Book Summary

The Game of Saturn: Decoding the Sola-Busca Tarot

by Peter Mark Adams

I would like to inform you about an exciting new project that I have just completed. Its title is,
The Game of Saturn: Decoding the Sola-Busca Tarot.
It is work of non-fiction involving literary and artistic detective work into the labyrinthine
imagery of the 15th century Renaissance masterwork known as the Sola-Busca tarocchi. This
work is the first full length scholarly study dedicated to it.
Created in Ferrara for a Venetian patrician client, its imagery is wholly
unique and defies comparison with every other gaming deck before or
since. Ranging from the obscure to the grotesque, its scenes of
homoeroticism, wounding, immolation and decapitation are redolent of
hidden meanings, violent transformations and obscure rites.
Careful analysis reveals that whoever designed this deck set out, first and
foremost, to create a literary artefact that was only later encoded in the
format of a Renaissance tarocchi, complete with dead ends and false
trails. The decks misdirection has allowed its true nature to remain
hidden and unrecognized for the last 500 years. The recovery of its
heavily

encoded

narratives

therefore

constitutes

significant

contribution to Renaissance scholarship, art history, tarot studies and the

history of Western esotericism.
This masterwork of the card makers art was never intended for gaming
nor, given its violent and homoerotic imagery, to serve as a sumptuous
wedding present or educational aid. It is, rather, a heretical grimoire of
the darkest imaginable sorcery. I have been able to conclusively prove

that the presiding deity of this cult object is none other than the Gnostic
demiurge in its most archaic and violent form, the Afro-Levantine god,
Ammon-Saturn, better known from Biblical sources as Moloch.
The Sola-Busca tarocchi is one of the few genuinely esoteric
Renaissance documents in existence. It constitutes a grimoire replete
with dark Gnostic cosmology, theurgy and astral magical rites. Beneath
its beautifully decorated surface we encounter a quite different and
subversive world, one that mocks conventions and inverts behavioral
norms. This looking glass world is, quite literally, the dark mirror
image of Renaissance light and grace.
Careful examination of the historical circumstances attending the decks creation and the
astrological and artistic sources upon which it draws (the Palazzo Schifanoia fresco cycle and the
work of the Ferrarese artist Cosm Tura) allows us to identify, for the first time, the identity of
the polymath who designed it.
Based upon this information I am able to account for its complex existence by placing it within
its historical context. It was designed and created against a background of political intrigue and
espionage directed by Duke Ercole dEste of Ferrara against the Venetian elite during the drawn
out negotiations that succeeded Ferraras defeat in the Salt War 1482-4.
Drawing upon the latest ethnographic research I have situated the cults dark esotericism within
the larger cross-cultural context of the cosmologies of predation that characterize the occult
practices of political elites in different societies and ages.
This highly illustrated work will add significantly to our understanding of
Renaissance art and culture. It opens a window onto certain heterodox and
libertine currents within the Ferrarese and Venetian elites at the height of
Venices empire.
A limited English language print run of this book will be published by the
UK fine book publisher Scarlet Imprint in the third quarter of 2016.

This heavily illustrated work is around 70,000 words, references some 50 academic works, 70
academic papers and a wide range of original sources from antiquity, late-antiquity and the early
Renaissance.

Peter Mark Adams

www.petermarkadams.com
petermarkadams@gmail.com

Scarlet Imprint
http://scarletimprint.com/