Taro As Colour (Deck)

DESCRIPTION

In 1977, the Newlyn Gallery in Cornwall exhibited a series of 78 taro designs quite unlike any previous. Ithell Colquhoun’s bold project seeks to dispense with the figurative narratives of the traditional taro and re-imagines the forces behind each card as pure colour. Drawing from the pioneering work of Moina Mathers and Florence Farr in the 1890s, Colquhoun integrates the esoteric teachings of the Golden Dawn with surrealist semi-automatic techniques to produce a design for a taro deck that remains unique in Western esotericism.

Originally produced as a small limited edition of 100 copies by Adam McLean (Alchemy Web Bookshop, Glasgow), this rare deck has long been highly prized by collectors of taro. Our new edition is reproduced from high-quality digital photographic files of the individual designs that we commissioned in 2017. The cards are on a premium 400gsm stock with a matt lamination. For ease of use, the cards reproduce both the traditional and initiated Golden Dawn names. This deck is sold with an accompanying booklet which offers an essay by Richard Shillitoe that explores Colquhoun’s relationship with the taro, and Colquhoun’s own explicative text ‘Taro As Colour’.

This deck has been designed to accompany our book of the same title, published in 2018.