This is a truly unique deck, and you’d never really guess that at a glance, which makes it one of my favorites. Because of its interesting approach, I tend to reserve it for lunar readings and special occasions — it doesn’t have the feel of an everyday deck (for me, YMMV). For me, it’s like using “the ~fancy~ plates.”
When I purchased this deck, I knew that it wasn’t going to be like most of my other decks because of what’s printed on the side of the tuck box: “Growing is like dying.” On the other side of the box, it reads: “The sweet sadness of innocence: an enchanted world that reawakens at twilight and dies with it, gathering within all souls in love.”
The artwork is by Cristina Benintende, and falls squarely into the category of pop surrealism. The colors are bold, the brushstrokes are big, and the imagery is beautifully weird. It’s a little candy goth in its aesthetic. The images are loosely based on RWS, but with its own bittersweet, lovely, and slightly melancholy way. There are also some images that are truly terrifying in their intensity (so if you read in an altered state, use discretion.)
The cards themselves come in a tuck box, which I hate, but I don’t hold it against the cards. The deck feels ever-so-slightly more narrow than a standard tarot deck, but I haven’t measured to confirm. The card quality is medium — it’s not bad card stock, it’s not of a high enough quality to make that a purchasing factor. The quality is about right for the price point.
Like most Lo Scarabeo decks, the LWB comes in 5 languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German (languages vary based on deck). That means that the LWB is compact. The card meanings are narrative based, and don’t follow traditional RWS meanings, even if the card images do. The card meanings are very based in the paintings and the artist’s world of The Sweet Twilight. That doesn’t mean that if you’re an experienced reader who has the meanings memorized that your readings won’t be accurate, it just means that they’ll be lacking one of the elements that makes this deck quite special, and that’s the very intimate meanings for the cards included in the LWB. I’d read it through at least once. However, for my use, I always refer to the LWB because it’s not exactly like any of my other decks, and when I use it, I want to get the intended effect, which is to immerse you in this ephemeral world of bittersweet beauty.