i picked both of these for their "Pow!" aries sort of feeling, to welcome in the spring and the new astrological year. but it quickly turned out i see them more as magical tools than just plain old tarot decks. the effect was twofold:
1. i followed a rabbit hole of thoth creators that pointed me back towards mysticism, which resulted in a renewed, inspired spiritual practice
2. when i wanted to just fool around with some cards, i reached instead for regular old playing cards, so that was quite fun.
in effect, the month itself wasn't all that much about tarot. as for my deck impressions - both of these are "good" decks. i used the ritual tarot a bit for introspective readings and what Esther from mindful tarot calls "wobble readings". i love the imagery, there's something primal and universal about it. using images of ancient art and artifacts together with landscape photography makes the art feel like it taps into a broad current of humanity. there's a sense of belonging and togetherness, both with other people and with the earth itself. at the same time the predominant colors seem to be blue and black, which to me grants it a bit of a distance, a coolness, space to breathe. it's both earth and sky. it's belonging but not in a cloying, naive way? not sure how to say it better. less "love and light" and more realistic?
the thoth still seems to me like the "purest" esoteric tarot. everything about its images simply reveals and underlines the essence and structure of (esoteric) tarot. because of that it seems to be suited to a particular type of magical work, or certain types of questions. ones which i'm not really asking. this makes it tricky to place in the year's rankings. on one hand i can say: if you're not asking the types of questions the thoth deals with, then you don't really need the tarot, period. on the other side of that same coin - it's (to me) a very specialized tool, so it's hard to see it as a candidate for the kind of universal reader i'm looking for... i guess time will tell. worst case scenario - it'll go in the packed away box of decks i'm keeping despite having no intention of using them.
