Last month, we high­light­ed Sal­vador Dal­i’s deck of Tarot cards. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed in 1984, the tarot deck is now being re-issued by Taschen in a beau­ti­ful 184-page art book. For those inter­est­ed, the offi­cial release date is today. Read all about the famous deck here. Or pur­chase your own set of Dal­i’s tarot cards here.

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Tarot began as a card game and became a tool of occult div­ina­tion. In that form, with its usu­al­ly elab­o­rate illus­tra­tions, the tarot deck found a major cul­tur­al role as an art object: here on Open Cul­ture we’ve fea­tured decks either designed or inspired by the likes of Aleis­ter Crow­ley, H.R. Giger, Philip K. Dick, and Sal­vador Dalí. That last, whose lim­it­ed edi­tion was pub­lished in 1984, has proven to be enough of an object of desire to gain the atten­tion of Taschen, the pub­lish­er of visu­al­ly (and often, in terms of dimen­sions and weight, phys­i­cal­ly) inten­sive pho­to and art books. Next month they’re bring­ing out a new edi­tion of Dalí’s tarot deck, boxed with a com­pan­ion book by tarot schol­ar Johannes Fiebig.

“Leg­end has it that when prepar­ing props for the James Bond film Live and Let Die, pro­duc­er Albert Broc­coli com­mis­sioned Sur­re­al­ist mae­stro Sal­vador Dalí to cre­ate a cus­tom deck of tarot cards,” says Taschen’s descrip­tion of the prod­uct. (Bond fans will remem­ber Jane Sey­mour as Soli­taire, the tarot read­er whom Roger Moore fate­ful­ly encoun­ters ear­ly in the pic­ture.)

Even though Dalí and Broc­coli ulti­mate­ly could­n’t come to an agree­ment — not least over the amount of mon­ey upon which the artist insist­ed — Dalí decid­ed to see the work through to com­ple­tion on his own.

As Josh Jones not­ed when we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Dalí’s tarot, the ear­ly 1970s was an aus­pi­cious time for such a project: “The occult inter­ests of the 60s coun­ter­cul­ture were main­streamed in the 70s thanks to books like Stu­art Kaplan’s Tarot Cards for Fun and For­tune Telling,” and Dalí had suc­cess­ful­ly tapped the mys­ti­cal zeit­geist not long before with his illus­tra­tions for a 1969 edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land. Draw­ing from all the West­ern art that came before his own, Dalí cre­at­ed a tarot deck that Taschen can now pitch as a “sur­re­al kalei­do­scope of Euro­pean art his­to­ry,” a kind of psy­che­del­ic course in West­ern civ­i­liza­tion pre­sent­ed across 78 cards. Dalí also worked him­self in, mak­ing an appear­ance as the Magi­cian and the King of Pen­ta­cles, and includ­ing his wife Gala — whose inter­est in mys­ti­cism sure­ly encour­aged her hus­band’s own enthu­si­asm for the project — as the Empress.

Any­one who has had an inter­est in Dalí’s work (and a lack of will­ing­ness to pay pre­mi­um prices for those first edi­tions) will find them­selves intrigued by Taschen’s Dalí Tarot. Those unfa­mil­iar with the rules of the tarot can rest assured that the com­pan­ion book, in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing sto­ries about the deck­’s con­cep­tion, also includes Fiebig’s expla­na­tions of the mean­ings of the cards as well as how to per­form read­ings with them. Per­ceived cor­rect­ly, so enthu­si­asts say, the cards of the tarot open a win­dow onto an alter­nate per­cep­tion of real­i­ty — a sim­i­lar­i­ty with Dalí’s art hard­ly lost on the artist him­self. Order a copy (set to be released on Novem­ber 15) here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Sal­vador Dalí’s Illus­tra­tions for The Bible (1963)

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Sal­vador Dalí’s Avant-Garde Christ­mas Cards

Take a Close Look at Basquiat’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Art in a New 500-Page, 14-Pound, Large For­mat Book by TASCHEN

Andy Warhol’s Sev­en Hand-Illus­trat­ed Books: Charm­ing, Lit­tle-Known, and Now Avail­able to the World (1952–1959)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Human beings got along per­fect­ly well for hun­dreds of mil­len­nia with­out stan­dard­ized tax­onomies of col­or, but they didn’t do so in a glob­al­ly con­nect­ed cul­ture full of logos, brands, and 24/7 screens. It’s arguable whether the world as we now see it would have been pos­si­ble with­out monop­o­lis­tic col­or sys­tems like Pan­tone. They may cir­cum­scribe the visu­al world and dic­tate col­or from above. But they also enable inter­na­tion­al design prin­ci­ples and visu­al lan­guages that trans­late eas­i­ly every­where.

These cir­cum­stances did not yet exist in 1692, when Dutch artist A. Boogert cre­at­ed a huge, almost 900-page book on col­or, Traité des couleurs ser­vant à la pein­ture à l’eau. But they were slow­ly com­ing into being, thanks to stud­ies by philoso­pher-sci­en­tists like Isaac New­ton.

Boogert’s book took enlight­en­ment work on optics in a more rig­or­ous design direc­tion than any of his con­tem­po­raries, antic­i­pat­ing a num­ber of influ­en­tial books on col­or to come in the fol­low­ing cen­turies, such as the art his­to­ry-mak­ing stud­ies by Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe and a book on col­or used by Charles Dar­win dur­ing his Bea­gle voy­age.

Boogert’s exhaus­tive study includes hand­writ­ten notes and descrip­tions and hun­dreds of hand-paint­ed col­or swatch­es. This above-and-beyond effort was not, how­ev­er, made for sci­en­tif­ic or indus­tri­al pur­pos­es but as a guide for artists, show­ing how to mix water­col­ors to make every col­or in the spec­trum. The author even includes a com­pre­hen­sive unit on whites, grays, and blacks. How much his­tor­i­cal influ­ence did Boogert’s text have on the devel­op­ment of stan­dard­ized col­or sys­tems, we might won­der? Hard­ly any at all. Its sin­gle copy, notes Colos­sal, “was prob­a­bly seen by very few eyes.”

The obscure book dis­ap­peared in the archives of the Bib­lio­thèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France. That is, until its dis­cov­ery recent­ly by Medieval book his­to­ri­an Erik Kwakkel, who post­ed scans on his Tum­blr and trans­lat­ed some of the intro­duc­tion from the orig­i­nal Dutch. Since then, the com­plete text has come online: 898 pages of high-res­o­lu­tion dig­i­tal scans at the Bib­lio­thèque Méjanes site. (Go to this page, click on the pic­ture, then click on the arrows in the low­er right side of the page to move through the book.)

If you read Dutch, all the bet­ter to appre­ci­ate this rare his­toric arti­fact. But you don’t need to under­stand A. Boogert’s expla­na­tions on water­col­or tech­nique to be stag­gered by the incred­i­ble amount of work that went into this ear­ly, over­looked labor of love for sys­tem­at­ic approach­es to col­or. Enter the full text here.

h/t David Hale

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vision­ary 115-Year-Old Col­or The­o­ry Man­u­al Returns to Print: Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s Col­or Prob­lems

The Vibrant Col­or Wheels Designed by Goethe, New­ton & Oth­er The­o­rists of Col­or (1665–1810)

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

Werner’s Nomen­cla­ture of Colour, the 19th-Cen­tu­ry “Col­or Dic­tio­nary” Used by Charles Dar­win (1814)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness