Deck Review: Hanson Roberts Tarot (Essential Tarot edition)

The Essential Tarot Book and Card Set. White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780880882484. (Link to publisher.)

 

Ace of Cups card

This edition of the deck comes with The Essential Tarot book and the deck. It's one of those sets you can often find in a regular bookstore. Such sets are not usually substantial nor have a good deck, so I was pleasantly surprised to see this one had a copy of the Hanson Roberts Tarot, which many in Tarot consider a classic. This set usually retails for $17.99, but I found it second hand at Half Price Books for $9.99, so I got it. The deck was new to me, and this is a nice and basic set. The kit comes in a gift box with the deck and a very small hardcover book. 

The small book, The Essential Book of Tarot, is very basic. It is arranged as follows: 

• Introduction. This is a short overview of Tarot history and what Tarot is. 
• How to Give a Reading. A short section on how to do a card reading. It gives you minimal guidance to do a reading. It is just enough to get you started. 
• The Ten Card Spread, or Celtic Cross. 
• The Seven Card Spread, or Horseshoe Spread.
• The Major Arcana. This includes a small color image of each card. It also has 2 to 3 sentences for meaning and a sentence for reversed meaning. Meanings may include an astrological reference such as telling us that Justice-XI is associated with Libra.
• The Minor Arcana. Content here is mostly the same style as for the Major Arcana cards. 

The book overall is not substantial. It gives the minimum for basics, so it is OK for beginners. Intermediate and advanced readers will likely ignore this book. Visually, it is a cute little book. 

Six of Pentacles card

The deck by Mary Hanson Roberts is nice and colorful. The images are large and fill the card. The watercolor art provides softness to the images. The deck is colorful but not excessively bright. That soft tone helps in nurturing calm. The faces are very expressive, and the images overall are detailed. This deck is well within Rider Waite Smith (RWS) system; you could consider it a clone. However, if you do not read RWS, the images are rich enough for intuitive readers. 

The deck is excellent for beginners. It is a deck that advanced readers may appreciate as well. In addition, if you want a deck for younger readers, this would be a good choice. For me, this can be a deck I can use for clients who may be a bit afraid of Tart. The images are relatively calm and mellow. The deck does not have nudity nor anything seriously scary. If you want a nice, user friendly, basic Tarot deck that is a reliable readers, this is a good choice. 

Overall, this is a pretty good set. Cards measure about 3 3/4 inches by 2 1/4 inches; cards are a bit smaller than a standard sized Tarot deck. If you have small hands, this may be a good deck for you too. Card back image is reversible. The card stock is a bit on the thin side, so if you do hard riffle shuffling the cards may not be as durable. The cards do have a very light gloss coating, so they slide easily when shuffling. As for the kit overall, it can be a good choice as a gift for a beginner, or for yourself if like me you want a copy of the Hanson Roberts Tarot deck.

In the end, I really like the set. For the deck itself, 5 out of 5 stars as this is a deck I would consider essential, and I would buy a back up copy. For the kit overall, 4 out of 5 stars, mainly for the deck since the small book is fairly optional, but it is better than nothing. 

This kit qualifies for the following 2022 Reading Challenge: