The Archive · The Sola Busca Tarot · Plate 53 of 78
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Swords

Three of Swords

from The Sola Busca Tarot, c. 1491

Three swords driven through a red heart, with a wreath and a vine below. This is the card. Pamela Colman Smith saw it, or a photograph of it, at the British Museum and made it the Three of Swords of the Rider-Waite deck, the image of heartbreak that every tarot since has copied. The Sola Busca got there first by four hundred years.

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Nearby in the deck
Re of Cups (Lucio Cecilio)Ace of SwordsTwo of SwordsThree of SwordsFour of SwordsFive of SwordsSix of Swords
More in the Archive The Mantegna TarocchiThe Visconti-Sforza TarotThe Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Notes: the minors this deck invented
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