Extispex: Tarot and Tarot Readings

For me to love a deck, it has to be consistent in the quality of artwork, and in the evocative nature of the symbols and imagery. A few bad, unattractive, or meaningless cards can spoil the whole deck for me.  Its hard to find a deck that is consistent enough for me to want to use, and I almost always do readings with my favourite deck, Crowley’s Thoth Tarot.

But being a neophile, I’m always on the lookout for something new and inspiring. I had high hopes for the Guardian Tarot, but unfortunately it didn’t meet my expectations. At its best, its very good, but at its worst, the illustrations are childish and sloppily rendered.

Which is a shame. I would like to have used this deck.

All of the illustrations contain winged beings - angels. But not the spruced up, watered-down, white chiffon-wearing new age concept of angels. These angels get dirty, think deeply, often behave badly; they fight, they love, they ponder and they wallow in misery. All this gives the deck a strange, surreal mood, but in many cases the artwork just doesn’t live up to the atmosphere evoked by the deck.

The illustrations are loosely based on the Rider-Waite deck, but with a darker feel to them. The original artwork were full-sized acrylic paintings - obviously a time-consuming and difficult labour of love for the artist, Jeff Minkevics. But in a few of the cards the work seems rushed. Disproportionate bodies, big heads, and dots for eyes abound.

I love the empty chariot, the Sun and Moon cards, the Hanged Man, and the weird, desperate feel of the Five of Swords. If only all the cards contained the quality of art that these do.

The deck itself is printed on rather flimsy card stock, little more than paper, but they’re a good size for handling and shuffling. There’s no little white book, but I tend to throw those away anyway. I prefer to derive my meanings from the imagery and intuition. They’re packaged in a small box with a rather cheap vinyl tarot bag that I’ll never use, except maybe for gaming dice.

Those who prefer their decks a little darker will find a lot to like in the Guardian Tarot, but it is by no means a consistent deck. The artist is obviously a talented man, but was unable to maintain consistency of quality when painting this deck. But if you’re a collector, buy it anyway. Support an artist’s hard work (not just the painting, but all the effort that goes into self-publishing a tarot deck), and perhaps Jeff will bless us with another deck in the future.

The Guardian Tarot can be found on the artist’s website.

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