TAROT Deck - Completely Revised Sola Busca from XV Century

trzes said:

Since seven stars calls her deck bastardized herself quite frankly (as you have noted yourself) I don't see why there should be any "intellectual dishonesty" in her work.

I perfectly understand that the "Revised" version doesn't appeal to you as you wrote a whole book on the original Sola Busca Tarot. And it's true, the "Revised" shows little interest in the original symbolism and philosophical background. But that is a matter of purity indeed. And it is an issue that is rather personal to you.

Your attempt to blow up your personal issue to a general moral matter has a somehow nasty smell. To put things straight: There is no limitation to art expect for respecting other artist's copyright. And there is no authority to declare what deserves to be called art an what doesn't. Honesty is a good thing indeed. Seven stars has been perfectly honest about what she does. There are no copyright issues with the original work. Everything else is a matter of taste only. And luckily so. Otherwise Pam Coleman Smith wouldn't have bastardized the Marseille trumps for the RWS. And we all would still stick to the style of medieval church paintings and the strict limitation to what we are allowed to depict.

Personally I find 80% of the artwork I see meaningless and superfluous. Still I would spare the terms "dirty" and "pervert" for some badly drawn and ugly hardcore porn for example.

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This is so good! Thank you, trzes!

I love your work, Seven. But more than that I love your elegant and dignified way of handling critisism (or even VERY rude people).

What Seven has done is give us a readable version of the Sola Busca. PERIOD. Like her, I love the original, love the historical value, but could I read with it? Nope. I can't afford to be buying decks that are just going to sit around. Her version of the Sola Busca makes an otherwise unreadable deck completely accessible. And for that, I love the deck and her work!

Nina* said:

This is so good! Thank you, trzes!

I love your work, Seven. But more than that I love your elegant and dignified way of handling critisism (or even VERY rude people).

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And as I am more like Winnie the Pooh ( just a simple girl that loves her friends and my belly full of honey LOL) than a tarot historician... I'd like to say that I just love the deck of the bastard!!!!! And also the sola busca revisited!!!!
I have the sola busca deck and I'm saving like a mad woman to buy the SBR cause I can't read with the SB for as much as I try... (limitations of a simple gal LOL)
And thank you seven for the efford you puted in your work to make us Sola Busca Revisited and the Deck of the Bastard such fine works of art!!!!
By the way, isn' t art meant to be subjective by all means????

Seven Stars, your reaction to this very harsh criticism is very impressive, and I admire you for it.

You never pretended to do anything other than what you do. You didn't destroy the original Sola Busca, it still exists. Scholarship still exists, too. So you did no damage - just the opposite, your revisited Sola Busca may well inspire people to study the original more in depth.

Allow me to express my confusion. On one hand, there is the Sola Busca original deck, a priceless masterpiece from a bygone century, which like the other early Italian Tarots and the original Marseille cards were probably not meant to use for divination. (Although there is little doubt that they can be, if one applies him/herself to it, as history has proven beyond a doubt.) The few editions of this deck are either facsimile like Mayer's, or colored/restored reproductions like Lo Scarabeo's.

On the other hand, we have the Sola Busca Revisited, a (post)modern creation which explicitly seeks to rework many of the iconic images of the Sola Busca to create cards that conform to the RWS tradition. As such, the SBR images are "severely manipulated," according to the author herself, and she even shows (in both her Etsy shop and her website) the many sources and the complex creative process she used to put together cards such as the Two of Cups.

While I understand that such a deck may not appeal to purists, or to people who stand to profit from the facsimiles, I fail to see why the SBR would be basically different from, say, Edmund Zebrowski's beautiful Marseille or Pixie's Lenormands, or even the Marseille Cat Tarot, and why it should be treated any differently.

seven stars said:

I actually mortified one of the most respected men in his field!

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Although I couldn't decide yet wether to like your Sola Busca Revisited or not I can easily see that it is a piece of well crafted artwork. How would a piece of art mortify someone? Well, only if it would be actively insulting or blasphemic. But the original Sola Busca tarot is not the heart of a religion and your deck isn't the film "the life of brian". If someone still decides to be mortified, then this surely isn't your fault. It's hardly possible to please everyone.

Well, not being pleased is one thing, false or dubious claims are another. I'll try to obey rwcarter's reminder and stick to the deck itself:

Is the deck an attempt to earn effortless on the work of others? No, it is an entirely new deck that most likely took a lot of work to be completed. I don't know the sales figures but I doubt that it paid back the long hours of work creating it.

Is the deck (or the maker) intellectually dishonest? No, see my post above.

Is the deck void of any philosophical meanings? No, it adds RWS-based symbolism to the images. If one doesn't look at tarot from the viewpoint of cartomancy only, then there is a lot of philosphy going on there, and in the RWS system in particular.

Does the deck pervert the sense of original work? No, it replaces the sense of the original work by an entirely new one. This can hardly be overlooked.

Is the deck a dirty meaningless patchwork? No, the cardstock it is printed on is perfectly clean (or what else should be meant by "dirty"?). It is no patchwork at all, quite the opposite, because without knowlege of the original work and just by looking at the images it is hardly possible to identify the bits that have been added. And it is not meaningless as it gives access to the RWS system.

Is the deck "not making art"? Let's put it like that: The more people get involved with all kinds of art, the more cautious most of them become about a definition of art and about defining it's limits. Almost all of them know that such a definition is just a personal view anyway.

IMO there is no need at all to apologize for what you are doing, seven stars, specially not to people who fail to respect you.

trzes said:

IMO there is no need at all to apologize for what you are doing, seven stars, specially not to people who fail to respect you.

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He's passionate about something that is deep in meaning & sacred to him, I can appreciate that - I didn't take it personally whether or not it was meant that way.

You have all been very kind. Let's just boil it down to this: I made the SBR for readers like me, not historians. Historians don't really care about how easy the cards are to use day to day, & readers need the cards to be readable more than historic. SO, for the people I made this deck for, it's been a great success & people seem to be happy. Which makes me really happy. You are a lot more important to me personally than high profile scholars. I think everybody who knows me knows I didn't slap together this deck - the images meant something to me, it was special to me, & I wanted to make it something I'd read with myself.

And you want to know something? I hated the recreations made of this deck by the big publishers. They put these awful borders around them & crisp white & they just lost that rich luster somehow & I wanted to try to get that back as much as I could.

New decks indicative of our need to create

I stumbled upon this deck via Etsy, and captivated by its imagery, found this thread here as I was attempting to learn more and see how people felt about using this unusual deck.

I have Seven Star's Deck of the B (bought more out of novelty than anything else) and it quickly became one of my favorite daily decks. Seeing her graciousness in this thread only endears me more.

As members of the human race, we are creators and imaginers of things, and what we touch evolves - often despite many efforts to retain the purity of the original. We see something and ask, "Could it be more?"

Our concepts and views morph over time. Imagine someone from the 1800s saying, "I'm just not in that space right now," to stress their emotional state. Romeo and Juliet was shaped into a jolting, modern movie in 1996 that probably left Shakespeare rolling in his grave. And the traditionally Islamic music of Senegal dances with pop and jazz and becomes a new and worthy form of its own.

Staring at the Pantheon in Rome, I wouldn't change it for the world. And yet the influence of classical and art and architecture rings today, even in my own city.

There is a place for both tradition and conservation for future generations as well as that evolution in which we cannot help but participate.

So I look forward to seeing this new birth (which I just ordered) and experience its very difference. And since it exists, something previously inaccessible to me conceptually will become available. I admired the traditional art from afar but could not find a way to make sense of it for my use.

Finally, when one considers this wonderful forum and all the decks at our disposal, it would seem that diversity of thought and view is foundational to this community, down to our very tools (Zombie Tarot, anyone?).

Card meanings?

I skimmed a lot of the earlier posts in this thread because of the whole copyright controversy; so if I missed the answer to this, please forgive me.

I just got my Sola Busca Revisited deck yesterday--so colourful! And seven stars did such a wonderful job of personalizing my deck and pouch!

So here is my question: where do I find a book or webpage with meanings of the Sola Busca cards? I am really confused by the Strength card--eek! A lot of cards I can relate to the RWS, but some others I could use help with.

Thanks!

CountryMouse

ctrymaus said:

I skimmed a lot of the earlier posts in this thread because of the whole copyright controversy; so if I missed the answer to this, please forgive me.

I just got my Sola Busca Revisited deck yesterday--so colourful! And seven stars did such a wonderful job of personalizing my deck and pouch!

So here is my question: where do I find a book or webpage with meanings of the Sola Busca cards? I am really confused by the Strength card--eek! A lot of cards I can relate to the RWS, but some others I could use help with.

Thanks!

CountryMouse

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I tried to keep as much of the original art as I could figure into the RWS system - the imagery for the Strength card is the same as the original deck.

In the SB deck this card is Nerone (I know this, because Nerone was written on the original), & upright it's supposed to mean malicious neglect & reversed it's mistreatment of the weak. And here, we must part ways, because I'm not a history buff. I'm assuming Nerone is the Roman Emperor Nero, but you'd be better off to ask a historian for sure. I could rattle off stuff I look up in Wikipedia but you could probably research it better than I could. I do know this was an incredibly war-related deck - all soldiers & battle & armor. So it's not surprising that Strength (or Fortitude) wasn't represented with a lovely lady in a flowing gown with her gentle lion friend.