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Pagan Tarot is firmly grounded in reality. Flipping through cards feels like we're flicking through snapshots of a twenty-something American Pagan girl - a modern girl with modern accoutrements: cards, computers, even a laptop - taken at regular intervals in her daily life. It comes across as a Tarot of the everyday; very prosaic and oriented towards the physical and material aspects of life. (Minutiae outweighs the spectacular in most lives, and it adds an extra touch of realism that it does so in this deck as well!) As mentioned, the card imagery is very modern, but the symbolism will be familiar to the regular Tarot reader. This is the kind of intuitive Tarot that supplies very human, very plausible scenes of human interaction and leaves you to make your own interpretation. There are no keywords to confine the meaning, either on the cards or in the booklet. Instead, you must look at the scene, and think about what is happening, and why, and how the people involved feel about it. The court cards have been modified to fit the Pagan theme, and are now Elemental, Novice, Initiate, and Elder. They are evenly divided into men (Swords and Wands) and women (Chalices and Pentacles): all willowy and elegant but differing in age, hair colour and appearance. The art style is true-to-life but is let down somewhat by the colouring, which is a little cold and heavy (there is no red in these cards) and gives the girl's life a dull veneer. The variations between cards can also be quite marked. Some like the Four of Pentacles and Five of Pentacles are in browns and greys, leached of almost all colour and sparkle, while the Four of Chalices seems over saturated with their artificial greens and lurid apricot skin tones.
