Sola-Busca Tarot: History & Symbolism
Uploaded by
Joshua CoverstoneSola-Busca Tarot: History & Symbolism
Uploaded by
Joshua CoverstoneDecoding
the
Sola-Busca
Tarocchi
Peter Mark Adams
Brief Facts
• Oldest complete deck & one of the
finest
• Engraved in Ferrara, centre of tarot
production (Mark Zucker).
• Production – London, Paris,
Hamburg, Vienna, Naples
• Version Sola-Busca 1491
• Venetian client, Venier and Sanudo
S anudo
• Carefully preserved
• 1907 photographs exhibited British
Museum
• Purchased by Italian Ministry of
Culture in 2009 & now held in
Brera Gallery in Milan.
Brief Facts
• Oldest complete deck & one of the
finest
• Engraved in Ferrara, centre of tarot
production (Mark Zucker).
• Production – London, Paris,
Hamburg, Vienna, Naples
• Version Sola-Busca 1491
• Venetian client, Venier and Sanudo
S anudo
• Carefully preserved
• 1907 photographs exhibited British
Museum
• Purchased by Italian Ministry of
Culture in 2009 & now held in
Brera Gallery in Milan.
“the past is a foreign country; they
do things differently there”
there ”
• Magic pervasive
• Elite sanctioned sorcery
• Clerical underworld / grimoires
• ‘arcana imperii’
imperii’ – the secret arts
of government
• Machiavelli
• Product elite Ferrarese culture,
Duke Ercole d’Este
• Music & necromancy
• Deck’s
Deck’s system on a different level
– Platonic metaphysics
– Hellenistic theurgical & magical
tradition
Rich Surface Texture
• Standard structure / uncommon imagery
• Trumps named, male, military figures
– Plutarch’s Parallel Lives or Livy’s
History of Rome
– Connecting thread : North Africa
• 9 of 12 named Court cards / Alexander
Romance literature
– no reference anything Alexander did
– concerned Alexander’s conception
by Afro-Levantine god Ammon in
form of a dragon
• Suit Cards enigmatıc, homoerotic &
grotesque scenes
Encryption Keys
• Polysemy – images multi-layered,
support different readings
• Ambiguity – generic & misspelled
names (Roman gens)
• Use of proportions, colour,
number
• Symbolic markers
• Emergent themes
• Extensive use classical sources
Decrypting the
Deck’s Many Layers
Historical Layer
• gens Postumia
• Palm tree & star = Carthage
• Punic Wars
• Livy’s History of Rome
• Lucius Postumius Albinus
• Ambushed, decapitated, skull set
on an altar as libation vessel
• Depicts ritual killing
• Hardly ‘illustrious’, we need
change our lens & take another
look ….
Hypothesis
‘the deck
encodes
Mithraic
imagery’
Why
Mithraism?
Male military
dress
Phrygian caps
Astral imagery
= Renaissance
Tauroctony maps a portion of Zodiac astral magic?
II POSTUMIO XI TULIO
