Tarô Carbônico

Creator(s): Adriano Camargo Monteiro
Date: 2007
Country: Brazil
Publisher: Ibrasa
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 978-8534-802505
Type: other
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol.IV, p. 24

Notes:  
Adriano Camargo Monteiro has also written several books in Portuguese about mysticism and the esoteric order Dragon Rouge. 

The deck  was drawn in pencil, that is graphite or pure carbon, and thus the title for the deck. While the art is in black and white, some of the cards have details in color.

The cards are small (6.5 x 10.5 cm ~ 2.5 x 4.1 inches) and printed in a thick cardstock that barely has any lamination. 

In the Portuguese only book Monteiro explains what every element in the cards represents for him. Each cards gets at least three pages of information. First there's a long text about what the cards means esoterically and how it relates to the spiritual journey of the Initiate. Then the artist explains what the symbols he added to each picture mean and how they contribute to the message of the card. At the ending of the explanation, Monteiro provides a list of keywords detailing what the card means in different contexts of life. 

Grand Tarot Belline

Creator(s): Edmond Billaudot
Date: 1863, 1966
Country: France
Publisher: Grimaud
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 
Type: Marseilles
Reference: A Wicked Pack of Cards pp. 202-203   

Notes: 

Le Grand Tarot Belline was drawn by hand using pen and ink, around 1863 by "Magus Edmond" (Edmond Billaudot,1829-1881). The decks name comes from the French cartomancer Marcel Belline, who years later discovered the deck, sold the printing rights to Grimaud and then donated the originals to the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris. Grimaud published them 1966 with many reprints there after. The earlier editions can be distinguished by the more generously rounded corners.

The deck is using ideas from Etteilla, Éliphas Leví, and Paul Christian. Each card is divided into four sections, upper and lower bands, and upper and lower fields. Written on the upper band is Leví's mundane kabalistic letter for the Majors, the Gematria number and  Paul Christian astrological correspondences. The Red Key-Words are the same as in  Jeu Du Grand Etteilla. The bottom band of the card contains the card name, the bottom field of the card contains a proverb specific to the card.

The gilt edged cards are large (159mm x 75mm), they came in a  black box, with golden title and red velure interior, complete with red ribbon to lift the cards.

There is a Translated Documentation of the cards by Paula Goodman, with an introduction by Dan Pelletier at Tarot Garden.

Mathematics Tarot

Creator(s): Karen West
Date: 2012
Country: Canada
Publisher: self-published
Number of Cards: 78+3
ISBN: 
Type: other
Reference: artist's page

Notes:
The deck was compiled from public domain and creative-commons diagrams available to the public. The Mathematics Tarot interprets the tarot archetypes through the lens of mathematics and physics. It came with three extra cards (The Mathematician, Möbius and The Empty Set).

Mine was number 40 of a limited edition of 50 copies. The cards are Poker-sized (2.5 by 3.5 inches) and the Handbook can be downloaded here

Golden Gomera Tarot (New Century Tarot)

Creator(s): Rolf Eichelmann
Date: 2004
Country: Switzerland
Publisher: Königsfurt Urania
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 978-3038-190240
Type: RWS
Reference: aeclectic






Notes:
The Golden Gomera Tarot was created by German artist and architect Rolf Eichelman, while vacationing on the island of La Gomera (one of the Canary Islands). Eichelmann was inspired by Stewart Kaplans book Tarot Classic, which he received as a gift from his wife.

All cards have a patterned tapestry-like backdrop running down the centre behind the main figure or suit element, and the colours of this backdrop change for each major and each suit. In the far background, all majors have a palisade of reddish trees silhouetted against a navy sky, the foliage of which changes subtly for each card, making the individual cards feel as though they are yet part of a whole, united world.

The deck was first published in 2003 by US Games. The US Games edition has smaller cards and a different back design ( Golden Gomera : 85 mm by 122 mm / New Century : 82 mm by 111 mm )

I Tarocchi del Re Sole

Creator(s): Paolo Piffarerio
Date: 1986
Country: Italy
Publisher: Lo Scarabeo
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN:  
Type: other
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol.IV, p. 475, 480

 Notes:
The title translates as Tarot of the Sun King. The szenes are based on Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketiers, which was set in the reign of France's "Sun King", Luis XIV.

The pip cards are illustrated and the four suits are represented by the four musketeers.The suit of swords is associated with D'Artagnan, batons with Portos, cups with Aramis, and coins with Athos.

The deck was issued by Lo Scarabeo Azzurro in a limited edition of 936 decks, comprising two versions: the first 530 decks have faces printed in black and the backs printed in blue; the remaining 406 decks have faces and backs printed in brown. Mine is number 889 and printed in brown. The Titles are Italian.

The deck included a title card and a presentation card and a leaflet in Italian.

Tarocchi d'Arte Il Sole Inchiostro

Creator(s): Linda Zanier
Date: 1998
Country: Italy
Publisher: self-published
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 
Type: other
Reference: artist's page






Notes:
Tarocchi d'Arte Il Sole Inchiostro is a majors only black and white deck, made in indian ink applied by pen and brush.

It is a limited edition of 500, mine is number 386. Instead of a LWB it came with a leaflet in Italian only. The card backs have a maroon and white design. The deck  is packaged in a dark red velvet pouch with a wax seal.

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.

Erotica Tarot

Creator(s): Ylva Trollstierna, Patrik Carlsson, Pierre Brawin
Date: 2002
Country: Sweden
Publisher: self-published
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 91-85052-00-0    
Type: RWS
Reference: artist's page






Notes:
The drawings were made by Pierre Brawin, but with the designs inspired by Ylva Trollstierna and Patrik Carlsson. The Erotica Tarot cards are black and white, and concentrate on the erotic aspects of Tarot, as well as Tantra and sex magick. The pen-drawn illustrations are sexually explicit.

Brawin leaves out the eyes and sometimes other features from the human faces. The Court cards are renamed to Master (King), Madam (Queen), Man (Knight) and Mistress (Page) .The Minor arcana have emblematic pips, which do not entirely follow the  Rider-Waite pattern, though in places the artist seem to have borrowed from there.

The deck came in a cardboard box with a book, which is available in Swedish, Norwegian and English.

Decameron Tarot

Creator(s): Luciano Spadanuda, Giacinto Gaudenzi
Date: 2003
Country: Italy
Publisher: Lo Scarabeo
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 978-3898-755153  
Type: other
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol.IV, p. 304






Notes:
This is an "Adults Only" deck with sexually explicit imagery. The images do not specifically match scenes from Boccacio's Decameron (written ca 1350). Rather they illustrate the milieu of the time.


The major arcana were first published 1993 by Ideogramma Arte Editoriale in an edition limited to 300 copies. In 2003 Lo Scarabeo printed an unlimited edition of all 78 cards.

Der Ägyptische Tarot

Creator(s): Bernd A. Mertz, Kamilla Szij
Date: 1987
Country: Germany
Publisher: Bauer
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 3-7626-0324-3    
Type: Egyptian
Reference: artist's page

Notes:
The cards (designed by the Hungarian artist Kamilla Szij) appeared in sheets in the back of the book, Der Ägyptische Tarot, authored by Bernd A. Mertz, a well-known writer of tarot and esoteric books in Germany.

The card backs are not reversible and depict numerous symbols associated with Egyptology.

All cards can be viewed here

Aperol Tarot

Creator(s): Fratelli Barbieri
Date: 1973
Country: Italy
Publisher: Aperol
Number of Cards: 46
ISBN:   
Type: other
Reference: tarotgarden






Notes:
Promotional set of Egyptian-themed tarot cards, as an advertisement for the Italian aperitif Aperol. Aperol originated in 1919 in Padova, it was a product of the Barbieri Brothers who launched the revolutionary idea of an aperitif with an alcohol content of only 11 percent.  Purchased in the ‘90s by Barbero 1891, Aperol then entered Gruppo Campari's portfolio.

The deck contains the full set of 22 traditional major arcana cards, but the minor arcana cards have been abridged to include only the 7 - 9, Queen, King, and Ace for each suit.

Cartomancie de l'An 2000

Creator(s): Pino Zac
Date: 1981
Country: France
Publisher: Grimaud
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN:   
Type: Marseilles
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. III, pp.556, 557

Notes:
Pino Zac is the pseudonym of the Italian cartoonist Giuseppe Zaccaria. He studied architecture in Rome, before going into illustrating. He made his debut in 1950, with Gato Filippo – the first comic strip ever to be carried by a newspaper in Italy.

The images of this deck show a humorous depiction of life in the year 2000, as envisioned by artist Pino Zac in 1981. Illustrations are rendered in a cartoon-like style.

The backs have a swirling design in different shades of blue.

Tarot for Cats

Creator(s):  Regen Dennis, Kipling West
Date: 1996
Country: USA
Publisher: Macmillan
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN: 0-02-860828-3   
Type: other
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol.IV, pp. 259, 261





Notes:
Majors-only deck, with each card featuring a different breed of cat. The cats are always depicted doing things that cats quite naturally do. The cards have standard titles, except that The Hanged Man has become The Hanging Cat. The reversible card backs feature a  graphic of two cats surrounded by flowery scrollwork, and are fully reversible.

The book is by Regen Dennis and the artwork is by Kipling West. The Tarot for Cats set comes in a cardboard sleeve containing a book and a box of cards. The book is subtitled Unlock the Mysteries of Your Nine Lives and written from the point of view of a cat.

Songs for the Journey Home (miniature edition)

Creator(s): Dwariko von Sommaruga, Catherine Cook
Date: 2005
Country: New Zealand
Publisher: self-published
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN:  
Type: other
Reference: artist's page
 
Notes:
Dwariko von Sommaruga is an illustrator of children's books and died in 2010. Both of the creators were followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho).

The major arcana are referred to as Life Songs. Some of the major arcana have also been renamed: Luminary (Hierophant), Renewal (Temperance), Beyond Judgement (Judgement) and Homecoming (World). The court cards are referred to as Shell Songs,  the other minor arcana cards are referred to as Hearth Songs and are based on numerology, the author recommends  to lay the cards out by suit when reading about the cards to see the numerological pattern.

The suits have been renamed: Earth Songs (Pentacles), Flame Songs (Wands), Wave Songs (Cups) and Wind Songs (Swords).The names of the courts have also been changed to Innocence (Page/Princess), Awakening (Knight/Prince), Creating (Queen), Resolving (King).

These cards are round ( 73mm diameter ) and the artwork is done in coloured pencil. They came in a cardboard box with a LWB. A 198 page book Songs for the Journey Home is separately available.

Mountain Dream Tarot (3rd Edition)

Creator(s): Bea Nettles
Date: 2012
Country: USA
Publisher: self-published
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN:  
Type: RWS
Reference: artist's page







Notes:
The Mountain Dream Tarot was the first photographic tarot card deck. The cards were produced between 1970 to 1975, years before the advent of digital photography, using traditional darkroom processes.

Bea Nettles lives in the Asheville, North Carolina area of the Blue Ridge Mountains. While she was at Penland Art School as a printmaking student one night, in the summer of 1970, after buying a black taffeta dress with white stars, she had a dream and came up with the idea of recreating the tarot archetypes using the medium of photography.

Bea Nettles worked on the project for the next 5 years, photographing in the landscape settings of Penland, using fellow artists, friends, colleagues and family as models. She photographed herself as the Queen of Pentacles in the black taffeta dress which had perhaps triggered the dream that started it all.

The first edition of this deck appeared in 1975 as a limited edition of 900 offset decks. In 2001 the second version was produced in an edition of 1000 decks. The original prints were scanned and enhanced digitally. As with the first edition, the cards were monochromatic, using different tint for each suit. This third edition worked again with the scans of the 70s cards and tinted the cards using Photoshop.

Tree of Life Tarot / Kabbalistisches Tarot

Creator(s): Rufus Camphausen, Apolonia van Leeuwen
Date: 1983
Country: Switzerland
Publisher: AGM
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 3-85914-147-3
Type: other
Reference: Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol.III, pp. 638, 640-641



Notes:
This deck was designed as a study aid for learning the kabalistic and astrological associations in Tarot. The images on the deck are wholly symbolic. The titles are in English and German.

The Major Arcabna feature the Tree of Life with a path between two Sephirot highlighted. Within each of the  two Sephirot a planetary symbol is inscribed. In the upper left corner is a zodiacal or planetary symbol, on the lower right is a Hebrew letter.

The Minor Arcana show a zodiac wheel with three houses highlighted. A small glyph of the Tree of Life is in the center of the Zodiac wheel. Each suit is matched with an element and colored in the appropriate color for the element: red for fire, blue for water, yellow for air and green for earth. The planet assigned to the card is shown on the outside of the zodiac wheel in position next to the appropriate sign. The symbol for the suit's element is in the upper right corner of the card; the card's number is in the upper left corner.

 The court cards are Knight, Queen, Prince and Princess. They show the four letters of the Tetragrammaton in the center of the zodiac wheel, vice the Tree of Life. The appropriate letters for the court card are colored in.

The kabbalistic attributions follow the Golden Dawn interpretations, with some exceptions . The back design shows the Egyptian god Thot. The deck came with a book titled  "Spiegel des Lebens - Tarot und Kabbala" by Rufus Camphausen.

The Tree of Life Tarot was first published in a limited edition of 222 decks. In 1983 it was published by AGM as an unlimited  massmarket edition.

Blue Birds' Tarot

Creator(s): Tadahiko Kawagushi (Hesomoge), Maki Mikami
Date: 2012
Country: Japan
Publisher: self-published
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN:  
Type: Marseilles
Reference: artist's page  








Notes:
The deck was created by Tadahiko Kawagushi ("Hesomoge") in cooperation with the professional astrologer Maki Mikami.

The cards are based on Marseilles designs. The artwork uses a restricted palette on top of strong pen drawings.

The deck came with a Japanese only LWB.

The original paintings were the subject of an exhibition in November 2012.

The Tarot of Curiosities

Creator(s): Nicole Monforti
Date: 2012
Country: USA
Publisher: headcase press
Number of Cards: 22
ISBN:  
Type: other
Reference: headcasepress





Notes:
The Tarot of Curiosities is a 22 card deck of the Major Arcana cards. The cards are digital prints of original cut paper collages.

The cards are primarily black and white with color accents in some of the images.

The deck is packaged in a black metal box and includes a LWB.

Tarot para Chicas

Creator(s): Alice Bensimon, Hilton McConnico
Date: 2010
Country: Spain
Publisher: De Vecchi
Number of Cards: 78
ISBN: 978-84-315-5000-4 
Type: other
Reference: De Vecchi






Notes:
The deck came in a box with compartments for the 78 gilt edged cards and an explanatory booklet. Booklet and the card titles are Spanish only.

 There exists also a French edition from 2009 called Le Tarot des Filles.

The images on the Majors  departs considerably from the established tarot, all Majors are renamed. The Minors are pips and the suits were renamed Emocion/ Accion/ Mental/ Triumfes rapidos.

Joseph Hilton McConnico  is a designer and artist who was born in Memphis, Tennessee but has lived and worked in Paris since 1965. He worked for fashion labels and as art director for films. Alice Bensimon  also created the El Tarot de las Mafias which is ment as the corresponding Tarot for men.