Topic: Rider Waite Tarot

Greg Carlwood highlights an eerie connection in Dean Koontz's 1981 novel *The Eyes of Darkness*, which mentions a biological weapon called "Wuhan 400." Hoffman and Carlwood note that dividing 400 by 19 (from COVID-19) results in approximately 21, further encoding the "21 Gateway" theme. This is presented as evidence of long-term planning or a "magnetic attraction" of symbols seeded as far back as the 1910 publication of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

After disappearing for centuries, the Sola Busca deck resurfaced in the hands of the Milanese Cerbaloni family in the 19th century. Photographic images of the cards were sent to the British Museum in 1909, where they influenced Pamela Colman Smith's design of the popular Rider-Waite Tarot deck. In 2009, the Italian Ministry of Culture purchased the original deck for 800,000 euros, placing it in the Brera Gallery in Milan.

After disappearing for centuries, the Sola Busca deck surfaced in the hands of the Milanese Marquis Cerbelloni in the 19th century. Photographic images of the cards were sent to the British Museum in 1909, where they were studied by Pamela Colman Smith. Smith subsequently incorporated elements of the Sola Busca imagery into the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, unconsciously propagating these esoteric symbols into modern tarot.

Alex Boleyn provides a primer on Tarot, explaining the structure of the Major and Minor Arcana. He describes the "Journey of the Fool" as an initiatory story told through cards 0 to 21. Historically, Tarot began in 15th-century Italy as a card game called Tarocchi before evolving into a tool for divination. Boleyn notes that the mystical Egyptian origin story is largely a later invention.