THE CELTIC DRAGON TAROT by D. J. Conway and Lisa Hunt A tarot deck review by Errol McLendon, CTM, CTI

Let me begin by saying, I am not a "dragon" person and tend to avoid decks which I consciously don't feel fall within my realm of knowledge. For this reason, I took quite a while to acquire this deck. Something about the "feel" of the artwork kept pulling me back to this deck, so I took the plunge and, after having worked with this deck, both for personal meditation and for readings for myself and other people, I find it is one of my most communicative decks.

If you are like me and are somewhat unversed on dragon lore, the accompanying book brings you up to speed in a concise, humorous, yet not preachy introduction. Not only did the focused information give me all I needed to know to start using the deck in three well written pages, the author's enthusiasm and affection for the subject immediately had me flipping to the bibliography to plan my further reading on the subject.

The illustrations on this deck are done primarily in soft pastels reminiscent of Victorian children's books. Mixed with this softer fairy tale feeling is the dynamics of fantasy artwork in the depiction of the dragons. The illustrator's use of soft borders adds to the dreamy quality and helps tremendously with mediation work as you "step into" the card.

The structure of the deck is more Wiccan, shifting the Wands and Swords in their elemental correspondences. The author does this to emphasize the ritual mental qualities of Wands and the energetic, active energy of Swords. The other change is that the Heirophant and the Devil are replaced by the High Priest and Chains, respectively in order to make the deck adhere more closely to Celtic tradition. These minor changes did not slow me down in my incorporation of this deck into my stable of working decks, but I always find SUBTLE changes (with valid reasons) to be refreshing.

This is my favorite deck for working with elemental readings. The four species of dragons represented in the four suites correspond exactly to the four elements. Visually this gives me an immediate three-dimensional, visceral environment for my elemental readings. These correspondences carry over into the Major Arcana as well; however, they are sometimes mixed and not always so obvious.

The only situation I have run into with this deck is client distraction. The illustrations are so beautiful, I have had instances where the client is more interested in looking at the images from an artwork point of view, rather than a symbolic perspective. The author does specify that this deck should not be used for reversals and that aspect of the deck design does cut down on this distraction since all the cards are upside down from the querants perspective.

I applaud the designer and author for staying true to the traditional card meanings. I have to admit that I didn't immediately see the some of the cards as following the traditional interpretations, but much of that was due to my lack of knowledge of dragon lore. Anticipating this possible lack of knowledge, Mr. Conway has written not only devinatory meanings of the individual cards, he has also written a brief description and background of what is going on in each card. This serves not only to educate the non-dragoneer, but also gives several layers which I found helpful in "seeing" the traditional meanings from the dragon's point of view. My initial impression, that these were pretty, but one-dimensional cards, was blown apart dramatically as I discovered the heart and soul of each card. I can't remember when I have had such an enlightening experience learning a new deck.

The Celtic Dragon deck and book (ISBN 1-56718-182-1), published by Llewellyn Publications out of St. Paul, MN, is a wonderful addition to your Tarot collection. As an art deck alone, it is worth the money, but it is a very powerful divination, magick and meditation tool. It is a comforting deck for querants (soft colors, no shocking scenes), a efficient tool for elemental readers, and an invitation to get to know dragons on a personal level for those of us uninitiated into the splendid world of the scaled messengers,

"THE CELTIC DRAGON TAROT",
by D. J. Conway and Lisa Hunt
© Llewellyn Publications
Images used by kind permission from Llewellyn Publications.