Cards - RWS Panorama (Deckstiny)

RWS Panorama tarot. Deckstiny, Thailand? Full divinatory tarot deck, Mediterranean suited, 80 single-headed cards. Size: 70mm x 120mm approx.

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.

We live in a portrait-or-landscape world, as anybody who's printed out a document or image from the web will know. A splendid idea, therefore, was to reconfigure the famous Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) tarot deck from its usual portrait mode into a new landscape version. Sounds simple, on the face of it, but this does mean adding new art at the sides of the cards which has to segue seamlessly with Pamela Colman Smith's original work in the centre. (You can see the original RWS cards on my page here.) The resultant deck, by Deckstiny, is the same size as its forerunner, which is a nice touch.

The designer/s behind the project aren't too clear; the box says: Author: Mate Horonumber; Artwork: Oomsin PP.; Artist: Hpn.boo. Like so many tarots, it appears to have started life as a Kickstarter initiative.

In the vast majority of cases, the idea works fine. There are a few instances where the cards look a bit vacant at the sides (see the hermit card or the 4 of pentacles, for example) or unbalanced (see 8 of pentacles or 8 of swords). As a way of making up for this, we sometimes get "value added" extra imagery at the sides which the original deck didn't have (for example, the lighthouse and dolphins on the king of cups, the windmill on the 7 of pentacles, or the boat on the page of cups). I know little about the mystical side of tarot but I gather these additions make sense to the informed.

The idea seems to have started with a Wide Angle version of RWS which expands the original images on all four sides. However, very many of those cards look particularly vacant at the top (i.e. sky, on most cards) and aesthetically are not very good (though this deck was published and is available in two sizes). The Panorama deck shown here appears to just be horizontal middle slice of the artwork produced for the Wide Angle deck, but it all works far better with this middle slice presented on its own.

It takes a fair bit for me to be impressed by a non-pedigree tarot deck, but this one manages it – it's traditional yet modern but retains respect for the original. Bravo. Get it while you can!

Trumps

Pentacles (i.e. coins)

Wands (i.e. clubs)

Cups

A bit of an "oops" Photoshop error is visible on the lower right-hand side of the last card. Also, I'm not sure the added lamppost(?) on the page is temporally correct.

Swords

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