Ahoy mateys, shiver me timbers, hoist the Jolly Roger, get out the eye patch, nail the parrot to the perch and give a big buccaneer welcome the Pirate Tarot. Pirate Tarot is a new deck designed by Carrie and Lucas Amodio, illustrated by Liz “Galindorf” Harper, http://www.galindorf.com, and published by Schiffer Books, http://schifferbooks.com.
The Pirate Tarot is a traditional 78-card Tarot deck, designed as a divination deck and as a gaming deck. Each card is a wood cut with images depicting the swashbuckling life of the pirates of old. The deck doesn’t come with a little white book of divinatory meanings; there is an insert explaining the deck. The insert gives sample layouts and teaches a card game to be played by 4-6 players.
Some of the Major Arcana have undergone a name change to make them more applicable to the pirate theme; The Magician becomes The Chirurgeon; The High Priestess becomes The Figurehead; The Hierophant becomes The Bosun; The Wheel of Fortune becomes The Winds; The Judgment becomes The Plank but the rest remain standard. There are four suits: Flintlocks, Cutlasses, Mugs and Coins. This is not a dramatic change from the traditional Wands, Swords, Cups and Coins or Pentacles respectively. Court Cards are also changed from the traditional Page, Knight, Queen and King to Cabin Boy, First Mate, Lady-Captain and Captain respectively.
Each card has three or four well-chosen key words carved at the bottom of the wonderfully charming images. I must say that The Fool looks like he is having a great time holding his mug of grog high in the air while dancing a jig in a rowboat. The words used to describe The Fool are ambiguity, chaos, faith and luck, which are all fitting and appropriate. The key words represent the divinatory essence of each card and I have no disagreement with their choices for any of the cards. Although excellent for key words, a greater reliance would have to be utilized on interpretation of the images to get the whole story. This isn’t a drawback. Learning to interpret the cards for a divinatory reading is a combination of image cues and key word memorization so I think this deck would be quite useful in this regard.
Truly delightful, full of fun and reasonably priced, the Pirate Tarot would be a nice addition to anyone’s collection or a nice gift for a pirate buff. Wooden copies of the deck are available from the Amodio’s at their website http://www.dragonfire-games.com .
