Deck Review: Nigredo Tarot Deck

Many moons ago, when I received my much-anticipated copy of the Alleyman’s Tarot, I selected The Magician card by Roberto Papavero Crusca as one of my favourite cards. I liked it so much I did some sleuthing on the artist, and was disappointed to see that they had historically designed a Majors deck, but it didn’t meet its Kickstarter funding target. What felt like bad news at the time turned out to be good news for Future Lucy, as Crusca has now gone on to design a full 78 card deck that did meet its KS target which means I now have this gorgeous Majors and Minors deck in my hot little hands (and which you can now buy via the creator’s Etsy page here).

The Deck: Look, Feel, and Finish

The deck comes in a well-made magnetic clamshell box. The cards have silver foil edges (which are standing up to shuffling well so far, no obvious dings or chips), a matte finish, and are printed on 350gsm art paper. They’re relatively lightweight, but not so much that I’m concerned they’ll bend or warp (however, I always prefer a slightly thicker card for working with clients – I would be wincing a bit letting someone else do a brutal riffle shuffle on thinner cards like these. They present no problem for self-work though, as I know how to treat my babies with the gentleness they deserve!) They’re slippery enough to shuffle easily, but not so slippy they do the annoying refusing-to-stack thing. The deck comes with a small paper booklet that explains the purpose and background of the deck, and provides some suggested exercises etc., but doesn’t act as a guidebook per se. I think this deck would be fine for a beginner, because it’s so weird and personal (it’s almost a secret, private deck), but I would def not recommend it to learn Tarot, given the absence of a guidebook and a fair amount of deviation from the ‘traditional’ RWS images.

The deck focuses on using Tarot as a tool for introspection and personal growth (which chimes with how I engage with my Tarot practice) and takes its name from the alchemic process of nigredo. Many alchemists believed that nigredo, or blackness, was the first stage in creating a philosopher’s stone, with the core idea being that matter needs to decompose down to its purest form before it can be rebuilt. In analytical psychology, the term then became a metaphor for “the dark night of the soul, when an individual confronts the shadow within“. Crusca notes that at one point or another “the darkness comes for us all” – there is no escaping it. He explains that “this stage is often experienced as a period of deep introspection, struggle, and confrontation with the darker aspects of the self” – a necessary but painful process that we need to go through to achieve personal growth. Crusca adds that, “this deck does not aim to cure, but to be a tool of self-consciousness, and it is my sincere hug to all of you”.

I fit for them—
I seek the Dark
Till I am thorough fit.
The labor is a sober one
With this sufficient sweet
That abstinence of mine produce
A purer food for them, if I succeed,
If not I had
The transport of the Aim—

Emily Dickinson

As such this deck is strongly focused on shadow work, and draws a lot from the work of the psychologist Carl Jung. Jung’s work emphasised the importance of integrating ‘the shadow’, or the repressed parts of ourselves, in order to become whole and balanced individuals. The guidebook quotes Jung: “nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light”. Crusca’s goal with this deck is to encourage users to confront their shadow, facing the parts of themselves they usually avoid, and learn to embrace it. It is only by fully integrating our shadows that we are able to achieve a sense of harmony.

Greatest Hits: My Favourite Cards from the Nigredo Tarot

I think the essence of Crusca’s message is really captured in my old favourite, The Magician card. Writing about The Magician in ‘Tarot For Change’, Jessica Dore explains that “when we live without examining the whys and hows of our particular lives, we are living by laws of meaninglessness, not magic. From this perspective, becoming conscious is the first step to performing miracles”.  The guidebook for the Alleyman Tarot (where I first saw this card) explains, “we all have multitudes within us, sometimes in ways we didn’t realise”, and Crusca’s art explores the ways in which we can consciously bring various aspects of ourselves together.

I also really like the quadro-boobed Empress, with her slightly disturbing take on the theme of fertility, and the hollow-headed Hermit. As Jen Cownie and Fiona Lensvelt write in ‘Wild Card‘, the energy of the Hermit is “an invitation to retreat within your shell for a moment, to sit with your thoughts and feelings, to notice and be nourished by them”, and so it seems fitting that in Crusca’s image the Hermit’s head has become a literal shell. Emerging from that ‘shell’ – that period of retreat from the world – is a wise old owl.

A lot of Justice cards draw on the mythology around he Egyptian god Anubis. Anubis (also beloved of many Judgement cards!) would weigh the hearts of the (recently) dead against a feather (Ma’at). Only if your heart is balanced may you proceed through the Hall of Judgement to heaven. A heart heavier than a feather was not good news – you were immediately devoured by Ammit! Crusca’s Justice card, however, appears to show a heart being balanced against a brain, and I love this idea. I like that Justice’s sword (here more of a dagger, which makes sense as the image is also reminiscent of an autopsy) is also present, as for me this image (and the Justice card generally) speaks strongly to the suit of Swords – a suit that is preoccupied with how we balance the pull of logic against the pull of our feelings. The traditional RWS version of the Justice card shows a figure sat between the two pillars of justice: mercy and severity. The pillar of mercy represents forgiveness for our wrongs (the heart). The pillar of severity represents the law of necessity – that we must reap what we sow (or, karma if you will!) – the brain. Both are necessary for justice to be served. Justice reminds us that life constantly asks us to make decisions, to weigh things up, and make a choice. And once we’ve made that choice, our decisions become a part of us. That is the ‘justice’ of our lives – that we are what we’ve made ourselves, both through our rational, ‘cold’ choices, and our emotional, ‘hot’ choices.

Again, I’m going to quote Dore on Justice here, as I think this passage really speaks to not just Crusca’s Justice card, but the whole theme of his deck. In fact, I’d recommend ‘Tarot For Change‘ as a perfect companion book for the Nigredo Tarot!

“Justice teaches us that when we’re cold and rejecting towards the things in ourselves that we find grotesque and undesirable, that attitude yields consequences just as it would if we were to treat a friend that way: loss of trust, dignity, and personal power. On the other hand, when we practice kindness and willingness to engage with the parts of ourselves that we view as hideous or unlovable, we’re bound to receive a benediction.”

Jessica Dore, ‘Tarot For Change’

Again, a lot of Hanged Man cards depict the central figure as a caterpillar/chrysalis/emergent butterfly, but the Nigredo Tarot does it in a fabulously unsettling way. Up close it’s difficult to tell if he’s wrapped in a true chrysalis, or it’s a sheet with rope wrapped around it, but either way – and coupled with his blank, catatonic, almost dead expression – I think it’s clearly meant to give cocoon vibes. I feel this perfectly captures the essence of The Hanged Man – what looks like a period of total inaction and inertia is actually a time of fundamental (and wonderful) change. As Bakara Wintner writes in ‘WTF Is Tarot‘, “a snake does not mourn the loss of its old skin, and neither does the caterpillar lament its chrysalis. There is wisdom found in the animal kingdom in their relationship to transformation… To grow, you must outgrow… [But] like a snake shedding its skin, the Hanged Man sheds only what is ready to leave us. When we let go of something, it should never feel like hacking off one of our own limbs, the tarot will not ask us to do something we are incapable of. In the Hanged Man, whatever we are leaving behind is also leaving us”.

This brings me very neatly on to the similar message of Crusca’s Death card, with the skeletal figure literally shucking off his human skin (i.e. life). But now he has wings!

The Star card in the Nigredo deck is just so beautiful. It’s such a dark deck that the sheer brightness of the star itself is such a gorgeous juxtaposition. It’s a real testament to Crusca’s skill as an artist that he’s managed to make a simple black and white sketch look like it’s literally glowing off the cardstock.

Finally (for my Major Arcana favourites), I love this World card. For some reason, as soon as I saw it I had these lines from T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ in my head, and I think it does weirdly fit. For me that’s what’s beyond that door – ‘the heart of the light, the silence… the peace which passeth understanding’.

Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.

From ‘The Waste Land’ by T. S. Eliot

I think the Swords suit is particularly strong in the Nigredo Deck, which isn’t that surprising, given Swords is a dark suit (also my favourite suit, as it goes), and the deck is invested in shadow work. Apologies for the poetry dumping that’s happening in this review but, again, as soon as I saw Crusca’s Three of Swords, with a sinister face about to tuck into what looks like a heart, I immediately thought of Stephen Crane’s poem:

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

‘In The Desert’ by Stephen Crane

Although the Three of Swords is traditionally thought of as ‘heartbreak / sorrow’, given the overall theme of the Swords suit, I’ve often linked the card to the Buddhist idea of the ‘sorrow of attachment’ (duḥkha/taṇhā). We will likely all experience a time when we realise something we thought to be true, particularly when we were young, is wrong/a lie/not a helpful way to view the world (even if this is as minor as realising Father Christmas doesn’t exist and our parents consistently and pathologically LIED to us, lol). But moving on to a new viewpoint is often painful and distressing – learning to go against the grain, and think outside of the box. It is easier to remain in the energy of the Two – stagnant and blindfolded. All of the Threes are about some kind of growth or progress, and I often see the Three of Swords as being about a necessary, but painful, change in mental state. Relatedly, with regards to both the card and the poem it reminds me of, to ‘eat your heart out’ is related to jealousy, bitterness, overwhelming sorrow, and grief. The Three here can be about the misery we put ourselves through when we are unwilling or unable to change, as well as the way we sometimes come to relish this feeling, enjoying our own self-sabotage – eating our own hearts. There is some comfort in the card too though – life is a sore thing, and sometimes we consume ourselves in trying to find our own truth, but at least when we do that we are being authentic.

The Eight of Swords being tied to a circus knife thrower’s board is a great way to illustrate the feeling of trapped powerlessness this card evokes (though I tend to think of it more as being in a prison of our own making), and the ten painful gorges on the face of the Ten of Swords create a very powerful image. This card is often linked to betrayal or backstabbing by others, but given this is a shadow work / self-reflection deck, I lean more into this version of the card being more about self harm (and certainly to me those wounds look self-inflicted).

I love the Swords royal family in the Nigredo Deck, particularly these three. Pages are related to communication, so the Page of Swords is often about how we communicate, particularly how we communicate our thoughts and how we ask questions of the world. The shadow of this card, to me, is how often we fail to reflect on this (like the stupid looking doll in Crusca’s image); how often we have no idea what we are saying (chat absolute shit, lol) or what we are telling ourselves. As Ethony Dawn explains, “thoughts are things. Words have energy and what you spend the majority of your time telling others and yourself affects your life. So take some time to be conscious of the words and thoughts that you project”.

Likewise, I love the Queen of Swords, and often think of her as a wise old war widow. She has learned from bitter experience precisely the cost of loss and sacrifice and now picks her battles with great caution. And I can see that in this card. But I can also see her dark side – her words are her weapons, and she knows how to use them well. But often when we hurt others, particularly those we care about, we also hurt ourselves. I can also see the darker energy that Bakara Wintner (who I think is overly damning of the court cards in general!) writes about here: “[she] has been burned in the past – badly, perhaps repeatedly – and is not going to let that happen again. She shut down her heart for the sake of protecting it, and she had her reasons, but she never went back to retrieve it.” Which, in turn, reminds me of the kick-ass epigraph to Josephine Hart’s ‘Damage‘: “Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”

I’m also very fond of the King of Swords (wise old war vet), but here he’s giving big ‘lions led by donkeys’ vibes, and reminds us of the danger of taking a cavalier approach towards conflict. Crusca’s drawing looks like a fabulously creepy bastardisation of a child’s tin soldier, and for this card I have a song stuck in my head (80s poptastic – less pretentious than a poem, lol!)

Step by step, heart to heart
Left, right, left, we all fall down
Like toy soldiers..
Bit by bit, torn apart
We never win, but the battle rages on
For toy soldiers…
If I don’t stop the next one’s gonna be me
Only emptiness remains
It replaces all, all the pain

‘Toy Soldiers’ by Martika

The coins on the eyes of the dead in the Two of Coins (Pents) are, again, very creepy and evocative, and I like that the figure in the Four of Pents is literally chained and blinded by his own greed. The Nine of Pents (my equal favourite Tarot card with the Seven of Wands) is just such an all round badass thought, that I can’t even see the shadow work here 😂.

I like how the figure in the Five of Cups isn’t just surrounded by the 3 empty (and 2 full) cups of traditional imagery, but also appears to be clutching an amphora of wine. The whole card has a real ‘drink away the sorrow’ vibe, and reminds us of the danger of embracing a method of self-medication that will eventually bleed us dry, even if it seems to offer temporary relief.

Dead-fish-faced Page of Cups is supremely, wonderfully terrifying. For me the shadow side of the Page of Cups is dreaminess and introspection to the point where you are completely unsure of how to cope with the world, and scared of reality – which I think is captured here in the self-soothing gesture of the hands.

Love the Ace of Wands – what is not to love about a bunch of creepy animals dancing round a giant flaming dildo in the woods? And the Six of Wands has a sense of the violence of victory to it, that is often missing in more conventional depictions. The easter eggs in the Queen of Wands – her cat’s gaze, her sunflower shown here as a kind of third eye – are very pleasing.

This is a beautifully illustrated, very personal, very powerful deck, and I 100% recommend it for self-work. You can buy it from the creator’s Etsy page for £43.

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