The Manuscript of Initiations Tarot
$40.00
Tarot is inspired by the European and Middle Eastern manuscripts. Book of illumination, Book of Kings, Holy Bible, Q’uran, Psalters, Botanical and Alchemical tractates, Book of Creation, Bestiaries, Astrological and Magical manuscripts -all these sources that interfered or coherently influenced each other were taken as a basis. The image as a representation of an archetype or an abstract system of thought travels through time and cultures and transforms itself absorbing the local concepts. We wanted to explore all these different connections and observe the layers of hidden meanings. It is known that first tarot game prototype was brought to Europe by Islamic soldiers Mamluks. The Islamic world in this period influenced various fields of European culture, such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, science, art, pottery, music, alchemy and mysticism.
So the exchange of the ideas and ideology inevitably reflected in the European manuscripts of these time. Step by step, continuing the previous religious and mystical traditions the West developed its own complex visual language. From elaborately detailed ornaments and random sketches to alchemical and astrological schemes, the drawings and other marks made along the edges of pages ( so called marginalia) reveal for us a vast amount of the informational flux in which manuscripts circulated. Some of them had a clear purpose, but in other manuscripts the meaning of the drawings can be indecipherable. There are countless examples of the rich imagery existed in the works of this period —rabbits decapitating peasants, monkeys playing the bagpipes, snails fighting with knights, naked bishops, strangely shaped alchemical vessels ,liquid bubbling substances, and human-animal hybrids that seem to defy categorization. Manuscript art was a sophisticated, labor-intensive symbolic game for both reader and scribe. The last one often swiped existing symbols and appropriated them for a new ones. So this kind of interaction continually developed through the ages and influence the appearance of the Tarot as we know it today. Thus, our goal was to reconstruct a relationship between these visual currents and open for the viewer a limitless perspective on divination and mysticism.
Swiss Quality 250gsm Card stock.
Format: 120 x 65 mm.
Guidebook: English, Spanish.
Year: 3rd edition 2023.