Introduction

Ronald Decker is a well known tarot historian, with publications going back to the 1970s and a collaborator in some now-classic works of tarot history, most notably Wicked Pack of Cards with Thierry Depaulis and Michael Dummett. Now he has produced a long-awaited tome on the historical tarot, The Esoteric Tarot: Ancient Sources Rediscovered in Hermeticism and Cabala, Theosophical Publishing House, 2013. Much of the book, although with key pages omitted, can be seen at http://www.amazon.com/The-Esoteric-Tarot-Rediscovered-Hermeticism/dp/0835609081#reader_0835609081.

In this post my focus will be on his Introduction, where he introduces the idea that the cards are allegories. He even gives a dictionary definition of tarot which defines the subjects in these terms (p. 1):

 Tarot (TAR-o, ta-RO) noun [French < Middle French , Old Italian tarocco (plurach tarocchi)]. a set of carda depicting certain allegories and providing a deck for oracles and games.

He explains that tarot as a game is well documented from its earliest mention, notably in books by Michael Dummett. As oracles, he says, that use is not documented before the 1700s., first mentioned by Etteilla. As allegories, too, the first discussion in non-Christian terms is in the 1700s, when de Gebelin and de Mellet argued that the allegories were Egyptian. In this case, Decker insists that the cards were not Egyptian, but they were affected by an Egyptomania that existed in Italy at the time of the earliest known tarot cards, "albeit blended with classical and Christian motifs" (p. 7,not on the Amazon website)

In fact, he claims, the cards were hieroglyphs in the Renaissance sense. Decker explains that in the Renaissance a hieroglyph was not seen as something uniquely Egyptian, but rather an image that shows one thing but means something else, to those who knew how to interpret them. That is what they read in the Greek texts about Egypt, he documents later. This was a standard way of interpreting texts at that time, applying the tradition of "polysemic" interpretation of scripture (he cites Hugh of St. Victor, c. 1140) to poets' own productions, starting at least with Dante. He says (p. 8) that Renaissance artists

designed their own hieroglyphs with hidden messages. Renaissance intellectuals were fascinated by riddles enigmas and codes. Their meanings, when lacking a qualified interpreter, could elude the casual observer. This exactly what happened to the Tarot in its earliest days. In the very period when both the archetypal Tarot and allegorical art were most familiar, viewers complained that the trumps were a senseless mishmash.

And why was that? He says that if the symbolism had been based on some well known work, such as Petrarch or the Apocalypse of John, people would not have been mystified. Instead (p. 10):

The Tarot mystified most Renaissance observers because of the curious combination of images and their confusing hierarchy. Individual trumps, however, were usually familiar, quite apart from the Tarot. They were standard allegories. Apparently, the deck's designers used exoteric symbols to disguise esoteric systems. This process was fashionable in Renaissance iconography. Conventional symbols were rearranged to produce new allegories that were unusual or unique.

If so, how do we know what these esoteric systems were, given that nobody wrote anything analyzing the tarot sequence in their terms? It would seem that we will be lost in speculation, in which those of de Gebelin, de Mellet, and Eteilla are as good as any other. Against this, Decker has some sharp words (p. 6, not in Amazon:

Some modern tarotists variously bolster the Egyptomania and the pseudo-cabalism. The Egyptian magicians and Jewish mystics are currently asked to share credit with Sufi masters, Samaritans, Rosicrucians, Hindus, earlyh Freemasons, Eleusinian hierophants, worshipers of the Earth Mother, Dionysian revelers, Chaldeans, Celtic sages, and Babylonian priests. None of those groups, including Egyptian priests and Jewish rabbis, ever claimed to have invented the Tarot. Tarotists are undeterred and fabricate Tarot theories that defy the historical record. They exceed the interests and expertise of intellectuals in the Renaissance. The inflated constructions of most Tarotists are easy targets for sharp criticism from academics.

But can we dismiss all these groups so easily? The problem is that no historical group of the time claimed to have invented the tarot. Decker's criterion for what is allowed is a matter of what does not "exceed the interests and expertise of intellectuals in the Renaissance". That part is useful. However Renaissance intellectuals, artists, and their patrons were in fact interested in Dionysian revels and rites (see my essay at http://dionysisandtarot.blogspot.com/), the Chaldean Oracles (see http://tarotandchaldean.blogspot.com/), and what Jewish rabbis had said (http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/), at some point in the 15th century. The only issue is whether they were so interested at the time of the tarot's invention, i.e. before 1440. That requires investigation and inference, as I have tried to do in the blogs just cited. I have found the interest in Dionysus in the early 16th century, or the late 15th at the earliest. The issue of Renaissance Christian knowledge of esoteric Judaism is more complex; I will discuss it later in this post. The Chaldean Oracles were probably brought to northern Italy by Gemistos Plethon in 1438. But their cast of characters is enough different from those of the tarot that it is quite a stretch to imagine them the inspiration for the latter, although parallels can be drawn readily enough.

Decker concludes, reasonably enough, by saying that what is important is to study the iconography of the cards within the context of the times they were done. To make his point, he gives two examples, the cards numbered I and XXI, commonly called "the Magician" and "The World".

ICONOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF THE JUGGLER

Decker calls the first of these "the Juggler"; this is in an archaic sense of "entertainer", not the current one of someone who keeps objects in the air; but he is really, Decker says, the Agathodaemon, or "good demon", the helpful spirit, in Christianity known as a good or guardian angel. He was "usually represented as a boy, an old man, or a god" (p. 11). Decker goes on:

The spirit, as a personal companion, also dispensed lots (in Latin: sortes, which relates directly to "sortilege" and "sorcery"). Agathodemon's lot indicated the kind of life chosen by the prenatal soul. The physical lot was a small token, usually a short strip of wood, papyrus, or parchment.

Decker then shows us a woodcut he says is by Hans Holbein the younger, the frontispiece to what he the 1525 Basel edition of the Tabula Cebitis, an ancient Greek allegory. Here it is (p. 13, not in Amazon):
 :

What we are to notice is the old man at bottom center, holding a "wand" and with a "broad-brimmed hat", just like the Juggler's. He stands under a sign saying"GEMIUS".

Actually, what Decker has given us is a different cutter's not very exact copy of Holbein's original. It may have been done in 1525, for an edition of Strabo, an ancient Greek geographer, but it is difficult to be sure, because he did not give us the title of the book, which would have been in the center. 

 

Holbein did do such a design, a metalcut, and it is of the Tabula Cebetis, done as the title page for a different work, Tertullian's De Patientia, in 1521 (see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Title_Page_with_the_Tabula_Cebetis,_by_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger.jpg). According to the British Museum, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/c ... 6&partId=1, Holbein was inspired by a woodcut from a Tabula Cebetis published by Singriener and Vietor in Vienna in 1519, which itself was a second edition. It may or may not have looked like Holbein's. Here is the relevant detail in Holbein's original:

As you can see, Holbein has not given him a wide-brimmed hat. He does have a rod in his hand. Whether it is a "wand" is not clear. (Also, "GENIUS" is spelled correctly.)

 

The reason why Decker wants there to be a broad-brimmed hat is that the Marseille tarot's card, the Bateleur, of which the earliest known example is mid-17th century Paris, the Noblet (center below), This example, even then is missing its wand, probably either a joke or due to damage. The comparison Decker wants is more that of the Chosson, of c. 1735 Marseille but perhaps from woodcuts as early as 1672 (below right). The similarity with the earliest known version of the card, of 1450s Lombardy (below), hand-painted for a noble family (perhaps that of the Duke and Duchess of Milan), is indeed striking, even if he has grown younger and clean shaven.

 

Decker will later assert that the one led to the other in an unbroken line.

 

But actually, except for the very particular example on the left above, none of the extant versions known that might have inspired Holbein had such a hat, as can be seen from the examples below, all printed versions of the sort that might have come to Switzerland or southern Germany (c. 1500, probably Perugia; early 16th century, Venice or Ferrara; c. 1500 Lyon or Milan; 1558 Lyon):

There seems to me a good match between the Ferrara/Venice hat (2nd from left) and the Lyon one (far right) with Holbein's depiction. As long as the idea of a wide-brimmed hat is discarded, Decker is on good grounds.

 

Let us continue. Decker says:

The "tablet" is described as an extensive mural or frieze. It probably never existed physically but was the author's literary invention to support a homily. It charts the soul's progress through the precinct of Life.

He continues:

Holbein shows unborn souls as naked babies. Each takes its turn consulting a bearded man labeled "Genius." (In the text the figure is called a daimon and a daimonium.) Holbein represents the Genius as bestowing a lot, shown as an open scroll of small size (figure 0.2). He admits souls into a landscape full of allegorical beings. They are comparable to some Tarot inhabitants: lovers, Virtues, hermits. The Genius is the only figure here who carries a wand and wears a broad-brimmed hat. He thus resembles the Juggler.

Moreover, wide-brimmed-hats are "artificial signs of exotic dignitaries, such as biblical prophets, ancient magi, Christian apostles, Arthurian knights, Trojan heroes" (footnote: Saxl, A Heritage of Images, 60). Decker argues (p. 12):

The Juggler's hat likewise identifies him as a native of a remote region, which, in this context, I take to be the abode of souls before birth. I would judge that the Juggler, as the first trump, stands in the same position as Holbein's Genius, at the beginning of a soul's journey through mortal life.

In the Tarot de Marseille, the Juggler's outstretched hands usually hold a wand and a circular object. The implements impress me as divinatory lots. At the ancient temple of Fortune at Antium, priests scattered small sticks and balls on an altar. The resulting patterns were interpreted to reveal the future. The Juggler, as Agathodemon, presumably casts lots and informs the soul of its mission in life.

As I read Decker's description, there is nothing in this practice of priests of (for which a reference would be nice) to suggest anything about a prenatal soul's "mission in life" obtained by the casting of lots. Nor has Decker provided any indication that the Renaissance would have known about such priests of a forgotten religion.

To find out what the old man is doing, one has to look at the text. As we have seen, Holbein's accompanying text was not the Cebes Tablet. Despite the various books this served, once one looks at the allegorical figures and compares it with the text of the book it is clear that, although dividing into two paths what in the book is just one, Holbein is illustrating the Tabula Cebetis. The paths both involve resisting the vices so as to be among the virtues. This is not on the face of it an unreasonable way of describing the tarot sequence as well.

Sandra Sider, a 20th century compiler of various editions of the text and engravings (Cebes' Tablet, New York, 1979) says that the Tablet was first published in Bologna, 1497 (p. 3 n. 20), in a Latin translation "written by Ludovicus Odaxius (teacher of Bembo and Castiglione) and edited by Filippo Beroaldo" (p. 3).  Beroaldo, a friend of Pico and Poliziano, was professor of Rhetoric and Poetry at the University; I have no information on the availability of the Greek manuscript before 1497. If the text is to be the source-document of the early tarot, this question is of some importance.

Looking in several English translations of the text, I found none that makes reference to lots being distributed at the entrance. The "genius" is instructing the souls as to the meaning of the scene they are about to tread, and what plan they should follow if they are to attain Felicity. A 1616 translation describes how the narrator, walking through a Temple of Saturn, chances upon a picture "hung up before the door of the Oratory" (p. 105 of EPICTITUS Manual. CEBES Table. THEOPHRASTUS Characters, by Io. Healey, London 1618, reproduced in Sider and also in Cebes in England with introductory notes by Stephen Orgel, 1980).

Our narrator, still inside the Temple of Saturn, sees a great enclosure, with a gate (Healey pp. 106-107; gere I modernize the spelling and punctuation):

In the entrance, there stood the picture of a grave aged man, who seemed to give some directions to the persons as they entered; talk had we about the signification of the portraiture, but none could conceive truly what it should intend. At last, as we were in this doubt, an ancient man that stood by stepped unto us, and told us: Strangers (quoth he) it is no wonder if this picture trouble you to understand the true meaning thereof; for there are but few of our own Citizens that can give the true interpretation hereof, as he that offered it intended.

The artist had been a stranger to the city and a follower of Pythagoras and Parmenides. Fortunately, the man saying all this had been his pupil and could explain the picture. Of course he is begged to do so (Healey pp 112-113):

So the old man lifting up his staff [1557 translation: rod] & pointing to the picture: See this enclosure, quoth he? Yes, very well. Why then, mark me: This is called LIFE: and the great multitude you see flock about the gate, are such as are to enter into the course of this life. And that old man which see with a paper in one hand, & seeming to point out something therein [1557: as it were showing somewhat] with the other, is called Life's GENIUS [1557: Genius]. He instructeth those that enter, what method to observe in their course of life, and layeth them down what they must follow upon peril of their own destructions.

As we see, there is no mention of the man in the picture having a wand, or even a stick. Holbein has given him a stick, but since the other old man is lifting his staff, presumably the one in the picture, too, is a staff. There is no mention of the hat either; Holbein gives him one, but the brim is not exactly wide. It is possible that the later artist was influenced by a version of the tarot card known to him; but now we are not talking about the 1440s and the origin of the tarot.

I can't identify passages in the Greek text, but I did check the 1498 Paris Latin edition (identical in wording to the Bologna, Sider says). Here is the sentence, with a little before and after:

It is something like "Senex aute ille superio (qui manu altera pagina quandatenet: altera nescio quid demostrat) Genius appelat". which I assume means something like, "the old man who has a page in one hand and points with the other is called Genius." Whether the text has him pointing to the paper is not clear to me. If he is, it is likely merely a copy of the picture, to illustrate the lecture he gives to all the new souls, for them to imprint in their hearts before they take the drink of what Plato called Lethe, forgetfulness, but here is called Error and Ignorance, which is in the cup of the first woman they see (on the left in the Holbein). One rather free translation of 1759 (The Tablet of Cebes, or a picture of Human Life, A poem copied from the Greek of Cebes the Theban, by "a gentleman of Oxford") actually says as much, about those souls who fail to follow the plan:

Each to the ruling Passion doom'd a slave
Mourns the loft[y] plan his Guardian Genius gave. (ll. 306-7).

Here the "ruling passion" is not something given to him by the Genius. It is something chosen later, during the course of one's life in the material world. What the Genius gives is "the lofty plan", i.e. a plan of how to live, which each person retains in his or her heart, even if one strays from it later. The poem concludes:

Such is the Plan of Life our Artist drew,
Observe the outlines, and his Plan pursue... (ll. 429-430)

Again, this is not an unreasonable interpretation of the tarot sequence. However it is not quite like that which Decker suggests.

I found another book, Cebes in England, ed. Stephen Orgel, that has a reproduction of the same woodcut as in Decker except that the center part, blank in Decker's book, is filled in with the title of a book by Strabo, and the date 1523. My scan is at http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A4IdeuXkh2A/U ... Strabo.JPG. This figure, to be sure, has a rod and medium-brimmed hat.


Sider gives other translations with other pictures. Here are a couple from a French version of 1541. First, of the first old man pointing to the picture in the Temple of Saturn. You see his cane:
'
And then of the Genius:

Here he's pointing and holding with the same hand! Neither has a very wide hat.

There is also the relevant part of a 1531 German version of the Tablet by Erhard Schoen, famous for his "Schoen Horoscope" (see the thread viewtopic.php?f=14&t=942) that shows figures very much like tarot trumps in the zodiacal houses (and I think "Huck" on THF found him listed as a card maker).

There is no wide-brimmed hat. cane, or wand on this one either. Since they were not mentioned in the text, they must not have been thought important. I don't think holding a sign saying who he is will work as the paper he is supposed to be holding. But Schoen does a good job showing people drinking the cup of Error and Ignorance.That can be found in Plato's Republic book X, the Myth of Er, 621a-b (https://eurosis.org/cms/files/projects/Plato_Republic_HB.pdf): 

[621a] And after it had passed through that, when the others also had passed, they all journeyed to the Plain of Oblivion, through a terrible and stifling heat, for it was bare of trees and all plants, and there they camped at eventide by the River of Forgetfulness, whose waters no vessel can contain. They were all required to drink a measure of the water, andthose who were not saved by their good sense drank more than the measure, and each one as he drank forgot all things. [621b] And after they had fallen asleep and it was the middle of the night, there was a sound of thunder and a quaking of the earth, and they were suddenly wafted thence, one this way, one that, upward to their birth like shooting stars.

This myth, in a work already translated into Latin before 1440, does have an old man who instructs souls and passes out lots, but these lots merely determine the order in which souls will choose among the many types of life available to them, not the type of life itself, which the soul itself chooses. Nor does the old man lay out the path of virtue and its deceptive alternatives. He merely says (617b), "But virtue has no master over her, and each shall have more or less of her as he honors her or does her despite."

 

 Yet in a sense, even without the "wand" and "wide-brimmed hat", the old man in the picture, developing the imagery of the Myth of Er further, is in the same position in the allegory as the "Juggler" (the earliest term is Bagatella, player with trifles) in the tarot sequence, introducing the game--and the tarot sequence--as an allegory for the principles by which to govern one's life, and its pitfalls (the Wheel, the Hanged Man, the Devil, the Tower). It is also possible that the 1523 cutter who gave him a stick and wide-brimmed hat had in mind, in the particular way he drew the old man, the tarot card.. As applied to the Bagatella, the Genius's Plan would be the Tarot Sequence, the 22 cards. If you keep them in mind, you'll reach Felicity, no matter what cards you are dealt.

In a card game, whether you win or lose depends on what the other players do. But if you keep the 22 fully in mind, you will have more chance of winning. Sider notes (p. 2):

Genius cautions the pilgrims that merely listening to his exegesis will prove useless, and even dangerous, unless they understand his words and fix them in their memories. The Tablet could thus be viewed as a miniature memory theatre.

The same has been said about the tarot sequence (see e.g. Andrea Vitali's "Giordiano Bruno and the Tarot", http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page. ... 23&lng=ENG).

If so, the Bagatella is in this way like a Socrates, or a Platonic Jesus, teaching us his plan before we are born, before we forgot it and need Plato or the Gospel writers to remind us of it.

The Bagatella's hat, in relation to present life, may still be a symbol--not of far-away places, but rather of a far-away time, before we were born.  The hats of some early Magician cards in fact were rather large, although not wide-brimmed; that associates them with earlier times, when people dressed more gaudily, as well as with exotic people, such as famous condottiere, often portrayed with large hats.

Another allegorical context in which Holbein's frontispiece and the Cebetis Tablet both fit is that of life as an inn where one stays briefly on the way to eternity. "Innkeeper" (the Latin "propinat") was in fact the earliest known description of the Milan-based card (although not that early), in Alciati's 1544 poem (quoted at http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=220&lng=ENG). The same concept, with exactly the allegory of life as an inn, was used by Francesco Piscina in his Discourse about the tarot in c. 1565 Piedmont, which is next to Lombardy ( see "Bagato che è l' Hoste"--Bagato who is the Innkeeper", at http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Piscina_Discorso_2). When I look for depictions of figures similar to the tarot figure before 1440, I do not find conjurers, but I do find innkeepers (http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&p=15114#p15114). In that spirit, the PMB Bagatella's "wand" (at left, https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaRhT3ZmMDFOtAd8CBRuNPj7z6L0Lv63dVwQUo30sdKcIP-Dul60QD_rrnYrjYFNJ1O3lTSKw6aO5-9gZh1Q7LxlgS-ivlk8FNox17aMuns9Ie4r4OztKtueLfzf8XvaIXN6vf9BoUAso/s1600/01SforzaNoblet.jpg) could as well be a quill pen, with which he is writing his accounts.

I do not deny that the figure on the card is also similar to the Bagatella seen in the De Sphaera, done in the 1460s for Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan (at left, https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhni6v6WavW-tFcNvaeLhYjQJOlnIy7w7jrXani0lmOg7Oh7glrIQYa4mcHsox-zjD1jdzkMucvtNelxzIQB2IbW8eXfoS3cuGcu0w03DkI5eScmfP8f6cKSvSW5vRgDsSkSVydHqF6CSo/s1600/01bluna3deste.jpg). But by then the tarot card was already known, for example in the 1450s Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo "first artist" cards, made in Lombardy.

The Tabula Cebetis gets us part of the way to one understanding of the Bagatella. In this allegorical interpretation (and there are surely others), he is at the beginning, a kind of gatekeeper. In Plato's philosophy the soul is imprinted with the truths it needs before it is born. This figure can be seen as a pictorial representation of that imprinting, after which the soul is allowed entrance into the inn of life. That is one way of being at the beginning.

 

However, such an allegorical figure as Decker describes is not one to be found in Plato. It is true that the archetypes of justice, temperance, etc. were held by him to be implanted in the soul before birth, and that some of the dialogs in which he presented that view were known in northern Italy before 1440, but none of them imagines such an Agathadaemon doing such implanting, as opposed to the Republic's "prophet," who merely mentions virtue and distributes lots. There is the Tabula Cebetis, to be be sure, but that text probably was not available in the time and place of the earliest tarot, northern Italy of 1400-1440. A very perceptive reader of Plato could have imagined the Bagatella in such terms; but it is more likely a product of the next period, that of the 16th century and beyond.

SECOND EXAMPLE:  THE WORLD CARD

Along with the Agathodaemon, Decker says, there was the Agatha Tyche, Good Fortune. And in contrast to both were the Bad Spirit, Cacodaemon, and a negative form of Fortune. In the "Holbein", he says, the negative form is portrayed on the lower right of the woodcut. She has wings, stands on a ball, and holds out some kind of prize in one hand and a bridle in the other (pp. 12-14, not on Amazon). The implication is that of those who trust in her, some get rewards and others suffer:

She is the ancient Fortuna, represented on a sphere to symbolize her instability. The poet Horace made Fortuna the ruler of the seas, inconstant and unpredictable. Her attributes can be nautical, such as a rudder or a sail. In the Renaissance, her perch often became a world globe, symbolic of her power over the whole universe.

This analysis of the figure in the woodcut (and in Holbein's original, which does a better job with the wings) is correct. Edgar Wind (Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance, p. 101 and figure 53) analyzed the Renaissance symbol of a lady on a ball as indicating the attribute of fast-moving, and the lady as Opportunity. The drawing as a whole (below left, school of Mantegna, c. 1470) illustrates the motto Festina lente, make haste slowly. The fleetingness of opportunity is something close to instability, in that it doesn't last long. Perhaps that makes her Bad Fortune as Decker describes her. Opportunities can be deceiving. In Wind's example, the youth is restrained by Wisdom, who stands on a very stable. unmoving cube.

But where does the World as "Good Fortune" come from? Decker offers the example of the so-called Charles VI "World" card. She indicates, in Decker's eyes, power over the universe (one sense of the Italian Mondo), which is the same as Good Fortune.

Decker offers us two cards of a later time, the "Anonymous Parisian" card of the early 17th century (center above, from http://www.letarot.it/cgi-bin/pages/saggi/saggi%20iconologici/saggi%20iconologici%20i/21%20-%20mondo/8.jpg), and one from the cardmaker Hautot in Rouen of the early 18th century (at right above, from http://a-tarot.eu/p/jan-11/bv/b-21.jpg). A naked lady not only stands on a globe but also holds a sail. On these cards the subject is named "Le Monde", the World. It is again a globe of the world--or better, the material universe, since there is a sun, moon, and stars as well as buildings and hills. But the lady could also be Opportunity, with all its risks. The sail merely emphasizes her fast movement. And there is no reason to think that the 15th century card, which in any case has no sail, has the same meaning as these later ones. 

The lady on the Charles VI card wears an octagonal halo. While octagonal halos were put on many allegorical figures, especially Fame, in this particular deck it is otherwise seen only on virtues. Neither Good Fortune nor Opportunity is in any list of virtues from that time or earlier that I know of

Another problem is that the Marseille tarot's World, which Decker will later choose as his candidate for the original form, has neither sail nor globe, but just a naked lady standing on one foot. To Decker (p. 14) that makes no difference: without the globe, she is even more Good Fortune, because she lacks the ball under her to make her unstable. But it was the ball that made her Fortune in the first place!

He also offers an "Egyptian connection": a passage in the 2nd century Latin writer Apuleius's Metamorphoses (also known as the Golden Ass) in which a priest of Isis contrasts the two Fortunes, a "Fortune blind and iniquitous" of robbers, wild beasts, and daily exposure to the fear of death, to that of "the Fortune "who can see, and who also illuminates the other Gods with the splendour of her light", a "saviour Goddess" identical with Isis. Decker notes that Apuleius has his hero follow with "truimphant steps". And (p. 17):

"Triumphs" was the original name of the tarot cards. Were they so-called merely because they resembled the allegorical parades, also termed "triumphs" in Renaissance Italy? Or did someone interpret the allegorical cards as culminating in the triumph of Isis?

It is a question worth asking, certainly. However in Christianity what corresponds to Isis as a savior-figure is not Good Fortune but Providence, which works in mysterious ways. Saviors do not always bring good fortune. Sometimes they bring adversity and even death, so that by our choice we can free ourselves from the snares of temptation and thereby attain glory in the hereafter. She is Good Fortune, even in Apuleius's novel, only in a non-material, spiritual sense (even if her steadying influence may promote material fortune as well). This distinction needs to be made. Probably it is in that same sense, and that sense alone, that triumph over the world is good fortune: if one has acted in accord with virtue in life, including the theological virtues, then one can hope to go with the angel to heaven. In that sense she is a perfect accompaniment to the Agathadaemon on the first card, as the reward for following his precepts.

THIS ANALYSIS GENERALIZED, AND THE REST OF THE INTRODUCTION

Now we come to his general thesis about the early tarot. It is that the cards originally were designed by someone knowledgeable about Greco-Roman writers enchanted by Egypt (p. 17):

I will again cite Apuleius, as well as other Roman authors, notably Manilius, Nicomachus of Gerasa, Lactantius, Macrobius, and Martianus Capella. They were not from Egypt, but some were enchanted by Egyptian lore. Most were Platonists. All were highly regarded by Renaissance intellectuals. The trump cards unexpectedly illustrate rare ideas from rare manuscripts and therefore are difficult to identify at a glance. This partially explains why the trumps have avoided easy analysis.

And, after discussing Christian elements in the Devil card (p. 18):

Other Christian concepts and cliches re prominent in the trumps. I conclude that their creators were Christian Platonists (possibly Hermetists) with an interest in Egyptian Platonism (essentially Hermetism).

In the remainder of the Introduction, Decker talks about the possibility of cabalist influence on the early tarot. He says (p. 19)

Cabalistic literature was abstruse in its subject matter, written in a demanding language, in scarce manuscripts, scrutinized in secret, and jealously guarded by Jewish cliques. If a christian Hermetist succeeded in overcoming those obstacles, why do we not have the name of such an independent and intelligent person?

And:

Only in 1486 did Pico della Mirandola begin to legitimize cabalistic studies among Christians. He makes no mention of Tarot cards. By the early 1500s, Christian esoterists certainly were blending Hermetism and cabalism. A famous example is Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia (Cologne 1533). He makes no mention of Tarot cards.

But nobody mentioned tarot cards in any esoteric context: not astrology, nor Pythagoreanism, nor Hermes Trismegistus, etc. Pictorial art, even when obviously symbolic, simply wasn't analyzed in symbolic terms by writers then, in the 15th century. It was left for people to think about them for themselves. In fact, when people wrote that they couldn't understand the mishmash (Alberto Lollio, mid-16th century Ferrara area), I wonder if they were not merely, in a humorous vein, inviting people to think about them. All we can do is speculate about what they might have thought. That is a worthy enough endeavor.

We do know of Christians who had some understanding of Kabbalah before Pico: Ludovico Lazzarelli was one, who gained his knowledge in 1460s Padua (see Moshe Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, pages referenced at http://books.google.com/books?id=T_kD_cr-VeoC&q=Libro+de+la+Scala#v=snippet&q=Lazzarelli&f=false. He is not at the origin of the tarot, to be sure, but he is not 18th century either, which is when Decker starts to see cabalist influence (p. 19, and also a later chapter). In fact Christians had taken pains to acquaint themselves with esoteric Jewish texts for centuries, if only for the purpose of converting them with their own texts, as Idel has documented (Kabbalah in Italy, Ch. 19, especially http://books.google.com/books?id=T_kD_cr-VeoC&q=Libro+de+la+Scala#v=onepage&q=Juan%20Manuel&f=false). This subject has yet to be explored with any thoroughness. Given the prejudice against Kabbalah by orthodox Jews and against anything Jewish by Christians, it is not easy to say anything about this with any confidence.

I have devoted an essay, with documentation, to how the tarot cards and subjects relate to Kabbalist and Kabbalist-inspired writings that were available in Latin in late 15th and early 16th century Italy (http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/). There is no indication that they knew anything about 22 so-called "paths" on the Tree of Life: such depictions didn't appear until the end of the 16th century, with the works of Moses Cordovero. Even there one had to read the Hebrew to know there were 22, because the book's diagram only had 20. Before then, however, they did know about the 10 sefiroth plus the En Sof, described in several texts available in Latin.  If one first descended to earth and then rose again to heaven the En Sof, as medieval Neoplatonism imagined the soul's journey before birth and after death, if the starting and ending point was the En Sof, that would be 22 steps in all. Even then, there is no evidence that such writings were accessed by Christians in the first half of the 15th century, nor that there even were 22 tarot "major arcana" by then.

It cannot be denied that Plato was the philosopher of the hour in early 15th century northern Italy, as Greek scholars fleeing Byzantium brought both his texts and the ability to teach the language in which they were written. But at what point might it have been an influence on the early tarot? At its very creation, or as one interpretation among others? It is not yet clear.

At this point all we can say about Decker's book is that the ideas are interesting, with some good methodology, facts that are partly right, and reasoning not completely free of prejudice. And while what some of what he says may have been true by the 16th century, when the Table of Cebitus was being popularized, it is hard to believe that this allegory would have been the instigation. There is enough of interest to read on.