Krapsakas

I got a gift card from Apollo (one of the leading bookstores in Estonia) as a gift a while ago.
For years I had a tradition of buying myself a deck of tarot or oracle cards for my birthday.
But then I skipped a few years because I felt like I had already accumulated a lot of cards and I mostly used only one specific deck.
When I got this gift card, my first thought was to go and buy several decks right away. Here is my favorite of the three decks.

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“Product Spotlight” items featured on the Krapsakas blog are personally purchased by the author unless clearly stated otherwise. No collaboration, sponsorship, or paid promotion has been made with the brand or seller.

All reviews reflect personal opinion, experience, and honest impressions.
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First impression

High quality, expensive, and beautiful! I don’t know why so much emphasis and quality have been placed on the thick, strong case with a magnet, but it is really nice.
First of all, you have to slide the pocket out of the package. And inside the pocket are the oracle cards and the guidebook.

Name: The Citadel A Fantasy Oracle – Modern Tarot Library
Author: Fen Inkwright
Publication date: 2 May 2023
Publisher: ‎ Sterling Ethos
Cards in a deck: 60
Card explanatory guidebook: included, easy and understandable to handle
Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 14.1 cm
Language: English
Price: 29.99 U.S $ / 38.99 CAN $ marked on the deck. I bought it for 30.95 €.

The story of the cards:
At the top of a cliff stands a city. White stone walls gleam in the sun, and banners snap lazily in the breeze. This is the Citadel, home of fates and possibilities, host to remarkable people whose own stories provide an insight into the nature of humanity itself…

Quality

The card and book cover are really high quality. The magnet is strong and the cards stay securely in the packaging.
But the quality of the cards themselves leaves a little to be desired. It’s not terribly bad, but I’ve seen cards made of much better and stronger material on much cheaper cards.
I don’t know what the grammage of the sheet is. They are not very flexible, but nothing super strong either.
The printing on the cards is beautiful! Some of the cards are embossed, or have a gold pressed shine.
However, after using the cards for about a month now. Not daily, but often enough, I have noticed that the black color on the back of the cards has started to darken the light part of the cards. Which is sad, because the cards themselves are beautiful.

Disain

Really nice! I like that each card has its own story + it says briefly what the card means below. So that if you want, you can read a long explanation of the card in the guidebook, but you can also quickly read the general idea below.

It stands out that effort has been put into designing and drawing the images of the cards.

I really like that on the one hand, these cards are not ordinary. They have their own story, about the city of Citadele and those who passes through there.
At the same time, the messages of these cards are simple. That is, they are easy to apply to your own private life.
I don’t like when the cards have too rigid instructions. I feel too boxed in. At the same time, I still need some guidance on where to look.
So these cards don’t tell you everything in advance, but they give you direction. If you can read them well, they are quite specific guides.

Reading cards

This is the real reason why I like these cards! They are simple and easy to read. At least for me.
They have a beautiful design. They come with a guidebook that has a table of contents and a description of each card.
So let’s say the name of the card is “Garden”. You open the table of contents in the book, look up “Garden” and see what page it is on and you can quickly find the right page by page number.
Which is a big plus in my opinion, because often these explanation books are without numbers. You just have to page through one by one until you find the right place. Super annoying and time-consuming.

Added bonus – the book also shows the description of the reversed card meaning right away.

Additional information – I look at the instructions for the cards depending on the moment. Sometimes I do, other times I don’t. But if I just got a new deck of cards and it’s not a regular 78-card tarot deck, but an oracle or something similar, I first read the instructions for the cards until they become clearer to me.

Holding cards in hand

At first, I thought the cards would be hard to shuffle or uncomfortable to hold because of their unusual shape, but they are comfortable to hold like other cards of the same size. As an additional note, I have large palms, size 8-8.5.

I noticed on a forum somewhere on the internet that someone was getting their cards stuck together when shuffling because their cards were made of matte material. I haven’t noticed this problem with this deck. The shiny reliefs probably help.
The cards slide well when shuffling.

Personal verdict

This has become my second-favorite deck of cards. I probably use it 1-3 times a week.
I really like that on the one hand, these cards are not ordinary. They have their own story, about the city of Citadele and those who passes through it.
At the same time, the messages of these cards are simple. That is, they are easy to put into your own personal life.
In addition, the cards must also be beautiful and comfortable to hold – and these cards do all that.

Final snapshot

Although the black part of the card design starts to fade over time, the thickness of the cards is not the thickest, but thick enough.
Then I recommend buying them. At least for those who like cards that have frames but no borders and are beautiful and easy to read.
Anyway, I am happy with the purchase and would buy them again if I didn’t already have them.

With love,
Krapsakas Agnes

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