This new, popular tarot deck from US Games has proven to be in very high demand ever since its release.  I have seen several on sale at www.ebay.com and they are consistently going for double the retail price.  Normally I don't address this right in the review, but I feel this is happening often enough to warrant a warning.  This is not a rare or hard to find deck!

When I first heard Londa was doing another tarot deck, I was curious, since her popular Londa Tarot is a great selling and totally unique deck.  I knew that a second deck by her would also be an unusual treat for the eyes.  However, the reality of this deck is something you have to see to appreciate.  It seems to be a clip art/computer art sort of deck this time, instead of paintings, against black backgrounds, which make the designs really stand out.

This is a true tarot, 78 cards with 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minors.  In the Major Arcana, all 22 cards enjoy traditional titling and order.  Justice is 8 and Strength 11.  Each card title (at the bottom, floating over the black border as opposed to being in a text box) is accompanied by the number for the card in Arabic numerals, as well as not one, but two keywords for the meaning of the card.  There are white borders around the edges of the card, but then the whole rest of it is taken up with the black background and all the clip art/computer art images are floated against it, giving a surreal 3D kind of feeling.

In the Minor Arcana, tradition also abounds, with a new flair.  Suit titles are Wands, Cups, Swords and Coins, and the Court titles are King, Queen, Knight and Page.  Once again we have the pair of keyword meanings under each card title, and the black backgrounds and floating images continue as well.  A really interesting note in the Coins suit is that here, as in the Londa Tarot, the 8 of Coins card features an art image of a stack of hardbound books, and you can see their titles on the bindings, and the titles include other tarot titles: Londa Tarot, Medicine Cards, Crow's Magick, two books by Stuart Kaplan (plug, plug) and a volume of Edgar Allan Poe.  Londa does this in the 8 of Pentacles in her other deck, showing several of the card designs from the deck on the wall of the figure in the card, and two of Kaplan's Encyclopedias of Tarot on the desk.

The deck itself is standard in size and handles and shuffles easily.  The cards feel somewhat slippery when new due to a slick protective coating.  The little white booklet which accompanies the decks is mostly filled with brief divinatory meanings for each card, with reversed meanings clearly indicated.  While short, they demonstrate Londa's excellent grasp of the nuances of the cards' significance.  The only spread included in the booklet is the Celtic Cross Spread.

I can recommend this deck easily for anyone who is a fan of shamanistic animal work, even though this deck appears more "gothic" in tone, it does indeed invoke the animal forms of the various powers involved in each card.  Gothic fans will love it.  In fact, anyone who likes to collect "different" decks will appreciate this.

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also by Londa Marks:
Londa Tarot

Review Copyright 1999 by Gina M. Pace

Crow's Magick Tarot by Londa Marks, 1998
published by US Games, ISBN 1-57281-068-8