Wild Eden Tarot
It's time to get ourselves back to the garden!
“Boobies!” my partner cried, his eyes lighting up as I unwrapped the latest Card of the Day deck, the Wild Eden Tarot from Lo Scarabeo. Yes, this deck is full of titties, although I noticed that there is no male frontal nudity, for the purposes of equity and equality. An interpretation of life in the Garden of Eden before the fall, the deck is filled with human and animal interaction before the advent of civilization (and clothing!)
Conversely, consider this your trigger warning if you have a problem with the unclothed human form, and yet are frequenting a witchcraft blog. I see you, so please sit this one out.
The deck itself is quite sturdy, with cards slightly larger than my hands. It took a month of daily use before they were broken in enough to shuffle rather than rifle. The accompanying book gives brief descriptions of the traditional Smith-Waite definitions of the cards, even if the symbolism on the card itself doesn’t necessarily match up.
Each suit is represented with an animal: leopards for Wands, sea creatures for Cups, birds for Swords and bugs for Pentacles. The Pentacles themselves I’ve decided are bits of pollen, since the authors were silent on that topic. It makes sense to me since the people on the Pentacles cards are tiny, like the bugs.
The art from Gloria Pizzilli is wonderful, and somewhat reminiscent of that old movie Heavy Metal. The Wands practically move before your eyes, with all of the leopards about to leap. I especially like the Knight of Wands, riding his leopard and charging into the fray.
Then again, some of the card meanings and art don’t seem quite right. For example, the Two of Cups and Four of Wands seem like they should be reversed: the people gazing at each other seem like they should be on the 2 (finding the “missing thing” in their lives) while the obvious union/consummation seems like it belongs on the 4. Maybe I’m just being picky; I have been accused of such things in the past.
In the end, I must give the deck a mixed review. The cards were difficult to use, mechanically. They’re not coated in any kind of finish, so riffling is out unless you don’t care about messing up the card faces. Yet, they’re also too sturdy to truly shuffle until they’re broken in. When I review these decks, I use them daily for a moon cycle and it took a full month of screwing around with these things until they were sufficiently flexible to shuffle. That’s a problem for reading for divination purposes.
If you’re using the deck as a meditation tool, then I can unreservedly recommend this one. The images are interesting and detailed; some cards, like the Queen of Swords, I have drawn multiple times over the course of the month, and I find a new detail in it each time. For instance, I always think at first that she’s gripping the lightning with both hands, but in reality her left hand is free and open.
The Wild Eden Tarot is a beautiful deck, but a bit unwieldy to use at first. If you’re looking for a deck that incorporates human and animal forms, and shows them cooperating more often than not, then it’s time to get yourself back to the garden (of Eden, that is)!1
With apologies to Joni Mitchell ❤️❤️❤️