The Marziano Tarot deck

is out of print

The deck is $120 plus shipping – $9 in the US, $26 for Canada, and $41 for other countries. Shipping is the same for one to four decks.

US customers may use this button to order:

Buy my product

For combing shipping on larger orders, or for international orders,

or because you just want to,

contact me at

alchemicaltarot@aol.com

Also be sure to see the link below for the new companion book:

Tractatus de deificatione sexdecim heroum

by Ross Caldwell

Buy the Tractatus Here

The oldest known Tarot, or the oldest ancestor of the Tarot, depending on your definition, was described in a 1449 letter by Jacopo Antonio Marcello to Queen Isabelle of Lorraine, in hopes of gaining her favor. Paul Durrieu first discovered this letter in 1895. Franco Pratesi brought an accurate account of this letter to the attention of playing card historians in 1989, and in 2003 Ross Caldwell made a new translation, which brought it further attention.

In the letter, Marcello described two decks that he was acquiring for the queen. Of the two decks, the older one was created between 1412 and 1425 for Filippo Maria Visconti (1392-1447), Duke of Milan from 1412 to 1447. This deck had trumps that consisted of sixteen classical gods, and did not follow the allegory that we now consider standard for a Tarot. The deck was designed by artist Michelino da Besozzo, working with a plan created by Marziano da Tortona, the Duke’s secretary, tutor, and astrologer. This is the oldest known deck to have trumps and, therefore, by my definition, is the oldest known Tarot.

The deck consisted of four suits, each with ten pips and a king and queen in the suit. The suit symbols were four different birds: eagles, phoenixes, turtledoves, and doves. According to Marziano, who wrote in great detail about the symbolism of the deck, each suit was intended to represent a life goal or desire, grouped in two contrasting pairs. As previously stated, the deck also contained 16 trumps composed of classical gods, which was not an unusual subject in Renaissance art. Besides forming a separate trump suit, four gods were assigned to each suit, with the gods representing appropriate qualities for each goal:

Eagles, representing the life goal virtue, were assigned Jove, Apollo, Mercury, and Hercules.

Phoenixes, representing the desire for riches, were assigned Juno, Neptune, Mars, and Aeolus.

Turtledoves, representing the goal of chastity, were assigned Pallas, Diana, Vesta, and Daphne.

Doves, representing the desire for sensuality, were assigned Venus, Bacchus, Ceres, and Cupid.

The question of profundity in a game was also addressed in Marcello’s letter. The letter recounted the rhetorical question put to the Duke by the deck’s intellectual designer, Marziano, who asked if it is fitting for a serious and virtuous man such as the Duke to spend time playing a card game. Marziano answered that it is fitting if the game is equally serious and virtuous in the philosophy that it presents. He felt that his game met that standard.

As stated above, Marziano wrote a great deal about the symbolism of the deck, but less on how the game was played. There is evidence to suggest that even at this early date, playing cards were used for divination, and Marziano’s concern with symbolism and his use of birds, which are connected with ancient augury, suggests that besides a trick-taking game he may have intended a divinatory use for the deck.

No cards exist from this deck and the originals were most likely hand painted and gilded like other Milanese 15^th century decks created for royalty. I have redesigned the deck as if it became a standard deck that was later reproduced in woodcuts and hand colored. My images for the cards are based on Marziano’s descriptions as translated by Caldwell and on the woodcuts found in the 15th century Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, early printed cards, as well as other Renaissance sources. In the future, Caldwell will author a book to accompany the deck, which will be sold separately. The deck measures 4.75″ by 2.75″ and it is now being printed.  You can preorder the deck through my campaign on Indiegogo or by contacting me in an email.

You can also order an archival art edition of the 16 divine trumps. I will print it on cotton paper, hand cut each card, and create a portfolio case for the deck.  These are $200 plus shipping – $9 in the US, $26 for Canada, and $40 international.

US customers may use this button to order:

Buy my product

For combing shipping on larger orders, or for international orders,

or because you just want to,

contact me at

alchemicaltarot@aol.com

Also now Available

The prefect companion book for the deck 

Tom Tadford Little discovered Marziano’s text in 1999

Comments on The Marziano Tarot by Sara James

Sara James is an Alexander Technique Teacher and Mystery Scholar from the Jungian based Pathways Mystery School. She lives in San Francisco. 

I can understand why these cards are hard for some people to know what to do with, they are in my opinion very different, they are not a seven and threefold allegory but a four and two fold allegory, they also have Eagles, Doves, Turtledoves and Phoenixes instead of Swords, Cups, Coins and Wands.  I my imagination Doves fly, cups fall over.  There are a lot of differences and I believe it can be hard to relate some of it to what we are used to, but I’ve been reading them using a different set of correspondences that I have picked up from twenty years of working in the realms of debt psychology, somatic work, alchemy and mystery school studies.  There are a couple of things I’ve worked with that have been particularly valuable.  I’ve come to look at the cards as 600 year old personality theory, that could possibly do a better job than most things out there today,  especially if it requires a test witch is the main reason many people I talk to think personality testing is bogus.

Voice Dialogue and Two Fold Path “Desires and Goals”
VD is a technique created by Jungian Therapists Hal and Sidra Stone.   It has to do with learning how to make conscious inner bonding patterns that for the most part are running our decision making on a moment to moment basis, and learn how to stop and make  more conscious decisions based on a more mature inner dynamic.  It’s about inner relationships and how they reflect outer relationships.  When I first got the cards and started working with them, I was facilitating a class in Voice Dialogue.    I became really fascinated with the idea of the way the cards are divided into Desires and Goals.  Much of what one does with Voice dialogue is to uncover unconscious desires and drives that are fueling our course of action or goals.  I started to have a theory that the cards could be used for the same thing, or better yet that the cards and technique could enhance one another.  It actually, at least in my own work it’s pretty effective.

The Relationship Allegory
Let’s talk about the Allegory, the biggest difference between this 16 card allegory and the standard 21 card is Relationships.  Every single character has some kind of relationships with one or more of the other characters, Zeus is pretty much everybody’s dad, brother, uncle, or grandpa.  This deck isn’t so much about the holy grail as it is like a family barbequ, when I look at the cards in order I think of the wedding party that started the judgment of Paris because Hera, Athene and Venus are all the first three characters along with Zeus who is the owner of the backyard I would imagine.   some of the mythology around these relationships is pretty intense, Juno and Hercules  for instance, If someone pulls these two it’s kind of interesting to think about what might be going on in their life.  Could a critical mother be blocking the person from making their own decisions? Or do they need some kind of initiation force to help them grow into a mature man?  Could depend on where the cards land, someone actually pulled these two cards and as a matter of fact he had a critical mother voice that was pretty debilitating and he felt like he could never be good enough.  He has a degree in design and can’t seem to find a job although he’s really qualified. He’s kind of sad in the way Hercules can be sad cause his inner animus is a little out of control.

Archetypal Relationship Patterns
What is a bonding pattern?  We all have bonding patters that go back and forth from power and vulnerability, in voice dialogue part of the study is to make a figure eight image like the one in that often gets displayed with the two of Coins and put it on it’s side OO  kind of this.  On one side you put a vulnerable voice like a vulnerable child and on the other side up put a power voice, say an unemotional father – usually what happens is that you find the strong voices are protecting the vulnerable voices. Sometimes the vicim voices become the power voices, think about our US president and his gaining power by getting people to sympathize with him by saying things like “It’s a witch hunt”  or “The Press is being unfair”  actually this pretty dangerous to a free and open society – but it’s the kind of thing that can happen when power and vulnerability are out of whack in someone. if you are a Donald Trump fan, I’m sorry if this seems bias, but it’s the best example that I could think of that (unfortunately) everyone would recognize in an attempt to describe something pretty complicated.

Mythology as an expression of the collective unconscious is a great way to reflect these archetypal bonding patterns and probably one of the reasons why so much of the great classical theater, poetry and philosophy was so powerful and still pertinent even today and probably will be off into the future long after we are all dead.

The Voices
I’ve found that the cards have a lot of different levels – they have their god category, like the sun (Apollo) and the Moon (Diana) but they are also Brother and Sister the Alchemical marriage, an equal partnership between a man and a woman sol and Luna.. the list could go on.  You can also  look at cards through the lens of developmental stages like child, adolescence, middle age and old age. Often times it’s a great in a reading to find out where you need more of one thing and less of another in your self development.  I myself did a reading that was really powerful where I pulled Bacchus (Un reason) and Apollo (reason) and I could see the place where I tend to have too much chaos (Bacchus) and not enough focus (Apollo) – someone else might need more Bacchus, they are just too uptight.  We tend to have certain parts of us that are more developed than others, and we tend to repress parts of us and these things tend to come out in the form of problems in our lives.   The cards are a great way to explore these problems and find resolutions.

The Birds
I haven’t talked about the Birds yet, and I’m not going to dive deep into Arguary, but like I said earlier, my thoughts are that I think there are some major differences where it can be a good idea to approach the birds in a different way, Doves fly cups fall.  A couple of ideas I’ve gotten have come out of a book I have by Michael Gelb called “How to think Like Leonardo da Vinci”  Leonardo, of course was a man of the time frame that the cards came from and he wrote a lot of journals and every day he would participate in a process he called “curiositia” where he would ask questions.  He might pick a turtledove flying around his yard for instance and ask..

Where does it fly to?
How fast does it fly?
How does it slow down?
Are the feathers heavy?
Does it have a mate?
Does it stay with it’s mate forever?
Is it’s mate waiting for him in a tree somewhere or did a dog eat it?

Ive found a lot of fun ways to work with the birds, including going out in nature and watching birds, creating a song list – there are tons of songs about Doves Eagles Phoenixes and Turtledoves. Different kinds of music fit different birds like Eagles: – wrap and Country – Turtle Doves: Singer Songwriter – Doves Rock and Roll and Jazz – Phoenixes – Punk, Metal.  You might find different inspirations, I”m sure you can come up with a song list for Cups Swords Wands and Coins but I don’t know that it would be as easy or as fun.

Jung’s Personality Theory
In Jung’s Personality Theory he divides the personality into four parts – feeling, Intuition,  thinking and sensation – the cards are divided up into The Goals of Chastity and Virtue and the Desires of Sensation and Riches.  I think there are correlations here – the main idea is that we have a tendency in life to move more toward one than others, the point of aware  of ones tendency is to move toward the unfamiliar and learn how to express true empathy.  In learning the Tarot I’ve noticed that a lot of people emphasize either intuition or thinking but very few people I’ve noticed really utilize feeling  or sensation.  We are taught in our education to trivialize feeling and and are told to sit still and thus not experience sensation at all most of the time.  In my school I remember feeling like the only ones that should be moving at all are the athletes and even then they had better win a ball game or they were useless.  I’ve studied The Alexander Technique for twenty years, it’s a somatic technique that helps you to learn how to free your head neck and spine  and create more ease and flexibility. When I work on sensations I often step into a posture that a character in a card is holding and see what see what feelings and sensations come up.

These cards  really require learning on all four levels.  They bring together art, music, divination, story telling and – maybe even game playing.  My imagination is that the cards were possibly intended for some kind of character building game.  The academics often say TAROT was originally “just a game” as if trivilizing  games (The gaming industry is trillions of dollars by the way).  Maybe divination is a game, but an important even serious game, and maybe these cards are a great clue in how the people of ancient times played that game.

If you have any questions or anything to add to this conversation I’d love to hear it.  I really love these cards and I think they can be powerful and even life changing.

for more information check out
Hal and Sidra Stones Embracing our Selves or their follow up book Embracing Each Other

Michael Gelbs “How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci”

Carl Jung

And I’d like to Thank Robert Place for putting these together

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The 66th Restored Temple of Hermes newsletter was sent on February 7, 2024. If you did not receive yours, you may need to update your email address.

Here are the designs for the 16 gods, the four aces; four pips, five royals, and the card back; the titles are in Italian: