Tag Archives: Tarocchino Bolognese

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

How to Work With Wrong Readings

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I had a nice exchange with a visitor, who asked how we can work with the readings we get wrong, so that we can improve our skill.

The first thing to take into account is that this is not always possible. We may say that we are accurate because 80-90% of our assertions end up being true, but that is calculated on those assertions for which we get feedback, and we don’t always get feedback.

Here, too, there is a lesson, I think: all we can do is be as good as we can be at the particular moment in which the reading takes place. If we think an interpretation is viable, there is no point in withholding it out of fear that we might get it wrong (unless the topic is sensitive and we choose to stretch the truth to avoid hurting the querent) because we might not get another chance to say it.

What happens after the reading is that some querents simply forget about it. Too many querents think that a reading needs to come true within a couple of weeks, when in fact it often takes months, so after the initial excitement (or dread) they simply move on, and they may only be reminded of it when it comes to pass, if at all.

Other readings are correct, but the querent thinks that’s just regular business, so they don’t bother to tell us, while other readings are wrong, and the querent either rubs that in our face as publicly as possible or they don’t talk about that anymore, thinking we are beneath them.

Then there’s the readings for which we do have feedback, which can be very positive (“everything was spot on, and you’re also kinda cute”), very negative (“it ended up being the exact opposite of what you said”), or mixed (“this and that came to pass, but this other thing not yet”).

Even the feedback we get needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Positive feedback can sometimes be a mix of wishful thinking and the desire to please, while negative feedback can sometimes be a mix of delusion (you said he wouldn’t call and he didn’t, but I know he loves me, so you’re wrong) and desire to hurt.

So, what do we do with the feedback we are given, if it is negative? The reasonable thing to do, in my opinion, is to check the spread (I usually take pictures and/or notes) and see where we might have screwed up.

Was there a point in the spread where the cards were a bit ambiguous and we forced the reading in the wrong direction? Was there a huge, smacking-your-forehead blunder? You simply cannot see what went wrong? Take notes on the reading. If you don’t think you can formulate a definitive theory on what went south, don’t. Leave things hanging. Add ‘maybe’ and ‘possibly’, and see if there are other readings you did on similar issues that can help you.

Even when going back to an older spread, we should never force it to say what the feedback said, if we just don’t see it: firstly, because, as I said, even feedback that exists must be treated with caution; secondly, because there is a tendency to want to read details into the reading that we would never have been able to guess beforehand, and that’s not divination.

Broadly speaking, the feedback we get, positive, negative or mixed, should be treated as raw data that needs to be studied carefully. That’s where a lot of growth can take place. Be especially thankful for mixed feedback, as usually it is the most honest kind: we rarely get 100% of the things right, either in our description of the past/present or in our predictions. As fallible humans, getting many things right many times should be enough to satisfy us, especially since we are doing something most people consider impossible.

MQS

astrology, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Geomancy, Playing Cards, Tarot, Vera Sibilla

The Home – A Deep Dive Into Cartomancy

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Following my deep dive into the symbols of the door knockers and the road in divination by cards, I want to tackle the symbol of the home. This, too, like the road, is a widespread symbol that is almost never absent from any divination system of a practical nature (I am aware of systems for playing card divination based on Rider Waite symbolism, but they have very little practical use).

The popularity of the symbol of the home is simply a consequence of its importance in people’s lives. The home or house card is, in most systems, a ‘topic’ or significator card indicating the querent’s or someone else’s house, and the cards surrounding it show us the atmosphere or happenings of the household. Its practical value, therefore, is immense.

In the earliest recorded system for reading the tarot, which is Pratesi’s guide for the Bolognese tarot, the house card is the Ace of Cups. This meaning is retained in the more modern variants of the method. This is also an almost universal constant in cartomancy, since the Ace of Cups or Hearts is almost always taken as a symbol of the home.

Whether this association originates with the Bolognese tarot I don’t know. It is possible that the symbolism is simply suggested by the shape of the Ace of Cups. In the Visconti tarot, the Ace of Cups is a water spring similar to a baptismal font, but in many old decks it can look similar to a walled structure. If we add to this the fact that the function of the cup is to contain, it may be that this could have suggested the idea of the house to old cartomancers, since a house is a large (the ace is large) containment structure.

Similarly, in almost all card reading systems using Italian regional cards, the Ace of Cups is the home, although I am aware of a couple where the meaning is attributed to the Four of Cups, possibly due to the squarish form suggested by the arrangement of the pips. The Ace of Cups is also the house card in the Sibilla regionale, which is the second-most widespread sibilla deck in Italy.

Why the same idea of home as the Ace was suggested by people using regular playing card suits is unclear, since the Ace of Hearts does not look like anything but a heart. Still, if the system I was taught is anything to go by, the main idea is that hearts deal with one’s emotional life and nourishment, and the home is the origin and source (ace) of our emotional life, the place where our first (ace) needs are met. As a matter of fact, the person who taught me cartomancy with playing cards often insisted that the Ace of Hearts is not just any house (though it can be, in practice) but especially one’s home, where we come from (the ‘spring’ we come from, in the Visconti sense), which is why an extended meaning of the house card is often one’s family.

The same attribution of the Ace of Hearts to the home is found in most systems I am aware of, including German cartomancy and most English and French methods. As far as tarot is concerned, we find that, in some earlier tarot documents, the Tower is simply called ‘casa’ (house), before being called House of God or House of the Devil in some other decks (the title ‘Tower’ is actually a rather late innovation).

Etteilla assigned the house to the Ten of Coins, which Waite retains in his illustration of the Ten of Pentacles, while Paul Case generally matched the house with the Two of Cups, among other things. However, this was more of an accidental consequence of the Golden Dawn attribution of the first cards of the suit of Cups to the zodiac sign of Cancer and, according to the sign/house equivalence theory, to the fourth house, which is the house of the father and therefore of one’s fathers and one’s family/house.

The Sibilla is a partial exception to the rule of the ace as the home, as the House card is given to the Two of Hearts. The meaning of origin (which metaphorically, depending on the reading, can also indicate the origin of a problem) is retained. Still, the Ace of Hearts is also given to the family and to people living together, among other meanings.

The Sibilla, like the Kipper cards, distinguishes between a House card and a Room card. This is probably because both decks seem to have been consolidated from earlier German or Austrian decks which also had similar cards, although the makers of the Sibilla also took playing cards into consideration.

I cannot speak to the Kipper cards (nor to Lenormand, where there is a House card, attributed to the King of Hearts), but in the Sibilla, the Room can represent a small(er) apartment, as well as a place in general, but it doesn’t usually have a connection with the emotional side of life, like the House, although it can represent intimacy, since it is connected with rooms in general, but with the bedroom specifically.

MQS

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

A Cartomantic Chaos

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The Bolognese Tarot is traditionally read using a reduced pack of either 45 or 50 cards (the 35 card system, of historical interest, is no longer practiced today). However, since it is a tradition that varies locally, the make-up of the deck varies. In other words, the 45 cards I use are not necessarily the same used by another person who uses 45 cards. The same is true for the 50 card deck.

This uncertainty is what contributes to the relative obscurity of the method. At the end of the day, many people want a clear standard to follow. For my part, I practice the systems I have been taught: the 45-card system you often see in my readings, which I was taught three or four years ago but had left alone until recently, and the 50-card system I have been taught by Germana Tartari.

Many of the sources I have consulted seem to believe that the 45-card system is older, and later five extra cards were added by some. Germana herself told me she remembers her grandma telling her that she (her grandma) had seen the full pack of 62 used (this reconstructed system is the topic of Germana’s newer book, which I will review in the near future).

So we have several systems, which isn’t surprising: if we look at Piacentine playing cards, there are at least several full-deck methods, at least one method with 30 cards and several with 25 cards.

Going back to the tarocchino bolognese, and limiting ourselves to the two most used systems of 45 and 50, usually the cards that overlap tend to have the same or similar meanings, at least in part. For instance the Ace of Coins can be the table or desk in all systems I am aware of. Additionally, in the 45-card system I know, the Ace of Coins can also be the card of money (relatively big money). In Germana’s 50-card system, the Ace of Coins can be a table, but also a letter or document. In Ingallati’s system, the Ace of Coins is the table or the work card.

As for the work card, both Germana’s 50-card system and the 45-card system I know assign it to the Star, but the Star is also the card of material possessions and possibly of gifts, which is the main meaning assigned to the card by Ingallati. In another book on the 45-card method I have yet to review, the Star represents the health status (in my system it can represent meds), but also ‘good job opportunities’.

As you can see, there is overlap, but also space for divergence. To avoid confusion, both for myself and for the readers, I tend to stick to the meanings I know, but I think it’s fair that I bring this up.

As for the five extra cards that some add to the initial 45, there isn’t great uniformity either. Some don’t even add five cards: I know a reader who uses a pack of 49, while Giliberti, whose book I reviewed, seems to use 51 in one video I saw (how many cards she uses in the book I don’t know, due to the book’s chaotic nature).

All this chaos may be frustrating for someone who is approaching the bolognese tarot for the first time, especially from outside of Italy. One thing is growing up with a particular system, another thing is having to randomly choose one.

I don’t believe any system is inherently better or worse. All have the same potential for describing life, if properly used, and much also depends on the person’s inclination. For instance, having studied the 50-card system under Germana’s supervision, there should apparently be no reason for me to go back to the 45-card system. Yet I found myself always coming back to it, despite integrating insights from Germana’s system and from the books I read.

Ultimately I recognized that the 45-card system simply resonates with me beautifully, and while we are still in an open relationship, I tend to gravitate toward it. Certainly, if I had to write a full guide on the Bolognese tarot, I would illustrate this method. You may find otherwise.

I think anyone who is interested in this deck should take their time to explore their options. Mixing and matching randomly without having first studied the various strands of the tradition is not recommended, but as we study and practice we may find that a more individual approach emerges.

MQS

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

Fixed Significators and Modern Issues

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Some decks have variable significators, while others assign certain cards to always represent the querent and their partner. This can cause confusion when reading for people who would not have lived their life out in the open back when cartomancy emerged, such as gay or trans people. Following are some experimental notes on how to deal with such instances in the various decks I use.

I want to stress that these are based on my practical experience, not on that of someone else and not on some theory I am trying force onto the cards. My aim is to improve my accuracy as a diviner, not to pontificate on academic eventualities.

Vera Sibilla

The Sibilla doesn’t have fixed significators, meaning that the querent will, if at all, be represented by a court card that indicates their role in the situation and/or society at the moment of the reading, always compatibly with their sex.1

And this is already problematic nowadays. I haven’t read for too many trans people, but I have noticed that if the person has either transitioned, fully or in part, or has at least adapted considerably to the other sex, then they are represented by a court card of that sex (ftm as a male, mtf as a female).

To be blunt: Jane, cashier, who has been living as Jane despite being born as Jim, and lives out her concrete life as Jane, is described as a woman in the cards, although the cards may hint at the transition, if relevant in the context; Jim, cashier, who would like to become Jane and maybe one day will, is represented as a man, even if he’s started to play with makeup since watching Myra Breckinridge; Becky, professional TikTok cheese grater, special traits no personality, who thinks an androgynous look makes her stand out, still comes up as a woman even if she pretends to identify as a man on every day with an R in it.

This has nothing to do with politics or tolerance or “passing as the other sex” and everything to do with concrete life: divination mirrors life, but social media clout simply doesn’t transfer to the cards, and there’s nothing I can do about it, even if it may offend some. The good news is that indentification with a significator is just a divinatory device and lasts only for the fifteen minutes needed to conduct a reading, and then is over.

IMPORTANT: we are talking about trans people, not crossdressers. A crossdressing man is a man who cosplays as a woman for whatever reason, but remains a man and lives as a man, at least until that fake business trip to Atlanta that his wife knows nothing about.

Talking about gay people, the Sibilla is very straightforward. In the few readings I do for myself, I usually come up as the Boyfriend, my husband as the Gentleman, and some years ago I came up as the Helper and my husband as the Boyfriend.

As for “but what about…” particular cases about any of the identities that are created daily, the best I can offer is: I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I trust the cards to simply describe the situation as it is and I accept the risk of not being able to understand how complex it may be, either in reality or in someone’s perception.

Playing cards and Bolognese Tarot

In some systems of cartomancy with playing cards, significators are not fixed. The way I was taught, though, the male querent is the King of Clubs and the female querent the Queen of Clubs, and the other card is the person they love. Similarly, in the Bolognese tarot the male querent is the King of Wands and the female querent the Queen of Wands.

For trans people, I think what I said about the Sibilla still holds true. Again, all I can say is to keep your mind and your eyes open (on the cards, I mean. Looking if the querent has an adam’s apple doesn’t count.)

For gay people, I have generally found that a degree of flexibility is required on the diviner’s part. Some readers seem to believe that you can just dictate to the cards how to behave, including in the case of gay querents. If that works, then bully for you, but I have always found the cards to have a mind of their own, regardless of the conventions we try to establish for them, so all I can do is be flexible.

Some people think the querent is represented by the court card of their gender, the partner by the other main significator, regardless of their sex. This theory is predicated on the fact that the two main significators are meant to show those people, and the fact that they are of two different genders is accidental or a matter of historical bias.

This may sound convincing, but have I found it to be true in practice? Sometimes. Sometimes the partner will come up as the other Club/Wand figure and there is simply no way of interpreting it other than as the partner, even if the stuff under the dress doesn’t match. Sometimes the cards will represent the partner as a court card of another suit that matches them. Sometimes the cards will throw in both cards for good measure: hubby has come up as the Queen of Clubs + King of Hearts together on more than one occasion in the past. Talk about a big personality.

Tarot

This is like the Sibilla, and doesn’t require much discussion. The male querent is usually the Emperor or the Pope, the female querent is usually the Empress or the Popess. Two men in a relationship can be shown as Emperor and Pope.

MQS

  1. I am aware of the difference between the word ‘sex’ and the word ‘gender’, but I am going to use them quasi-interchangeably to avoid too many repetitions that hurt the ear. ↩︎

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

Bolognese Tarot – Manuale Pratico di Lettura di Tarocchino Bolognese by Rossella Giliberti (Review)

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In recent years, a small number of new books on the Bolognese tarot have been published to meet the demands of the small but growing niche of afficionados. This, as I explained, is largely the merit of Ingallati’s book, which, in spite of some limitations, managed to create that niche outside of Bologna.

Rossella Giliberti’s book is one of these new books. The title of the slim publication literally translates as ‘Practical Handbook for Reading the Bolognese Tarot’. It is a wonderful title, one that is likely to arouse hope in many people. Unfortunately, it has very little to do with the actual content of the book.

Giliberti uses a similar deck as Ingallati (49 cards plus the Joker). I have already explained in my review of Ingallati’s book why I don’t like this selection of cards, which however is unique to Ingallati’s style and must be accepted as such.

Seeing Giliberti’s choice of deck, one would think that she’s just a copycat of Ingallati. But this would be unfair to Giliberti. As short as it is, her book is filled to the brim with notes on combinations and meanings that Ingallati doesn’t talk about, plus she swaps certain cards for others. It is clear that Giliberti, despite obviously being inspired by Ingallati, also had other sources for learning the tarocco bolognese, and this alone makes her book worth buying if one is serious about this deck.

That said, there are some glaring issues with it. For starters, there is absolutely nothing practical or handbookish about it. It is a very (VERY) disorganized collection of notes which would have been fine as initial preparatory work for a book. After the skippable part (the initial chapter about history, which however is more interesting than that in Ingallati’s work) the book gives the usual rundown of the cards one by one, with their core meanings and a couple of classical combinations. For whatever reason, the picture of the Hanged Man is from the Marteau Marseille Tarot.

The merit of this section is that it is clearer, more concise and less fluffed up than Ingallati’s, and the symbolic interpretation more down-to-earth and more informed by Bolognese folklore, as it should be. The possible drawback is that there is space left for the reader to take notes, possibly in an attempt to make the book longer, with the result that the sections seem a bit disjointed and separated from one another. I guess that’s the ‘practical’ part of the book.

When Giliberti comes to the description of the minor arcana, the book starts to fall apart more clearly in terms of organization, with some cards often repeated, some out of order, lack of punctuation and proof-reading, tips on how to read the cards thrown in the mix in random places, some paragraphs all in caps lock, etc. At this point one would be excused for thinking the book is self-published, but it’s not. Some publisher took a look at this and said “yes, I want our brand to be liked to it”.

Giliberti also offers the meanings of the other minor arcana, the ones that are discarded from the 62-card deck. Unfortunately the meanings are taken from a famous discussion board post dating back several years, where one user had assigned the meanings of the Rider Waite deck to the discarded minor arcana.

Afterward there is a section on combinations, all rigorously in caps lock, all rigorously with huge amounts of blank space left between paragraphs. The wording of some of them even makes one think they were taken from other books that I shall review in the future. Some combinations make no sense (e.g., the Page of Coins and the Ace of Cups is a marriage). Some are repeated multiple times with different meanings. Typos and mistakes abound. Still, for all its limitations, an interesting section.

Then there is another section, organized differently in the form of a table, this time on… Combinations? And then there is another section, organized in yet another manner, which is about… Meanings and combinations, some of which have little to do with the ones presented in the first section, and which are more clearly taken “as is” from other sources.

At the end comes an extremely slim final section with some layouts, one of which is taken from Ingallati’s book (I do not mean the layout itself, which is traditional. I mean the actual spread, down to the cards shown in the example). The thirteen card spread is explained in two different ways. The cross spread is also explained in two different ways. You get the picture.

So, what to think of this book? It depends on how one sees it. As a ‘practical handbook’, as promised in the title, it is a bad joke bordering on false representation. As a disorganized mess of poorly edited notes taken from many different sources, some of which are credible, it is somewhat serviceable, especially if you know where and how to look, where and how to block out the information, and if there are no linguistic barriers between you and the text.

Whether it is worth your money depends on the level of autistic fixation you have for the Bolognese Tarot. As I am definitely on that spectrum, I’d rather have it than not, but I am not going to sit here and pretend it is a finished book worth 20€.

Where to buy: Amazon

MQS

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

A Quirk of the Thirteen-Card Spread

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The last thirteen-card spread I posted was interesting for a couple of reasons. One reason I already talked about: the need to be flexible with significators.

Another reason is that it showcases what I suspect to be an interesting quirk of the thirteen-card spread. This is a purely experimental anecdote, so take it with a pinch of salt, but I have found it to be true on more than one occasion.

The quirk is that, in the thirteen-card spread (which I discussed here), the rows seem to be connected not just one after the other, but also alternately, i.e., the first row with the third row and the second row with the fourth row.

I cannot stress this enough: this is NOT a rule, it is simply something I have found to be true on occasion. There are situations where the thirteen-card spread is perfectly smooth from start to finish, reading like a little story with a beginning, a middle and an end. In this sort of situation we don’t need to pair up the rows 1-3 and 2-4.

However, sometimes we can recognize snippets of story mixed together in an odd way. I have found that pairing odd rows together and then even rows together can help sort these snippets out, giving them a more logical order.

In the example of the spread I posted, the second and fourth rows seemed to talk more about material issues, whereas the first and third were more centered on the person’s emotional life. Pairing them odd-with-odd and even-with-even, the spread became more clear.

If the spread is talking about more than one issue at once (which can happen), then this kind of pairing often makes sense. However, sometimes it makes sense even if there is only one topic in play, and this particular case the rows that we pair up talk about subtopics within the same topic.

It may be that this technique simply stems from my limitations as a reader, so that I find ways to circumvent difficulties in the interpretation of the spread. Still, I found this to be accurate enough to bring up, in case anyone wants to experiment with it.

Finally, it may simply be that we need to be very flexible with the rows, and take for granted that they may pair up in unlikely ways. Who knows, maybe I’ll find that the first and fourth row really go well together in some readings. The point is always that the techniques we apply need to shed light on the querent’s life, not simply add flourishes and complications to the interpretation.

MQS

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

How Long to Shuffle the Deck?

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This may sound like a silly question, but it is one I get asked constantly in private. I think the reason is that, especially at the beginning, we are very unsure of how to go about the reading and we are afraid we may get it wrong on technical grounds even before the interpretation starts.

Unfortunately, there is no clear answer to this. I know of old-time diviners who shuffle the deck for a fixed (usually odd) number of times, like seven, nine or thirteen. I have never been able to get behind this way of doing things. It is, however, a traditional approach, so I thought it better to mention it.

I distinguish between when I’m reading for myself, or even for someone else, but who isn’t there; and when the person is with me, even just on the phone or on skype (I used to do skype readings for friends all the time when I was in college).

The second case is the easiest, so I’ll talk about it first: when I’m reading for someone and I am directly in contact with them, I simply ask them to think about the question and to give me a stop when they are ready. Meanwhile, I decide which spread to use, then I relax and I take on an attitude of calm focus, without strain.

The person may have me shuffle for two minutes, or they may tell me to stop after two shuffles. After the stop, if the person is physically there, I also let them cut the deck, otherwise I do it for them after knocking three times on its back (that’s my little ritual). As weird as it sounds, the cards always seem to fall into place very well regardless of how long it took to shuffle them.

I believe this is because, in a reading, there is more at play than just two eccentrics’ focus on a topic. We may like to concoct philosophies that give us ultimate power over external reality, but the fact remain that we live at the intersection of cosmic, personal and interpersonal currents, a number of which are beyond our control. Our focus may catalyze these forces, but they are more ingenious than our conscious awareness could be.

In the first case, i.e., when I’m reading for myself or for someone who isn’t there, I need to be especially at peace with myself. If I’m distracted, depressed, in a heightened mood or very sick, the reading won’t go well. Even when I am at peace, there is always a question mark at the end of my readings, like they are never as crisp as when I’m reading for someone else who is there with me.

So, how long do I shuffle in this case? The answer may be disheartening for some, but it’s: as long as I feel I need to. This is hard to explain, but one soon learns to recognize the feeling of a well-shuffled deck. Some may feel the deck becomes heavier, others seem to just get an undefined feeling.

For my part, I usually feel a sensation akin to being full after eating a hearty meal and being unable to take another bite, while at the same time the deck itself seems to oppose resistance to being shuffled as the cards lock into the right place. Your experience may vary.

MQS

Card Reading, Cartomancy, Fortune-telling, Tarot

Love Beyond the Grave? (Example Reading)

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a reading with interesting implications. Like and subscribe to support my work

I thought this was a rather interesting reading, in part because of what it revealed and in part because it shows that divination requires rules and flexibility. I’ll probably talk about it again in an article.

MQS

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

The Road – A Deep Dive into Cartomancy

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Following my deep dive into the Door Knockers, which seems to be an exclusive symbol (or almost) of Italian cartomancy, let’s talk about a much more universal presence in many traditions: the Road. Still, even though the symbol is widespread, the interpretations may vary.

I was introduced to the symbol of the road when being taught to read playing cards. In the system I was introduced to, the Two of Clubs is the card of the steps. Actually, the word for it was “cammino”, which means a way, road or path, but it also implies the idea of people taking steps on it. That is, a ‘cammino’ is a road that exists because people walk on it, rather than being a road that has been created so that people may or may not use it. An example would be a path through a forest or a road created by pilgrims as they progress on their pilgrimage.

The Two of Clubs therefore implies forward motion toward a goal of some kind, and the taking of steps, whether literal or figurative. In this, it is similar to the Two of Wands in some Piacentine cards systems, which interpret the card as a road, largely due to its design showing two parallel staves, no doubt (although in some other Piacentine systems the road is the Knight of Wands).

The Vera Sibilla doesn’t have a road card per se, although it does have various cards connected with movement, journeying or taking steps/fighting for something. For instance, the Journey card is connected to traveling, while the Soldier may imply fighting to attain a goal (although, being a Spade card, the struggle is more accentuated).

Etteilla famously attributed the meaning of road to the Six of Swords, and his pupils developed a whole vocabulary of synonyms that extend the meaning into other areas. An example of this is the meaning of conduct, which is, figuratively speaking, the path of the person’s actions through life. Etteilla’s attribution of the meaning of road to the Six of Swords remained attached to tarot through the Golden Dawn, who preserved it in part as a possible meaning in their Book T, and then through Waite, who had Smith design the Six of Swords as a card of journey. Even in the Crowley tradition this attribution has in part been rediscovered in Eshlemann’s Liber Theta.

In the Bolognese tarot, the meaning of road is attributed usually to the Six or Eight of Wands. Some strands of the tradition also distinguish between an open road (Six/Eight of Wands) and a closed road (Nine of Wands or Ten of Swords). The road is in itself a card of forward motion, like the Two of Clubs, it can indicate short trips and it is a card of openness.

The road or path is also present in the Lenormand and Kipper traditions. I am unclear on the Lenormand meaning, as the interpretation seems to have evolved considerably through time. Most contemporary English-speaking sources seem to see it as a card of choice (with two paths, although I am unsure if this duality was intended in the original design). Most German sources interpret it differently. Since I am not a Lenormand reader, I will leave it at that.

As for the Kipper cards, they have a card called Ein langer Weg, a long road. In most of the sources I have consulted, the card is more static than in the other traditions, highlighting the element of time (some call it the Two Years card). Interestingly, in many German Skat systems of divination, the suit of Spades / Leaves is connected with movement, and the low-numbered cards, mostly the Seven and Eight, can show a short trip or something happening quickly, while the Ten is also called the long road, and it can indicate an actual journey or the need to wait a long time.

BONUS: The Road is obviously present in Geomancy as well. The Geomantic figure Via, attributed to the Moon, is a symbol of journey and change. It is the symbol with the least amount of points, only one in every position, so some sources also attribute it to the concept of ‘little’ and to the waning of something.

MQS

Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Tarot

Bolognese Tarot – I Tarocchi Parlano by Maria Luigia Ingallati (Review)

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I Tarocchi Parlano (The Tarot Speaks) by Maria Luigia Ingallati is perhaps the most well-known book about the Tarocchino Bolognese in Italy, and the one that, thanks to its success, launched the rediscovery of this deck outside of its native region. Since the publication of Ingallati’s book, the Bolognese tarot has enjoyed a small but growing cult following. This, we shall see, is probably the book’s greatest merit, though not the only one.

Ingallati herself is not from Bologna. She relocated there many years prior to the publication of her first book (‘Il Tarocchino Bolognese’, which I will review separately). There, she started seeing the local card readers, getting her fortunes told and learning a great deal from them, until she began practicing the art herself and synthesizing a personal method from the Bolognese tradition and her own experience as a card reader.

The book does a good job of presenting Ingallati’s journey, and it is undeniable that her personality shines through the pages of the richly illustrated volume. Ingallati is a good story-teller, enjoys reading and talking about poetry, philosophy and psychology, all of which she uses to shed light on the Bolognese tarot.

Ingallati uses a personal variation of the 50-card method, comprised of the following cards: the 18 surviving Major Arcana; the 3 Strangers or Moors; 7 Cup cards (Ace, Nine, Ten and the Court); 6 Wand cards (Ace, Six and the Court); 8 Coin cards (Ace, Six, Nine, Ten and the Court); 7 Sword cards (Ace, Six, Seven and the Court); and the red Joker.

Of Ingallati’s selection, the choice to include the Joker is the one that has always stuck out like a sore thumb to me. The traditional deck includes no Jokers, since they are not needed for playing card games, and to this day only one producer has recently randomly decided to add them. That being said, Ingallati is very careful in acknowledging what she took from the tradition and what she introduced as her own innovation.

The book starts off with a chapter on the history of the Tarocchino. It is not the best and most accurate historical account, but it covers most of the basics and it is the one most people will skip anyway. Then, Ingallati presents the spreads she uses. This is a peculiar trait of her method, which she also teaches in her private classes: she uses a huge variety of spreads one after the other to move from an account of the querent’s past to the future.

No time is wasted on the technical details of how to lay out the cards, in what order, etc.: the reader is left to his or her own initiative of how to apply the traditional spreads. This may overwhelm us at the beginning, but it is clear that she thinks everyone should find their own way of laying out the traditional spreads, which is fair. This is possibly the most interesting part of the book: Ingallati’s method is a synthesis of many strands of traditional lore about the spreads which can be mined by reading the section carefully and comparing it to other sources.

Only after the section on the spreads does Ingallati start her discussion of the card meanings. Here, the writer spends, in my opinion, way too much time overanalyzing the various details of color and symbol. We learn, thus, that the shape of the lace on this or that character’s tunic has this or that meaning; that the number of triangular shapes on the Queen of Coin’s scepter suggests certain symbolic interpretations; that the colors of the Fool’s feathers is very important.

Of course, none of this has any historical relevance nor any bearing on the interpretation of the cards, nor with the traditional, succint meanings that Ingallati scatters around in the descriptions, sometimes almost as an afterthought. This leaves one wondering if the overzealous interpretation of the various bits of design was just the happy meeting point between the publisher needing a longer book and the writer being happy to provide it with a clear poetic gusto for the mysterious and the metaphorical. Almost every card is accompanied by snippets of poetry and aphorisms, anecdotes as well as by illustrations of some combinations.

The final part of the book is dedicated to Jungian character analysis based on the Bolognese tarot, something that the author clearly has a great deal of interest in, and for which she provides some curious combinations that might be worth trying.

Ingallati’s book is hard to review objectively. It has the incredible historical merit of having brought the Bolognese tarot to a wider public, and it is undeniable that her poetic and evocative style and her attempt at ennobling it as a ‘legitimate’ tool for divination is part of why she succeeded.

The esoteric landscape has a growing public of people I like to call educated suckers, those who think themselves too smart and learned for folk superstitions but can easily be sold on the idea of reinterpreting them as deeper mysteries of personal development and esoterically flavored self-help. This is the reason why so many ‘real and only’ Tarot of Marseilles’ get sold every year, together with ridiculously expensive courses on ‘this is not divination’ and books of metaphysical platitudes that sound deep if you don’t think too much about them.

Ingallati struck gold when she managed to appeal to this kind of public with her literary style while also preserving the teachings she received and developed from the card readers she met in Bologna. In doing so she succeeded where the small handful of other books published before and since failed: creating a niche for the Bolognese tarot. Despite my sarcasm in the previous paragraph, this is no small accomplishment. Pragmatically speaking, it is a serious merit.

The book also excels at being a treasure trove of meanings, spreads, combinations and suggestions that can be studied, reflected on and compared with other sources. It is certainly a book I recommend, in this regard.

Where to buy: Amazon

MQS