Lee
Hey, everybody, there's a new tarot deck out there -- the Sharman-Caselli deck. It's conceived by Juliet Sharman-Burke, co-author of the Mythic Tarot, and illustrated by Giovanni Caselli.
It's a little confusing, because the deck comes packaged with a book, "Beginner's Guide to Tarot" by Sharman-Burke, and the whole package is called "Beginner's Guide to Tarot," so if you look at it, for example, at Amazon.com, you wouldn't know that there's a deck that comes with it.
The deck is similar a bit in style to the Lo Scarabeo Universal Tarot by Roberto De Angelis. It's very Waite-derived, although there are other influences to the cards. For example, the standard Marseille image is used for the Lovers, while the Visconti image is used for the Wheel of Fortune. I think it's superior, though, to the De Angelis deck, because more thought was put into the symbols on the pictures. For example, the Minor cards all contain lots of animals appropriate to their suit: birds and butterflies for Swords, rabbits, mice and dogs for Pentacles, etc.
The quality of the illustrations is really excellent. The cards have an open, airy look, with lots of sky and far perspectives. The Minors are very much based on the Rider-Waite Minors, but there's lots of new little touches in them.
The book is a pretty good beginner's book. It studies each suit in turn, then recommends reading spreads with just that one suit, then moving on to the next suit, and after all the suits are done, doing layouts with all the Minors. Then she moves on the Majors, then has a sample layout with just the Majors, and finally puts the whole deck together with a sample reading with Majors and Minors.
This is a really, really good deck. I could see this deck becoming a favorite of mine. The whole package is $19.99, pretty good for a deck and book. I recommend it!
-- Lee
It's a little confusing, because the deck comes packaged with a book, "Beginner's Guide to Tarot" by Sharman-Burke, and the whole package is called "Beginner's Guide to Tarot," so if you look at it, for example, at Amazon.com, you wouldn't know that there's a deck that comes with it.
The deck is similar a bit in style to the Lo Scarabeo Universal Tarot by Roberto De Angelis. It's very Waite-derived, although there are other influences to the cards. For example, the standard Marseille image is used for the Lovers, while the Visconti image is used for the Wheel of Fortune. I think it's superior, though, to the De Angelis deck, because more thought was put into the symbols on the pictures. For example, the Minor cards all contain lots of animals appropriate to their suit: birds and butterflies for Swords, rabbits, mice and dogs for Pentacles, etc.
The quality of the illustrations is really excellent. The cards have an open, airy look, with lots of sky and far perspectives. The Minors are very much based on the Rider-Waite Minors, but there's lots of new little touches in them.
The book is a pretty good beginner's book. It studies each suit in turn, then recommends reading spreads with just that one suit, then moving on to the next suit, and after all the suits are done, doing layouts with all the Minors. Then she moves on the Majors, then has a sample layout with just the Majors, and finally puts the whole deck together with a sample reading with Majors and Minors.
This is a really, really good deck. I could see this deck becoming a favorite of mine. The whole package is $19.99, pretty good for a deck and book. I recommend it!
-- Lee
