Celtic Tarot

Celtic paganism is very popular across the entire pagan landscape in both Europe and the greater Anglosphere. There are many tarot decks geared toward this branch of European folk belief, which makes it likely some of those decks will miss the mark. This is one of those decks. The author and artist both sought to syncretize their understanding of Celtic beliefs and mythologies with the Kabbalah, which is a branch of Jewish esotericism and mysticism. The major arcana cards feature numbers in the artwork itself; these numbers correlate to the Kabbalistic tree of life model. For me personally, this is a big miss. Kabbalah and other Abrahamic frameworks are rather foreign to the cultures and beliefs which existed in many varied forms throughout Europe for millennia before Christianity. I prefer to avoid such frameworks entirely, but to each their own.

The book is comprehensive, providing full details for each card, with equal attention given to the minors. The cards feature a number of characters from the Celtic pagan pantheon, which is pretty great if you're already familiar with them.

The artwork is detailed, but many of the human faces look “off” to me. It's not distracting to the point that the deck is unusable, but it's noticeable if that kind of thing bothers you. There's quite a bit of nudity, both male and female.

This is one of the lower quality Llewellyn decks I've worked with. The edges of the cards are in rough shape right out of the box, with visible chipping on some. I had to do a bit of editing to clean up the card scans, and you'll definitely want to sleeve this deck. The book is very nice, with glossy pages and large, full-color images of every card.

Overall, this is an okay deck. I probably won't use it much for my own readings, but I'll hang on to it for now.