Deck review: Tarot in the land of Mystereum by Jordan Hoggard

Where is the Land of Mystereum? Mystereum is a place where you can establish harmonious relationships with your ideas and feelings, explore identity and personality, and guide your intuition and imagination. We celebrate our differences. All similar, each unique, is our motto. It keeps our lives lively! There are 78 cards in this intuitive Tarot deck and each card has its own individual personality. As you meet each character visually, there is the opportunity to breathe life into the image and to learn to sense what you feel. At the same time, you will learn the card meanings and how the character interacts with you and the world around you. The answers to your questions will become clear. Then things become fun! Each Mystereum Tarot character speaks to you in their own voices and they have something for you! Some have single gifts. Some have packages. These gifts are Imagination Tools and they are the primers for your life. Only you can use these tools to solve the mysteries in your own Land of Mystereum. Enjoy the journey. Your creativity will thank you!

This deck is published by Schiffer Publishing.

---

You can see the unboxing and flickthrough videos on Tiktok.

Most of the decks I've had so far have been on the realistic side as far as the art goes, so it's been interesting to work with this one, which is a little more abstract in spots.

The deck is presented in a long, low box. The front is hinged along a length and held closed with a magnetic closure. It feels very sturdy and secure when it's closed. Some cautious shaking upside down didn't knock it open - I haven't been too rough as I don't want to risk the cards!

The LWB is also long rather than tall. There's a brief introduction, explaining the idea behind the deck; it's set in the land of Mystereum, a land of imagination and creativity. We move quickly into the Major Arcana. Each card has two-three pages, featuring an image of the card in black and white, a description of the meaning, a section from the point of the view of the card, and some imagination tools, which are meditation tips and ideas. I like the sections from the card's POV; it's not something I've seen before and it really helps to get into the meaning of the card.

The Minors are laid out the same, with a little less space devoted to each. There's space for notes at the end of the Cups and Swords, but not the other Minors, presumably the layout didn't allow for it. There's a cheat sheet at the end with a couple of sentences on each card.

The cards themselves!

(Be aware that the deck comes with two cards that look like they're part of the deck, but they're advertisments for the publishers. Remember to separate them out before you start to shuffle. They were at the back of my deck.)

The cards are a little taller and a bit wider than standard tarot cards. I can just about get my fingers around them longways, but I usually shuffle them on the length to save myself the stretch! They're very glossy and have a tendancy to stick together; a lot of shuffling has loosened them, but they're still not great. I'm going to try talcum powder next and see if it helps.

The back has a fully reversible design featuring trees bordered by pillars. It's coloured in light blue and silver.

The front of the cards has both a white border and a sort of arch incorporated into the designs. It's a mark of Jordan's architecture training and it's very pretty. The cards are almost all in bright, primary colours. The names and numbers are listed at the bottom in English, German, Spanish and French.

Here are some examples:

The characters from the Majors wander through the Minors, turning up in a lot of other places. It highlights some links I hadn't thought about between cards. My first time through it turned into a sort of Where's Wally game as I was having so much fun looking for them! As I kept working with them I realised I'd missed plenty of other instances, and each time I find one now I stop and think about it for a few minutes.

Here are some examples of characters moving between cards:

The Minors are a mix of pips and decorated scenes. They mostly follow the RWS, but some have drifted away from those interpretations.

I think this wouldn't be a deck for a complete beginner. It would be much better for someone who's got the basics down and is looking to expand their understanding of the cards and their meanings. There's a lot to learn here, for sure - I'll be working with it for a long time yet and I'm sure I won't even scratch the surface!

I have done a few reads and found it very direct and insightful. There's no beating around the bush with this deck; it says what it means. I even surprised one of my subjects by figuring out something I hadn't been told!

I'm going to enjoy working with this deck in the future. The only tiny problem is the stickiness of the cards, and that will wear off with use. Just be aware of it!

This deck is available wherever Tarot supplies are sold.