Tag Archives: Bolognese Tarot

Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Tarot

Bolognese Tarot – Il Tarocchino di Bologna by Andrea Vitali and Terry Zanetti (Review)

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The literary landscape in Italy is rather dismal, as far as the occult arts are concerned, even though in recent years something seems to be changing. But Il Tarocchino di Bologna (the Little Tarot of Bologna) by Andrea Vitali and Terry Zanetti is not a very recent book, and this makes its outstanding quality even more of a surprise.

The book is divided into several sections, some authored by Vitali and some by Zanetti. Andrea Vitali is possibly the greatest living tarot historian (and a damn good diviner too), the one who has shed the most light on the history and origins of the tarot, bursting a lot of bubbles in the process. His section is, as usual, well documented and written, and generally aims at showing that the tarot probably originated not in Milan but in Bologna.

But, as undisputed as Vitali’s expertise in the field, our focus in this review is Zanetti’s section on cartomancy. This is well organized and competently written. Aside from a brief preamble, the largest part of her section of the book is dedicated to the meanings of the cards, which she has researched in various ways, including by looking for old decks with the meanings written on them.

Zanetti, like Celi (and currently like me), uses a 45-card deck. The deck, however, differs: instead of one Stranger, she uses two, one of them taking the place of the Ten of Coins. As I mentioned elsewhere, these discrepancies are to be expected from a tool of popular divination that was invented in a non-globalized world of isolated villages and streets. Even some of the meanings differ, as I explained in this post, where I talked about the fact that she interprets the Page of Swords not as a letter but as a young man.

Each card is presented with their Italian and Bolognese dialect name, a brief iconographic rundown, the list of meanings, an example reading with a three-card method, a saying from the Bolognese popular tradition that illustrates the meaning of the card, and a combination. Some combinations are exceedingly curious and stray far way from the original meanings of the cards.

The spreads covered by Zanetti are also interesting and worth studying. One is a variation of the great staircase spread I talked about, but Zanetti gives very specific and somewhat rigid rules for interpreting it. She then covers a pyramid spread and a variation of the cross spread, the thirteen card spread and, finally an oracle made up of only three cards.

The only small concern is the rigidity with which Zanetti treats combinations of two cards. My experience is that cards must be first and foremost combined logically based on the context of the question and the other cards, but she asserts that when two specific cards come together they always have a specific meaning regardless of everything.

This, I have found, may be true when many cards come together. For instance, even if you ask about love, if someone in your life is about to drop dead, lots of cards will amass in that regard, not just two. Yet Zanetti treats two-card combos as if they were powerful enough to transcend the question (and yes, she does give a combination about death). Again, this is a question of method and personal experience. It does not detract from the validity of her experience, but it does highlight one of its peculiar traits.

So is this book worth having? To this my answer is a big fat yes. Both Vitali’s and Zanetti’s sections are well thought-out and insightful.

Where to get: Amazon

MQS

Card Meanings, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Everyday Oracle, Fortune-telling, Geomancy, Playing Cards, Sibilla della Zingara, Tarot, Vera Sibilla

Deriving Meanings From a Keyword

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When someone teaches someone else the traditional meanings of the cards, they often don’t waste too much time giving them a rundown of all the applications of the one or two keywords they give them, especially at the beginning. Keep in mind that in many traditions, at least in Italy, the initial instructions for card reading are passed down on Christmas Eve, so the explanations must be quick enough to fit into one evening where you have plenty of other stuff to do.

Usually, the initial instruction is followed up by a more thorough explanation later, but the new reader is also expected to “lavorare le carte”, literally to “work the cards“. This means that while they are being given a vocabulary (the keywords) and some grammar and syntax (the various spreads and combinations) they are supposed to develop their own language.

Think about it: we all speak English on this blog, yet each of us speaks a different version of it, not only because some of us are native speakers while some aren’t, and not just because some come from the US, some from GB, some from Australia, etc. but also, and especially, because each speaker of a language has their own slightly different version of it, owing to their character, personal history, experiences, education, talents and many other factors.

This may sound like an admission that language is random and infinitely pliable at will, but it isn’t. Your own language is an emanation of you as a person, but who you are as a person is not fully under your control. In fact, the diviner and occultist in me believes that it is only very slightly under your control.

What is true for regular speech is true for the speech of the cards. Once you are given the meanings of the cards, it is not a matter of reinventing them, but rather of discovering how the meanings work for you, of understanding what your particular, individual dialect is. This is a never-ending process, because the language of divination is a difficult second language to learn and because there is no human native that can help us.

But let’s discuss an example of how you take a single keyword and turn it into a web of interrelated meanings. In the Bolognese Tarot, which is my current obsession and is quickly becoming one of my favorite systems, the Queen of Coins is called “the truth”. There. If you were sitting on grandma’s lap on Christmas Eve and she were passing the meanings down to you, that’s what she would say. The truth. Period.

The truth is a complex thing, and throughout history different people have understood it to be something different. In itself, it is an abstract concept. After receiving it, you need to make it concrete, i.e., you need to discover how the word “truth” is used in your particular divination dialect. Let’s give it a try (and this is my dialect, obviously. It may or may not overlap with yours).

The truth is what truthful people tell, so obviously the card qualifies people as truthful, dependable, reliable. Next to a person card, the person will be all these things, probably.

Once you know the truth about something, you know about it. Knowledge is therefore another aspect of truth. Who has knowledge? Professors, for sure, and people who have studied something. One might counter that so many graduates today are ignorant fools filled with prejudices they never questioned. And one would be right. Archetypally, though, the connection (the ‘signature’) holds, similarly to how astrologically scholars are ruled by Mercury, even if scholars are often up their asses.

Study, teaching, learning, explaining, science, discovering, bringing to light, intellectual (or at least not physical) occupations seem to also be concepts that beautifully complement that lonely keyword “truth”. But all these aren’t just descriptions for abstract knowledge. What is a less abstract form of knowledge? Expertise, for sure. If you call the plumber, he may not be able to tell you how the categories of Aristotle’s logic apply to your toilet, but he sure knows how to stop it puking out scum. And that’s a good deal more helpful. So a plumber with the truth on his side is certainly a plumber you want to hire.

Today, the word wisdom is almost forgotten, or relegated to describing dubious practices with no scientific stamp of approval. But wisdom used to be deeply connected to knowledge. The Queen of Coins, therefore, surely describes the ability to lead your life the right way, or to lead others the right way.

Especially in the West, the idea of truth has always been connected with the ability to see. “I see” we say, when we understand something. This may sound shallow, but it actually has its roots in the old Greek notion that the truth is what the mind sees beyond the illusions of the senses. The word “idea”, which is what we have in our minds and which we hope to be a truthful representation of reality, comes from the root ‘vid-‘, which is the same root as the latin ‘videre’, to see. So the Queen of Coins stands for sight and for the eyes, and for windows, which bring light (understanding) into the home and from which we see how the world outside looks like. And so on and so forth.

These associations can be discovered by practice and by decoding the combinations that are usually passed down. Again, it is not a matter of making up. It is, literally, a process of discovery.

MQS

Cartomancy, Divination, Fortune-telling, Tarot

A Bolognese Tarot Course

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I often get messages from people asking me how to learn the tarocchino. This makes me happy, because it means this extremely old divination tradition is slowly getting the attention it deserves.

I had the blessing of knowing a great teacher, Germana Tartari, whose first book I reviewed (and whose two other books I shall review in the near future). She taught me how to read the 50 card method.

For those interested, a course by her will start on 15 January. You can read more about it on the website of the Accademia degli Studi Ermetici

Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Everyday Oracle, Fortune-telling, Occultism and Esoterism, Sibilla della Zingara, Tarot, Vera Sibilla

Which Deck is Chatty, and Why?

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I recently received some questions from a visitor to this website. One of them was in which sense the Sibilla is considered “chiacchierina”, i.e., chatty.

This is an interesting question, because it gets to the heart of how divination works (and not just divination with cards). I don’t want to foster the belief that the Sibilla is more capable of conveying information than other divination systems. This would be false advertising. Every deck and every system is capable of informing us.

But the way in which the Sibilla informs us is rather unique. Here we get into the specific character that each deck and system has. The Sibilla is like an off-beat aunt with a poor sense of boundaries.

A girl once asked me how her crush for a guy would develop. The girl had moved in with her grandma and the grandma disapproved of the guy. The Sibilla started off not with an answer to the question, but by telling me that the girl’s grandma disapproved of the situation. If I had asked another one of the decks I work with, I probably would have gotten a more straightforward answer.

It takes working with each deck in order to understand their language and personality, but these always emerge sooner or later. This is also probably why old folk diviners believed that each deck has a spirit attached to it that lives inside its cards and infuses them with its peculiar traits, a belief that I tend to share, since it explains this phenomenon much better than the impersonal Jungian theory of synchronicity.

The reality is that each (valid) divination system is chatty in its own way. I’ve heard the Bolognese tarot being referred to as chatty, and as I work with it I understand that its chattiness really is a factor, even though it is less chaotic than the Sibilla.

MQS

Card Meanings, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Tarot

The Tower As A Place

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I did a reading recently with the Bolognesw tarot that I unfortunately forgot to record. It was one of those instances of “of course I will remember it.” The one thing I do remember is that the Tower featured prominently in the reading and did not take on a nefarious meaning, instead just indicating a place other than the home.

This gave me the idea of collecting here the combinations I have actually experimented in practice so far.

Tower + Queen of Coins (Truth) = School, Place of learning (this combo was in the reading I did recently)

Tower + Ace of Coins (Table) = Restaurant

Tower + Moon (Bad stuff) + Hermit (Isolation, Blockage) = Hospital

Tower + Ten of Cups (Fun) = Bar, Club or similar

Tower + World (big) = A palace (in the example of the reading I did, it was a tourist attraction)

It is not an endless list, as you can see, but then again the Tower doesn’t always come up in a reading, and when it does it doesn’t always indicate a place, and when it does it isn’t always clear what kind of place it represents, based on the other cards. But this short list is what my experience has borne out so far, and it clearly shows how the cards operate as small particles of meaning that gravitate toward each other to create complex structures.

Obviously, much depends on the context and on the other cards. The Ace of Coins, for instance, is the table, but it is also a big money card, so with other material cards it could turn the Tower into a bank instead of a restaurant. What I can say for certain at this point is that my experience with the Bolognese tarot shows the Tower isn’t necessarily an evil place (like a hospital or a prison) as some strands of the tradition seem to indicate, but its meaning can be modified by the presence of positive cards.

MQS

Card Meanings, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Playing Cards, Tarot, Vera Sibilla

The Bed – A Deep Dive Into Cartomancy

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The bed symbolism is almost as widespread in cartomancy as that of the table, of which it is a natural counterpart. The table often stands for conviviality, nourishment, feasting and interpersonal contact, and it often represents situations happening during the day. The bed, by contrast, is a nocturnal symbol of retreat and rest, and can stand for sickness, but also for physical intimacy, depending on the other cards. As usual, it is admirable how the card readers of yore used to weave simple and effective symbols of daily life in their reading systems, which allowed them to talk about reality.

The oldest mention I could find of a card representing the bed is in a little-known system for reading Italian regional playing cards with a reduced pack of 25 (instead of the full deck of 40). In this method, the Four of Coins is the bed card. It tends to represent situations becoming static or sick, or it can talk about passion, depending on the other cards. It can also indicate that something happens in the evening or at night. Interestingly, in another system I’m aware of, this time utilizing the full pack, the Four of Coins is the table, while the Five of Wands is the bed.

In the Bolognese Tarot, which is the oldest used divination deck we have written records of, the Chariot is the bed card. This has got to be one of the most puzzling bits of symbolism of the deck: a card that is usually indicative of forward movement, travel, progress, launching forward is seen as a card of static sickness, likely due to how the chariot is represented, with the horses crouching at the sides, as if the forward movement had stopped.

Truth be told, in the oldest extant document on divination with the Bolognese tarot, which dates back to the Pre-Napoleonic period, the Chariot is still considered a card of journey, but shorter than the World card, which is assigned the meaning ‘long journey’. This may indicate that the meaning of the card evolved through time, from ‘little journey’ to ‘little movement’ to ‘not much movement’ to ‘staticity’. Another likely possibility is that different meanings were used by different strands of the tradition, one of which hadn’t yet been put down in writing. This latter possibility is confirmed by the fact that there are readers who who assign both meanings to the Chariot, depending on the cards that surround it (static cards activate the static meaning, active cards the moving, active meaning).

The bed card is also present in some of the oracle decks that originated in the XVIII century as parlor games. In the Sibilla we have two bed cards: one is the Four of Spades, the Sickness card, which interprets the symbolism of the bed in its more static and negative sense of needing to interrupt one’s routine and of situations that are not healthy. The other bed card is the Ace of Diamonds, the Room, which can indicate any room in a building, but which in itself stands for the bedroom. As an extended meaning, it is the card of intimacy, so the presence of cards indicating love or physical contact can lead to rather hot interpretations.

The Kipper deck does not have two bed cards, but it does contemplate the symbol of the bed in the card “a short sickness”, which depicts a patient in bed being visited by a doctor. This is mostly a card of sickness, but many German-language sources I’ve read consider it also an ingredient in combinations about intercourse, partly due to the presence of the bed and partly due to the doctor touching the sick man’s wrist, which is supposed to be indicative of physical contact, if supported by other cards.

MQS

Card Meanings, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Tarot

Who’s the Little Sword Bearer?

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Working on my review of Andrea Vitali and Terry Zanetti’s book on the Bolognese tarot I came across some interesting information that matches what some Bolognese tarot readers have confirmed.

If you read my section on the card meanings of the Bolognese tarot, you will see that I call the King of Swords “Spadino”, which literally means “little sword” or, more appropriately in this context, “little sword bearer” (the ‘bearer’ part is implied). This is because the people I have chiefly learnt from all agreed on this one name, independently from one another.

When we read Zanetti’s section on the divinatory meanings of the cards, though, we find that she calls the Page of Swords ‘Spadino’, identifying the figure with a young man. This is in contrast with the tradition I’ve received, whereby the Page of Swords is just a letter or message. Zanetti does say that the card can also sometimes signify a disquieting letter, but she chiefly identifies the Page with a young man.

The Page of Swords and the King of Swords in the Bolognese tarot / Tarocchino bolognese

I must say I find this option strangely titillating, as the Page of Swords, Spadino, would then be a male counterpart to the Page of Cups, Coppina, ‘little cup bearer’. The ending -ino, which in Italian points to something small or young, definitely fits the Page more than the King. Zanetti denies that this parallel between Coppina and Spadino exists, because the Coppina is supposed to be always negative (she’s traditionally the little floozy who snatches hubby away). But I have not found this to be the case: the Page of Cups is just a young (or younger) woman.

Ultimately, as my understanding and practice with the Bolognese tarot evolves, I know I will have to create my own deck (all traditional readers seem to have done so, preserving a part of tradition and integrating it with their own discernment and experience). Tradition is, after all, not something fixed, but something that is handed over to us (from the Latin tradere) and that we must administer intelligently.

Another interesting fact is that Zanetti emphasizes the intellectual aspect of Spadino, calling the card “young man and his thoughts”. This is in contrast with what I’ve learned from Germana Tartari, my teacher for the 50-card method, whose grandma taught her that the Knight of Swords can sometimes represent the King of Swords’ thoughts, in a kind of parallel to the Knight of Wands being the thoughts of the King of Wands.

The fact that so many traditions seem to exist should not discourage us from engaging with them. Keep in mind that the Bolognese tarot tradition evolved locally, with each city, village or even street having slightly different versions of it. Thus, this is less a matter of who is right or wrong and more one of systemic preference and whether integrating different system together leads to new systems that work, or whether it is best to keep them separate. This is something that can be established only through trial and error.

MQS

Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Everyday Oracle, Fortune-telling, Occultism and Esoterism, Playing Cards, Sibilla della Zingara, Tarot, Vera Sibilla

Do You HAVE To Change Your Deck?

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This is a recurrent question I get. Some people are of the opinion that reading decks have something akin to a shelf life, after which they stop answering or they become impregnated with negative energy from all the readings. I often get asked if this is the case.

To which my answer is: under normal circumstances, your deck will keep answering you (or at least it will keep working, even if it occasionally snubs your questions) for as long as you use it. This has been my experience, as well as that of all my teachers, and I’ve had the good luck having many teachers.

My first teacher, from whom I learned to read playing cards and the Sibilla, followed the Italian tradition that divination decks need to be old, must have been used to play at the local inn and the people playing with them must have covered them in offensive swearwords (read here my hypothesis on why this tradition exists).

This obviously doesn’t apply to the Sibilla, since Sibilla decks, as well as similar decks like Lenormand or Kipper cards, are pretty much the only card decks specifically designed for divination. But tarot was a playing card game, and playing cards… well, it’s in the name, and so, according to my teacher, they needed to be “giocati e bestiemmati” (played with and offended with swearwords). And after you got a hold of one such deck, you probably were going to use it for as long as you lived.

When I started learning the tarot, my other teacher held on to her first deck as if it was a relic, and it did answer her beautifully. She was of the opinion, however, that the deck could stop answering correctly or become more negative in its answers if you read for many people with a tragic life. When this happened, she usually took the deck to church and had it blessed by the priest. I honestly cannot say I ever needed this, but there you have it.

As for the Bolognese tarot, I do not know what deck the person who taught me the 45-card system used, but I do know that my teacher for the 50-card system still uses her grandmother’s deck. Another person I am in contact with, who uses 49 cards, still uses the deck her teacher gifted her.

As for me, I have a conservative outlook on life, and I don’t throw away something unless I really, really have to. The Sibilla deck I use is the one I bought when I started learning, and while I don’t insist on always using the same playing card deck, I still occasionally whip out my old one.

Still, there are people who believe decks can stop working after a while, including people I admire (see Josephine MacCarthy). Is there anything to it? Obviously, much depends on the theoretical framework one uses for their magical activities (which includes divination).

I was taught that divination (any divination) can stop working if you are the recipient of a curse, but that’s an extreme scenario. More often, the people who complain about their deck going lazy on them tend to torture them with repeated questions on the same topic over and over.

As much as skeptics may point out that this is proof that divination doesn’t work because it cannot be repeated ad libitum in lab conditions, it is simply how it is: if you annoy the deck it will stop answering. This simple fact shows, at least in my opinion, that there is something alive attached to the deck.

Usually, in traditional divination folklore, we would say that the deck has a little spirit hidden inside. And while this may sound like a childish explanation, it is the one that best explains my experience, as well as being perfectly in line with traditional hermetic principles. The point is that while many valiant attempts have been made at explaining divination using more or less recognized principles (see Jung’s views), we are at work with something we don’t fully understand. Some level of respect is due to this something, if for nothing else than to keep the work environment positive with whatever it is.

MQS

Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Everyday Oracle, Fortune-telling, Playing Cards, Sibilla della Zingara, Tarot, Uncategorized, Vera Sibilla

How ‘Topic’ Cards Behave

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In every deck there are what we might call topic cards, that is, cards that represent a specific field of life: family, work, money, health, love, the law, etc.

All or most of these cards also have general meanings that apply to various contexts. For instance, the Ace of Cups in the Bolognese Tarot is the home card (just like the Ace of Hearts in playing cards or the Two of Hearts in the Vera Sibilla), so it is the topic card for everything relating to family and house questions. But it can also indicate that someone belongs to the family, e.g., when it comes up next to a court card. It can also indicate the inner side of one’s experience of life, one’s inmost, intimate world, etc. So it can also show that something is close to us and touches us.

We need to distinguish between a card acting as a stand-in for a specific topic and the same card acting out a particular meaning. To keep with the Ace of Cups example, when it comes up in a question about work, it might show that the querent’s work life interferes with their family life or vice versa, or that they work from home, or that their work environment is family-like. In all these cases, the house card qualifies the other cards by adding details of its own.

But when the House card is simply a stand-in for the topic ‘home and family life’, the card says nothing about the topic itself. It doesn’t qualify the reading. It simply tells us, “this is the topic.” It is then the role of the other cards to describe the situation, qualifying it in a positive or negative way.

When we are doing a general reading with no question, or with all the cards down on the table, this is all well and good: we see if the person’s significator is next to any of the topic cards, showing that that topic is important, and then we read the cards surrounding the topic card relating them to the topic.

When the question has been specified, though, extra care must be taken trying to figure out if the topic cards that appear are qualifying the topic of the question or if they are coming up to ignore the question and talk about something else. This is not always easy.

Let’s say you asked about work, but the house card comes up. Why? Is it because the home is involved? Or is it because the cards have decided to bypass your question and discuss something else? Or is it both? (It CAN be both). One way to solve this issue is to see if there are topic cards relating to the question, or if at least the cards seem to be predominantly of a nature that seems more akin to the question asked (e.g., lots of Diamonds and Clubs in a work-related question).

The other way is to see if the cards next to the rogue topic card coalesce with it to form a coherent statement that has nothing to do with work, or if instead the topic card allows itself to be absorbed into the querent’s question.

The third way is simply to work with the querent. This is always a good idea. After all, our aim is to interpret the oracle correctly, not to impress people.

Cards that have the potential to be topic cards are always quite strong in a reading, so it is always good to observe them first. Often they form focal points in the interpretation of the spread. Sometimes some cards in some readings can even be ignored, but topic cards always seem to have something to say. We ignore them at our peril.

MQS

astrology, Card Meanings, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Everyday Oracle, Fortune-telling, Geomancy, I Ching / Yi Jing, Playing Cards, Tarot, Vera Sibilla

Get Out And Read!

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When it comes to divination, theory can only get you so far. The best way to improve your reading skills is to learn the basics of a *valid* system and then start reading.

For most of us, we are our own first querents, and that is a problem. I don’t have a 100% accuracy record when reading for others, but I barely reach 60% when reading for myself, especially if I’m invested in the topic. It is not just a matter of wrong interpretation, which can and does happen. I am more and more convinced that sometimes, when we read for ourselves and we are not perfectly at peace, we tend to get readings that reflect what we think rather than what is happening or will happen.

Furthermore, the tendency that many people have to start obsessively putting questions to the cards just to see if they say something vaguely understandable (which doesn’t mean true) is dangerous, and can get us in a warped frame of mind.

I know that for many, especially coming from certain societal backgrounds, reading for others can be a big step into the unknown, but I would advise anyone to start reading for some sympathetic friends or relatives (and when I say for them I mean in front of them, not asking questions about them) and then to graduate as soon as possible to readings for people we don’t know or know little about.

I don’t have too many friends, but they do a good job of talking about me to their friends and to their friends’ friends, which is how I get my supply of test anim-ehm, querents. If you start reading for your friends and ask them to spread the word the same will happen to you.

The cool thing about reading for people we don’t know is that it is so much easier than you might think. Divination DOES work! And divining for someone when there is no chance of you knowing the information in advance is very impressive for them and very satisfying for us as diviners. It will build your confidence much more quickly than torturing the cards about your own mental dramas. Plus, the oracles always seem to be much clearer and much more crisp when I divine for strangers.

One thing I would advise is to be as scientific as possible: record the question, the reading, your interpretation and the results. Don’t think you cannot build your vocabulary because the only right answer is the one offered to you by your intuition. 99% of intuitive readers are terrible, and what they call intuition is not actual intuition: it’s their stupidity echoing in the empty chambers of their mind. Be systematic and slowly you will gain experience.

MQS