Tarot Panel Addendum: The LWB
During the tarot panel at NDK, I brought up the topic of what is known as the “Little White Book,” or LWB. Tarot decks either come by itself (with a LWB the size of the cards about 50-60 pages long, depending on how many languages are included) or as a boxed kit, which would include the deck plus a longer companion book. The LWB is bare bones and normally just contains keyword meanings to the cards, a blurb about tarot’s general history or a introductory blurb about the particular deck’s conception, and maybe a spread or two; the companion book is a little more elaborate about what the cards mean and more beginner friendly. My co-panelist, having been taught by members of her coven, doesn’t have any sort of use for either kind of book and in fact just detests the LWBs; I don’t feel quite so strongly against them, except for one in particular.
Introducing the Favole Tarot.
The Favole Tarot is published by Fournier and is a dark, gothic arts style deck illustrated by Victoria Frances. The art’s neat, but it is rather bleak, if you’re not used to it:
Even the sun card is a little dreary:
Anyway, the Favole Tarot is a pips deck, i.e. the minor arcana aren’t illustrated and only show the number of the suits on the cards. Also, the suits are not the usual wands/cups/swords/pentacles; rather, they are crosses, masks, flowers, and butterflies:
Now, if you’re wanting to see what the LWB says corresponds to these new suits, you’re out of luck. The LWB that comes with this deck looks like this:
Innocuous enough, except that it literally doesn’t use the terms crosses, masks, flowers, and butterflies. It explains the suits as if they were still the traditional wands, cups, swords, and pentacles:
Another look:
If a person new to tarot were to pick this up and expect to use this deck to read with by reading this LWB first, they’d be lost. How’s a newbie supposed to know what’s supposed to correspond with the new suits? GG, author of this particular LWB.
Needless to say, this is probably the one exception (so far) to me not minding the LWBs so much, and the only reason I keep them is because usually they do have some insight from the artist about their process and a spread or two that I might like. Sad tarotist is sad.