by Patricia Beattie, illustrated by Mike Giddens

This set is heavy!  As in, the box is heavy, the book is heavy, the set is heavy!  The presentation is beautiful.  A large, solidly put together box with full color glossy boards all the way around, with a lift-off lid that opens to reveal a hardcover book inside a plastic tray.  When you lift the book out, you see the deck underneath it in a deeper section of the tray.

The Major Arcana has been completely renamed and forsakes any kind of numbering system, making their order less than significant and making one focus more on the meaning of the card itself, rather than its place in a sequence of cards.  Even though the titles are different, and the cards interpreted using a Native American symbolism, I had absolutely *no* difficulty in ascertaining which card correlated to which Major Arcana card in the Rider-Waite deck.  For all that it is a "new interpretation" of the tarot, it seems very Rider-Waite based.  I think this is a positive aspect since it doesn't venture too far from familiar territory.  Ironically, while I generally prefer Native American oracles to Native American tarots, I liked this one a lot for this very purpose.  I was able to focus more on what the card meant in its tradition, because I was freed from having to work too hard to come up with a completely new meaning.  I know my Rider-Waite deck very well and feeling its connection underlying this deck's cards released me in some way and allowed me to work on it without worry.

There are 23 Major Arcana cards in this deck, as opposed to the usual 22.  In the Quester deck they are called Quester Life Path Cards.  This is sensible considering the major life archetypes they describe.  The titles of these cards are:

Brave
Chief
Cornmother
Heyokah
Keeper
Shaman
Shaman's Drum
Trail Maker
Inner Power
Awakening
Sacred Hoop
Sun Ritual
Twisted Hair
Image Shatterer
Shadow Dancer
Passage of Time
New Life
Starwoman
Grandfather Sun
The Calling
Council
Village
Warrior

The Minor Arcana has several small changes made to it; for example, the suits in this deck are now Bears, Buffaloes, Wolves and Eagles.  It's not as easy to see how they correspond if you go directly from Eagles to, say, Sword; but if you make the connections elementally this makes more sense.  Eagles correspond to Air, Wolves correspond to Fire, Bears correspond to Water and Buffaloes to Earth.  These are called Totem Suits in this deck, and this is why animals are used, they are the four main totem animals in the Journey of the Brave.  Aces in this deck are replaced by Dancers, for example, the Eagle Dancer.  Court cards used here are Maiden, Warrior, Matriarch and Patriarch instead of Page, Knight, Queen and King.  All of the cards feature full scenes, although this doesn't mean the scenes are completely evocative of the card's meaning all the time.

The cards themselves are quite thick and also larger than standard size, making for a very *chunky* feeling deck.  The cardstock used is good, though heavy, and doesn't flex easily.  It's coated with a substantial semi-gloss protective coating that will withstand years of use.  This deck is definitely designed to be used often and for a long time. Rounded edges and corners are fairly comfortable.  This deck would have to be shuffled hand over hand as opposed to a casino-style riffle shuffle.  Handling it would be fine taking that into consideration.  The back design is a simple plain black with a gold colored outline drawing of the feather wand that is also on the book cover.  There is no little white booklet since the book coming with this set is substantial.

The book itself is quite thick and, aside from giving ample descriptions of both the cards' illustrations and their meanings, goes on to discuss enough information about the author's background in Native American studies and how she came to be working with this system for the tarot.  It gives a lengthy story of the Journey of the Brave (similar to the Fool's Journey in the traditional tarot) as well as numerous spreads, a decent section on Qabala/Qabbalah/Kabala (insert your favorite spelling here), a hefty amount of information on using this tarot deck for pathworking, and a great table of correspondences.

I recommend this deck for anyone who is looking to work with a Native American style system.  I can't say how authentic it is, since I myself am not Native American.  However, out of all the decks in this genre I find that I like this one the best, for its overall accessibility and also the quality of the set itself really stands out.  If one were going to give a tarot set as a gift this would be an excellent choice.  A beginner would probably do fine with this deck since it explains itself so thorougly.

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Review Copyright 2002 by Gina M. Pace

Quester: Journey of the Brave by Patricia Beattie and Mike Giddens, 1999
published by Element Books, Inc.
ISBN 1-86204-550-X