Historical Tarot

A collection of meanings and interpretations Sola Busca Tarot It is not easy to find different meanings and interpretations for the Sola Busca cards on the internet. I made a collection from various sources (Mentioned below). Various meanings and interpretations Sola Busca cards Triumphs, Majors, Court Cards, Minors and numbered cards. Major Arcana – Triumph cards 0. MATO a. 0: strangeness, infantilism, holiday, detachment from worries, madness. b. 0. MATO: upright: Foolishness. reversed: Insanity. c. 0. The Fool (Mato): It doesn't matter if you are misunderstood, as long as you are true to yourself. Ther…

Do you use decks that are not of the Golden Dawn heritage? What are they? I use the Egyptian Tarot by the Brotherhood of Light. This deck is structurally built to the guidelines of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. The last surviving members of the Luxor chapter had someone in america take on their teachings, and this is that deck. The art for the major arcana was taken from a sort of mysterious Astrology book written in 1901 written by someone claiming to be Count saint Germain. The hermetic brotherhood of Luxor and it's two or three sister chapters ironically(?) are the origins of the handful that would initiate the Golden Dawn itself but in the end Alister …

@_R_ For the general forum reader: _R_ published the translated to English essay that Roger Caillois wrote as a preface to Wirth's Tarot of The Magicians last November. Below are my notes and comments about that preface. Reading it first or having it open in another browser window will provide the right context. I feel like I should have been more familiar with Roger Caillos than I was before reading your article, from my years of studying game theory if nothing else. I am sure he was cited and quoted in things I read, but that is the problem of being an eclectic who knows a little about a lot of different topics, master of none. Based on what I re…

The Morgan Library & Museum is hosting an exhibition from June 26 through October 4, 2026. I just stumbled over this info in an article in The New Yorker. There was a fun illustration that is probably not part of the exhibition but was done by an illustrator for the magazine (Nicholas Stevenson). So, what do we have here? The 2 of Swords, the Hermit and the King of Wands (?), I suppose. And our psychotic psychic (Yayoi Kusama) is holding up the Sun. So mainly it's about us having fun, sharing and feeling free in our expression. But there is a lot of ambivalence, evaluation or perhaps even retreat preventing us…

Who knows the origin of the Celtic Cross and why it seems to be as abundant as it is? I've been doing a lot of reading teaching back to the origin of tarot, the Kabala beginings and I've found some unique geometric designs all based on numerology that I feel make power spreads and I've been using them. Very energized. I also found a spread in the Brotherhood Of Light Book that seems to have been forgotten about using 7 cards. I just wonder if 7 questions are necessary for it.

Recently, I've been seeing a lot of readers say that The Hierophant and the High Priestess are counterparts (similar to the Empress and the Emperor) but that doesn't make any sense to me. When I first started reading tarot I assumed that the High Priestess and The Magician were counterparts seeing as how they come right after one another and the High Priestess deals with spirituality, intuition, psychic abilities while the Magician deals with manifestation, creation in the physical world, beginnings. To me those two just seem to go together. I'm wondering if there is any history behind the Hierophant and High Priestess being considered counterparts…

I open this discussion to share some paintings and depictions of Strength, Justice and Temperance across history, that I found on the web. It is interesting to compare them with the pictures that we can see in tarot. These three arcana are part of the seven christian virtues, that include four cardinal vitues: Fortitude (Strength), Justice, Temperance and Patience, and three theological virtues: Faith, Hope and Charity. But only three of them made their way into the tarot. The topic will be divided into several posts, as only three pictures are allowed by post. All pictures are from free sources, and all links to the originals are included. Let's first…

https://rinascimentoitalianartenglish.wordpress.com/2020/02/27/the-oldest-method-of-reading-the-tarot/ I'd ask Mr. Berti - he's very nice - but every time I engage him in conversation, I end up buying something. And I just CAN'T right now. 😁

Hello everyone, I've been searching for "historic" spreads aside from the Celtic Cross and the Opening of the Key. I have used the CC so far and I am very interested in learning the OOTK but that's for later considering the amount of work required. So, I was looking for an alternative to the CC that would have some historical/influential origin but I haven't found anything... Do you have any recommendations?

A few months ago, at a fair, I bought a vintage copy of the Richard Gardner Tarot https://www.abriefhistoryvintage.com/sold1/1970-richard-gardner-rare-tarot-card-set-2005-tarot-book-78-cards-england (I paid much less than the price quoted here!). I have the corresponding book too (The Tarot Speaks). The Gardner Tarot is a brighter version of the Insight Institute Tarot, apparently https://www.wopc.co.uk/tarot/insight-institute. The latter is rather lovely with its muted colours. Both decks seem a curious mix of different Tarot traditions. Has anyone worked with either of these decks?

Does anybody here have the Limited Edition of the Sola Busca Tarot recently released by Lo Scarabeo? How was it? It seems that a fly card there stated that to recreate the original physical look of the ancient deck, they decided to ditch the card varnish so that it may not be ideal for shuffling. Given this, do you even read with it? I ordered this online through my source, and since it is to be exported from half a world away, it might take weeks before it gets here. I just hope I'd have it in my hands before the month ends. I'm so excited!

Every seen that one hermetic deck by Dobson that looks so cool? Probably everybody...ever wonder what make it so Hermetic? Gosh i sure did…. Chances are most of us are using hermetic decks and don’t know it, the most of the rest of us just know they are. A quick search of the internet about hermetic orders reads like a cool medieval story. Brotherhood of this, Brotherhood of that, Rosy roses, knights, and freemasons…. The beginning of the end is between Austria and France around 1800….by 1870 the old orders were collapsing just like the rest of the world around them. Fun stuff for sure. But what makes a deck Hermetic? Not so apparent...Hermeticism is in gene…

What is the earliest deck dating back in or before the 14th/15th century with original illustration?

I've just had the idea to display several historical decks side by side. Click on the pictures to see a high resolution version. From top to bottom : Visconti di Modrone tarot (around 1445). The cards with a red cross are not originals. Rosenwald sheet (around 1500). The cards with a red cross are not originals. Minchiate Gaetano - All Aquila (1763, restored). Pierre Madenié tarot (1709). Marseille Vintage Tarot (2022, rebuilt from Conver, 1760). Tarot de Besançon, Grimaud (around 1895). The order presented here is a hybrid between order A1, with the three virtues, Te…

This topic has been moved to Promote Yourself. [iurl]https://www.thetarotforum.com/index.php?topic=4644.0[/iurl]

Ok the first thing I'd like to say is just @Rose Lalonde I was so happy to learn all you said in your first response about how the Golden Dawn influenced the RWS. I didn't even realize that Christian Mysticism was a huge interest of Waite but that is amazing to know and makes so much sense now with all the biblical imagery especially in cards like Judgement and The World. Secondly, I don't feel I am knowledgable enough about the Tarot to really add much to this conversation but I am learning a ton by reading through it so I will definitely be following the progression. @sixdegrees I will be looking forward to these posts now 🙂

(Not sure if this is the right place to put this thread but it seemed appropriate) I posted this over in another forum but thought I would see what other information I could get... I don't know much when it comes to tarot. In fact I don't know much about a lot of things, but I am working to remedy that I am curious to learn about the differences between deck styles (is that the right word?) such as Thoth, TdM, RWS, and any others that may be out there that I am unaware of. Are they read differently? In what way? How does the symbolism differ? Do card meanings change? Do they have different card orders? Why? Sorry if I have gone really wide with m…

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Hi Guys Not too sure if this is the right place for this but it is a very historical account of all types of playing cards. It is (some of you may well have heard of it that I do not doubt) "The Devils Picturebook" and it is free to download, without any copyright issues (I think). Anyway I think @katrinka and @gregory would have an interest in it maybe @Flaxen too. I know you guys love a little bit of history when it comes to the cards 😉

Hey everyone, So I've had this deck for a while now, though it's never been read with. More because of a huge lack of information around it. I did find one site which is now on the wayback machine that took a stab at making an attempt to understand this deck, but the webpage ended up being taken down due to lack of interest. My main question is, who in the world are on these court cards? I've tried to take as good a picture as possible, please let me know if I should take others. I'll probably be ignorantly blending Greek and Roman mythology together, so I apologise in advance. This whole deck has existed in a va…

I was wondering if there is a Lismon Etteilla (Etteilla II) facsimile-deck currently available to purchase anywhere? I’m also looking for a facsimile of Jeu de la Princesse. I have managed to order Lo Scarabeo’s 1996 Ancient Esoteric Tarot. It is described as a ‘modified’ version of Princesse but I’m unsure as to how/if it differs from the earlier Dusserre edition. Any information would be great!

Just to let you know that an exhibition about the history of tarot will take place in Bergamo in Italy, from 02/27/2026 to 06/02/2026. We can expect to see several cards from the Visconti-Sforza deck, and, hopefully some cards from other gilted decks from the XVth century. Link : https://lacarrara.it/en/mostra/tarocchi-2026/

I'm not sure if this blog has been shared on the forum before, but I found it a few days ago and thought it worth sharing for those interested in pythagorean number symbolism and Etteilla's deck: https://neopythagoreanisminthetrot.blogspot.com/2012/05/magician-and-aces.html?m=1 I've yet to read it all, but so far it's proven to be a really interesting blog that does a great job comparing pythagorean sources on the meaning of numbers and Etteilla's (and other decks) majors and pip card meanings. The author has a few other blogs too, all Etteilla related, which can be found on the homepage Hopefully new and experienced Etteilla fans can get some…

It might interest some readers to know that a period manuscript translation of the essays by Court de Gébelin, the Comte de Mellet, along with most of Etteilla’s Cahiers has recently been digitised and placed online on a library website. For those interested in these historical texts (or Etteilla’s reading methods), please see here. In passing, I will note that Donald Tyson has also just published his version of the first two essays, along with some other texts, but no Etteilla, in his “Essential Tarot Writings.”

... as suggested by Lynyrd Narciso who posts here as BlueToy. This is another follow-up to a thread on ATF, the beloved forum that closed down a year ago. It is meant to deal with everything that is related to the Mamluk pattern in general, also in particular to discuss the possible extension of the mamluk pattern to a full tarot deck, however of course not exclusively. I'll start with something my daughter came up with recently (already posted that on my Facebook page): When she looked over my shoulder while I was paying attention to the mamluk cards (more than paying attention to her, terrible injustice that is), she got me to talk about all the patterns, and we …