[.ca] Tiny Universal Waite Tarot (ISBN 1572811226)

The Itsy Bitsy Tarot Deck:
I like miniture things so I love this tiny little deck with cards about the size of a postage stamp ( actually some commemorative stamps are bigger than these cards.) This is a very tiny edition of the Universal Waite deck by Mary Hanson-Roberts which is a more vividly colored version of the famous Rider-Waite deck featuring the artwork of Pamela Coleman Smith. It is mostly useful as a collector's treasure. It is very faithful in color and detail to the normal size deck. Obviously, the imagery is very small and hard to see, so you would want to familiarize yourself with a larger deck before expecting these to be of any real use in divination. They are so tiny and numerous that it is easy to drop them and they are difficult to handle, but you can get used to them if you really want to do so. They remind me of the little Nanta bags that Strega witches carry with their tiny little magical implements. They are easy to carry in a purse, back-pack, glove-box or pocket and for a reader who is very familair with the symbols this deck is a nice little portable, readily available deck that can come in handy for on the spot, impromptu readings. This deck may be useful depending upon your needs , but it is certainly an endearing little treat.

Cute but entirely impractical:
I'm new to tarot, and while I own and deeply love my World Spirit deck (based on Rider-Waite), the cards are a little large, so I thought it would be fun to get this tiny, portable set. Alas, the very first day I had it on my keychain, the clasp of the holder caught on my car door as I was getting out and cards spilled *everywhere*. Since it's difficult to squish all 78 cards into the little box in the first place, imagine the explosion. I did the best I could, but was still missing three cards after several minutes of searching. When I got home, I actually found another card on my couch, where I hadn't even noticed it fall the night before. Long, sad story short -- cards are cute enough, but way too easy to lose to really be useful as a portable deck.