2012: Tarot of Ascension

Read today, this Lo Scarabeo deck from 2012 is a time capsule with the lid still warm: the new age movement's great expectation that the year 2012 would bring either an ending or a global shift toward higher consciousness, dealt into seventy-eight cards at the very peak of the belief. The date passed; the world declined both options; and the deck quietly changed genres, from prophecy to document. That is not a dismissal. Failed prophecies are some of the most instructive artifacts a tradition produces, and this one preserves, in polished Lo Scarabeo craft, exactly what ascension-era spirituality hoped transformation would look like. The imagery's themes, consciousness rising, thresholds, planetary change, still read perfectly well as personal metaphor once the calendar claim is retired. It suits collectors of new age history, readers interested in how spiritual movements imagine time, and anyone who enjoys a deck with a dated wager built in. Read it as the era's self-portrait, which it now honestly is.