As a lover of classic Italian and other pip decks and having learned to read on Waite-Smith decks, I’m a sucker for decks that mash them together. The Tarocchi by Mr. Friborg is a merger of the two systems and has turned out to be my most reached-for deck, these days. I like how the classical artwork is a morphing of historic decks like Soprafino and Sola Busca while also incorporating little nods to Pamela Coleman Smith’s handiwork, in the pips.
The thing is, I read the systems differently. Pip decks like classic Italian and French Besançon and Tarot de Marseille utilize visual cues, leading the eye to note patterns and directions, interpreting colors, that sort of thing; whereas the Waite-Smith deck was born out of the teachings of the Order of the Golden Dawn, so astrological and other esoteric meanings are imbued in the scenes on the cards (though I like to use them more naturally and introspectively). Add Sola Busca and its enigma of ancient Roman and Greek figures parading through the cards in scenic sequences that may relate to alchemy or the dark arts or whatever, and you have at least three very distinct systems.
So, reading my Tarocchi by Mr Friborg, my logical brain wants to find a common denominator between these systems for each of the number cards or minor arcana. Some are easy, because they have the same meaning (e.g., the 2 of Cups is a partnership or coming together in some sort of relationship across all of them); some have a common theme if you dig a little; and some just stay in their own lane.
To do this, I’m going to the sources of each as best I can. For pip and TdM-style decks, I’m taking a lot from Yoav Ben-Dov’s The Open Reading (retitled The Marseille Tarot Revealed), and of course the little white book or pamphlet that came with each deck, where available.
For Waite-Smith, A. E. Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot is the guide for the meanings of his deck in his own words. (I’m not going into the more esoteric details like planetary placements and decans of signs.) For the illustrations, I consulted Robert Place’s The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism, 2nd Ed, as well as Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot by Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin. Knowing that PCS was also inspired by the Sola Busca and by Shakespeare, they’re referenced where appropriate.
There are no key sources for Sola Busca that I know of, or that are available, aside from Peter Mark Adams’s The Game of Saturn, which is a treatise on the deck as symbolic of the dark occult arts, but has been rejected by some (despite it being very well-researched). James Raven did a series of facebook posts dissecting each card, which I found very informative, and will likely be sprinkling in some tidbits inspired by that.
But this is my new project, and I’m really looking forward to finding new layers of meaning in the cards as I try to find that point of intersection for each one. I hope you do, too — and invite you to share your insights!
ARCANIS TAROT 