New Packs: Sola-Busca and Mantegna

[Cowhead]

I have uploaded a pair of packs to the Deck Exchange. These have high historical interest for me. I hope some of you will also find them interesting.

The Mantegna pack is not really a Tarot deck in the modern sense, but it is a series of images that were created during the same period that the earliest known Tarot decks were appearing. Historically interesting because we can see that many of the images we associate with Tarot were part of the popular culture of the Renaissance.

The Sola-Busca pack is another ancient pack from the time that the Tarot's card-set and card-order was still very non-standardized. The trumps are images of celebrated warriors, and bear almost no resemblance to the modern Tarot trumps. What makes this deck especially interesting to me is that the pips are often fully illustrated with scenes that suggest divinatory meanings. As A.E. Waite acknowledged, the Waite-Smith pack was not entirely unprecedented in that respect. It is also apparent that Pamela Colman Smith knew about the Sola-Busca pips, and borrowed some of her imagery from them. The Three of Swords, for instance, is very similar in both packs, with three swords piercing a heart. Smith's Ten of Wands appears to have been inspired by The Sola-Busca Ten of Swords. There are other parallels -- see if you can spot them!

Enjoy!

-- Cowhead