€ 95,00
Renaissance woodcuts from 1551, digitally restored and coloured. A tarot deck based on Claude Paradin’s emblem book, with 78 tarot cards, 10 additional oracle cards and Latin mottoes on each card.
A historical deck with a clear Rider-Waite-Smith structure.
Out of stock
Most tarot cards start on a blank sheet of paper. These started in 1551 as woodcuts in a French emblem book. Claude Paradin published his Devises Heroïques that year, a collection of images with short moral mottoes in Latin and French.
Urania Press restored those engravings, added colour and turned them into a complete tarot deck. The structure follows the Rider-Waite-Smith system, but the images come from the Renaissance. The result is a deck where you read sixteenth-century symbolism with a familiar tarot logic.
Each card shows a restored woodcut on a dark brown background, with gold metallic ink for details and text. The colours are added, not original. That gives the images a vivid quality the old engravings did not have.
Below each image is a Latin motto, sometimes supplemented with French. Those mottoes were not invented for tarot, but as moral lessons for Renaissance readers. In this deck they work as additional intuitive anchors.
Alongside the 78 standard tarot cards, the deck contains 10 additional oracle cards. These stand apart from the major and minor arcana and can be used separately or mixed with the rest.
The guidebook runs to 184 pages and explains both the tarot meanings and the original emblematic context. That is useful, because without explanation many images are not immediately clear.
The deck follows the Rider-Waite-Smith structure, which means the numbering and themes are recognizable if you know that system. The images themselves are different, sometimes more abstract, sometimes more direct than you might be used to. That takes a little adjustment.
Draw one of the 10 additional oracle cards and read the Latin motto aloud. Let that sentence sit for a day or two before you look up the explanation. Sometimes the sound says more than the translation.
The cards are printed on 350 gsm cardstock with a linen finish. They feel sturdy and shuffle smoothly. The size is 69.85 × 120.65 mm, slightly narrower than a standard tarot card but not awkward.
The packaging is a matte tuck box with embossing and gold foil. The guidebook is softcover, richly illustrated with images of all the cards.
Claude Paradin was a sixteenth-century French writer and canon whose emblem book had a major influence on European visual culture. His work combined classical mythology with Christian morality.
Urania Press digitally restored the engravings and adapted them for this tarot deck. The colour choices and adjustments are theirs, not from Paradin's time.
How does this deck differ from the standard Tarot Emblemata?
This Chromata edition is fully coloured. Other versions show the original black-and-white woodcuts. The colour adds an extra layer of emotion and clarity, but does not change the structure or symbolism.
Are the Latin mottoes translated in the guidebook?
Yes. The guidebook gives both the original text and an English translation, and explains the emblematic meaning in relation to the tarot interpretation.
| Author | Nitasia Timms |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | |
| SKU | 2108-NT01 |
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