by The Decameron Tarot defies convention through its explicit embrace of sensuality, humor, and unapologetic provocation. Inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, a literary work famed for its bawdy tales and candid exploration of human desire, the deck channels the spirit of the Renaissance text into a modern divinatory format. Rather than softening the source material, the Decameron Tarot leans into its erotic origins, offering images that challenge, amuse, and unsettle. Its iconography, saturated with physicality and sly irreverence, transforms the tarot’s archetypes into figures of flesh, appetite, and social subversion.
Origins and Artistic Vision
The Decameron Tarot emerged from a creative collaboration between artist Giuliano Costa and publisher Lo Scarabeo, whose commitment to experimental and boundary-pushing tarot ensured the deck’s uncompromising aesthetic. Released in the early 21st century, the deck traces its roots to Italy—a fitting birthplace, given both Boccaccio’s Florentine legacy and the tarot’s own Renaissance origins. Costa, an artist steeped in both classical technique and modern sensibility, approached the project with a visual vocabulary drawn from Renaissance painting, erotic art, and burlesque illustration. The result is a deck that oscillates between parody and reverence, marrying lush linework and painterly color with a subversive edge.
The historical context of the Decameron itself informs the deck’s spirit. Boccaccio’s collection, composed during the Black Death’s devastation, uses humor and eroticism as a balm and a rebellion. Similarly, Costa’s tarot confronts social anxieties and repression through visual exuberance, inviting readers to contemplate themes of survival, pleasure, and renewal. The deck’s reputation for provocation is not incidental: each card stages a miniature theater where desire, embarrassment, and delight intermingle.
The deck’s eroticism references both classical myth and the European pictorial tradition, echoing Bosch’s playful grotesquery and the libertine spirit of 18th-century French engravings. Costa’s figures often resemble stock characters from commedia dell’arte or the ribald woodcuts that circulated alongside forbidden books. The Decameron Tarot, in this sense, reclaims tarot’s marginalia, reminding readers that divination’s roots lie as much in carnival and laughter as in solemn mysticism.
Symbolism
Card function as archetypal images, often staging a scene that merges the symbolic meaning with a vignette echoing the Decameron’s themes. The Major Arcana cards, for example, present iconic figures—the Fool, the Lovers, the Devil—transformed by the language of seduction, farce, and transgression. The Fool becomes a literal fool, sometimes pants-less, driven by instinct and desire rather than mystical innocence. The Lovers appear not as idealized romance but as bodies caught in the throes of sex.
The deck’s symbolism refuses solemnity, preferring the ambiguity and multiplicity of carnal comedy. Scenes bristle with double entendre and visual puns. Costa incorporates objects—wine, musical instruments, open windows, discarded garments—as stand-ins for hidden desires or social commentary.
Unlike many modern tarot decks that privilege introspection or spiritual purity, the Decameron Tarot foregrounds story and spectacle. The deck rewards the reader who approaches the cards as narrative fragments. This layering echoes the Decameron itself, which presents one hundred tales told over ten nights—a meta-structure that the deck mirrors by inviting the reader to assemble their own sequence of stories through a reading.
The deck’s humor serves both as armor and invitation. Erotic scenes, while explicit, rarely settle into the pornographic but play with embarrassment, self-exposure, and reversal of expectation. The cards frequently depict the aftermath of desire—a shoe left behind, a curtain hastily drawn, a knowing smile from a bystander—suggesting that sexuality’s real drama lies not in the act, but in its social consequences and comedic fallout.
Structure
The Decameron Tarot adheres to the standard tarot structure, comprising seventy-eight cards divided into the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana retains its familiar twenty-two archetypes but reinterprets each through the lens of erotic storytelling. These cards become, in Costa’s hands, less cosmic waypoints than characters in a commedia—a parade of seducers, lovers, cuckolds, and schemers. The Empress may appear as a figure of maternal fecundity, but also as an unapologetic lover; the Hierophant doubles as priest and voyeur, simultaneously gatekeeper of morals and silent witness to their subversion.
The Minor Arcana is divided into four suits: Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles. Each suit retains its elemental associations—emotion, creativity, intellect, and materiality—but reimagines them through scenes of desire, pleasure, and folly. The suit of Cups, traditionally linked to relationships and feeling, becomes a catalogue of flirtations, courtships, and amorous confusion. Wands, associated with will and sexuality, erupts in visual metaphors—staffs, branches, and other phallic emblems populate scenes of pursuit and conquest. Swords, the suit of intellect and conflict, frame sexual encounters as contests of wit, seduction as negotiation or duel. Pentacles, emblematic of the body and resources, explore the intersection of pleasure and economy, physicality and transaction.
Court cards in the Decameron Tarot further personalize these energies. Pages and Knights, often depicted as youthful or impetuous, become messengers and initiates in the world of erotic experience. Queens and Kings, in contrast, represent mastery or authority, but always with a subversive edge—a Queen of Wands presiding over her domain with both sensual power and comic exaggeration, a King of Swords as much a judge as a participant in his own escapades.
In terms of system, the Decameron Tarot maintains the numerological progressions and suit relationships familiar to students of the Rider-Waite-Smith or Marseilles traditions. However, its unique artistic choices and narrative interpretations challenge the reader to look beyond rote meanings. Traditional symbolism becomes a backdrop for visual storytelling, and the deck encourages interpretive flexibility—readers must adapt to the ambiguity and playfulness built into the cards.
Key Cards and Interpretive Approaches
The Lovers abandons angelic mediation for corporeal engagement: a trio, a pair interrupted, or even the aftermath of clandestine union. The image challenges sentimentality, foregrounding physical desire and social complexity. In readings, this version of the Lovers signals the necessity to confront not only choice and union, but also the messiness of longing, betrayal, or unacknowledged needs.
The Devil card, already potent in traditional decks, finds an even bolder form in the Decameron Tarot. Here, the card may depict an uninhibited revel, a masquerade, or a scene of irresistible temptation and indulgence. Chains become voluntary, faces turn toward pleasure, and the line between vice and liberation blurs. In interpretation, the Devil signals surrender to forbidden desires, but also the transformative force of acknowledging one’s shadow.
The Tower appears as a moment of erotic exposure or scandal—a tryst discovered, a secret revealed, the sudden collapse of social pretense. The image is both comic and consequential, inviting the reader to recognize that upheaval may arise from disruption of decorum. Interpretation emphasizes catharsis, release, and the necessity of truth—however embarrassing—in dismantling false security.
Among the Minor Arcana, the Ace of Cups in the Decameron Tarot bursts with sensuality: an overflowing goblet held between entwined lovers, a clandestine note, or the playful exchange of glances. This card amplifies the traditional meaning of emotional openness, adding an unmistakable erotic current. The Two of Swords, usually a card of stalemate, becomes a negotiation between lovers, emphasizing the tensions, strategies, and silent communications in the erotic or romantic encounter.
The King of Pentacles embodies material mastery with a distinctly carnal edge. Depicted as a powerful, indulgent figure surrounded by signs of wealth and sensual excess, he is less the stoic financier and more the libertine patriarch—one who knows the value of pleasure as much as property. His authority is rooted in appetite and satisfaction, suggesting not only control over resources but also an unapologetic enjoyment of them.
The Queen of Wands is depicted as both alluring and assertive—she may oversee her domain from a boudoir, suggesting mastery of her own desire. In readings, she calls forth unapologetic self-expression and sexual agency, but also the humor of recognizing oneself as both player and played in the games of passion. The Knight of Pentacles, often a symbol of patience and method, might appear weighed down by gifts for a secret lover or nervously plotting a rendezvous. His approach is earnest but tinged with comic futility, reminding the querent of the follies and labors of seduction.
Decameron Tarot in Readings
The Decameron Tarot’s explicit, narrative-driven imagery lends itself powerfully to relationship readings—where questions of desire, honesty, and communication take center stage.
For shadow work, the Decameron Tarot is especially potent. Its humor and explicitness strip away euphemism, compelling the reader to confront aspects of the self that polite society prefers hidden. The deck’s bawdy images become catalysts for honest self-examination. A querent struggling with shame or inhibition might find the Fool’s pants-down innocence refreshing, the Devil’s laughter cathartic, or the Empress’s fecundity a reminder of creative and sexual abundance. The deck’s refusal to moralize allows it to function as a mirror—sometimes funhouse, sometimes brutally accurate—reflecting the richness and absurdity of human experience.
In creative exploration, the Decameron Tarot is a font of inspiration. Writers and artists often use its narrative scenes as prompts for stories, dialogues, or artwork. Each card contains within it the seed of a tale—scandal, romance, misadventure, or reconciliation—making the deck a valuable tool for breaking through creative blocks or for reframing personal history as a sequence of stories to be laughed at, learned from, and eventually retold with new understanding.
Self-reflection readings with the Decameron Tarot encourage the querent to reclaim playfulness. The cards remind users that divination, at its heart, need not always be somber or ceremonial. There is wisdom in laughter, transformation in acknowledging embarrassment, and healing in the act of naming desire without apology.
The explicit nature of the Decameron Tarot’s imagery means it is unsuited for all audiences or circumstances. Readers must gauge the comfort level and consent of their querents, particularly in group settings or public readings. The deck demands respect for boundaries, tact in interpretation, and the skill to turn discomfort into insight rather than shock for its own sake. Used with care, the deck becomes not only a tool for revelation but also a catalyst for genuine connection and healing.
Reception, Legacy, and Collectability
Upon its release, the Decameron Tarot was met with a mixture of fascination, controversy, and admiration. Within tarot communities, it found a passionate following among those seeking alternatives to sanitized or overly reverent decks. Practitioners praised its fidelity to the earthy humor of Boccaccio and its unflinching approach to sexuality, while critics questioned the appropriateness of its imagery for general use. Despite—or because of—these controversies, the deck achieved cult status among collectors and avant-garde readers.
Its influence on modern erotic tarot is unmistakable. Decks such as the Eros Tarot or the Manara Erotic Tarot draw on the precedent set by the Decameron, seeking to reclaim sexuality as a legitimate subject for spiritual and psychological inquiry. The Decameron Tarot’s legacy lies in its refusal to dichotomize body and spirit, instead positing that the full range of human experience—shame, laughter, longing, fulfillment—has a place at the tarot table.
From a collectability standpoint, the Decameron Tarot’s original Lo Scarabeo editions are prized for their print quality, durability, and artistic integrity. Limited print runs, periodic scarcity, and the deck’s controversial reputation have made early editions especially valuable. Variants with guidebooks, deluxe packaging, or original art fetch high prices on the secondary market. The deck’s enduring appeal ensures it remains sought after by both seasoned tarot enthusiasts and collectors of erotic art.
Critical reception has evolved over time. What once seemed purely provocative is now more widely recognized as a serious artistic and literary intervention—a deck that invites adults into a playful, honest, and unashamed conversation about pleasure, folly, and the complexity of being human.
