Metamorphosis

Tarot of Metamorphosis
Massimiliano Filadoro & Luigi Di Giammarino (Lo Scarabo, 2005)

Review
You see that lost expression on the Seven's face? The one where he's not sure what's going on, or if the rest of the High Priestess' blouse is going to condense out of the smoke? That's basically the face I'm making right now.

The simplest explanation of this deck is that it features people and animals mid-transformation from one state to another. In fact, what we have here is a dizzying array of visual references- the Queen of Chalices might well be Circe, the Eight of Pentacles a Davis Cronenburg movie, the Four of Swords is A Midsummer's Night's Dream, the Six of Swords might be Dante's Inferno, and the Eight of Swords combines a Dali painting with Alice In Wonderland!

Flicking through the deck at high speed, I can see that there's a quite unnecessary amount of breasts on display, and the Chariot features a man in shades pulling the hair of a two-headed female plant centaur, much to her annoyance. There's something about the art that verges of exploitative without ever getting there- the expression on the Nine of Pentacles suggests that the camera wants to film him doing something that he's really not comfortable with.

Why is the Four of Wands so lovely, and the Five of Wands an impenetrable mess? This definitely isn't a deck for beginners to learn on, but for experienced readers heartily sick of Rider Waite clones, they might find this worth a try.