Russian Tarot by Boris Monosov

This charming and Russian deck not only in name but also in looks is one of the latest East European tarot’s to find a home in my collection and urging me to show it off to those visiting my blog.

As with (almost) all decks originating from that part of the world information about it is scarce to put it lightly, I suppose part of that fact can be traced back to the use of the Cyrillic alphabet, but still I did the very best I could and found some data about it.

The inspiration and system behind it is from Boris Monosov’s, a Russian mage and founder of the "school of magic Atlantis" the artist who drew the cards being Anastasia Nikolaeva.From what I gather the deck was printed in 1994 by Skyline Courier to be used for meditation and energy workings by the students of Monosov's mystery school.

In 2011 the deck was re-published by the Russian publisher Vector and sometime later became accessible to us here in the west, mainly thanks to eBay sellers from that part of the world.

So far for the history part of the deck, now the images themselves, the style and colors breathe a Russian atmosphere that is immediately recognizable, simple yet strong with colors that jump directly at you an effect that is made even more potent due to the use of large white sections within the images.

According to the Russian information I found the deck is WCS-based, yet when opening the box and looking at it, the first impression was more of a TdM based one, perhaps an hybridization of those mixed with Mr. Monosv's own vision??

One other thing I could gather and that may shed an interesting light upon this deck is the fact that many majors have been renamed to fit Monosov's system, some corresponding to the traditional meanings, others less.
The new names (translated by Google) being:

1)  Creator

2)  Cognition

3)  Matter

4)  Will

5)  Consciousness

6)  Inclination

7)  Achievement

8)  Force

9)  Spirituality

10) Fate

11) Law

12) Object

13) Destruction

14 Transformation

15) Dependence

16) Return

18) Development

19) Word

20) Update

21) Success

22) Illusion

De Grote Arcana Van Doetie Spinder (Doetie Spinder's Great arcana)

This is one of those decks that I fell in love with more then a decade ago when I started collecting and have finally, finally succeeded in obtaining  (it seems that many rare and OOP or Limited Edition decks are surfacing lately, good for my less for my credit card).

Miss Spinder started her arcana drawings in October 1994 and completed the deck in April 1995, choosing what card to draw next by randomly drawing one from the Crowley Thoth Tarot followed by some research into the card from various sources even including the Baphomet Tarot der Unterwelt. 

She created the cards in a style similar to the mandala's she had been creating for some time already, resulting in 22 complex and intricate renditions of the tarot, echoing both ancient iconography and personal inspiration.

Following C.G. Jung's works she views the tarot cards as representing archetypes, ancient principles of the collective subconsciousness but whom perception is an individual experience and so each 'version' of the tarot a very personal depiction of these principles.

The artist self-published this arcana in a small number, printed on a non laminated  heavy paper stock (making it possible to color these if one wished to do so) and came in an envelope with the same image as the extra card (the other extra card is an overview of the 22 arcani and their name).

2 Sola Busca Tarot edtions by Wolfgang Mayer; Giordano Berti - Osvaldo Menegazzi

Yesterday was a special and memorable day for my collection, 2 new decks arrived or to better put it 2 editions of this historical important deck.
Both editions are high quality reproductions of the deck faithful to the original! The difference are ever so slight between both editions of the Sola Busca, there where both are offering the deck in it's original size the Mayer/Berti cards have a very discrete border around the cards rendering them a bit larger than the one reproduced by Osvaldo Menegazzi, the second difference is that the Il Meneghello Sola Busca is a bit darker in hue.

The Sola Busca is an important deck for many reasons, first it's age at the beginning at the official history of the Tarot, and it is the only complete 78 cards deck that has survived into our age. It was also the FIRST deck (and only for many centuries) to portray all minor arcana cards as ilustrated images not solely as a numerical representation of the suit emblems + court cards. The deck is said to have been a great inspiration to Pamela Colman-Smith who has drawn the Waite-Colman Tarot one of the best known, used, sold and used as inspiration for other tarot's deck of the 20th century, the influence can for example be seen in the 3 of Sword.

As a food starting point more information about the Sola Busca visit the Tarotpedia page dedicated to it.

The edition printed  in 1998 by Wolfgang Mayer is the full 78 cards deck, published in a limited hand numbered and signed (on the information card that is on side in German the other in English) edition of 700 decks and is now being offered by (tarot) historian Giordano Berti who obtained some copies and commissioned an Italian artisan to create a book shaped box for the deck.There is also a LWB provided with it by senor Berti
You can find more out about this deck at Berti's Facebook page here or at his website here or you contact him via email here.

Il Meneghello obtained from the Ministry of Heritage and Culture and Pinacoteca di Brera (where it is housed) the exclusive rights to reproduce the deck directly from the original cards, and is offering it in a limited edition of 400 majors only decks.
For more information about this edition see the Il Meneghello Facebook page here, this deck's Facebook page here or contact Christina Dorsini here.

Both decks deserve my 2 thumbs up and made this collector extremely happy and proud by their presence in my collection.

Polish Tarot / Jasniak Tarot by Aleksandra Jasniak & Anna Galuszka

It's always good news when a deck comes back into print, especially when it's one i didn't have in my collection yet.
First published in 1995 and then in 1998 this lush colorful deck is at it's third printing now (the 2011 version is now called “The Polish Tarot”)  and i'm sure it has many years and potential in his future.It is a deck that has personality and dares to stand out of the crowd, like that eccentric aunt we all loved, that everyone was looking at and that loved the attention!

Subtly hinting towards the TdM, non-scenic pips, (almost) psychedelic effects, golden borders bilingual titles (Polish & English) what's not to like in it - I love it!

It's available at Tarot Garden

  

Satanic Tarot by Juha Vuorma & Faustus Scorpius

One of the subsections in my collection are dark decks and what could be more dark than a satanic deck  (from a conventional view - no offence meant to satanists) and this New-Zealand one has been on my wishlist for quite a while.

Low-budget printed with black ink on red paper it's the adaptation from the satanist point of view, like the renaming of the Emperor into The Anti-Christ but largely following the normal tarot structures. The deck, that is a majors only, resulted and reflects the path-working of Faustus Scorpius, and given form by Finnish artist Juha Vuorma and is accompanied by a 20 page booklet with information about the cards and for each a description of the 'astral journeys' from where the images came from and also  a  satanic spread .

Le Tarot Idéographique Du Kébèk.

Each of us had at least once had this; you see a deck, fall in love only to discover its OOP (Out-Of-Print). These last years I found a few places that listed it as in stock so I ordered only to discover they are unable to deliver. So when I found one a few weeks ago at yet another shop I ordered but without much hope (but then you never now was what I was thinking) and YES at last after a hunt of 5 years I found one and even better at a price that seems identical to when it was released.

The Tarot Idéographique Du Kébèk was the first tarot created and published in Canada (Kébèk or Quebec is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level)

It is a majors-only deck following the Wirth/ Papus systems and inspirited by the Papus deck but with a twist: the images are constructed entirely by lines and non-elliptical arcs, variant curves are created by joining arcs of different size, and shading is created with crosshatched arcs and lines. The artist, Yves Paquin, restricted himself to using only square rule and compass to accomplish this.