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The Tarot of Marsilio Down Here - 2024 - Scarlet Imprint

Down Here is the first of a meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated three volume work, The Tarot of Marsilio by Christophe Poncet; a landmark inquiry into the origins of the Tarot de Marseille. Against the prevalent view in the academy – that the tarot was never used, before the 18th century, for anything other than card games – Poncet argues that the Tarot de Marseille is a work of esoteric philosophy hidden in plain sight.

Through a careful analysis of artworks, philosophical texts, and the imagery and symbolism of the cards, Poncet places and dates the deck to Florence in the 1470s. Marsilio Ficino, translator of the Corpus Hermeticum and the complete works of Plato, is identified as the likely mastermind behind this tarot. In this first volume, the imagery and meaning of the Chariot, the Devil, the Lovers, Strength, the Hermit, the House of God, Arcanum XIII and the Fool are explored.

Christophe Poncet has been on a decades long quest to discover the truth about the Tarot de Marseille and the esoteric ideas encoded in the cards. The Tarot of Marsilio takes us on an extraordinary journey of discovery, from a lost masterpiece of Botticelli in a ruined castle, through the stacks of the Vatican library, artist’s sketchbooks, and works in the collections of the Louvre, the British Museum, and the National Gallery. Poncet brings us into the hermetic thought-world of the circle around the brilliant polymath Marsilio Ficino.

4vo (325 × 225 mm), 208 pp.

Illustrated throughout in color.

Bound in sky blue cloth stamped in gold on spine and front, and with an onlay of The Fool, carmine endpapers and ribbon. Printed in color on premium 150 gsm paper.

Limited to 875 hand numbered copies.

Printed in the EU.

Fine, never read.