Difficulties with the Estensi Tarot

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 03 Jul 2004, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Kittaine	03 Jul 2004
(I'm not sure where to place this thread. Mods...) I don't know this deck very well. But I did a few readings with it and discovered that some of the cards' images and meanings are so different from RW, which is what I've grown accustomed to. For example, 8 of Cups = MATERNITY. Is this based on another tarot system?

Rusty Neon	03 Jul 2004
Kittaine, Riccardo will be in a better position to answer this for you. The question you raised is interesting. However, I can make some quick comments, which I confess don't do full justice to the importance of your question. I note that the LWB that comes with the deck includes a short article by Giordano Berti, under whose direction the deck was prepared. In the article, Berti indicates that the images in the minor arcana were drawn from images in the frescos in the Palazzo Schifanoia that date back to about the same time as the Charles VI (Estensi) cards. Berti indicates that "each figure [from the frescoes] was chosen [for insertion in the lo scarabeo deck] in relation to its closeness with the meanings dictated by cartomancy specialists." I suspect that, the deck being published in Italy and given the Italian provenence of the Charles VI cards, the cartomancy meanings chosen were probably Italian cartomancy meanings. On the other hand, the Rider-Waite images that you (Kittaine) would be most familiar with have more similarities to French cartomancy meanings (via the Etteilla tarot deck from France) than Italian cartomancy meanings. For the pip cards, even Etteilla meanings and RW meanings don't coincide with one another a large part of the time.

Fulgour	03 Jul 2004
The 8 of Cups is usually associated with Saturn in Pisces, which would indicate perseverance and universality... Eight suggests authority, power, and statrus, while Cups signify intuition and emotuion. Long, long months?

The Difficulties with the Estensi Tarot thread was originally posted on 03 Jul 2004 in the Tarot Decks board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Tarot Decks, or read more archived threads.