If you stopped by the Annual Display of Rare Anatomical Books last week, you might have seen visitors hard at work on a scavenger hunt around the display. The fruit of their labors? The new tarot decks made with images from our rare book collections!
Tarot cards are seen as divination tools and are thus rife with symbolic imagery. The Becker Rare Books Tarot Project took images from our rare book collections and created twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana with these works.
The project references a wide array of images, from woodcut prints from the 16th century alchemical text Splendor Solis to images from the great De Humani Coporis Fabricaby Andreas Vesalius. Each deck comes in its own box and has twenty-two cards as well as a booklet describing the card’s symbolism and the history behind the chosen image.
The card frames also are derived from the collection and are based on 19th century book cover embellishments, and the card backs feature a skeleton from Henry H. Smith’s Anatomical atlas, illustrative of the structure of the human body in bright gold foil.
To check out the Tarot Project online, visit https://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/s/tarot/
Physical tarot decks may be purchased at the Circulation Desk via the payment portal on the website.
Click on the “About” tab on the Becker Library website menu.
From that dropdown menu, select “Make a Payment.”
Users will be directed to a page with several payment categories. Scroll to the bottom to “Rare Books Tarot Card Purchase.”
Fill out the form with your first and last name, and check out from there!
You can pick up your tarot card deck from the Circulation Deck by showing a receipt (sent via email).