Starlight Dragon Tarot Deck Review
So, this is an unusual one! I saw it, and thought "let's take a risk", because I like having my boundaries expanded, and this deck was sure to do that!
Firstly, let's cover the obvious difference here - the cards aren't read 'on the square', they're designed to be laid out and read as a diamond shape, point up and down. It's such a simple difference to a standard deck, and yet it is a very big difference, especially for a reader, like me, who is quite visual in their approach to a reading! It also opens up some cracking opportunities and brings some challenges of its own...
The cards themselves are a healthy size at 3 3/4 by 3 3/4 inches (9.5 by 9.5 cm's for those born and raised this side of the 70s), black background with a design on each card that's centred leaving a healthy dark border around the edge. They're printed on a high-shine card stock with gilt golden edging, and the card stock is light, but not too light, making them suitable for frequent use. The high-shine coating does hold fingerprints - they're easily buffed off with a soft cloth, but you'll likely find that if you're using your deck often, or allowing your querent to handle them, they may need wiping down more often than other decks.
The backs of the cards have a non-reversible intertwined serpentine dragon motif, which forms piercing eyes. The artwork on each card front is swirling, textured and incorporates dragons (naturally!) on the majority of majors and courts, with an abstract East-Asian feel to them, and on the minors, there's a mixture of symbolic imagery with hints of draconic additions to some of them. The additions to the cards occur in the corners - where there's a semi-circle, set in a specific colour, to reflect whether the card is a Major (orange/gold and the additional card in purple) or a Minor (elementally associated in red, blue, white and green). Within that semi-circle is additional info - at the top, they're numbered, and at the bottom they contain either an elemental symbol, or a planetary association (for the Majors). The court cards have an elemental symbol at the top of the card as well, to identify them, Earth, Fire, Water, and Air for Pages, Knights, Queens and Kings respectively, and the suits in the Minors are Cups, Coins, Swords and Wands. There is also a 79th card, The Dragon Eye, used to symbolise clarity of vision, farsightedness or the call to view the situation from a longer-term perspective - it's an unusual addition to the deck, and can be included, or not, at the readers preference.
The box is a well-constructed flip-top style, thick sided and sturdy, offering excellent protection to the cards and LWB within, and it was signed by the artist as well, which is always a pleasant bonus! The LWB is a soft colour-cover, black and white paged booklet, the same size as the cards, and fits neatly on top of the cards inside the box. At 120 pages, it dedicates sections to the deck and its unique design features, some info about the artists, and then a page to each card...there's information about the Suits in general, giving the keywords and perspectives on those areas, and the pages about the Minors contain keywords and some information about the card and what it represents...for the Majors there's talk about the Draconic symbolism and the journey of that card, some keywords and and almost poetic piece for each card, while the Court Cards give keywords and also a This Dragon Speaks section which is like a quote from the respective royal family member. It's a unique take on the individual contributions to the decks makeup!
There's also 4 suggested spreads - two simple, and two more in-depth - that show how the deck can be used in the traditional layout style, or can be used in a way that clusters together the cards in the two more in-depth spreads, which is a great motivation for spreadcrafting in this new style of card layout, where the cards actually touch and interact with one another, rather than being laid out well spaced! The LWB rounds itself out with a few pages left open for your own notes, and a final page just running through the symbolism used on the bottom corner of the cards, for those who are unfamiliar with the standard planetary symbols.
It's an interesting take on traditional Tarot symbolism, and the coloured semi-circles will certainly make reading elemental dignities a more visual process...there are some cards that I've squinted at a couple of times, in the Minors, to try and work out what the artist was attempting to convey, but a quick look at the LWB usually sheds light on the perspective they've taken, and how that can be associated, through that imagery, into a reading - because it's a different set of imagery to the RWS or Thoth standards (not completely alien, but not wholly synergistic either) it can take some time to get used to, but in that respect it can provide a broadening of horizons for both the novice and advanced reader alike!
The Starlight Dragon Tarot is self published by Steph Engert and Nora Huszka, and available via their Etsy page, and they also have a web page with quite a bit of information about the deck.
Images are © and used with kind permission.
