A Spiritually Enlightening Online Magazine. January Theme: "Within" Volume 1 Issue 2 ISSN# 1708-3265
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Nigel Jackson Tarot By Nigel Jackson ISBN#: 1-56718-365-4 This lovely deck is not only beautifully executed but very readable as well. The delicate and highly detailed ink drawings were painted with watercolours, which are soft, and yet radiant at the same time. Blues, greens and yellows predominate, with splashes of vibrant red. This 78-card tarot deck is illustrated with medieval and renaissance symbolism. It would be a good deck for both beginner and/or experienced reader. While the illustrations are a melding of classic and Rider-Waite-type imagery, they are similar enough to Rider-Waite to make them easy to learn. In fact, I found many of the images more evocative of their meanings than Rider-Waite. Along with being an accomplished artist, Nigel Jackson is also a tarot scholar. The experienced reader will find many details and layers of both Christian and Pagan symbols to explore. I have found the more I use this deck the more I discover. Each card has a white border, with its name written across the bottom. The Major Arcana cards are labelled with the older 'classic' names, such as the Pope rather than the Hierophant, the Magician becomes the Juggler, and Strength is called Fortitude. The numbering also follows the classic pattern, with Strength being XI and Justice as VII. Each Minor Arcana card is illustrated, and also incorporates the classical 'pip' arrangements. The court cards are the King, Queen, Knight and Page. Jackson has replaced Swords with fire rather than the standard Swords as air, and Staves (Wands) as air rather than fire, but I did not find it a problem to use the traditional correspondences. One thing I did find difficult at first was the Staves (Batons or Wands) in this deck are depicted as Arrows; I found myself often confusing them with Swords, but over very little time, this was no longer a problem. So often the back design of a deck seems to be an afterthought, but this completely reversible back is one of the loveliest I've seen. Slightly larger than average, at approximately 5" x 3-1/2", the deck is not so large as to make shuffling difficult. The Nigel Jackson Tarot comes conveniently packaged as a mini-book set. The deck fits into its own box and both the box and the mini-book slide neatly into a slipcase. The mini-book, at 160 pages, contains a surprising amount of information; history of Tarot, Nigel Jackson's new theory about the connection between Pythagorean numerology and Tarot symbolism, descriptions of the Majors, brief divinatory meanings of all the cards, 6 Tarot spreads and meditation techniques. The Nigel Jackson is a multifaceted deck, which should hold any reader's interest. Reviewed by:
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