Tarot deck

Tarot de Marseille (Conver)

Artist: Nicolas Conver · 1760

This is the Tarot as it was before interpretive traditions layered over it — raw, geometric, and unflinching. Reconstructed from the 1760 copper engravings, its pip cards speak through pattern and number alone, asking you to trust your own seeing. It rewards those who want to learn the old way: slow, direct, and rooted in the image itself.

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Yours forever · tied to your account · 78 cards

Readings by: Veronika Koretskaya

What the Marseille Tarot Is

The Marseille Tarot is the classic European tradition, the mother of nearly every modern deck. Its roots reach back into 15th-to-18th-century Italy and France, and our reprint follows the famous model of the engraver Nicolas Conver (1760) — one of the most refined and influential "Marseille" standards. This is a Tarot of woodcuts: a clean line, flat local colors, and a strict symbolism with no psychologized scenes.

The Marseille is the choice of those who want to work with Tarot as a strict symbolic system rather than an emotional image. Here meaning is born of structure: numbers, suits, colors, and the relative positions of the cards. It's an ancient, archetypal language that European readers have spoken for centuries.

The Engraver Nicolas Conver

Nicolas Conver was an 18th-century Marseille master cardmaker; his 1760 deck became the benchmark of the "Tarot de Marseille." It was Conver's drawing — with its characteristic poses, ornaments, and palette of roughly eleven colors — that became the basis of what we now call the classic Marseille.

Conver's engraving is prized for its clarity and its faithfulness to the canon: every detail (a gesture, a fold, a color) carries meaning and has been repeated from deck to deck for centuries. Our reprint preserves this historical drawing along with the Russian captions on the Major Arcana.

The Structure of the Deck

The structure is familiar — 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor. But there are Marseille particularities. Some of the Majors are named differently: II is the Popess (rather than the High Priestess), V is the Pope (rather than the Hierophant). The numbering is Marseille as well: Strength stands at number XI, and Justice at VIII (the opposite of Rider–Waite).

The thirteenth arcanum traditionally appears in the engraving without a caption — the famous "nameless arcanum" (in meaning, Death-as-transformation). The four suits are Wands (fire), Cups (water), Swords (air), and Pentacles (earth); the courts are Page, Knight, Queen, and King.

How It Differs from Rider–Waite

The main difference is in the Minor Arcana. In Rider–Waite every Minor card is a drawn scene (on the Three of Swords, a heart is pierced by three blades). In the Marseille the Minors are pip cards: seven cups are simply seven cups, with no scene. The meaning is drawn not from a "picture" but from the number, the suit, and the color.

The Marseille is the historical ancestor of Rider–Waite, which makes the comparison especially useful: on each card's page we include a "How it differs from Rider–Waite" section, setting the two versions side by side. Plus the formal differences — the swapped numbering of Strength and Justice and the names Popess/Pope.

How the Marseille Is Read (Our Method)

Since the pip cards have no scenes, a method is needed. In our original system, the meaning of a Minor arcanum is derived as "the degree of the number × the element of the suit × the color." The number (1–10) sets the stage of the journey — from the pure potential of the One to the totality of the Ten; the suit sets the sphere (will, feeling, thought, matter).

Color refines the emphasis (we work with a scale of roughly eleven tones, each of them ambivalent), and the orientation of the symbols sets the dynamic. This is a "projective" reading: in the card's strict geometry you see not a ready-made scene but a structure that the question brings to life.

What Questions It Suits

The Marseille is a deck for those who want depth, structure, and archetype rather than a quick narrative hint. It works beautifully with questions of self-knowledge, life path, and inner dynamics, and its strict symbolism disciplines the intuition.

It isn't the "easiest" deck for a beginner used to narrative scenes: the pip cards require mastering the method of number and suit. But for whoever has mastered that language, the Marseille offers an exceptionally clean reading, unclouded by extra imagery.

How We Interpret the Marseille Cards

The interpretations on Arcanika are our own exclusive, original system: the living Marseille tradition and the symbolism of Conver's engraving, reassembled into a single voice. For the Majors — an individual reading of each arcanum; for the Minor pips — the number × suit × color method. We don't invent meanings — every card is verified and rests on the canons of the Marseille school.

The tone is clear, structural, archetypal. For a pip card, in the "image" section we describe the actual geometry (how many suit symbols there are, how they're arranged, which colors) rather than a scene that doesn't exist. Correctness matters more than beauty.

How we read timing

Tarot doesn't name exact dates — that goes against its nature. To the question "when," we read RHYTHM and PHASE: the card's suit gives the speed (Fire — fast, in a burst; Water — in waves, by feeling; Air — sharply, in events; Earth — slowly, by ripening), and the number gives the stage (early ones — just beginning; middle ones — in full swing; late ones, 8–10 — near the resolution). This is a living tendency, not a calendar — it has nothing to "fail to come true."

Want it even more precise, by season? In our decks with astrology — Seduction, Manara, Thoth — the Minor cards carry decans (10-day windows of the zodiac), and the interpretation adds a gentle seasonal window to the rhythm and phase.