Metelo Tarot Card Meaning and Art: Sola Busca Tarot Deck: Queen of Tarot

Metelo Tarot Card Meaning and Art Sola Busca Tarot Deck

Designation

About the Deck

Sola Busca Tarot Deck

The oldest complete tarot deck we possess, and one of the only early decks to be fully illustrated.

It is by no means certain, but it has been alleged that the Sola Busca tarot deck was commissioned to honor Alfonso d'Este on the occasion of his wedding to Anna Sforza, granddaughter of Bianca Maria Visconti.

Provenance

Italy, c.1491.

Meaning of Metelo from the Sola Busca Tarot Deck

Upright

Internal struggles. Fighting between friendly parties.

Reversed

Fealty.

According to Many Schools of Thought

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings

The Devil. In the eighteenth century this card seems to have been rather a symbol of merely animal impudicity. Except for a fantastic head-dress, the chief figure is entirely naked; it has bat-like wings, and the hands and feet are represented by the claws of a bird. In the right hand there is a sceptre terminating in a sign which has been thought to represent fire. The figure as a whole is not particularly evil; it has no tail, and the commentators who have said that the claws are those of a harpy have spoken at random. There is no better ground for the alternative suggestion that they are eagle's claws. Attached, by a cord depending from their collars, to the pedestal on which the figure is mounted, are two small demons, presumably male and female. These are tailed, but not winged. Since 1856 the influence of Eliphas Levi and his doctrine of occultism has changed the face of this card, and it now appears as a pseudo-Baphometic figure with the head of a goat and a great torch between the horns; it is seated instead of erect, and in place of the generative organs there is the Hermetic caduceus. In Le Tarot Divinatoire of Papus the small demons are replaced by naked human beings, male and female who are yoked only to each other. The author may be felicitated on this improved symbolism.