By Lalia Wilson
Apps, the software you can install on your smartphone or tablet, allow you to take your tarot cards with you wherever you go. In some ways more versatile than cards, in other ways less, apps are an important and inexpensive way for many of us to keep multiple decks at our fingertips. I have three new apps to share: The Tabula Mundi Tarot created by M.M. Meleen, the Fellowship of the Fool Tarot by Helena Domenic, and the Everyday Witch Tarot by Deborah Blake and Elizabeth Alba. These decks are different from each other, but that is part of the beauty of having them available—you can see how different tarotists visualize and interpret the cards.
Each of these apps is $3.99 or less, much cheaper than the physical decks! I’ve bought whole decks for prices ten times this and discovered that most of the cards were so-so as far as them speaking to me. Here you can check out a deck, and if you really must have the cards in your hands, you know you like the cards before you buy.
I imagine that you may have questions about apps instead of cards for a tarot reading. Yes, the apps work! That same element of chance and synchronicity that works for the cards will work in the app, too. At least that’s my experience.
I’ve been asked about the spreads available for these decks. The Tabula Mundi has 22 built-in spreads and an option to enter a spread that you have drawn elsewhere. The Fellowship of the Fool has as many. The Everyday Witch Tarot only has 20 built-in spreads and an option to enter an external spread. This flexibility should suit just about any tarot enthusiast!
The real advantage to tarot apps is the immediate ability to refer to the creator’s words about that particular card. You don’t have to go find the book or books that came with the deck and then get to the right page, you just touch the card and the appropriate text comes up. The Tabula Mundi deck, in particular, is almost a teaching text as it compares each card in the Thoth tradition with that in the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition including all the symbols and colors.
I chose a “favorite” card from each deck to illustrate the decks and I surprised myself as two are the Five of Cups. Whoever heard of anyone favoring the Five of Cups? Well, what I like is how each of the examples expresses the despair of this card, yet in completely different ways.
The Tabula Munda Five of Cups is a parched lake bed—love and emotion, symbolized by water, are absent.
The Everyday Witch Tarot Five of Cups shows a young witch with plenty to enjoy, yet she’s focused on what is not present.
For the Fellowship of the Fool, I chose the Adept of Cups. She is the equivalent of the King of Cups, as royalty in this deck is represented as the Apprentice (Page), Journeyman (Knight), Master (Queen), and the Adept (King). The Adept is the highest expression of each suit, showing clearly how one progresses to mastery and beyond in each of the four realms.
May you have fun exploring your own tarot apps!