Le Millenaire Tarot de Marseilles

The record

This was a deck I knew I wanted from the moment I saw the online scans on artist Chris Butler’s website, and now that I own a physical copy, I can say without reservation that it exceeded my expectations by leaps and bounds. Chris has found a way to make a Marseille deck which honors the traditional pattern and at the same time is completely modern. The human figures on the Majors and Courts are silhouettes, which are filled in with vivid rainbow pools of color, graduating from blue to purple to red to orange to yellow. Other symbols on the cards are kept as simple and two-dimensional as possible. Traditional Marseille symbology is already straightforward and uncluttered. By deconstructing it almost into abstraction, Chris has created a fascinating commentary on the centuries-old pattern. The style is comparable in some ways to Robin Ator’s International Icon Tarot, but the Millénaire Tarot de Marseilles definitely has its own style and personality. The deck was created as an homage to Nicholas Conver. Conver’s 1760 Marseille deck inspired the Grimaud Marseille, which popularized Marseille decks in the 20th century. Like the Grimaud, the Millénaire features flat areas of red, blue,

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