An extremely creative and unique deck, the vice versa tarot features art on both sides of the card, one side showing the front view and one side the back view. Like the two sides of a coin, the vice versa tarot gives perspective and flow, capturing the energy of day and night, action and understanding.
As a Total Tarot deck there's no unboxing video. You can see the complete flickthrough video on TikTok.
Total Tarot is a bimonthly magazine designed to help teach anyone how to read tarot. With every two issues, readers get a complete tarot deck from Lo Scarabeo, one of the major Tarot companies on the market. The art of these decks is true to the originals, but they have frames where the originals don't and the LWB is not included, instead there is some information in the magazine about the history of the deck and the specific meanings attached to cards. This is a great collection if you want to try a lot of styles of deck at very reasonable prices - I'm learning a lot about my preferences!
The Vice Versa deck has a very clever concept; while one side is the normal RWS style images we're used to, the reverse shows the scene in the other direction, so we see what the characters are looking at or what's happening in front of them. It's not the only deck with this concept - we'll be getting to the Tarot of the New Vision in a while, but that deck only shows the 'reverse' view. This deck allows us to compare the two sides, and as part of that they often vary in some significant way - one at night and one in the day, perhaps, or one on solid ground and one at the edge of a body of water. The images are not opposites, precisely, but they are two sides of a coin, showing two different aspects of the same situation.
As a TT deck there's no LWB, but the magazine does give us meanings for both sides of each card, which is nice! The 'front' uses standard RWS meanings, while the 'back' puts some kind of spin on it. For example, the back of the Chariot reads "The mystical side of your life journey requires attention. If you have been focusing on mundane details you may miss an important transition. Continue along your chosen path, but listen to your intuition more than your logic. Be aware of what was holding you back - you may not even have noticed that you are now free."
As you can see, the images are presented within a thin frame. Majors have their name and Roman numeral printed across the bottom on both sides; Minors have their Arabic number and name on both sides. However, apart from the artwork there's no indication of which side is 'front' and which is 'back', and while in general the fronts are daytime and the backs are nighttime that's not always the case, so there's no easy way to tell which is which. It's also a strange deck to shuffle as you can always see the images! This isn't the deck to use if you like to be surprised by your cards in a spread, unless you want to put a cover over them. But it is a deck that would take a lot of study; I feel I've barely scratched the surface of it this week and I'm looking forward to continuing to work with it in the future. I love the fact that these cards are clearly all set in the same landscape, as some aspects show up in multiple cards; the fountain in the Ace of Cups, for instance, shows up in a couple of other Cup cards, the Empress is also in Strength, The Tower shows up in the Ten of Pentacles, the Moon's dogs are wandering around, and I'm sure there are other connections I've missed yet!
This is one of those decks where I could have showed so many, but I have cut it down to a few sample images. The full flickthrough is linked above if you'd like to see the whole deck.
I'm torn about recommending this for a complete beginner. On the one hand, it does follow the RWS style, at least on the front; on the other, it doubles the amount of learning you'd need to do, which might be intimidating for a beginner. Ultimately I think making a beginner aware and allowing them to chose would be best! It certainly adds a lot to a reading; my Querants liked the artwork and thought the reads were accurate and interesting.
This deck is a little out of the ordinary, but definitely worth looking into when you're ready to expand your practise a bit.
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