RWS vs Radiant Wise Spirit Tarot Deck Review

Hello, everyone! This is another post in my RWS vs. series. Today I’m looking at the Radiant Wise Spirit Tarot and comparing it against the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck, the Universal Waite Tarot Deck. The Universal Waite has a standard tuck box and little white book that come with most decks. The Radiant Wise Spirit has a much nicer, heavy-duty box and the lid slides off (see image below). The deck too is of a very thick card stock. It is also very shiny. Both of these traits make it a hard to shuffle. The shininess also make the deck very reflective so there is some glare if you’re in a well-lit room as I was. I wish the cards were matte finish like the box and book.

The book that comes with it is of a higher quality and does have a little more information than a typical Lo Scarabeo deck. However, because it does inlcude several languages in the book, it’s not much more information than you would find in a standard little white book that your typical tuck box tarot deck comes with. The back of the tarot cards is a really nice rose print that I like.

The quality of the images in the Radiant Wise Spirit is not very crisp but the shading is very nice. It does look a lot more 3-dimensional than the Universal Waite which can look a little flat. It is a borderless deck and it appears that they’ve zoomed in on the images as well. They used a wide-tipped pen to draw the images in the Radiant Wise Spirit and it makes it look a little messy and busy in many of the images. A fine tip marker would have been much better in this deck. If you compare the detail of both decks, you’ll find the images and detail much more crisp in the Universal Waite. Some of the images in the Radiant Wise Spirit deck are also a little dark.

Some of the coloring choices are a little different and I prefer the colors they’re using in the Radiant Wise Spirit deck but if you’re attached to the coloring in the original drawings, you may not like this. I know some symbolism is attached to the traditional coloring so this may change the meaning of the cards for those of you that read using the color meanings as a part of your readings.

What I’d really like to see is the quality of the detail and drawing in the Universal Waite, with the coloring and shading that’s in the Radiant Wise Spirit deck. I’ve included some images of the deck below. You’ll find the Radiant Wise Spirit images on the left while the Universal Waite is on the right.

As I used the deck I noticed that the cards are sliding all over the place because they are so shiny. They also stick together. A couple were stuck together so tightly that I thought I was going to damage them to get them apart. I used a needle and very carefully worked them apart from each other. I’m afraid that they’ll stick together again as soon as they go back into the box. It’s a really tight fit to get everything back in the box. I don’t think I’ll be using this deck very much. I’m not a fan of how messy many of the images are and I find the deck hard to shuffle. If the cards continue to stick together as much as they already have, I think it’s going to end up staying in the box.

I have to say I’m disappointed. Even looking at the images I included here, that I took myself, I find myself really drawn to this deck. Unfortunately the reality is much more lacking than what it looks like on camera. This isn’t a deck I would recommend. Thanks for stopping by!

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS POST:

Universal Waite Tarot Deck by Stuart R. Kaplan (author), Pamela Colman Smith; Mary Hanson-Roberts (Illustrator)

Radiant Wise Spirit Tarot by Llewellyn Publications, a Lo Scarabeo deck.

Come visit my YouTube Channel for a flip through of the deck here!