Tarot Grande Luxe

I haven’t bought a tarot deck in well over a year. I went through a bit of a tarot phase where I studied it for a few months after never being interested in it before, and collected a lot of decks, and then I just as quickly lost interest in it again. Recently I was buying some books and this deck was recommended to me by Amazon. I was surprised there was a mass market edition of this deck. I knew the artist self-published it a while back. I bought it immediately and it came the next day. And now that I have it in my hands and have had a chance to look through it several times (in fact, I can’t stop looking at it!), I have to say that not only is this the best Ciro tarot deck yet, I think it might be my favorite deck in general! It’s absolutely gorgeous. Even the borders are beautiful, and I love how some of the art goes beyond it. The size and quality of the card stock is perfect.I have his other tarot decks, but there was always something about the other decks that didn’t work for me. Sometimes it was the art (Tarot of Dreams has some beautiful imagery, but I found the cartoonish-looking people a bit off-putting) and sometimes it was the card stock (Legacy of the Divine has gorgeous art, but is let down by its smaller size and flimsy card stock). I don’t love every card in this new deck, but overall, Tarot Grand Luxe is my favorite deck by the artist so far, and probably my favorite deck overall! It’s so beautiful, I’m actually tempted to try reading with it, and I’m not into reading cards at all! Divination in general doesn’t interest me much.The deck comes with a small booklet, where the artist talks a bit about each card and why he made some of the artistic choices he did. It’s interesting to me, but if you’re a total beginner to tarot, you’ll probably need a separate book that’s more in depth.All in all, I’m pretty happy with my purchase. I also see that there’s an updated (and borderless!) version of his Gilded tarot coming next year. Since it’s a Llewelyn deck, I know the card stock won’t be the best, but I hope that the art makes up for it. I’m glad Tarot Grand Luxe was published by U.S. Games. Their card stock is usually superior.Anyway, this is definitely the one tarot purchase that I don’t regret.UPDATE: I thought I should talk about some of the things that I don’t love in this deck. Two of my least favorite cards are the Queen of Cups and Queen of Coins. While the rest of the deck has that painted look to them (except for Three of Cups and Four of Wands, but they don’t have closeups of the faces), these two look like someone took a picture of a real woman’s face and just slapped it onto the card. Queen of Cups even has some garish makeup on. These two cards definitely standout in the deck, and not in a good way. King of Cups is also not a favorite. Another problem I had was with the kings and some of the other cards sporting the same face. My guess is they’re based on the artist? Having that same face show up on three of the kings seems a bit much to me. King of Swords is a gorgeous card (image also featured on the booklet), so it would have been nice to have more variety in the kings. I will say that I like the King and Queen of Wands! It looks like more effort was put into these than the Cups and Coins. If more care had been taken with some of the kings and queens (mainly Queen of Cups, Queen of Coins, and King of Cups), this would have been a perfect deck. But it’s still pretty great overall.

Tarot Grand Luxe is my favorite Ciro Marchetti deck, and I am overjoyed to report that U.S. Games has produced a genuine tribute to the out-of-print original limited edition. This is a gorgeous mass-market publication -- almost a twin to its self-published sibling.The thing I’ve loved best about reading with the Tarot Grand Luxe is the way the cards interact -- symbols meet one another across cards to create wonderful aha moments. I began discovering these symbolic connections by turning over pairs. My process is to go through the deck fairly quickly, not stopping to meditate. I just take a good look at each pair, reshuffle and start over — the stories reveal themselves.At times, I've also found that the colors and patterns in Ciro Marchetti’s artwork suggest something surprising — an answer or message originating outside the traditional parameters of the card’s meaning. And while this observation could be applied to most tarot decks, I’ve found that the Tarot Grand Luxe is especially rich and evocative compared to many other decks in my collection.U.S. Games packaged the Tarot Grand Luxe with a LWB in a beautiful sturdy 2-piece box. Happily, the lid features those crescent cutouts that make it nice and easy to remove the lid.The magnificent King of Swords adorns the cover of the 56-page LWB. And in it, Ciro Marchetti writes about his use of symbols and shares his thoughts on the meanings of the cards. A black and white thumbnail image of the card appears with each description.The cards are not only gorgeous to look at, the deck is wonderful to hold. The stack is thick (I measured 1.3 inches). The card stock is heavy, not flimsy. The surface is a smooth silky matte finish — slick, but not overly so. The cards slide easily against one another. I’ve riffled them, and I’ve mixed them. Perfect.The deck contains 78 cards, no title or ad card.The card dimensions are 3x5 inches, which is large enough to allow for appreciation of the lush artwork and yet a manageable size for shuffling.The colors are treasure chest of jewel tones.The images are true and sharp. My takeaway:U.S. Games is offering a fabulous, high-quality, standard Tarot Grand Luxe for about 30% of the cost of the limited edition.