Publication Facts and Rating (0 to 5 stars) "At-a-Glance"

Publisher: Little Astrology Prince (Taiwan?)
Publication Year: ??
Number of cards: 22
Quality of artwork -- 1 star
Usefulness for meditation/pathworking -- 1/2 star
Readability (Divination) -- 1 star
Symbology -- 1 star
Value to Collectors -- 2 1/2 stars

General Commentary
Over the years, there have been many beautiful Asian tarots published. The Little Astrology Prince tarot, however, is not one of them.

The genesis of this tarot apparently begins with a Taiwanese website of the same name. There is an English-language version of the site available for access at www.astprince.com/english/index.html. (If you visit this site, be prepared for lots of pop-up ads and slow load times.) There is section of the site where visitors can get a free, automated on-line tarot reading using the Little Astrology Prince cards. Presumably, the published version of the cards was inspired by the apparent popularity of the site (the on-line counter registered over 3.7 million hits last time I checked).

I suppose it should be no surprise that a tarot which was designed specifically for use on a divination website should itself be computer generated. But surely someone could have come up with something better than this! (?) The images appear to have been rendered with one of the old 3-D modeling programs. The people and objects in the cards all have that undetailed, geometric look that was common in the very early days of computerized 3-dimensional rendering software. The symbolism is minimal and highly stereotypical. The card backgrounds are simply flat, solid colors and are wholly uninteresting. Many of the cards use very dark color schemes that make the few details that are present difficult to see.

The cards themselves are of a good quality stock -- sturdy with a nice laminated coating. There is also a book that accompanies the deck, which is also well-produced and contains a nice pull-out chart showing all of the cards together. The card titles are in given in French; the book is written in Chinese. The cards and book simply come shrinkwrapped together, however. There is no box included.

The only people who might have an interest in a tarot such as the Little Astrology Prince are eclectic collectors who are interested in owning a wide variety of different decks. As unimpressed as I am by these cards, I'm planning on keeping my copy as a "good example of a bad tarot." While there appears to be no way to direct-order this tarot from the Little Astrology Prince website, I would assume that the group that runs the site would be amenable to e-mail inquiries regarding its purchase (the site is obviously designed with purely commercial intentions; banner ads seem to be present on about every other inch of screen space). The e-mail address given for the Little Astrology Prince site is: laprince@skynetgroup.com.

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Guest review copyright 2000 by Jeannette Roth
Used with permission