The Brotherhood of Light Tarot Deck

Special note, February 1, 2010: The Brotherhood of Light tarot deck is reprinting. It is expected back by March, 2010, and will be in COLOR. The publishers (Church of Light) assure me it will be nicely done. I will update the jpg (below) with the new cards as soon as they arrive. - Dave

Sacred Tarot, the Art of Card Reading & the Underlying Spiritual Science,
by C.C. Zain, Brotherhood of Light, (advanced) $21.95

Secret Symbolism of the Tarot, by Doris Chase Doan, AFA, (advanced) $21.95

Number of cards in deck: 78

Measurements: 2.45 x 4.2 inches, or 62 x 106 mm.

Back of card: The Brotherhood of Light logo printed twice: Once upright on the top half, once inverted on the bottom half. These cards may be inverted. The logo consists of the words, "The Brotherhood of Light" in an arc, above a Star of David surmounted by a sun. The backs, like the fronts, are solid white with black ink.

Booklet included: No. There are two extra cards: One promoting the Brotherhood of Light lessons, the second promoting the book about this deck, Sacred Tarot, both by C.C. Zain.

Publisher: Church of Light. Printed in USA.

Comments: Don't adjust your monitors, these cards really are white cards with black ink. As they are very contrasty, I have darkened the images slightly so you can see the full detail. The design of the cards is unique to the author. The Major Arcana cards look vaguely like earlier tarots. The face cards are his own invention. The pips are simply the right number of symbols, with stars. The stars have meaning, though I'm not prepared to guess what.

For an explanation of this deck, see the author's Sacred Tarot, The Art of Card Reading and the Underlying Spiritual Science. This is not the usual book. It's one of the most serious metaphysical books ever written on tarot. As with all the Church of Light materials, it's heavily Egyptian, which might be of interest to many of you.

This isn't your average deck, but then, it was never intended to be average. This deck was unavailable for several years (1999 to 2003, if memory serves). When it finally reappeared in October 2003, the Church of Light had this to say about it:

We're very proud of and happy with the newly drawn cards. Although the images have been completely redrawn, they remain faithful to the original Brotherhood of Light deck and the C.C. Zain Sacred Tarot text. Their clarity is remarkable and those of you who have been using the older version of the cards will be pleased to find things on them you probably didn t realize was there!

We know it took a long time and we apologize to all of you for the frustration it caused. The story behind the necessity to redraw the cards is simply that the original printer passed away and his wife discarded all the masters without notifying anyone. Loosing the masters resulted in degraded images that were no longer acceptable in detail or aesthetic.

Because of our desire to create a beautiful new deck that is a joy to use as well as a profound learning tool, we exercised great care in their creation. The standards that guided us were faithfulness to the BofL symbolism in both the original deck and The Sacred Tarot text; faithfulness to the Egyptian style to which our tradition is linked and mindfulness that that we wanted to create images in electronic format that can withstand the test of time. Another factor that extended the time it actually took to produce the images was that we worked in a committee of three. Two of the persons have backgrounds in archaeology and have studied ancient culture. As you may well imagine, we had some lengthy debates over details that were sometimes difficult to execute or find agreement. As an example, one of those discussions revolved around the dogs and the clouds in Arcanum XVIII & though it took what seemed like a ridiculously long time to come to agreement I think this card has turned out to be one of my personal favorites.

Someone asked it they should order more than one deck just in case there is a need to reprint again. I grimaced a little because I understood the frustration behind the question&the answer is that what all of us just experienced is rare and (at least in our life time) will not be repeated&we now have masters over which we will just wave our magic wand and poof! Well & actually it won't be quite that easy but compared to this process it will seem like waving a magic wand!

Again, thank you for your patience&and for those whose patience was sorely tested, thanks for your spirit of endurance!

Sincerely,

Vicki Brewer

For The Church of Light

PS A word about coloring the cards. As it turns out the printing process requires that the card stock have a minimal amount of coating to keep the print lines from rubbing off. We experimented and found that markers seem to work fine. We will continue to experiment with the various types of markers and will share what we learn. Also, if when you order your cards and want to share what you learn about the coloring process we will be pleased to pass it along.

The Astrology Center of America

207 Victory Lane, Bel Air, MD 21014
Tel: 410-638-7761; Toll-free (orders only): 800-475-2272

	Tarot Home	Tarot Decks	Tarot Books	Astrology Home	E-Mail: Dave