The Cook's

The record

Predicated on the idea that the kitchen is the "heart of the home" where people gather together for spiritual as well as physical nourishment, The Cook's Tarot is a vibrant deck loosely based on the Rider Waite Smith deck with some clever culinary re-imaginings. Though one may suspect that the whole foodie/food-as-metaphor could become strained, this is a remarkably consistent, fully illustrated tarot. This is a standard tarot in that it has 78 cards, 22 Major and 56 Minor Arcana. There are no renamed cards, and the suits are Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles; with the usual suspects - King, Queen, Knight, and Page as Court cards. While most of the images do not directly reference scenes from traditional decks, colours, symbols, and mis-en-scene typical of the Rider Waite Smith deck are recognisable throughout the Cook’s Tarot. There is a sly humour to many of the cards – there is the bathroom scales of Justice, the piles of teetering dishes and collapsed cake of The Tower; in The Lovers a snake coils – around a coffee pot; and a sphinx obstructs a shopping trolley in a surreal supermarket of The Chariot. Swords take on many guises – paring knives, skewers, spatulas, and toothpick

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