The Manga Tarot by Riccardo Minetti (design) and Ann Lazzarini (artwork)

Published by Lo Scarabeo, March 2007
ISBN 888395527-7

Although there are many decks that I review positively (especially recently when there have been a number of excellent decks printed), few cause me to rave about them. Few take my breath away and make me want to read with them instantly. Having studied Tarot for a number of years, my usual criteria for a deck’s worth to me is how deep, symbolic, and filled with esoteric and occult imagery it is. If it’s complex and needs some serious time and effort to understand, then it’s a deck for me!

So when a simple, evocative, and utterly symbolic deck without all that complex esoterica attached to it comes along, I naturally gear myself up for disappointment. Not so with the Manga Tarot, an upcoming release from Lo Scarabeo. Created through a collaboration between Riccardo Minetti (author of the popular Fey Tarot and Vampire Tarot) and Manga comic artist Anna Lazzarini, this deck is exactly what its’ title suggests: a Tarot deck illustrated in the world and style of Manga.

The article on Manga at Wikipedia.com says that the way Manga is drawn (few lines, exaggerated facial features) makes the image a projection of an idea rather than physical reality. This is so close to Tarot imagery that the two seem to fit well together: Tarot’s pictures also are symbolic projections of ideas and aspects of the universe and life, rather than a portrayal of them in reality. Death, for instance, is not physically a skeleton with a scythe on a white horse – it may symbolically be so, and thus Tarot depicts projections of an idea just as Manga does.

The Manga Tarot does not present itself in a comic-book style however (which is a good thing in my opinion), and also does not use all the characteristics of Manga style (again, probably a good thing.) Instead, it is a very elegant deck with each card image portraying a scene that you can imagine occurring in a comic book yet at the same time in real life: surrounded by cherry blossom trees and a slight breeze, The Lovers embrace and are lost in themselves. Her white kimono torn and ragged, The Fool walks with her hands over her eyes towards a cliff-edge, flowers trailing behind in the wake of her footsteps. On a slippery marble floor in the rain, a blindfolded and armoured man carefully balances a sword between his palms, its point at his forehead, and walks forwards in Justice. No complex occult symbolism is needed in these striking images to understand the meaning they are trying to convey.

Every single card of the Major Arcana is beautiful and elegant, every now and then retaining a traditional symbol from the Rider Waite Tarot (such as the white dog in The Fool, and the book in The Priestess). Yet the images are sometimes very different from traditional Rider Waite decks. In this deck, for instance, Death is no longer a skeleton on a white horse, but a cloaked and hooded figure taking a young woman by the hand and leading her towards a bright light. Despite the differences in imagery, it is still very easy to tell which card is which – again, because they are so evocative and meaningful without any occult symbolism.

In places card titles have been changed, usually to better fit an interesting feature of this deck: where there are traditionally men in the cards, the Manga Tarot has women. Where there are traditionally women in the cards, the Manga Tarot has men. This can get a little confusing when it comes to the Empress, Emperor, Priest, and Priestess, since II is now The Priest  (while retaining the meanings of The High Priestess) and V is now The Priestess (while retaining the meanings of The High Priest.) Similarly, the Empress and Emperor’s titles have swapped places, but The Emperor retains the meanings of The Empress and vice versa. Whilst many may argue that this takes away an important symbol of the Tarot (e.g. masculine = active, aggressive, assertive, feminine = passive, receptive, intuitive) I think that it makes a more experienced Tarot reader look more than once at the images and think about them. It is easy for experienced Tarot readers to get into habits with the cards, sometimes taking things for granted that they maybe shouldn’t. A deck like the Manga Tarot opens their eyes and invites them to continue their studies with a ‘beginner’s mind’ once more. And luckily this change does not make the deck difficult to read for beginners: the imagery is so meaningful and easy to understand that somebody without any experience of Tarot could easily read with this deck by just asking themselves what is going on in the cards.

Everything I have said about the Major Arcana can be applied also to the Minors. They are equally as beautiful and elegant, and because this deck has no occult or esoteric symbolism attached to it they are just as meaningful. If you took away the borders of the deck, an untrained eye would not be able to tell the Minors apart from the Majors – and that, to me, is a great thing. I dislike putting the cards into categories of “little secrets” and “big secrets”, believing that every card in the deck, Major, Minor, and Court alike can denote both complex archetypes and mundane realities. The Manga Tarot really conveys this idea, since it is obvious that Lazzarini has spent as much time and energy on the Minors as she has on the Majors. Hurrah! And once again, the Manga Tarot moves away from traditional Tarot imagery, giving us some food for thought and interesting ways of seeing the cards. One that I particularly like is the Five of Pentacles: a couple prays before a shrine in the snow, their heads and knees bowed in prayer, while incense burns. They ask their ancestors or Gods for the help they so desperately need. In the Six of Pentacles we no longer have a somewhat smug-looking benefactor handing out money to begging hands: instead, a tall, beautiful woman takes off her silk glove to place a hand on the cheek of a leper. As she comforts the man with her touch, tears fall down her face. Hell, I know that tears fell down my face when I saw that card.

I find the way the suit symbols are represented in the Minor Arcana to be an ingenious way of showing which suit the card is from, whilst not taking over the image with a bunch of cups or swords. In the Seven of Pentacles the Pentacles are found on a necklace whilst in the Six they appear to be golden flowers opening. In the Three of Cups we find the cups painted on the fans of three male dancers and in the Nine of Swords the swords are wielded by nine demonic figures who terrorize a man in bed. Great stuff. The Court Cards are also colourful, evocative, and elegant, though the gender of the figures have also been swapped round, changing the order of Princess (Page), Prince (Knight), Queen, King to Prince, Princess, King, Queen. As with the swapped Major Arcana though, despite the card title the meanings remain the same. The meaning is conveyed wonderfully in these cards: in the facial expressions of the figures, what they are doing, their surroundings, and more.

One very useful feature of the deck is the use of colour and ‘glyphs’ within each card. The accompanying little white book says that each card has a dominant colour and glyph, the colour “…indicates a suit of the Minor Arcana and an aspect of human nature, of the surrounding world, or the how, “with what eyes” we view others, ourselves and things. It therefore represents a card’s internal theme.” This means that even the Major Arcana are linked to the Minors through colour – and some Majors have no dominant colour at all (indicated by white, found in The Fool, or many colours, found in The World. This is explained in the little white book.) This use of colour also allows beginners to get some idea of the nature of each card based on the colour (since the book gives a brief summary of what the four dominant colours mean), allowing them to read the cards easily and quickly. The glyphs represent the four seasons, and appear on every card except The Fool. They indicate cyclic and temporal aspects of the cards, such as birth, endings, growth, minimum, and decline. This would be interesting to study further to find the links between cards.

The backs of the cards are reversible and beautiful, showing the figure from The Emperor, meditating on a lotus. The accompanying book (63 pages in total, though only 12 of those are in English, the rest being devoted to Italian, Spanish, French, and German) whilst being small is still very useful, demonstrating some really good and original approaches to the cards that would be excellent for beginners. Each card meaning is accompanied by a phrase that sums up its deeper meaning: “Nothing is forever and every moment has its worth” for the Wheel of Fortune, “Thoughts come from the heart and take on life” for the Prince of Cups, and “The mind must become a blank page at the beginning of each chapter” for the Four of Cups. As well as being useful summaries for a beginner, I think an experienced Tarot reader could gain a lot of insight by meditating on these phrases.

Overall, the Manga Tarot is an utterly beautiful, elegant, friendly, easy to read deck. Its’ simplicity contains its depth, and every card shines with an intensity that can instantly be connected to. Highly, highly recommended. My hat goes off to Minetti and Lazzarini for a wonderful addition to the Tarot world.