Tarot Studies

In my preface to The Tarot of the Bohemians, which, rather by an accident of things, has recently come to be re-issued after a long period, I have said what was then possible or seemed most necessary. The present work is designed more especially--as I have intimated--to introduce a rectified set of the cards themselves and to tell the unadorned truth concerning them, so far as this is possible in the outer circles. As regards the sequence of greater symbols, their ultimate and highest meaning lies deeper than the common language of picture or hieroglyph. This will be understood by those who have received some part of the Secret Tradition. As regards the verbal meanings allocated here to the more important Trump Cards, they are designed to set aside the follies and impostures of past attributions, to put those who have the gift of insight on the right track, and to take care, within the limits of my possibilities, that they are the truth so far as they go.

Explicamos el sentido y el significado del Tarot en general y del Tarot de Marsella en particular, entregando las bases teóricas que encierra. Además contiene una aproximación al simbolismo del Tarot. Por último hacemos una distinción comparativa entre la ciencia experimental moderna y la ciencia mágica, base de los principios en que se fundamenta el Tarot.

Mais do que uma série de imagens, as cartas do Tarô corroboram a necessidade do ser humano de buscar algo que transcende suas crenças existenciais. E mais, pode ser um método para desenvolvimento de amplas capacidades, como a cognição, criação, interpretação e crescimento mental e psicológico. Assim, torna-se esse sistema de interpretação uma ferramenta para o autoconhecimento, muito mais do que simplesmente um meio de predizer ações pessoais.

Lost Envoy:  The Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare. Edited by Jonathan Allen. London: Strange Attractor Press, 2016. 336 pp. (with more than two hundred full- color illustrations). isbn 978-1-907-22244-3 (cloth).

Lost Envoy is now available through MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/lost-envoy

Dalla metà degli anni 2000 hanno cominciato a diffondersi, tra gli studiosi di esoterismo, i termini "tarologo" e "tarologia". Questo lemma non è ancora presente sui dizionari e tuttavia, navigando su internet, lo si incontra comunemente nei siti di lettura dei tarocchi i cui annunci solitamente offrono servizi di "divinazione e predizione".
Esistono anche tarologi che si muovono su un livello differente, ai confini con la psicologia, offrendo non predizioni del futuro ma consigli per affrontare il presente: è il cosiddetto Tarot Counselling. In sostanza, il tarologo può essere tanto un cartomante esperto nella lettura dei Tarocchi, quanto una specie di sciamano moderno, uno "psicomago", per usare un termine coniato dal regista e scrittore Alejandro Jodorowski, anche lui sedicente tarologo.
Taromanti e Psicomaghi, insomma, sono "tarologi", ma i loro presupposti teorici e le pratiche che utilizzano sono legati a triplo filo ala cosiddetta "Arte della Divinazione". In sostanza, si tratta di interpretare dei simboli disposti secondo degli schemi predefiniti. Tuttavia, è necessario fare una netta distinzione tra queste due pratiche. Taromanzia e Psicomagia-la lettura predittiva, ovvero la taromanzia, è finalizzata a prevedere il futuro;-la lettura evolutiva, ovvero la tarologia, o anche psicomagia o counselling, è finalizzata all'autoconoscenza, all'equilibrio psichico di un soggetto o alla sua evoluzione spirituale. Ma qui si scivola nel campo della psicoterapia, sebbene non sempre a monte di questa pratica esista una laurea in psicologia. Va detto che a molti tarologi non piace essere definiti taromanti. Proprio per questo, cioè per evitare confusione, sarebbe opportuno utilizzare termini più specifici. Ma in realtà la "tarologia" abbraccia effettivamente sia la taromanzia sia il counselling, che sono pratiche diverse con il medesimo strumento: le carte di Tarocchi.
Va detto che esiste un'altra modalità di approccio ai Tarocchi che ne ingloba tutti gli aspetti culturali. Per questa modalità vorrei suggerire l'uso del termine "taropedia", che andrò a spiegare dopo le seguenti premesse.

The Major Arcana of the Tarot  Marseille offer an effective illustration of Neoplatonic Christian philosophy, together with the moral and spiritual crossroads at which we stand.  In particular, the Tower, the Wheel, the Lover, the Hanged Man, and the World offer (together) an effective illustration of the choice that confronts us between putting on the mind of Christ and entering the kingdom, NOW, or continuing to play the wheel of fortune in pursuit of personal power, pleasure, and prestige.  The "easy yoke" of the Master is also discussed in the context of the Magician:

“Learn at first concentration without effort; transform work into play; make every yoke that you have accepted easy and every burden that you carry light!” ("Meditations on the Tarot:, Letter I, “The Magician”).

Readers are also invited to "Play the Fool" as they continue on their pilgrimage.

I have written tis essay about the history of Tarot where I suggest an alchemical narrative is at play in the imagery of the cards, the Arcanaes. I identified and described twenty-two different figures of Christ in the main twenty-two Arcanaes. I give a date, 1144, as the beginning of the work Tarot. I explain that the word means Oracle. I name the place where it was designed, the scriptorium of Saint-Denys abbey. And I name abbott Suger as the driving force in the construction of Tarot. .
This was also uploaded here two years ago at Academia under the login of Souscomm Marco.

Most people think of the tarot as either a fanciful deck of cards, a system for divination, or a tool for spiritual growth. In fact, as noted in an earlier article (Sosteric, 2014), the tarot is a powerful system of indoctrination created by emerging social elites to facilitate the creation of modern power structures and modern systems of mass control. This article extends the previous sociological expose of the Western Masonic tarot by delving into the origins, form and content of the elite ideology inscribed into the deck. Finally, an alternative to the elite, masonic deck is suggested.

This essay pursues the themes of cartomancy and tarot as they appear in Brazilian narrative in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. In so doing, it attends to the dialogue shared between three important literary works: “The fortune teller” (Várias histórias, 1896) by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, The Hour of the Star (1976) by Clarice Lispector and “The fortune teller” in the collection of short stories A secretária de Borges (2006) by Lúcia Bettencourt. I intend to show the clear influence of Machado’s story on the famous scene of the fortune teller in Lispector’s The Hour of the Star, as well as these texts’ impact on Bettencourt’s short story. Further, by making evident this textual conversation, other surprising findings, veiled until now, come to light. These include the overlooked detail of tarot which, I suggest, proves that cartomancy is a subtext of much more importance than what it may seem at first glance. The points of contact among these texts and the shared theme of cartomancy indicate that the three works are varying readings of the same cards.

This is my chapter titled "One, two, three... one: The edusemiotic self" (UNCORRECTED PROOF only)-- Ch 4 in JUNG, DELEUZE, AND THE PROBLEMATIC WHOLE (Edited by Roderick Main, Christian McMillan, and David Henderson).

Review: ‘Jung, Deleuze, and the Problematic Whole is essential reading for those interested in the flourishing area of Jung/Deleuze studies. From a Jungian perspective, Deleuze’s ideas allow an interpretation of Jung’s writing on the unus mundus that both critiques and revitalizes his work. For those who study Deleuze, this is added evidence of the potential for a psychology consonant with the ideas of schizoanalysis. Overall, this book marks an important contribution to the ongoing exploration of Jung’s influence on the philosopher of the rhizome.’
Barbara Jenkins, Professor, Department of Communication Studies, Wilfred Laurier University; author of Eros and Economy: Jung, Deleuze, Sexual Difference (Routledge, 2016)

The cross-disciplinary inquiry as to whether Artificial Intelligence is capable of an evolving self-awareness places the electronic arts in the hot seat. Heidegger left it to the arts to resolve the matter of a holistic ontology of Being. In 2020, this sentience reflects the leap in quantum physics characterizing a new decade of inner/outer space exploration. Antiquated interpretations of the Copenhagen Collapse as contingent on the consciousness of a physical observer brings us into the Age of Entanglement. New leaps towards holism in quantum physics, along with recent cross-disciplinary breakthroughs in the academy, are rapidly transforming this debate into a new pedagogy requiring an integral perspective for hermeneutics reflecting the inner/outer process identified by philosophy as the Möbius strip. This paper presents a decade of groundbreaking experimental electronic arts mattering/mothering the sentient/spectral as a contemporary praxis incorporating ancient technologies synchronizing human co-creation with the rotational movements and interrelationships of heavenly bodies. The ontological ART-I-FACT of an ancient praxis of the hieros gamos (sacred marriage) is rendered a new constant of the Intergender Third via the wedding of biological corps to electronic corpus, demonstrating The Science of Magic methodology operates in the Third Space between cosmos and psyche.

Resumen: Este artículo analiza la relación existente entre psicología, tarot y astrología en Buenos Aires. Muestra como el tarot y la astrología pudieron desarrollar una perspectiva terapéutica tomando y transformando ciertas categorías de la psicología. En particular, el foco está puesto en la manera en la que el concepto de inconsciente pudo generar la idea de que existe una dimensión desconocida dentro de nosotros mismos, la cual es muy difícil de manejar y que es retomada por el tarot y la astrología. También se muestra como ciertas categorías tomadas de la psicología jungiana, tales como sombra, o la idea de arquetipo otorgaron al tarot y a la astrología un rol terapéutico.

Pertama kali saya mengenal kartu tarot adalah pada tahun 2010, saat itu saya menganggap kartu tarot adalah kartu misterius yang memiliki
kekuatan gelap, sihir, dan kematian. Hal tersebut sangat amat terkait dengan gambar-gambar yang sering kali dimunculkan dalam deck
kartu-kartu yang dapat dijumpai dimanapun.
Setelah itu saya bertemu dengan seorang praktisi tarot yang ada di Yogyakarta (https://abrahamtarot.com/tarot-jogja/). Ia banyak
menjelaskan mengenai kartu tarot dan memutar balikkan pemikiran saya mengenai hal ini. Saya akhirnya membeli beberapa literatur yang
membuat saya membaca lebih jauh mengenai kartu ini, ternyata ada keterkaitan dengan sejarah perkembangan dunia psikologi. Saya
semakin tertarik…

- Нижний Н.: ИП Москвичев А. Г., 2018, 458 с. ISBN 978-5-6041737-1-8

Что такое Таро? Откуда растут его корни, что значили привычные глазу иллюстрации шестьсот лет назад, как возникло само слово "Таро" и когда на нем начали гадать? Если рассудить, то подобными вопросами должен задаваться каждый таролог - ведь, как известно, познать предмет можно, только поняв его историю. История карт Таро долгое время упорно сгущала вокруг себя тучи тайн и таинственности, и только сравнительно небольшое время назад историческая правда начала выплывать наружу, оказываясь ничуть не менее увлекательной, чем все египетские теории. Книга "Мир Марсельского Таро" - как раз о такой правде. Автор книги, Анастасия Двинянинова, скрупулезно исследует историю появления одного из самых распространенных средств прорицания. Стоит ли говорить - гадальными картами, да и вообще картами Таро стали не сразу, а вот тайнами, спорами и разночтениями обрастали чуть ли не с начала своего существования. Марсельское Таро является наиболее аутентичной версией традиционного Таро, сохранившейся с XVII века. Прочитав эту книгу, вы познакомитесь с мифами и легендами, историей, вариантами колод, структурой и символизмом Марсельского Таро, а также найдете отражение образов карт в культуре и искусстве. Кроме того, в книге представлена уникальная система «Acta non est fabula», рассматривающая мажорную и минорную масти как единое целое, подходящее под определение понятия Таро как колоды из 78 карт. Эта система дает свежий взгляд на Марсельское Таро, не упуская из внимания традиционные интерпретации и не привязываясь к четкой последовательности в нумерации карт. Во второй части книги, посвященной практическому применению марсельской колоды, будут приведены разнообразные расклады и магические практики, в том числе и авторские. Книга будет интересна как специалистам в области изучения Таро, так и всем интересующимся этой областью знания.

Tarot'u düşündüğümüzde, falcıların, kristallerin ve tütsülerin görüntüleri aklımızdan  geçmektedir. Büyük boyutlu kartlar karıştırılır, düzenlenir ve okunur; çizildikleri sıra, sembolizmleri ve birbirlerine göre konumları, gözleri olan insanlar için önemlidir. Kendileri için bir sürüye sahip olmak isteyenler, şaşırtıcı bir  çeşitlilik ile karşı karşıyadır: pagan tarotları, astrolojik tarotlar, çingene tarotları, herhangi bir sayıda Mısır tarotu. Bilimsel çalışmaların azlığı olmasına rağmen, ‘New Age’ kitapçılarının raflarını ve mağazaların ‘kendi kendine yardım’ köşelerini kaplayan popüler tarot monograflarının neredeyse sınırsız sayıları vardır. Akademik bir çalışmaya başlarken, tarihsel gerçeği,  mitlerin sonsuza dek geri dönüştürüldüğü ezoterik kurgudan ayırmak zordur. Sembolizm, kullanım kalıplarındaki değişiklikler ve tarot kökenli teoriler, meydana geldikleri kültürel bağlamlarla birlikte ele alındığında tamamen anlaşılabilir hale gelir. Bu çalışmada tarot’un kısa tarihini, tarot kart çeşitlerini örnekleri ile inceleyeceğiz.

This article attempts to establish a sociology of the occult in general, and a sociology of the Western tarot in particular. The tarot is a deck of 78 cards invented in Italy in the fifteenth century. From humble beginnings as a device for gaming or gambling, the tarot became invested with occult, mystical, divine, spiritual, and even psychological significance. This investing became part of a larger strategy of discipline and indoctrination to ease the transition from pre-industrial structures of power and authority to industrial and bureaucratic structures. That tarot, associated as it was with the emergence of elite Freemasonry, helped provide new ideologies of power and ways of existing within new tightly structured, bureaucratic organizations.

Résumé. Cet article vise à établir une sociologie des sciences occultes en général et une sociologie du tarot en particulier. Le tarot comprend 78 cartes et a été inventé en Italie au XVe siècle. De ses débuts modestes en tant que jeu, le tarot s'est vu associé aux sciences occultes, mystiques, divines et spirituelles, prenant même une signification psychologique. Cette dimension s'est inscrite dans une plus grande stratégie de discipline et d'endoctrinement dans le but de faciliter la transition des structures préindustrielles du pouvoir et de l'autorité à des structures industrielles et bureaucratiques. Ce tarot, associé à l'émergence de la franc-maçonnerie d'élite, a contribué aux nouvelles idéologies du pouvoir et des moy-ens d'exister dans les confins d'organisations très structurées et bureaucratiques.

Перевод статьи Thierry Depaulis. The Tarot de Marseille-Facts and Fallacies. Part II // The PC, Vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 101-120.

"Теперь, когда мы создали «каталог» колод таро, созданных в Марселе, мы можем приступить к более тщательному анализу их иконографии и корней Марсельского Таро."

In a society increasingly intolerant of religious enquiry, where empirical scientific investigation and strict rationalism are afforded primary importance, tarot has been discredited, linked in the media and popular culture with dodgy soothsayers with a malignant intent to deceive and with weak-minded seekers clad in rainbow colours. The relatively small numbers of scholarly works relating to tarot is in marked contrast to the large numbers of popular tarot books, which crowd the shelves of New Age bookstores and ‘Self-Help’ corners of department stores.

In the second half of the seventeenth century, starting from the court of Versailles of Louis XIV, in all European courts the use of lacquerware, ceramics, textiles and silver in Chinese style were widespread. In that same period, kings and princes of various European States promoted the opening of porcelain factories that reflected the traditional Chinese technique and Far Eastern aesthetic models.
This trend became a true international fashion. Parks of the palaces and country houses of the aristocracy were partially remodelled to include items inspired by Eastern culture.
Even the cardmakers  started to produce decks with scenes in "oriental style". This article focuses on the Tarot decks with oriental scenes and in particular on the deck printed in Turin by Claudio Foudraz in 1845.

Traducido al inglés por A. L. Pogossky Trood Print. and Pub. Co., St. Petersburg, Russia [1913] Escaneado en sacred-texts.com , Diciembre de 2003. J.B. Hare, redactor. Este texto es de dominio público. Estos archivos pueden ser usados por cualquiera sin propósitos comerciales. __________ Traducido al castellano por Alvaro López Vera, desde el sitio citado.

Перевод  статьи: Thierry Depaulis. The Tarot de Marseille – Facts and Fallacies. Part I // The PC, Vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 23-43.

Несмотря на то, что термин «Tarot de Marseille»  рекомендован IPCS  в качестве названия для определённого стандартного шаблона (шаблонный лист № IT-1), и хотя существует несколько других признанных стандартных шаблонов для карт таро, которые существенно отличаются по дизайну и, возможно, старше, чем Марсельское Таро (например, шаблонные листы IT-2: Болонское Таро; IT-3: Бельгийское Таро; IPT-1: Минкиате; IPT-2: Сицилийское Таро, и пр.), некоторые рассматривают Марсельское Таро как САМО слово таро, как его истинную суть или как его абсолютного прародителя. К большому сожалению, французская Википедия предлагает свою основную статью о Таро под заголовком «Tarot de Marseille» (под «Таро» описывается только современная французская игра).

The Tarot, in both its origin as a card game and in its transformation into an occult divinatory tool, functions as an iconographic mirror of a particular culture's time and place. By examining the evolution of the World card, from the 14th century Italian decks to contemporary ones, we will see a shift from male Christ imagery to female anima mundi imagery. Parallel to this iconographic shift is the figure of Mary Magdalene, who in Renaissance painting began to be portrayed less as a sinner and more of a penitent saint. The assumption of Mary Magdalene in art correlates with the finalized form of the World card.  The alterations of Christian iconography and symbolism in Tarot cards are the result of occultists’ reappropiation of the Tarot in the late 1700s.  The fear/distrust/disbelief of God and Christianity that began at this time funneled into an interest in the occult; in the Tarot, we see a preservation of the luminous but a problematic relationality with Christianity. The World card, as it has been handed down to us today, is a synthesis of the assumption of Mary Magdalene, the Christus Victor, and the anima mundi.

This book proposes a journey, or rather a walk, in time, space and also in some regions of the mind. It is first, indeed, to explore some activities of the mind seeming at first glance to have no connection with each other, but between which some authors (Leibniz, Simone Weil, Italo Calvino ...) thought they spotted as a family resemblance. These activities are: divination (or at least some geomantic procedures using arithmetic operations, such as Chinese geomancy, but also Arabic and Tuareg geomancies); some games (chess, go, and also an African game known as awélé, etc.); mathematics; literary writing (such as it was at least practiced by some authors like Italo Calvino, members of the Oulipo, and some German poets of the Baroque period). The book will therefore go from one to the other of these activities, gradually putting before the reader's eyes reasons for admitting that they are, in a way, related. It is not because of a taste for paradox that this walk is proposed, but because, as has been said, great minds have not been far from proposing it. Leibniz, for example, thought he could affirm in 1703 that the 64 hexagrams of Chinese geomancy were nothing more than the writing of the numbers 0 to 63 in the binary system. He was wrong, but the arithmetic underlying Chinese geomancy does have something to do with binary numeration. As for the relationship between divination and writing, Italo Calvino said he used a "combinatorial narrative machine" running on tarot cards to write his Castle of Crossed Fates. And it so happens that Tuareg geomancers use a kind of combinatorial narrative machine very comparable to that of Italo Calvino. Not to mention the role that the Yi-King played in the plot and even in the writing of Philip K. Dick's Master of the High Castle. And as for mathematics, in addition to seeing it present in divination and in certain writing practices, we will sketch, from the confidences of some illustrious names of the profession an ideal portrait of the mathematician that we will place alongside an ideal portrait of the player, composed according to some game theorists. The "machines" I am talking about here after Calvino are mental machines, but we will also encounter very tangible machines in other writing enterprises. The most notorious is the wheeled machine of the Catalan Ramón Lull (end of the 13th century). In addition to this, there were other machines that appeared in Baroque Germany. Finally, it will come as no surprise to learn that this trip will bring us face to face with an illustrious traveller: Gulliver had the opportunity to observe a machine on the island of Lagado that is very similar - albeit a little more extravagant - to the ones discussed in this book. (see introduction online here: https://fr.calameo.com/books/000911625ab5696af433b)

Mozart’s passion for the Tarot game has been handed down to us thanks to the notes that he himself wrote in 1780, on the pages of his sister Nannerl’s diary, where Wolfgang often wrote notes such as word plays which Mozart indulged in, or affectionate, intimate accounts.

This article, which reports the essential news on the relationship between Mozart and the Tarot, is taken from the book "Tarot in German countries from the 16th to the 18th Century", by Giordano Berti (OM Edizioni, Quarto Inferiore - Bologna, 2019).

This paper was originally written during my undergraduate, although not for any subject as such, but rather simply out of interest. It was edited and redrafted in 2006.

The paper presents a survey of the development of the Hanged Man from Court de Géblin’s identification of this card with the Cardinal Virtue, Prudence, through some of the key esoteric currents associated with the Tarot. By way of a conclusion it reassess de Géblin’s vision of the Hanged Man.

Situates the life and fiction of Inkling Charles Williams in the network of modern occultism, with special focus on his initiatory experiences in A.E. Waite’s Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. Roukema evaluates fictional projections of magic, kabbalah, alchemy and ritual experience in Williams’s seven novels of supernatural fantasy. From this specific analysis, he develops more broadly applicable approaches to the serious expression of religious experience in fiction. Roukema shows that esoteric knowledge has frequently been blurred into fiction because of its inherent narrativity and adaptability, particularly by authors already attracted to the syncretism, multivalence and lived fantasy of the modern occult experience.

Tarot is central to the philosophies of the New Age. If you look in any of the numerous popular books about tarot, you will read that ancient Egyptians encoded their secrets into these mysterious cards when they were threatened by brutal invaders. Yet others say that tarot were invented by the Gypsies, then thought to be Egyptians. Alas, neither of these theories are true!

This article presents an iconological analysis of a playing card from the 15th century deck now known as the Visconti Tarot. This card
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became named The Magician following the reiterated use of the iconographic motive in later tarot decks. Earlier and contemporary iconographic models of this card have been found in images from manuscripts and prints with astrological, alchemical and symbolic contents dating from the 14th and the 15th centuries. The present study considers the importance these traditions had in the cultural development of the early Italian Renaissance.

El siguiente artículo presenta un análisis iconológico de una carta del mazo del siglo xv actualmente conocido como el tarot Visconti. La carta adquirió el nombre El Mago, debido al reiterativo uso del motivo iconográfico en mazos de tarot posteriores. Modelos iconográficos anteriores y contemporáneos a esta carta se han encontrado en imágenes provenientes de manuscritos y grabados con contenido astrológico, alquímico y simbólico que datan de los siglos xiv y xv. El presente estudio considera la importancia que estas tradiciones tuvieron en el desarrollo cultural del Renacimiento italiano temprano.

In this essay I will attempt to introduce Surrealism’s relationship with the elements of Western European traditions of thought that have come to be defined as ‘esoteric’. The
historical and social impact of this union draws into focus the direct concerns of the ‘esoteric’ within art and its perceived ability to impact on society as well as the individual. A short analysis of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain then aims at identifying further key features of ‘esoteric’ art, as well as add further answers to some important questions. Can ‘esoteric’ art be defined by a simple re-presentation of ‘esoteric’ symbols and images? Are there any pre-requisites that exist for creators as well as viewers of ‘esoteric’ art? This analysis aims to answer such questions, but firstly a clarification of the term ‘esoteric’, and its place within western religious thought, becomes necessary in order for us to refine our definition of what is esoteric art.

Taking the word Golem, and following Rabbi Abulafia's 5th, and 6th path of Torah (Kabbalistic hermeneutics) I use the symbolic images revealed on the Visconti-Sforza trump cards assigned to the letters that spell out the word Golem in Hebrew to create a new definition of the word. I support my interpretations of these symbolic images with verses from the major Kabbalistic works.

This note investigates the path that led to the creation of the Chariot trump of the Tarot “of Marseille” (fig. 2). The track originates from a drawing by the Venetian painter Jacopo Bellini showing a triumphal wagon pulled by two horses (fig. 3) and probably made in the context of the competition organized in Ferrara shortly after 1441 to select an artistic project for an equestrian sculpture. This sketch appears to have inspired a Ferrarese tarot card, dated around 1450, and presenting an allegorical figure on a chariot (fig. 1). Probably due to the participation of Toscan artists in the contest, it seems that the design leaked to Florence, as revealed by a niello engraved by the Florentine Maso Finiguerra before 1464 that presents striking similarities to the Ferrarese card (fig. 4, on front cover). Finally, the Chariot card of the tarot “of Marseille” obviously borrows characteristics common to its three ancestors, but also some features specific to each one. Given the very scarce circulation of the three images until recent times, this leads to conjecturing that the Chariot of the tarot “of Marseille” might have been originally created in Florence sometime between 1460 and 1473.

Quando ebbe l’idea di scrivere Il castello dei destini incrociati, nel luglio del 1968, Italo Calvino aveva appena impresso una svolta alla propria carriera. Con il recente trasferimento nella Parigi di Raymond Queneau e dell’Oulipo, l’autore era approdato nei territori della letteratura combinatoria, confermando quel cambio di rotta in senso scientifico che fin dalle Cosmicomiche gli aveva alienato i favori di numerosi intellettuali, legati a un’idea tradizionale di engagement.

Con il presente saggio, Davide Savio ricompone la frattura che sembra intercorrere tra il primo e il secondo Calvino, riconducendo Il castello entro la ragnatela di iniziative che lo scrittore era impegnato a tessere tra la fine degli anni Sessanta e l’inizio dei Settanta: dalla stesura delle Città invisibili alle discussioni intorno alla progettata rivista «Alì Babà», dall’approfondimento dell’utopista Charles Fourier alla traduzione dei Fiori blu di Queneau.

Collocato in una fase di ripensamento dei valori e delle prospettive, Il castello si dimostra una tappa nevralgica della riflessione calviniana sulla convivenza, nonché sul ruolo che all’intellettuale, nel pieno della modernità, è ancora concesso di recitare. Viene così rinnovata quella sfida al labirinto che, lanciata dalle colonne del «menabò», aveva trasformato Calvino nel cartografo di un mondo in apparenza refrattario all’ordine e alla ragione, eppure ancora capace di condensarsi in figure, immagini ed emblemi di respiro universale.

A obra da artista Marlene Godoy intitulada O Tarô de Brasília (1990) demonstra sua sensibilidade artística perante problemáticas inerentes à história e atualidades da capital federal. Muitos grupos espiritualistas se atraíram para a região com o objetivo de contribuir para o desenvolvimento de uma nova civilização e oferecer suporte espiritual ao centro das decisões políticas do país. A Legião da Boa Vontade faz parte deste contexto e recebeu a obra de Marlene Godoy em seu acervo. Para realizarmos a análise da obra, nos debruçamos sobre o Tarô em seu aspecto esotérico e sobre fontes disponíveis na LBV.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Tarô; misticismo; Brasília; Marlene Godoy.


The work of the artist Marlene Godoy entitled The Tarot of Brasilia (1990) demonstrates her capacity to respond to the problems inherent in the history and news of the federal capital. Many spiritual groups have attracted themselves to the region with the aim of contributing to the development of a new civilization and providing spiritual support to the center of the country's political decisions. Legião da Boa Vontade is part of this context and has received the work of Marlene Godoy in its collection. In order to perform the analysis of the work, we focus on the Tarot in its esoteric aspect and on sources available in the LBV.
KEYWORDS: Tarot; misticism; Brasilia; Marlene Godoy.