Today’s deck is an interesting one: The Visconti-Sforza Deck.
This is a replica of one of the oldest Tarot decks that have managed to be preserved, like the Sola Busca Tarot. To be more specific, the Visconti-Sforza deck is the oldest SURVIVING deck (it was known that tarot existed long beforehand but thies is the earliest surviving sample), while Sola Busca was the first surviving example to have individual illustrations for the minor arcana that aren’t just the suit and amount.
Its name comes from the fact that it was comissioned by the Visconti-Sforza family, so called because duke Filippo Maria Visconti only managed to have a daughter (out of wedlock no less) that got married to the more militant Sforza family.
The tale presented in the booklet is fascinating, apparently Bianca Maria (the aforementioned out of wedlock daughter) joined in combat more than once giving her a “warrior woman” fame that clashes with how she gave so much money to the arts and hosítals.
For context, this is all happening in that period in the 1400s where Italy was a bunch of warring city states.
The deck was comissioned for Bianca Maria and Francesco Sforza’s tenth anniversary.
If you’ve ever read those tales of Tarot starting with the egyptian mystics… that’s a myth. Tarot is the 1400s equivalent of a ouija board, a game that was then turned into a divination tool. Apparently the thing with the Egyptian origins was a 1800s fabrication by French author Antoine Court de Gebelin. Then the Rosetta Stone got deciphered and nobody ever found any egyptian writing related to Tarot.
Sidenote, Gebelin was a believer that ancient times were more spiritually and intellectually illuminated than his times which… the more things change, huh…
He would also sometimes make a reading that used ALL 78 CARDS AT ONCE.
I would HIGHLY recommend this book, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination by Robert M. Place. I wrote about it last year and I read it two years before, and to this day it’s still my favorite book on the subject. Demistifying Tarot while also turning it into a more powerful tool in the process.
I bring it up because the booklet mentioned how the progression of Arcana is influenced by things like Triumph parades, The Divine Comedy, and this one 13th century poem called I Trionfi. Which are all elements that the book goes into more detail.
Back to the deck, apparently the real deck was missing four cards: The Devil, The Tower, The Three of Coins, and the Knight of Swords. But this replica made their best guess at approximating what those might’ve been like. And while one’s instinct would be to assume that they got lost, there’s also a non zero chance that they just weren’t finished, because you gotta remember that these were made by hand in that period.
Another detail worth pointing out is that a lot of the cards depict family members or specific moments. And I mentioned the Sola Busca Tarot earlier, in that one the artist actually added biblical figures to the cards. One of the things I love about collecting Tarot decks (and the reason why I started even before documenting them here) is the fact that you see how artists tackle the same concepts, and the fact that some of the oldest surviving examples see that sort customization is evidence of how it’s not a new recent thing.
When it comes to this edition, this replica specifically, my only complaint is that the cards are too big. I get the point because you want to show the old art in a good size but the shuffling was… cumbersome.
I still paid less for this than for the Nijisanji one if I remember right…
Also please behold this Capital C Creature. Thank you.
As for today’s reading… Ten of cups again, huh… And also the card that they had to make for this recreation.
Today’s vibe is a harmony between my sicko side and my contemplative side. With the reminder that the sicko side can tie me up and my contemplative side can give me tunnel vision.
I guess a more summed up reading would be “indulge within reason”.
I also got this Jojo Tarot but it was more of a fan item thing than an actual Tarot deck. Still super neat, zero regrets, but I was HALF hoping for a 72 cards deck.
As for my day… so one thing you need to know is that I tend to wake up with either songs or melodies stuck in my head. My theory is that whatever neurons fire while I sleep leave me with that. The problem is that with ADHD, without medication, the song will just… stay in my head alongside any other piece of noise (where “noise” can be a memory or a thought) and it gets noisy before long.
Some days the melody is brand new, some days the melody is familiar. Sometimes it remains, sometimes it vanishes like a nightmare.
So what about now? It’s time to ROCK WITH THE BICKEDY BUCK BUMBLE
WHAT ABOUT NOW IT’S TIME TO ROCK WITH THE BICKEDY BUCK BUMBLE
BUM TO THE BUM TO THE BUM TO THE BASS BUM TO THE BOOM TO THE BUMBLE
Outside of that I was making dial up noises for a couple of hours (do I make literal dial up noises? …sometimes) until I decided to go out for a walk. It had been a bit since I went to Nipponbashi so I dropped by the Volks shop and gave them a new set of photos.
For context, they have a wall where you can give them photos and they put them up. There’s some pics that have been in that wall ever since I started going to the shop but I have a corner of it (literally) where I give them photos as the seasons change.
I do mean “corner” by the way. Also, not to brag because seeing the whole wall fills me with the joy of seeing Kindred Spirits, but my pics do pop out a bit.
Sidenote, if I had to “sell”, to promote, what I think makes my doll photography stand out, I’d say it’s two things.
The first is character work. This is an extension of my own writing style and creative way of doing things, I like writing characters and dialog the most, so when I take pics I like making the “character” of the girl pop out as much as I can through clothing and poses.
In a way, the girls are the closest I have to OCs. Normally I make characters in relation to a bigger story and go in depth on their path, but the girls are the ones where I just have a general personality and relationship with each other.
The second thing is that I have this mindset of “don’t hide the illusion, make the illusion irrelevant instead”.
What I mean is that many doll photographers tend to put a lot of effort into hiding the behind the scenes wires and such. Some photoshop away the base, others edit out the joints. Another style has them trying to make everything look as much to scale as possible and some even go extra steps in styling hair so it looks like it’s being really dynamic.
I love all of these in their own way, but the thing that I try to do myself is make the composition and the photo in general so pleasant that you don’t even notice the base propping the girl up or how small she looks somewhere.
Again, less bragging and more just explaining what makes my brain tick.
The shop is going to hold another photo meetup on the 17th and the theme is interesting. They call it “homecoming” and it’s exclusive to girls made with their in-store custom service.
Maybe I’ll finally be able to go since it doesn’t clash with my end of month trip.
Then I dropped by the Games Workshop shop to pick up some orders and with a bag full I went back home.
I got really sleepy at like 8PM and then I wasn’t really able to sleep. It was then that it dawned on me that the weird sleepiness, the lethargy, the long sleep time… it’s basically from how short the days have become. It’s now that point where by 5PM it feels like 8PM and that kinda messes you up. It feels like my body is clashing internally with my sleep clock and my cicada rhythm or whatever it’s called I never the spelling right.
Sleep will eventually claim me.