At this point, wishing to point out one of the principal traits which dominated the investigation of the Tarot in the course of recent history, we might say that almost all researchers made, more or less artlessly, the same mistake. As we have seen, most scholars hypothesized that these images had an ancient origin, and in the long list of hypothetical characteristics, there were those who connected them to the Book of Thoth of ancient Egypt, to the Hebrew Cabala, to Gypsy fortune-telling, and so on. In substance, based on these conjectures, esoterists maintained that the Renaissance Visconti Tarot, the most ancient known today, were none other than the most recent echo of a remote tradition of which they conserved only an imperfect memory, but to which because of the lack of direct provable ties, it was not possible to trace them. What to do, then, if these cards from the 1500’s were inadequate for expressing a deeper sense? Convinced that their knowledge was enough to guarantee an integral restoration of the meaning of the Arcana, they all took the same path:
They redesigned the Tarot according to their own personal visions!
For this reason, each one wrote a text, commenting his own ideas and theories, using as analysis model the re-created and perfected deck. If, to these Tarot with more esoteric characteristics, we add the infinite number of decks produced for other motives, as those for artistic or for recreative purposes, the reason is clear for which the quantity of decks published, especially in the last two centuries, has been, and today still is, so copious, reaching an impressive number of editions. Referring specifically to the Tarot decks created by the more famous authors of the 1700’s to the 1900’s we may say that the drawings of these cards express their perspective, their moral prejudices, their personal convictions on the world.
Each has modified the original plan of the Tarot in favour of a subjective representation, committing an act of free will, but not to the good. Every authentic tradition, by definition, transmits an objective message which must prove to be far from any individual interpretation. Therefore why did these scholars commit such an abuse? Why did they violate a balanced and impartial knowledge in favour of a personal and private vision? Were they all in bad faith? The answer is quite simple: they were unaware of the existence of the Coded Structure which, once comprehended, allows the revelation of the true sense of the Tarot.
If this framework were unknown, not only did it not represent the factor of orientaton of their research, but neither did they consider it in designing their decks… For this reason, in all the decks of different creators who followed one upon the other in the course of the epochs, and more generally in all those designed for the most varied needs, any system at all of codified reference is totally lacking. This Structure , which explains the meaning of the Tarot, their function and the correct manner in which to utilize them, even in the known practice of interpretation, is to be found, in its completest form of perfection , only in the deck of Nicolas Conver, French cardmaker of the 1700’s, who engraved a deck belonging to the so-called Marseilles Tarot (a detailed description of this group may be found in the Appendices).
Nicolas Conver, who founded the manufactory 35 which bears his name, created his Tarot deck in 1760. He had been named “Master of Cards in Marseilles, engraver at the court of the King”, which, in his epoch, put him at the top of his category. Scholars agree that the features engraved by Nicolas Conver on the blocks in pear wood used in those times for printing the Tarot decks, even though subject to the limits and errors of woodwork, are the highest exmple of perfection ever reached. In fact, these cards, in the centuries to come, will be used for numerous reprintings and re-editions by various publishing houses.
Fig. 18
The World, Conver edition of 1760 - editor Heron
In any case these later publications, although not substituting the matrices and therefore safeguarding the features, made many alterations and modifications to the colors. This was owing to the fact that every change in the technique of fabrication caused inevitable variations. From 1760 to 1880, the Conver Tarot were painted with colored stencils (the pochoirs ), a method of coloring by hand in which the color passes through sections of the surface of the material (cardboard or metal) of the stencil cut-out. With this sort of production, once in widespread use above all in France, in many varied sectors of graphics, one painted onto the stencil, but the color passed onto the material below in the shape of the image desired. Thus there were stencils for yellow, for dark blue, light blue, one for red, etc, and the technique allowed the reproduction of a rather large number of colors. stencils, though, subject to wear, were changed fairly often, creating problems for later reproductions.
In 1880, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the transformation of methods of printing, the original tints were simplified, as the machines allowed a more limited number than were to be found on the earlier, handcrafted cards. Thus, in the new editions, tied to this sort of production in an effort to optimize the costs of a great number of decks, there remained only red, blue, yellow and flesh-tone 36 ; green and light blue disappeared and much was subverted, including the allocation and the disposition of the remaining colors. This led to the creation of an edition of total fantasy, fashioned according to the necessities of the new manner of production, which was substituted by the more innovative offset machines only after the second half of the XX century. These last, although printing in quadrichromic thanks to a system of rollers, allows the possibility to print all the tonalities.
However it may be, apart from these vicissitudes, in the last century the Tarot have awakened an ever-growing interest, inducing researchers to formulate more serious questions, in particular regarding the Marseilles variety. They have (naturally, we think) directed much attention and investigation to the deck of Nicolas Convers, whose version most respectful of the original coloring has always been the one in blue, light blue, green, pink, yellow and red.
Unfortunately, in the various editions of these images, one of which is conserved in the Paris National Library, the colors have changed, losing the brilliance and the original tonalities and, simultaneously there has been a total disappearance of certain nuances present at the time of printing with the pochoirs , for example, the lighter and darker shades of green and yellow.
Despite all, these illustrations are to be considered the maximum model of perfection reached in the more recent history of the Tarot and although some alchemical symbols needed slight graphic re-elaboration, the relationship with the Coded Structure forms an nearly impeccable whole.
Nicolas Conver in fact, having recuperated, thanks to his former masters, the initiatic tradition of the Marseiles Tarot, re-established it by reintegrating the codification of the colors, the numbers and the symbols. This tradition, until 1631, the year of the liberalization by King Louis XIII of the printing of playing cards, forbidden until then, had been handed down by a confraternity which, manufacturing the cards illegally, conserved its secret.
The considerable increase in production, a consequence of this decree,with the appearance of dozens of decks lacking the authentic tradition, generated a definitive loss of the true initiatic message. This is also the reason for which the decks that have come down to us are so many but are all from the mid-1600’s on...
Therefore, Conver’s deck may be considered the continuation of an original source; and its recovery, implemented by the author, allows us to fully use again this metaphysical instrument known as Tarot . The reader will find the technical explanation of this restoration in the Appendix.