Crystal Tarots

The archive review of Elisabetta Trevisan's Crystal Tarots opens in full Qabalistic flight, Briah intertwining with Yetzirah in the Sun of Tifaret, and that register is the deck's actual address: beneath the crystalline decorative surface runs a scholarly Tree of Life architecture, correspondences worked with enough rigor to earn the review's technical vocabulary. Trevisan's paintings, glassy, faceted, jewel-toned, make the deck read as ornament until the structure declares itself. The combination places it among the catalog's stealth-esoteric decks: pretty enough to sell as art, built soundly enough to study. Lo Scarabeo's nineties-era pairing of serious systems with gallery surfaces produced several such, and this is a fine specimen. It suits Qabalistic students who like their Tree painted rather than diagrammed, collectors of Italian art-esoterica, and readers ready to be ambushed by depth in a decorative deck. Those wanting the correspondences plain have the austere shelf; here they arrive dressed for the opera.