A magical tarot deck is a powerful tool used for divination and spiritual guidance. It consists of a set of cards, each with their unique illustrations and symbolism. The main idea behind a magical tarot deck is its ability to tap into the universal energy and provide insights into various aspects of a person's life. The cards in a magical tarot deck are divided into two main groups: the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana cards represent significant life events and spiritual lessons, while the Minor Arcana cards reflect everyday experiences and emotions. What makes a magical tarot deck truly special is the connection between the reader and the cards.
The deck is a good weight and easy to shuffle. The cards measure 10.4 x 8cm, and they come in a tuck box. The authors must be pleased with the colours – they are so vibrant that they are in some cases almost tactile. I’ve used the deck a few times and found it to be excellent to read with. For this review, I asked “What issues do you want to help us with?” It gave us The Chariot, the Seven of Cups, and the Ten of Cups – important issues, urgent issues, ‘big’ issues; matters of choice and decisions; and issues of happiness. That makes it a beautifully flexible deck, and in my own daily readings it has been clear and decisive. It’s a lovely deck to work with, and will be of particular interest to anyone studying the Order of the Golden Dawn and/or ceremonial magick.
The Celtic Cross is considered by many to be a little too complicated for a daily reading, but I appreciated this reminder of the depth and insight it offers. If I were to use this system in a reading for a woman asking about her work situation and I draw the Knight of Wands, the card has to be someone other than her because the card is male; it has to be a man under the age of forty who is very fair with blue eyes.
What makes a magical tarot deck truly special is the connection between the reader and the cards. Before using the deck, it is important to cleanse and charge it with positive energy. This ensures that the cards are attuned to the reader's intuition and vibrations.
Review: The Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn Deck: 78 Cards for Divination, Meditation and High Magic
You are probably familiar with the most famous members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (HOGD): AE Waite, Pamela Colman Smith, and Aleister Crowley. You might also be familiar with literary members WB Yeats and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and those who went on to make their reputation in the world of esoteric Qabalah, such as Israel Regardie, Paul Foster Case, and Dion Fortune. It was a powerhouse of an organisation and when it was dissolved it seeded the world with the brightest minds in occult studies, who went on to write the books and create the decks that form the core of esoteric practice today. There are also less well-known members of the HOGD, such as one of the founders, William Wynn Wescott, whose work also forms the basis for a deck. The Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn follows his version to create a deck that returns to ‘classic Golden Dawn imagery’.
One of the first things you notice when you pick up The Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn is the colours and the patterns of colours that are used to illustrate the cards. The colours are striking, but not always what you might call appealing, and the same goes for colour combinations. There is also an unusual variation within suits. For example, in the suit of Wands, the Ace has a vibrant green background, but the 2, 3, and 4 have a deep red background, the 5, 6, 7 have yellow, and the 8, 9, and 10 have navy blue. The reason for this is that the Tarot of the Golden Dawn assigned a suite of colours for each card depending on which of the Qabalistic Four Worlds it belongs to, rather than designing the cards for visual appeal. Coloring the Classic Golden Dawn Tarot by Richard Dudschus and David Sledzinski offers a more detailed explanation of the Qabalistic basis for the system but if we want to keep it simple, we can say that the Four Worlds correspond to the Elements: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. These of course correspond to Tarot suits: Fire is Wands, Water is Cups, Air is Swords, and Earth is Pentacles or Disks.
Each scale is then named after the corresponding court card (this also relates to Qabalah and the Tree of Life). In the Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn, the court cards are, in descending order: Knight, Queen, King, and Princess (see HOGD’s Book T). So we have the Knight Scale being the first World (Fire), the Queen Scale being the second (Water), the King being the third (Air), and the Princess being the fourth (Earth). The Knight Scale gives us the ‘natural essence of colour’, the Queen Scale gives us ‘the colours we perceive from reflected light and are taken from nature’, the King Scale is a blend of the Knight and Queen scales, and the Princess Scale is a variety of combinations and shades of the colours that have come before.
It is not possible to know for certain that we are dealing with the ‘original’ colour scales of the HOGD because part of the training in the Order was to create one’s own deck, based on a template but using colours individually intuited. The creators of the Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn had to choose the scales they believe to be the most authentic, but you will find considerable variation in other Golden Dawn (and Golden Dawn-based) decks. For example, the Tabula Mundi Tarot uses a very different set of colour scales.
The colours are there to help your intuition access the higher meaning of the card, through meditation and contemplation, and to help with your magickal practice. I am not a ceremonial magician, so I won’t speak to that aspect of the deck, but it is clearly something the authors intended. This is probably explained in the book intended to accompany the deck, also called The Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn. And I suspect that it is here that a reader new to the Golden Dawn system might find more detailed background and explanation.
The deck itself comes with a stapled eight-page booklet which packs in quite a lot of information for its size. It gives very brief meanings of the cards, but more importantly it gives a very interesting set of suggestions for how to read the cards in a spread. For example, it tells us that if we draw three 10s it suggests ‘buying, selling, commercial transactions’. If we draw four 10s it means ‘anxiety and responsibility’. This reminds me very much of the Marseille style of reading.
There is also a page that explains whether a card is ‘strong’ or ‘weak’, according to the cards that appear on either side of it in a reading. This is determined by the Worlds, i.e. the element or suit, and whether or not they work well together. For example, a Wands card with Cups on either side would be in a debilitating position because Fire and Water do not work well together. The two adjacent cards can also be supportive, e.g. a Wands card with two Swords on either side, because Fire and Air work well together. But all is not lost if our Wands card has a Cup on one side and a Sword on the other – the Cup and Sword (Water and Air) are ‘contrary’, and cancel each other out, leaving our Wand in peace to do its job. The booklet also gives the Celtic Cross spread as ‘the most suitable for rapidly obtaining an answer to a definite question’. The Celtic Cross is considered by many to be a little too complicated for a daily reading, but I appreciated this reminder of the depth and insight it offers.
The classification of court cards is what I consider to be ‘the old-fashioned way’. Here Wands represent people with fair hair, Cups with light brown hair, etc, and each one signifies a specific age range. I personally find this system to be too prescriptive to be helpful. If I were to use this system in a reading for a woman asking about her work situation and I draw the Knight of Wands, the card has to be someone other than her because the card is male; it has to be a man under the age of forty who is very fair with blue eyes. It is much more flexible and, I would argue, realistic, to see the youthful and energetic approach of a Knight in my querent, or in a relevant colleague.
More problematic is adopting this Eurocentric system wholesale and without qualification. The descriptions remind me very much of the booklet in my first RWS, where the assumption is that everyone is white except for the sallow or ’swarthy’ Disks – I’m not sure that I would use that term today. The issue of historical accuracy will always arise when we are reviving decks from a hundred years ago, but we have to be critical about accepting everything unchallenged. If a historical text is to succeed and be useful today, it has to be open to adaptation.
The cards give us a lot of information to work with. On the Minor Arcana, we are given the astrological correspondences. Each court card gives us the element associated with it, plus the element associated with its suit. For example, the Queen of Disks is Water (all Queens) of Earth (all Disks) and the symbols for these two elements appear at the top of the card. The Majors are numbered in the usual way and show the Hebrew letter assigned to each card and its ruling planet or zodiac sign. One difference I notice from another Golden Dawn deck that I have, and also from the Thoth Tarot, is that The Fool, The Hanged Man, and Judgement are assigned planets instead of elements. And they are assigned modern planets, i.e. the authors of the deck have not stuck to the traditional Chaldean system that works with the Sun, Moon, and planets from Mercury to Saturn. Here, The Fool is assigned to Uranus, The Hanged Man to Neptune, and Judgement to Pluto. These associations work well on their own, but personally I feel that they don’t relate as well to the Hebrew letters as the elements do.
The deck is a good weight and easy to shuffle. The cards measure 10.4 x 8cm, and they come in a tuck box. The authors must be pleased with the colours – they are so vibrant that they are in some cases almost tactile. I’ve used the deck a few times and found it to be excellent to read with. For this review, I asked “What issues do you want to help us with?” It gave us The Chariot, the Seven of Cups, and the Ten of Cups – important issues, urgent issues, ‘big’ issues; matters of choice and decisions; and issues of happiness. That makes it a beautifully flexible deck, and in my own daily readings it has been clear and decisive. It’s a lovely deck to work with, and will be of particular interest to anyone studying the Order of the Golden Dawn and/or ceremonial magick.
Each scale is then named after the corresponding court card (this also relates to Qabalah and the Tree of Life). In the Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn, the court cards are, in descending order: Knight, Queen, King, and Princess (see HOGD’s Book T). So we have the Knight Scale being the first World (Fire), the Queen Scale being the second (Water), the King being the third (Air), and the Princess being the fourth (Earth). The Knight Scale gives us the ‘natural essence of colour’, the Queen Scale gives us ‘the colours we perceive from reflected light and are taken from nature’, the King Scale is a blend of the Knight and Queen scales, and the Princess Scale is a variety of combinations and shades of the colours that have come before.
When using a magical tarot deck, the reader focuses their energy and intention on the question or concern at hand. The cards are then shuffled and laid out in a specific pattern, known as a spread. As the reader interprets the cards, they tap into their intuition and the cosmic forces to gain insights and answers. The magical tarot deck acts as a mirror that reflects the reader's subconscious thoughts, desires, and fears. It provides a visual representation of the energies surrounding the question, allowing the reader to explore different perspectives and potential outcomes. Through this process, the reader gains a deeper understanding of themselves and the situations they are facing. While a magical tarot deck is a powerful tool, it is important to remember that it is not fortune-telling or set in stone. The future is not fixed, but rather a culmination of choices and actions. The cards act as a guide, offering suggestions and possibilities, but ultimately, it is up to the individual to make the decisions that shape their life. In summary, a magical tarot deck is a potent instrument for self-discovery and spiritual guidance. It provides a visual representation of the energies at play and offers insights into various aspects of life. By tapping into their intuition and the universal energy, the reader gains a deeper understanding of themselves and the situations they are facing..
Reviews for "Magical Tarot: Understanding the Symbolism of Each Card"
1. Jared - 2 stars - I was really excited about getting the Magical Tarot Deck, but I must say I was disappointed. The illustrations on the cards were blurry and poorly printed, making it difficult to interpret the meanings. Additionally, the instructions provided were very basic and lacked depth. I expected a more comprehensive guidebook to accompany such a deck. Overall, I found the quality of this deck to be subpar, and it did not live up to my expectations.
2. Melissa - 1 star - I regretted purchasing the Magical Tarot Deck immediately after opening it. The cards felt flimsy and cheaply made, and the images were not as vibrant as they appeared online. Furthermore, the interpretations in the accompanying guidebook were vague and lacked substance. As someone who has been using tarot decks for years, I found this deck to be uninspiring and unhelpful. I would not recommend it to anyone seeking an authentic and visually appealing tarot deck.
3. Ryan - 2 stars - The Magical Tarot Deck was a big letdown for me. The artwork on the cards was not to my taste; it felt outdated and lacked originality. I found the deck to be lacking in diversity, both in terms of representation and symbolism. Moreover, the cardstock used was very thin and easily bent, making the handling of the cards quite difficult. Overall, I was not impressed with this deck and will be looking for a more visually appealing and diverse option.
4. Sarah - 2 stars - I was really excited to receive the Magical Tarot Deck, but my excitement quickly turned into disappointment. The cards had a strange chemical smell that lingered even after airing them out for days. Additionally, the illustrations, though colorful, were quite cliché and lacked depth. The guidebook also fell short, as the interpretations provided were very generic and lacked the nuance I was hoping for. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this deck to anyone looking for a high-quality and unique tarot experience.