Stone Tarot

Stone Tarot
Alison Stone, 2000

These cards are from a series of 78 oil paintings by Alison Stone. The completed deck was published by the artist in the year 2000, and is distributed through her web site. It is a deck of intense color, rich saturation, and a full range of hues. Impressed by the online scans I saw of her paintings, I was not disappointed when the actual deck arrived. The cards are printed on a medium-weight cardstock, unlaminated but varnished on front and back. I like that the image area extends farther to the card edges than that of most decks, minimizing the white borders.

The sheet that comes with the deck has very little background information, though it offers brief interpretations for every card. There are about four to eight keywords for each card, plus reversed meanings. The keywords follow traditional interpretations. The only idiosyncrasy to the deck is that the artist calls the Knight of Cups the ‘Amazon of Cups’ and the Knight of Pentacles the ‘Amazon of Pentacles’.

Most of the trumps are based on Italian or Marseilles designs, without the profusion of occult details such as in the Waite and Crowley decks. The Lovers (above) and The Wheel of Fortune do have similarities, however, to the Waite-Smith designs. Some cards are a gentle departure from tradition, such as The High Priestess who sits between one waxing and one waning moon, and The Heirophant who has formed a closed circuit with the two aspirants, who are interacting with his chalice and staff. There are no astrological signs (except for Saturn symbol on the Devil’s hand) nor are there Hebrew letters on these trumps which might connect the deck to a specific occult tradition. I think this is nice, since there are already so many decks which align themselves obviously to a particular system of correspondences.

The numeric cards, or pips, are illustrated using arrangements of the four suit symbols. There are no human figures here, though beautiful scenes are portrayed, such as in the Ace of Swords and Seven of Pentacles (above). Several pip designs are clearly influenced by the Waite-Smith and Crowley-Harris decks; one example is the Seven of Cups. Among my favorites are the court cards, with their beautiful and varied faces and slightly monochromatic tone. The four elements are expressed through color, with each suit using the same palette for its court group. The Knight of Wands, above, shows the red and yellow palette used to depict the fire court, and the Queen of Cups shows the blue and green palette used for the water court.

This excerpt from the artist’s booklet mentions some of her other influences:

“The cards in the Stone Tarot are reproduced from original oil paintings by Alison Stone, who works in New York City as a holistic psychotherapist, yoga teacher, Reiki Master, and healer. Drawn to the tarot in childhood, Ms. Stone later spent nine years producing the paintings, which represent her interpretation of the divination deck, using color to evoke the spiritual and emotional meanings of the cards. With her background as a poet, artist, and Wiccan High Priestess, she combines art and mysticism to produce a deck that reflects the integration and synthesis of the two.”

Review by Mark Filipas, 7/27/00