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The taxonomy of decks of cards

A blog by Scandinavianhermit in Member Blogs

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About this blog

How to avoid purchase of unintended decks, written mainly from a historical and typological point of view. This blog is intended to be helpful to beginners in particular.

Entries in this blog

So many decks

What does middle eastern judges have in common with German Jacks and Spanish playing cards? (So many decks 1)

Decks, decks, decks. There are so many of them. How do you tell them apart? Where did it all begin?   From the late 18th century to the mid-20th century there circulated a hypothesis, wild as it may seem now, that the tarot deck was invented in ancient Egypt – and with ancient Egypt I mean the time period c. 2700 BCE to 395 CE, but please remember, that Egypt was under foreign administration (Persians, Græco-Macedonians and Romans) from 525 BCE.   Today, we know more about bo
Scandinavianhermit

Scandinavianhermit in So many decks

11
Out of sequence

Just a few notes to myself, out of the sequential order of my 'normal' blog posts

I will return to the tarot deck of Bologna later on, when I have assembled my mind and my health decently, but just a note to myself here: Until 1725, Bolognese tarot had two female Popes (no Empress) and two male Popes (no Emperor), and a long succession of Popes had no reason to comment on this stylistic choice, until 1725. The Popesses and the Popes were replaced with four Moors, since exotification of foreigners was apparently all nice and dandy at the time. Bologna, boasting the world'
Scandinavianhermit

Scandinavianhermit in Out of sequence

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statement of purpose

The main idea with this blog

When I now look back on the past thirty-five years, or actually more, I wish I had learned certain things before I bought some decks, and I wish to help others avoid buying another deck than they intended to buy.   For instance, someone, who wish to buy a Sibilla deck, and not something else than a Sibilla deck, should know, that a Sibilla Indovina does not follow the structure generally known as a 'Sibilla' (I will return to this subject matter in a later blogpost). Similarly, @reall 
Scandinavianhermit

Scandinavianhermit in statement of purpose

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So many decks

The cradle of tarot (So many decks 2)

By the time playing card decks had become prevalent in Europe, the Kingdom of Sicily was the Korea of its time: There were two political entities claiming to be the real Kingdom of Sicily. This reminds us, that there was no unified Italy at the time. The old kingdom of Sicily split in 1282, and it wasn't until 1816 the two claimants reunited into one kingdom, the strangely named Kingdom of the two Sicilies.    North of these two rivalling southern countries, the Papal States (Holy See)
Scandinavianhermit

Scandinavianhermit in So many decks

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