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The Chinese artist and designer Masa September published two editions of the Silhouettes Tarot, and a third is on its way. There are slight differences between the two editions. The most obvious one: the first edition has borders, the second is borderless. My own copy is the borderless 2nd edition, and this is the one this review refers to. There is also a negative edition with a reverse color scheme (silhouettes are white instead of black, bright colors are dark).
The deck comes with a lwb in English and Mandarin, with a short foreword (that encourages “self-realization without restriction” through the use of this tarot deck), and short but poignant explanations for every card. There’s a short description, upright and reversed meanings. Only one spread is mentioned in the lwb, the Celtic Cross. There is no deck-specific spread offered.
The backs of the cards are fully reversible, with a black-and-grey, negative-positive pattern that combines flowers and chevrons, a bit like a Harlequin costume.
The card stock is strong, smooth, matte and flexible. The cards are on the thin side but hold up very well to use. In some cards, there seems to have occurred minimal bleeding of black color toward the edges – hardly noticeable and probably only a problem for borderless cards. I edged mine in black anyway. The overall production quality of this deck is in my opinion high. The deck is easy and pleasant to shuffle, hold and spread. There is no stickiness, and the edges are perfectly smooth.
The deck follows the RWS tradition: VIII is Strength and XI is Justice. The major arcana have traditional names; the minor suits are called Wands, Chalices, Swords and Pentacles. The card names are added in simple, unobtrusive white writing at the bottom of the cards.
There is an bonus Happy Squirrel card, a charming addition that the reader can decide to use or not. Its interpretation can be found at the end of the lwb.
The style of this deck is unique. Each card consists of a silhouette figure and scene, set against a colorful background. There are no cards without living creatures; there is life everywhere except for the Death card. Birds or little animals, mechanical toys, fairytale figures or fairies, magicians and tiny children – and they all look very cute. So cute that I was initially skeptical and feared that cuteness overload would make this deck sugary or unreadable. We’ll come to the question of readability later!
These figures enact little scenes, most of them are in motion and are about to do something, and they’re all surrounded by nature motifs – mostly from nature, like flowers, trees, branches, thorns, stars, but also man-made umbrellas, tools etc. These are often in motion, too – branches growing in a spiral, flowers hugging a figure, thorns tearing into the picture or water rushing through it.
So each card has a rich silhouetted arrangement of at least one figure in an expressive pose, surrounded by “props” that make for interesting, dynamic compositions.
Even on a simple one-color background, these silhouetted scenes would be quite expressive and strong. But the artist has outdone himself with the multi-colored backgrounds. They’re very expressive, too, and the color choices reflect the element depicted: Wands are in strong reds and oranges, Chalices in shades of lighter and darker blues, Swords in somber purples, and Pentacles in rich greens.
The color backgrounds of the majors are chosen individually, though with reference to their elementary associations, and are especially beautiful and strong.
These backgrounds have intricate negative-positive patterns, i.e., the silhouette technique is used masterfully both in the silhouettes themselves and in the background. It is obvious that the artist has produced them digitally and not with scissors, but his technique is unique. It is definitely based on traditional folklore paper cuts, on the silhouette art of the 18th century and the wonderful silhouette animations of the great Lotte Reiniger. Indeed, the deck’s similarity to these magical fairy tale animations of my childhood attracted me immediately to the deck.
The cards are, as you can understand from my description, extremely busy – they burst with energy. The clever games with positive and negative elements give joy to the observer. You will always find something new on a card, even though the images are easily understood and jump to our eyes. There is great visual pleasure in the apparent simplicity of gnomes and fairies, and the artistic sophistication of the silhouette technique and its interplay of positive and negative space.
Now how do these cards read? Quite simply: they read magnificently. This deck is so easy to read it’s incredible. I don’t use any elaborate spreads with this deck, I just put one card next to the other and let the story come up. I read somewhere that Enid Blyton conceived her books by turning her mind into a stage where her figures acted the whole story out and she just followed the action and wrote it down. Well, the Silhouettes deck does the same. It turns into a storyboard, and you can see the changing scenes, the actors, and their action.
These cards interact with each other in an uncanny way and sometimes I get this “Toy Story” feeling that the little puppets and fairies come alive and enter each other’s card. The whirls and swirls, branches and thorns, sun and stars of the background with their clear, atmospheric color choices of the different cards in a spread react to each other, complement or contradict each other, and often continue each other. You get movement, direction, and you recognize patterns. Living, moving patterns.
The techniques for reading a spread as a whole, as presented by Deborah Lipp in her book “Tarot Interactions”, just jump at you when you look at these cards. I can’t say how the bordered editions read but I’m glad I have the borderless one. Its cards connect seamlessly for me.
I have read with this deck for skeptical teenagers who just wanted to have a laugh but were drawn into the world of this deck and found that the cards told them something. The language of colors, shapes, composition and movement is easy to understand, and the little creatures on the card invite empathy.
I’m certain that this deck, like any other, is not for everybody. The cuteness, the children’s book figures, the business and strong colors are not everybody’s cup of tea. But if you worry that such a pretty, colorful, playful, dynamic deck doesn’t address the difficult cards of the deck, you’re in for a surprise. It does. Loneliness, sadness, vulnerability, loss and grief and anger, aggression, indecision and fear - they’re all expressed clearly and without flinching.
This is a very special and user-friendly deck. It has become immediately one of my favorites when I received it, and it’s a good deck to use for work with clients who find traditional esoteric symbols intimidating. Personally, I can say the Silhouettes deck is my deck of choice for shadow work, and it performs very well.
I can definitely recommend this deck for people who feel attracted to the deck but are afraid it’s an unreadable designer piece or gimmick. It’s not. It’s a real tarot deck, and it gives strong readings with clear insights.
I make a mixed stack, some of the cards back to back, others face to face, in small groups. And then rubber band around the deck. That way, at least they don't warp any further. I'll try to find a picture...