Deck Review: The Westwood Tarot

• Deck Name: The Westwood Tarot
• Author Kalliope Haratsidis and Illustrated by Yasmeen Westwood
• Publisher: REDFeather, Mind, Body, Spirit
• Westwood Tarot Website Link
• Recommended retail price: $34.99
• ISBN:978-0-7643-6812-7
• Review by: Helen Masters

The Westwood Tarot is a beautifully packaged deck. It includes the card deck plus a substantial guide book, which comes in a rigid magnetic closure box, all wonderfully illustrated. The box is designed to look like a book, with a rounded spine and faux pages with dragonflies on the top and bottom edges. Straight away I was impressed with the level of design and artistry that has gone into this.

The cards themselves are large, measuring 3.5” x 5”, so I find them a little cumbersome to shuffle. However it does give room to see the details of the artwork. The deck is printed on standard glossy card stock which makes them easy to shuffle, and gold-edged which I personally love. I think it adds to the beauty of the already exquisitely artistic cards.  The backs are illustrated with a green floral design, which doesn’t give indications of the card being upright or reversed.

The deck is based on the traditional Rider Waite Smith (RWS) system of 21 major and 56 minor arcana cards, with Pentacles, Cups, Swords and Wand suits. Some of the card names differ from the traditional RWS. For example The Hermit card is called ‘The Seeker’, and The Devil card renamed to ‘The Shadow’.

The cards have detailed and colourful illustrations which cover the entire card front, without a border, and the name and number of the card are unobtrusively placed, which I think is a plus. 

The designs are inspired by artist Yasmeen Westwood’s fondness for Enid Blyton’s story ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’, with a whimsical style depicting animal and insect characters rather than human ones. These are depicted in imaginative and magical scenes.

Whilst you can see the inspiration of the RWS in many of the cards, some do take a departure from the traditional symbolism, and I found some of the imagery didn’t resonate for me pictorially in terms of the core meanings.  However, the pretty and fairy-tale like illustrations make this deck suitable for readings where darker themed, sombre or more serious imagery isn’t desired or appropriate for the querent.

The guide book provides multiple ways of engaging with the symbolism. Keywords for the light and shadow expression of the card are provided along with a small poem summarising the core meaning, which is helpful for beginners.  A story is given for the scene depicted on the card instead of a card description. Also included are additional paragraphs for words of wisdom, animal spirit guide insights, and interpretations related to specific areas of life, namely love, finances, career, and wellness, making this deck suitable for every-day mundane enquiries.

I like the variety of interpretive options given, and think it opens the deck up to being accessible to a variety of reading styles and experience levels.  Because of the detailed imagery and less traditional style of characters and scenes, this deck would also be suitable for tarot readers who prefer to read with a more free form style, letting meanings arise through intuition and the imagery rather than hard and fast traditional card meanings. The guide book itself is very nicely illustrated and laid out, and I find it a helpful addition to the deck. It also includes a handful of spreads at the back.

If you love colourful tarot decks with whimsical and imaginative imagery, are particularly drawn to story telling, nature themed or magical fairy-tale style cards, then The Westwood Tarot might be for you.