Mai offers three decks: Rider–Waite–Smith, Tarot de Marseille, and Sola Busca. The latter two are older than RWS and carry a character worth knowing.
Tarot de Marseille
This is the “template” of European tarot, standardised in 17th–18th century France (the name ties to Marseille, a card-making hub). Its features:
- Plain woodcut art, flat colour, decisive lines.
- Pip minors: numbered cards simply show that many wands/cups/swords/coins, with no narrative scene.
- Justice (VIII) and Strength (XI) are numbered the opposite way to RWS.
Marseille readers lean on number, suit, and intuition more than illustration — a classic, distilled style of reading.
Sola Busca
The Sola Busca (Italy, c.1491) is the oldest surviving complete 78-card tarot, and the first to illustrate the minors with full human scenes. Its trumps depict ancient historical figures (Roman and non-Roman alike — Panfilio, Catone, Nabuchodenasor the Babylonian king…) rather than the familiar archetypes — making it more a deck of history and aesthetics than one to read RWS-style.
It was Sola Busca that inspired Pamela Colman Smith as she drew RWS.
Three decks, three voices telling the same story. At Mai each card’s meaning follows the RWS tradition, while the imagery depends on the deck you pick — try switching decks to feel the difference.