Cards - Tarot Of The New Vision (Lo Scarabeo)

Tarot Of The New Vision. Lo Scarabeo, Italy. Full divinatory tarot deck, Mediterranean suited, 80 single-headed cards. Size: 66mm x 120mm.

Deck make-up:
Trumps: 0-21.
Pentacles (i.e. coins), wands (i.e. clubs), chalices (i.e. cups), swords: A, 2-10, foot jack ("knave"), mounted jack ("knight"), queen, king.
Extras: title card, advertising card.

Here's a nice idea – show the classic Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) images, but from the other direction! Such is the concept behind The Tarot Of The New Vision ("The deck no one had ever thought of") devised by Pietro Alligo and illustrated by twin brothers Raul Cestaro and Gianluca Cestaro, and apparently first released in 2003. "This is not simply a figurative peculiarity but an ulterior extension of meanings." Yay!

The blurb continues: "While realizing this project some of the cards required 'artistic' license for the enlargement or reduction of the size of the figures and objects in relation to their original position. For some cards, for example the High Priestess and Justice, the edge of a curtain located behind them was allowed to fall in order to make the main character more visible."

A man and his twin, a coin and its other side, a person and his opposite point of view, the Rider-Waite tarot and this deck: All for broadening knowledge... and awareness. (Sounds like dialogue from a Coleman Francis movie!)

There are some minor colouring changes from the RWS originals but, more significantly, as is common with re-drawings of that deck, the new artwork helps to bring out details previously missed. For example, we can now see that the woman in yellow on 3 chalices/cups is holding a bunch of grapes, which is not really very clear on the original.

There are also some completely new additions to the pictures, often animals (e.g. the monkey on The Magician, say, or the bear on 9 wands). I've pointed out a few of the more interesting extras below; what these Mean you'll have to work out for yourselves! According to the booklet, the Divinatory Meanings are along the lines of the standard Waite ones and includes reversals, but, "...if a positive card is upside-down, its positive meaning is reduced, whereas if a negative card is upside-down, its negative meaning is accentuated."

The deck is also available in a mini version, and as part of a kit with a 160-page manual by Alligo (which I haven't seen and perhaps explains some of the additions to the cards?) See also The Viceversa Tarot for a later take on the same 180° idea.

In the galleries below, you can optionally choose to also display the original Rider-Waite-Smith pictures alongside, so you can compare the two.

Comparative images shown (on the left: the New Vision card; on the right, the Rider-Waite-Smith original): No Yes

Trumps

The 180° idea isn't meant to be taken too literally in all cases, it seems. For example, on the Moon card, the towers should be in the foreground on the reverse view, not still in the background, and our planet would have two suns.

Pentacles (i.e. coins)

Wands (i.e. clubs)

Note the added jester on the 2. The angel with the arrow on the 8 livens up a very spartan card (the original is just the wands).

Chalices (i.e. cups)

For some reason, there is an odd change of location for the queen – on the original she sits under a cliff on a beach with pebbles, but the new card shows her on a green hillside next to a stream.
Note the ark on the king.

Swords

The guy on the 5 was smiling on the original; not so here.
Note the coffin-bearers in the background on the queen.

Extras

Title card; two sides of advertising card; example page from LWB; views of box; reverse of deck.

Documents

The deck on this page is one masterminded by a Golden Dawn (or its offshoots) member, or designed to adhere to their concepts of tarot. A list of other major such decks is given below (scroll/swipe to the right if needed):

Deck	Author/s	Artist/s (if diff.)	Release year	"Official" guide book	Notes
Marseilles tarot / Tarot de Marseille	unknown	various	15th century	The Tarot: Its Occult Signification, Use In Fortune-Telling, And Method Of Play, Etc.	The booklet cited (written in 1888 by Samuel L MacGregor Mathers of the Golden Dawn) gives "official" Golden Dawn divinatory meanings when using the Marseilles tarot (referred to at that time as the Italian tarot). In 1889, Swiss occultist and artist, Oswald Wirth, designed a well-known tarot specifically for esoteric use with his own versions of the trumps in the Marseilles pattern.
The Rider-Waite[-Smith] Tarot	Arthur Edward Waite	Pamela Colman Smith	1909	The [Pictorial] Key To The Tarot
Builders Of The Adytum (BOTA) Tarot	Paul Foster Case	Jessie Burns Parke	1931	The Tarot: A Key To The Wisdom Of The Ages or Highlights Of Tarot [NB doesn't cover pip cards]	Revised version of Rider-Waite with some "corrected" trumps and courts, and simple pip cards. Trumps also issued in colour form; full deck is b&w.
Thoth Tarot Deck	Aleister Crowley	Lady Frieda Harris	1972 (painted 1938-43)	The Book Of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot): A Short Essay On The Tarot Of The Egyptians
The Golden Dawn Tarot (aka The Whare Ra deck)	Israel Regardie	Robert Wang	1978	An Introduction To The Golden Dawn Tarot
The Hermetic Tarot	Godfrey Dowson		1979	Only the Little White Booklet that comes with the deck.	Black & white.
Golden Dawn Magical Tarot (aka The New Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot)	Chic Cicero & Sandra Tabatha Cicero (with Israel Regardie)		1991	Golden Dawn Magical Tarot / The New Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot	"Ritual" was the earlier name. Do not confuse this deck with the one below – they are different!
The Magical Tarot Of The Golden Dawn	Pat Zalewski & Chris Zalewski	Skip Dudchous & David Sledzinski	2022	The Magical Tarot Of The Golden Dawn: Revised Ed.	Earlier editions had art by Jonathon A Pierce instead. This deck is not to be confused with the similarly named deck above!

Links to other Rider-Waite-Smith tarot pages