Magical Hours Tarot Review By Beth Allen

 

Wands: Sky lanterns guide a hot air balloon covered in flowers at dawn.

Pentacles: At midday a sunflower watches a woman balance on a rock at sea.

Cups: The sky softens at twilight and fish are seen swimming in clouds above three women sipping tea. 

Swords: A woman climbs a ladder leading up to a crescent moon in the night sky.

The traditional RWS system and surrealism collide into one in the Magical Hours Tarot, paradoxically making it a straightforward reader as well as a psychological tool to unpack.

And why not?

Artists and psychologists have long understood the power of tarot to bridge the conscious and subconscious — what confronts us in the light and what is obscured in shadow.

The Magical Hours asks us to follow what we see and to believe what is hidden. 

The art is surreal and dreamlike, overflowing with visual nuance and symbolism. Most of the cards have a muted color palette, which gives them an even dreamier quality. 

As the name suggests, the deck also offers a unique perspective on time. Each Major Arcana card depicts a specific time of day and a plant association. The journey begins with The Fool at 6 a.m. and morning glory flowers in bloom, then continues on through a 24-hour period, ending at 5:45 a.m. with The World and the seed.

This completed cycle emphasizes the circular nature of time, not the linear, and the plants remind us of the connection between everything — beginnings, endings, and life’s return to beginnings with the seed.

The natural focus on the sky as we visually move through the hours only amplifies the airy feeling of an internal, emotional landscape. 

In addition, each of the Majors offers an action that can be taken, for example, The Devil represents 9 p.m. and the intoxicating tuberose, with this suggestion for action: 

“What habit would you like to change? Start doing that today. It can even be a small thing that will slowly lead you to bigger change.”

The Minor Arcana and Courts follow time and growth in a broader sense, with each suit representing a different time of day or night: Wands are dawn, Pentacles are midday, Cups are twilight, and Swords are night. Plants that correspond to those times are scattered throughout each of the suits and listed in the guidebook.

Written by Cecilia Lattari with art by Fabiana Belmonte, the 78-card deck comes with a 128-page illustrated guidebook. Published by U.S. Games Systems, the cards are glossy and larger than standard size at 3”x5”, so riffle shuffling can be difficult for smaller hands.

There is some diversity in the deck, however, my one complaint is that there is little body diversity and no age diversity.

This deck is stunning, but there’s much more going on than meets the eye. Adhering to the RWS system but with its own vision, Magical Hours offers the reader many options for interpretation and many different paths to explore, whether under the glare of a midday sun or seeking illumination in darkness.