Publicado por: C.A. du Chateau de Gruyeres 1993

Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. IV, p. 373 - Medida de las cartas: 3 7/8 "x 5 1/2"

"El Tarot de Gruyères" es un raro tarot de 22 Arcanos en blanco y negro creado para una exibición en Suiza en el año 1993. Gruyères es un pequeño pueblo en Suiza que alberga el museo del artista H.R. Giger. Las imágenes de este tarot son semejantemente detalladas y surrealista. Casi todas las cartas tienen un posado de desnudez frontal completo. Sólo la carta de "La Rueda" contiene color rojo. El folleto adjunto tiene un poema para cada carta escrito en francés.

Le Tarot de Gruyeres is an unusual black and white, majors-only Tarot, created for a Swiss Tarot exhibition in 1993. Gruyeres is a small village in Switzerland, home to the museum of artist H. R. Giger, and the card imagery in this deck is similarly detailed and surreal. Almost every card has full-frontal nudity. Only Trump X, the Wheel, has the color red added. Backs are red and white. The accompanying booklet has a poem for each card in French.

The basis of this interpretation of the famous card deck, besides the symbolic elements that belong to the medieval tradition, is a reading of the ensemble of the major arcana as 22 stages of a initiatory way to the knowledge. This initiatory way is divided in two paths, called dorian (of activity and reason) and ionic (of passivity and mystic). The first path goes from the card number 1, The Juggler or Magician, to the card number 11, The Strength. The second path goes from the card number 12, The Hanged Man, to the card without number (or zero), The Fool. We can dispose the arcana in two paths, as we can see below:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

0 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

This disposition shows not only the opposition between the directions of the two parts of the initiatory way, but also the opposition of the meanings between the cards that correspond to each other.
For exemple, the Juggler (1) is an intelligent and skillful man, that knows exactly what he does, while the Fool (0) is the image of a senseless person, walking blindfold,
not knowing its destination. 

This reading is largerly developed by Oswald Wirth in his book "Le Tarot des Imagiers du Moyen Age". His writing was the main reference for the interpretation by Roosevelt.

Roosevelt wanted to make the opposition between the correspondent cards still more evident. For that, he turned of 180º the composition of each drawing and inverted the tones of the black and white backgrounds, as it will be easy to observe in the series reproduced below (the two rows are presented here vertically).

A new contribution to the traditional imagery of Tarot, by Roosevelt, is the omnipresence of the nude.

The Fool - Fou
The Magician - Bateleur
The High Priestess - Papesse
The Empress - Imperatrice
The Emperor - Empereur
The Hierophant - Pape
The Lovers - Amoureux
The Chariot - Chariot
Justice - Justice
The Hermit - Ermite
The Wheel of Fortune - Roue
Strength - Force
The Hanged Man - Pendu
Death - Mort
Temperance - Tempérance
The Devil - Diable
The Tower - Tour
The Star - Etoile
The Moon - Lune
The Sun - Soleil
Judgment - Jugement
The World - Monde