let's draw back the curtain one minute
In my opinion, Philippe Tourrasse (Camoin) has built an enticing story around his deck by putting details that are not on any other old decks (except door in Tower and other items well listed by Jean Michel David), in order to produce his own story for his show. Marie Madeleine Legend is a cornerstone of this show(like Rhodes/Sanchez that added Cathars Legends to their own). A little detail to show you how it works in Philippe's courses : in La Lune XVIII, you can see (on his deck only as everybody can check), a small fish designed with waves made by water on the lower right side. A shaped fish like we all made when we were young. Philippe questioned by myself on this specific point answered that it was the Christian symbol of fish meaning... Jesus moving from right to left in direction of... Marie Madeleine symbolised on L'ETOILE XVII by the woman. And we all know/see that the woman is pregnant. Take it or leave it but he said that. All details added by him are explained like this. His system is built like this. But it has nothing to do with the real Tarot System which is a complex system where all details counts, but certainly not "added/restored/re-instored" details. To reply now to Coredil about an old and full deck bought in Mexico by the couple Jodo/Camoin-Tourrasse, I learnt by a friend that used to be close to the Tourrasse "Camoin" family, and who saw it, that it is the François Tourcaty deck. Camoin pretends that it predates Conver, but nothing can be certain. My friend who saw the deck told me it was not a lot richer in details than Conver, except for colours, that camoin did not match! No Holy Grail here… Sorry to break a dream. The worst is that this deck is kept in a safe, and never showed to anybody, even when Marseilles exposed ancient Tarots in 2004, and that Camoin was presented as the heir of this tradition. Philippe took the praise, but did not show his treasures. Yet, someone who managed the expositions at this time, critisized severly the Camoin Tarot, which she said to a limited comitee, was out of tradition with the light green and orange colours added. She said categoricaly that theses colours have never been used in ancient Tarots! Indeed, the Tarot use a very precise colour palette, as one can see on older decks. One thing has to be cleared about Philippe "Camoin". He's not bloodlined for certain with Conver, which anyway certainly did not engrave this deck, but owned the factory. Conver House became Levenq-Conver, then Camoin. From there, a Camoin women married a Tourrassse man, which gave birth to Philippe Tourrasse's father or grandfather (Camoin is a pseudo, and he nearly get sued for that).
We only can says that Camoin is a Trade Mark or an Artist name or both depending the way we judge or estimate Philippe.
Truth is sometimes terrible isn't it ?
Yves Le Marseillais
Yves! How I would love to be able to attend
