Ithell Colquhon’s Taro as Colour

Ithell Colquhoun was a pioneering figure in the British Surrealist movement, whose seven-decade career spanned painting, poetry, fiction and theoretical texts including a comprehensive history of the occult movement The Golden Dawn entitled Sword of Wisdom, which she published in 1975. She was deeply influenced by a range of esoteric practices and, in the late 70s, created her own tarot deck made up of small enamel paintings on thick watercolor paper, one panel of which representing the Major Arcana, is shown here. Her decision to work with enamel was inspired by Golden Dawn founder William Wynn Westcott who encouraged practitioners to use enamel when creating materials for the Order so as to achieve the purest color. Indeed, color became for Colquhoun the key to harnessing tarot’s transformative energy, which she believed to be conducive to meditation and spiritual growth rather than divination. Her deck is entirely abstract and ascribes colors to each of the four suits with swords, or air, being yellow; cups, or water, being deep blue; wands, or fire, being scarlet and disks, or earth, being indigo. The cards were exhibited once in Colquhoun’s lifetime at the Newlyn Art Gallery in Cornwall in 1977. In her 1978 essay ‘Taro as Colour,’ Colquhoun recalled: “After I had completed the pack, I saw some slides showing nebulae in outer space and the birth of stars. These recalled my designs and confirmed my conviction of their cosmographic function.”