New deck (for me) - Nicoletta Ceccoli Tarot

[Trogon]

On Tuesday I stopped by our local New-age shop since I had a bit of extra money (I'd finally cashed in my loose change ;)). I went in thinking I might get the Medicine Cards oracle. But, as I was looking at the decks, the Nicoletta Ceccoli Tarot caught my eye. Now, I've seen it there before, but I hadn't really paid attention to it. But for some reason, it kind of jumped out at me. Looking through the sample deck, I was struck by the dream-like quality of the artwork. I basically fell in love with the deck.

 

In my opinion, The Fool is one of the most important cards in a Tarot deck. And this one is very unique and very cool. It is almost a cross between Fool and Chariot as it shows our Fool embedded in a large drum on wheels. The Chariot, one of my favorite cards, shows a young girl, holding a doll and sitting on a hobby horse. These two cards have rather unusual imagery, but then, the entire deck does as well. I think the closest that any card comes to an image which is strongly reminiscent of the RWS, is The Hierophant, but it shows our Pope-like character as a stuffed monkey. All of the cards have very surrealistic, dream-like images that portray the meanings of the cards in different ways.

 

The deck is published by Lo Scarabeo, and the LWB is in the LoS standard with 5 languages stuffed in it, which of course means that the information is necessarily brief. Unlike other LoS decks, we don't have multiple language titles on the cards - in fact, no titles at all. The card meanings in the LWB basically follow the RWS/Golden Dawn standards. Justice is placed at VIII and Strength resides at XI. The Golden Dawn standard of Wands as Fire and Swords as Air is also followed.

 

But, besides the surrealistic images, the deck also departs from the "normal" by not picturing the suit symbols within the images. Instead, there is a single, small, line drawing of the suit symbol at the top of the card, with the number of the card at the bottom. The images will feature other things relating to the suit, such as salamanders on some of the Wands, or birds or the sky on the Swords. But there is a lot of overlap, sometimes birds will show up on other suits as well. And, when we look at the Major Arcana, as I briefly mentioned above, we do not have card titles at all. All of this (the lack of titles, the unusual images and not using the suit symbols in the Minors), pretty much means you are going to have to use your intuition with this deck (a main theme in my "new deck" reading - linked below).

 

Another thing of note is the fact that almost all of the characters portrayed are feminine. I think the only one that definitely appears male is The Emperor (showing a young Napoleon on a hobby horse). The Hierophant is non-human, The Fool and a few others are actually kind of androgynous. But even the Kings are portrayed by feminine characters. However, the deck is rather somber since none of the characters appear happy. The 9 and 10 of Swords do portray the fear, and tragedy which they should, but using Nicoletta's surrealistic imagery.

 

All in all, this is a beautiful deck which is going to make you rely on some different images and probably push you to stretch your intuition and psychic abilities in readings. My "New Deck" reading is here; https://www.thetarotforum.com/tarot-readings/new-deck-reading-nicoletta-ceccoli-tarot/

[Hemera]

Oh, this is an amazing deck! It has been one of my favourites. I feel it speaks directly to my Inner Child and it is therefore a great deck for intuitive readings. I had just started working my way through this deck in the Study Groups in AT when it closed down and I have not touched that deck since. I have been too shocked of what happened to AT and how even most of the mods were not informed beforehand. Well, enough of that.

 

There is another male in this deck btw. I think it is in the Seven of Swords where he is peeking behind the corner.

[Lantana]

Trogon, did you know there’s also an oracle the artist put out?  :D