I wasn't really sure where I should put this since these are about oracle cards but it's a review. So I may put this review here but with a link of this in the tarot section... Not sure yet
Tea Leaf Fortune Cards by Rae Hepburn
Illustrated by Shawna Alexander
For a Preview of the book click here.
About
It’s a Set of 200 round, watercolor illustrated set of fortune cards. This is really a true, innovative oracle set. It comes with a 94 page book that that goes over how to divine using tea leafs or tea leaf fortune cards. It also comes with a “swirling” bag to make shuffling the deck to resemble swirling the teacup.
This deck was made so that everyone could do Tea Leaf readings without having to master the art of tea lead reading or for those who struggle with seeing images in their tea cups from by tea leaves.
It describes three spreads-
The Coming year Method
The Coming Week method
The Astral House Pyramid method
The book also goes over the Tea Leaf symbol and their meanings.
The cardstock is medium sturdiness and the cards are between a matte/semi-gloss. There are three types of cards;
Months (12): used to create structure for a yearly reading and are purple
Astral House (6): used to focus on a certain area in life like love, marriage, career, etc. and are green
The Symbol Cards (182): used for the reading and are red
The packaging is also very nice and has two wells in it to divide and hold the cards in along with the book and swirling bag. Keeps everything organized and in one place.
What I Liked
The cards are really beautiful and they each have a brief meaning right on the card too so it’s not necessary to look up every card (but the book has a more in depth explanation of it). This deck is truly very unique considering that it has a lot of cards and they are round so they resemble a round teacup.
Another thing that I liked about this system is that it provides a specific time frame unlike most decks. From days, weeks, months and years. Usually with tarot, it’s past, present or future but not when in the future. Since this does a time frame, It would be easier to see how accurate this system is. All you have to to do is wait and see if something happens that the reading said would. I'm intrigued to test it out.
I love how the book went over both forms of divination, using actual tea leaves and these fortune cards. It’s a small book, but the writing is very concise so it makes it easier to learn and understand.
These cards could also be used in conjunction with other tarot decks. Like do a reading then pull a tarot card for advice on a certain card in the reading.
What I Did Not Like
I don’t care for the “swirling” bag that it came with to aid in shuffling/mixing the deck. It’s this cheap material that frays very quickly (and they are hard to mix in the bag because its so light and the card are heavy). I’m going to sew myself a sturdier bag to swirl these cards in. It’s not necessary to have the bag because you could swirl these on a table (makes cleanup a longer process though) but they are pretty much impossible to shuffle like a regular deck of cards considering they are round and there’s so many of them.
I also wish the book went into a little more detail when it came to explaining how the time aspect of this system was set up. I found myself having questions about it that she really didn't address in the book.
I'm sure this wouldn't bother everyone but for me it's kinda of an annoyance. The book's binding is very tight so its very stiff and hard to keep the book open when you set it down to reference from it.
Rae Hepburn doing a Reading with her deck.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=O5o8vHUvU3k
I’d give this 5 out of 5 stars!
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