tarot de besançon

I bought these cards about 10 years ago from a private dealer in the Netherlands, but this is the first time I've used them for a reading, and possibly the first time anybody has.

The Renault Deck was made the old-fashioned way in Besançon, France nearly 200 years ago, printed from wood blocks and then hand colored by the artisan using four large stencils, then cut from the large sheets they were printed on into 78 approximately 4-1/2-inch by 2-1/2-inch cards. Their heavily-thumbed backs and the smell of strong tobacco that still lingers in the deck tell me they were used primarily for playing the game of tarot during most of their long life. All 78 cards remain in reasonably good condition considering their age and hard usage.

The woodblocks the cards were printed from weren't carved by the cardmaker Renault, but by an earlier artist, Jean Jerger, also of Besançon, in about 1800. Renault purchased them a few years later, but made his own stencils. The coloring of the Jerger deck was much more thoroughly and carefully done than that of the Renault cards, which appear somewhat slapdash in execution -- one of the reasons I love their unmistakable folk-art quality.

The Tarot de Besançon is based on but not identical to the Tarot de Marseilles. The cardmakers of this southern French city opted for a regional variation, made to placate the clerical authorities, and replaced the II - Female Pope and V - Pope cards with images of the Roman gods Juno and Jupiter. For card players the change was insignificant, since what matters in gaming is the value of each card rather than the symbolic meaning of its image. For card readers, however, the switch weakens the integrity of the tarot sequence.

So even though I've had this deck for 10 years, I hesitated to read with it. What I finally decided was that if Juno or Jupiter showed up in the spread, it would void the reading, and I went ahead with the result pictured here.

The Reading

Three cards read left-to-right (no Fool card this month). The three cups signifies indecision, hesitation, or confusion in matters of love. The female person in the center is the "Valet de Baatons" (sic), whom I conceptualize as what might be called "the Jill of clubs," is the individual referenced in the the three of cups.

The trump card on the right, designated "Capucin" (with a backward "N") in this deck, and called "the Hermit" in most modern tarots, was originally called either "Time" or "the Old Man" in the oldest decks, and was meant to be associated with the Greek god Cronos (Roman Saturn). His lantern was originally an hourglass, and he means to remind us that the passage of time is relentless and irreversible. Yes, it's true that I'm not getting any younger, but there's still plenty of life left in me, and I'm ready to meet that special someone who will confuse me, and cause me to hesitate and have hard time deciding.

Click on the image for a larger view; click twice for actual size.

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