Ceccoli Tarot Deck

Celebrated illustrator Nicoletta Ceccoli draws in a style of provocative enchantment. Her tarot deck moves between harmony and madness, capturing a wholly unique element of eerie innocence. These cards provide insight into complex questions, where the dark mingles with the light and reveals the shades of gray that illuminate our most profound truths.

The companion booklets for most Lo Scarabeo decks are in five languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German.

Summary:
Tarot brings us to thresholds, liminal places where we can explore the strangeness of ourselves, our lives, and the world. The Ceccoli Tarot is the perfect deck for wading into these surreal and strange waters.

Full Review:
Nicoletta Ceccoli is a popular surreal artist and illustrator of children's books. Her artistic world is ethereal, innocent, malevolent, humorous, sensual, dangerous, and complex. Fishes fly, food talks, and toys come alive. The cards are definitely evocative and stimulating, although some may find them confusing or disturbing. The deck is created by using either whole works or parts of work from Ceccoli's existing portfolio. Because of this, the images are not Rider-Waite-Smith recognizable nor is there any other apparent system used. The author of the booklet does a valiant job of pulling RWS meanings from the cards and, in reading them, you'd expect the images to have more in common with RWS than they do.

My test for whether a deck is a RWS-style deck is to look at the images with the names covered. If I cannot determine what card it is based on the image alone, then it is not (to me) a RWS-style deck. I could not. Here are descriptions of two of the cards I looked at. See if you can determine what they are (answers below):

A little girl and a gingerbread man are sitting in a bowl of froth. A winged blue pitcher floating above the pair pours milk into the bowl. Nearby a spoon lays on the table and a pink and white cupcake with a cherry on top walks away on what looks like fawn's legs. A raven-haired angel sits at the top of a bare tree looking mournful. A spiral of reddish pink roses spiral around the tree trunk and onto the ground and down a path, which leads to a castle in the background. In the middle ground, a fox sniffs at roses on the ground.

Some of these may make sense (in terms of traditional meanings) as soon as you see them, such as the toy monkey sitting on a throne made of legos and dice with four children kneeling before him. He wears a pope's outfit made of white paper and holds a candy cane scepter. He is, of course, the Hierophant. Some of the cards may make sense after you read the name of the card. Some you may have to struggle with.

The booklet includes one spread with a sample reading.

If the art resonates with you and you want something only loosely related to RWS, if you want to play and explore, if you are not afraid of contradiction, weirdness, imaginative twists, and the unexpected, then you will love this deck. It reminds me, in some ways, of the Tarot of the Sweet Twilight, the Fey Tarot, and the Ludy Lescot Tarot.

Note: the first card described is the Ace of Cups; the second is the 3 of Wands.

Deck Attributes
Name of deck: Ceccoli Tarot
Reviewer's Byline: Barbara Moore
Publisher: Lo Scarabeo
ISBN: 9780738744438
Creator(s) name(s): Nicoletta Ceccoli
Artist(s) name(s): Nicoletta Ceccoli
Name of accompanying book/booklet: Ceccoli Tarot
Number of pages of book/booklet: 63; 19 in English
Author(s) of book/booklet: Lunaea Weatherstone
Available in a boxed kit?: No
Reading Uses: General, dream work
Artistic Style: Surreal
Does it follow Rider-Waite-Smith Standard?: Yes
Does it have extra cards? Yes

Nicoletta Ceccoli studied at the State Institute of Art in Urbino, Italy. She was awarded the Silver Medal in 2006 by the Society of Illustrators in New York, and won the Anderson Prize in 2001, honoring her as the best children's book illustrator in Italy. Nicoletta has illustrated many acclaimed picture books here and abroad, including"The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum "and "How the Robin Saved Spring." She lives in San Marino, Italy.

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