Fairy Lights Tarot Error???

Hi all.

So I just recently purchased the Fairy Lights Tarot and noticed something that I'm curious to get feedback on.

When I work with the tarot I rely heavily on elements such as Wands being fire, cups being water, etc...

I could be wrong but did they accidentally switch the court cards for cups and wands? I mean, seriously, look at the use of colour and feeling the cards convey.

ALL court cards from cups have red in them. They embody fire archetypes. The wand court cards have a warrior riding a water creature, or a woman above a watery stream, or how about a guy literally walking on water!!!

Am I going crazy? Has anyone else noticed this?

Will include this info when doing a review. Overall a very interesting deck but this really throws me off.

I have sent the creator of the deck an email to clarify.

Still love to hear what other owners of this deck think of my observation.

Thanks

Hi Henry, nice to meet you.
I can see exactly what you mean about these cards, on the other hand reading the LWB you could also ascribe the images to the written meanings - the owl in the queen of wands with wisdom for example, or the king of cups having control over his inner beast.

It will be interesting to hear what the creator and/or publishers might have to say, and I can see that they are deviating from what you might expect in terms of colour and image. Maybe that will just encourage us to see more in the courts than we have previously though?

The artist also created the Tarot of the Secret Forest - I'm not sure if you've seen it?
http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/secret-forest/
So I never was expecting completely traditional or easy to read images from her, but I do enjoy her style.

Do please let us know if you hear anything.

My friend thinks she may have been inspired by the Crowley deck and not rider waite.

I will post any responses I get here. Yes heard of the other deck she did but heard that for some bizzare reason each card does not have a standard back stock image design but rather has images of each card in black and white.

At any rate, you do bring up an interesting point about the King of Cups card, never looked at it that way before. The Queen of Wands on the other hand I did see the whole owl wisdom thing
It's actually one of my favourite cards in the deck.

To be continued. Lol!

Got a response of sorts from Lucia, the deck creator.

She seems very friendly and says she will reply when she has a moment, possibly on Friday.

Certainly the King of Cups is holding a staff/Wand but is that water lapping at the bottom of the card?

I'd never noticed these details - the redness in the Cups courts, I mean - but I love the King of Wands in this deck - I think he conveys well the charisma and theatricality I associate with the King of Wands.

The Queen of Cups is walking on water...

I was noticing the king of wands, I thought the white stuff was maybe mist? Rather than water, looks like a stream though. The queen of wands looks very swordsy with the birds and winged crown. I don't think this deck approaches the cards from a typical rws system with regards to image depictions, I think the artist was in a deep meditative state and painted from the heart. So maybe it appears the images don't reflect their suit/element but I think I will just try and strike recognition that works for me.

Another weird thing is on the cards there are coins for the suit obviously but in the lwb the suit is named pentacles, what is that all about? A publishing error I assume.

MagsStardustBlack said:

Another weird thing is on the cards there are coins for the suit obviously but in the lwb the suit is named pentacles, what is that all about? A publishing error I assume.

Click to expand...

I think it might be a translation issue. The artist is Italian, so I looked up the Italian word the LWB uses for that suit and it means "money," apparently. And so does the word in French, while the Spanish means "gold" and the German means "coins." So either LoS uses the traditional tarot "pentacles" for English or maybe it was the translator's choice? *shrug*

……I wonder if Henry_ ever heard back from the artist?

Personally, I quite like the red/magenta in the Cup court cards. I think red can symbolise emotion, while purple can represent psychic or spiritual matters… And the suit of Cups can represent those things, so it works for me.