Peter Mark Adams, Mithras and the Renaissance

7 Feb 2024

With the recent release of Two Esoteric Tarots, we had the pleasure of reconnecting with the insightful author, poet, and essayist Peter Mark Adams. Known for his work in exploring ancient mysteries through art and ethnography, Adams’s latest book, published by Scarlet Imprint, is a deep dive into two remarkable and very different tarot decks: the well-known Tarot de Marseille and the elusive Sola Busca deck. Adams joins forces with Christophe Poncet in this book, bringing readers a layered conversation on the art, history, and powerful symbolism of these decks, which both reveal and obscure the mysteries of the Western esoteric tradition.

Adams’s body of work has long ventured into the realms of ritual and initiation. A few years back, he introduced us to the cultic mysteries of ancient Dionysus in his book Mystai. Dancing out the Mysteries of Dionysos, decoding frescoes from Pompeii’s Villa of the Mysteries. In 2017, in The Game of Saturn. Decoding the Sola-Busca Tarocchi, Adams returns with his meticulous attention to the Sola Busca Tarot, a 15th-century artifact of astonishing complexity. His approach, blending historical research with a symbolic reading of the deck, transforms the Sola Busca into more than just an art object; it becomes an initiation into the mind and soul of the Italian Renaissance, steeped in a mysterious world of ritual and mythology.

Unlocking the enigma of the Sola Busca tarot

The Sola Busca deck, as Adams notes, is nothing like the more familiar tarot decks. Where most decks, including the Tarot de Marseille, present their symbols in ways that are relatively accessible to modern readers, the Sola Busca is cryptic, laden with obscure symbols, color shifts, and mythological figures. It’s not just a deck of cards. It’s a puzzle. Figures like Alexander the Great share space with names and characters that seem, at first glance, to be random or even deliberately confusing. For Adams, this complexity is part of the deck’s attraction.

“I couldn’t understand what these images were trying to convey at first,” Adams recalls. “But that opacity drew me in.” His investigation of the deck led him into a deeper historical and symbolic journey, encountering what he sees as clear links to Mithraic and Orphic rituals. Among the cards, he observed two figures holding torches — one pointing upward and the other downward — echoing images from ancient Mithraic rites, which featured torchbearers representing portals to life and death.

The influence of Mithraic and Orphic imagery

According to Adams, the Sola Busca Tarot contains echoes of Mithraism and Orphism, ancient cults whose rites centered around cosmic cycles and transformative mysteries. The iconography of Mithraism, for example, plays into the complex network of symbols within the Sola Busca. Adams suggests that the deck’s references to stars and planets may be more than symbolic: they might represent a kind of cosmic grammar for initiating one into the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth — the same themes central to Mithraic ritual.

Some cards, Adams explains, contain figures poised as if performing ancient rituals, even drawing down the power of the moon. One such card, showing a figure holding a vessel and the waning moon, seems to depict a ritual that Adams calls “Drawing Down the Moon,” an ancient practice that aligns earthly forces with celestial bodies to channel specific energies.

Why this deck?

Why would a deck like the Sola Busca, created during the Italian Renaissance, be shrouded in such obscurity? Adams points out that Renaissance Italy actually experienced two renaissances. The first, a rediscovery of Latin texts, was followed by a second wave that brought ancient Greek and Hellenistic texts and ideas back to Italy, as scholars fled Constantinople. This influx of esoteric knowledge into Italy included both philosophical and occult texts, prompting a revival of interest in classical paganism.

Adams believes the Sola Busca Tarot was a product of this intellectual climate — a unique artifact, probably created for an elite individual with the knowledge and means to appreciate it. The deck’s unusual imagery and cryptic symbolism make it clear that this wasn’t a deck for ordinary fortune-telling or education; instead, it was a work of art and philosophy, a personal and ritualistic object for its owner.

The mystery of ownership and legacy

The Sola Busca Tarot was kept in private hands for nearly five centuries, surviving in nearly pristine condition until its sale to Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera in 2009. Such a preservation suggests that it was rarely used, possibly kept more as a treasured object than a practical deck. Adams speculates that while the deck’s symbolism might appear to invite interaction, it would have required a very specific training to interpret fully — training that might have been available only to those initiated into certain mysteries.

When asked whether he thought the deck had been created specifically for the Venetian noble Marin Sanudo, a notorious figure of the time, Adams suggested that it may have been more of a gift, given in recognition of his role as a diplomat. “I’m skeptical whether anyone could use these cards without very specific training in the ritual apparatus embedded within them,” Adams says, noting that a surface-level reading would likely satisfy even an astute Renaissance noble like Sanudo.

Embracing the mystery

For Adams, the Sola Busca Tarot is not just a relic from a forgotten time; it’s a doorway into the world of the Italian Renaissance, its strange mythology, and the chthonic powers that fascinated thinkers of the era. “There’s a lot about this deck that still needs to be researched,” Adams admits, hinting that more revelations may yet come.

As our conversation closes, Adams hints at ongoing projects, including a monograph on Mithraism that promises to uncover even more mysteries hidden in the shadows of the ancient world. For those fascinated by history, ancient philosophy, or the enduring power of myth, The Game of Saturn. Decoding the Sola-Busca Tarocchi offers a journey that spans centuries and invites readers to look deeper, past the surface and into the mysteries at the heart of Western esotericism.