Gaian Tarot...the good, the bad, the anything else

Winterchild

Trees

Oh Griz you make me wanna be there... I always wanted to live in a forest.. or at leasta wood!

Carla that tree is fabulous! It looks like it has a mirror in the side...I can see what looks like misty refelcted grass and tree's. maybe it's a scrying tree :)
 

baylys

When I saw the Gaian tarot come out, I saved and saved and paid it off month by month. I was so excited when I made my final payment on my very own LE.

Then it arrived.........

So, who wants a never used Gaian deck?!?!

I really disliked it, almost hated it, but I think part of that is to do with the e-zine updates I get as well.

I find the pictures are much too unfamiliar to what I am used to. At least with fantasy decks, you use your imagination. In NZ the only otters are in the zoo. I had never seen a squirrel till I was in the UK for a week. We don't have most of those animals and it felt like it was just too in-your-face Northern Hemisphere.

Then there is the e-zine. She advertises these online courses, seasonal practices for the soul, the first one was midwinter (or something). I emailed her and suggested that if she wished to broaden her market and also connect with more people, she might consider making another version. In hte other version, she would only have to change a few words, like the month, and it would be available for the southern hemisphere market. And that we would get ours at opposite times of the year. No reply. I then emailed again and asked if I could get a spring one (that she had already done) when everyone else was getting autumn, just to keep things seasonal for me. No reply.

To me, she just feels too commercial. I know she comes across as very earthy etc, but you have to pay a reasonable amount to be on her forum (and they only discuss one tarot, at least on here there are hundreds), she charges heaps for the courses and each year she does a retreat at an atronomical amount. It has put me right off. I think the money side of her deck has made me almost hate the deck. I paid a small fortune for my LE only to find she charges a small fortune for eveything she does. That was by far my most expensive deck, yet it came in a hideous purply colour tie-dyed bag, not a box in sight.

The most I ever spent on a deck and the one i like the least...oh dear!
 

Alta

baylys :( I know exactly what you mean. And I live in the northern hemisphere! & I am familiar with otters and squirrels, but I also have a never-used copy of the LE and like you had been very excited to get it. Until I saw it.
 

Chiriku

That's a bad experience to read about, baylys (and Alta). Deck regret must be heck of a lot worse when you've "saved and saved" and "made [your] final payment." Too bad you didn't get a response to your queries about a northern hemisphere newsletter.

But I do have a question for you and everyone else who deeply regretted the Limited Edition: I assumed that she had posted online all of the paintings as she completed them, so you would have known ahead of time what you were getting. Was this not the case?

On the other hand, I have paid some serious money for a couple of decks for which I've only seen maybe 20-30% of the cards, so I understand how there comes a point when we feel we have to take a plunge to buy costly decks for which only some cards are available online. (Before anyone says "But tarot buying didn't used to be about seeing all the cards online first, and what about mystique of seeing them for the first time?," I've done my share of buying decks sight unseen or with just the few sample cards in the shop...and have the large unused collection to show for it. And none of those decks were particularly expensive to begin with; it's a much bigger leap of faith with something you have to make real sacrifices for over a period of months.
 

gregory

I only got the MM complete deck - and I am very glad I didn't have the cash for the LE. I owned the earlier majors only one, and liked it - not OMG LOVE LOVE, but still.

I bought the full deck because of that. And like others, I was hugely disappointed. :(
 

weaver

baylys said:
When I saw the Gaian tarot come out, I saved and saved and paid it off month by month. I was so excited when I made my final payment on my very own LE.

Then it arrived.........

So, who wants a never used Gaian deck?!?!

I really disliked it, almost hated it, but I think part of that is to do with the e-zine updates I get as well.

I find the pictures are much too unfamiliar to what I am used to. At least with fantasy decks, you use your imagination. In NZ the only otters are in the zoo. I had never seen a squirrel till I was in the UK for a week. We don't have most of those animals and it felt like it was just too in-your-face Northern Hemisphere.

Then there is the e-zine. She advertises these online courses, seasonal practices for the soul, the first one was midwinter (or something). I emailed her and suggested that if she wished to broaden her market and also connect with more people, she might consider making another version. In hte other version, she would only have to change a few words, like the month, and it would be available for the southern hemisphere market. And that we would get ours at opposite times of the year. No reply. I then emailed again and asked if I could get a spring one (that she had already done) when everyone else was getting autumn, just to keep things seasonal for me. No reply.

To me, she just feels too commercial. I know she comes across as very earthy etc, but you have to pay a reasonable amount to be on her forum (and they only discuss one tarot, at least on here there are hundreds), she charges heaps for the courses and each year she does a retreat at an atronomical amount. It has put me right off. I think the money side of her deck has made me almost hate the deck. I paid a small fortune for my LE only to find she charges a small fortune for eveything she does. That was by far my most expensive deck, yet it came in a hideous purply colour tie-dyed bag, not a box in sight.

The most I ever spent on a deck and the one i like the least...oh dear!
Click to expand...
As you live in NZ, I understand your comments about the pictures in the Gaian being unfamiliar and, thus, difficult to relate to. Living in the New England area of the USA I have experienced the same sort of thing with decks showcasing flora and fauna unfamiliar to me.

In reading your post, however, I am simply not certain how or why the deck creator's means of self employment ought to factor into the viability of the deck itself. Who knows, or cares, how an artist earns his or her living unless, of course, it is somehow harmful to others?

The way I see it, the deck's merit should be gauged in terms of it's content, quality of production versus cost, how well you relate to it and its overall usability. There may be other considerations that are not coming to mind as well, but, you get the drift, I hope.

The LE Gaian Tarot is pricey and clearly you regret purchasing it. I have been there with other LE decks and know its a pretty bitter pill to swallow. Where this is the Tarot Decks section of the Forum, the purpose of my post isn't to negate your unfortunate disappointment in your purchase but to rather bring the focus back to the deck itself.
 

BodhiSeed

Chiriku said:
But I do have a question for you and everyone else who deeply regretted the Limited Edition: I assumed that she had posted online all of the paintings as she completed them, so you would have known ahead of time what you were getting. Was this not the case?
Click to expand...

I'm curious about this too, since she posted all the images before the deck came out. Was it more than the images, such as cardstock and coloring?
 

gregory

BodhiSeed said:
I'm curious about this too, since she posted all the images before the deck came out. Was it more than the images, such as cardstock and coloring?
Click to expand...

I looked at a few ahead of time. But it was when the whole lot were in front of me that the bubble kind of burst. Which in terms of those people who "want to see all the cards before they buy" is rather interesting - as even if I had - it was the actual SIGHT of them (card stock etc are fine) that disappointed so much. They just - were so not what I had expected them to be. I can't really explain it, as even the images I knew from the majors didn't seem the same. It was weird and I was very sad.

I would not have begrudged paying for the LE if I had had the money - if I had liked it. I know many people who have published their own decks, and what it cost them. I am just - with hindsight - very relieved that I didn't have the cash at the time.
 

weaver

gregory said:
I looked at a few ahead of time. But it was when the whole lot were in front of me that the bubble kind of burst. Which in terms of those people who "want to see all the cards before they buy" is rather interesting - as even if I had - it was the actual SIGHT of them (card stock etc are fine) that disappointed so much. They just - were so not what I had expected them to be. I can't really explain it, as even the images I knew from the majors didn't seem the same. It was weird and I was very sad.
Click to expand...

Obviously, I love my LE Gaian Tarot but I have experienced the same phenomenon with other decks, gregory. Seeing a deck in its entirety online can go a long way toward preventing a regretted deck purchase, but not always. I acquired the first printing of Tarot of Prague and though I thought the deck was ok, in truth, I really never used the darn thing. The second ToP printing featured the same images but the cards were a bit larger and the colors were slightly tweaked up. In that instance, those slight changes made all the difference in the world for me. The second edition Tarot of Prague remains one of my favorite decks to this day. The differences between the two printings were so subtle, though, I don't think online images would have helped. Instead, I had to see and actually use the decks.

In her post baylys mentions not being able to relate to the card images in the Gaian indicating "in NZ the only otters are in the zoo". I certainly understand the sentiment. I literally have watched three otters play in the pond behind our home. It is safe to say that Gaian Tarot's 3 of Water card speaks to me in a way that a card featuring an animal I only know about from zoo visits or books would not. The thing is, would you necessarily KNOW that until you tried to work in earnest with a deck featuring the flora and fauna from another region of the world? Maybe some would, but I sure didn't!
 

magpie9

Looking back on it, I think my source of huge disappointment was not so much the art,(I mostly like the art) but the combination of extremely heavy political message and how very far it turned out to be from RWS. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't looking for people prancing about in semi-medieval robes holding pentacles....but I was looking for the cards to relate to the basic RWS meanings in some way, and for there to be the spectrum of reality. Not everything is good. People hurt, and grieve and loose their tempers and all that...but not in this deck. In this deck the people are all mellow to happy, and only nature is harsh. Dead fish, et al. The people are just too evolved and politically correct for me to believe them.

I traded away my LE, and didn't regret it for an instant. I did get a MM, and now and then I try to use it....but I just don't like it enough to do the work it requires to really read with it. Now and then I pull a card, as though it was an Oracle. That's pretty much it. As Tarot, it's a dead failure for me.
 
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