Tarot of The Magical Forest by Lo Scarabeo

Throughout human history and across every culture, there have been legends, myths, and tales of talking animals. This delightful Tarot takes advantage of this by using animals on all of the cards, adding to the Rider-Waite-Smith symbolism that was already there.

The Major Arcana cleverly features sheep, lions, bears, pigs, hedgehogs, and kangaroos, adding a wonderful feel to the cards that is happy and basic. The Strength card, which shows a lamb and a lion nuzzling each other, has to be the sweetest version of this card ever. The Sun card shows a baby kangaroo in his mother's pouch in a field of sunflowers under a huge sun happily waving a little red flag with innocent, blissful joy.

The Minor Arcana suits, while traditionally named, each feature a specific animal: Cups have bunnies, Pentacles have foxes, Wands have frogs, and Swords have cats. These choices brilliantly represent the suit qualities. Bunnies bring forth feelings of warmth and sweetness. Foxes are thought to be clever. Cats can be seen as intelligent and emotionally distant. Frogs, well, they like games (leap frog, anyone?).

So the Four of Cups shows a bunny under a tree with three cups in the foreground and one being offered by a hand emerging from a cloud (like the RWS). This bunny has her eyes closed and is very much at peace, using creative visualization to manifest what she wants.

This refreshing, whimsical, and wonderful deck will surprise you every time you use its immediately evocative images.

Hsu Chi Chun, art by Leo Tang, 78 cards, 66x120mm; Instructions. Multilingual edition.