Flea Market Finds

This has never happened before; I mean, I go regularly to the flea market most weeks and – if I’m lucky –  I may find and buy the occasional deck I already have as a back-up, but to go to the flea market and find three decks I don’t have is most definitely a first. I couldn’t believe my luck. I don’t go looking specifically for decks; I think I’ve done well if I find something for my reading table – vintage silk scarves or lengths of threadbare velvet, crystal ball supports, leather pouches, potential card cases – plus any other non-divination items. A trip to the flea market is like a holiday for me. I feel my brain soar far away and I get so engrossed routing through all the tat that hours pass and  - like pearl-fishing – I always come back to the surface with something to show for my trouble. I always think it’s highly unlikely I’ll find any tarot surprises, but yesterday I came across three decks I don’t have, which is quite a feat. Soon after arriving I spotted the AG Muller Tarot de Marseilles (“edition française”) for 5 euros, see far right in the photograph above. This is a reproduction of the Schaffhouse deck, probably not with the original colouring, but it is a far more moodily muted version of the same deck published in the 1970s by U.S Games and known as Tarot Classic. Although I have a soft spot for all and any 1970s tarot decks, this must be one of the hardest ones to love with its pink tower and gaudy, clashing colours. I always wonder quite what the Golden Dawn would make of its colour symbolism, there must be some collective rolling in graves going on, but thankfully this AG Muller version of the same deck has much gentler colouring, tones which merge and are actually quite pleasing to the eye yet retain some of the dark, slightly brooding atmosphere which I suspect the original deck has. Beware the card backs though; never did card backs more resemble sickly candy wrappings (or sanitorium wallpaper, take your pick). It’s interesting, I have noticed, how when I stumble upon a deck unexpectedly, I often give it more attention than I would have done if I had decided to order it online and wait for it. In short, I didn’t choose to look closely at this particular deck this weekend. These decks which are strewn in my path unnannounced are little surprises I actually end up paying more attention to and loving all the more for it. This is one such deck. It is in perfect condition with most of the cards still in some semblance of order – I think the previous owner only got as far as looking at the Majors (which were left in reverse order from Le Monde to Le Mat) and then packed it away. The cardstock is lovely and the deck itself is from a time when (Thoth apart) AG Muller still had something to contribute to tarot. I love the Devil in this deck. So full of character; he looks impish and cheeky (not some remote, unreal creature with eyes in his belly) and there feels to be a sort of friendly unity – almost 3 of Cups –  between him and the two figures chained to the pedestal.  The Hanged Man in this deck is my favourite of all Marseilles Hanged Men, a three-quarters profile, he has the patience of a saint, nose grazing the ground, the poles of the gallows like an old barber shop pole (or maybe inspired by traffic cones, who knows). I also love the lumpy cups suit. The Ace of Cups is the lumpiest of all, filling the card frame, coming to get us during the night with its voluptuousness and confectionary colouring. I think I shall use this deck this week. A deck like this, which dropped as if from the skies, demands to be given some immediate attention.  It really does have a great deal of charm and – what I most like to see in a Marseilles deck – clearly defined eyes that look in very specific directions and show us in readings where we should be looking.

Then I wandered some more – found a lovely porcelain hanging plant pot and a 1960s bakerlite paperclip dispenser – before going back on myself and wandering among stalls I thought I had already seen until suddenly my attention was drawn to an old toiletries bag stamped with the Delta Airlines logo. I spotted cards peeping out. “Are those cards?” I asked the stallholder, “ah, those are tarot cards” (i.e not playing cards) he said as if to prepare me for disappointment. When I peeped inside I saw a deck I have been looking for for ages – a double-ended Tarocco Piemontese which I remember from Kaplan’s Encyclopedia (Volume I). I love these curious double-ended tarot decks – worth it for the Hanged Man alone, two pairs of kicking legs joined at the waist, and the Tower card which floats disembodied in time and space, no roots, no foundations – and really couldn’t believe my luck. I have no idea who the publisher is as there was nothing with it, no box, no instructions, no title card, no clues.

With it in the toiletries bag was a Brazilian Egyptian  tarot deck which I have subsequently (via the card backs) identified. It was published by Pallas “at the vanguard of Afro-Brazilian publishing”, a Rio-based publisher specialising in Afro-Brazilian magic, religion and esoteric books. It came as part of a kit called Tarô Egípcio by someone called Anádora and is basically a version of the Egipcios Kier deck (first published in Argentina, 1970s, then later by U.S Games) but this one is gold coloured, black and white, rather samey it has to be said, and part of that tarot tradition which draws a self-consciously mysterious, rather pompous veil over tarot images by buying into the  - don turban and speak in hushed tones –  ”it came from Ancient Egypt” school of thought. I wonder if anyone still believes this?

It always strikes me as terribly 1970s, or maybe a bit earlier, but still there are people churning out Egyptian-themed deck and I suppose it is considered a “tradition” in the way that the “Marseilles” is a tradition. I have the Egipcios Kier deck but tend to use its numbered cards (1-78) for choosing lottery numbers rather than doing proper spreads with. It’s one of those systems which never quite convinces me but which I find periodically fascinating as it was a way of thinking about tarot which was in a lot of the earlier literature I used to read when I first started getting interested in it. And years later to come across a relic of that belief system in a Delta Airlines toiletries bag made me feel unaccountably nostalgic (“10 euros for both decks” he said, offering me the whole package, “but I don’t want the toiletries bag” I told him, affronted, gearing into bartering mode, “OK then, 8 euros for both decks without the bag.” A deal). Altogether, that was three decks for 13 euros, but what thrilled me more than anything was that they were three decks I didn’t have, and I left the flea market in the afternoon sun with that exhilarating feeling I so love, of – really – anything is possible. You just never know what you might stumble across.

Card backs, left to right; Tarô Egípcio, Tarocco Piemontese, A.G Muller Schaffhouse

The Vintage Lenormand

How times have changed. The New Age mantras of self-help and inner healing part like seas to usher in a new tendency in cartomancy. Well, maybe not new (though there is much in it that is new), more full circle, reinterpreted perhaps. And yet it was the arrival of this deck that got me wondering about just where we might be heading in our card-reading, what we might be leaving behind, what might imperceptibly drift downstream or simply have other forms of reading laid on top like sediment, imbued, assimiliated and absorbed. I like how this deck, The Vintage Lenormand (not any old vintage Lenormand), describes itself as a “Fortune Telling Deck”.  I like how we have started being unashamed about this, how we now proclaim, yes, it’s alright to read fortunes. I am intrigued by the current Lenormand phenomenon – I am reluctant to think of it as a fad – and I find myself thinking that it must all be happening for a reason. Tarot has perhaps become too nebullous, too dissipated, too all-encompassing and we are torn between the urge to console our querents and the urge to actually help them. It’s as if Lenormand cards allow us to be more objective, plotting those quickfire combinations, projecting outwards, firm sentences distinct from loose interpretation. I don’t quite know what it is, all I know is that certain decks come along and fill me with the palpable thrill of some new energy, some new thrust and this is one such deck.It was created by Andi Graf, known as Jera-Babylon Rootweaver and I love how it confounds our expectations. Not another vintage Lenormand you might think – in a blinding haze of etsy excesses – not more Victorian scapbooks. But vintage doesn’t have to be Victoriana. This deck was created from contemporary photographs – the artwork is by friends of the artist from what I can gather – and was then manipulated using digital software (Moku Hanga and Photoshop) to give the effect of Japanese woodblocks. It feels vintage but a different kind of vintage to what you might immediately think. The Gentleman card, for example, has a noticably hippy feel. The imagery is bold and beautiful and the graphics are very harmonious, if a little unexpected. I find myself noticing the graphics on Lenormands more and more and this is one of the few decks of the recent bunch that has very distinct graphics. The playing card reference is in the bottom left-hand corner of the card and the artist has her insignia in the bottom right-hand corner. At first I thought this might be intrusive but it balances the card out nicely. Then, best of all, the title is in a sort of banner in the upper quarter of the card. It slices indiscriminately into the image sometimes, across the gentleman’s face, for example, across the crest of the Stork’s and the Dog’s heads. It slices the Sun in half, transforms the Cross into a tau cross, decapitates the Rider. It feels almost accidental, but sometimes a badly framed photograph can have its own charm and when you lay out the cards and see the homogeneous whole you see how well this works. I think one of my favourite things about this deck is in fact the fearless placing of the titles. It works beautifully, and for a moment – at first glance – I found myself asking, was that a mistake?  But no, here is a deck that has the confidence to play around with what you might think is a very limited format. I also love the simplicity (and a Lenormand deck has to have this for me). I personally (and others may be different) don’t like to see things that set me off interpreting symbolically beyond the confines of the classic image itself. I don’t want patterns and too much overlay, except in the Melissa but that’s one of a kind. I don’t want to feel pushed into picking out details that might mean something else. In a sense, if this Clover card comes up in a spread, it should mean the same as the Dondorf Clover or the Piatnik Clover. In tarot, you’d be torn apart if you admitted to interpreting all 10 of Swords in the same way, but with Lenormand, I like that and (am I wrong?) I do it. It’s the symbol and what I learnt of its meaning – and combinations –  that I hold in the forefront of my mind and this deck gives us unambiguous images loud and clear.

This probably explains one of the reasons why the deck has been chosen to be included  in the forthcoming book by Tali Goodwin, “Learning Lenormand.” Certainly not the first book in English on Lenormand by any means, but one that rides on the current wave and probably picks up on a lot of the current themes and ways of thinking about Lenormand cards that are influencing contemporary reading methods. The sheet that comes with the deck contains some very good, succinct meanings, with a single keyword in bold plus two secondary meanings, taken from a variety of sources. The deck comes in a protective plastic case and a lined, fabric pouch. I think I got one of the last copies of the first edition but I have no doubt that there will be more editions to come. I look forward to reflecting on how – once Tali Goodwin’s book is published – there will be a surge in the appeal of this deck. Readers will see it and fall in love with it, of that I have no doubt, and I can languish in the knowledge that I am one of the lucky ones. We really have been spoilt with Lenormands of late.

A Rider-Waite Relic

I couldn’t resist this one, though I know I really have no need of yet another Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. I have so many versions and so many editions, multiple copies, different printings, but this one attracted me like no other. Simply because I don’t think I have ever seen a deck so well-used, so violently thumbed, so tatty, so frayed; shuffled- you might say – within an inch of its life and riffled to high heaven. The item description said “quite worn and well used” which is something of an understatement. It came without a box, with no other information, no history, no bag, no silk scarf or provenance. Just dropped into my loving, appreciative lap on the eve of what would have been Pamela Colman Smith’s 135th birthday.

What is this fascination for heavily used, dog-eared old decks? Do decks gain a certain gravitas and status through sheer overuse? It is as if this deck (and only this deck) gave good answers, so it was forced to go on giving good answers, forced to earn its keep as a repository of ancient wisdom. Or rather, as I suspect, this is a relic from a time when there weren’t new, shiny self-published decks coming out every other week. You acquired a deck and then you used it. Who knows, maybe other decks were tried but gave garbled or erroneous messages? Maybe the owner did try other decks and then gave up, returning to the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs.

It is something of a fantasy among certain tarotists to want to use ancient, wizened decks, something which drives them to extreme measures, artifically ageing their decks, scraping them along the edges of tables, scuffing them, sanding them, subjecting them to merciless batterings, maybe (who knows) burying them in the garden for a few weeks before exhuming them. All perhaps to give their decks authority, to give them  – as readers –  authority (“now here’s someone who has been reading for years”). Even U.S Games went for the antique deck look with their tea-stained Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Edition deck. But the deck which arrived this week is the real deal. I can now look at the Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative deck and see that the Rider-Waite Smith deck simply does not age like that, the cards doesn’t go that colour. I defy anyone to customise their glossy, mass-produced newly published tarot deck into something like this. It has aged so authentically – by use alone – that it is now a fragile shadow of its former self. It is the standard Rider & Co so-called “British Blue Box” copyright free Rider-Waite Smith deck - the one that presumably had The World dancer on the cover of the now lost two part box. It could be late 1960s, but for someone who knew nothing about tarot, they could be forgiven for thinking it was over 100 years old. If I hadn’t seen the plaid backs, I think I would have reached the same conclusion.

L-R; used Rider & Co RWS, unused Rider & Co RWS, U.S Games Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative deck

It has been shuffled and dealt to within an inch of its life. In fact it has been so brutally shuffled that many –  if not most - of the cards have a vaguely hourglass shape to them. Decades and decades of pressure has been applied to the sides of the cards during shuffling (or firm grasping while the question is formulated) that they have worn away. The narrow white border that acts as a sort of buffer has eroded away and the edge sometimes encroaches on the actual image. Decades of dirt and artful stains cover each card, some card corners are bent and may soon break off. There are blots of varying colour, some cards (such as The Lovers) have what look like red wine splashed across them. The overall effect gives this deck a deeply endearing character. There is a fine line between a compelling, ancient, heavily used deck and one that provokes disgust, as I discovered myself only this morning at the flea market when I came across (and didn’t buy) a second hand copy of the Balbi Tarot encrusted with grime and which I could hardly bring myself to touch.

I feel that this is a deck which was treasured, used and kept safe. Considering the state of the deck, it is a miracle that it is complete. But it is. And a miracle that it hasn’t been taped or glued with the best intentions. Seventy eight stained and scuffed cards and no disastrous attempts at repair. I wonder just how many times each card has been read. Must surely run into the hundreds. I feel an urge to handle it carefully, as if one more shuffle would see the whole pack crumble like seventy eight clay tablets lifted from an archeological dig. I purchased it from a charitable organisation that helps neglected animals with money from sales (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), a cause dear to my heart. Not wanting to demean the plight of what animals suffer at the hands of human beings, this deck made me think of those racehorses put out to grass. It has reached the end of its useful life, has given all it can and is now retired, past glories evaporated . But who is to say it doesn’t have much more still to give (if shuffled very gently, of course)? And I think of those who abandon pets when they get old, when the vet bills start getting expensive, and it breaks my heart. This is only an inanimate object and not in the same league at all. It deserves to be absorbed into a loving collection, kept complete, handled with a little reverence for all the answers and consolation it has given over the years. But it has, in effect, been abandoned (unless, I suppose, the owner died). We must hope that there is always someone ready to take these rejected things with open arms (and me with my love of the old and the grubby and overlooked couldn’t resist this one), as I wish that every time an animal is abandoned, the right next owner will find it and love it and carry it onwards. Sadly this is so often not the case. I applaud the work this charity does, yet humbly feel my purchase is a meagre drop in the ocean. This deck feels magic to me, with decades of compressed stories and secrets layered between its seventy eight parts. I look at it and I cannot help feeling the profound sadness of abandonment. But at least this is only a deck.

Favourite Decks; Part VII

Deck only first edition (1985) on top of later kit edition (1992)

This rich and strange tarot – The Magickal Tarot by Anthony Clark –  belongs to that hallowed group of decks that so few others are fortune enough to enter. A very select and sacred club, now sadly forever closed; my treasured eighties decks. Those decks I bought when the fascination for tarot first gripped me circa 1983-1986. This was probably one of the last tarot decks of the eighties that I actually bought. I had ostensibly stopped buying decks by the time this was released by the Aquarian Press and only came across it because I happened to be working in a bookshop at the time. An eccentric little family affair, the owner of which was a distinguished elderly lady who tested racing cards in her free time and stocked a very well-informed selection of tarot decks. It was thanks to her (as a customer, even before I started working there) that I built up my meagre early eighties collection with my carefully counted pocket money. One day, during the time I worked there – it may have been around 1986 or 1987 – this deck arrived on the shelf.

The box intrigued me, but my passion for tarot had largely waned by then so I resisted the lure for a while. Yet still it intrigued me. I kept returning to it whilst working on the shop floor and – with my 10% staff discount – eventually decided to purchase it. What is extraordinary is that I didn’t own a Thoth deck during this first phase of my tarot collecting. Even though I had about ten decks, the Thoth Tarot was not one of them. I have no idea how I managed not to buy one. I’m not sure I can even remember seeing one for sale, though I’m sure I must have. Certainly if I had had a passing familiarity with the Thoth deck then this deck would have made more sense to me. As it was, the Magickal went completely over my head and, after the initial novelty had worn off, seemed to me little more than a showcase for some very impressive calligraphy. It was not really a favourite but I held onto it for sentimental reasons. Plus the fact that it always looked so mysterious. It slumbered for two decades, untouched in a box somewhere, forlorn and misunderstood until I came back to it after having worked hard at the Thoth, read the Book of Thoth, and ended up really rather liking the Thoth.

Enochian Backs

I am constantly bemused by the fact that Thoth-based decks never seem to overtake the Thoth itself in the way that the Rider Waite Smith Tarot is regularly overtaken by Rider Waite Smith-based decks. There are many, many tarotists who have found a Rider Waite Smith-based deck which they feel is better than the original Rider Waite Smith Tarot. I know very few readers who prefer one of the many Thoth-based decks out there to Crowley’s original Thoth. The only function they seem to serve is to make you scurry back to the original and discover how much better it is than its successors in more ways that one. That doesn’t seem to happen with the Rider Waite Smith as much.

It has taken me a long time to find a way into Clark’s Magickal Tarot and I cannot profess to completely understand it now. Much of the esoteric symbolism and hebrew squiggles are lost on me as only recently did I come across the kit version which comes with the companion book and been able to make a start on actually deciphering it. Before then I had been using the deck only version, my first copy, with what I know of the Thoth deck. Yet the fact that this deck looks like no other decks out there means that I was always going to find it endlessly intriguing (“Its artwork is somewhat unappealing” I read in another review. Not the case at all. Don’t listen.). It’s a “difficult” deck and I have always been partial to difficult decks. Plus – as I said – it being an eighties deck – I tend to read some of my nostalgia for that decade into its angular graphics and cheekbones. The blusher, the frilly ruff on Lust (or “Lust for Life” as it is called), the androgyny and excess. Yet it is, whichever way you look at it, a very beautiful and evocative deck, relatively easy to find but not always cheap. A deck that makes me wonder why nobody has reissued it as it seems to me to be one of the few Thoth-based decks that can actually look the Thoth in the eyes and be a contender. It shows painstaking attention to detail, has all the right references, though some may find the layout of the cards a bit repetitive, especially in those cards where there are no figures present, such as the ”pip” cards (or as the author calls them, “spot” cards). These cards tend to all show a sort of central spinning circle with the symbol of the element, Elizabethan calligraphy pompously declaiming – as if through a megaphone –  the Golden Dawn-based titles “Lord of Perfected Work” or “Lord of Established Strength”, an encapsulation of the cards’ material energies, and this format tends to be the same throughout; calligraphy up top, hebrew down below, keywords below that and sometimes these very atmospheric little vignettes that show us a scene that the Thoth never did and which goes quite a long way to evoking meaning. Take the Ten of Wands, for example, “Lord of Oppression” which shows a burning lakeside ruin, starry night, light reflected in the water. A number of the courts also contain the Nug Soth alphabet from Lovecraft’s Necronomicon (see Princess of Wands; below, second left) so there really are lots of bits of everything in this deck to unearth as you gain familiarity.

Court Selection

I have found when reading with this deck that it has a knack of tossing up tiny, pertinent details which tie in with the many keywords found through the deck (I who always disliked keywords but with this deck see them as a sort of welcome crutch when reading as the deck is so complex in other aspects). I have had some uncanny readings with the Magickal Tarot - a combination of textual pointers (of which there are many) and details in the vignettes, moods or brooding skies. I find that I like this deck more and more as the years pass. A lesson; never get rid of decks; you may require twenty years to learn to love a deck or grow into it but it will be well worth the wait. The companion book by Tony Willis (published later as part of the kit, the first edition was deck only), while a little dry, dense and serious in the actual card descriptions, is an excellent companion guide to the deck and explains all the symbolism necessary. It really comes into its own in the introduction, setting up background contextualisation and has an excellent section on “Magick” and making the deck your own. Magick for the author is cited as  “the art of causing willed changes in consciousness”, a definition I like (taken from Dion Fortune) as it seems to bring the concept within reach of us all. The Quabalah and Tarot Symbolism” chapter is one of the best, most accessible introductions of its kind that I have read.

Once you’re into the individual cards, each description contains a black and white image with subheadings; ”Mystical Titles” of the card e.g The Emperor is Son of the Morning, Chief among the Mighty Ones. There then follows the “Quabalistic Description”, e.g “sphere of the Zodiac acting through Aries on The Sun initiating new growth” Next, the Angelic Ruler which, in the case of The Emperor, is Malchidael. There are then three different types of card meanings; Moral Level, Mental Level and Material Level and then the same again, but this time Ill-dignified. This is for the Majors only, small/Minor/”spot”  and Court cards have only dignified and ill-dignified meanings. The concepts of Moral, Mental and Material meanings are defined respectively as “stored wisdom”, “states of mind” and “the everyday” and they correspond to spirit, soul and body or “higher intelligence,” Psyche, Soma.  Overall, this companion book contains all you need and I cannot imagine using the deck without it. I really would describe it as essential for those who want to use this as a reading deck. I like how he comes down on the side of “fortune tellers” and doesn’t see this as a lowly or lesser use of the cards. For a deck such as this which is so replete with symbolism and highbrow mysticism it is refreshing to see this point of view and this in fact influenced me to see the deck as a very open, welcoming deck, capable of responding to whatever we bring to it. At first glance it seems icey and intimidating but it has taken me years to discover its surprising warmth as a reading deck. Sad though that nobody ever really mentions it.

The Triumph of The Son Tarot

Now you may think I’m repeating myself here, as I have blogged about this deck before, but the previous version I wrote about was an unpublished version of the deck, the proofs of a proposed Kunati edition (bought from the artist) to satiate me as I waited for the mass market edition, finally published by Schiffer at the end of last year. At last I have it in my hands; have had it in my hands quite a while in fact but what with Christmas and New Year, visitors, work demands and everything else, precious time to allocate to the deck was seriously wanting. Then a couple of weeks ago  – like clouds clearing – I had the sudden feeling that now the time was right to peer a bit closer at this deck, a deck I feel I have been watching and anticipating for years ever since I saw it in its Majors only version on Adam McLean’s site.

Card Backs

This is a wonderful publication which I truly envisage changing lives. Now that may sound like a a lofty claim but if we may just shift the focus of decks for a moment away from only artwork, then this deck is the sort of deck – in concept, design and focus –  that I wish I had stumbled across years and years ago and which  – had I done so – probably would have changed my life and how I “divine” for myself (and then later, for others). I wish I had been able to learn tarot from the perspective that Chris Butler has given it here which doesn’t need to be an entirely gay perspective –  though its target public may well be mostly gay –  but from the perspective of sexuality, since the inner sexual and emotional self has to be a legitimate place to start for a trip through the Arcanas. Bring to it what you will. And what really comes across in this deck – thanks, in part to the superb companion book – is how limitless we, our sexuality, our inner selves are, and also how tarot can help us plumb these depths. We always sort of knew this but the deck makes that sensation (the limitlessness of the inner life) very apparent. This would be an excellent deck for solitary readings, as in reading for oneself - and not just love and relationship readings either. It would also be a suitable, gentle, non-confrontational deck to anyone coming to terms with parts of themselves that may be new to them or which have lain buried for whatever reason. It would be a very readable, exuberant tarot too for anyone happily gay who wants a deck to read with that speaks loud and clear to the gay friends of their circle. It would also be an appropriate deck for exploring maleness when so many decks nowadays are geared towards the feminine and female intuition.

The book has a very particular approach which works excellently alongside the deck. You don’t feel that you’re being taught, but rather that impressions are being shared, memories being delved into and that you too can – and should – do the same. I love how he elaborates on each card from personal experience rather than giving us a running historic  commentary on the Visconti-Sforza then Arthur Waite etc etc. I found his observations very meaningful as they make you reflect everything back onto yourself and your own experiences and where that might take you with the deck. If he had tried to insert the deck into some current social or cultural context of where we are with gayness in the early 21st Century or some such thing it would have dated the whole package very quickly. As it is, the narrative is so personal that it makes it universal. The lesson with tarot seems to be ”start with yourself and see where that takes you” which – in a sense – is the only worthwhile starting point. Tarot, you might say, can be a sort of soliloquy. It can be your soliloquy.

I am so glad that this deck has finally made it out there into the public sphere – and you can see the influences – most notably Patric Stillman’s Brotherhood Tarot and Lee Bursten’s Gay Tarot for Lo Scarabeo – but also feel how distinct it is. Plus the fact that the deck has been revisited and reworked over the years means that the edges have softened, the composition has become more fluid and it has gained layer upon layer with each new burst of the artist’s enthusiasm. I wouldn’t say esoteric layers exactly, but an identifiable deepening of meaning as the artist ruminates and goes on learning and rethinking what tarot means to him. This is a very personal deck and some may not like the fact that the models reappear and repeat throughout the deck in different guises but if this is regarded as a sort of Fool’s Journey then it makes sense that we ourselves are all the archetypes and that we find the self same person in different stages. I don’t usually like this in a deck but as the companion book is so evidently a journey of one person it reinforces the theme and – to be honest – I hardly notice it when reading as, alongside the characters, there are so many auras and kaleidoscopic flashes, Chris Butlers distinctive, reappearing themes; the pools of water, sunbursts and galvanistic bolts. I love how unabashed the deck is; yes, the Empress is a man (“The Bountiful”) and the High Priestess is a man (“The Mystic”) and it works. All the court cards are male (Herald, Knight, Prince, King) and – yes – it works just fine like that. The deck doesn’t feel erotic per se, for those who might be wondering but there is a dynamic sensuality about certain images; they have tremendous depth and very cleverly thought-out details and dynamics which have come to me in flashes during readings, things I didn’t notice at first but which tie in with references in other cards. I have been using the deck all this week and last week and it is a pleasure to read with. Schiffer, as ever, have done a tremendous job in packaging the deck though I am now finding that Schiffer boxes are perhaps a little too cumbersome. It’s good that you get a substantial kit like this for your money but the format they used for the Tarot of the Sidhe or the Lowbrow Tarot (with companion book the same size as the cards) would have been more convenient for transport and storage, but then I wouldn’t have wanted to forego the extensive book that comes with it and which adds so much and wouldn’t have fitted into a small, deck-sized book. Perhaps most pleasing in the actual production is the bold borderlessness á la Morgan Greer. Not a pesky frame in sight so (best of all) the images bleed into one another, colours clash and  spark off each other. I wrote in my other review about images merging and in this edition, with the dark strip at the bottom of the card giving way to an unobtrusive little plaque suspended about half a centimetre from the bottom of the card, the effect of cards merging is even more enhanced. This is the format so many of us tarot lovers dream of; no borders and discreet titles. Cardstock is standard glossy Schiffer fare which some may not like but I surprise myself in that I love the cardstock of Schiffer decks. It comforts me that they will last forever. What bothered me in U.S Games high-lacquer glossiness is that so often this type of production went hand-in-hand with (if you looked closely) pixelated images. None of that here; sharp crisp images through and through.

My favourites; Nine of Pentacles, partly because I just love the card anyway, but also because of the composition, the sweep of Pentacles across the image, butterfly, peacock, grapes and fortress and the brooding expression of the man which fits in with that slight ennui of the card, for all its comforts and satisfaction. I also love the shrill clashing colours of The Devil (which I cannot capture in a photograph), so bold, electric and daubed (none of these things in the above image!) and the celestial beams of the Four of Swords. Perfect composition with the swords boxing in the rays while a bearded man rests. The Death card has been spruced up from the previous edition with a truly scarey grim reaper on horseback (it is from the Minchiate Fiorentine Etruria, I think) rising aloft what could be the Maria Celeste abandoned and adrift. So much to marvel at here as there are so many striking images A highly recommended deck and book. Unlike so many tarot publications right now this really isn’t just more of the same.

The Gilded Royale

I surprise myself sometimes. I suspect all of us do. Those decks that you thought you really didn’t like, that you would never - in a million years – like, can suddenly catch you out. It can happen at any time. You are struck down and repentent. It happened to me with the revamped edition of the Gilded (no, not Guilded) Tarot, that mainstay of favourite decks, the one that comes up first when you cast the net open wide on amazon, throw out your arms and search simply for “tarot.” It is - I imagine - the modern deck that outsells the rest and nobody should begrudge it that, but I have a peculiar relationship with the original Gilded Tarot. It was one of those decks I could never really warm to. I couldn’t understand how seasoned readers found it so welcoming, so readable. The real, photo-collaged faces didn’t express any light or life for me, the jewel-like colours were never quite jewel-ish enough for me. I felt short-changed on the opulence which - via the name and the trompe-l‘œil gemstones - it promised to deliver. I only really started sitting up and taking note of Ciro’s work when I took a gamble and paid a fairly high price (though prices have since become higher) on the Special (glossy) Edition of the Tarot of Dreams. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and was impressed. I made a mental note to henceforth watch the development of Ciro’s artwork more closely, though the Llewellyn edition of the Legacy of the Divine Tarot passed me by. The Oracle of Dreams subsequently made me sit up and take note again, and then – almost immediately (or was it simultaneously?) –  there was news of him reworking the Gilded. My tarot tastes intrigue me; I have a morbid urge to deconstruct and dissect and find out why certain decks don’t appeal, so the Gilded Royale was always going to be on my list of decks I really needed to see up close. It’s not enough just to say, as many do, “I don’t like the artwork”. I was a little envious, I confess, when I saw those photos from the Readers’ Studio in New York with the very first copies of the Gilded Royale in various hot hands and vowed to get myself one as soon as possible. I was delighted when, soon after, I was able to buy one off someone who had bought one of the first 200 copies that came with a printed reading cloth. I have enough spread cloths in my life but the collector in me jumped at the chance of getting one of the first 200 (plus I didn’t have a Ciro Marchetti reading cloth so that would be a first.)

When it arrived I was gobsmacked. As a product it was unsurpassably top-notch; sturdy box, excellent cardstock, sharp images, richly coloured (now we’re talking jewelled), gilded edges, a deck to last a lifetime. Moreover, as a tarot deck for reading it was equally superb. Everything about it was flawless. A few months on and I really should be using the present tense as it continues to be all of these things and more, one of my most vivid reading decks. There is something about the luminously unreal colours. I don’t think I have ever seen colours this vibrant on anything. Not tarot decks, not illustrations, not fabric. In fact, not on anything at all. I look at the Knight of Pentacles or the Page of Swords and think “this is how colours of the court must have looked to medieval peasants who lived in browns and greys and then suddenly came face to face with the sumptuous gowns of the Doges of Venice or a royal wedding in Mantua or Toledo.” The colours really knock you out. I like the artificiality of them and the impossibly dazzling light flowing in at the windows, flashing on the horizon. In readings, the colours reach a level of near abstraction which is hard to describe and which really seems to work for me.

Is this what others have felt about the traditional Gilded all these years? Funnily enough, in this deck, it is the more negative cards which are the most beautiful – the Three of Swords, Death (with its fluttering banners), the Nine of Swords. In the case of the Three of Swords, even though we have seen that pierced heart so many times, this version brings a symmetry, harmony and beauty that – really - no other versions have. That heart could be marzipan, that’s how much I love it. The deck in its entirety feels streamlined and the themes that I always felt I should love ”in theory” in Ciro’s decks come alive here and make more sense, most notably the brass and mechanical contraptions, the luxuriant foliage, the skies, the courtly regalia, the mischievous wildlife. This really is one of the most captivating reading decks around and one of my favourite releases this year. Or rather, the deck that most surprised me. I love how it has made me look anew and see that an unloved (admittedly rather wooden for me) deck really can be honed to perfection and injected with new life and passion and suddenly feel miraculously readable. I’m so glad that he revisited this deck and gave it the treatment it deserved now that his technique and tools have advanced so much in the intervening (eight?) years.  True, much of its success is due to the extremely high quality of production, the stiff, gilt-edged card with just the right amount of gloss (ie, not much), so I’m doubly glad that production was in the hands of the artist and not a mainstream publisher. I cannot imagine a mass market edition using this cardstock and maintaining the intensity of these colours. Let this be a lesson all round. I’m so glad that – at last – I can see the magic.

Vive La Lenormand Revolution!

As one who has long felt they can channel – at whim – Maria Antoinette in her finest hours, the Lenormand Revolution deck by Carrie Paris & Roz Foster immediately perked my interest. I felt my metre-high powdered wig totter with excitement and was thrilled to receive a copy just last week, one of a print run of 450 that has already, deservedly sold out. It feels like a deck that, although we know it didn’t exist to predict the storming of the Bastille, the American Revolution and the new world order, may quite well have done if we ponder long and hard enough. A sort of fantasy, a variation on a theme, it ties together the sparse, loose strands of Mme Lenormand’s life, her enigmatic biography, her place in the revolutionary fervour, alongside Josephine (who features as one of the two Lady cards), Napoleon (who features as one of the two Lord cards) and all the rest of of the kaleidoscopic chaos as the Ancien Regime slid into the horrors of bloody revolution. Here we have all these things in one tiny deck (cards; 8.7cm x 5.7 cm). We may applaud the liberty of the French Revolution and the end to oppression which it heralded but we should also remember the horrors and the crimes (to paraphrase Mme Roland) committed in its name.

This deck, a very clever and really rather wonderful little deck, captures something of the exhilaration and foreboding  of the times and feels like something created as a kind of historical “what if?” What if a deck had been created at the time to celebrate the revolution, foresee American independence and Mme Lenormand had had a hand in it and honoured her supposed friends Josephine and Napoleon in the significator cards in the way great heroes and heroines – like Pallas, David and Judith –  were often honoured in French playing card courts of the time? All pure conjecture of course but the deck is so compelling and hangs together so well that it goes a long way to convincing whoever handles it that it may just be a relic from revolutionary times.

The images feel as if they come at us through a veil of ectoplasm. It feels ghostly, it feels as if it bridges the old, privileged Ancien Regime world of hunting (see the Dog card; a depiction of one of King Louis’ favourites), the Sun King (see The Sun card), Marie Antoinette (that Bouquet could have come from her boudoir) and then the horrors of what toppled all of this (see the looming devil behind the Birchrod, the Napoleonic documentation in The Letter.)  Even the Child card shows a sword-wielding youngster (with American flag), the 18th Century equivalent of those images we now see of 8-year old children in the Middle East brandishing guns. I like how this deck has terror simmering (or maybe it’s in my imagination, as one who has long been fascinated by the French Revolution?), the Mountain is a volcano and  I’m almost certain that the Tower card is in fact the Bastille. The alternative Lady card shows what I thought was a mean, scraggy tricoteuse, not knitting but stoking up a cannon, though I was told that the card depicts Mollie Pitcher who supposedly fought in the American Battle of Monmouth. And how visceral the Heart card is with its tiny sacred rays. I remember the story of the unfortunate Princesse de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette’s favourite who was set upon by the crowd, mutilated, torn apart, had her heart and head set on pikes which were then paraded at the prison window of Marie Antoinette. Her legs were fired from cannons (they said) so I wondered if that frowning lady in the Lady significator really is going to fire cannons.  These were violent times. We all applaud liberty but the horrors acted out on the way should never be forgotten (cont…)

Princesse de Lamballe by Pierre Claude François Delorme

This deck seems to capture the atmosphere of the times so well; it feels historical, brooding and yet at the same time playfully modern. The selection of images is elegant and uncluttered (a must in any Lenormand deck). A deck on this theme could so easily have slipped into rococo excess but this one is restrained and unfussy while at the same time feels just decorative enough to be in keeping with the spirit of the age, yet keeping extravagance in check. The overall palette makes it very cohesive when laid out as a Grand Tableau even though the images come from diverse sources. It comes with a fold out parchment-coloured sheet with card meanings; useful for a beginner but also with enough interesting takes on familiar meanings to make it of interest to anyone, however experienced they are. The whole thing – with title card – comes in a tin with windowed lid. It is a truly beautiful deck and the day I decided that I wanted another one (my favourite Lenormand decks must always come in pairs; one to use, one just in case) was the day I discovered it had sold out. I’m glad for the creator as I’m glad that wonderful things are seized upon and spread across the four corners of the globe, and we need not despair as this will – I believe – soon be issued as an iOS application and ebook in collaboration with Glopilot.com. I’m just glad it became a deck, a real deck to have and to hold, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the honour of adding it to my actual card collection.

http://lenormandrevolution.com/