The First Occult Tarot Deck and Book Set by Robert M. Place

The First Occult Tarot draws its inspiration from the writings of Louis-Raphaël-Lucrèce de Fayolle, comte de Mellet, one of the earliest French thinkers to propose an esoteric foundation for the tarot. De Mellet connected the Major Arcana to the Classical Ages of Man, the Hebrew alphabet, and early divination practice, all filtered through a deeply Hermetic worldview. Robert M. Place has given these ideas a physical form through his own refined artistry, producing a deck that feels both ancient in spirit and fresh in execution.

Rather than following the Marseille tradition, Place turned to the Besançon Tarot as his structural model, and the sequence moves from the World back to the Fool, tracing a descent from the Age of Gold down to the Age of Iron. Yet the same progression can just as easily be read as an ascent toward spiritual unity. This set pairs the 78-card deck with a guidebook authored by Place alongside David Vine's translation of de Mellet's original description of the trumps, making it a rare combination of original scholarship, art, and esoteric depth.