Tarot History Forum

I had quoted this ....

The central part is this ...
(40) 20 World (in Sola-Busca 21)
(39) 19 Angel (in Sola-Busca 17)
(38) 18 Sol (in Sola-Busca 16)
(37) 17 Moon (in Sola-Busca 17)
(36) 16 Star (in Sola-Busca 4)
15 Tower (in Sola-Busca 20)
14 Falconer (in Sola-Busca 9) ... somehow later replaced as devil
13 Death (in Sola-Busca 13)
12 Hanging Man (in Sola-Busca 8)
11 Father Time (in Sola-Busca 5)
...
1 Panfilio (in Sola-Busca 1)
0 Mato (in Sola-Busca 0)
12 cards ... with a 13th, Chariot, in the background
You see here 13 special cards (12 trumps /1 Fool) of the Sola Busca and they are in their meaning the same as they are used in the Lucca Tarot (but they look rather different).

In the recent research I noted, that I had in the older reflections a mistake with the position of Panfilio ....
It's not "1 Panfilio (in Sola-Busca 1)", but "9 Panfilio (in Sola-Busca 1)", cause the trump row in the younger Orfeo-Lucca is ...

no number .... World
no number .... Angel
no number .... Sun
no number .... Moon
no number .... Star
15 Tower
14 Devil
13 Death
12 Hanging Man
11 Father Time
10 Chariot
09 Wheel or Fortune = 1 Postumio in Sola-Busca

Later more to this, I just have to sort a few things.

Huck

If you put Fortune=Panfilio (not 1 but 9) then we dont have your nine heroes together in two lines or groups. And where do you put Falco=Devil? (It was in the number 9).

My be I am confused...

Why dont you write 9 FORTUNA? You write Panfilio when you write about Lucca Tarot. I understand why you do that with Falco but I domt understand why you do the same strange thing with Fortuna. You dont want write Fortuna. Do you think that early Lucca Tarot had a card with Panfilio picture?

Magic Moon wrote: 03 Apr 2025, 23:07 Huck

If you put Fortune=Panfilio (not 1 but 9) then we dont have your nine heroes together in two lines or groups. And where do you put Falco=Devil? (It was in the number 9).

My be I am confused...

Why dont you write 9 FORTUNA? You write Panfilio when you write about Lucca Tarot. I understand why you do that with Falco but I domt understand why you do the same strange thing with Fortuna. You dont want write Fortuna. Do you think that early Lucca Tarot had a card with Panfilio picture?

Hm.
Can you see all the pictures .... at "test IN WORK" ?
I'm fighting with the system ... the Forum once had lost the capability to present, what now is called "insecure pictures". This has ruined a lot of pictures in the 5000 texts, which I've written.
Earlier browsers could see and present these pictures.
Tarot has a special attention for the cards Fool, lowest trump and highest trump. In some game rules the cards have 5 points each.
The lowest trump In the Lucca Tarocchi is the Wheel-Fortuna and it has the number 9. In normal Tarot with 22 special cards the number of the lowest trump is 1.
Lucca Tarot of ca. 1725 has ...

0 Fool ----- corresponds to 0 in Sola-Busca
9 Wheel-Fortuna ----- corresponds to 1 in Sola-Busca
10 Chariot ----- corresponds to 7 in Sola-Busca
11 Father Time ----- corresponds to 5 in Sola-Busca
12 Hanging Man ----- corresponds to 8 in Sola-Busca
13 Death ----- corresponds to 13 in Sola-Busca
14 Devil ----- corresponds to 9 in Sola-Busca
15 Tower ----- corresponds to 20 in Sola-Busca
(16) Star ----- corresponds to 4 in Sola-Busca
(17) Moon ----- corresponds to 12 in Sola-Busca
(18) Sun ----- corresponds to 16 in Sola-Busca
(19) Angel ----- corresponds to 17 in Sola-Busca
(20) World ----- corresponds to 21 in Sola-Busca

This looks very chaotic. But it has a system, and the system proves, that the Lucca Tarocchi of ca. 1725 had in its trump-compositiom a sort of forerunner ca 1490-1500 in the Sola-Busca-deck.
And if this was so, then it opens the possibility, that the Lucca-trumps-composition might have been even much older than the Sola-Busca Tarocchi.

There was a German king from Luxembourg, Heinrich VII in 1308 . Before King Albrecht was killed ....
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_VII._(HRR)

Nach der Ermordung König Albrechts am 1. Mai 1308, einer Tat mit rein persönlichen Motiven, mussten die Kurfürsten einen neuen König wählen.
Translation: After the assassination of King Albert on May 1, 1308, an act with purely personal motives, the electors had to elect a new king.

May 1, that's somehow a symbolic day since very old times.

Am 27. November 1308 wurde Heinrich in Frankfurt am Main von den sechs anwesenden Kurfürsten gewählt, am 6. Januar 1309 wurde er zusammen mit seiner Frau Margarete in der Kaiserstadt Aachen gekrönt. Die Wahl wurde ohne Bitte um Approbation Papst Clemens V. angezeigt.
Translation: On 27 November 1308, Henry was elected in Frankfurt am Main by the six electors present, and on 6 January 1309 he was crowned together with his wife Margaret in the imperial city of Aachen.The election was reported to Pope Clement V without request for approval.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_VII._(HRR)
January 6, that's also a very symbolic day, especially cause Heinrich VII cooperated with the archbishop of Cologne, and Cologne was already very proud cause of the 3 holy kings.
I don't know, if this date was counted in this period in this region as January 6, 1308 or as January 6, 1309.
One year later at another 6th of January (1311/1310) Heinrich VII was crowned as king of Lombardy in Milan.

Am 6. Januar 1311 wurde Heinrich VII. in Mailand als erster römisch-deutscher König nach dem Staufer Heinrich VI. mit der eigens neu angefertigten eisernen Krone der Langobarden gekrönt.
Translation: On 6 January 1311, Henry VII was crowned in Milan as the first Roman-German king after the Hohenstaufen Henry VI with the specially made iron crown of the Lombards.

This king Heinrich VII, who became a Kaiser, but reigned not very long, got a very influential book with 9 Heroes.
"Les Vœux du Paon“ (1312) by Jacques de Longuyon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Worthies
The 9 Heroes in this book were:
3 of the Pagan time

Hector of Troja,
Alexander the Great,
Julius Caesar

3 of Jewish history

Judas Makkabeus,
David
Prophet Josua

3 Christians

King Artus,
Karl the Great, Charlemain
Gottfried of Bouillon

9 Heroes appear also in the Sola-Busca Tarocchi, it are other persons. Roman persons.

But this theme demands some time. Anyway 13+09 = 22 and this might have a meaning. 13 trumps +9 heroes
It's a complicated problem to fix, when and where the year 1309 started
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hochneujahr
In this German text appears the observation, that also the 6th of January was occasionally used as the New Years day. Possibly Heinrich VII. contributed to this idea. Then we have with the coronation of Henry VII the new year 1309 at a January 6 and the begin of a new world with the Luxembourg dynasty for 128
years till 1437.

*********

Possibly some readers will argument, that in 1309 there would be no playing cards in Europe.

in work ....

Thanks Huck for the explications.

You ask me if it is ppssible to me looking pictures ib this forum. Which pictures exactly do you ask me? I look fine the charriot Sola Busca picture in last page. Each writer put the pictures using different technics andit is possible to me looling some pictures. That depend.

I think is iteresting the probably conexion between 9 classic heroes in art and 9 heroes in Sola Busca or 8 heroes or 8 emperors in Emperor Game. I think you have heroes in Colonia in a bilding. This is very old. This is an interesting tradition in Italy also. And some heroes are conected with a virtue.

Hello

I've been studying Huck's proposal. I have some comments.

You say you arrived at your chart through trial and error. I find the chart interesting, but I don't know the details that led you to correlate each card. That is, I don't know what you base each correlation between Sola Busca heroes and Tarot trumps on. I also don't know why you don't see correlations between nine Sola Busca heroes and the Tarot. Perhaps you're basing your correlation on conceptual, visual, or name similarities? I suppose you have a reason for your correlation in each card. For example, I know that Time is the hero who holds an ancient clock made up of a system of weights. And I know that the Hanged Man is the hero who holds a child with his feet up. With what I'm going to say now, you'll understand my question about the origin of your correlations (13) and not correlations (9).

On the one hand, I have the feeling that the order or numbering of those thirteen cards wouldn't be that of the Minchiate or Lucca Tarot, but rather the Bolognese, with the exception of the World above the Angel. Incidentally, you put the World above the Angel when you imagine numbering for those high cards, which don't have a number printed in either the Minchiate or the Lucca Tarot. However, in the Type A tradition, the Angel is supposed to be above the World, as we see in Rosenwald. I think the order is Bolognese because the quintet with the Chariot would allow Love to be placed below the Chariot and three virtues above the Chariot. The other quintet of heroes (with no equivalences with the Tarot, as you suggest) could be occupied with the Magician and the four Popes. Perhaps there are no correlations between those nine heroes and the nine cards I just mentioned, but the structure has room for those cards in the order of the Bolognese Tarot. Howard says that the Chariot once held a higher hierarchy and was later placed alongside Love, as we see in the familiar Bolognese Tarot. His argument is based on the poem (1602) written by Croce. It's a good argument, but I have doubts that the Chariot was really separated from Love early in the Bolognese Tarot. In any case, it's strange that Sola Busca follows a Type A order (Lucca according to Huck or Tarocchino according to me) and has the World card above the Angel card. I suppose that at that time, the Type A order was the most widespread, and that others were still emerging as variants: Type B and perhaps later Type C.

Aside from this question about numbering, I find it interesting to speculate about the 13 cards of the Lucca Tarot in relation to the Sola Busca. Nine valiant heroes plus thirteen Lucca trumps result in 22 cards. I don't know if any of those nine cards could be identified with the remaining nine cards in the Tarot. However, I've noticed something that I find curious. Huck forms two quintets when proposing a structure for the Sola Busca. Curiously, the five cards of one Sola Busca quintet are in the top row of both Rothschild-Arts sheets, while the other quintet is in the bottom row of the sheets. Huck, had you noticed this coincidence? Furthermore, both sheets have the Chariot in the bottom row and the World in the top row. It seems that the order of the twelve Rothschild trumps isn't totally chaotic. Huck, did you base your correspondences between Sola Busca and Lucca Tarot on Rothschild?

I've been playing with the sequence lately, too. I haven't reread this thread or caught up yet as I've been distracted with updating things, but I do know that I tend to favour the A sequence as likely the original and I would indeed group Love with the Chariot and then the three virtues. I still lean heavily on Patrarch being a main influence for the sequence.

I was giving a talk with a small, local group last week and the question I keep coming back to is this: If you had to learn the order of 22 trumps knowing that to play the game effectively you had to know which one trumped which other one... AND there were no names or numbers on the cards... Would you be able to do that? I think the only way this would be possible without a lot of confusion is if the images were clear enough to create a fairly recognisable or discernible order that would have been easy to learn for 15th century players. Sure, there can be some room for learning some of the more unusual cards, but generally, it's a game of triumphs and one would think that the order would be more obvious to the players at the time.

Don't know Howard or Croce's poem, that seems an interesting suggestion. Is it in this thread already or linked?

Many thanks,
Robert

P.S. Magic Moon, nice to meet you.

"Howard" would be Mike Howard, I believe.

"Croce" refers to a poem using all the trumps in order, by Giulio Cesare Croce, first mentioned by Steve Mangan here in 2016
viewtopic.php?p=17062&hilit=croce+carro#p17062

He was Bolognese and it was printed in Bologna, and it gives the earliest attestation of the Bolognese order of cards (not the earliest A order though, which is a "Strambotto" poem of about 1500), although it lacks Popess and Pope. The order here is Love-Temperance-Justice-Fortitude-Chariot. I tend to think it is the original order, even in Florence, although the earliest surviving Florentine cards have the Chariot numbered 10 (Catania) or X (Charles VI), which is above the Wheel of Fortune, like in Minchiate. If this latter order is indeed the original, then the moral message has to be interpreted differently. Not the ultimate meaning, but just the relation between glory and fortune in the mind of the creator. My own sense is that symbolizing mastery of Fortune by a triumphator is more of a Machiavelli-age thought than a mid-century Florentine thought. But individuals could think differently at any time, and I may not know enough to generalize.

Croce's order:

Angelo
Mondo
Sole
Luna
Stella
Saetta
Diavolo
Morte
Traditore
Vechio
Ruota
Carro
Fortezza
Giustitia
Temperanza
Amore
Imperatore
Imperatrice
Bagattino
Matto

Lotto Festevole Fatto in Villa

Fra una nobil schiere di Cavalieri, & di Fame, con i Trionf de’ Tarroch, esplicati in lode delle dette Dame, & altri bei trattenimenti da spasso.
Di Giulio Cesare dalla Croce. In Bologna, Per Vittorio Benacci, 1602
Con licenza de’ Superiori.

A Festive lottery done in a country house, among a noble crowd of Knights and Ladies, with the Triumphs of Tarot, explained for the pleasure of these Ladies, & other beautiful amusements to hoot.

https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=tY ... &q&f=false

I don't believe it matters too much how the moral "middle section" is arranged, as long as Death and Devil are at the end and Fortune is above the virtues. I'm adamantly A. Stranger orders exist though, like in the B family, the "Budapest Tarot", where the order is the typical Pope-Temperance, but then the Chariot follows, and THEN Love. So Love trumps the chariot here. Somebody wanted to say something about the power of love here.

Many thanks Ross. I know this is an odd one, but are there ANY orders with the Hermit late in the order, especially before the Angel?

If we make some assumptions, (I realise these are not at all standard or agreed upon), trying to place Petrarch's triumph associations as such:
Love = Love
Chariot = Chastity
Death = Death
World = Fame
Hermit = Time
Judgement = Eternity

Then I would expect to see the Hermit late, but as far as I know, that never happens, and that theory is pretty blown.

No such order is attested, which for me does indeed blow the Petrarch-triumphs origin theory. The same artists who painted Petrarch's Trionfi also painted Triumph cards, and those who commissioned them would have known Petrarch's order, and those who designed the order would have known that Time is only defeated by Eternity, so it seems like a lot of ignorance has to be invoked to explain how Petrarch's "Time" could have fallen to below Death, if Petrarch's "Time" is what he originally represented.

So I don't believe he represented "Tempus Edax Rerum", Time the Devourer of All Things, Petrarch's Time. Some designs, like the Bolognese, definitely conflated him to Time later, but originally I think he was time-in-life, using it wisely. Also a contemptus mundi, turning his back on Fortuna.

I'm going to hold out a bit of hope for it. The A sequence is so nicely explained with Judgement at the end over the World with Judgement = Eternity and World = Fame.

The only explanation, I suppose is an even older order (channeling our beloved JMD now), an "ur-order", that got forgotten or replaced quickly. Otherwise, we're back to the same old question, without names or numbers, how was a player expected to learn the trumps, certainly, there must have been some sensible order that a player could easily learn and remember? And with the damned cards being named triumphs, how could Petrarch not have influenced this?

Going to sulk in a corner now.