Surprise! Yes, it's that deck again. I just got it and while I'm waiting for the usual Lo Scarabeo yucky plastic chemical smell to offgas, I went through the cards.
The appropriateness of the imagery (or lack thereof) has been exhausted in these past pages and threads. Rather than comment on it five years on, I'm going to discuss something I absolutely love about the deck: its divisions of the shamanic journey.
Lo Scarabeo decks aren't always known for their cleverness of organization. Often, the individual cards of the Minor Arcana are standalone, misjointed affairs with little connection between each other. But the Shaman deck relates each suit to one stage of the journey, that would be impossible for the themes of other decks. In a way, this creates an order to the suits just like the Thoth deck and Golden Dawn decks, that go through a strict progression of Wands - Cups - Swords - Pents.
Drums - Bows - Bones - Stones places Earth/Pents as the first suit, which almost never happens. Yet it grounds the story in the here and now, beginning right where we are on Earth, drumming to initiate the journey.
Bows is an excellent choice of suit for Swords, both as an earlier weapon and being able to shoot far, the journey travelled from here into the spirit world.
Bones are the active violence of the journey that rend the shaman's body to prepare her for wisdom, leaving her the purest form of herself: her own skeleton.
And Stones, the only environmental suit object, submerges us in water, the final suit, to receive the earth's wisdom, to heal, or to be healed.
No other deck purporting to embody shamanism in its themes or imagery does this. The cards themselves demonstrate the purpose of the shaman, his goal. Rather than find a shamanic equivalent to attach to each classic RWS meaning, the Shaman Tarot forces the reverse. The RWS themes adapt to the context of a journey, and show how they're applied to each step of the process.
I think this deck is extremely useful for exploring the journey using visual storytelling. Playing with Tarot cards or performing readings can't produce a full-fledged shamanic experience, but it might help gather some insight or provide advice.