Tarot of the Golden Sepent

Creator(s): Sebastian Haines
Date: 2013
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 
Type: Thoth
Reference:  artist's website





Notes:
The Tarot of the Golden Serpent is a work in progress. This is an edition of the Majors only, but eventually it will become a full deck of 78 cards. The images for the cards are created as a series of oil paintings. The Major Arcana are 18x24, but the not yet existing Court Cards and Minors are planned as paintings on smaller canvases.

For each of the cards Sebastian Haines has worked out a set of images which he constructs within a symmetric structure. The symbolism is taken from alchemy and western ceremonial magic.

For the fool Hains took inspiration from a Gnostic amulet found in Budges Amulets and Talismans. The amulet depicts Harpocrates riding in a boat with the heads of Horus and Anubis at either end.

As in the Thoth deck, the empress is pregnant to emphasize the nature of Venus (ruling Taurus), but also express reproduction as a universal principle. She is chained to Taurus as an expression of materialization - energy becoming form. There is also a reference to the myth of Europa. On the Strength card the smoldering black shards were making a reference to the Qlippoth.

The Tarot of the Golden Serpent is a limited edition of 50 signed and numbered copies. The cardstock is thin, the backs are blank and the deck came in an old CD case instead of a box. There is no LWB.

The Greater Mysteries Tarot

Creator(s): Robert Ellaby
Date: 2013
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 
Type: other
Reference:  Adam McLean

Notes: 
Robert Ellaby is a British surrealist artist. He produced this deck between 1982 and 1984 as part of the Gareth Knight Christian Kabbalistic course.

Ellaby associated the ten pips of each suit with the ten sephiroth, from one (Kether) to 10 (Malkuth). He has chosen a motif for each sephirah and then explores these through the four elements that constitute the suits.

The artwork is pen drawings which are coloured with thin washes of water based pigments.

Tarot of the Sidhe (McLean Edition)

Creator(s): Emily Carding
Date: 2006
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 
Type: other
Reference:  Adam McLean








Notes:
The Majors only edition of the Tarot of the Sidhe is "Art Tarots Number 5" from Adam McLean's Artwork Tarot Series. There also exists a mass market full 78-card version by Schiffer. 

These is a limited edition of 100 copies, mine is number 40. The borders are smaller than in the 78-card version, and it has a different back design.

The W. T. Horton Tarot

Creator(s): W.T. Horton, Koretaka Eguchi
Date: 2013
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN:   
Type: RWS
Reference: Adam McLean





Notes:
Horton (1864-1919) was a mystic and an illustrator, and once belonged to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He also was  a friend of W. B. Yeats and Aubrey Beardsley, by whom his works were inspired.

Koretaka Eguchi collected books with illustrations by Horton and realised that many of these illustrations had imagery that paralleled conventional tarot, indeed the images fitted the tarot archetypes without requiring reshaping or collaging. Most of the images for the deck come from Horton’s book “The Way of the Soul”, which was printed in 1910 by William Rider and sons, London. At that time they were also printing Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot and the Waite-Smith deck as well.

Fortuna's Wheel Tarot

Creator(s): Nigel Jackson
Date: 2007
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN:   
Type: Mixed
Reference: Adam McLean








Notes:
Nigel Jackson is an artist, symbolist and esotericist known for his Medieval Enchantment Tarot produced in 2000.  His Fortuna's Wheel Tarot is in the same style with detailed pen drawing and luminous glowing colours.

My copy is number 88 of a limited, numbered, signed edition of 100.

A book for this deck is published seperately and can be found here.

Aleph Tarot

Creator(s): Rosetta Woolf, Aleph Kamal
Date: 1994, 2006
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 
Type: Thoth
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol.IV, pp. 25,26







Notes:
This deck was printed in 1994 as an edition of 250 copies for the Musée Lilim in France. In Kaplan’s Encyclopedia it was called the Cathar Tarot and listed as unpublished . In 2006 Adam McLean obtained the remaining stock from the artist, reboxed the decks and sold them as No.9 in his Artwork Tarot Series.

The images for this Tarot were abstract watercolor paintings by Rosetta Woolf  based on the spiritual and cultural history of the Mediterranean and dedicated to the myth of Lilith and her children, known as the Lilim. The cards are a little longer ( 6.25 by 3.25 inches) than a standard size deck .

Oswald Wirth Tarot (McLean Edition)

Creator(s): Oswald Wirth, Adam McLean
Date: 2013
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN:   
Type: Papus-Wirth
Reference: Adam McLean

Notes:
The Oswald Wirth Tarot was created in1889 as a majors only deck. It has a Marseilles foundation, with some changes based on the ideas of Eliphas Levi. These cards were used to illustrate Le Tarot des Bohemiens by Papus.

The deck was printed as line engravings then coloured by hand, as was usual with playing cards at that time when colour printing had not fully developed. The colouring of the cards was often messy, with the colour overflowing the lines and often not entirely filling the areas, because the colour was applied using stencils and relatively unskilled labour. Adam McLean has cleaned up the images, sensitively correcting these flaws, to produce a deck that reflected Wirth's original conception.

Javanese Folktales Tarot

Creator(s): Andhika Wijaya
Date: 2009
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 
Type: other
Reference: artist's page









Notes:
Andhika Wijaya is living in Jakarta as a graphic designer and childrens book illustrator. The Javanese Folktales Tarot shows on each card an illustration related to a particular Javanese Folktale, which can be found on her website.

The cards are unnumbered. Each has an English title at the top and a Javanese title at the bottom. The deck came in a lidded gold cardboard box with a ribbon inside for lifting out the cards. The backs are reversible.

My copy is number 43 of a limited, numbered, signed edition of 100.

Marie-Claude Purro Tarot

Creator(s): Marie-Claude Purro
Date: 2006
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 
Type: Marseilles
Reference: artist's page

Notes:
Marie-Claude Purro is a self-taught artist, who was born on in 1962 in Fribourg, Switzerland. 1993-1994 she lived in Portugal, where she painted the 22 major arcana of the Tarot, which she exhibited in the little town of Praia de Mira, as well as, upon her return to Switzerland, at the "Espace Galerie Placette" and at the "Café des Grand-Places".

The cards are 4 1/8" (10.5 cm) high * 3" (7.5 cm) wide. It is a borderless deck with non reversible backs.

Limited edition of 100 copies, mine is number 83.

Arto Tarot

Creator(s): Jane Estelle Trombley
Date: 2008
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 
Type: RWS
Reference: artist's page

Notes:
The artist started working on the Minor Arcana but does not intend to complete the deck. Some Minors can be seen here .

The art is watercolour, the cards are brightly and harmoniously coloured, and bring new imagery to the standard tarot scenes.

The Arto Tarot is the 17th limited edition, majors-only deck from Adam McLean. It came in a lidded box and is signed and numbered by the artist. I have copy #24 of 100.

The Fialko Tarot

Creator(s): Jeff Fialko
Date: 2012
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN:   
Type: Mixed
Reference: Adam McLean

Notes:
Jeff Fialko is an American artist and musician. The deck is painted with ink and watercolor in a sort of Marvel-Comic-Style. Some card images have more elements of RWS (Magician / High Priestess) others more of Marseilles (Sun / Lovers). The numbering with Justice at VII and Strength at XI is Marseilles. The cards are numbered but without title.

It is a signed and numbered limited edition of 50, mine is number 35. The Fialko Tarot is number 24 of Adam McLean's "Art Tarots" series. This deck is made cheaper than the earlier editions, the cards are without lamination, there are no card backs printed and it has no custom made but a transparent acetate box.

Rotin Tarot

Creator(s): Peter Rotin
Date: 2006
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 
Type: other
Reference:  Adam McLean

Notes:
The Rotin Tarot is "Art Tarots Number 8" from Adam McLean's Artwork Tarot Series. It has 22 minimalistic cards that work with the polarities and dark and light.

The Rotin Tarot contains black and white line drawings in ink, pencil and pen surrounded by a thin black border line. A double box at the bottom of each card contains the card name followed with the appropriate Trumps number. The cards follow the generally accepted Marseilles numbering system (Justice 8 and Strength 11) with no number  printed on “The Fool” card. The card backs are an evenly split black and white diagonal that would indicate a reversed card. 


Comment on the Fool by the artist:

 "I was always fascinated by the fact that The Fool is unnumbered, giving it a certain ambiguity in the flow of the Tarot. A couple of years back when I was studying the Tarot, I came about a book on numbers and another on buddhism about the importance of the discovery of the number zero by human kind and the importance of the concept of emptiness for buddhists. It was quite revealing at the time and helped me piece many thought processes together. What I tried to do with the front card was simply that. 
 
There are 21 cards drawn on the card but the card in itself is another card, becoming the 22nd one. It exists when the other 21 exist, a concept of buddhist interbeing. 

The Fool is the most important card in the deck, it is the beginning, the end, and the reference point of all the other cards. Like the number zero, it has no apparent value unless one is ready to understand that without nothing you cannot have something, that emptiness is the root of all being. "

Tarot ng Daigdig sa Balintataw

Creator(s): Lynyrd-Jym Narciso
Date: 2009
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 
Type: RWS
Reference:  Adam McLean

Notes:
The Tarot ng Daigdig sa Balintataw ( 'The World Inside the Pupil Tarot') is "Art Tarots Number 21" from Adam McLean's Artwork Tarot Series.

Narciso's art is anchored in strong underlying drawing, which he has coloured with subtle muted tones keyed to a tight palette. He uses a rather neat technique of altering the contrast in the line drawing so as to create a background, middle ground and foreground to the forms.

The Goth Tarot

Creator(s): Christina Fernandez (Winny)
Date: 2009
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher: Adam McLean
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 
Type: RWS
Reference:  Adam McLean

Notes:
The Goth Tarot by the Spanish artist Winny is "Art Tarots Number 22" from Adam McLean's Artwork Tarot Series.

The cards are laminated with a glossy laminate. The backs are not reversible. Look here how the Artwork Tarots are made.

The deck deck came in a lidded box and is signed and numbered by the artist. I have copy #49 of 100.