Rocambole-Tarot

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 08 Nov 2004, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Strange2	08 Nov 2004
I was fortunate in my eBay searches to obtain a new and very unique Russian deck called the Rocambole-Tarot. This deck came out in 2003, and is the creation of Sergey de Rocambole and Anna Nikolaeva. The artwork reminds me of Mayan Legos, and is very tribal and geometric. I could not find the Rocambole-Tarot listed on any other site, so I've posted some scans here. The Rocambole has 25 Major Arcanas (3 extra Fools), and 6 Court cards per suite (have both male and female Knights (or riders) and Pages (or servants). The Minors are non-pictorial (which is my preferred style), yet incredibly fascinating in their geometric patterns. The cards themselves are quite tall (147 mm x 68 mm), which make them somewhat a challenge to shuffle. Curious if anyone else has seen or used this deck. It's quickly becoming one of my favorites!

Gerbear	08 Nov 2004
I got it from a seller in Estonia who mis-spelled it as Rokambol. Thank you for the background information. I like the Mayan styled artwork and primal colors. At one time I was a Russian major in college, so one of my projects is to translate the book with the deck. The cards are comfortable in my big hands, and are flexible enough for many shuffles. Did you notice the unicorn on the Strength (XI) card? I wonder where that came from.

Myrrha	08 Nov 2004
What lovely cards! They look like they would be amazing to read with. They remind me quite a bit of another deck, something I saw at Tarot Garden and thought was really sumptuous and powerful. I think it was by a French tarot artist, and it had masks over long cloaks like this, and lots of red and gold. I wish I could remember the name. Am I going mad or is there really a deck with similar art style? --Myrrha

Strange2	08 Nov 2004
GerBear: Small world... sounds like we got the deck from the same seller from Estonia on eBay! As I cannot read Russian, I've been trying to decipher/translate the not-so-little-black-book using AltaVista Babel Fish and WorldLingo translation tools. With the stylized font in the book and on the cards, it's like translating ancient hieroglyphs to me, but that makes the deck even more mysterious and effective. I would be most interested if you took up the project of translating the book (nudge nudge wink wink say no more)! Here's some interesting links on Sergey de Rocambole and artistAnna Nikolaeva.

Strange2	08 Nov 2004
Myrrha wrote: They remind me quite a bit of another deck, something I saw at Tarot Garden and thought was really sumptuous and powerful. I think it was by a French tarot artist, and it had masks over long cloaks like this, and lots of red and gold. I wish I could remember the name. Am I going mad or is there really a deck with similar art style? --Myrrha This is quite synchronistic! On the same page that I posted the images of the Rocambole-Tarot, just above that I posted images of the deck you described: Tarot de la Rea Tarot de la Rea is by Alain Bocher, and indeed the cards feature characters with masks and robes, richly embellished in golds, silvers, and red. One of my favorite decks, which deserves a discussion "thread" of its own!

Gerbear	08 Nov 2004
I was checking my database and I have this deck listed as being published in the Ukraine. Ukrainian and Russian are very close, similar to Spanish and Portugese, so there should be no problem. The font you see is a stylized font of the Cyrillic alphabet, used by most Slavic languages. My Babelfisn doesn't have a Russian option, just languages that use the Roman alphabet. I'll have to see if I can get that module. Thanks for the links, especially the one on the Dragon Keys. I just may make sense of this deck yet!

Myrrha	08 Nov 2004
Oh, I see. You have to scroll down to get to the Mayan Leggo deck so I only saw the scans for the Tarot de la Rea the first time. Well, now at least I know what it is called! I am not good at reading pip cards (yet) but those look like there is quite a bit to go on. Wow. Wow. Just.... stunning. --Myrrha

The Rocambole-Tarot thread was originally posted on 08 Nov 2004 in the Tarot Decks board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Tarot Decks, or read more archived threads.