THE TAROT WHEEL
CONCLUSION OF THE TRUMP STRUCTURE
As a result from the previous pages we can say that there is a very basic and strong structure behind the Tarot, describing the Universe and our responsibilities within this entity. The trumps can be divided in three levels. On the lowest level, we have the journey of the human Soul through this Universe, from birth to resurrection. This journey is divided in three stages. The first stage guides the human Soul through human Society with a clear explanation of its structure. The second stage gives all the pitfalls that affect a human life, desire, power, luck, time, accidents or illnesses and Death itself. The last stage describes the journey of our Soul through the Afterlife, from the deepest of Hell to the eternal light of Paradise. The cards on this level are strictly ordered, and there were very little variations to occur during time. There can be some minor changes within the stage of a journey, but never in between two stages.
On the second level we have the moral values. In the direct ancestors of the tarot, there were only 14 Trumps, and the cards finished with the Death card directly followed by the Final Judgement. So for game purposes in the 22 trumps structure, the card makers could put the Virtues wherever they wanted, and we got significant differences in the trump order. The main three sequences were called the Milan order, the Ferrara order and the Bologna order. But on the basic structure this had no influence, the moral values could be placed anywhere, and at best their position was governed by the underlying journey cards. The number of moral values could be three of seven, both numbers being special numbers for the Tarot.
On the highest level, there is only one card, representing our Universe and thus God himself. In most cases "the World" is taking this function, but for historical reasons on the Visconti Sforza "The Last Judgement" takes this place.
The Tarot Trumps form a complete view of the world, as complete as the Kabbalah, but with a pure western origin. The first decks with this structure appear after 1457 in which year a Trionfi deck of 70 cards is considered complete (account books of the Dukes of Este), long after Filippo Maria Visconti died. After 1460 Trionfi cards became a cheap every day's object and no new entries can be found in the account books of the Dukes of Este. The only cards surviving produced in this period are the Charles VI deck, probably produced in Florence, and commissioned by the Este court. In 1473 appears the Este deck, and somewhere after this date, the cards who completed the Visconti Sforza deck, were produced. On the Charles VI deck we see the page of Swords with no heraldic elements on his shield. Possibly, this card was only made as an example how the court cards should look. On the Este deck, eight out of twenty-two trump cards and eight out of sixteen court cards are surviving. Probably they were all produced, with the missing cards lost in time. The court cards of the Este deck contain many heraldic elements to honor the wedding between Ercole I of Este, Duke of Ferrara and Eleanore of Aragon, daughter of the King of Naples. No pip cards are surviving, nor of the Charles VI deck, nor of the Este deck. Because the cards were only made for explaining the new trump structure (Charles VI cards) and to honor the wedding between the Este and Aragon families (the Este deck), they were not used as playing cards and the pip cards were maybe never made. For playing card games, printed decks were abundantly available.
Was the Este court behind the 22 trump structure? We will never know. The only thing we can assume is that highly educated brains were behind the development of this structure. Given the fact that Ercole I of Este was one of the best educated figures of his time and that between 1460 and 1471 he was not yet absorbed by State matters, it seems for me that it is very plausible that he was at least part of the group of intellectuals who transformed the 14 trumps structure into a 22 trumps structure.
