarot

Creator(s): Nigel Jackson
Date: 2009
Country: USA
Publisher: US Games
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 978-0-7387-1168-3 
Type: RWS
Reference: aeclectic

Notes:
The Rumi Tarot has a traditional structure: 78 cards, traditional titles (with exception of the High Priestess, which becomes the Priestess, and Strength which becomes Fortitude), the four suits are entitled Swords, Cups, Staves and Coins, with the Court cards entitled King, Queen, Knight and Page. The minor arcana show a mix of both pip styling and small RWS-like scenes. 

The images are based on Rumi and Sufi beliefs, some of the features of the Rumi Tarot court cards are taken from the fifteenth-century cards of Mamluk design. Each card  has a verse from Rumi at the bottom.

The suits of the Minor Arcana symbolize the four Aristotelian elements and are corresponding to the alchemical mysteries of the Sufi path.  The basic positioning of the Trump figures and elements looks like in RWS Tarots, but everything from costume to architecture is Arabic.

The original paintings for the cards, done in tempera, are the same size as the cards themselves, also for the Minors, done in miniature portrait style.  The background color for the Major Arcana is blue, for the Minor Arcana and Court Cards it is green.

The box set comes with the 312 page companion book and a black organdy pouch. The book gives some history and background on Rumi and Sufism, offers a complete guide to the Tarot’s divinatory meanings, and also associates one of the 99 names of God with each card.

Linol-Tarot

Creator(s): Gerhard Haack
Date: 1988
Country: Germany
Publisher: self-published 
Number of Cards: 79
ISBN:    
Type: RWS
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. IV, pp.401, 403

Notes:
The deck is printed as "Linol-Farbdruck", that means not the black lines (which are line drawings), but only the five different colors were applied as linoleum block prints.

The minors were fully illustrated, they are inspired by the RWS images but not clones. The cards have German titles and Roman numbers, Strength is 8, Justice 11.


The deck has 78 cards plus an untitled extra card showing a man with a club.

It is a limited edition of 150 decks. The cardboard box of the deck is signed and numbered by the artist, mine is number 123. There is no lwb.

Primavera Tarot (Tarot Art Nouveau)

Creator(s): Antonella Castelli
Date: 1998
Country: Italy
Publisher: Lo Scarabeo
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN:   
Type: RWS
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. IV, pp. 222, 223  

Notes:
The Primavera Tarot was also called  Tarot Art Nouveau, but there is another deck by Matt Myers called the Art Nouveau Tarot. The Myers deck is less representative of art nouveau and shows mainly influence of stained glass design, while Castelli's tarot looks like the works by Alphonse Mucha and Aubrey Beardsley.

The cards are are elegant, flowery and ornate, the minor arcana do show a distant influence from the Waite-Smith designs. People, which are the focus of the deck, are uniformly young and attractive. The colours are soft greens, blues,  pinks, and yellows, inset into a white border. The main title, in Italian, is purple; other language titles are pink.

There are Knights and Knaves, rather than Prince and Princess or Knight and female Page; but the Kings all have women beside them who appear to be consorts, whereas the Queens are alone. Most of the minor arcana cards have only women in them.

Death is female and Strength is male, the rest of the majors adhere to the genders usually assigned to them. There were no deeper esoteric meanings, no associiations with Kabbala, Numerology or Astrology.

The deck comes with a lwb that gives very brief card meanings.

Tarot 2-12-1-3-11

Creator(s): Lynyrd-Jym Narciso
Date: 2010
Country: Philippines
Publisher: self-published
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN:  
Type: RWS
Reference: tarotgarden

Notes:
The 2-12-1-3-11 is a "faux-vintaged" reproduction of the RWS majors. Faces, hands and sometimes whole persons are blackened, what made the images look like photo-negative.

The title of the deck  reads BLACK, when you substitute the number with the letter at the position in the alphabet given by the number.

This miniature deck is a limited edition of only 50 copies. Mine is number 35.

Watersprite Tarot

Creator(s): Alison Muir McDonald
Date: 2013
Country: Australia
Publisher: self-published
Number of Cards: 78+1
ISBN:  
Type: RWS
Reference: World Playing Cards






Notes:
Before becoming a Tarot Creator Alison Muir McDonald worked as Community Psychologist in NSW. It took her 10 years to paint and sometimes repaint the images. The art is watercolor.

The deck has an additional significator card and came without a book or LWB. The deck comes in two sizes, a standard tarot deck size and a larger "professional reader size", mine is the larger size and signed by the artist.

Mythic Tarot

Creator(s): Juliet Sharman-Burke, Liz Greene, Tricia Newell
Date: 1986
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Eddison-Sadd Edition
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN:  
Type: RWS
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. III, pp. 609, 612, 613




Notes: 
The Major Arcana depict Greek gods or demi-gods and keep the traditional names but are unnumbered.The suits carry the traditional designations of wands, cups, swords and pentacles. Each suit is based on a Greek myth and the cards from the suit tell the story as they progress from Ace through ten.

Cups tell the story of Psyche and Eros, Wands tell of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Swords tell the story of Orestes and The Curse of the House of Atreus and Pentacles tell of Daedalus. While each suit is tied to a story, we still find scenes that are similar to those in the Waite-Smith deck.

The deck seems to be published by many different publishers in 1986, there is an edition by Fireside mentioned on aeclectic, one by  Simon and Shuster (USA) mentioned by Kaplan, one by Century Hutchinson (UK) and mine by Eddison-Sadd. They all have slightly different backs, some black with gold embleme as mine, some purple or blue. Mine came with a hardcover book, some others came with a softcover book
.

Morgan-Greer Tarot (US Games)

Creator(s): Bill Greer, Lloyd Morgan
Date: 1979, ca. 1985
Country: USA
Publisher: US Games
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 
Type: RWS
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. III, pp. 595, 608





Notes:
The Morgan-Greer Tarot was originally published by Morgan Press in 1979. Morgan and Morgan declared bankruptcy in 1975, but continue publishing decks and books up to 1985. The deck was later published by U.S. Games Systems. This edition is the "transitional edition", it was still printed by Morgan Press but already distributed by US Games- and thus it must be from 1985 or older.

The cards have seven different star patterns on their backs. These are the same patterns (which are on the same cards) as in the last edition by Morgan with the two-piece box. Coredil classified the star patterns of the last Morgan edition in this thread on aeclectic.

Aquarian Tarot (Morgan)

Creator(s): David Palladini
Date: 1970
Country: USA
Publisher: Morgan
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 
Type: RWS
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. I, pp. 229, 230





Notes:
The Aquarian decks by Morgan have cardbacks with different shades of red (or blue). They all came in the black box with the Fool on the cover, but there are several variations of the cardbacks:

                      Dark blue back
                      Blue and white back
                      Pink with red ourobouros
                      Red/orange with black ourobouros
                      Red with white ourobouros
                      Black with white ourobouros


The Aquarian is a "traditional" deck, consisting of 78 cards, 22 in the Major Arcana and 56 in the Minor Arcana, divided into four suits : Cups, Swords, Pentacles, and Rods. There is a white border around the cards. In the majors the card title is worked, often elaborately, into the design and a Roman numeral tops each card. The minors are titled at the bottom of each card.

My Morgan-Aquarian came with a lot of extras, which in principle belong to another deck (The New Tarot for the Aquarian Age): the Windows of Tarot book, Royal Maze poster, The book T- Age of Aquarius, the Book G- The Royal Maze and an Instruction book. It also has an additional  smaller LWB  and  a custom bag.

Since 1975 the Aquarian is produced by  US Games, in their version  the cards shifted a bit in color tones and the box changed to the tuck box.The US Games Version has the blue and white backs only.

Celtic Tarot (Gaudenzi)

Creator(s): Giacinto Gaudenzi, Saverio Tenuta
Date: 2000
Country: Italy
Publisher: Lo Scarabeo
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 978-0738700137  
Type: RWS
Reference:  Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. IV, pp. 267, 268

  




Notes:
The Celtic Tarot is illustrated by two different  artists. The Major Arcana were created by Gaudenzi in a style that is found in book illustrations. His work appears to be pen and ink colored with watercolors. The Minors Arcana are by Tenuto and recalls comic book art. The Majors were originally released in 1994 as an art deck under the name of Tarochi Celtici, and the Minors were added some years later and the deck re-released.

The Major Arcana's images are from Celtic folklore and fairytales. The Minors are based on the Rider Waite symbolism with the suits being attributed to Irish tribes. Wands represent the Fomori, Pentacles are the Tuatha De Danaan, Swords are the Ulaid, and Chalices are the Fianna. The deck attributes Wands to Air and Swords to Fire. The Court Cards follow the traditional pattern- Knave, Knight, Queen King.

The deck comes with a LWB that briefly explains the legends associated with each Major Arcana card.

Element Tarot

Creator(s): David Bourne, Stacy Mendoza
Date: 2002
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Element Books
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 0-00-713696-X   
Type: RWS
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. IV, pp. 318



Notes:
The Element Tarot was designed to accompany the book Tarot: Your Destiny Revealed in the Secrets of the Cards. The artists stated their aim was "to create a set of strong archetypal images associated with dream states. The bold colors, together with the mystical and fairytale imagery, are used in order to unlock the deeply seated subconscious feelings we all hold within us from childhood".

Most of the court cards figures seem feminised, certainly androgynous at the very least. All the human figures have long hair, and there are a number of mermaid forms.The pip cards have no imagery.

The deck came in a violet box with a booklet, the backs are violet with a sun and moon design. The deck was first published as Dreamers Tarot by Anness Publishing in 1999 with a black and white pattern back design. There is also an edition as Mysteries of the Tarot kit put out by Selected Editions and an edition by Hermes House from 2002.

The 723 Tarot

Creator(s): Paul Afong Jr.
Date: 2001
Country: USA
Publisher: self-published
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN:
Type: RWS
Reference: artist's page

Notes:
Paul Afong is an artist and graphic designer, he did the line work for each original painting in a very small scale, and subsequently enlarged it. The backgrounds were created by finger painting with acrylic paints. The deck was named 723 Tarot, because the artist's birthday was July 23^rd. The card numbering is traditional; Strength is eight and Justice is 11.

The 723 Tarot is a limited edition of 50 copies signed and numbered by the artist, mine is number 49. They come in a red fold over cardboard cover with a matching band that slips over the case and on which the deck information is printed.The backs are plain black.

Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set

Creator(s): A.E.Waite, Pamela Colman Smith
Date: 1910*, 2009
Country: USA
Publisher: US Games
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 978-1-57281-639-8   
Type: RWS
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. IV, pp. 484-491

Notes:
The Commemorative Set is a rather huge package. It included two books, the 78 cards and assorted extras, such as a little blue organza bag  for storing the deck, a fold out with tarot spreads as well as some postcards and pictures.

One book is Waite's "The Pictorial Key to the Tarot" except that the illustrations are not included (!).  The book is obviously a photographic reprint based upon either the 1910 or the 1922 edition; which one isn't mentioned. The missing pages with illustrations have forced a renumbering of the text pages, which makes this edition impossible to be used as a reference. 

The other book, "The Artwork and Times of Pamela Colman Smith" by Stuart R. Kaplan is a small biography. Pamela Colman Smith's life and family history are thoroughly covered and many colour illustrations of her art, most of them from Mr. Kaplan's own collection but also pieces from other sources are displayed throughout the book with notes that help the reader learn about the mediums that Colman-Smith worked with throughout her life (watercolor, ink, pencil, etc.) as well as all the different places where her work was featured (book illustrations,  magazines, etc.)

This deck is obviously a reprint of the same original `roses and lilies' deck from Kaplan's collection that was already used for the Original Rider Waite Tarot , but  the back pattern, which gave this edition its popular name, has disappeared to be substituted by one single `Irish rose' flanked by a stylized version of Smith's  signature. 

One major reproduction problem with this edition is that  the coloured background areas, particularly  the blue and grey areas are rather muddy and with larger grains than the original.