A "cuddlier" Marseille deck?

I currently read exclusively with the Jean Noblet Tarot de Marseille. It's just so darned honest, bawdy and irreverent. It's the "no BS" deck!

The Noblet is not for everyone, though. If you'd like a "cuddlier" deck, I think the Tarot de Marseille by Spanish publisher Fournier might be just the ticket. The lines of the Fournier follow those of the Nicholas Conver Marseille, so it reads like the originals (unless you find the original coloring to be important in reading), but it has contemporary coloring, giving a different feel. It is the deck that I started reading with when I began my study of Marseilles.

The two cards shown here are The Hermit from the Jean Noblet then from the Fournier.

If you read with the Minor Arcana, you may find the fact that each suit has a different background color to be useful. Some people have pointed out that the intensity of the coloring can be a little inconsistent, but I have not found that to be a problem.

There do seems to be a few editions of this deck available. There's even a mini version, although some have commented that some of the resizing may not have been done proportionally, leading to some distortion (I read that the coins are not perfectly round, for example).

You can see images of the entire deck here.

This deck is available at Tarot Garden or in Europe from Alida.

About My Tarot Deck Of Choice: The Jean Noblet Tarot de Marseille (Part 1)

This is the first installment of what promises to be a series of pieces about my tarot deck of choice: The Jean Noblet Tarot de Marseille.

This 78 card tarot deck was faithfully restored by Frenchman Jean-Claude Flornoy in 2007, following an earlier hand stenciled restoration of the Noblet's Major Arcana (the tarot's "trumps").

There is only one original set of these cards still in existence, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library) in France. Unfortunately, that deck is missing the six to ten of swords. Flornoy re-created these to conform with the graphics of the rest of the deck and after consulting contemporary designs.

It is the earliest example of the Tarot de Marseille in existence, dating from around 1650, so it had been out of print for over 300 years. It is thus free from the many layers of clutter that adorns so many more modern tarot decks.

I have to thank my friend Enrique Enriquez who introduced me to the Jean Noblet Tarot in his e-book Looking at the Marseilles Tarot that I recently reviewed here. I was attracted to its lack of pretension and its sometimes bawdy and irreverent imagery. I instantly bonded with the deck.

You can find out more about these cards at Jean-Claude's site. It is well worth taking a virtual stroll through to learn about the history of the deck, and see images, both from the original deck and the restoration.

If you are interested in purchasing the deck for yourself, it can be found at The Tarot Garden.