Celtic

The third John Matthews deck in this catalog, and the three together map his method: take a body of lore he knows at scholarly depth, and build the instrument the material asks for. The Arthurian legends got a full tarot, Camelot's characters got a quest oracle, and the broader Celtic tradition gets this forty-card oracle from 2006, a compact frame for material that spreads across myth cycles, nature lore and the poetic tradition rather than following one narrative. Forty cards is enough to give the tradition its range of figures and forces without the padding that dilutes larger oracles, and Matthews's framework keeps each card anchored in sources rather than in Celtic-flavored invention, the besetting sin of the genre. It suits readers of Celtic mythology, practitioners of the traditions it draws from, and anyone who has learned to trust the Matthews imprint as a guarantee the lore is real. Readers who want their Celtic material romantic and unsourced have a hundred other decks for that.