SUSANNA VICENZETTO
MANDALA . TAROT . BERGAMO
ONE DAY IN BERGAMO
SOME OF THE WORLD'S OLDEST TAROT CARDS ARE IN BERGAMO
Most people who visit Bergamo do not know this.
A short walk from the Venetian walls, inside the Accademia Carrara, are painted cards from one of the oldest tarot decks in existence. They were made by hand for the Visconti and Sforza families in fifteenth-century Lombardy, decorated with gold leaf, and passed down through Bergamo's own Colleoni family.
Tarot was born here, in northern Italy. It started as a card game for nobles. Over the next three hundred years it moved across the Alps, picked up its mysteries along the way, and turned into something else.
Then it came back
Sitting across from Susanna, a Bergamo artist who has spent her life with colour and symbol, and who trained in Alejandro Jodorowsky's way of reading the cards at the Accademia dei Tarocchi di Carlo Bozzelli, you'll find the Tarot de Marseille spread out in front of you, close to where the whole story began.
A pattern fabled to be born around 1500
Why the Tarot de Marseille is different
Most tarot decks you see today are modern. They have pretty pictures, and they spell everything out for you. The Tarot de Marseille doesn't.
Its pattern goes back to around 1500, and many historians trace it to the card makers of Milan, an hour from Bergamo. It took its classic form in France in the 1600s and 1700s; the best-known version was printed by Nicolas Conver in 1760. The woodblock lines and flat colours have barely changed since. When you hold one of these cards, you're holding an image that has looked back at people for centuries.
It leaves things out on purpose
In most modern decks, the numbered cards show little scenes. The Marseille deck shows only the symbols: seven swords, five cups, three coins, arranged in patterns. There's no story to copy. The meaning comes from the number, the suit, and the cards around it. Some people find this frustrating at first. Then they realise it's the point.
death has no name
Card number thirteen shows a skeleton with a scythe. Every other major card carries its title at the bottom. This one leaves the space blank. Readers have argued for centuries about why. Most agree on one thing: it almost never means what people fear. It's about endings that make room.
The Fool has no number
Le Mat, the wanderer, walks out of the deck with a bundle on his stick and an animal tugging at his leg. He doesn't belong at the start or the end. Is he running away or setting off? The card won't tell you. Your question will.
The details are where
the reading happens
Which way a figure is looking. Which hand holds the coin. Whether two cards side by side seem to face each other or turn away. In a Marseille reading, the cards talk to each other, and the reader's job is to listen.
“The image stays the same. What it says to you depends on the question you brought.”
In Susanna's words
Why Susanna reads the Tarot de Marseille, in the Jodorowsky tradition
“I chose the Tarot de Marseille because it is one of the oldest decks, going back to around 1500. I learned to read it by following the magnificent readings of Alejandro Jodorowsky, and trained at the Accademia dei Tarocchi di Carlo Bozzelli, a school devoted to his way of reading. The Major Arcana are archetypes that have always lived in our psyche. I don't read them to predict the future. I read them to reveal parts of yourself, to give you new clarity to act from, and to open the way to new actions that answer a deep need.”
- Susanna
TRAINED AT
Accademia dei Tarocchi di Carlo Bozzelli
The Jodorowsky
way
Filmmaker and author Alejandro Jodorowsky spent years restoring the original Marseille deck with Philippe Camoin. He treated the cards as a mirror, not a crystal ball. A reading in his tradition is a conversation about who you are and what you could do next.
22 archetypes that already live in you
The Magician, the Empress, the Hermit, the Star. Everyone recognises these figures, because they're already part of us. When one turns up in your reading, it's pointing at a part of you that wants attention.
Clarity you can
act on
You don't leave with a prophecy. You leave seeing your situation more clearly, and often knowing the first step you're ready to take towards something you've needed for a long time.
THE READING
What happens in a tarot reading with Susanna
You sit down. You don't need to know anything about tarot, and you don't need a perfect question. “I'm not sure what I want next” is a perfectly good place to begin.
Susanna lays out the cards. Then the conversation starts. She won't recite meanings from a book, and she won't hand you a verdict. She looks at the images with you: the colours, the gestures, the odd little details. Together you notice what they bring up about the chapter of life you're in right now.
Often the surprise isn't an answer. It's a question you hadn't let yourself ask.
No two readings are the same, because no two people sit down with the same life.
IS THIS FOR YOU ?
Who comes to a Tarot reading in Bergamo
The curious traveller
You've seen the Duomo and had the polenta. You want one memory from Bergamo that nobody else will have.
The person at a crossroads
A job, a move, a relationship, a chapter ending. You want space to think it through without anyone deciding for you.
The
romantic
You have questions about love, about patterns that keep repeating, about what you want from someone and what you're actually getting.
The art and
history lover
You'd happily spend an hour with a Renaissance painting. These cards are a direct descendant of the ones in the Accademia Carrara.
Couples and
friends
Book together. Hearing what the cards bring up for someone you love can be its own revelation.
The
sceptic
You don't believe cards can predict the future. Good. You don't have to. Come anyway, and decide afterwards what you think.
HONEST EXPECTATIONS
What a Tarot Reading is Not
Lets be honest , because good readers are
-
It won't predict the future with certainty. Nobody can, and nobody serious will claim to.
-
It won't tell you what someone else is secretly thinking.
-
It doesn't replace a doctor, therapist, lawyer or financial adviser.
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It won't make your decisions for you. Your choices stay yours.
" What it can do is slow you down long enough to see your situation from a new angle. Sometimes that's worth more than a prediction. "
Città Alta, after sightseeing
Why have a tarot reading in Bergamo, and why now
At home, there's always something more urgent than sitting with a question. Travel switches that off for a while. You're away from your routine, nobody needs you for anything, and your mind finally has room. Things you've been pushing aside start to surface.
Bergamo gives you that space for a few days. Then you leave, and ordinary life fills it up again.
You'll take photos of the same view from the walls that thousands of other visitors take. A reading with Susanna is the one part of your trip nobody else can repeat, because it's built entirely from your own questions, in a city that has been looking after tarot's oldest secrets for five hundred years.
Readings are personal and the sessions are few. Don't leave it until your last afternoon.