Fantastical Pentacle Mystery

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 24 Aug 2001, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Elphaba	24 Aug 2001
Got a parcel from B & N today...mmmmm new stuff. I opened up my Fantastical deck, which I love already. I have one question though. One of the suits in this deck is Pentacles. Now, I've always assumed pentacles to be the lovely star shapes but in this deck the Pentacles are depicted as large gold circles. If she was going to draw them as discs or coins...why call the suit Pentacles? Is this some Tarot symbolism that I'm missing? ...now that I think about it, they kinda look like flying gold records...I need sleep :)

Rhiannon	24 Aug 2001
elphaba, I also have the fantastical deck. You know, it never occurred to me to question why she did that. hmmm. One thing i DID notice was that some of the meanings of the cards differ from the traditional Rider-Waite ones. Especially in the Wands suit. Let me know what you think of the cards and if you have any helpful hints for dealing with this deck. I've found it to be very truthful and not a "beat around the bush" type deck. Rhiannon :)

faunabay	27 Aug 2001
I don't think it has any big meaning. And I'm like Rhiannon, I hadn't really noticed it before. Elphaba, have you had a chance to use them now? What do you think of the different meanings in the LWB? I use the fantastical as my personal deck. When I first got it I tried to do readings for others and didn't get anything. But it is spot on when I read for myself. I really love this deck. It's so strange -- beautiful but strange.

marichan	10 Oct 2001
(A little late, but still an interesting topic...) Wow... I didn't even notice that the Pentacles Suit didn't have Pentacles until I saw this post (in my defense, I just got these cards today). Now having given the cards a closer look, I'm left scratching my head since as someone else mentioned, they look like gold records. This is just a guess on my part, but could the use of the word "Pentacle" as opposed to "Coin" been a miscommunication between the artist and the publisher? I'm not sure if all artists design the borders of the cards, and in this set, the lettering is actually outside of the artwork, so perhaps US Game Systems was responsible for that portion, and someone no quite in the "tarot know" labeled them "Pentacles" not realizing there was another option. A long shot as well as a run on sentence, but the best theory I could come up with. BTW, to others who have this deck - were the cards out of "order" when you opened the deck? This is the first deck I've purchased in the shrinkwrap that wasn't grouped by major/minor arcana and suit, and I'm a little curious as to why.

The Fantastical Pentacle Mystery thread was originally posted on 24 Aug 2001 in the Tarot Decks board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Tarot Decks, or read more archived threads.