I've had a copy of this deck for review for a while, but I've been holding off, savoring the deck for a while, I love it so much!  I still can't believe how amazing this deck is, I get chills every time I look through it.  David's Tarot is an independently published tarot deck that I first discovered on the Internet when Chastain created a website displaying his images.  A couple of years later, the deck has become available in hard copy form and can be ordered directly from Chastain's website.  It is definitely well worth getting!

First of all, the deck is done to resemble a Japanese art form, I believe the term for the type of artwork that it reminds me of is "kanji" but, not being an art scholar, I'm not certain.  My brother has a bunch of kanji artwork on his walls and this puts me in mind of it so strongly.  The deck has a plain white card face with simple and elegant images painted in black.  This is definitely the kind of art where less is more, but I've rarely seen images which were so hauntingly intuitive.  The deck even comes wrapped in a thick off-white paper, adding to the Japanese look and feel of the deck.

The deck contains the standard 78 cards broken into 22 Major Arcana Cards and 56 Minors.  Some of the titles in the Majors have been changed; for example, instead of the Hanged Man, there is a Traitor.  In most cases, the changes are basically simplifications, like The Priestess (in place of the High Priestess) and Fortune (in place of the Wheel of Fortune).  Justice is 8 and Strength 11, following the Marseille style of ordering.  Each card is pure white with the images floated against it in black, and the Title of the card is rendered in calligraphy at the bottom.  There are no numbers used in the Major Arcana.

The Minor Arcana are done the same way, with the stark yet evocative images in black against the plain white background.  The standard suits of Cups, Wands, Swords and Pentacles are used here.  Court titles are King, Queen, Knight and Page.  Often the numbered cards are simply images of the number of suit icons, but even these seem to imply something more, and a lot of the time the images are actually scenes reminiscent of the Rider-Waite.  However, even those most closely resembling the Rider-Waite are so original that you can't call them clones in any way, shape or form.

The cards themselves come on a heavy white card stock which is uncoated so they make you want to handle them carefully.  I found that the images were so compelling that I would have handled them with tremendous respect regardless of whether they were coated or not.  The edges are stiff-cut and the corners are squared.  This is not a deck that you would casino-shuffle, unless you laminated it first.  There is no back design, in keeping with the stark white simplicity theme, the backs are solid clean white.  There is no little white booklet that comes with the deck, and instead of a box it comes wrapped in stiff white paper, as noted above.  When I first opened the deck, I had the same feeling of breathless anticipation as Charlie must have when he opened that Wonka bar with the golden ticket inside in the movie "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory."

Out of all the decks I've seen, this one is one of the best new ones to come along in years, in my personal opinion.  I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for beginners, but only because there isn't (yet) a book that works with it.  However, for those who have experience with the tarot, especially the Rider-Waite, this deck will really strike a chord without needing one word of explanation.  Of course collectors will also want it as well.  I would love to see some of these images rendered in larger size prints suitable for framing, I love it so much I want to hang it on my walls.  I highly recommend it for anyone.  For more information on purchasing this deck, please see David's site, 10,000 Things.

Click here for pictures

or here to return

Please use your browser's back button to return from pictures
 
also see
10,000 Things

Review Copyright 1999 by Gina M. Pace

David's Tarot by David Chastain, 1996-8
self-published