Apparently,

if you wish to know your future,

you can go to a tarot card reader, and all will be revealed, but what about the cards themselves? in many cases they are works of art in their own right, take the one above by Mina Mond, Wild Men Tarot, 2014, France, all images © Taschen, 

 or the black-and-white rendering of The Lovers by Madison Ross, 

there are just so many decks of tarot cards that have been produced over the centuries, that a book compiling more than 500 cards has been produced, above from Visconti-Sforza, Yale Deck, mid-15th century, Italy,

above from Elisabetta Trevisan, Crystal Tarot, 1994, Italy, the book Tarot, is arranged in order from the Major to the Minor Arcana and examines the meaning behind the varied illustrations, considering who created them and when,

another by Jean-Baptise Alliette, France

 the book itself, many of the pieces included in the 520-page book are being shown outside their respective decks for the first time, Tarot, which you can purchase on Tashcen’s site, is the debut tome in the publisher’s ongoing Library of Esoterica series, if you are interested in a almost unique set of tarot cards that nearly featured in a James Bond movie, have a look here,

designed by none other than Salvador Dali,

they never featured in the film due to the cost of them, but here is the thing, if people are so good at telling the future, why do they not win the lottery every week?