Andrey Moss

The Latin motto "Trahor Fatis" (I am drawn by Fate) appears but four times in the Tarot masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, the Sola Busca deck, and yet it hangs unmistakably over the cards’ entire colorful procession of ancient Greek and Roman heroes. Armored in the style of late-fifteenth century northern Italy, they bear bagpipes, shields, lyres, pennants, staffs, and torches, while accompanied by basilisks, crows, falcons, doves, and eagles. Every single card is a miniature drama - the expressions of the highly individualized figures inviting us to speculate, like the Tarot itself, on the past and future of this cryptic world.

Considered the oldest complete seventy-eight card tarot deck in existence, the Sola Busca - named for the family of Milanese nobles who owned it for some five generations - was the first to be produced using copperplate engraving. It is also the earliest known tarot deck that illustrates the Major and Minor Trumps in the way that has become the standard, with characters and objects depicting allegorical scenes. In the Renaissance era this would have been revolutionary, while, today, some of these cards may seem familiar. In 1909, when Arthur Edward Waite commissioned artist Pamela Colman-Smith to illustrate his The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, she drew inspiration - and for nearly a dozen cards, the exact imagery - from the Sola Busca deck.

The genius of the Tarot is its multivocality, its ability to convey manifold meanings independent of the interrogator. Shorn from the historical, mythological, and pictorial associations that would have been available to its users in fifteenth-century Venice, the Sola Busca deck is limited in its use for divinatory purposes today, and yet, its enigmatic imagery irresistibly invites decoding..

Discover the Sola Busca Tarot Deck

It's hard to describe the extent of my love for classical Japanese culture and the impact it has had on me.. But if the Halloween mood doesn't leave you all year round, as it does me, here is a small list of my most inspiring Japanese horrors:

This movie should definitely be first on the list - Kwaidan. Its a 1964 anthology horror film directed by Masaki Kobayashi. It is based on stories from Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folk tales. I have a huge collection of Japanese folk tales in my library, which I read as a child, so I have been returning to this film for many years..

Another treasure - Kuroneko or "A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove". Its a 1968 film directed by Kaneto Shindo, and an adaptation of a supernatural folktale. Set during a civil war in feudal Japan, the film's plot concerns the vengeful spirits, or onryō, of a woman and her daughter-in-law..

And this completely unique film Onibaba, also directed by Kaneto Shindo in 1964, may have made me pay attention for the first time to how everything mystical is connected to the social agenda.. The film is set somewhere in Japan near Kyoto, in the mid-fourteenth century during a period of civil war. Two fleeing soldiers are ambushed in a large field of tall, thick reeds and murdered by an older woman and her young daughter-in-law..

The last film on the list may not belong to the horror genre, but only the great Kurosawa was able to convey all the horror and all the tragedy of Macbeth..

Throne of Blood is a 1957 film directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film transposes the plot of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth from Medieval Scotland to feudal Japan, with stylistic elements drawn from Noh drama..

This list is just a drop in the ocean of this unique classical Japanese culture, which has always been my inspiration since my childhood.. But in the end, one more treasure - Yamata no Orochi..