The Vernier Tarot is an imaginary deck, designed for Sepulchre, painted by artist Finn Campbell-Notman and based on the classic -Rider--Waite deck (1910).
Experts cannot agree on the antique origins of the tarot—Persia, China, ancient Egypt, Turkey, India—all have claims. But the format of the cards we associate now with tarot is usually accepted to date from -mid--fifteenth--century Italy. There are hundreds of decks—and more come into the market every year. The most popular continue to be the Marseille Tarot, with its distinctive bright yellow, blue and red illustrations, and the narrative Universal Waite deck, devised in 1916 by the English occultist Arthur Edward Waite and with illustrations by the American artist Pamela Colman Smith. The deck used by Solitaire in the James Bond film Live and Let Die, the Tarot of the Witches, painted by the artist Fergus Hall, drew strongly from the Universal Waite Tarot.
For those wishing to find out more about tarot, there are plenty of books and websites. The best -all--round guide is Rachel Pollack’s The Complete Illustrated Guide to Tarot, published by Random House (2004).
