Tarot of the III Millenium

Tarot of the III Millenium
by Iassen Ghiuselev, 2000

The Tarot of the III Millenium signals the completion of a Trump-only deck previously published by Lo Scarabeo. The deck is now a full 78-card Tarot, 56 suit cards having been added. With that introduction, let readers be forewarned: I have very mixed feelings about this deck.

What immediately impressed me are the deck’s twenty-two trumps, featuring detailed and meticulously rendered line drawings. These have been reproduced entirely in an indigo hue. I would expect a new edition to have added color to the original illustrations but they are certainly remarkable as is.

The illustrations are imaginative and depart in several ways from the usual trump imagery. Some depict their subject matter from an unusual perspective: The Magician and The Heirophant (shown above) are seen from behind and The Wheel (shown below) is seen from the side. There is also more drama to the figures than is usually seen. The Magician, for example, seems to be carefully performing to multiple vantage points; the king atop The Wheel clutches to it with manaical glee; the drapery of The World (shown below) wafts around the woman in exaggerated style, cleverly obscuring whether the shape beneath it is a sphere or her pregnant belly.

The ‘renaissance’ style of illustration belies the variety of cultures represented in these trumps. The Chariot carries a seated pharaoh in Egyptian garb. The Hermit depicts an Indian ascetic seated crosslegged under a tree. Strength is an Assyrian warrior stabbing into the side of a lion. Temperance is a Japanese geisha with wood shoes, parasol and water urns. The Tower depicts a complex multi-storied structure next to which stands a large figure reminiscent of an Old Testament prophet.

In contrast, I find the suit cards to be a disappointment. Neither their illustration style nor their content bear any real similarity to the trumps of this deck. While the pips are reproduced in the same indigo hue as the trumps, their illustrations are not nearly as refined, nor as imaginative.

The pip cards feature backgrounds which are akwardly cropped from five larger images: one for each suit, and a fifth for the Aces. There is nothing particularly significant about these backgrounds; the image used for the four Aces, for example, depicts a monk or alchemist who appears to have been murdered (if we can judge by the twist of his neck), lying among the broken tools of his lab. What does make the pips interesting is that they can be assembled like a jigsaw puzzle into their larger images — an entertaining thirty-minute exercise. Beyond this, the scenes are arbitrary and bear little if any relationship to ideas relating to the cards they illustrate. At least this is in keeping with the fact that the electrical diagrams and ISBN codes which also appear on the pips add nothing to the card meanings either. My impression is that this was simply a quick and easy way to complete a trump-only deck.

The impression is reinforced by the deck’s booklet, which offers no convincing justification for this assemblage (or dissassemblage) of imagery. In reference to the backgrounds, it is suggested that the deck “could be imagined as nothing other than a great puzzle,” and that “This puzzle is never complete and meditating on the part which does not appear could at times be more useful than concentrating one’s perception on that which does.” Regarding the electrical diagrams, it is suggested that they recall “the technological evolution which for some superimposes spirituality while for others it is the counterpart.” As for the bar codes, these are “an obsessive component of our times” and reflect “the need to catalog” our modern info-glut.

There is at least one element here which reflects a Tarot idiom: the images from an eighteenth-century Tarot, which are reproduced in miniature on each of the Minor Arcana. (These particular images were also published by Lo Scarabeo as a separate deck titled Ancient Tarots of Bologna.) There is otherwise no indication of suit or number on any of the forty pip cards.

The only colorized illustrations in this deck are the sixteen court cards. These are richly painted, apparently with watercolor, but beg the question as to why the rest of the deck is not. Again, the impression is that this was a shortcut taken by the publisher. And again, the booklet does nothing to dissuade the impression. As for the pips, we are told that “the vision of a monochromatic world indicates the difficulty with which man perceives the profoundness of things;” as for the courts, “The color indicates that they belong to the subjective dimension of man but are rather tied to the external world which travels at speeds which are asynchronous to our inner view.”

My final thoughts here are this: had the entire deck been illustrated in a style similar to the trumps, it could have been a gorgeous creation. Alternatively, if the new pip backgrounds had shown scenes relevant to their respective cards, there would have been no need to add disparate image-schemes such as diagrams, barcodes, redundant website addresses and antique pip miniatures. I just don’t see the point of this new 78-card edition.

Review by Mark Filipas, 10/24/03