Tarot Thrones | The Court Card Blog

Tag: Sola Busca

  • Strength | Summer Solstice | Blog Hop

    Welcome to the Midsummer
    Blog hop! If you’ve happened here by chance, then you are in for a
    treat if you follow the links below to all the other blog hoppers who
    are providing a chain that runs from 0 The Fool through to XXI The
    World.
    My card of choice is
    Strength.
    Most decks published today show
    Strength as Major Arcana VIII, however this wasn’t always the case.
    In older Marseille-style decks Justice is found at position
    VIII.
    So why the switch? Well, Back in the early 1900s, The Golden Dawn’s 
    A
    E Waite (the creator of the Rider Waite Smith Tarot) was keen to add
    astrological references to the Major Arcana.  But if Strength (Leo),
    kept her position at Major XI, then pesky Justice (Libra) would disrupt
    their plan to show all the Astrological trumps in their correct
    order. 
    And Lo! The switch was made!  Righting some ancient Tarot wrong, no doubt 🙂
    Aleister Crowley, another but more notorious member of the Golden Dawn, stuck resolutely to the traditional
    numbering for his Thoth deck. But changed the names of the cards – Strength became Lust.  Contrary ol’ coot!
    Does this order-switching matter? Probably
    not really, because back in the day, the old decks didn’t have numbered
    Major Arcana cards. 
    Why were numbers added? I fondly imagine that the various City States of Italy – each more powerful and vainglorious than the
    next – ended up with different cards in different orders.  It’s easy to imagine courtly gents in tights arguing heatedly about whether Temperance scored more points than Justice in their card game.  That’s the sort of argument that can get you run through with a rapier….
    But I digress, what I REALLY wanted to share with you is the evolution
    of the image:
    Visconti Sforza – 1451

    Hercules giving the Ebil Nemean lion a jolly good thrashing.
    Pretty danged violent to our contemporary eyes, isn’t it? 
    The Sola Busca Tarot – 1491

    A completely different viewpoint from a completely unique deck.
     This is Tulio, meditating on the night

    Don’t mix up card VIII which shows a child being dismembered over a fire by Nero – that’s Justice, not Strength!


    This is a deck crammed with alchemical symbolism 🙂
    Tarot del Mantegna – 1470(ll Meneghello version)


    A woman holds a club and wears a lion’s mask.
    There is also a lion behind her and a broken column.
    The broken column is traditionally the symbol for Forteza.


    BTW – this deck doesn’t actually have anything to do with Mantegna 🙂
    The Rider Waite Smith – 1909

    The combination of lion, woman and physicality that we strongly associate with this card makes an appearance.

    Tarot Sophistique – 2014

    A contemporary version of a Marseille Tarot image 
    Woman and Lion
    we can see the nascent leminscate of the RWS in the circle of her hat.

    Strength earned her place in the Tarot deck by dint of being one of the four Cardinal Virtues: Fortitude.

    The other virtues are Prudence (The High Priestess), Temperance and Justice (represented by, erm, Temperance and Justice).

    I like the virtue of Fortitude being part of the Tarot deck.  But Fortitude and Strength have slightly differing meanings:

    Fortitude means courage in
    pain or adversary.
    Strength means:
    a) the
    quality or state of being physically strong
    b) the capacity of an
    object or substance to withstand great force or pressure
    The subtle difference is that Fortitude brings a moral strength, a valour (indeed a Virtue!) to the heart of the card, which Strength alone does not.
    And there endeth the Lesson on Strength!
    Hope you’re ready to hop onwards to the next card?

  • Face to Face | The Sola Busca Tarot

    Our first full day in Italy was kicking off in grand style!  Half of our merry band would spend the morning at Il Meneghello, Milan’s marvellous Tarot shop, and half would visit the Sola Busca Tarot at the Brera.  Then a bite of lunch and the groups swapped over.

    To say that I was excited doesn’t even touch the ankle-socks of how I was feeling.  It was like a first date – what should I wear? Not such a barkingly mad question because we were going into a temperature-controlled room to meet the cards.

    I opted to take my fleece.  Good decision.

    We got to the Brera early and stood in the tiny back courtyard as groups of Italian students and staff milled backwards and forwards like casually fabulous film stars.

    Eventually we were given the go-ahead to enter.

    Just hand over your passport and get a visitor’s badge.

    Total silence please.

    Half a dozen at a time, we silently trouped into the tiny elevator and slooooooowly climbed to the top of the Brera.  There we were ushered (again, in silence) past various offices and into a tiny, chilly room where the Director (more effortless Italian chic – black trousers and blouse) carefully lifted a ‘page’ of cards up for us to see.

    The 78 cards are nested in shallow trays, each one protected by a piece of acid-free paper, keeping the colours of these ancient cards absolutely PRISTINE.

    The cards date from the late 15th century (predating Shakespeare, for those of us with a hazy grasp of what happens where on a timeline!) and were purchased for E800,000 by the Italian government in 2009 and maintained at the Pinocateca di Brera.

    Although there ARE feminine figures within the deck, the cards comprise mostly of male figures – military men.  The Minor Arcana are fully illustrated and there are clearly similarities in imagery between this ancient deck and the Rider Waite Smith.

    This is not surprising because black and white photographs of the deck were donated to the British Musuem in 1907 by the Busca-Serbelloni family (who owned the cards) and were most likely seen by the artist of the RWS, Pamela Colman-Smith.

    I was terribly excited at seeing these cards ‘in the flesh’ so to speak! Could we take photos? Yes we could – but no flash.  This ‘no flash’ thing became the bane of my life on our Tour as it meant too many of my photos suffered from camera shake thanks to lengthy shutter speeds :-/

    Shoulda brought my ipad …. *sigh*

    The Sola Busca at the Brera, Milan.
    Look at the brightness of the colours!

    The Sola Buaca Tarot, the Brera, Milan - Tarot Thrones blog
    The charming and knowledgeable Director

    The Sola Busca Tarot, the Brera, Milan
    In close up – see how the paper folds over to protect them?

    The back of the cards – check out that quivering finger! 
    The names of the characters on the Sola Busca are largely a mystery to me, so I have bought books to help explain it all.
    Some are in Italian.  I don’t speak Italian.  But I guess I’ll have to learn!

    Bright colour! Look at that vibrant purple!

    Quite honestly, after I’d seen these cards, I was ready to get a flight back home.  Nothing could possibly top them….. now I was as high as a kite thinking about the Mayer version of the deck that I was picking up from Giordano Berti later on in our holiday!

    Could the Visconti Sforza cards that we would see at the end of the tour take my breath away?!

    Keep tuning in to find out!