Lo Scarabeo Epic Tarot

I found this new Lo Scarabeo publication in my local esoteric shop this morning on the way to work. It's by Riccardo Minetti & Paulo Martinello (he of the Universal Fantasy and Mona Lisa Tarots.)

I like it - richly coloured and with that inventive graphic composition work which you see in the Universal Fantasy. I always liked the Mona Lisa too but this one feels more workable, more in the same vein as the Universal Fantasy. Very elaborate and richly illustrative. There's a lot going on, a lot to get your teeth into. It has very decorative but unintrusive borders, no text, just card numbers and suit symbols. Some extraordinarily beautiful images. I love that feeling you get in his art of how he "resolves" certain compositional issues so expertly and gets it all within the confines of the card, with bends and swirls.

The only thing I'm not so keen on are the Courts. They are all beasts. No humans. Each suit has a Unicorn (Page), Griffin (Knight), Phoenix (Queen) and Dragon (King). They are all quite similar, only with different backgrounds. Not so many clues to bounce off and interpret. There is a section in the LWB (by Barbara Moore), so I'll need to take a closer look here. But Courts are hard enough as it is without having them bereft of human presence. But others decks have done it and I've coped - but then these are the same beasts!

Beautiful colour palette. I like it.

I waffle on this one- simply because as much as I liked the Universal Fantasy deck- I just could not get into it for reading. Are you noticing this one is a bit more easy to dive into? Or is it about the same?

It sounds like a mixed blessing. On one hand, I love the Universal Fantasy to pieces, and it does read amazingly well for me.

But the court cards sound troubling. It's bad enough not having human faces (I know some people can easily do without, not me) but basically having the same animals in different backgrounds does not bode well. And the few images I have been able to find of it show very large, very ornate, hard to trim borders.

It does not seem to be available in the States, yet.

Could you post pics of the courts, Le Fanu?

FLizarraga said:

Could you post pics of the courts, Le Fanu?

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Yes, please, Mr. Le Fanu cause that sounds like a deal breaker for me too.

rwcarter said:

Yes, please, Mr. Le Fanu cause that sounds like a deal breaker for me too.

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Here are two (mobile phone) pics. Firstly, three suits from the courts laid out. See if you can distinguish... Secondly, some initial favourites and a back.

FLizarraga said:

It sounds like a mixed blessing. On one hand, I love the Universal Fantasy to pieces, and it does read amazingly well for me.

But the court cards sound troubling. It's bad enough not having human faces (I know some people can easily do without, not me) but basically having the same animals in different backgrounds does not bode well. And the few images I have been able to find of it show very large, very ornate, hard to trim borders.

It does not seem to be available in the States, yet.

Could you post pics of the courts, Le Fanu?

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Pretty much my thoughts. Of course the MerryDay has "Elementals" instead of Pages. It has a lot of things I complain about in a deck but I have used it a lot.

Diana

Le Fanu said:

Here are two (mobile phone) pics. Firstly, three suits from the courts laid out. See if you can distinguish... Secondly, some initial favourites and a back.

Click to expand...

I LIKE those courts. But I am having HUGE issues rotating the image to look properly (not your fault, I imagine, but VERY weird...) In the end I took a screenie and rotated that

I do like this deck. It brings some freshness (something new? different?) compared to the other mas market decks. And I just LOVE the back! Pre-order on Amazon, available for shipping in summertime (add a few months in my experience) = available in September/October. Uh! Such a long time...

gregory said:

I LIKE those courts. But I am having HUGE issues rotating the image to look properly (not your fault, I imagine, but VERY weird...) In the end I took a screenie and rotated that

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funny you should say that. I took the photo and uprighted it while editing but when I look at the post on my phone, it goes sideways and If I tilt my phone, the photo also tilts! How did that happen?

Le Fanu said:

funny you should say that. I took the photo and uprighted it while editing but when I look at the post on my phone, it goes sideways and If I tilt my phone, the photo also tilts! How did that happen?

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My tabled does the same. I had to deactivate this feature for the screen not to tilt together with the device (on my tablet you can turn this on and off).