Deck review: Tarot of the Enchanted Soul by Yasmeen Westwood

There are those who believe in the magic of the Soul. Now there is a tool to access that magic and hear the whispers of your inner spirit. Let the photocollaged images with their blue, green, and orange colors set a dreamlike tone of magical faraway places that you imagined as a child. Through using 78 cards based on the Rider-Waite Tarot system, learn to connect to the magic of your Soul not only for personal growth but to help ground you in times of need. With an accompanying guidebook that uses a journal format to allow space for self-development, this deck makes a wonderful divination tool for beginners or anyone looking to do inner-child work. Let this delightful, expressive, and charming deck bring out the magic in you!

This deck is published by redFeather (UK/US). You can see the unboxing and flickthrough videos on TikTok.

This is such a fascinating deck! I've never seen or used one quite like it. It's a fabulous beginner's deck while also working really well for those with a bit more knowledge!

The box is a book style, opening with a flap on the righthand side secured with magnets. The magnets are very strong and the box is sturdy; I'd have no fear about putting this set into a bag or backpack to carry around, but it's quite large and would be bulky! The book sits on top of the cards, which are secured in a well. The box features images from the cards.

The cards themselves are among the larger I've handled; I was much more comfortable shuffling them on the length rather than the width, but they're lovely to hold and study. The images are described as 'photocollaged' and have real actors or models in created settings. There's no real theme in the deck, but I would say they're loosely fantasy or perhaps steampunk!

A couple of Major cards have been renamed. This isn't specifically addressed in the book, but it's not unusual either. Also, Pentacles are Coins in this deck.

The Minors each tend towards a colour, but not enough to make it obvious just from the colours what you're looking at. Swords are mostly a cool, icy blue; Cups are generally a rich royal blue; Coins are fresh greens; and Wands are energetic oranges and reds.

The image is presented inside a 'frame' on the card. Below the frame are keywords relating to the card's meaning, and the card's name is inside the frame at the top or bottom depending on the image. Majors have Roman numerals and Minors have the numbers written out. I adore the keywords; if you've read any of my reviews, you know I love a cheatsheet, and this is like having a cheatsheet printed right on the cards! It's such a great idea for a beginner, and for those with a bit more experience it can help to remind them of the different aspects of any given card.

The back of the card has this lovely design: it's technically not reversible, but you'd need to be looking very closely to see which way up a card is, so if you work with reversals and don't want to know ahead of time, you'll be safe enough with this deck. 

The edges are gilded and the cards are lovely and smooth; they shuffle beautifully, with no catching or stuttering. The cards follow the RWS school of meanings; there are twists and surprises in the images, but overall they're easy enough to follow. The colours are mostly quite muted and there are a lot of details in each card, plenty to study and pick out and learn about. 

The book starts with a welcome and introduction, where Yasmeen addresses a few of the most common ideas and misconceptions about tarot. She briefly explains the structure of the deck and gives some tips for getting started and giving readings. There are seven different spreads, ranging from three cards up to sixteen(!) to give the reader an idea of the kind of ways cards can be used.

Now we're into the meanings. Each Major card has two full pages; an image of the card, a quote, the keywords, a brief story that illustrates the meaning of the card, a paragraph on the actual meaning, what kind of person the card might represent, and some Thoughts, which would work very well as a jumping off point for journaling. For instance, the Thoughts for the Hermit, pictured below, are "How often do you allow yourself to retreat from the hustle and bustle daily life? Do you find yourself on your own a lot of the time? Why is that?"

The Minors have one page, with the image, quote, and keywords all intact, and a long paragraph that mixes describing the image - really useful as it sometimes highlights bits of the images I hadn't picked up on! - with describing the meanings. The Thoughts are also intact for every card.

Here are some of my favourite cards (it was very hard to narrow these down, hence the more than usual number of pictures in this review!);

In readings, I found these cards very straight forward and to the point, no beating around the bush or struggling to decipher. The art style will put some people off, I know, and that's a real shame, as I think it's a really useful deck to have in your arsenal. I've really enjoyed studying and working with them and I'm going to keep them in my rotation - I think they'd be a great deck if you were reading at an event as the customer would be able to see how you put the keywords together into a full reading!

I definitely recommend this deck and I'm so glad I got to work with it.

(Ok, one sneaky extra image; does this card remind anyone else of comedian Katherine Ryan?

No? Just me? Fair enough...)