Reviews of the Deck

Rachel Pollack wrote about an earlier version of the Kirwan Cards in her 1990 book, The New Tarot, Modern Variations of Ancient Image

"The San Francisco artist Kirwan sees the traditional Tarot as the ‘Royal Road traveled by initiates of the Gnostic path.’ In his own deck, he seeks to build a new road toward understanding the human experience.  In other words, he hopes to broaden the Tarot to apply to ordinary people who do not know or care about esoteric religion. Instead of luring us into abstract or else mythological worlds, the Kirwan Cards attempt to trigger conversations with ourselves through showing us characters and scenes from our own lives."

"This does not mean abandoning Tarot or its concepts. Gary Ross writes that Kirwan has taken ‘great pains’ to ‘preserve the higher wisdom of the Tarot.’ To bring the two levels together - higher wisdom and daily life - Kirwan has ‘reunited’ the Tarot with conventional playing cards."