Beautiful Tarot HD

Get a quick Tarot reading anytime without carrying your deck of cards around with you everywhere you go with Jonathan Miller's Beautiful Tarot App. Touch technology on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad makes it possible.

Luckily I became aware of this indeed "beautiful" Apple App when it was being offered as a free download on World Tarot Day, May 25, 2010. This review is for the second version of the App Beautiful Tarot HD which was created for the iPad. The original version Beautiful Tarot is available for anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch.

The design of the application is really delightful. You can almost forget that you are not handling a real deck of cards when you're interacting with this program. The primary Tarot deck used in the App is the classic Rider-Waite Deck, but you can also choose to do a life lesson reading with only the Major Arcana from either of two alternate decks, Tarot de Marseilles or Charles VI or Le Gringonneur. Choose from a variety of background colors and ten different card back designs. I'm fond of the Art Nouoveau design, also the Pentacles design. Before you read your cards you can shuffle and reshuffle the cards as often as you like with a simple touch. There are nine built-in card layouts that are titled Paths to Understanding. After choosing your path you simply deal out each card into place with an upward sweep of your finger from the deck of cards placed on the bottom bar of the display. Cool! The cards are dealt face down, a finger tap on an individual card will flip the card face up. A second tap enlarges the card for better viewing, another tap flips the card revealing card interpretation AND the meaning of card placement in the layout. Simple as pie!

Note: If you prefer to have the cards appear face up as they are dealt, simply double tap the top of the deck for each card rather than sweeping.

What I Love About Beautiful Tarot HD:

Customized Card Readings: Although there are nine layouts available, you can also customize your own reading. For example, I like to shuffle my tarot cards and toss out a single card for a quick response to an impromptu question. This application will allow that. Also, after I've done a full card reading, I sometimes like to throw out one or two more cards from the deck to gain additional insight or a deeper understanding of the full reading. You can do this with Beautiful Tarot.

Reverse Cards: Another thing I like is that the program allows you to undo "reversed cards" that show up in a spread. Some Tarot readers don't interpret reversed cards, so this is helpful for anyone who always uprights reversed cards before analyzing the layout.

Save Your Reading: You can email a copy of your reading when you're done. You will be sent a graphic of your layout along with the card interpretations. On your iPad you can also request a screen shot of your reading be sent to your photo album. Pretty slick, huh?

What I Don't Love About Beautiful Tarot HD:

Card Decks: I wish I could choose to do a major arcana reading with the Rider-Waite Smith deck. More deck choices would be nice too!

Card Meanings: I don't particularly like the card interpretations, but that comes from years of doing my own readings and using my own insights. This isn't really a big issue, you can choose to ignore the cookie-cutter interpretation if you're like me.

Creator: Jonathan Miller
Release Date: April 1st, 2010
22.8 MB
iPad Compatible (Requires iPhone OS 3.2 or later)