The New Palladini Tarot
The New Palladini Tarot
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The creator of the best-selling Aquarian Tarot, brings to the New Palladini Tarot a deeper understanding of traditional tarot's meanings and symbolism. New Palladini Tarot combines elements of medieval, Egyptian, Renaissance, and modern art in a bold, original style. The artwork is clear and vivid, with full-realized pictorial scenes for the Minor Arcana as well as the Majors. The color symbolism adds a depth to the readings, particularly the night sky backgrounds in the suit of Pentacles, which adds a meditative quality. The booklet guides the reader through the card meanings and interpretations, making this an ideal deck for beginners as well as the experienced tarot followers.

"As the creator of The New Palladini Tarot, I have tried to infuse as much magic and true meaning as possible into the artwork. But these subtleties will only become apparent and useful after careful and patient introspection. Each door which opens reveals more doors to be opened. Each road traveled leads to more roads and choices. Each new piece of knowledge gleaned from the cards leads to greater knowledge."

-- David Palladini, Introduction to the New Palladini Tarot
Specs
    • SKU
      PN78
    • Weight
      0.69 lb(s)
  • ISBN
    978-0-88079-189-2
  • Size
    Cards measure 2.75" x 4.75"
  • Language
    EN
  • Artist
    David Palladini

What Customers Are Saying About The New Palladini Tarot

This tarot deck review is about the New Palladini Tarot. One of the best tarot deck in the universe and beyond, (at least in my opinion). When I got the New Palladini Tarot deck from Gateway books and gifts it was love at first sight! I was so certain that this was the deck that I wanted that I did not even bother to look at the rest of the decks lying around on the shelf at the store! I especially like this tarot deck because it has wild and extremely vivid artwork. I think that this deck will appeal to almost anyone. I think it will especially appeal to people with huge and unlimited imaginations. Another reason the New Palladini Tarot deck is so cool is because it is easy to shuffle. The cards are not too big or too small. They are just the right size. That is another reason the New Palladini tarot is a good, fun and exciting tarot deck to use and/or own! The New Palladini tarot deck is also great because when a querent does a reading this deck will put an ear to ear grin on their face. This deck is positive and brings great bliss to whoever uses this tarot deck. It is a good deck because it is an easy deck to use. Even third day tarot readers can read accurately with the New Palladini tarot deck. That is a very good reason, don't you think so? Well, that was my review on the New palladini tarot deck. I hope you liked it.

-- Robert, Aeclectic Tarot


The New Palladini Tarot, created and illustrated by David Palladini, is one that has been on my wish list for a long while. I had looked at some of the cards online when I was able, and felt drawn to the art and style of the deck. Having the Aquarian Tarot in my collection also, I was intrigued by the New Palladini in its richness of color and detail, as compared to the Aquarian Tarot, which is still quite lovely and has worked well for me over the years. This is your standard tarot deck in that it is a full 78 cards (22 Major Arcana, 56 Minor Arcana in suits of Cups, Swords, Pentacles, Rods). Much of the symbolism is based on RWS imagery, but with a new interesting interpretation. The Fool for instance is a bit different, with a young bearded fellow in blue/green tunic and turban carrying a rod and a white rose in the other hand. We can see that he is cliffside. We cannot see the little white dog usually nipping at his heels, and the Fool seems to be facing towards the right instead of left. But I like this card, nevertheless.

The strength of this deck lies in cards such as The Emperor, The Chariot, and Death among others. The Strength card, always one of my favorites, is quite nice. The lion seems to be apart of the maidens dress almost, which I think is a great illustration of the lion as being a part of the maiden (her emotions, impulses, and animal instincts) and she gently reigns the lion in. The Empress is the guardian of bounty with corn growing around her, waterfall spilling behind her, her glowing shield of Venus and crown of stars show her power. I've also enjoyed many of the unique elements this deck had to offer. The backgrounds of many cards are a nighttime sky instead of daytime. The King and Queen of Pentacles are simply sillouetted, with a pentacle in their heads, thats definantly something Ive never seen before. None of the suits seem to have a specific color designation, however many of the characters in the Wands are adorned in greens and golds, the Swords, mostly blueish-purples, but there are many colors throughout, which I am happy for being a reader that responds strongly to color symbolism within the tarot.

The only issues I have had with this deck so far are more my own prejudices anyway (such as the Judgement card being renamed the Last Judgement). But overall, this is one that I think will be on my top ten list of decks for years to come, and I highly recommed this one. I think it is appropriate for beginners as well as intermediate/advanced readers. The symbols are drawn clearly and simply and all evoke the meaning they are meant to. The size is about perfect, easy shuffling. If you are into reading with reversals, the back picture of two snakes swallowing their tails in the pattern of a figure eight, works for that purpose. I hope if you choose this deck, that it guide and delight you the way it has me, and that it becomes a trusted friend for your collection and reading pleasure. Enjoy, it's a keeper.

-- Eala, Aeclectic Tarot


After many years of not buying any decks, of not even looking at other decks, I recently bought The New Palladini Tarot. I like it. It's a RWS clone. For the most part such decks don't so much reinterpret the standard, or revise it, as they do add a new coat of paint to it. It always seemed to me that there ought to be a better reason than mere caprice to change what is well-loved and working fine. But maybe there needn't be a better reason. I tried the deck as soon as it arrived, laying out some cards, looking for general guidance, seeing what the images suggested. Over the next few days, I did readings, and laid down mandalas. The deck, while new, really, in only a cosmetic sense, did suggest new insights into certain cards. This always excites me, those moments -- for me infrequent -- when new understanding slides into consciousness like something warm and buttery. I've always felt like tarot's equivalent of a person who moves his lips while reading, but these insights always inspire a new confidence. Should the deck itself take all the credit? No, probably not. Probably, any new understanding grows as much from the newness of the images, from the friction of the new against the expected, as from the artist's efforts. But Palladini's images are pleasing to the eye, the are bright, the are detailed, and so they command scrutiny. Palladini favors medium- and close-ups of human figures in most of the cards. One big difference between this deck and the RWS is that the human figures on the cards are much more individualized than those in the Waite deck. The characters are not interchangeable -- they are distinct from one another; they are particular individuals. For someone who makes the NPT deck his or her primary one, this kind of uniqueness among the "players" could, conceivably, allow for a different sort of intimacy with that deck, one that goes beyond reading to meditation, visualization, pathworking, and so forth.

In the booklet that comes with the deck, the artist says that he has tried to represent all races in the cards. There are compelling reasons for this kind of inclusiveness -- after all, if as some writers aver the deck is a book of archetypes, then not to represent as many of the world's cultures as possible would be misleading. The author has drawn not only from various ethnic cultures, but from different time periods, as well. Figures are costumed in ancient Egyptian garb, medieval, renaissance, and modern costumes. The periods and costumes vary from card to card, determined, I guess, by the author's interpretation of that card.

Palladini's earlier tarot deck, The Aquarian Tarot, used muted colors. It relied on more earthy tones, with occasional colorful highlights, and to me conveyed a flavor of the Jazz Age. The NPT deck's color is bold and energetic, more striking than what you get in the RWS deck, and the range of colors used is much wider than that used in the earlier deck, and in the RWS deck itself.

Some of the changes Palladini makes are curious, while others are very precise and help clarify the cards' meaning for me. The Devil card, for instance, is dramatic, and its devil especially horrible, bearing no resemblance to the Devil of the RWS deck. The symbolism of the old card has been distilled to a single clear and arguably oversimplified image: the Devil holding a chain, "the great black chain of slavery," the booklet calls it. For me this is a case of less being less, not more. In Waite's deck, the image revealed the materiality of the card, and the willingness of the bondage much more precisely. The chains around the man and woman's necks were loose; they could remove them whenever they chose. The Waite card emphasized choice, and therefore wonderfully and corruptly echoed The Lovers, both in its meaning and its image. The Saturnian quality, too, of the RWS Devil has been all but expunged from the new card-it has been reduced to the blackness of the chain. To a reader who is already comfortable with her repertoire of meanings for the card, this might not make much difference, but for one who relies heavily on intuitive flashes suggested by the images, it might. Nevertheless, it is a compelling card-dramatic and ugly. Aesthetically, I like it.

Trump VIII, however, Strength, is very expressive of that card's qualities. The card shows a woman not taming a lion, but having already tamed it. Its jaws are closed. And the woman's eyes are closed. She has already wreathed the lion in flowers. Her gentle posture and contemplative expression more vividly show that special strength that comes from self-mastery, or spiritual power, or whatever you care to call it: It's gentle, silent, irresistible, and you see it clearly in the card, much more so, I think, than in the RWS deck (or the Thoth, deck, for that matter).

The booklet that comes with the deck is standard stuff -- just enough to get a novice started. It contains a helpful gloss of some of the basic symbolism found in the cards. There may not be anything quite stunning about this deck, but, then, why must there be? There are probably only so many ways to decorate a thing, and at some point change and razzmatazz will become fulsome. In many cases, they have. If tarot is a living art, its life comes from what the users bring to it, from the changes wrought by their experiences and insights, not from the song-and-dance of new ideologies, or any other fanciful newness borne of a misguided notion that we need something new, anything, just so it's new. The New Palladini Tarot deck is simple and good; Palladini does it well. And if this is just a simple, colorful deck, fine. That's all it needs to be.

-- Mitras, Tarot Tripod


This deck is by the artist who drew the Aquarian Tarot deck, which despite its age is still selling briskly. The New Palladini is similar in style to the Aquarian, you can recognize the style of the faces and the artist’s penchant for a large centralized figure in most scenes, though not to the extent we saw in the Aquarian. It was drawn using, pencils, ink and magic markers. Palladini has included much more detail in this deck and has reduced his reliance on pastel shades in favor of bolder colors. There has also been an effort made This deck is by the artist who drew the Aquarian Tarot deck, which despite its age is still selling briskly. The New Palladini is similar in style to the Aquarian, you can recognize the style of the faces and the artist’s penchant for a large centralized figure in most scenes, though not to the extent we saw in the Aquarian. It was drawn using, pencils, ink and magic markers. Palladini has included much more detail in this deck and has reduced his reliance on pastel shades in favor of bolder colors. There has also been an effort made to include some other cultures in this deck. The Fool for example, is bearded and wears a turban, giving him a somewhat Arab look, The Chariot driver is wearing an Egyptian headdress and has the long thin beard often seen in Egyptian art and Strength portrays a woman who appears to be from India; she has the mark of her caste on her forehead. While Palladini stamped his own style on the deck, it is for the most part, a Waite-Smith clone and readers familiar with the Waite-Smith or the Aquarian should have no trouble reading this deck. Some slight changes were made to the symbolism. The Wheel of Fortune no longer has the familiar four elemental symbols in each corner, rather the elements are depicted in the center of the wheel. The Angel of Temperance is shown in profile, and you only see the upper half of the body, so you can’t determine if the one foot is in the water. The Woman in The Star is submerged in the water to her hips, vice kneeling beside it, and she has two cups -- one submerged and one above the water. There are no dogs in The Moon and no people in The Sun, or Judgment. These are minor changes though and should only be a problem for those who prefer traditional symbolism on their decks. The suits are the traditional Swords, Rods, Cups and Pentacles and the Court Cards are King, Queen, Knight and Page. Again, Palladini does not stray too far from Waite-Smith in the scenes on his Minor Arcana. He seemed to run out of steam on the 6 and 7 of cups however, the 6 shows 6 cups filled with flowers (no people) and the 7 shows 7 cups "Filled with images of fantasy" -- again, no people. These two cards look more like they belong in a deck with unillustrated minors. On the other hand, some of the cards have unique touches. The King and Queen of Pentacles for example, are silhouettes filled in with a star filled night sky. Many of the cards have delightfully different details, which make the deck a pleasure to peruse at length. The booklet that accompanies the deck is fairly decent, with a description of the symbolism used on each card and short upright and reversed interpretations for each card. Overall this deck is very nice. It would work well as a first Tarot deck or make an nice alternative to the standard Waite-Smith or Aquarian.

-- Michele Jackson, Tarot Passages

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