This deck-and-book set from Llewellyn Publications is an interesting and different take on the traditional tarot.  While the art is strangely compelling and fascinating, I find it inconsistent.  Sometimes it almost appears as if two different artists worked on it.  Simple tribal designs grace some cards, while others are fully illustrated scenes.  It really is not a true tarot set, and explains in the book that the name "tarot" was chosen for this set because the word "tarot" is associated with divination cards that have pictures on them.  I will make the comparison to tarot, but also treat this as its own system.

This is one of the first truly bilingual divination sets I have seen, with not only the cards titled in multiple languages, but also the book.  Even the box is labeled on one side in English, and the other in Spanish.  The concept behind this 77-card set is that this is the first tarot to employ the energies of Brazilian Candomble, a Yoruba religion related to Santeria which is more and more widely practiced today, as more people discover their religious roots.

The Major Arcana consists of 25 cards in this deck, the first 13 of which represent the varied Orishas, or archetypes, of sacred energies, including Yemaya, Oshun, Eleggua and Chango.  After that, there are 12 cards for various other energies and archetypes, like the Guardian Angel, the Enslaved Prisoner, the Man, the Village, and the Devil.  Each card's image is bordered completely in white, and the titles appear at the top and at the left and right sides, leaving the bottom blank.  There is nothing I can find to explain what each title is (they seem to be variations in different languages) and so I will guess that one side contains the title in Yoruba, one in Santeria, and one in Candomble.  If anyone knows the answer, please let me know.  These cards are unnumbered, because the Orishas exist outside of numerological systems and cannot be limited by such.  There is not a direct correlation between these cards and the Major Arcana titles of traditional tarot.

The 52 other cards in this system, which loosely correlate to the Minor Arcana in traditional tarots, are numbered, but have scenes on them as well.  There are four suits, but they are called by the Elements instead of by any items like Pentacles, etc.  Each suit of Earth, Air, Water and Fire has the titles in the borders, English on the left, and, I believe, two versions of Spanish, perhaps the Caribbean and Brazilian.  I find the explanations for this to be nonexistent as well as those of the Major cards.  In each suit, there is an Ace, then numbered cards 2 through 10, then there is a card with a symbol representing the Element itself, then there is a card representing a Message from that Element, and finally, a card for the spiritual creature for each element, Salamanders for Fire, Undines and Mermaids for Water, Fairies and Sylphs for Air, and Dwarves and Gnomes for Earth.  The exact same character is in the Message from Earth and the Dwarves and Gnomes card, a redundancy I found irritating.

The cards themselves which come with the set are slightly larger than standard, mostly the increase is in length.  The cards handle fairly well and shuffle nicely, with smoothly finished edges and a silky coating.  The set comes boxed in the typical Llewellyn box with flaps and the cards are housed in a slideout tray, with no individual boxing.  Additionally, the set includes a folded ritual layout sheet printed on some kind of tough paper in full color.  And then there is the book.

The book is three hundred and fifty pages thick in a large trade-size paperback.  It wouldn't have to be so thick if it was strictly in English, but it is bilingual.  However, I find this annoying, in the way it is set up, each page has two narrow columns of text side-by-side, the English on the left and the Spanish on the right.  It makes reading more difficult, as we are trained to read the left column and then go up to the top of the right column to continue, and this isn't what you should do in this book.  I feel it would have been more appropriate to make the book start in English from one side into the center, and make it Spanish if you turn it over, a flipbook style.  Even better, Llewellyn could have marketed an English set of this deck and a Spanish set, and included a book in each printed in the appropriate language.  I don't think that would have been a lot more work.

Other than the book, I don't have too many complaints.  It's a nice divination set, although since it is religiously oriented and it isn't a religion I practice, I know there are a lot of nuances and material that I simply don't get.  I would recommend this deck for collectors, because the art is good, but really, as a workable system, I don't recommend it to anyone unless they have some previous knowledge or at least understanding of the related religious systems of Candomble, Santeria, or Yoruba.  It simply loses me.  I don't feel previous tarot knowledge is required, however, so in that sense, it would be fine for beginners.  As I have said, this isn't a true tarot, so perhaps the lack of preconceived ideas is helpful.

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Review Copyright 1999 by Gina M. Pace

Tarot of the Orishas by Zolrak and Durkon, 1994
published by Llewellyn  ISBN 1-56718-842-7