Royal Thai and Medieval Cat Tarots

Medieval Cat Tarot: First Impressions

I just got this from Amazon yesterday (even though it claims that it still hasn't been released). It's very cute! At first I was a little worried that the excessive use of brown hues may make it seem bland, but it just comes across as more antiqued than anything. And there's generally enough blue and red splashed into the cards to keep them from being monotonous. About the only thing that I can say that I'm having a little bit of a hard time warming up to is the fact that the figures on the cards all look like the same little cream-colored cat. Tall or short, in breeches or a dress, or x2 or 3. And even that doesn't take too much away from the deck's appeal (it's just one of those things that I'm critical about in all decks) and I suppose that the coloring of the cats goes with the background. Otherwise, they are lovely, sort of a marriage of RWS and Marseilles with a cutesy (but not sugary) theme, yes, it sounds odd, but it works. They're also a nice size, a bit slippery during shuffling though, and they read well. Now if only Royal Thai would hurry up and get here!

Images and ordering information for the Medieval Cat Tarot are now also on display on Aeclectic Tarot.

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/medieval-cat/

~ Solandia

Sounds great--anyone have the Royal Thai?

I am curious about Dave's notes on astroamerica about this being a 'reading' kind of deck. But the pips may not be scenic...might be a pretty art theme deck. I do not know if it's collective pantheon is more related to Hindu, Buddhist or perhaps an East Indian personalities and legends?

http://www.astroamerica.com/t-thai.html

Regards,

Cerulean

Hi Cerulean,

Images of the Royal Thai Tarot are now up on Aeclectic Tarot as well.

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/royal-thai/

~ Solandia

Thank you! I think I do like this one...

I have a Buddhist Tarot (Robert Place) that I like...I think I would like Royal Thai as a delicate and different style Asian deck with decorative, but not scenic pips--that's fine by me. Many of my Japanese-style decks have no English instructions and plainer pips than the pretty ones depicted in the scans.

I have some great Asian Art style decks, but this one really seems unusual and the Thai art has a lovely feeling to me...sometimes I see Okinawan art images that sometimes remind me of Thai art styles. From the very preliminary reviews it seems there are instructions to be able to use this deck for readings if one doesn't mind the lack of scenes in pips.

The lady and the tiger image tipped it for me...

Cerulean

P.S. Two beautiful decorative decks just for striking tiger art...

(1)Alika Lindbergh's artistic tarot being reissued as L'Eden Tarot from Urania Verlag, with a tropical forest flavor, based on her zoological and fantasy art).

(2) Marie White's very artistic but not complete deck has a tiger in water image...

Well, pretty art, nice intro for reading...low on art study notes

The funny order of border-cutters will be snippity with glee...big cards with a half-inch of border on each side.

Those who know about the folklore and perhaps some generic East Hindu symbology--I was able to place Ganesh as the Magician, for instance as the one who removes obstacles -

http://www.crystalinks.com/ganesh.html

But I had a delightful Hindu roommate for a few years who liked to show me some of the art that she enjoyed and there's some similar correspondences in East Asian art and Buddhist mythology with some of the symbolism...

Not one drop of hint in the LWB for Thai folklore correspondences! The art is beautifully done for the 'land of smiles' and if you like the theatre arts, this is a lovely choice of a deck.

The suggestion of the six of cups is to 'go to your attic or the attic of your mind for hidden treasure.' Well, for me, Asian puppet theatre comes to mind. Okay, another excuse to pop back into fanciful diversion and have a tarot impish overlay--like an elvish whisper, 'you can see tarot in all things if you can try.'

You can see my personal filters are warped.

Cerulean who likes her twelve-dollar treasure..

Subtle cats

I just got the Medieval Cats tarot. I was wondering if I needed another deck with cats...dressed cats...but I am glad I got it.
I like the artwork, it looks a very calm deck but there are these subtle (and often humorous) expressions on the faces of the cats.
I also love what they did with the minors, a small scene in the middle and around it the objects according to suit and number.
A good example is the 7 of swords you can see here at AT: the empty bird cage and the (pseudo-)innocent looking cat next to it.
Also the lwb looks quite interesting - with two new spreads, and not that eternal Celtic Cross !

I recently got the Medieval Cats tarot, and have fallen in love with it. The cats do look similar as Melpomone18 mentioned earlier, but somehow Teng has managed to get a great deal of feeling into them. He did a great job of showing joy, sadness, etc. without making the cats look cartoony.

The Medieval cats deck looks charming. I love that there is an opossum family on the Ace of Coins, they are such mysterious and interesting animals.

I am wondering if I could read with this though. I wonder if having only the very essence of the RWS scene rather than a full scene I would end up only thinking of key words and not reading at all intuitively. The foliage and background designs don't seem as varied as in decks with non-scenic pips.


-Myrrha

Medieval Cat

I finally got the deck after years of waiting! I was not expecting the card size to be this small though, I had the impression it was the same size as Medieval Scapini (it would have been great if it is). The cats are not realistically drawn and do remind me of old woodblock or illustrated manuscript pictures of animals / pets. I'm glad it's not excessively cute or cartoon-like. I suppose this keeps it more or less authentic looking (for me anyway).
I have to agree that having only the essence of RWS may not be as useful for beginners, but then I have to remind myself that this deck ultimiately is a Visconti / Marseille type of deck (not an RWS clone) where the main visual component in the pip cards are the suits. Making it more complex or extra fancy would more likely detract from it's period style appeal. I am glad still though that the tiny cameos have enough details in them to allow me to decifer the main gist of the cards.
The booklet is informative, although I noticed that it mentions very little about the cats. But then the whole deck is littered with cats anyway, so I guess the authors just directly dwelt on the meaning of the cards rather than pre-occupying themselves with the felines in the scenes (which is obvious enough).