Here’s a Kickstarter Tarot Game project I can get behind … Stones of Fate, a strategy game based on Tarot cards and illustrated by none other than Ciro Marchetti!
The incomparable Ciro Marchetti has sadly decided to retire from the world of Tarot, but the incredible decks and Tarot characters he’s created will continue spreading their magic for many years to come.
The video below is a montage of some of that magic. It’s a collection of Ciro’s own favourites as first shown to his lucky audience at last month’s Readers’ Studio 2013.
Ciro Marchetti’s Lenormand deck has already sold out of its first two printings, but at least according to his website, more copies will be available soon.
The Gilded Reverie Deck is just gorgeous. As with all Marchetti creations, it’s rich, lush, and swimming in magical light. I hope I manage to get a copy myself soon before it’s sold out again.
And if I do, I’d also like to get myself one of the Reverie themed Houses of the Grand Tableau reading cloths. They’re amazing!!
Donnaleigh de LaRose has one already, and in the video below, she lets us see just how fabulous they are.
Marie Anne Lenormand was a French fortune-teller born in the late 1700s. Through the Napoleonic era she was heralded as one of the greatest cartomancers of all time.
Mlle. Lenormand was said to have read for the likes of Robespierre, Marat, the Empress Josephine, and Czar Alexander himself.
She made quite a stir during her lifetime, writing books and other texts, causing many a public controversy, and sometimes even ending up in jail.
And though she herself didn’t use the deck her name was later attached to, her cartomantic powers seem to have lived on through it.
The Lenormand deck in its various manifestations has become quite in fashion among the Tarot folk these days. Even I recently caught the bug.
At BATS I attended a seminar on the topic with Mary Greer and within hours I had myself two news decks of 36 cards each.
You read these cards a little differently than Tarot. The meanings of each are much more fixed. They’re more like words in a sentence than symbols in a dream, but I’m starting to catch on.
Beyond Worlds has a Lenormand tutorial series and Donnaleigh herself has been posting how-to videos. I’ve got a lot watching and listening to do.
And though I’m looking forward to having a new divinatory tool to play with, I’m afraid I’ll find all the new Lenormand decks hard to resist.
But his first deck, the Gilded Tarot, is still an all time favourite, and within the Tarot world, it’s a smash hit sensation.
It’s sold over 250,000 copies worldwide, with translations available in Czech, Russian, Slovenian, Greek, German, Hungarian, Polish, Spanish, French, and Chinese.
But Marchetti’s still not completely satisfied. He’s thrilled with the incredible reception his deck has received, but he wants the deck itself to be even better.
Since he made the Gilded, the technology he used has developed way beyond what it was, and he himself has learnt a lot more about Tarot through the years.
So he’s gone ahead and redone it, making it bigger, and more detailed, and with actual gilding on the sides of the cards.
It’ll be self-published, and available only through Marchetti’s website. And it’s got a new name – the Gilded Tarot Royale.
Take a look at the video below to see images from the new cards. And go to his site to look at comparisons between the original version and the new one.
The old ones were nice, but the new ones are gorgeous.
Ciro was a guest on Beyond Worlds just last Sunday, and he talked about his new deck. Take a listen here …
They started on February 19th and nine days later they were done.
Floridians Tim and Peggy Baker patiently organized and connected 2000 little pieces of cardboard until the fantasy figures from Ciro Marchetti’s Legacy of the Divine finally appeared.
He liked working with an Oracle deck, saying that it had ‘a more flexible platform with fewer rules to adhere to and fewer rules to break.’
The Oracle of Visions has no one theme. Marchetti chose instead to mix faux Victoriana, theatre, and nature with his trademark jesters and masked figures.
He was trying to keep the ideas open, no one particular archetype being stamped on any one card.
Marchetti hopes that the surreal images will serve as visual triggers. Combined with a reader’s intuition and life experience, they should provide some compelling readings.
The deck comes with a full colour companion book and interactive CD with themed avatars, wallpapers and screen savers.
Here’s one of the screen savers you get with the CD. Very nice.
