Cards To Judge a Deck By

Hi from a new poster

Does anyone have particular cards by which the deck is judged entirely? When I look up a new deck online, I notice I check the images of The High Priestess, Death, The Tower/Star/Moon sequence, 3 and 6 Swords, and 8 Cups if available; this habit's evolved over time and I was wondering if anyone does a similar quick-check. Cheers

For me, I always look at Death, The Star, and the Queen of Swords.


That is my first browse anyway- then I look at the rest if those suck me in!

Majors: Death, Tower, Wheel of Fortune.

Minors: The Kings, the Queen of Wands, the Queen of Swords, the Knight of Swords.

Death, the star, high priestes, lust/strenght, sun and moon.

To find the parameters of the deck (it's not a pass-fail thing) in the majors I check the High Priestess for presence or absence of symbols, and the trio of Justice, Temperance and the Chariot (and sometimes the Wheel) to see if whoever created the deck has thought very deeply about it.

In the minors I check the 2, 8 and 10 of swords for the presence or absence of ambiguity.

In the Court, I compare all four kings or all four queens to see if and how they differ. Then I really take a good look at the K,Q,Kt & P of Pentacles, which can often tell me a lot about the attitudes inculcated in the deck.

I do have my pet peeves (such as the refusal to call death Death), but I try to suppress my own bias until I have an idea of what is going on in the deck and what its particular virtues are.

I look for Death, Star, and the World -I think these cards can represent the tone of a deck.

Oh, very cool - I'm not alone!

A deck's 'tone' - yes exactly - Queen of Wands is a good one as well.

One card I brace myself for, is the 5 of Wands: I had the hardest time reconciling what that card meant from research, to the many different deck interpretations. But the DruidCraft's 5W made me have a 'a-ha' or 'Finally!' moment.

Oh, very cool - I'm not alone!

A deck's 'tone' - yes exactly - Queen of Wands is a good one as well.

One card I brace myself for, is the 5 of Wands: I had the hardest time reconciling what that card meant from research, to the many different deck interpretations. But the DruidCraft's 5W made me have a 'a-ha' or 'Finally!' moment.

greycats said:

To find the parameters of the deck (it's not a pass-fail thing) in the majors I check the High Priestess for presence or absence of symbols, and the trio of Justice, Temperance and the Chariot (and sometimes the Wheel) to see if whoever created the deck has thought very deeply about it.

In the minors I check the 2, 8 and 10 of swords for the presence or absence of ambiguity.

In the Court, I compare all four kings or all four queens to see if and how they differ. Then I really take a good look at the K,Q,Kt & P of Pentacles, which can often tell me a lot about the attitudes inculcated in the deck.

I do have my pet peeves (such as the refusal to call death Death), but I try to suppress my own bias until I have an idea of what is going on in the deck and what its particular virtues are.

Click to expand...

That's interesting re the Pentacles Court - when you say attitudes, do you mean intuitive or astrological/elemental, etc.?

I judge the deck by..

I now just find the deck online and look through the cards. If there is a card that I find offensive like the 3 of swords in the Ludy Lescot Tarot. {Three swords stuck in 3 babies}. That is SICK! I immediately stop looking at the deck and move on. I will not buy a deck that has even one gross/weird/odd/etc card that I don't like/click with/etc.

I do look at some of the cards here in the cards section and if I like those.. I try to find images of the entire deck online. I don't like getting 'surprises' with the decks as they are always ones that I don't like. I liked the Morgan-Greer except for the Devil card. Not sure why, but it creeps me out. I gave the deck away solely because I disliked that card in it so much.

Different strokes for different folks I guess.


I do like looking at the High Priestess, Wheel of Fortune, The Fool, Court cards, and the World cards. If I don't like those, I know I probably won't like the rest of the deck.


Brightest Blessings,
BeyondtheVeil