Deck Review: White Sage Tarot

If you have been following my social media accounts for the last year you may have noticed that I stuck mainly with the Rider Waite Smith traditional deck.  My reasons for this are pretty woo-woo (basically my guides made me do it), but as the year has come to an end and the energies around me are changing and evolving I am back to using different decks.

In 2017 I bought one deck (technically I pre-bought two others but those won’t arrive until Spring).  The only deck that I felt I HAD to have was the beautiful White Sage Tarot.  I had seen the beautiful images from Theresa on instagram – actually finding her account just before her initial launch of this deck.  But I did not break down and buy it right away.  I was a stalwart and resisted the urge for several months.  Finally, with the changing energies, I decided it was time to go ahead and order this deck.  And I am so glad I did.

So why exactly do I enjoy using this deck.  Well, right away I formed a strong connection to this deck.  When I do my daily readings for my social media accounts, I first channel a message from my guides intuitively.  They let me know what the energy is like out in the world that day, normally with an image but sometimes a song or a word.  I then use the cards to provide a backdrop on which to send this message out into the world.  Now if there was an invention that could take an image I have in my mind and transfer it to an instagram picture, I likely would not be using tarot cards as much as I do.  But that technology doesn’t exist and we live in a very visual community, so I ask the cards to provide that landscape for my message.

Right away, this deck was providing me just the cards I needed to pair with the image I received.  The pinnacle came when I had an image of a sun as the energy for the day (meaning it would be an expansive and warm day) and then the sun card came up after I shuffled the cards.  Something other then coincidence at work there!

Another aspect about this deck that I really enjoy are the images of the animals.  If you have followed this blog at all or read any of my monthly forecasts you may have realized that the clairvoyant images I receive from my guides feature a lot of animals.  Who here remembers a certain rabbit that kept showing up in a business suit offering guidance in the money category?

Well can you just imagine how much my eyes and mind enjoy seeing animals acting as humans in these cards just as much as my guides like showing them to me?  So yes, the drawings in these cards work very well for me visually.

I also enjoy that by taking people out of the equation you take a lot of the politics of today’s world out of the picture as well.  When you are doing a tarot reading there is nothing worse then having your mind get sidetracked with current events.  How many decks have you seen recently get ridiculed for the ethnicities or genders of the people depicted, or not, in the cards?  Well, take out the people and remove the politics from the equation.

I know, kind of avoiding the issues there – but when it comes to intuition it helps to avoid the world around you and focus on what the energies are really saying.  It is too easy to get your or your clients emotions caught up in the image of a person on a card instead of the meaning and message that comes through.

So yes – the animals are very nice in this deck!

Another aspect I enjoy is the gentle energy that this deck brings.  The watercolors are so calm and serene that this deck can deliver a difficult blow with a moment of zen attached.  This feels like a very buddhist low-key kind of energy.  In a field where being heavily meditated helps establish the close connection with the divine – the colors and energy of this deck help keep me in the zone during readings.

But no deck is completely perfect, and, like anything there are a few things about this deck that I don’t totally jive with.  First this deck offers a color system that connects with the chakra colors and blends its way throughout the deck.  You would probably think I love this with the amount of work I do with chakras (shameless self promotion – you can get a chakra reading – aura reading – or total energetic body reading through my etsy store).  The thing with this deck is that I just don’t agree with some of the correspondences that are made between the chakras and the cards.  For example, I don’t relate the two of swords with the heart chakra – for me it would make more sense as a throat or solar plexus chakra card.  But, you know what, if I cared so much I should make a deck of my own.  So really this doesn’t bother me too greatly.

The other thing I do not love about this deck is its use of Egyptian symbology.  And the reason…I just don’t have a strong connection or knowledge of Egyptian mythology so I have to google some of the characters to gain a greater perspective.  I could look at this as a pro as I am learning something new, but really I am kind of lazy sometimes and just don’t want to google or look more into a subject I do not have a great interest in.

Overall, I think this is a really great deck.  I like the card stock and the shuffling is wonderful – something I always worry about when buying a deck that is produced independently.  This is a good deck to use with clients who are young or who are afraid of any “spooky” cards.  There are no naked boobies or scary death scenes depicted in these cards.  Instead you get PG images that are zen and calm.

So right now I am excited to continue to work with this deck in the upcoming year, at least until my guides tell me otherwise!