The Cary-Yale Visconti Tarocchi Deck is comprised of 22 Major Arcana and 64 Minor Arcana cards. The deck includes reproductions of tarocchi cards from the Cary Collection of Playing Cards, now housed at Yale University. Nineteen cards have been recreated to replace missing originals. In addition to the King and Queen, each suit in the Minor Arcana contains both male and female Knights and Pages.

This new edition presents an 80-card deck with expanded guidebook in a deluxe, hinged box. The 60-page guidebook, by Stuart R. Kaplan, features color illustrations of the tarocchi cards. The pack includes two bonus cards with portraits of Bianca Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza. The 78-card deck is comprised of full-color facsimile reproductions of 74 extant, original Visconti-Sforza tarocchi cards that have survived from the 15th century (Milan, Italy). Four cards have been meticulously recreated to replace those missing from the original deck; The Devil, The Tower, Three of Swords, and Knight of Coins. The cards, which do not have titles or numbering, depict daily life in medieval Milan through allegorical imagery. The original cards are located in three different locations. Thirty-five of the original cards are located in the archives of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Twenty-six extant cards are at the Accademia Carrara in Italy, and thirteen cards are housed at Casa Colleoni, in Bergamo, Italy.

This divination kit comprises of a deck of 66 divination cards and a book that introduces the most powerful and important members of the faery kingdom.

Italian artist Luigi Scapini's lavish paintings recreate 15th century Italy in this gold-accented tarot deck. The Major Arcana and court cards have gold backgrounds in the manner of fifteenth-century European decks. Both the Major and Minor Arcana include full scenes. In the Minors, symmetrical arrangements of the suit symbols provide composition around which the scenes are arranged.The depth of Scapini's art history expertise is evident in his lush settings and period costumes. Interesting details, and sometimes-humorous references, are cleverly imbedded in the artwork, with many of the cards depicting historical figures, for example, Rasputin as the Knight of Cups. Readers will easily relate to the universal situations revealed in the cards, for pleasurable and insightful readings.

In the late Middle Ages and early modern times, card playing was widely enjoyed at all levels of society. The playing cards in this engaging volume are unique works of art that illuminate the transition from late medieval to early modern Europe, a period of tumultuous social, artistic, economic, and religious change. Included are the most important luxury decks of hand-painted European playing cards that have survived, as well as a selection of hand-colored woodblock cards, engraved cards, and tarot packs. The casts of characters they illustrate range from royals to commoners. Many feature animals such as falcons and hounds, while other portray such diverse objects as acorns, helmets, or coins. This is the only study of its kind in English and the only one in a generation in any language. The insightful narrative by Timothy B. Husband discusses the significance of playing cards in the secular art of the period and also recounts the varied stories they tell, conjuring the customs and facts of life of the time. Little is known abut the games played with these cards, but as Husband notes: "The playing out of a hand of cards can be seen as a microcosmic reflection of the ever-changing world around us—a world in play—a view that the creators of the cards under discussion here would seem to have shared.

That the Tarot originated in ancient Egypt as a divinatory tool is a romantic misconception. Ron Decker’s meticulous scholarship will surprise practitioners and academics alike, revealing the Tarot’s true evolution and meanings as its inventor(s) understood it. The Tarot consists of the Minor Arcana, four suits of cards similar to our modern deck, and the Major Arcana, twenty-two allegorical or “trump” cards. Decker says the four-suit deck was invented in Asia Minor before AD 1000; Italian courtiers added the trumps in the 1400s. But Tarot was first used as a game. Tarot divination was only created in the 1700s by a Parisian fortuneteller who based the trump images on Hermeticism, which merges Greco-Egyptian alchemy, astrology, numerology, magic, and mysticism. Today, the suit-cards are often traced to the ancient Jewish Cabala. But, says Decker, they, too, acquired their meanings only in the 1700s, and he cites a lost numerical system based on Cabala at that time Decker’s interpretation integrates three whole systems-astrological, arithmological, mystagogical (concerning initiation rites into the Mysteries). His depth of knowledge makes the book a must-have for serious students of Tarot and esotericism