Sola Busca Tarot
Number of Cards: 78
Recommended: Use upright and reversed
The Sola-Busca Tarot is one of the earliest surviving complete 78-card tarot decks. It was created in Italy around the late 15th century and consists of 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana cards, making it one of the most distinctive and historically significant decks in the development of tarot.
Unlike the later and more familiar Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, every card in the Sola-Busca Tarot features its own distinct and detailed scene. Figures, objects, gestures, plants, weapons, and settings combine to form a complex symbolic language, while all 56 Minor Arcana cards are also fully illustrated with narrative imagery.
The Major Arcana do not use the familiar titles found in modern tarot, such as “The Magician,” “The High Priestess,” or “The Emperor.” Instead, they are centered around historical and legendary figures from the ancient world. Themes such as war, power, death, labor, sacrifice, growth, decline, and rebirth frequently appear throughout the deck.
The four suits of the Sola-Busca Tarot are Swords, Discs, Amphorae, and Clubs, which roughly correspond to the later tarot suits of Swords, Pentacles, Cups, and Wands. However, its imagery and individual card meanings have their own distinctive character and should not be interpreted entirely through the framework of modern tarot systems.
Because the original creator did not leave behind a complete official system of divinatory meanings that has survived to the present day, modern interpretations of the Sola-Busca Tarot are primarily based on its imagery, historical context, the identities of its figures, symbolic elements, and contemporary research. Different researchers may therefore offer different interpretations, which is also one of the reasons this remarkable deck continues to fascinate tarot enthusiasts.
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Recommended: Use upright and reversed
The Sola-Busca Tarot is one of the earliest surviving complete 78-card tarot decks. It was created in Italy around the late 15th century and consists of 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana cards, making it one of the most distinctive and historically significant decks in the development of tarot.
Unlike the later and more familiar Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, every card in the Sola-Busca Tarot features its own distinct and detailed scene. Figures, objects, gestures, plants, weapons, and settings combine to form a complex symbolic language, while all 56 Minor Arcana cards are also fully illustrated with narrative imagery.
The Major Arcana do not use the familiar titles found in modern tarot, such as “The Magician,” “The High Priestess,” or “The Emperor.” Instead, they are centered around historical and legendary figures from the ancient world. Themes such as war, power, death, labor, sacrifice, growth, decline, and rebirth frequently appear throughout the deck.
The four suits of the Sola-Busca Tarot are Swords, Discs, Amphorae, and Clubs, which roughly correspond to the later tarot suits of Swords, Pentacles, Cups, and Wands. However, its imagery and individual card meanings have their own distinctive character and should not be interpreted entirely through the framework of modern tarot systems.
Because the original creator did not leave behind a complete official system of divinatory meanings that has survived to the present day, modern interpretations of the Sola-Busca Tarot are primarily based on its imagery, historical context, the identities of its figures, symbolic elements, and contemporary research. Different researchers may therefore offer different interpretations, which is also one of the reasons this remarkable deck continues to fascinate tarot enthusiasts.