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Originally Posted by Le Fanu
It is the Cathar Tarot by John Matthews -
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Immediate point in its favour. These two have walked alongside me since I first bought one of their books in - what? 1982? 1983?
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- and Wil Kinghan - based on the teachings and belief system of the Cathars in southern France in the 11th-12th Centuries who were subsequently persecuted and wiped out in the early 13th Century. No, I'd never heard of them either.
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Oh, I've heard about the Cathars! That's the only reason why I clicked open the link, in fact. They were fascinating - and were deliberately and systematically wiped out by the Vatican of the time. A few years ago I read somewhere that 150 years prior to the Visconti-Sforza deck being developed, a female Visconti was a leader of the Cathars and was put to death, and her passage to Rome as a pregnant woman and a leader of her community invited to meet the Pope and subsequently murdered, may have been the model for the Visconti Chariot card - which certainly shows a woman who looks to be pregnant.
Information about the Cathars is fairly tricky to come by - I'm going to have to get this deck just for John's book (and for the cards, of course - I am *such* a card-slut!).
