Fortuna's Wheel

Nigel Jackson works the older seam of tarot, the one that runs back before the Golden Dawn to allegory, emblem books and the medieval wheel of fortune, and this twenty-two card deck is that seam distilled. Majors only, classical in register, organized around fate's turning wheel: the format and the theme are the same statement twice. A trumps-only deck concentrates every draw into an archetypal pronouncement, and Fortuna is the archetype the whole tradition descends from, the image of fortune's rise and fall that predates the cards themselves. Jackson's reputation rests on exactly this kind of historically literate work, and the deck reads best as visual scholarship: allegory treated as a living language rather than a costume. It suits historians of the tradition, majors-only readers, and anyone drawn to the classical and emblematic end of tarot. Readers who want a full working pack with court cards and pips should treat this as a companion volume, not a replacement.