MARSEILLE TAROT: TOWARDS THE ART OF READING

This book is about the art of reading the image, semiotics, and the poetics of cartomancy. Camelia Elias offers an introduction to the Marseille Tarot cards combined with readings of the cards in context. For each description there’s an interpretation that combines the cunning-folk method of reading the cards – based on making logical inferences about the meaning of the cards – and the visual argument method, which relies on the subjective and individual art of perceiving. The book also features full-length readings, based on real-life tarot consultations.

The book aims to cover four basic questions: Why do we read cards? What’s so special about the Marseille Tarot? How can the cards uncover our blind spots? What does it mean to live a magical life, when we allow the stories that the cards tell us to offer solutions to our real problems?

The book is also the first to introduce the readers to the wonderful and strange cards of Carolus Zoya, a most rare and unseen Tarot de Marseille deck made in Turin at the end of 1700. It is a book that engages with the card maker, Carolus Zoya, through storytelling.

For the paperback and image sample pages go here.