Gilded Tarot (Marchetti)

Overview

Interestingly, and totally by coincidence, the very next deck I bought was also by Ciro Marchetti, and it is the Gilded Tarot, although, at the time, it came in a box called Easy Tarot, which, while it does have Ciro's name on the box, I didn't make the connection to him at first. The brightly coloured box caught my eye as I wandered through a local bookstore, and the name - Easy Tarot - intrigued me enough to splash out the few bucks. It comes with a great book by Josephine Ellershaw, which introduces Tarot for the novice reader.

As with the Legacy of the Divine Tarot I spoke of previously, the imagery and colours of the Gilded Tarot are spectacular, and draw you in to the cards so that you become involved in developing the stories being told. Again, Like the Legacy-Divine, the tradition is RWS, with enough of that symbology and mythology to allow this deck to be used to learn from, as the Easy Tarot name indicates. I am not sure if this was Ciro's first Tarot deck, but it predates the Legacy-Divine, and you can trace the evolution from the Gilded to the Legacy, seeing both similarities and differences as Ciro's skill and understanding developed.

As I mention above, this deck came as part of the Easy Tarot box set, and it’s worth commenting on the book by Josephine Ellershaw. This is definitely more than just a LWB! It is a full introduction to Tarot, with sections on Good Foundations, Meeting the Tarot, Preparing for Readings, Various Tarot Spreads, Final Touches and Tools and Templates. The only thing missing, for me, is an in depth description of each card as portrayed in the Gilded Tarot, as this is a more generic introductory text. Ciro does provide a Foreword where he describes his journey into Tarot and an explanation of why he included so many additional symbolic features, such as the animals I list above, but it is still not enough to give a clear introduction to each card. I guess he would say that that gives us more opportunity to provide our own meanings and intuitions to our readings with his deck.

The deck also comes with two extra cards, one of which shows the Celtic Cross spread - probably the most traditional and widely used Tarot spread - while the other card has a 5 card Daily spread. The deck also comes within its own tuck box which, typically, I would give less preference than other, more substantial boxes, but in this case, as its part of the bigger box set, is fairly reasonable. All in all, and excellent package that is well worth the investment.

Details of the Deck:

Tradition: RWS

Major Arcana: 22 cards

Minor Arcana: 56 cards

Court Cards: Page, Knight, Queen, King

Fire Suit: Wands

Air Suit: Swords

Water Suit: Cups

Earth Suit: Pentacles

Designer(s): Ciro Marchetti

Artist(s): Ciro Marchetti

Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2007

Home

Major Arcana:

0 - The Fool

1 - The Magician

2 - The High Priestess

3 - The Empress

4 - The Emperor

5 - The Hierophant

6 - The Lovers

7 - The Chariot

8 - Strength

9 - The Hermit

10 - Wheel of Fortune

Interestingly, this deck was obviously so popular, and Ciro's ability improved so much over the years, that he produced an updated version of this deck, called the Gilded Tarot Royale, which, while it retains the same depictions of the cards, the imagery is significantly updated. See the scans at the bottom of this page for samples of the old and new artwork, with borderless cards.

As I mentioned in the write-up on the Legacy of the Divine Tarot, Ciro seems to have a penchant for the acrobatic antics of the Cirque du Soleil style, and the four cards shown below echo that artistic meme, if not quite as overtly as in the Legacy deck. It’s also interesting to note some of the deviations from the standard RWS symbology, such as the Fool echoing the TdM deck tradition of the Magician being Le Bateleur, or Juggler, in this case juggling the 12 signs of the Zodiac. His Emperor looks rather Romanesque, too, but check his hands - they are intimating what the Magician would typically indicate - pointing As Above, So Below. The Lovers card also seems to reflect that Roman style, while The Wheel of Fortune and other cards display some typical Steampunk imagery. I love some of the other artistic symbols Ciro has included in other cards, such as the rabbits in the Four of Wands, signalling not only a happy marriage, but a fecund one too, and the stags in the background of the Ten of Wands. Many more are sprinkled throughout the deck - a scarab in the Nine of Wands, a frog in the Six of Swords, an Owl in the Knight of Swords, a squirrel and a white rat in the Four of Cups, the cat in the Six of Cups, and so on. What a wonderful adventure to discover all of the hidden sign and symbols in this deck!