Cards - Llewellyn's Classic Tarot (Llewellyn Books)

Llewellyn's Classic Tarot. Llewellyn Books, USA. Full divinatory tarot deck, Mediterranean suited, 78 single-headed cards. Size: 71mm x 118mm.

Deck make-up:
Trumps: 0-21.
Pentacles (i.e. coins), wands (i.e. clubs), cups, swords: A, 2-10, foot jack ("page"), mounted jack ("knight"), queen, king.

Llewellyn's Classic Tarot is basically a redrawing of the classic Rider-Waite-Smith tarot of 1909, taking full advantage of the extra detail afforded by the finer lines and less-coarse halftoning allowed by modern technology. It was released in 2014. American tarot author, Barbara Moore, is given overall credit for this deck, but the art itself is by Eugene Smith. Moore's role is thus presumably as the overseer of the contents of the artwork. She also wrote the accompanying book, Your Tarot, Your Way.

The extra clarity afforded by this redesign (which is aided by it also being larger in size than its forerunner) really does bring out extra detail in the RWS design not really apparent before. I've given a few examples in the notes below of the way this deck unmuddles Pamela Colman Smith's original artwork. After looking through the cards, I really did end up noticing things I had missed for years. You can compare with the original RWS cards on my page here. There are also, of course, "halfway house" decks available. These don't go as far as actually redrawing the artwork per se but seem to be retraced versions of the original PCS outlines (chiefly to make them finer and less clumsy) with new colour fills – for example, U.S. Games' Universal Waite Tarot Deck (by Mary Hanson-Roberts) or their Radiant Rider-Waite Tarot (by Virginijus Poshkus).

The deck is available in two formats: full size and a mini/compact version. It is also available bundled with the book mentioned above as part of the Tarot Made Easy box set.

I should point out that my copy of the deck featured quite a few tiny white blemishes (a technical printing problem where a wet, just-printed card is stacked and adheres to the card in front, then pulls off specks of the design when the two are separated later). I've noticed this issue before in other decks and it seems to be indicative of the cheaper end of Chinese printing. I've cleaned a lot of this up in the scans below when it becomes distracting.

In the galleries below, you can optionally choose to also display the original Rider-Waite-Smith pictures alongside, so you can compare the two.

Comparative images shown (on the left: the Llewellyn's Classic card; on the right, the Rider-Waite-Smith original): No Yes

Trumps

The Death card deviates from the Waite recipe a little: the figure of Death isn't on a horse and there isn't a pair of towers in the background. This is strange as mostly this deck is about bringing extra detail into play/view, rather than less. The stork on The Star card is an example of the former – I never noticed it on the Pamela Colman Smith version of the design. Unlike the PCS version, the sun doesn't have a face here, but the moon seems to feature Captain Jean-Luc Picard looking down!
My favourite card in the pack is The Tower.

Pentacles (i.e. coins)

The bull motifs on the king is another example where this design brings out more detail missed on the PCS deck. And isn't the 10 here far better than the hopelessly muddled original version?

Wands (i.e. clubs)

Another detail I had previously missed were the boats on the 3. They are little more than a couple of distant squiggles on the original.

Cups

At least two more cards here are considerably less muddled than the PCS drawings: the 6 and the queen.
Note the added bird (in the cup) on the 4.

Swords

The 3 has added barbed wire and a scorched landscape – reminiscent, perhaps, of WWI?
Elsewhere, we can actually see the two passengers on the 6; I preferred the hidden figures on the original. Meanwhile, on the 9, the individual seems to just have a slight headache compared to the feel of "utter desolation" on the original.
The 7 is the card which is the most different between this redrawing and the original PCS deck: here the man with the swords is climbing a mountain rather than just slinking along.

Extras

Documents

The deck on this page is one masterminded by a Golden Dawn (or its offshoots) member, or designed to adhere to their concepts of tarot. A list of other major such decks is given below (scroll/swipe to the right if needed):

Deck	Author/s	Artist/s (if diff.)	Release year	"Official" guide book	Notes
Marseilles tarot / Tarot de Marseille	unknown	various	15th century	The Tarot: Its Occult Signification, Use In Fortune-Telling, And Method Of Play, Etc.	The booklet cited (written in 1888 by Samuel L MacGregor Mathers of the Golden Dawn) gives "official" Golden Dawn divinatory meanings when using the Marseilles tarot (referred to at that time as the Italian tarot). In 1889, Swiss occultist and artist, Oswald Wirth, designed a well-known tarot specifically for esoteric use with his own versions of the trumps in the Marseilles pattern.
The Rider-Waite[-Smith] Tarot	Arthur Edward Waite	Pamela Colman Smith	1909	The [Pictorial] Key To The Tarot
Builders Of The Adytum (BOTA) Tarot	Paul Foster Case	Jessie Burns Parke	1931	The Tarot: A Key To The Wisdom Of The Ages or Highlights Of Tarot [NB doesn't cover pip cards]	Revised version of Rider-Waite with some "corrected" trumps and courts, and simple pip cards. Trumps also issued in colour form; full deck is b&w.
Thoth Tarot Deck	Aleister Crowley	Lady Frieda Harris	1972 (painted 1938-43)	The Book Of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot): A Short Essay On The Tarot Of The Egyptians
The Golden Dawn Tarot (aka The Whare Ra deck)	Israel Regardie	Robert Wang	1978	An Introduction To The Golden Dawn Tarot
The Hermetic Tarot	Godfrey Dowson		1979	Only the Little White Booklet that comes with the deck.	Black & white.
Golden Dawn Magical Tarot (aka The New Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot)	Chic Cicero & Sandra Tabatha Cicero (with Israel Regardie)		1991	Golden Dawn Magical Tarot / The New Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot	"Ritual" was the earlier name. Do not confuse this deck with the one below – they are different!
The Magical Tarot Of The Golden Dawn	Pat Zalewski & Chris Zalewski	Skip Dudchous & David Sledzinski	2022	The Magical Tarot Of The Golden Dawn: Revised Ed.	Earlier editions had art by Jonathon A Pierce instead. This deck is not to be confused with the similarly named deck above!

Links to other Rider-Waite-Smith tarot pages