A view from the deck: the Röhrig-Tarot

By Sarah Taylor

I read something interesting by Kristin Lee-Gray in her review of the Röhrig-Tarot on the Aeclectic website. She had been doing some focussed work with a particular client for a period of time, using the Röhrig-Tarot for the readings in each session. However, because the appointments were conducted over the phone, the client hadn’t seen the deck — until, that is, she sent him some photographs of it.

Gee whiz, I don’t know why I was surprised to learn how stunned and shocked he was when he saw the pictures for the first time. He expected a medieval dressed bunch of Knights and Queens, however his first visual introduction was the Chariot. A race car driver in some sort of Indy 500 hotty car. I’m still laughing about this … . Once he got over the shock and I explained the cards to him, he settled down and got back into it.

My first reaction to the Röhrig-Tarot was that it alienated me while drawing me in inexorably: the modern imagery, voluptuous nudity and hyper-realism, which sit side-by-side with an other-worldly quality, a feeling that I’ve landed on an outer planet.

The deck came to me in an unusual manner, too: I was the only bidder for it at an auction at the 2012 UK Tarot Conference. Its name seemed somewhat familiar to me, and I found myself putting my hand up in the absence of any other offers, with the clear sense that the deck was mine. But not mine as in my own child is mine — someone who feels familiar to me. No: this was a stranger — an extraterrestrial creature that was bundled at me, but who was still apparently mine.

The deck was created by German artist Carl-W. Röhrig and copyrighted in 1995, although some of the imagery, particularly that of the female subjects, is distinctly Eighties in style. It is considered a collector’s item — perhaps due to its being out of print, perhaps due to the lack of information on the artist and his connection to its creation. Even Röhrig’s own website manages to be enigmatic in spite of its self-promoting tone. On Amazon U.K. the deck retails between £195 and £220 (although one deck is on sale for £1,195!), and in the States for up to $1,000.

Given what I paid for it, I might well be able to make a considerable profit, but immediately I knew money was going to be immaterial. My deck wasn’t going on an eBay listing; it wasn’t going to be displayed trophy-like on a shelf. This was a tarot deck that I would be working with. I guess you could say that it has been the beginning of a love affair — a beautiful hall of mirrors that reveals by degrees a quality that is quite different from anything that I’ve encountered in a deck so far. It has felt like the tarot equivalent of meeting the Other. Can you tell I’m smitten?

The cards themselves are large — 16.3 cm x 9 cm — and printed on heavy, semi-matte stock. The back of the card is not reversible (You can tell which way up the face of the card is by looking at the back), and is a melange of cosmos and Earth, incorporating all four elements, with an eye-catching red ‘ejection’ from a volcano at centre-left.

For the most part, the minor arcana share the same names as the Thoth Tarot, i.e. the Four of Cups is Luxury, the Six of Disks (Pentacles) is Success. One anomaly is the Five of Swords, which instead of Strife is named Strive — and if it is an oversight it is one I like. The court cards are ranked from Princess (Page), to Prince (Knight), to Queen, to Knight (King).

The major arcana returns to Rider-Waite Smith traditions: Strength remains in position VIII and Justice in position XI; there is Temperance instead of Art, and The Judgment instead of The Aeon — although The Magus does not change to The Magician. All majors include their corresponding astrological, Qabbalistic and Rune symbols.

But the resemblance to the Thoth stops there. The Röhrig-Tarot is very much its own deck. It is a collage of airbrushed and painted images that incorporates torn-out, short-hand notebook pages on which are sketched images of the Rider-Waite Smith equivalents and key words in both German and English. If you’re unsure of a card’s meaning, you should be able to find it somewhere on the card, even if you have to squint a little.

The style is sometimes hyper-real, sometimes surreal, sometimes fantasy. Often the characters bear a striking resemblance to movie stars, which feeds into their archetypal natures given that many of today’s gods and goddesses are celebrities. There is a lot of nudity — mainly female, mostly breasts, some of them seeming to dissolve in from nowhere. It is evocative of the male gaze, and yet as a feminist I don’t find it offensive. It sits at the level of archetype; both male and female figures are boldly drawn, empowered, and hold their own.

Having said that, there are a few cards that I consider weaker than the rest, the Knight of Wands and the Eight of Swords being two examples. Their compositions don’t seem fully at ease with themselves, though I am open to the possibility that it is I who am not fully at ease with them. (Note: You can find all of these cards by doing a search for “Röhrig Tarot” and the card name. I am not linking through because I feel it is taking liberties with copyright for one article.)

Several themes run through the deck that are picked up by various cards. One is the presence of a nautilus or globe shape across both arcana, coming to literal fruition in the Princess of Disks. The other is a shining light, most obviously associated with The Star, but which then appears in the Ace of Disks and The Chariot, among others.

Some cards that are traditionally ‘positive’ I find hard to see in the same light in the Röhrig-Tarot. The Queen of Cups feels cold; the Prince of Wands looks like a dandy with a shattered heart. On the other hand, the Four of Cups is Dali-esque beautiful, perhaps playing up the dreamlike state that we have to snap out of in order to see the true gift being presented to us. The Five of Cups looks like a visit from a stone Borg.

I absolutely love the Hierophant and the Nine of Cups.

Some other reviewers have suggested that the Röhrig-Tarot is not for beginners, but I am not sure I agree. Maybe I’ve forgotten what it is like to read as a beginner, but the imagery is provocative, rich, and descriptive enough for it to be worth giving it a go. At the very least, I think you might come into contact with that otherworldly feeling that is at once familiar and unsettling.

The biggest challenge of all might be getting your hands on a deck in the first place.

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.