Tarot Illuminati

The archive reviewer almost passed on Erik C. Dunne's deck because of its name, recoiling from imagined secret societies, and the deck won the reviewer over because the name means what it actually says: illuminati as the illuminated, light as the organizing principle, every card built around luminosity, ornament and theatrical radiance. The record's conspiracy framing repeats the same misreading; there is no lodge here, only light. Dunne's maximalism is the deck's signature and its filter: brocade, gold, costume drama, compositions that read like opera staged inside a jewel. In the catalog's spectrum it sits at the opposite pole from the minimalists, the Dark Exact's austerity inverted into full pageant. Ornament this dense either delights or exhausts, and readers know which camp claims them within three cards. It suits lovers of opulent illustration, readers who want their arcana staged grandly, and collectors of the 2010s ornate wave at its most committed. Minimalists should avert their eyes before the gilding takes them.