This deck makes a lot of changes to the traditional tarot setup, but I like the ones that are made, at least to the Major Arcana. The artwork is gorgeous and intuitive, highly evocative of dream-like states. This comes as a deck-and-book set only, but is nicely packaged and is worth buying, especially for dream psychology buffs.
The Major Arcana cards have no markings or titles whatsoever, there is just the illustration and a border. The pictures are archetypal in nature and convey a deep sense of meaning. Unfortunately it is necessary to go back and forth with the book a lot in order to identify them in early use since there are no numbers either. While I find the lack of markings is probably intended, I think it hinders the initial learning process.
The Majors are divided up into three "realms" of pearl, stone and whirlpool. These represent different levels of consciousness and apparently relate to Jungian concepts of personal unconscious, collective unconscious, and the conscious. All of the cards' names are different from traditional tarot titles.
The Minor Arcana have been divided into suits of a sort, which seem to be renamed as Messengers, which represent the Element of Air; Spirits, which represent the Element of Fire; Souls, which represent the Element of Water; and Ancestors, which represent the Element of Earth. King, Queen, Warrior and Child are the courts in each suit except Messengers, which substitutes Herald for Warrior.
The rest of the Minor Arcana cards are basically pips, although they don't even show the number of items in each suit, but just the same picture ten times over with a different corresponding number, or the word Ace. These were a disappointment to me, considering how much work obviously went into the rest of the deck's design.
The book which comes with the set is a nice smaller-sized paperback book and the package as a whole is quite nice. It's a very nice set for anyone who is into dreamworking. If you have no interest in dreamwork, you may find it after looking through this deck.
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Review Copyright 1998
by Gina M. Pace
Dreampower Tarot by R.
J. Stewart and Stuart Littlejohn
published by Aquarian
Press
ISBN 1855383004