tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2307556366698346722024-03-13T14:26:21.396-07:00Decker's "The Esoteric Tarot": Ancient Sources Rediscovered in Hermetism and CabalaMichael S Howardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488567669455421279noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-230755636669834672.post-71280278979713088972014-04-28T20:12:00.017-07:002022-10-12T03:08:56.331-07:00IntroductionRonald 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 <i>Wicked Pack of Cards</i> with Thierry Depaulis and Michael Dummett. Now he has produced a long-awaited tome on the historical tarot, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Esoteric Tarot: Ancient Sources Rediscovered in Hermeticism and Cabala</span>, Theosophical Publishing House,
2013. Much of the book, although with key pages omitted, can be seen at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Esoteric-Tarot-Rediscovered-Hermeticism/dp/0835609081#reader_0835609081">http://www.amazon.com/The-Esoteric-Tarot-Rediscovered-Hermeticism/dp/0835609081#reader_0835609081</a>.<br />
<br />
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):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Tarot </b>(TAR-o, ta-RO) noun [French < Middle French , Old Italian <i>tarocco</i> (plurach <i>tarocchi</i>)]. a set of carda depicting certain allegories and providing a deck for oracles and games.</blockquote>
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)<br />
<br />
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 <br />
<blockquote>
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.</blockquote>
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):
<br />
<blockquote>
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.</blockquote>
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:<br />
<blockquote>
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. </blockquote>
But can we dismiss all these groups so easily? The problem is that<i> no </i>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 <a href="http://dionysisandtarot.blogspot.com/">http://dionysisandtarot.blogspot.com/</a>), the Chaldean Oracles (see <a href="http://tarotandchaldean.blogspot.com/">http://tarotandchaldean.blogspot.com/</a>), and what Jewish rabbis had said (<a href="http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/">http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/</a>), 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. <br />
<br />
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". <br />
<br />
<b>ICONOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF THE JUGGLER </b><br />
<br />
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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Agathodaemon</span>, 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: <br />
<div class="content">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The spirit, as a personal companion, also dispensed lots (in Latin: <span style="font-style: italic;">sortes,</span>
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.</div>
</blockquote></div>
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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Cebitis</span>, an ancient Greek allegory. Here it is (p. 13, not in Amazon):<br />
:<img height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKj0goywVjBw8a_6MNaLUvtlvkKq_Gt4vZfxM1xve6tqqrLblREtemeYqaRAzfkDjBwjrj7iEE9-pP-IIjf-xy36v6Diu_fyjDnhrjVhLzng2wohCsZr9qOgx_Lqnd4mnnDRgj8nTJsBA/s640/Decker0-2.JPG" width="396" /> </div>
<div class="content">
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".<br />
<br />
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. </div><div class="content"> </div><div class="content">Holbein did do such a design, a metalcut, and it is of the <i>Tabula Cebetis</i>, done as the title page for a different work, Tertullian's <i>De Patientia</i>, in 1521 (see <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Title_Page_with_the_Tabula_Cebetis,_by_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger.jpg">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Title_Page_with_the_Tabula_Cebetis,_by_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger.jpg</a>). According to the British Museum, <a class="postlink" href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1417696&partId=1">http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/c ... 6&partId=1</a>, Holbein was inspired by a woodcut from a <i>Tabula <span class="posthilit">Cebetis</span></i> 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:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBzJpKgy1zeb7U5f2jRkWTEFxiInWfMIOmTeq6vGqRntgyovz5th1GMoHSziWJntX39MUQgCEkfKCjbvBnVwV-XChmpF9A0PkMw6z1Bbmnv_esy8uB0VEO7BfUAO9O-dzHUdALQjK7N84/s1600/Title_Page_with_the_Tabula_Cebetis%252C_by_Hans_Holbein_the_YoungerGenius.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBzJpKgy1zeb7U5f2jRkWTEFxiInWfMIOmTeq6vGqRntgyovz5th1GMoHSziWJntX39MUQgCEkfKCjbvBnVwV-XChmpF9A0PkMw6z1Bbmnv_esy8uB0VEO7BfUAO9O-dzHUdALQjK7N84/s1600/Title_Page_with_the_Tabula_Cebetis%252C_by_Hans_Holbein_the_YoungerGenius.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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.)</div><div class="content"></div><div class="content"></div><div class="content"> </div><div class="content">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.</div><div class="content"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlo6xEg9plqisCq7c9Z5BBY0jf_o_r6iT7HxowXD65HXo8-eC2bKIkwW6BZUPW2hX2Ypl9PIvwhh-FlepgixVMtG3wvCJxTms3Pq1WuxGSKPhcRlEqei-Hht0era84H50K4A_YnXvOnVU/s866/BatSforzaNobletChosson.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="866" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlo6xEg9plqisCq7c9Z5BBY0jf_o_r6iT7HxowXD65HXo8-eC2bKIkwW6BZUPW2hX2Ypl9PIvwhh-FlepgixVMtG3wvCJxTms3Pq1WuxGSKPhcRlEqei-Hht0era84H50K4A_YnXvOnVU/w640-h386/BatSforzaNobletChosson.jpg" width="640" /></a></div></div><div class="content">Decker will later assert that the one led to the other in an unbroken line.<br /></div><div class="content"> </div><div class="content">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):</div><div class="content"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRYGy2X7oOEJmOrkw0PSikwFxLM6rwuZRildTxf-V4IVXLtU-T39KFqenCoh90gaxuzHas7Jsd8znSCowHxHZspTr3Sf4vx-0E3njlxzS5LbmTCNfH_fOdm8f_C9Zw-Wu8Kdo-Q-wo0Ic/s2110/BatRosenDickCaryGeoffroy.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="916" data-original-width="2110" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRYGy2X7oOEJmOrkw0PSikwFxLM6rwuZRildTxf-V4IVXLtU-T39KFqenCoh90gaxuzHas7Jsd8znSCowHxHZspTr3Sf4vx-0E3njlxzS5LbmTCNfH_fOdm8f_C9Zw-Wu8Kdo-Q-wo0Ic/w640-h278/BatRosenDickCaryGeoffroy.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
<br />
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.</div><div class="content"> <br /></div><div class="content">Let us continue. Decker says:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
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.</div>
</blockquote>
He continues:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
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 <span style="font-style: italic;">daimon</span> and a <span style="font-style: italic;">daimonium</span>.)
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.</div>
</blockquote>
Moreover,
wide-brimmed-hats are "artificial signs of exotic dignitaries, such as
biblical prophets, ancient magi, Christian apostles, Arthurian knights,
Trojan heroes" (footnote: Saxl, <span style="font-style: italic;">A Heritage of Images</span>, 60). Decker argues (p. 12):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
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.<br />
<br />
In the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tarot de Marseille</span>,
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.</div>
</blockquote>
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. <br /></div><div class="content"><br />
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 <i>
Cebes Tablet</i>. 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<span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="posthilit">,</span></span>
although dividing into two paths what in the book is just one, Holbein is illustrating the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tabula <span class="posthilit">Cebetis.</span></span> 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. <br />
<br />
Sandra Sider, a 20th century compiler of various editions of the text and engravings (<span style="font-style: italic;">Cebes' Tablet</span>, New York, 1979) says that the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tablet</span>
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.<br />
<br />
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 <span style="font-style: italic;">EPICTITUS Manual. CEBES Table. THEOPHRASTUS Characters</span>, by Io. Healey, London 1618, reproduced in Sider and also in <span style="font-style: italic;">Cebes in England</span>
with introductory notes by Stephen Orgel, 1980). <br />
<br />
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):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
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.</div>
</blockquote>
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):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
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.</div>
</blockquote>
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.<br />
<br />
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:<br />
<img height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFj4XiZaUANuUzowMe7Amjpm40GRSR83eRP8gHD3Ioq7z52eGliO9eW0EaJRPYTvjH5tr3BkIDtl2G8Hlfj09OBlZPLaUZAcn-rK1mUhRudlO-n29huqQDxNJ_n1oBS3bI6AVUqxZiEWc/s1600/LatinCebes.jpg" width="640" /><br />
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 (<span style="font-style: italic;">The Tablet of Cebes, or a picture of Human Life, A poem copied from the Greek of Cebes the Theban</span>,
by "a gentleman of Oxford") actually says as much, about those souls who fail to
follow the plan:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Each to the ruling Passion doom'd a slave<br />
Mourns the loft[y] plan his Guardian Genius gave. (ll. 306-7).</div>
</blockquote>
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:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Such is the Plan of Life our Artist drew,<br />
Observe the outlines, and his Plan pursue... (ll. 429-430)</div>
</blockquote>
Again, this is not an unreasonable interpretation of the tarot sequence. However it is not quite like that which Decker suggests.<br />
<br />
I found another book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Cebes in England</span>,
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 <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMfIABzgPlBRWO2S2ArZs528BtP1GvYj2GtrcmjHRjpXpXz8iqid1f_FSqrOu53GBzvm2N-BQ0g3djuz_SR9UY_DNqQglDLuuuA4l3VAeE4vhYc32HEKwf1wobjEfi1lwugOb9_zrvqa0/s1600/Strabo.JPG">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A4IdeuXkh2A/U ... Strabo.JPG</a>. This figure, to be sure, has a rod and medium-brimmed hat. <br />
<img height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhZQ-PajpuVOz-VhDX9VDQ32-EMbsS12PZ2ydu3dmwjAUGZAAvbHouuQFi-HqsUYh3A829gzsFUjHE3dTKPuTv7o_pqMZoUnUM0GA3Z7wEiauRzlDy3XTG3PGsu_2wiep3oC8xibztlpQ/s1600/StraboDET.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<br />
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:<br />
<img height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb6N5nDRBYyI7LI7Rq1OSoHhDEBc6Qar_XVpgKoBWquwusOf4YdtBPyqwyl6pSVZm4jQZA9lRLqPibDxGhhMY8543wQyEe0u2FoTFOORD7gnoKYHkKOP76Yhy3UuqLLj451E2Yb_iMXxw/s1600/FrenchCebesCane.JPG" width="400" />'<br />
And then of the Genius:<br />
<img height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUBxQ_cII4zk5K5F_zcPYZqc91eRfd0311MOLMx5u3-9GTWIDXMVdvyWCYPIZX6et8E0wmG0bqU4ZYsZES9Q3HlUaVEwumWHehcAT8XY5cd-xH2dkMog3YeEqs28Hu8RuGwSEbpxpdZIc/s1600/FrenchCebesGenius.jpg" width="392" /><br />
Here he's pointing and holding with the same hand! Neither has a very wide hat.<br />
<br />
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 <a class="postlink-local" href="http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=942">viewtopic.php?f=14&t=942</a>)
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). <br />
<img height="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXZyXb9c-EUJKDjykj3Q1VEEO40n1sLTRg3Bky8B2m2ZEDV8W8RzbzH7KfSW_q0sKxng80mp_Uemw3EuUbLwrQxOxP_fEvFLzgyWrMEKF7MHf3I_E0TjNJxnKns5VsyG7dYrzPDZOZWUU/s1600/SchoenCebesCup.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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 <i>Republic </i>book X,<i> </i>the Myth of Er, 621a-b (<a href="https://eurosis.org/cms/files/projects/Plato_Republic_HB.pdf">https://eurosis.org/cms/files/projects/Plato_Republic_HB.pdf)</a>: <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="markedContent" id="page31R_mcid62"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3px; left: 165.433px; top: 1219.62px; transform: scaleX(0.921386);"></span></span></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="markedContent" id="page31R_mcid62"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3px; left: 165.433px; top: 1219.62px; transform: scaleX(0.921386);">[6<span style="font-size: small;">21a] And after it had passed through that, when the others also had passed, they all </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 165.433px; top: 1253.12px; transform: scaleX(0.933017);">journeyed to the Plain of Oblivion</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 416.267px; top: 1249.82px; transform: scaleX(1.45132);">, through a terrible and stifling heat, for it was bare of trees </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="markedContent" id="page33R_mcid0"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 165.433px; top: 145.317px; transform: scaleX(0.918856);">and all plants, and there they camped at eventide by the River of Forgetfulness</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 753.1px; top: 142.024px; transform: scaleX(1.29084);">, whose</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 165.433px; top: 178.817px; transform: scaleX(0.921218);"> waters no vessel can contain. They were all required to drink a measure of the water, and</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 165.433px; top: 212.417px; transform: scaleX(0.914128);">those who were not saved by their good sense drank more than the measure, and each one as</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 165.433px; top: 246.051px; transform: scaleX(0.92897);"> he drank forgot all things. [621b] And after they had fallen asleep and it was the middle of the</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 165.433px; top: 279.551px; transform: scaleX(0.92507);"> night, there was a sound of thunder and a quaking of the earth, and they were suddenly</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 165.433px; top: 313.151px; transform: scaleX(0.939426);"> wafted thence, one this way, one that, upward to their birth like shooting stars.</span></span></span></span></blockquote><span class="markedContent" id="page33R_mcid0"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3px; left: 165.433px; top: 313.151px; transform: scaleX(0.939426);"></span></span></span> 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), "<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="markedContent" id="page26R_mcid2"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 165.433px; top: 615.251px; transform: scaleX(0.918228);">But virtue has no master over her</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 733.5px; top: 611.957px; transform: scaleX(1.33447);">, and each shall </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 165.433px; top: 648.851px; transform: scaleX(0.90606);">have more or less of her as he honors her or does her despite." </span></span></span></span></div><div class="content"> </div><div class="content"> 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 <i>Bagatella</i>, 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.<br />
<br />
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):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Tablet</span> could thus be viewed as a miniature memory theatre.</div>
</blockquote>
The same has been said about the tarot sequence (see e.g. Andrea Vitali's "Giordiano Bruno and the Tarot", <a class="postlink" href="http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=223&lng=ENG">http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page. ... 23&lng=ENG</a>).<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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 <span style="font-style: italic;">condottiere</span>, often portrayed with large hats.<br />
<br />
Another allegorical context in which Holbein's frontispiece and the <i>Cebetis Tablet</i> 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 <a href="http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=220&lng=ENG">http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=220&lng=ENG</a>). The same concept, with exactly the allegory of life as an inn, was used by Francesco Piscina in his<i> Discourse</i> about the tarot in c. 1565 Piedmont, which is next to Lombardy ( see "Bagato che è l' Hoste"--Bagato who is the Innkeeper", at <a href="http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Piscina_Discorso_2">http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Piscina_Discorso_2</a>). When I look for depictions of figures similar to the tarot figure before 1440, I do not find conjurers, but I do find innkeepers (<a href="http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&p=15114#p15114">http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&p=15114#p15114</a>). In that spirit, the PMB Bagatella's "wand" (at left, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaRhT3ZmMDFOtAd8CBRuNPj7z6L0Lv63dVwQUo30sdKcIP-Dul60QD_rrnYrjYFNJ1O3lTSKw6aO5-9gZh1Q7LxlgS-ivlk8FNox17aMuns9Ie4r4OztKtueLfzf8XvaIXN6vf9BoUAso/s1600/01SforzaNoblet.jpg">https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaRhT3ZmMDFOtAd8CBRuNPj7z6L0Lv63dVwQUo30sdKcIP-Dul60QD_rrnYrjYFNJ1O3lTSKw6aO5-9gZh1Q7LxlgS-ivlk8FNox17aMuns9Ie4r4OztKtueLfzf8XvaIXN6vf9BoUAso/s1600/01SforzaNoblet.jpg</a>) could as well be a quill pen, with which he is writing his accounts.<br />
<br />
I do not deny that the figure on the card is also similar to the Bagatella seen in the<i> De Sphaera</i>, done in the 1460s for Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan (at left, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhni6v6WavW-tFcNvaeLhYjQJOlnIy7w7jrXani0lmOg7Oh7glrIQYa4mcHsox-zjD1jdzkMucvtNelxzIQB2IbW8eXfoS3cuGcu0w03DkI5eScmfP8f6cKSvSW5vRgDsSkSVydHqF6CSo/s1600/01bluna3deste.jpg">https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhni6v6WavW-tFcNvaeLhYjQJOlnIy7w7jrXani0lmOg7Oh7glrIQYa4mcHsox-zjD1jdzkMucvtNelxzIQB2IbW8eXfoS3cuGcu0w03DkI5eScmfP8f6cKSvSW5vRgDsSkSVydHqF6CSo/s1600/01bluna3deste.jpg</a>). But by then the tarot card was already known, for example in the 1450s Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo "first artist" cards, made in Lombardy.<br />
<br />
The <span style="font-style: italic;">Tabula <span class="posthilit">Cebetis</span></span> 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.</div><div class="content"> </div><div class="content">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 <i>Agathadaemon </i>doing such implanting, as opposed to the Republic's "prophet," who merely mentions virtue and distributes lots. There is the <i>Tabula Cebeti</i>s, 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. <br /></div><br />
<br />
<b>SECOND EXAMPLE: THE WORLD CARD</b><br />
<br />
Along with the <i>Agathodaemon</i>, Decker says, there was the <i>Agatha Tyche</i>, Good Fortune. And in contrast to both were the Bad Spirit, <i>Cacodaemon</i>, 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:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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.</blockquote><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMPMdqS6b4Z-kbCa_KlnIDV3QZtehjwTHRcEP45mt8Gr1GWGdPhSv7O3lUbYP0hk0aCbx4EyjFD7ijy62BiJk-OFrvxoqKr8znm8t0vaEHTfgohO9sy7-bImaXspji6X0wV9HL-Bs5hvo/s743/FortunaStraboChVIWorld.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="743" height="323" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMPMdqS6b4Z-kbCa_KlnIDV3QZtehjwTHRcEP45mt8Gr1GWGdPhSv7O3lUbYP0hk0aCbx4EyjFD7ijy62BiJk-OFrvxoqKr8znm8t0vaEHTfgohO9sy7-bImaXspji6X0wV9HL-Bs5hvo/w400-h323/FortunaStraboChVIWorld.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>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 (<i>Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance</i>, 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 F<i>estina lente</i>, 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.</p><p> 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 <i>Mondo</i>), which is the same as Good Fortune. <br /></p><p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ5HGMTIVyMPKY_1xfciY-yIoJB6VB1nyF77ZtSntBjVlxhThDLisubxgkZwpowu0VI8rTxmZZfB38axeTW0uOaEDmApK7QmIf2FvANTBDLZg7aay2W8rH7cShuti5-5BAtoyzcodXkEQ/s1418/FortunaMantWorldAnonHut.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="1418" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ5HGMTIVyMPKY_1xfciY-yIoJB6VB1nyF77ZtSntBjVlxhThDLisubxgkZwpowu0VI8rTxmZZfB38axeTW0uOaEDmApK7QmIf2FvANTBDLZg7aay2W8rH7cShuti5-5BAtoyzcodXkEQ/w640-h294/FortunaMantWorldAnonHut.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Decker offers us two cards of a later time, the "Anonymous Parisian" card of the early 17th century (center above, from <a href="http://www.letarot.it/cgi-bin/pages/saggi/saggi%20iconologici/saggi%20iconologici%20i/21%20-%20mondo/8.jpg">http://www.letarot.it/cgi-bin/pages/saggi/saggi%20iconologici/saggi%20iconologici%20i/21%20-%20mondo/8.jpg</a>), and one from the cardmaker Hautot in Rouen of the early 18th century (at right above, from <a href="http://a-tarot.eu/p/jan-11/bv/b-21.jpg">http://a-tarot.eu/p/jan-11/bv/b-21.jpg</a>). 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. </p><p>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 </p><p></p><p>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!<br />
<br />
He also offers an "Egyptian connection": a passage in the 2nd century Latin writer Apuleius's <i>Metamorphoses</i> (also known as the<i> Golden Ass</i>) 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):<br /></p><blockquote class="tr_bq">
"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?</blockquote>
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 <i>Agathadaemon</i> on the first card, as the reward for following his precepts.<br />
<br />
<b>THIS ANALYSIS GENERALIZED, AND THE REST OF THE INTRODUCTION </b><br />
<br />
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):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
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.</div>
</blockquote>
And, after discussing Christian elements in the Devil card (p. 18):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
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).</div>
</blockquote>
In the remainder of the Introduction, Decker talks about the possibility of cabalist influence on the early tarot. He says (p. 19)<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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?</blockquote>
And:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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 <i>De Occulta Philosophia</i> (Cologne 1533). He makes no mention of Tarot cards.</blockquote><p>But nobody mentioned tarot cards in <i>any</i> 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. <br />
<br />
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, <i>Kabbalah in Italy</i>, pages referenced at <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=T_kD_cr-VeoC&q=Libro+de+la+Scala#v=snippet&q=Lazzarelli&f=false">http://books.google.com/books?id=T_kD_cr-VeoC&q=Libro+de+la+Scala#v=snippet&q=Lazzarelli&f=false</a>. 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 (<i>Kabbalah in Italy</i>, Ch. 19, especially <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=T_kD_cr-VeoC&q=Libro+de+la+Scala#v=onepage&q=Juan%20Manuel&f=false">http://books.google.com/books?id=T_kD_cr-VeoC&q=Libro+de+la+Scala#v=onepage&q=Juan%20Manuel&f=false</a>). 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.<br />
<br />
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 (<a href="http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/">http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/</a>). 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. <br />
<br />
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.</p><p>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 <i>Table of Cebitus</i> was being popularized, it is hard to believe that this allegory would have been the instigation. There is enough of interest to read on.</p>Michael S Howardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488567669455421279noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-230755636669834672.post-43156734418660546062014-04-28T20:12:00.016-07:002022-10-12T03:07:13.518-07:00Chapters 1 and 2<b>CHAPTER ONE: THE TEXTS </b><br />
<br />
Chapter One continues the discussion initiated in the Introduction about the orientation of the original tarot as grounded in Greek and Roman authors, with a special emphasis on their writing pertaining to Egypt. All of this chapter is reproduced at Amazon's website except pp. 37, 40 and 43. Of these, only p. 43 contains essential information, on Horapollo' <i>Hieroglyhica</i>; I will summarize that information when I get to Decker's Ch. 3, in which he deals particularly with that text <br />
<br />
Decker's main subject in this chapter is the word "Thoth", which for the 18th century authors de Mellet and Etteilla was so intimately connected with the tarot that they even called the tarot "The Book of Thoth". Thoth is in fact mentioned in Plato's <span style="font-style: italic;">Phaedrus</span>, a text he said in the Introduction (p. 9) was available in Italy from 1423; Decker cites Michael J. B. Allen, <span style="font-style: italic;">Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer</span>, p. 5. I would add that although the part of that dialogue on the Charioteer, 246A-254e, was translated in the 1420s, by no less a figure than Leonardo Bruni, chancellor of Florence. The part mentioning Thoth, 274C-D, was not, until Ficino's translations of the 1460s. However enough people would have known the Greek text in the cities of the early tarot that its unavailability in Latin is not important. Plato writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I heard, then, that at Naucratis, in Egypt,
was one of the ancient gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird
is called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. He it
was who [274d] invented numbers and arithmetic and geometry and
astronomy, also draughts and dice, and, most important of all, letters. </blockquote>
Plato, in turn was supposed to have studied in Egypt. Decker writes, p. 27:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
According to Clement of Alexandria, Plato was the pupil of Sechuphis of On [footnote 1: Clement of Alexandria [Titus Flavius Clemens],<span style="font-style: italic;"> Stromata, I, </span>15, 69. Plutarch names Sechuphis of On as one of Plato's Egyptian tutors [footnote 2:<span style="font-style: italic;"> On the Daimon of Socrates</span>, 578].</div>
</blockquote>
After Plato the <i>Corpus Hermeticum</i> combined Egyptian religion with Greek
mythology and philosophy, he says. The <i>Corpus</i> arrived in Italy in the 1460s, Decker
says, p. 29 (actually, 1460 precisely, per Wikipedia), too late to have
influenced the original tarot. However Latin intermediaries were enough to have
influenced the imagery and order of the original trumps. This is a promisory note on which he will have to deliver.<br />
<br />
In the rest of the chapter, Decker gives a brief rundown of numerous references to either Thoth or "the Egyptian Mercury" in numerous classical works available in Latin, Christian as well as pagan: Cicero, Manilius, Apuleius, Tertullian, Cyprian,
the Latin <i>Aesclepius</i>, Lactantius, Julius Firmicus Maternus, Ammianus (p. 37, omitted by Amazon),
Augustine, and Martianus Capella (partly omitted by Amazon). Then he turns to Hieroglyphs. discussed in Greek by Clement of Alexandria, Plotinus,
and finally "Horapollo", author of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Hieroglyphica</span> (omitted by Amazon). This is actually only a partial list. Others are conveniently quoted at the end of Boas's translation of Horapollo. He does not document that all of these authors were known in early 15th
century Italy, but I have checked and all were except possibly Clement,
for whom there is no evidence until Ficino's time (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=2457172">http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=2457172</a>).<br />
<br />
<b>In sum:</b> this is a promising introduction. <br />
<br />
<b>CHAPTER TWO: THE SUITS</b><br />
<br />
Chapter
Two discusses the evolution of the suit cards. He says that they
evolved from dice via domino cards, 21 of them for each combination of
two dice, which the Chinese duplicated and reduplicated to make decks of
cards, but without suits. From this point on Amazon stops giving us a free look at Decker's book.<br />
<br />
The next deck known is that of the Moguls in Central Asia,
which the Muslims introduced from Persia into India; it had 8 suits of
10 number cards plus 2 courts. Research leading to this conclusion was presented by Michael Dummett in his 1980 <i>Game of Tarot</i>. Decks also went west to the Mamelukes in
Egypt, probably after the lifting of a papal embargo on Muslim goods in
1344; at that time the Mameluks were favored by Italian shippers (p.
50). Their deck had 4 suits with 3 courts (p. 46f).<br />
<br />
Decker does not mention where else cards went, since his focus is on Italy. They of course went other places in the Mediterranean , e.g. Marseille, Barcelona, In Spain, Muslims still controlled the South, and many
Muslims lived in Christian territory. They were also found in Northern Europe in the 14th century, but with a very different look. Dummett's focus on Central Asia offers a possible explanation for this difference.<br />
<br />
Given that the cards had already spread to Central Asia, it seems to me that it cannot be excluded that cards went to Northern Europe by a different route than via the Mediterranean. In the 1340s the Plague raged throughout the Mediterranean area, as it did through much of Northern Europe. However Prague was relatively free of it, and would likely have preferred cards that had not passed through Plague-infested areas (on beliefs about the relationship between paper and the spread of the Plague, there is a line in a late 15th century sonnet by Luigi Pulci of Florence).That would explain why German cards have a very different look than those of the Mediterranean, with types of trees rather than the Italian suits of cups, coins, staves, and swords.<br />
<br />
Also, the Mamelukes themselves had come from between the Black and Caspian Seas. That is rather close to the trade routes through Central Asia. They might have brought the cards with them.<br />
<br />
None of this is discussed by Decker, but it seems consistent with his presentation.<br />
<br />
Decker advances a
theory about hidden astrological significances in ordinary cards,
starting with the Mogul suits, which he hypothesize happened when the 8
suits reached the city of Harran in what is now eastern Turkey, a city that he says had retained its worship of the
Greco-Roman gods and something of Hermetism (p. 52). Decker assumes they
had the <i>Corpus Hermeticum</i>; but checking his source, Copenaver's translation with commentary of the <i>Corpus</i>, I see that it speaks only of "Hermetic
magical practices" there. Decker says that in Hermetism Thoth was associated
with the Moon, as opposed to Selene, Diana, and other female
goddesses. I am not sure where Decker gets that information.. It is not in the<i> Corpus Hemeticum</i> that I can find, I see that association only in Copenhaver's notes to his translation, as a
fact about the historical Thoth in Egypt and not something in the
Hermetica. There is in these dialogues, to be sure, the pupil "Tat", but he is hardly the god
himself, nor is he associated with the moon. I have searched the ancient secondary sources as well, but of
course not everything. Plutarch begins his <i>Isis and Osiris</i> by relating a gambling game between Hermes (i.e., Thoth) and the Moon, in which he wins a large portion of her light, originally similar to that of the Sun. That does not make him a moon god.<br />
<br />
For Decker the 8 suits were each given one of the
planets, plus the "Part of Fortune", which in astrology had to do with
material fortune. His argument is to compare the
colors of the Mogul suits with those associated with these entities in
writings about the temples of the gods in Harran (p. 58); he finds a
close match and thus identifies each of the eight with the corresponding
astrological entity (p. 56). Somehow the suits were reduced to four,
those planetary entities associated with fire (the Sun, Mars) and water (the Moon, Venus) which are the
first elements created in the Hermetic creation myth. He gives no
reference for either the planetary assignments or the myth. But the assignments are those of Renaissance astrology (see https://www.renaissanceastrology.com/planets.html). And the creation myth might be that of the beginning of the <i>Poimandres</i> (p. 1 of Copenhaver's <span style="font-style: italic;">Hermetica), </span>in which the narrator describes a vision bestowed on him by Poimandres, the "mind of sovereignty", i.e. the <i>nous</i> (mind) of Platonism and other systems:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I saw an endless vision in which everything became light - clear and joyful - and in seeing the vision I came to love it. After a little while, darkness arose separately and descended - fearful and gloomy- coiling sinuously so that it looked to me like a (snake). Then the darkness changed into something of a watery nature, indescribably agitated and smoking like a fire; it produced an unspeakable wailing roar. </blockquote>
Actually, water is not being mentioned as such; it is fire, of a watery nature. But perhaps this is close enough, since indeed "water" and "fire" are mentioned before "air" and "earth".<br />
<br />
Decker then says that Thoth,
the inventor of writing according to Plato and associated with the ibis, shown in
images as a scribe or architect with a writing or measuring stick,
became in Europe the deity associated with Batons, He poses
the <i>Picatrix</i> as an intermediary here: one of its talismans bears the
image of ibis-headed Thoth with his measuring stick, although the
depiction has been reduced to "a man with the head of a bird leaning on a
cane" (p. 55).<br />
<br />
There is actually a similar reference that was more accessible than the <i>Picatrix,</i> in <i><span style="font-style: italic;">The Marriage of Mercury and Philology</span></i> (II, 174; Stahl & Johnson translation, p. 56)<i>, </i>where a divination-related ibis with a staff is described<i>, </i>as part of a description of a guest at the wedding<i>:</i> I put the most relevant parts in
bold:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
There came also a girl of
beauty and of extreme modesty, the guardian and protector of the
Cyllenian's home, by name Themis or Astraea or Erigone [translator's
note: This figure is identified by Hyginus (<span style="font-style: italic;">Astronomica</span>
1.25) with the zodiacal sign Virgo]; she carried in her hand stalks of
grain and an ebony tablet engraved with this image: In the middle of it
was <span style="font-weight: bold;">that bird of Egypt which the Egyptians call an ibis. It was wearing a broad-brimmed hat</span>, and it had a most beautiful head and mouth, which was caressed by a pair of serpents entwined; under them was <span style="font-weight: bold;">a gleaming staff</span>,
gold-headed, gray in the middle and black at the foot; under the ibis'
right foot was a tortoise and a threatening scorpion and on its left a
goat. The goat was driving a rooster into a contest to find out which of
the <span style="font-weight: bold;">birds of divination</span> was the gentler. The ibis wore on its front the name of a Memphitic month.</div>
</blockquote>
The
other astrological associations, he theorizes, were the Sun for Coins,
Venus for Cups, and Mars for Swords (p. 62). So there are two fire signs
and two water signs.The broad-brimmed hat of course will be of interest for the image of the "Bagatella" on the early tarot cards.<br />
<br />
How would the Europeans have managed to
learn the astrological symbolism? Decker says that the Mamelukes
retained the symbolism in their suit cards. The polo sticks,
corresponding to Batons, appear between two crescent moons (p. 58); also
the sticks sometimes end in dragons. In astrology the head of the
dragon and the tail of the dragon are two "nodes" of the moon (p. 59). This argument of course assumes that Harran used the pre-Hellenic Egyptian association of Thoth with the moon.<br />
<br />
In the case of Cups, Venus is a water sign, and in the Mameluke deck in
the Topkapi museum, ducks are associated with Cups. Also the suit of
Harps in the Mogul deck are green, which is the tint of copper when it
tarnishes, the metal of Venus. Musical instruments and cups were
associated with Venus in Mameluke art (no references given). Finally:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The Mamelukes certainly depicted Mars with a sword.<br />
They knew that gold (as in the Coins) was associated with the Sun.</div>
</blockquote>
More elaboration, at least some references, would have been nice. Green could have been associated with Venus in another way, as the color of renewal, new life and growth after the winter's cold. The spring is Venus's season.<br />
<b> </b><br />
<b>CRITIQUE OF DECKER ON SUITS, AND OF HIS EXTENSION OF THE SAME IDEA TO THE FOUR COURTS </b><br />
<br />
Looking on the Web for discussions of
Mogul/Moghul cards, especially at the pages in "Andy's Playing Cards", I
see a variety of suits and colors, including an astrological deck of 9
suits, including the seven planets and both the head and the tail of the
Dragon (<a class="postlink" href="http://a_pollett.tripod.com/cards56.htm">http://a_pollett.tripod.com/cards56.htm</a>).
The colors for the various planet-cards pictured do not match Decker's
assignments; but the mere existence of such a deck is enough to
give Decker what he needs for an assignment of some Mogul decks' suits
to planets. On Wikipedia, I see a description of a Moghul deck of 8
suits with 12 cards each at <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganjifa">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganjifa</a>;
but nothing else is said about it. Wikipedia gives a link to the Ambraser
Hofjagdspiel and Hofamterspiel. I am not sure why, but these decks both have 12 cards per suit (in 4 suits: 9 number cards and 3 courts).<br />
<br />
There is something else that supports Decker's thesis that Europeans
learned the planetary associations from the Muslims, orally and by what
was on the cards. The theory corresponds to some things de Mellet in 1781 says about the
suit cards, presented as though he is reporting from his own observations or what
he has heard from others. On two of the Aces, reporting on Spanish names
for the cards (I am using J. Karlin's translation in <span style="font-style: italic;">Rhapsodies of the Bizarre</span>, pp. 55-57; the original is at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherches_sur_les_Tarots">http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherch ... les_Tarots</a>): <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
III. <span style="font-style: italic;">Names of various Cards, preserved by the Spanish</span><br />
One-eyed or the Ace of coins,<span style="font-style: italic;"> Phoebea lampadis instar.,</span> consecrated to Apollo....<br />
The Serpent or the Ace of batons (Ophion) famous symbol & sacred to the Egyptians.</div>
</blockquote>
We saw the serpent before, in the <i>Poimandres</i>, where it was watery fire. De Mellet continues, in section IV:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The Ace of Swords, consecrated to Mars....<br />
The ace of cups indicates a unique joy, that one by oneself possesses.</div>
</blockquote>
And for the suits (sections IV-V):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The Cups in general announced happiness, & the Coins wealth.<br />
The
Batons meant for Agriculture prognosticated its more or less abundant
harvests, the things which should have occurred in or that regarded the
countryside.<br />
They [the Batons] appear mixed of good & of evil...<br />
All
the Swords presage only evil, mainly those which imprinted by an odd
number, still bear a bloody sword. The only sign of victory, the crowned
sword, is in this suit the sign of a happy event.<br />
...<br />
The Hearts, (the Cups), portend happiness.<br />
The Clubs, (the Coins), wealth.<br />
The Spades, (the Swords), misfortune.<br />
The Diamonds, (the Batons), indifference & the countryside.</div>
</blockquote>
The
Moon is appropriate for Batons and the countryside, because (a)
cudgels are the weapon allowed to peasants; (b) the Serpent was indeed
sacred to the Egyptians, as far as was known, in that authorities such as Horapollo had it as
a symbol of the "Almighty" and "Spirit" (<span style="font-style: italic;">Hieroglyphica</span> I, 64); (c) the Moon both waxes and wanes, and so could be seen as
bringing both good and evil; (d) the Moon is important to farmers for
the planting cycle. This account has the virtue of not depending on
Thoth as the deity of the Moon, as the serpent was associated with the
supernatural in many traditions, while Thoth is not associated with
serpents in any ancient text available in the Renaissance that I have
found. So one explanation for de Mellet's
characterizations would be as a survival from the Moguls through the
Muslims. However there other ways in which these associations could have developed.<br />
<br />
According to Decker, the Europeans, when they
introduced Queens so as to make four courts, also associated the courts
with these same four deities: the Sun for Kings, Venus for Queens, Mars
for Knights, and the Moon/Thoth for Pages (p. 66). With astrological
input from both the suit and the rank, the combination of planets can
induce conflict or not, according to standard medieval astrological
associations (p. 68). <br />
<br />
For the four that have the same planet
each way (suit and court), Decker sees astrological symbolism visually
in the cards. The Tarot de Marseille King of Coins "sits with legs
crossed in a meditative pose, which bespeaks an Apollonian person" (p.
68). He adds that the pose can be traced back through medieval
portrayals of saints to ancient portrayals of poets and philosophers.<br />
<br />
Actually the King of Cups also has legs crossed in the Tarot de
Marseille (in the PBM, Batons), all except Cups in the Budapest cards
(p. 277 Kaplan vol. 2), as well as the Emperor (Tarot de Marseille and
CY) and the Hanged Man in the trumps. Also, Panofsky says
that in the Renaissance crossed legs symbolized the detachment necessary
for judges (<span style="font-style: italic;">Life and Art of Albrecht Durer</span>, p. 78):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
This attitude, denoting a calm and superior state of mind, was actually prescribed to judges in ancient German law-books.</div>
</blockquote>
It is true that the image that he is commenting on, a Durer Christ, has solar symbolism top and bottom:<br />
<img alt="Image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCMiUQAQrqFnvMD0eVwuvDfAsEl4vNjxkf_WCiCq9fVSxZj2P3SDB6bc891pE5882IXbABCw5hrdd2DbKWCd_0Cfnr-Y7HYfr9ZCISZIrFP-CVTvZp2r0DAza4-QE8v3XfL1L95rPkQsY/s400/scan0014.jpg" /><br />
But the crossed legs are not, that I can find, associated with Apollo in particular. It conveys Christ's role as a judge, at least according to Panofsky. Christ was also associated with the sun.<br />
<br />
Decker continues<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The
Queen of Cups holds a vessel with a stem marked by a kind of socket,
round and red, like an apple. This recalls Venus, the most amorous
goddess, who received an apple as the prize in a legendary beauty
contest.</div>
</blockquote><p>
See <a class="postlink" href="http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-images/XM10007343/Tarot-Card-Reyne-de-Coupe-Queen-of-Cups">http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-ima ... en-of-Cups</a>. This detail is absent from any extant 15th century cards, and it is a forced interpretation of a small detail in any case.<br />
<br />
He adds, "The armored Knight of Swords would qualify as Mars". But <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span>
the Swords' males have armor, in the early cards. In Batons, he says, the
Page "wears a distinctive cap (Phrygian) which may indicate a
traveler (therefore a ward of the moon)". I don't think it's really
Phrygian, which twists forward at the end (<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_cap">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_cap</a>; compare with <a class="postlink" href="http://www.planetlight.com/td/content/page-wands">http://www.planetlight.com/td/content/page-wands</a>), and in any case none of the early cards have him with such a cap. And what is there about the Pages - not just Batons, but any of them - to associate them with Thoth and the Moon?<br />
<br />
So it is hard to believe that there is planetary symbolism in the courts, beyond what might be in their suits.<br />
<br />
Decker
uses his theory about the courts to explain why in some card games the
Coins and Cups are ranked Ace, Two, etc. in trick-taking ability, while
in the other suits it goes Ten, Nine, etc (p. 70). He says that the Sun
and Venus were considered "good" astrological signs and Mars and the
Moon "bad" ones. If the power of the suits starts with the Ace, then in
Coins and Cups the Ace is the "best", but in the others, it is "worst."
<br />
<br />
It seems to me that this same result would come about independently of astrology, if
war and violence (swords and sticks) are "bad", while wealth and
piety/pleasure are "good". </p><p>On the other hand, if one is in a war, 10 swords or sticks is better than 1. And a little wealth (Coins) is better than a lot, because with more one gets too attached to it, and likewise for the pleasures of Venus (Cups). This is an argument that in fact was made in the 15th century, by Marziano da Tortona who explained that the orders associated with Venus (pleasures) and Juno (riches) should be associated with the suits where the Ace was high, and those with Jupiter (virtue) and Athena (virginity, i.e. piety) with those where the 10 was high. (See here <i>A Treatise on the Deification of Sixteen Heroes by Marziano da San Alosio,</i> trans. Caldwell and Ponzi, p. 25, 3rd to 11th lines, in Google Books. I have discussed this section of the work at ). He had different suit-signs than the usual ones (different species of birds), but it is the principle that is of interest. Decker's assumption that the Ace is always strongest, because it is associated with the One, is true only if that is indeed the principle at work in all four suits, and for Marziano at least it wasn't true for any of them. By the 18th century, it was a different story.<br />
<br />
Another thing is that it is not at all clear that the change in court cards from Mameluke to European was simply from 3 to 4. In actual fact, European decks other than tarot often kept at three. Moreover, John of Reidenfall wrote of decks with 6 court cards per suit. The Cary-Yale tarot also had 6 court cards per suit. In any case, the most obvious reason for Queens, as opposed to an astrological one (or a numerological one, which Decker also advances), is that Queens were an essential part of the medieval court: without them, there would be no hereditary successor to the King.<br />
<br />Aside from de Mellet, there is no particular reason for associating suits or courts with planets. Cups did not have to be associated with Venus to connote happiness. The Ace of Cups on the earliest cards was a baptismal font. Happiness is in one's association with God. A Renaissance image for water showed a monk with his rosary beads, which also promote calmness (see below, a 15th century illustration of the four humors). Batons are the weapons allowed to the peasants. That is a good enough reason for associating them with the countryside. One Renaissance image suggested association with falconry; the hunt was the aristocrats' notion of countryside, and of course birds associate to the element of air. Swords are weapons of the nobility and warfare, hence sadness - but also the weapon of vengeance. Coins are the tools of commerce and the measure of wealth - and again sadness, because "money can't buy happiness." <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtB6i4xMravqKaerxupZrpjUvcpveBdyI3ahDXdB0FtpKCR5sEvoIuywuhuQQQbMv6sQzFR6Iutt8hvTomG_d5cZ2nfgqV9iKWhtX5ULx685u_9EV4OBcFl4rUiW6i5fv-hL824K0ucZx2UY9GYQLusFK7yECewHcEljaC181oEDffT1edLg-f_G7b/s1200/4%20humors15thCent.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1200" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtB6i4xMravqKaerxupZrpjUvcpveBdyI3ahDXdB0FtpKCR5sEvoIuywuhuQQQbMv6sQzFR6Iutt8hvTomG_d5cZ2nfgqV9iKWhtX5ULx685u_9EV4OBcFl4rUiW6i5fv-hL824K0ucZx2UY9GYQLusFK7yECewHcEljaC181oEDffT1edLg-f_G7b/w640-h480/4%20humors15thCent.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>Yet astrology was well respected long before de Mellet, and especially in the Renaissance. If one were to associate suits with planets, it would be logical to associate Mars with swords, coins with the Sun (as round and golden, however from their association with commerce Mercury would also be possible), cups with Venus (as the goddess of pleasure and longing, both spiritual and otherwise), and Batons, as the weapon of the peasants, with the Moon, which governs the planting cycle (although here, Mercury would also be possible, since he carries a staff with two serpents on it). If the Mamelukes associated suits with particular planets, perhaps these associations passed on the Europeans. But it is hard to say one way or the other. I have found no evidence in Europe before de Mellet.<br />
<br />
<b>In sum:</b> there are some interesting ideas here about the associations of suits to planets, but they are weak on evidence. The idea that courts are associated with planets, too, is possible, but only because of who they are, not because of any associations before they reached Europe. Planetary symbolism, as in popular "children of the planets" illustrations, was omnipresent in the Renaissance.</p>Michael S Howardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488567669455421279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-230755636669834672.post-26467150503204608412014-04-28T20:12:00.015-07:002022-10-12T03:06:04.643-07:00Chapter 3: the Italian trumps<p><br />
Decker's Chapter Three begins with an account of Marziano's "game of the gods",
fairly straightforwardly derivative from the research of Franco Pratesi and Ross Caldwell, which Decker cites. This is a game designed in the 1420s by Milan court humanist Marziano da Tortona for Duke Filippo Maria Visconti, using 16 Greco-Roman gods and demigods allegorically representing the four categories of pleasures, virginities, riches, and virtues. Any of them outrank any of the four suits. They are also ranked among themselves, pleasures lowest and virtues highest, but also tied to the four suits as far as having to follow suit in the course of what in English is called a "trick", i.e. a round in which one person leads and the others have to follow suit if possible; the high card then takes the other cards, for scoring later. This is the first known game with a special trump suit.</p><p>He notes in passing that two of the suits increase in value as the numbers go up and in two it is the reverse (p. 75). "This counterpoise doubtless derives from the Mameluke practice. Here, however, it does not entail the Pythagorean interpretation (see chapter 2)." In other words, the only explanation of why the reversal occurred before de Mellet is non-Pythagorean. <br />
<br />
Then comes his defense of a 14 card original
sequence, expanded to 22 later (pp. 76-77). It is the familiar one
advanced tirelessly by "autorbis" (alias Lothar Teikmeier), <a href="http://trionfi.com/0/f/x/">http://trionfi.com/0/f/x/</a> and elsewhere, although without crediting him or his colleagues at trionfi.com. <br />
<br />
In favor of the original being 14, he cites, first, an order for 14 "figures" in Ferrara of Jan. 1, 1441; second, the
1442 order there for "triumphs" and the order there for five decks of 70 cards in 1457 (4x14
+ 14 trumps). Decker does not cite sources; but for the documents,, see again trionfi.com. The 1441 reference to "14 figures" is in Ferrara, done by a Ferrarese artist, albeit as a gift to a Milanese. The 1457 reference is also from Ferrara.<br />
<br />
Despite this location, Decker opts for Milan as where
this 14 card original tarot was invented, apparently on the basis of his preference for
the "C" (Lombard) order of the triumphs, reflected in the Tarot of Marseille
(Tarot de Marseille), of which he holds--without argument, except that it fits the interpretations in the later parts of his book--that a "prototype" was the first
tarot, at first with just the first 14 cards, then the other 8 added by 1465. </p><p>So for Decker, the 14 original cards are just
the first 14 of the Tarot de Marseille, ending with Temperance. I would guess that this view is original with him.<br />
<br />
Decker adds that the 14 card original was first proposed by him in 1974 (<span style="font-style: italic;">Journal of the International Playing Card Society</span> 3:1, Aug. 1974, pp. 24ff). However a look at his article shows that the
number 14 there is mostly coincidence. He was speaking there of the Cary-Yale--a deck he hardly mentions in his book--on the grounds that if there were 16 cards per suit, as there surely were, it would take 14 more
to add up to 78. which is the number of cards in the standard tarot deck later. (The reason for 16 is that the surviving cards have female Pages and/or Knights in every suit.) In that essay he also considered--but did not endorse--the idea that the next Lombard deck with a significant number of surviving cards, the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo (also known as the Colleoni-Bagliati), with 14; the problem for Decker is that since the
Cary-Yale had a Strength and a World card, it would seem likely they
would have been in the PMB, too. </p><p></p><p>Teikemeier, on the other hand, did and still does consider that the PMB did have just 14 trump cards, to go with the 14 cards per suit in that deck. As for why there is not a Strength card, he proposes that this was a deck without virtue cards at all. Even though there appears to be a Justice card, it has a knight on a white horse in the background; he points out that Triumphs of Fame also frequently had people holding scales: it is Fame in fighting for justice. It replaces the World card in the Cary-Yale, which in Teikemeier's view represented Fame in that deck, identifiable by the trumpet she is holding, consistent with the crown she holds in her other hand and the lone knight at the center of the scene below. For his presentation see <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="IT" style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=17682#p17682"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;">https://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=17682#p17682</span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; line-height: 107%; text-decoration: none;">.</span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
In
the current book, Decker does not maintain that the PMB had 14 cards;
he hardly mentions that deck. He does not mention the Cary-Yale of c.
1441-1445 either. Instead, he insists that the original was a prototype of the first 14 trumps of the Tarot de Marseille,
probably coming out of Milan but maybe Ferrara, perhaps the "14 figures"
of Jan. 1, 1440, perhaps invented by Bianca Maria Sforza (p. 79).<br />
<br />
But why should we go from the "14 figures" of Jan. 1, 1440, to an assumption that these were based on a Milan deck? It may well be that there was a 14 trump deck in Ferrara but not in Milan. Why would a deck have 14 trumps as opposed to any other number? The only principle I can think of is that it matches the number of cards per suit; the trumps are a fifth suit. But Milan then might have had 16 suits per suit, as we see in the Cary-Yale deck of around that time. On the other hand, another old deck, called the "Brera-Brambilla" from
the same time as the Cary-Yale and in the same style, did have 14 cards
per suit. So it is possible that on the principle of the same number of cards in the fifth suit as in the others, there were usually 14 cards per suit in Milan, and the Cary-Yale was an exception.<br />
<br />
However, the number of cards in the fifth suit might have been determined on some other principle , giving it even more cards; Dummett suggested as one possibility: the principle of the fifth suit having 50 per cent more cards than the other suits; that would give the Cary-Yale 24 trumps (i.e. 14 + 7 trumps with 14 cards per suit, or 16 + 8 trumps with 16 card suits), that is, the regular trumps plus the 3 theological virtues, which we know were part of that deck. <br />
<br />
Likewise, the 70 card decks can be explained as 22 special cards (trumps plus Fool) plus 4 suits of 12 cards each, as Franco Pratesi has suggested. Some regular decks did have 12 cards per suit then. Also, there are data suggesting other numbers. In 1423 (see trionfi.com), there is an order for 13 figures. In a deck with 13 cards per suit, 13 trumps would be a natural number. These 13 might also be something else, ordinary suit cards, for example. We have no idea.<br />
<br />
There are also problems about the priority of a 14 card deck of the specifically Tarot de Marseille variety. First, there is no evidence of anything even like the Tarot de Marseille in imagery before around 1500, in the Cary Sheet (and perhaps some of the "Sforza Castle" cards, given that one of them is a 2 of Coins dated 1497).<br />
<br />
Second, everything we do know about the 15th century tarot counts against Decker's theory. The extant court cards mostly do not look like the TdM. Most of the surviving trumps also look rather different. Most significantly, the last two trumps of the TdM, Judgment and World, resemble cards that are extant in almost all the existing early decks: the Cary-Yale has both, the PMB has Judgment, the Charles VI has both, the Catania cards have the World. If these cards were in all those decks, from various cities and with various designs, surely they would have been part of all the decks, at least at those times, and probably part of the original tarot. But they are not among the first 14 of the Tarot de Marseille.<br />
<br />
Decker is of course aware that the surviving early cards do not look much like the TdM. Those were luxury decks, he says, and did not have to look like the common woodblock cards, He dos not address the issue of the Judgment and World cards. He would have to say of them, as far as I can tell, that these were in the luxury decks (in both Milan and Florence, as it happens) but not the woodcut ones--until of course they were, in the early 16th century. I have to say that such a reply seems to me woefully inadequate, given the existence of the Judgment and World cards in all the decks. <br />
<br />
One argument he gives for the
priority of the Tarot de Marseille is correspondences between the Tarot
de Marseille and Milanese fashion and heraldry:<br />
</p><blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
In the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tarot de Marseille</span>,
the trump figures wear costumes that are mostly in early Renaissance
style (belted jerkins, tights, robes, high-waisted gowns).</div>
</blockquote>
Also,
the Ace of Swords' blade is (p. 78f):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
encircled with a crown that is draped with
two fronds, palm and laurel...The Viscontis adopted the motif of crown
and fronds as a heraldic device.</blockquote>
It seems to me that the most these might show
is that the Tarot de Marseille is descended from the decks sponsored by
the Visconti-Sforza rulers; there may have been many changes along the
way, as well as costumes deliberately intended to look old and
venerable. It may well be that the Tarot de Marseille is older than as
we think, i.e. late 15th or early 16th century. If so, more argument is needed. But even then, it would probably not be the
beginning<br />
<br />
<b>THE FANTI FRONTISPIECE OF 1526 </b><br />
<br />
Later in the chapter Decker gives an interpretation of another frontispiece, this one from Venice 1526,
Fanti's <span style="font-style: italic;">Triompho di Fortuna</span>, a
fortune-telling manual based on 21 outcomes, as in the throw of twice diece; it seems to show numerous
tarot subjects and suggests to him that tarot cards were probably used
for the same thing, fortune-telling (p. 90).<br />
<br />
Besides Decker's and Place's discussions, I have found two scholarly articles on this frontispiece, a detailed one by Robert Eisler in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes</span> for 1947, pp. 155-159, and a note by Detlev Baron von Hadeln in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Burlington Magazine</span> 1926, p. 301, about the drawing that preceded the woodcut.I will preface my discussion with a summary of these articles.<br />
<br />
About
the drawing, it is important to realize that Fanti is "Fanti Ferrarese"
(even in the words on the frontispiece) and was a citizen of Ferrara.
The drawing is in the Ferrarese style, in particular that of Dosso
Dossi, von Hadeln says, and Eisler doesn't disagree. The woodcut, to be
sure, is in the Venetian Titianesque style. But the whole project is initially
Ferrarese. Dossi is of the more enigmatic of Renaissance artists.<br />
<br />
Here is the frontispiece . Eisler
identifies the river as the Tiber and the city as Rome. He sees the
frontispiece as a warning to Pope Clement VII that he sits precariously
between good and bad fortune (p. 157):<br />
:<img height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS2RzFHJwVNnm25s80QXVYFK3ZpI9dUKj2mgF01ugY2rCb8U_BPKYx6dpWxHr6Jlqyk_3txoMSTZbm48Dx8aOFN7rl1ldIqClb1ZbiX6LuWTpvIwm3SwAdSuyx5PDO8Icbear6pAPIAPc/s640/Decker3-1.JPG" width="520" /><br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
,,it is remarkable how daringly Sigismondo Fanti represents the insecurity of the Vicar of Christ's position at the summit or <span style="font-style: italic;">Medium Coelum</span> of the slowly revolving sphere...<br />
...The female figure on the left is, of course the <span style="font-style: italic;">Bona Fortuna</span> of the system (Agatha Tyche), turning the handle of the world-axis upward, the other is the <span style="font-style: italic;">Malus Genius</span>
(malos daimon) turning the handle down and thus threatening to
precipitate the Pope from his exalted position at the apex of his power
into the abyss of misery he was to experience when he was besieged in
the <span style="font-style: italic;">Castello S. Angelo</span> while Rome was sacked and plundered by the <span style="font-style: italic;">soldatesca</span> of the rival Catholic great powers.</div>
</blockquote>
The
pope at that time was severely threatened by both the King of France
and the Holy Roman Emperor, and in fact Rome was sacked by the soldiers
of the Emperor in 1527, shortly after the book's publication. Eisler says that
such an action was not hard to foresee, "in view of the follies
committed by the Pope and the cold fury of the Roman Emperor Charles V and
of his Most Christian Majesty the King of France" (p. 157).<br />
<br />
Accordingly,
the muscular man with the dice is the boy (or slave, as they were
called "boy") in a quote of Heraclitus in one of Lucian's stories, as
Eisler relates: <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
...there the
weeping Heraclitus is asked, "What is the Aeon?" and he replies "a boy
playing drafts putting (things) together and taking (them) apart,"
assembling, dividing."</div>
</blockquote>
And the astrologer next to him is Fanti himself (p. 157).<br />
<br />
As
for the city, Eisler admits that Dossi's drawing had no Pantheon; also,
if there was such a clock tower in Rome, it was not famous like the <span style="font-style: italic;">Torre dell' Orologio</span> in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Piazza di san Marco</span>
in Venice, where the book was printed (p. 156). The boats and expanse
of water better fit the Venetian lagoon then the Tiber, which had
bridges.<br />
<br />
Decker asks us to see this frontispiece in the context of the tarot. He does not mention the Ferrarese source (instead, he cites a source saying that the originator was from Siena). He points to various aspects of the engraving that suggest tarot figures. There is the Pope, of course, and on one side the Devil and the other an Angel (of the "Angel" card, as the TdM Judgment card was called), with the World between them, held up by Atlas, as in fact was shown on some World cards. The globe has a dual significance, however, due to the cranks, which turned the Wheel of Fortune in medieval illustrations. On either side of the Pope is a young lady, which Decker says is similar to the situation on the TdM Love card, a choice between virtue (on the left) and pleasure (on the right). Beneath the Devil is a Tower, and on the tower a clock-like circle (with the Roman numbers from I to XXIV) with the picture of the Sun in the middle. Then there are the two lower figures, a muscular man holding one of a pair of dice and an astrologer with calipers and an astrolabe.<br />
<br />
I would add that astrologers were associated with the stars, hence there is a reference to that card, or else the Moon card, which in some versions, including ones in Ferrara, had just such astrologers.<br />
<br />
In addition, this frontispiece seems to me of significance as similar in content to the 1521-23 Basel one, except for a few changes
dictated by the nature of what is inside the book. That is, the city (Rome or Venice)
represents life in this world and the people entering the gate at the bottom are souls
entering life (similar, that is, to the naked souls entering the gate of life in the other frontispiece). They do so at particular times as indicated by the clock
in the tower, from which the astrologer can construct a horoscope. They
are faced with a choice between virtue and vice; one woman pointing
down is "pleasure" and the one pointing up is "virtue". The Pope looks
steadfastly at virtue, so he is a reliable guide. Yes, the two figures at the axle are an angel and a devil; they
are in a contest to control the wheel. In the world, sometimes vice
wins, sometimes virtue. the words "virtue" and "pleasure" apply to the
wheel-turners as well as the two women. This is an application of the
principles of "contempt of the world" ethics, which I have discussed at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=404&p=14117#p14117">viewtopic.php?f=23&t=404&p=14117#p14117</a>). It is a matter of what is good and bad for the soul, not the body.<br />
<br />
The two figures in the
foreground, the astrologer and the dice-thrower, in contrast, are separated from the city. For the dice-thrower, Place (<span style="font-style: italic;">Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination</span>,
p. 118) suggests Hermes, as the "god of runners and athletes, who ruled
over divination by dice and lots". Eisler (p. 158) mentions Hermes in a
different context, that of Plutarch's <span style="font-style: italic;">Isis and Osiris</span>,
as the Egyptian god, also called Thoth, who gambled with the moon
goddess, Selene. That seems to me at least as relevant as Eisler's boy of
Heraclitus.<br />
<br />
Decker characterizes the two figures as randomness
and predestination. Place considers them to be the two ways of using
the book to tell fortunes: one way is to throw two dice, and the other
is to go by the hour in which the casting of the fortune is initiated (indicated on the clock).
Inside the book is a series of tables, all with 21 rows; by which one
works one's way toward a verse that is the fortune.<br />
<br />
It seems to me that the time the fortune is being told is comparable
to the time of birth in a standard horoscope. It is a matter of using
the regular, predictable motions of the stars to infer what their
influence will be on human affairs. The procedure is like using the
phases of the moon to predict the tides: from the macrocosm of things
beyond us we infer the microcosm of the world in which we live. <br />
<br />
If
so, the contrast is not between randomness and predestination. It is
not even between randomness and order. It is between two ways of learning about the likely future (not predestined: that would be against Church doctrine).<br />
<br />
The Greeks in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Iliad</span> cast lots to determine the gods' choice of who to send on a dangerous
mission; they reasoned that the gods controlled who would get the
shortest straw and were making their will known. In <span style="font-style: italic;">The God of Socrates</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Apuleius Rhetorical Works</span> p. 309), Apuleius relates that Socrates would consult his <span style="font-style: italic;">daemon</span>,
or "guardian genius", before he undertook anything. If it said no, he
took it as a warning. The Genius could see further than he could. It seems to
me that a Hermetic Christian would have seen dice in the same way
(regardless of the fulminations of the Franciscan and Dominican
preachers) as warriors in the Iliad saw the casting of lots, or more
philosophically, Socrates and the signs from his <span style="font-style: italic;">daimon</span>,
as possible means to understanding God's will, leading
him upward. In a similar way, it is apparently random at what hour and
day a person is born, but it is also a way of knowing God's will. And just as the
astrologer can learn from the time of birth what is in store for the
person, so can one learn from the lot-book what is in store for the
person casting dice. <br />
<br />
So I agree with Place that the two figures are essentially equivalent, merely representing two ways of getting to the same place, one by using the hour and the other by using the dice. Both are expressions of the "good genius" that we also saw in the Tablet of Cebes,
but in the sense of Providence or a guardian daemon. The only difference is that in the
1521-23 book, the plan is "one size fits all". In this illustration of 1526, it is more differentiated, tied to a particular person throwing dice or consulting the
book at a particular time, with 21 possibilities. It is a true casting
of lots, whereas the Holbein and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tabule Cebetis</span> isn't.<br />
<br />
Now
for the payout: what does all this say about the tarot? There is a
Devil, a winged representative of Virtue, a Choice of Hercules with
poses similar to the Tarot de Marseille, a Pope, a Wheel, and an Atlas
with the sky on his shoulders, as appears on a few decks. The astrologer
is like on the Ferrara Moon card; a Sun appears on the clock, which is
on a Tower; and there are Stars on the globe. The Pope, while a card in his own right, sits on the globe
like a figure on the Florentine-style World card. That's quite a bit, in fact most of the cards after Death in the Ferrara tarot.
And there is also the virtue vs. vice interpretation of the Love card.<br />
<br />
Then there is the question of the Magician, which Decker earlier related to the "good genius" at the gate in the fronstispiece illustrating the Tablet of Cebes. I like some of what Place says, on p. 121f. He starts out:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The
Tarot's Magician is not an astrologer or an athletic male, yet there is
a connection between him and the two figures in Fanti's
foreground--particularly to the athlete with the die. One easily
recognized pair of objects found on the Magician's table in the Tarot of
Marseilles is a pair of dice...</div>
</blockquote>
He then goes on
to show us a woodcut Magician with dice in the Budapest Museum of Fine
Arts that probably dates from c. 1500 (the original is on p. 274 of
Kaplan vol. 2). In my view it is probably from Venice (due south of
Budapest) around the time of the 1526 Frontispiece. But I don't think it
is essential that the dice are there. There are no dice in the d'Este
or the PMB cards. What works as well are the types of objects on the
table, four in the PMB and in the Cary Sheet, which correspond to four suits.
It is the Magician as dealer--of dice or cards, the cards we are dealt
at birth and many times thereafter, which it is up to us to know how to
use. Dice and cards are equivalent. Place goes on (and here I put my
own additions in brackets):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
As dice
[and cards, I add] were used for gambling their presence could confirm
that the Magician is a gambler and a rogue, but dice [and cards] were
also used in the Renaissance for divination, and perhaps the magician,
like Fanti's athlete, is offering us a means to obtain advice about our
destiny. The Magician is the first trump, and he is introducing us to
the parade of trumps just as Fanti's athlete is in the foreground.
Whether his dice [or cards] are intended for divination or for gambling,
there are two of them [of dice], and there are twenty-one possible
combinations of the two when they are thrown. It would be easy to
imagine the Magician making use of the throws of his dice [or the drawing of cards] to make connections with the twenty-one figures in the
trumps. Like the figures in Fanti's foreground, it may be that the
Magician is a guide offering help in finding one's way in the allegory.</div>
</blockquote>
So on this view the Magician offers us our individual
allotments/lots and also, given the nature of the game, tells us to pay
attention to the other trumps more than to the ordinary suit cards.
Whether in game-playing or in divination, he is giving us a life
situation together with a plan for finding our way in the game or in
life. That's my integration of Decker and Place, and of the two
frontispieces, 1521-23 and 1526.<br />
<br />
<b>THE REST OF THE CHAPTER </b><br />
<br />
Otherwise in the chapter, Decker cites various late 15th and early 16th century documents. He cites the Steele Sermon, the first listing of the 22 subjects. For the 16th century, he has quotes from Francesco Berni and Flavio Alberto Lollio, 16th century, about
how the tarot sequence is a mishmash; that supports his idea that the
meanings are hidden, as the cards in their Christian sequence do not make obvious sense as a whole. He also talks about the so called "tarocchi appropriati", the tarot subjects "appropriated" for another use besides playing a game. He mentions Folengo's tarot
sonnets in his "Caos del Triperuno" (online translation by Anne Mullaney, starting on p. 138) as examples of use of cards to give advice to individuals, and he
quotes Giralomo Barghagli on the practice of associating particular
cards with particular individuals during pageants (p. 92). He does not
mention Andrea Vitali's account of Barghagli in this connection; see <a class="postlink" href="http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=199&lng=eng">http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=199&lng=eng</a>.<br />
<br />
To summarize the more controversial aspects of this chapter: Decker has given us some reason, far from conclusive, for thinking that the original deck might have had 14 cards. It may well be that some decks had 14 trumps, if that is what the "14 figures" for Bianca Maria Sforza represent, a reasonable enough assumption, and it may well be that these were the original trumps. But there are other possibilities. 14 may have been just the number of trumps in Ferrara, with different subjects than in Milan (hence Bianca's interest in taking them back there). There are also other possibilities that as far as we know are just as likely. <br />
<br />
Also, there are numerous reasons for thinking that the original deck did not look like the Tarot de Marseille, nor for its original cards being only the first 14 of that deck. His identification of the Fanti frontispiece as significant in relation to the tarot does make sense, both for his reasons and Place's. For me, they tend to support the idea that the other frontispiece, and its broad-brimmed hat in some versions of it, are related as well, by Fanti's time.<br />
<br />
It is good that he raised the point that the original tarot deck, and some later ones, may not have had the standard 21 trumps plus the Fool. Some decks may have had 14 trumps. Also, the TdM designs may be earlier than the extant TdM decks, i.e. late 15th or early 16th century. But it is highly unlikely that if there were only 14, they were precisely the first 14 of the TdM, because of the presence of cards corresponding to the TdM Judgment and World in all the early decks and lists. As to whether the cards make sense as a whole sequence in order, given how they would have commonly been seen at the time, that is another question. If may be that they do. It also may be that if they don't, they did at first, when there were only 14, but then other cards got added, not just to the end but perhaps to the beginning or in the middle as well. <br />Michael S Howardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488567669455421279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-230755636669834672.post-10056347007120801652014-04-28T20:11:00.006-07:002022-10-13T01:21:42.104-07:00Chapter 4: Hidden Hieroglyphs<div class="content">
In Chapter Four, Decker
addresses an issue he has been postponing: why the designer of the
first cards, i.e. the Tarot de Marseille, must have been someone
familiar with Roman-era writings about Egypt. His key text is
Horapollo's <span style="font-style: italic;">Hieroglyphica</span>, the
Greek text that was brought to Florence in 1422 and offered
interpretations for 130 pictures claimed to be Egyptian hieroglyphs.</div><div class="content"><br />
Decker's
idea is at least original. De Gebelin, who was the first to publish an
interpretation of the trumps in Egyptian terms, did so on the assumption
that they meant things actually in Egypt, based on Greco-Roman writings
about Egypt. I myself have undertaken Egyptian interpretations with the assumption that the tarot sequence
originated in 15th century Northern Italy. It is not hard to interpret
each of the group C trumps (Lombardy and France) in terms of something
in ancient sources about Egypt or using ideas contained also in books
then attributed to Egypt, e.g. the <i>Corpus Hermetica</i>. Thus humanists
playing the game might have enjoyed showing off their erudition by
giving Egyptian interpretations based on Greek and Latin authors. In the
18th century, Freemasons and others would have enjoyed explaining the
cards in terms of the "Mysteries of Isis" they were fond of (see e.g.
the novel <span style="font-style: italic;">Sethos</span> and the opera <span style="font-style: italic;">The Magic Flute</span>).
Also, designers might have seen opportunities to sneak in Egyptianate
details, or provide lead-ins to such interpretations and thereby promote
themselves among the well-to-do, while maintaining the obvious Christian imagery. </div><div class="content"> </div>
<div class="content">
</div>
<div class="content">
Decker says nothing about such
interpretations, not even mentioning Piscina and Anonymous (both c. 1765).,booklets that analyzed the cards as hieroglyphs; Anonymous even uses
the term "figure geroglifiche" to describe the trumps (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=1389857&postcount=1">http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... ostcount=1</a>). Perhaps Decker is content with his, Dummett's, and Depaulis's 1996 assessment (<span style="font-style: italic;">Wicked Pack</span> <i>of Cards</i>
p. 33): "Neither of the proposed interpretations is at all plausible";
that is strong language, with which I don't agree,
for exoteric meanings. But it never occurred to me that Horapollo was
significant for anything more than illustrating the general idea of
using an image to convey an idea. or complex of ideas, different from what was there on the
surface. Even if his arguments are weak, his correlations might
strengthen my own arguments in this area, as seen on my blog "22
Invocations of Dionysus: The Esoteric Tarot Before 1781" (<a class="postlink" href="http://22invocationsofdionysus.blogspot.com/2008/06/">http://22invocationsofdionysus.blogspot.com/2008/06/</a>).
However I want if possible to avoid equating "bad argument" with
"argument that is inconsistent with my arguments" and achieve some kind
of objectivity if possible. <br />
<b><br />ON THE ACCESSIBILITY OF HORAPOLLO IN 15TH CENTURY ITALY </b><br />
<br />
To introduce this <span style="font-style: italic;">Hieroglyphica</span>,
Decker has much to say about the origins of this document in the
ancient world and what corresponds to its decodings in the actual
Egyptian language, as determined by modern Egyptology; he also speaks of
Durer's use of Horapollo c. 1515. But he gives nothing on the
dissemination of this text before 1441 into places like Lombardy or
Ferrara where tarot-designers would have lived. He just says (p. 101) <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Nine fifteenth-century copies of the Hieroglypica reportedly exist [footnote 14: Stanislaus Klossowsky de Rola, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Golden Game: Alchemical Engravings of the Seventeenth Century</span> (New York: George Braziller, 1988), 20 n13). Latin translations of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Hiroglyphica</span>, or parts of it, must soon have been available. It began to influence the polymath Alberti in the 1430s, if not earlier.</div>
</blockquote>
De Rola does indeed say that there are nine 15th century copies, but with
no references. In any case, the issue is when and where in the 15th
century.<br />
<br />
I will help Decker here. Curran in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Italian Renaissance</span> (p. 124)
writes that Cyriaco of Ancona or a or a contemporary may have made in
the 1430s the “Latin abridgement of 36 signs from Horapollo’s book I
that was copied years later in a sylloge now preserved in Naples. It is
an hypothesis first advanced by Giovanni Batttista Rossi and still “has
considerable merit”. That 36 is out of 70 in part I
and 119 in Part II. </div><div class="content"> </div><div class="content">The translation would probably have been made for
his 1435 visit to Egypt. In 1438 he surely heard Plethon talk on Plato
and other subjects (such as, I think, the "ancient theology"), because
he is depicted in the Medici <span style="font-style: italic;">Procession of the Magi</span>,
which started out as a portrayal of everyone who had gone to the
conclave in Florence then; he later visited Plethon in Mistra, Greece.
Upon his return from each of his trips, Cyriaco probably made the rounds
of cities and courts, as we know he did after his last trip. There was
also his travel journal, probably with copies of hieroglyphs; the part
on Egypt is now lost, probably burned in a fire in Pesaro; the last
owner was a Alessandro Sforza, Wikipedia tells us (<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciriaco_de%27_Pizzicolli">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciriaco_de%27_Pizzicolli</a>).</div><div class="content"> </div><div class="content">Alessandro is the probable commissioner of the "Catania" tarot deck,
one of the four or five earliest decks with extant cards, probably
contemporary with the PMB (Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo, also known as the Visconti-Sforza and Colleoni-Bagliati). We know that Cyriaco went to Ferrara to talk
with Leonello in 1449, because of his famous description of the Belfiore
Muses in the Belfiore (cited by Venturi, <span style="font-style: italic;">North Italian painting of the Quattrocento: Emilia</span>,
1931, p. 29. In that year also he went to see Sigismondo Malatesta, the
man for whom the first recorded tarot had been made in 1440 (Woodhouse,
<span style="font-style: italic;">Gemistos Plethon</span>, p. 161), In 1450 he moved to Cremona and stayed they until he died, 2-4 years later (per Wikipeda). Cremona is where the Bembo workshop was, which did the early extant cards done for the Visconti and Sforza in those years. It is also where Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Sforza stayed for part of these years, to escape the plague raging in Milan.<br />
<br />
Other translations of Horapollo were made during that century. Charles Dempsey reports that George Valla, who was at Pavia 1465-1485
and then Venice, made a partial translation of Horapollo (“Renaissance
Hieorglyphic Studies and Gentile Bellini’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria</span>,” p. 344, in <span style="font-style: italic;">Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe</span>).
Other partial translations were made in the early 16th century, and the
first complete one in 1517 (D. L. Drysdall, “Fasanini’s Explanation of
Sacred Writing,” (<span style="font-style: italic;">Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies</span> 13 (1983):1, p. 128f). <br />
<br />
It is also certain that Filelfo, in Milan 1439-1451, then in Cremona to escape the plague, and then back to Milan, had a copy of the
Greek or knew its contents. In 1454 he cites Horapollo specifically and
gives the correct definition of "eel" in a letter to Scalamonti, the
biographer of Cyriaco (“Renaissance Hieroglyphic Studies,” in <span style="font-style: italic;">Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe</span> p. 354). Ross Caldwell noticed an allusion to Horapollo in a Filelfo sonnet (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2881137&postcount=48">http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... stcount=48</a>).
Guarino in Ferrara probably would have had a copy. Alberti, who was in
Ferrara during the late 1430s and early 1440s. would also have had a copy, because he quoted it in his treatise on architecture. And numerous
Greek-readers would have had it in Florence. For fuller information, see
my posts at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2457203&postcount=44">http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... stcount=44</a> and the following two.<br />
<br />
In
examining Decker's decoding via Horapollo, I looked to see if it makes
any order out of the mishmash. On this reading, the first trump is
someone "who enjoys creating"; the first step, I suppose, in the journey
is being created. Then for trump 2 he gives "inherited traits"--whether from previous
lives or from one's biological parents, is not said. Then we have
"mother", then "ruler who doesn't tolerate mistakes," and "governance", i.e. state or church. Then it's on to
"achievement", "triumph", "the middle way" (Justice), the fleetingness of
time (the original Hermit as carrier of an hour-glass), and the cycles
of the years. That that comes "strength", "prolonged suffering",
"departed spirits", and finally "rebirth". </div><div class="content">That is the end of the first
14. It looks like a picture of life, ending with either a new birth or,
more Egyptian, the resurrection of the dead. He says that the next 7 are
an expanded version of what comes after death. First is "lust,
blasphemy, weakness, and audacity", tending to pull one back to earth, I
assume; then the heeding of God's word in Purgatory (if that's
"Egyptian"), fate or destiny, the honoring of the moon goddess, the
concord of the sun, rise of the spirit, and Isis at the end. (For the
interpretation of Isis, see my quotes from Apueius at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=404&p=14117#p14117">viewtopic.php?f=23&t=404&p=14117#p14117</a>)<br />
<br />
Yes,
it makes some sense, much like what other researchers have found in a
Christian context. The idea of "new birth" in a new body is Pythagorean;
I find no trace of it in classical writings about Egypt; but Pythagoras
was said to have studied in Egypt. If rebirth seems strange here,
remember that this is a an Egypt of the Roman Empire, in which Apuleius's
Lucius (not in Egypt, but somewhere where there is a cult of Isis)
heeds Isis's call and is transformed. It is also a cosmos in which
longing for the body, assisted by wicked spirits, can keep a departed
soul from rising.."Prolonged suffering" is not necessarily unto death;
Lucius's suffering is in the body of a donkey, symbolic of someone
attached to the body.<br />
<br />
<b>THE FIRST 14 TRUMPS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF HORAPOLLO AND EGYPT-RELATED ANCIENT TEXTS GENERALLY</b><br />
<br />
So
let's look at how well Horapollo correlates with the tarot. Here,
besides making sense of the sequence, both as 14 and as 22, I want to
consider that when Horapollo isn't enough by itself, we might supplement
it with other classical writings pertaining to Egypt and its
religion,such as Herodotus, Plato, and the Roman-era Platonists,
especially Plutarch and Apuleius I do so with the idea that the tarot
would have been seen not only in terms of esoteric symbolism from Egypt
per se, but also as providing insight into the "ancient theology" before
Christianity and into a Platonist world-view congenial to many
humanists of the Renaissance. Again we have to note the time at which
such world-view could have been expected among humanists advising the
courts o the Sforza in Milan, the Estensi in Ferrara, the Medici of
Florence, and the Bentivoglio of Bologna. As will be evident, the
convergence of data begins in the late 15th century, strongly suggesting
that an Egyptian perspective was not part of the conception of the
original tarot.<br />
<br />
In this presentation, I include a variety of
images. So as not to interrupt too much the flow of the argument, I leave
them as links to click on if you wish. In many cases there will be,
other material besides the image that I am talking about; that is
because I am getting these images from my blog, where I give other
arguments besides the ones here. I am not trying to include everything,
just enough to make the points. <br />
<br />
1. We start with the Bagatella
or Juggler. His hands are his most prominent feature, and for "hands" we
have "person who enjoys building". in other words, a demiurge. Decker
changes it to "person who enjoys creating," which is the much the same
thing. But Decker is thinking of the potter-god Khnum, creating humans
on his wheel. I have found no evidence that such a god was known in
writings available in Italy, although it could have been part of what
Cyriaco had picked up. As I have said in a previous chapter, there is the evidence of the creator-god Ammon and the mind, nous, of the
Asclepius, as well as the Agathadaemon of Apuleius, deriving from
Plato's Symposium,which appears also in the Greek Hermetica.<br />
<br />
2.
For the Popess, the only thing Decker finds relevant in Horapollo is the
book. A book means "very old". A related meaning, Decker says, is that
for papyrus, "ancient descent," the same sort of thing. However what is
meant there is a sheaf of papyrus plants, which looks much different
from what is on the card (Durer has such a sheaf in his depiction of
Maximilian, emphasizing his ancient descent (<a class="postlink" href="http://libraryofsymbolism.com/images/newletters/nsl1-3.jpg">http://libraryofsymbolism.com/images/ne ... nsl1-3.jpg</a>);
he indeed, like Pope Alexander VI, traced his ancestry back to Osiris).
So I go with "very old", describing the book, the woman, or what she
knows. <br />
<br />
3. For the Empress, Decker insists that the bird on her
shield is a vulture, quite different from the Emperor's Eagle. A vulture
represents "mother". I don't see a vulture (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcdJcjfAxcskl-vZ0R0Kr31RzJ4E31PYX3Op6cApK0P-UQ6Mb-LkJO96zk0jFKSyUkRcgN_x-YSzKuEEvxeDy3yCz0-CofM5ve584AwYL__7-9ANKm4zF375poZexE6VQ0FmsnzDuR3ZA/s1600/03NobConv.jpg">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sp2sFIa3hJY/T ... obConv.jpg</a>), and it looks the same to me as the Emperor's bird (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjISvcw0gcLEfmk1F4tk_E3SBo4HGQH_Oa6uzmBZCxOMIfKNJKslWoo7Ea2FlgOfLk3T_lmnJSCN_IM00ZVwB6kuLqnFBVqrJbgXbrLEOLz5wPByNWFPoF8MIjQkUXDx8fZtcB_UZVREPCj/s1600-h/04bcarytConverDion.jpg">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... erDion.jpg</a>). But isn't it the job of Empresses to provide future Emperors? A
more natural Egyptian interpretation, for a different bird than the
Imperial eagle would be a hawk, which looks more similar to an eagle.
For "hawk" Horapollo has "Ares, or Aphrodite", the latter in the sense
of a fertility goddess. Ares would be the figure on the Empress's lap;
Aphrodite would be the Empress herself. There is also "the lord of
sight" or "sublime things". A reader of Plutarch, <span style="font-style: italic;">On isis and Osiris</span> LI (<a class="postlink" href="http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html">http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html</a>),
would associate also the hawk-god Horus, sitting on his mother's lap as
in the Roman coins that were being collected by rich antiquarians (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLvlD3_3FUQRU2Tvr3mJ5q36npnd7L5vBz-ptjFdKZG4vuLJKt7_zk3RCDI5tqevX5HUkpZh5o79qnVJeV968vmLK2HcjdrggQ_ofJa-t8E1TDQCTcYQFbQL-V6ZNxDQ7MZWyGMhj0tA4/s400/03isisCar.JPG">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... sisCar.JPG</a>).
That would be an expression of the ancient theology of God the Son, as
seen in mature form in the Madonna and Child paintings of Renaissance
Italy.<br />
<br />
4. The Emperor's eagle represents "a king who is aloof and
intolerant of mistakes". Boas has "king living in retirement giving no
pity to those in fault" (ii, 56) Yes, that is a good negative
interpretation of the card. An Eagle carrying a stone means a man
living in safety in a city (II, 49). That could be a positive meaning,
the Eagle as contributing to safety. <br />
<br />
5. For the Pope, Decker
focuses on his stole, i.e. his vestment; Stoles symbolize governance in
Horapollo (1, 40) Actually, in Boas's translation, it is not just a
stole, but one placed near a dog, who gazes at the king or judge who is
naked! Interestingly, Durer draws the stole on the dog, and it is
crossed, similar to how the Popess's stole is crossed on the Tarot de
Marseille (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5CB9CGgnH1-7cDgVvdIXHK7_omlLFiYVh9oG0pOYfhuLUe6FbveSEAt58pxwI9OFDCCGfrzS1YTmPYPqHGmIkSeqa335drQ981T6lb8o3e5BlVqSzO9QrY1pqtRVOMAX0HCyO9cXfbfo/s1600/DurerDogStole.jpg">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TgyUFEPLutw/U ... gStole.jpg</a>, <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVBHDfnNapgtrZ6BVA39WZHP1m0AfNOHi17peMCbcc1kw0VzC8Kc8gsT5WsANhbzNeKJSRQX0z0l-1Hzgzd6JzzE2JQhR4-wXuTn7FlN2hkMTaZ4n-ADl9G__HjSd0QYHwUcYNm93U1mg/s1600/02NobConv.jpg">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... obConv.jpg</a>).
Some versions of the Pope, e.g. Rosenwald, are like that, too. I notice
that in Apuleius, stoles are symbolic of the sacred. Sacred governance
is a fairly obvious meaning that would hopefully not offend the Papacy..
<br />
<br />
6. For the Love card, Decker finds nothing in Horapollo. But
the laurel on the the Tarot de Marseille Lover card's left lady's head (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsSs38unaW10-N1offrGLbY6hZ0MLB9Vj3z_NmjmBymaLTtetErh1S2v-aWvh6a91XhJCT5Sb2ik0SBB0V1Erq-iHaFswdIf5sTlEYIT9Q-B5VAzc64a-Liz96dIyops2dEi9ppvRJQ-E/s1600/06NobletFidii.jpg">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... tFidii.jpg</a>)
in Greco-Roman art represents achievement, he says:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The male "lover"
stands between Pleasure (the cute girl) and Virtue (the homely girl).
But the latter has an attractive personality: she wears a laurel
wreath, a symbol of achievement. A laurel wreath figures in the
medallion that Matteo de' Pasti designed for Alberti, who regarded the
wreath as a hieroglyph for "joy and glory".</blockquote>
There are no
references, but what he says seems true. But in fact laurel is mentioned
in Horapollo, II.46; it represents a healing oracle. Love of Virtue (if
it is the choice between Virtue and Pleasure) can indeed be healing.
But there is no laurel in the early cards (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMmwUJwgaquDLnyPcn2vKD6-WWBBV9mmfsV_E7CsRYuoQVuMZdI5xp78SyMbU1hVBtcgBy2F5yuYZZwWZlcbb3MuOZJv5qfuZpLFdA_XGO5jjolLmJf7SBa2x8wDF6JfsW5dZ74B8pT8I/s1600/06acarSforzCarShGring.jpg">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... hGring.jpg</a>); the earliest I see is the Schoen Horoscope, where it is more likely a crown (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ue0v9oOurHsfmP79NXBHUfYacoXd4MuZufDy0c2qT847gVR_lZYqZk3PaiUzMQBh6vKkHz_AV5h5-hWhubs2c6grYHu1o86SY_yR2LD4TWAtT1RyXLGNkMyB9-n9p6lzQuMVUWBIgBM/s400/06schoenVieville.jpg">http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... eville.jpg</a>).
Another interpretation might focus on the two figures plus Cupid of the Cary-Yale,
PMB and Cary Sheet: in Egyptian mythology, they could be Isis and
Osiris and their son the hawk-god Horus. If the Tarot de Marseille, then
it is one Horus below, with Hathor and his mother, while another Horus flies
in the sky (Plutarch, XIX, has two Horuses). This would be another
manifestation of the "prisca theologica" (ancient theology), which in mature form would
show the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus, with his mother and Mary
Magdalene looking on later at the foot of the cross, sadly in that
context.<br />
<br />
7. For the Chariot card, Decker focuses on the
breastplate, which was on the card in the 15th century, although in
Florence rather than Milan. He says it meant "triumph". This meaning is
not in Horapollo, he admits, but was reported by Cyriaco of Ancona after
his travels there. He has no documentation of this, but in support he
gives a 1780 picture of an obelisk, said there to represent the
victories of Alexander, with various pictures on it, including a very
detailed, realistic breastplate. It is obviously not a true
representation of an Egyptian obelisk; but it might indicate what people thought.<br />
<br />
I can help Decker out here. In the illustrated novel <span style="font-style: italic;">Hypnerotomachia</span>,
published 1499 but written earlier, a breastplate is indeed given as a
hieroglyph for "triumphal trophy". This book's hieroglyphs mostly aren't in
Horapollo, but some might have had some ancient source. Also,
Renaissance art of the time conventionally used the breastplate as a
symbol of victory (e.g. Marco Zoppa's "Venus Vitrix" or "Venus Armata",
cited in Wind, <span style="font-style: italic;">Pagan Mysterious of the Renaissance</span>,
p. 91 n.32). Perhaps it came from Cyriaco and Egypt, perhaps not. In
any case, chariots were typically the vehicle of choice in Greco-Roman
writings about victory parades, in Egypt and elsewhere. <br />
<br />
Or this:
Horapollo does have an interpretation of a man in armor: the image means
a mob (II, 12). Decker ignores that. Could the card represent a
rabble-rouser, like Julius Caesar or Mark Antony?<br />
<br />
8. For Justice,
Decker finds no interpretation in Horapollo. But he focuses on the the
dot in the circle in the middle of the lady's forehead on the TdMII (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY5aQlDQ6NpHWRIp8odeNFpP93OBqmroFNm8E8K23-yKBjPOLu3-1R00sQbXo-UcqWff45FJKC-MjqOe2dba9igXHc6aUbCUHlNcrtl7cu3XKbJ7eO1zuKgDbzm-CuFHu1nEdH9J3gknc/s1600/08aNobChossHeronCamoinSM.jpg">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MTyGqZhNkes/T ... moinSM.jpg</a>), a feature never found before Chosson and Conver (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDwFwPqyYjPic2Sng0QM7tdFQ0h-HJWx_3MwXBSrX9i7c7kI544ugwISZZ4LAyd5RtHsZFtI2sUNEgJ86Iiw0-5cyOMr0NcQQ51o8cMiq3zZ8QqMjtLdb-dlChUQzVgCqLRg-LonQhMNdq/s1600/08aVisCastleGring.JPG">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... eGring.JPG</a>);
Decker says it is the "middle way", something Pythagoras talked about,
and Pythagoras was said to have studied in Egypt. I don't recall this in
Pythagoras, and in any case this is quite a stretch. But suppose we
focus on the upper part of the card except the scales, whose meaning is
too obvious. Then we get "a bust with a sword", which means "impiety"
(II, 19). Surely the one for whom the sword is intended is impious,
obvious but at least in Horapollo.<br />
<br />
9. In the case of the Hermit,
Decker sensibly opts for the historically correct (in the 1440s) image
of the old man with an hourglass. Horapollo has no man with an
hourglass, but he does have a man "eating the hours", which Durer
represented as a man putting an hourglass in his mouth. The image means
"horoscoper", Horapollo says, in other words an astrologer. That seems
to me quite suitable, given the hermetic perspective and Apuleius. If
the "good genius" sends the signs, e.g. the cards dealt or dice rolled,
someone needs to interpret the signs. The old man is an interpreter of
what has been, is, and is to come. For some reason Decker does not take
that route. Rather, the esoteric meaning is that the man "should
observe, display or declare the hours". That seems to me an obvious
surface meaning, not needing Horapollo. Decker goes on: the esoteric
meaning is "timing". That is vaguely connected with Horapollo, although
in a way that Decker does not explain; Horapollo interprets "eating the
hours" to mean that different foods are appropriate for different hours
of the day.<br />
<br />
10. For the Wheel of Fortune, Decker sees the "little
apes" on the Tarot de Marseille Wheel (never seen or mentioned in the
15th-16th century) as baboons sacred to Thoth, noting the cycles in the
heavens, but he adds, sensibly, that wheels are symbolic of cycles
anyway. But in fact Horapollo does have a non-obvious interpretation,
about monkeys. They mean a man with two sons, one of whom he raises as
his heir and the other he slays (Ii-66). That does seem to fit the Tarot
de Marseille card, with a king in the middle and a figure going up and
another going down (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-P9P8mHPdeAQgy4tknsvuSmK0qFDT4sDRfVM9D1riN-Yj9SSxRe4_WKWup70OgPCKElHlSLJEjFUNmFCfK_tcaHN2z0pOaYNC1FCXf-RLvQHsfuHjG3793_sQrG2kgShBGmqTUpfUsw8/s1600/10scan0251.JPG">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... an0251.JPG</a>).
On the early cards, however, the figures are simply men, with another
at the bottom; in the 16th century it changes to the donkey-headed and
-tailed men we see in the cards now in Budapest (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjymbYEbbhzeGOIdrW14mE6lPf7JSW6rnOfRkY4v0e1OyVMn3IzikuaXpVIErtOJw1rClO66tzcIko37LfVZ9FB4xIftME_YbIbwC7Lwe4rfUEBu-5STXyvOn7q2EQD4c5qSmnkhDeU53Q/s1600/10abnobletItalian.jpg">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... talian.jpg</a>).
By Noblet the man at the bottom had dropped out; so maybe Horapollo's
are close enough. The dual role of raiser-up and bringer-down also fits
the Sphinx in the tale of Oedipus; it is a Greek tale, but an equally
famous Sphinx was in Egypt.The figure at the top of the TdMII does
resemble a Sphinx.<br />
<br />
11. In the Strength card, the lion is
prominent. In Horapollo, a lion's forequarters represent Strength. That
is obvious and exoteric, a property of this image even at Chartres
Cathedral (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz2NWv8gUE_U4sJ4zIaAIG8DMbXL1qu-F-cYv0c7L3e5Yu5x_WY3GOa9wVYLKIS4kEMAO30r63B7C3bmN1ejz3_MO6wqTRns3pJ2WTG98KF2Njz5yVbbo3PEu3mXgtpYc6sBiIXyFUmMNR/s1600-h/11a545AM11BotticellChar.jpg">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... llChar.jpg</a>).
One might get an esoteric meaning from Plutarch, the lion as a
fire-animal and hence Seth, the desert-god that Isis gains supremacy
over. Or the lion as the sun-god Ra, whom Isis bends to her will to have
Horus's legitimacy recognized over Seth's ( <a class="postlink" href="http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html">http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html</a>, XIX). In the Renaissance, a comparable picture is Botticelli's <span style="font-style: italic;">Pallas and the Centaur</span>, in which Athena restrains a centaur from acting on his impulses (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKE2RS0LJ495ptnNtgnYFjU0QSWwsKwa-uq1iUoJV0yH7iehkFLd6p674QtXfyQBn1B3_FUvanD8G9K_d_sWB0oAaEkKa3YmL53voZQhN44ggUMVxfC-DOL7RSQ3_EMk4EwQAYsQJU_0E/s1600-h/11aConv1761Botticelli.jpg">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... icelli.jpg</a>). Athena was recognized, e.g. in Horodotus, as a Greek equivalent of Isis.<br />
<br />
12. Decker goes to rather absurd lengths with the Hanged Man:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Portraits of criminals were displayed, upside down, to disgrace them publicly. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Hieroglyphica</span>
cites a ladder as a hieroglyph of "a siege" (II, 28). This might be
taken as a metaphor for "prolonged suffering". I suggest that the
truncated branches, as seen in the T de M, were used as ladder rungs.
The man's tormentors would have climbed the rungs to hoist him onto the
gibbet.</div>
</blockquote>
There are indeed such notches in the 15th century tarot, although in Florence rather than Milan (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9pqTunKKeKFG2BR-L6viK8zczJTZ7xlHh4OnEfVPMsfm2myEYIDU-OOwEuwarxrXzbzzB80kYKb6GfYBh06Fnfox7caVuBlMCDOdA20JIDAonSdXtJc-wQaBM1rUbDd7hpm0QIQ8-41o/s1600/12aasforzaGring.JPG">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... aGring.JPG</a>),
The ladder is now removed, Decker says, so we don't see it. But do we
interpret the hidden meaning by what is absent, and especially for a
use, siege-warfare, not in the picture, and not for the users but rather
those it is used against, also not in the picture? That is not the way
memory theaters worked. <br />
<br />
I myself would rather focus on the hole in
the ground under the Hanged Man's head in the PMB, retained in the
Tarot de Marseille (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBeo8qhrvvPWf3wXEezaGiII7y7kO1sVEgCUZ3e1xRv21tiImnFScwElmyyNdR5vscn97bBB2ZbVH9e-AA2XF3eBHGnWvRxVVuz2F1FMEByV4r3x0Kmx9bg-y7xBg-6Af3oInC3bQRxj-r/s1600/12bcarySheetNobDodCon2.jpg">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... odCon2.jpg</a>).
Osiris, tricked by Seth, enters the darkness of his coffin but is the
seed from which a mighty tree will grow. Plutarch XIII relates how the
coffin went out to sea and then floated to land, where an imposing tree
grew around it. Isis found it and brought Osiris back to life. It is
like Christ's entrance into the crypt from which he is resurrected. <br />
<br />
13.
Decker sees a mask on Death's face, and says that in Horapollo a mask
means "departed spirits." Death is not a departed spirit, but it is thought to instigate such a departure. Here I
like de Gebelin's story of the mummy displayed at banquets, to remind
people that to hold death at bay practice moderation. Plutarch XVII says
that the custom was to bring out "a dead man in his coffin...to warn
one to make use of the present and enjoy it, as very soon they
themselves will be as he", The story was cited by Montaigne <span style="font-style: italic;">Complete Essays of Montaigne</span>, trans. David Frame, p. 62, 65, 85), The heads and feet at the bottom of the Tarot de Marseille (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK1K5sdajW-vJ6VR4-h9oKcz8VxmmrO9bMSBEg4lWAbqYHbFw81kD97WloeXIwKevnzbSI5tmHiiEfksJEUbdd-YPqrB8c10hfzoZQ3PNeANxSNIaJQ9-_QPrAF6C3Z9FaShX3nSnkIt_o/s1600/13nobDodChosConver2.jpg">http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... onver2.jpg</a>)
are like the scattered limbs of Osiris in the tale told by Plutarch and
Diodorus, symbolic of the resurrection to come. Pico gave that
interpretation, saying, in his Oration of 1486 (quoted in Wind, p. 134) <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
...we
shall sometimes descend, with titanic force rending the unity like
Osiris into many parts, and we shall sometimes ascend, with force of
Phoebus collecting the parts like the limbs of Osiris into a unity.</div>
</blockquote>
14.
Temperance is the last of the first 14. For Decker it symbolizes
rebirth. He gets that from the lady pouring liquid from one vessel to
another, which he says is comparable to Horapollo's "a rush of water,
from above to below" symbolizing rebirth. I'm not sure that the little
stream going from one jug to anther qualifies as "a rush of
water"--actually, "water gushing forth over heaven and earth", in Boas'
translation (as opposed to the 1840 translation Decker found). In any
case, what is symbolized is "the rising of the Nile" in Horapollo,
nothing about rebirth. Decker needs "rebirth" because it's the end of
his "original" sequence of 14 cards, after which it has to either start over or
go to another level. <br />
<br />
I think Decker's argument could be improved.s. First, what Horapollo says is "three water jugs, or water
gushing over heaven and earth". We have only two jugs; but when Durer
illustrated this image, he had two as well (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZI9HG8lyYki-gXinYlg6ZQuSflbbttzC8I9_fibQPbL05gcHGim7NiliulvQDtySFMKRq8dYIBCw-dJVphHQQUSEGxh4ijIDjQLbXio138ALTGOg4DCb7Ewkr_gT6IBPmEjIHaqklPaE/s1600/DurerWaterJars.jpg">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PAgDTQ6W80E/U ... erJars.jpg</a>).
Perhaps there was a mistranslation: I haven't seen the Latin, either
the 1435 or any later. Another way of seeing the card is as the mixing
of wine and water for the Eucharist, which sets the stage for rebirth in
the resurrection to come. </div><div class="content"> </div><div class="content">The rising of the Nile is likewise the
condition for the rebirth of the plants of the land of Egypt. This
sacred rejuvenation is a precursor of the Eucharist. It could also be
seen as the combining of water and fire, the water of Osiris with the
fire of Seth, upper and lower Egypt, and also of good and evil, which
Plutarch XLI, quoting Euripides, said "makes the world go well"; the
popularity of this idea is shown in Montaigne (<span style="font-style: italic;">Essays</span>
3. 13, "On Experience." Knopf ed., p. 290). Evil is the condition for
good. Without evil to fight against, good is merely a habit or reflex.<br />
<br />
<b>THE NEXT SEVEN TRUMPS, AND THE FOOL</b><br />
<br />
15.
Evil is the subject of the next card, the Devil. Decker says that particular animals are implied in this figure: the goat, oryx (a type of African antelope) and bat. "As
hieroglyphs, they respectively symbolize lust (I. 48), blasphemy (I,
49) and weakness and audacity (II, 52)." Boas has this latter as "a
weak man who is rash". In these ways evil is not outside, but inside the
human being, all of us. At the same time, Apuleius, the Hermetica, and
Plutarch all warn us about earth-bound evil spirits that take advantage
of our weakness to bind us to them. The danger is within and without.
The Cary Sheet shows a devil picking up souls as though they were
garbage on the ground (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCMSFdZZqC7an3M0UZo-TgZk8ki_1qM8Odw36VOd0lv3PjFnVY0BelT7wHLXc4hLaD2WQU-nUAs6sjRJydeQE1qD7tOtFAywxmeSN4gVwm5vCAErZ_F1Hj6he76olLmqgeF2cZCurTtm0/s400/15acCarySheetand2from16th.jpg">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... om16th.jpg</a>). That the devil's appearance could be related to Horapollo's animal symbols is an interesting idea. But the devil had horns, bat-wings, and hooves long before Horapollo appeared in Florence. <br /></div><div class="content"> <br />
The TdM shows a large Devil on high and two small devils tied
to his platform by ropes, none with the animal features. The idea of the Devil binding souls is of course a conventional
Christian one. Marco Ponzi, in discussion of this point on THF, posted a
photo of a relief on a 12th century capital near Paris, originally
posted by "Fauvelus" that fits the card well: <a href="https://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=5242#p5242">https://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=5242#p5242</a>.</div><div class="content"><br />
Brian Innes in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The tarot</span> related this portrayal to an Egyptian relief (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrzILEc6_VyLH456FiQjSSGxg02vGniUsKWbvLBgh_iF6pIq_qBSOLPQe6IK-2ypLOnvln8ghf2HqX1t6tnqU0XwvEdR8WHfl9iIEf2U-3mpaaxsH2AfamcecFjmIHZREtUqkkKH_eSfk/s1600/15anobHerSeth.JPG">http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... erSeth.JPG</a>).
Although I can't now find my reference, I found in one book about Egypt
that it is from Sakkara, near Cairo; so Cyriaco could have drawn it.
Modern Egyptology says it is Seth and other gods bringing enemy captives
to the Pharaoh. If the Devil card actually showed such a scene in its 1450s appearance, there could be a connection. However no early cards in fact show captives bound to the Devil by ropes. Nor is there any report of the Sakkara image appearing in books about Egypt before the 20th century. </div><div class="content"><br />
16. The Tower card almost always has a lightning-bolt on it, from the earliest times; it was even called "Saetta," meaning lightning-bolt as well as arrow.
Horapollo doesn't have "lightning", but he does have "thunder", which
means "far-off voice". Decker says, "surely it is of divine origin," and the Tower is a conventional symbol of Purgatory; I didn't know
that, and he has no reference. Hence "Souls in Purgatory still have the
option of heeding God's Word and gaining salvation." He is thinking of
the tarot sequence at this point as the soul's progress as far as
Purgatory, something for which he has not yet laid a foundation and is surely
not Egyptian. The lightning as representing the Word of God is not bad,
using Horapollo to build a Christian interpretation. But lightning
represents God's will even without Horapollo, e.g. the Tower of Babel,
Moses on the mountain, and various enemies of Israel struck dead. <br />
<br /><img alt="Image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGbcho-aTNkraKc0Ca7xLNP20pKqxAmxFHbjB269OAdHuJkswlEnwvUxw2pdRPaJSzYNZneULDnauzfCcNqIuHjtfweTk-miPYXh4_5GBDT-gKUnCnufu8aCfKjttGL3dzRqg7yOuP3p4/s300/hats.JPG" />For Egyptian towers, my favorite story is in Herodotus (<span style="font-style: italic;">History</span> Book 3 (Thalia), pp. 17fF, AT <a class="postlink" href="http://www.greektexts.com/library/Herodotus/Thalia/eng/62.html">http://www.greektexts.com/library/Herod ... ng/62.html</a>)..
The Persian king Cambyses conquers Egypt, thus becoming the new
Pharaoh, and commits sacrilege by killing the sacred Apis bull. On the
way back to Persia he dies of a an accidental self-inflicted injury
(hence the man lying at the bottom of the tower) and his deputy,
involved in shady dealings over the succession, has a fit of
conscience--the voice of God, no doubt--confesses all to the summoned
crowd and jumps off his platform, the highest tower in the city In the
Noblet card, instead of circles, the shapes near the heads of the men
are more like Egyptian hats, shown most clearly in Flornoy's
restoration; the Dodal has some of this, but more ellipses (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxTekYnwgfI_VTbIX1PjuBHr-ixNwiV6ATAijYOh1Z5vWVWLJCHYBQ2BV7rqo-DMdKQ-ua21PIU8PeSc9RE63HkW01ggvVJcdHtMcQdYVeAVeD9piB2h2ovsZLfW4rvHzUA5YjrnN5f4g/s1600/16amnobDodHeron.jpg">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... dHeron.jpg</a>). Above, I give a detail, from Flornoy's restoration of Noblet, so you know where to look. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVpGAjdwNMVPjqbubVVgT7CalZKJaUsLEjHuK5OodvEX2pxjXL715HyNl8EY8jw7NsHhXUQiKksbdSicHwYd2Y-ALOzzGih-9EaGRicmewpQgrvhzCBfdaSRv26KYQJp0x3MmsfEV4z-4w9drhDTRZ1HmrRD0tzYQahkPA7f0pC_9TDh2U_UhVPizX/s469/08CarySheetStar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="469" data-original-width="273" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVpGAjdwNMVPjqbubVVgT7CalZKJaUsLEjHuK5OodvEX2pxjXL715HyNl8EY8jw7NsHhXUQiKksbdSicHwYd2Y-ALOzzGih-9EaGRicmewpQgrvhzCBfdaSRv26KYQJp0x3MmsfEV4z-4w9drhDTRZ1HmrRD0tzYQahkPA7f0pC_9TDh2U_UhVPizX/w233-h400/08CarySheetStar.jpg" width="233" /></a></div>17.
A star, Decker notes from Horapollo, means fate. The earliest known image similar to that of the TdM is on the Cary Sheet, c. 1500. There is one big
star over four smaller ones, or five if you include the one on the
lady's shoulder (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNyzFj_Uy_TvlVS4uysdUF_pVDi4inaImcJNu8FoMZWYOIoIbTcJa0OdpDJkTnNbMzpi-l65saIvGr43DZiYMmyItUz6JgKDWtHhI3CgJ2PY6Dr6ETo_m_c7ZPaJBMX-yLwFUpakfafEM/s1600/17aacarSothis.jpg">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... Sothis.jpg</a>).
That might, it seems to me, represent the transcendence of fate by
means of Providence, assuming that the lady is Venus, or
in Egypt Isis. Horapollo says:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">And among them Isis is a star, called
<span style="font-style: italic;">Sothis</span> by the Egyptians, by the Greeks the <span style="font-style: italic;">Dog-Star</span>,
which appears to rule over the other stars.</blockquote>
Plutarch calls it both
Isis and "Isis' water-carrier" (<i>On Isis and Osiris</i> XXI, XXXVIII) and the
herald of the Nile flood as well. The Cary Sheet image, shows two vessels pouring watger, one on
the side of a mountain and the other on the side of a hill. In Africa,
the Nile is formed by the conjunction of two rivers; the White Nile
flows slowly and picks up rich clay;, the Blue Nile comes in a torrent
in the summer from the Ethiopian rains. The nutrient-rich clay wouldn't get to the
fields without the torrent. The allegory might be that for rebirth
attention is needed both to the body (slow) and the spirit (torrent). <br />
<br />
To
judge when the Egyptianizing influence might have come to the tarot,
one indicator might be the switch, for a while, from one-jugged
Aquariuses to two, and a feminizing of the figure so that it is sexually
ambiguous. In the Dendera zodiacs, above ground on a
trade-route since Greco-Roman times, Aquarius is shown with two jugs
and sexually ambiguous (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitH61LPttTlywrTuvs9f2x5zcAfwBMUVGZbQOkw3ziB_RfZH-oeaAGdT3R1N6HfTPo_rJduoosipG9izkoqrWeVtncbhqve09F2VQyJTnmhNnrgTu_1HRkU30tcCeW_vQhnOVsPqr7ra4/s400/17abadenderaDETNota.jpg">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... ETNota.jpg</a>, <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6zMFwgW6vNyZa7dBatSxqYMXYxr2Jv3l5YwW37nbnW5TnP82gzIzAL2kadY0b5I4efu1pYXqV9PS6-UwsjxTgmOWM9bztEf0vJCobnuaMxkXkrgRtuYg2Ot4VNdvUXqX2fqWmSmvLA58/s400/17abbwatcar2Nota.JPG">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... r2Nota.JPG</a>). The opening of Egypt to European traders by the Mameluks might have induced the change. I see an Italian Aquarius, c. 1475, that fits this description (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4sxm5XMeB8FTWZHmi8sadxyAGRv3dH21-BzK7pyMsu5nM7HW20dwqxlrMMmSJhWBvsus9GdgdYBmuhi_D_pEIH-UWESwt5s9Fj0W1oBfc444GNti-ge68JXuxGLEeOhXzo6hlZs2_oqo/s1600/17aAquariusMinchHours.jpg">http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... hHours.jpg</a>), and a zodiac in Troyes of 1497 as well (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY02l2KdTxwCmR3Vbeco4jo0GMVlS0OKrgqH-WcxkaMFkehsrjpHA7KoyQdwQ8efM1Q497iUvVVBoAjOSLxm9bzrRaGsKxDkkXnf56I2W8SivProHSBHwuSDwLDs4ViCGaHUoU3Nv1HlA/s1600/17aascan0020zodiac.JPG">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... zodiac.JPG</a>).
The 1497 zodiac will be of interest for the Sun card as well; the
Dendera zodiacs relate to both the Moon and Sun cards, as we shall see.<br />
<br />
In the Tarot de Marseille, there are seven smaller stars rather than five.These could be to represent the seven planets. But two of the traditinal "planets", the Sun and the Moon, do not look like stars and have their own cards next. Another possibility is the group of seven stars mentioned as "sweet influences" at Job 38:31, in the Vulgate identified as the Hyades. "Influences" means astrological influence in the context of the poem. In Greek mythology the Hyades were rain nymphs; their weeping for their dead brother Hyas comes to us as rain. It is similar to the function of Aquarius or Sothis.<br />
<br />
In the TdM, the hills and mountains of the Cary Sheet become trees, and a bird is added (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirBNAmGr4vxeSFf8zWGwr0p8shp95Xzcbhp05hQtX6W_ofVuDP4ADsaTPNCEwnMKmMSJGnj33w1rQ6nyJ5MZbdrz23_BlIGW1Xb9N3jX5ElrgE1LDEGQ2vWANgueqSvtx_sa5DApDQ9Me9/s1600/17aNobDodolChos.jpg">http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... olChos.jpg</a>).
The bird faces right, the direction of the rising sun, and has its
wings spread. That fits Horapollo's description of the phoenix, one that
particularly fits the frontispiece to the French translation of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Hyperotomachia</span>, c. 1600 (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkDxfLnT_fX0tZjWSK2g54zvjtWag4CW5OoZRoopx7LGoHsGaFyzZum47ReIkbIcFwpHN78OeKX53Sn6qrEzbGbXk2QkW7WQH3GiBq_14w7aL1bMWssMIxbJL58Ljk7K6ayZnSB-l3lzk/s1600/phoenixtableauLGE.jpg">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PMRBwK9y-M0/T ... eauLGE.jpg</a>). Horapollo talks about the Phoenix three times. The most relevant passage is at II, 35. I highlight the most relevant words:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">When
they wish to indicate a long-enduring restoration, they draw the
phoenix. For when this bird is born, there is a renewal of things.</span>
And it is born in this way. When the phoenix is about to die, it casts
itself upon the ground and is crushed. And from the ichor pouring out of
the wound, another is born. And this one immediately sprouts wings and <span style="font-weight: bold;">flies off with its to Heliopolis in Egypt and once there, at the rising of the sun, the sire dies.</span> And with the death of the sire, the young one returns to its own country. And the Egyptian priests bury the dead phoenix.</div>
</blockquote>
The
phoenix is also connected with the rising of the Nile. I, 34, says that
among other things the phoenix symbolizes a "a flood, since the phoenix
is the symbol of the sun, than which nothing in the universe is
greater." I, 35 elaborates:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
And
whatever the Egyptians do in the case of the other sacred animals, the
same do they feel obliged to do for the phoenix. For it is said by the
Egyptians beyond all other birds to cherish the sun, wherefore the Nile
overflows for them because of the warmth of this god, concerning which we
have spoken a little above.</div>
</blockquote>
Another reason for the connection of the sun with the flood is that its peak
occurs in the month of Leo (July 22-Aug. 22); this is a Greek category, of course, but we are dealing
with Greco-Roman Egypt.<br />
<br />
The phoenix was often shown with a fire under it, unlike the bird on the Star card. If the bird derives from Horapollo, the lack of a fire does not mean anything, because Horapollo mentions no fire.<br />
<br />
The bird could also be an eagle, although in that case the derivation is not from Horapolo. Psalm 103:5 says: <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Renovabitur sicut aquilae iuventus tua" </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
(Your youth will be renewed like the eagle's)</div>
</blockquote>
The reference would appear to be a belief expressed in a 13th century Bestiary (<a class="postlink" href="http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast232.htm">http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast232.htm</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The
eagle is the king of birds. When it is old it becomes young again in a
very strange manner. When its eyes are darkened and its wings are heavy
with age, it seeks out a fountain clear and pure, where the water
bubbles up and shines in the clear sunlight. Above this fountain it
rises high up into the air, and fixes its eyes upon the light of the sun
and gazes upon it until the heat thereof sets on fire its eyes and
wings. Then it descends down into the fountain where the water is
clearest and brightest, and plunges and bathes three times, until it is
fresh and renewed and healed of its old age.</div>
</blockquote>
The
sun is then offstage right, and after flying into the sun it will dive
into the pool. The allegory is much the same as with Horapollo's
Phoenix.</div><div class="content"> </div><div class="content">The earliest Star cards have none of this imagery: either a woman is grabbing at a star, or else it is a suggestion of the star of Bethlehem. Again, it is a matter of ancient literature about Egypt affecting the imagery starting with the Cary Sheet, c. 1500. <br /></div><div class="content"><br />
18. Decker finds a dog in the Moon
card, and concludes that it means the Moon is a divinity. But there is
no dog in any 15th century Moon card, and it doesn't take Horapollo to
interpret the Moon as a divinity. I think he would have done better to
take the meaning of "crab", which is the same word as "crayfish" (in
Horapollo with an oyster, but let's keep it simple): "a man careless of
his welfare". <br />
<br />
Actually, "crayfish" in Greek is "karabos", which also means "scarab," the dung beetle (<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CE%AC%CF%81%CE%B1%CE%B2%CE%BF%CF%82#Ancient_Greek">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CE%AC%CF%81%CE%B1%CE%B2%CE%BF%CF%82#Ancient_Greek</a>). Pictorially Cancer on the Dendera zodiacs could be either a crab or a scarab (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEOvyxaPdTyPmhNbKvavCxyCmOpmmdZe2adCv5BC6_fJm8rnPtesIgRZqb9EELOCZQvXDNIwIrfF8g7y5CWGrbCzPj3qH0v2ehXIiXWYjIbn3ugxfkI7VV5fABgjtJxiwH466nWpI-HWHd/s1600/18acscarabMinchiateCrab.JPG">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... teCrab.JPG</a>). Thus we may perhaps invoke Horapollo on the scarab (I, 10), where it is indeed connected with the Moon:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
When
the male wishes to have offspring, it takes some cow-dung and makes a
round ball of it...Then, burying this ball, it leaves it in the ground
for twenty-eight days, during which time the moon traverses the twelve
signs of the zodiac. Remaining here, the beetle is brought to birth. And
on the twenty-ninth day, when it breaks the ball open, it rolls it into
the water. For it considers this day to be the conjunction of the moon
and the sun, as well as the birth of the world. When it is opened in the
water, animals emerge which are beetles. It symbolizes birth for this
very reason. And a father, because the beetle takes its birth from a
father only.</div>
</blockquote>
Assuming a mistranslation of
"karabos" as "crayfish", we have precisely the situation on the Cary
Sheet Moon card, with its Egyptian background of two obelisks, a temple,
and what I think are crocodiles along the bank of a lake (look carefully!) (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjXl-1Q7-SeEPa2jrvgYc3CVsaGCHkDzAFBmqITGRBI3bnerHF10QHjI8lEwFn18vTu3OAtjy2Czkv1Pkj6VXqdOgQ0gmlfcFrfzfuWIyC28jv7rq8HEa9emd7QLojrSPXpFUZnU3KbPo/s1600/18bcarplusdetNot.jpg">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... detNot.jpg</a>). The crocodile, Horapollo says, is a destroyer (II, 35):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
When they wish to represent a man at war with another, they draw a scorpion and a crocodile. For each destroys the other.</div>
</blockquote>
It is also a lunatic, as we see at I, 67: <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
When
they wish to represent a plunderer, a fecund man, a madman, they draw a
crocodile, because it is fecund and has many offspring and raves.</div>
</blockquote>
I want to get back to the dogs, two of them. It is totally commonplace that dogs bark at the moon. But we are looking for "hidden," i.e. non-obvious, interpretations. I find one in Clement of Alexandria, in a work that might not have been known until around 1500 or so. The dogs are not in the Cary Sheet, done around that time. Here is what Clement of Alexandria had to say about
dogs Tropics; it is in the same short section that discusses the
nature of hieroglyphs, so there is no way the humanists would have
missed this part if they had the text (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02105.htm">http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02105.htm</a>).
He is talking about what the Egyptians meant by various symbols, such
as the lion, the ox, the horse, etc. I have put in bold the most
important part:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
And in what is
called among them the Komasiæ of the gods, they carry about golden
images— two dogs, one hawk, and one ibis; and the four figures of the
images they call four letters.For the dogs are symbols of the two
hemispheres, which, as it were, go round and keep watch; the hawk, of
the sun, for it is fiery and destructive (so they attribute pestilential
diseases to the sun); the ibis, of the moon, likening the shady parts
to that which is dark in plumage, and the luminous to the light. And
some will have it that <span style="font-weight: bold;">by the dogs are meant the tropics, which guard and watch the sun’s passage to the south and north.</span> The hawk signifies the equinoctial line, which is high and parched with heat, as the ibis the ecliptic...</div>
</blockquote>
I
think the idea is that if the sun went any further north in its mid-day
course than the Tropic of Cancer, it would make the summer too hot. And
if it went any further south at the tropic of Capricorn, the winters
would be too cold. So the dogs keep the sun on course. From a Greco-Egyptian perspective, they are guard-dogs. The gods did not want
another Phaeton, whose erratic leading of the solar horses burned the
land and led to the creation of the Sahara Desert. The card, while
focusing on the moon, is on this view also about the sun. on the Noblet
card, one disc is wholly inside the other, as in an eclipse. </div>
<div class="content">
<br />
19.
Decker sees two men on the Tarot de Marseille Sun card greeting each
other, This symbolizes "concord" or "unanimity". He ignores that the couple usually associated with the zodiacal sign of Gemini, Castor and Pollux, had the same feelings. The early cards had no
such two men. The PMB has a child reaching for the Sun; in the Cary
Sheet, there appears to be a boy waving a flag, retained in the
Vieville (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6ubTGoOoSmf3jQuur86CMQZ7Wv2IAcL5_rCMC43TUASS5fV-y_rk_U4GrkYuDQeuWQZczVzje8F4a7vzZkX1LuGAIYvj0gcL6SzVuCXf3yAuNMmGPZLWOljoLlYjPvHjtP6URCxmZiFx-/s1600/19caryShVieville.JPG">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f_huNLujqas/T ... eville.JPG</a>).
It suggests that the new birth has happened, and it is a cause for joy.
That is not something uniquely Egyptian. <br />
<br />
But in the earliest TdM-style cards, that found in the Sforza Castle, and the c. 1650 Noblet, it is a male and female pair touching each other, (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDP8u2AVUXi8v02pvL8hZ9BK0Cce4j-ebADaGiyjRhyphenhyphenZb1VVSo7gluCUdM57GIssPODAo157Zadhfn4HIfMsI8KuVLmuZrln_Iyyhrc7dnOKVEwmswnp0JAaVfm769jt_rek3XrPDCoqI/s400/19absforzaCastleNoblet.jpg">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... Noblet.jpg</a>) and Minchiate (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnFxsaysIPw5l7UJejtTSrIxdUq6RVTgn0jhI2KQTy7n2Px1m_9rOx0BucwFA_JIOP5_yasT06exzHEgx-xf_ZckzyHCxEmZD0pyBqB9ALiCYXkKgyBXfQdC44MY4RyBW2c4Uu0Sl0I9Q/s400/19MnchiateCharSunGem2.jpg">http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yeUc6jb8pBE/T ... unGem2.jpg</a>).
In relation to Egypt, that would correspond to the Egyptian
representation of the Gemini at Dendera, clearly male and female
(<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwgE2ssw5oLT-RDbyJrcXm2FTmQl7XC_zhlKVYRa9NoadTzDTuTePDqyv5s9pm6ZKIfBBS7NCVpdJgoXWKyg_bLfPUGeCkdTQZ1yO-ZMtP-zqZnYEaw0Dq0orek62CmL4ZeDRyPEgrye0/s400/19DenderaGemini.jpg">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... Gemini.jpg</a>);
the Greek Gemini have perhaps become the Egyptian son and daughter of the Sun,
Shu and Tefnet. Actually, many images of Gemini in the 15th-16th centuries had a male and a female clasping each other affectionately, even some with no possible connection to Horapollo. Yet the Dendera zodiac remains a possibility. An example is a 1497
Troyes zodiac (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY02l2KdTxwCmR3Vbeco4jo0GMVlS0OKrgqH-WcxkaMFkehsrjpHA7KoyQdwQ8efM1Q497iUvVVBoAjOSLxm9bzrRaGsKxDkkXnf56I2W8SivProHSBHwuSDwLDs4ViCGaHUoU3Nv1HlA/s1600/17aascan0020zodiac.JPG">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... zodiac.JPG</a>). The image is unlikely to have been part of
the original tarot, because the "Sforza Castle" is later
than the earlier Milan cards which show no such two people, and the other early cards are quite different. <br />
<br />
20. For the Judgment card (or "Angel", as it was called early on), Decker focuses on the Angel's wings.
He says that "wings" meant "wind", and wind is breath or spirit.
Actually, the image is not "wings" but rather "a hawk rising toward the
gods". Since "hawk" is a symbol of the soul, it would follow that a hawk
rising up would mean the soul or spirit rising. An angel is not a hawk,
but there is enough here to force the analogy, as an Egyptian
prefiguration of the angels who assist in the Resurrection, lifting the
soul up or giving it wings.<br />
<br />
By the time of the Chosson (1670 or c. 1746), there is what seems to me might an allusion to one of the major Egyptian gods (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmCoe73SEVVc7LDeg9-q-6v0QwfELG0rmO_477S6UH_zyWHH4Vnb2HlhizHFEcOUM6tMzDNUFIcXDF3Ent29qlKV0QOJPlrgEMpL9SihCPYxgQTo6R8CYNoNiglbbupeUVCbgHHyPcgBg/s400/20ClossonWadjet.jpg">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... Wadjet.jpg</a>).
The hills conjoined with the tonsured head of the middle figure form an
eye, very similar to the "eye of Horus" or "Wadjet" that was depicted
schematically. Plutarch LII describes the eyes of Horus as the sun and
the moon. Since the sun sees everything, that eye probably would have
been identified with the all-seeing eye of God, a well-known hieroglyph in the Renaissance sense of pictorial symbol,
most famously in the US dollar bill (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRThleFwNspI0cWmQAyKqTaLDQI7gPLwqUnpkt4ad59NdtifSjyx-4Jg-VsAYJc3CyWz6wnQfV_yLuvNKzG1mcMKJiBjUZBU0Y06xVV_HG-_s27CPzKj2eQOVNeHfe5dYZ2NQwjDSGzC4/s1600/20QueModoGreat_Seal.jpg;">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gUn-DswmmJ0/T ... _Seal.jpg;</a> on the left, the Latin means "This is the way of God"). </div><div class="content"><br />
21.
For the World card, Decker has already said that the lady in the middle
is Isis. Horapollo says that the depiction of a woman signifies Isis (1,3). That fits Decker's
interpretation of the TdM card, to be sure, but many
other cards as well. That is no objection: in Apuleius, Isis is all
goddesses combined into one. Thus for example, even the Cary Sheet's
Popess could be Isis, as Robert O'Neill has pointed out in his book Tarot Symbolism. It is quite similar to
the Isis of Pope Alexander VI's fresco series (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtgwI2yBcxDP1oCJuZtv3a5eSKXR236-FyYvVdv_ihGe4N2GrUcXfaITXo9pbpxBE5yUwTzDh48mtcKo4K2eYUQXa5L-VWn1gk1_Ju_WDmSJMAFo4uaAHWSHR586r3dEFhsTi-OHXQsOc/s1600-h/02CaryIsis.jpg">http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... ryIsis.jpg</a>,
where I have given a mirror image of the fresco, as woodcuts like the
Cary Sheet do that to the image as carved). From there we have the curtain behind
the Tarot de Marseille Popess as the "veil of Isis" in Herodotus, and we
are on our way to the Golden Dawn.<br />
<br />
For the Fool, a card he says
was added after the first 14 and was not part of the original sequence, Decker interprets the card by the animal reaching up to the Fool: it is a
hyena, he says, which the artist, an Italian, didn't know how to draw. That gives
the card the meaning of "unstable, because sometimes male and sometimes
female". But the early Fool cards had no animal on that card, not even
the Cary Sheet, which shows the left half of the card (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbVQKTGQDH5foBX97_KD-zhrFPHEBs-mSa8QrTL5ai2Gxqv0MTNVIBrbmYPcyPu4zaqyb__fPXS7_x8mQBrkImRmac7z1azIWQDZDRQopG-GiQ8DaYs_m_HVgDnWuzSiWJ4YVZ_rD_J7U/s1600/01CarywFool.jpg">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2J3f4rKYxsY/T ... ywFool.jpg</a>). And when there was an animal in art that might have been suggested by the Tarot Fool, as in "Tarot of Mantegna" Misero (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHRuK4uBBcPoWn3vf7vnGJNZ-Vylrn7Dcxfk3OIWIcCPicxG6i2Y0GGnOFLkorvvbZq8qY7pKa0P3uM1MLimWJQQv8rQKZDdOw04m_hJsfwB4hKNL96yEnZrHjv7NYsy8_2QjPQxaVbVE/s1600/00acMantegnaSforzaScrovegni.JPG">http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... ovegni.JPG</a>) or Bosch's "Wayfarer" (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXst3dhlhyphenhyphen-Zy1AIWpDGpo63u33ij1cdze3NZU4rkxU8FupVFFMjVW0Ud-0TI9jT3y5bDEPR6E1Zx6FweEOsQEOpuzRsiRNAuRRzFN1MdWS_fgiqoet9J5m6vVrrkrFizHZ54hxK9VUv4/s1600/00ClossonBosch.jpg">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... nBosch.jpg</a>),
it was unambiguously a dog. A dog looking at something means that what
it is looking at is a divinity, Horapollo says. Divinity is one
interpretation of the Fool ("the divine brain" in one 16th century Ferrarese composition, for which see Andrea Vitali in "Tarocchi in Literature I" at <a href="http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=199&lng=eng">http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=199&lng=eng</a><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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mso-para-margin-left:0in;
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">)</span></span>, based on St. Paul's "foolishness of God".(I Cor. 1:25). <br />
<br />
<b>CONCLUSION</b><br />
<br />
Can one suppose
that the inventor of the cards had to have had Horapollo and the other
texts in front of him? There is one major problem. Much of the argument
depends on card images that cannot reasonably be thought to exist until
late in the 15th century at the least. It is not that "absence of
evidence implies evidence of absence", which is indeed a fallacy. It is
that there are many contra-indications (contradiction seems too strong a
term, the medical term better) in the early cards of Decker's
hypothesis. <br />
<br />
Also, interpretations involving the Tarot de
Marseille too often require knowledge of Egypt that was not available
until later, unless Cyriaco was exceptionally well informed. Moreover,
correlations do not imply causation, even when repeated 22 times. The
early cards simply don't suggest Egyptian interpretations, except
possibly the Bagatella with his odd, wide hat. On the other hand, the
Cary Sheet was done at a time when over Egyptian references were being
made everywhere. The Pope had his apartments painted with scenes from
Egyptian mythology and traced his ancestry back to Osiris. Not to be
outdone, the Emperor had Durer draw hieroglyphs around him and had his
ancestry also traced back to Osiris, and to Hercules as well. After that
it was simply a matter of completing the job. Egyptomania was still
rampant, and when the Counter-Reformation clamped down, it still raged
in France and elsewhere in Northern Europe. Apart from what the
designers would have done, I see no reason why a system of "hidden
symbolism" such as I describe shouldn't have readily been imposed by
viewers of the cards, regardless of whether the artists had them in
mind. <br />
<br />
Ross Caldwell (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2881163&postcount=49">http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... stcount=49</a>)
has objected that if Alberti, Filelfo, etc. had been designing tarot
cards, they would have come up with something more recondite than what
we see. I reply that the situation here is not like the designing of
medals and personal devices, where enigma is meant to suggest
profundity; and it is not like the emblem books of later years, where
enigmatic images encouraged people to read the rather pedestrian
explanations. It is like in Shakespeare, where in "Get thee to a
nunnery", "nunnery" means both a place for nuns and a whorehouse; and in
"I took thee for a fishmonger," "fishmonger" means both a seller of
fish and a procurer. The innocents can enjoy the lines, and so can the
cynics. Italian poetry of the period was full of such double meanings,
usually obscene or insulting. But they don't have to be understood for the poems to have meanings on a surface level.</div><div class="content"> </div><div class="content">Likewise, here
it is a matter of taking cards that make perfect sense in commonplace
terms and using more obscure, "recondite" sources to give them new meanings, sometimes followed by new designs that cater to them. For example, dogs were conventionally associated with the Moon, as was the crayfish (astrology) and large bodies of water affected by the tides. That does not exclude other meanings, however. For me there is no question
but that the card were first Christian and also likely Petrarchan
(for its name <span style="font-style: italic;">Trionfi</span>, for its
sequence of images through life and beyond, and most of all for the six
stages with clear correspondences in the early Milanese cards). It is with what
happened later, at first in narrow humanist circles and then more broadly, that I have been concerned.<br />
<br />
I cannot, to be sure, prove that such interpretations of the cards were made historically between the time Horapollo was discovered and the early 18th century, the time of the final TdM style. All that can be said is that these quotations from Horapollo fit the cards and that certain details added to the cards after their initial appearance, at least as shown by the Cary-Yale, support Egyptianate interpretations. Also, it is not a question of finding an explanation of all these details that cannot be explained in other ways. Some can be explained in other ways, with different assumptions about when the details were added.. These interpretations merely add another dimension, consistently through all the trumps, to the Christian one which is also there. <br />
<br />
One aspect of the tarot that these references to Horapollo do not include in their interpretations is the order of the trumps. The trumps do not follow the order in Horapollo at all. In fact, the order of the explanations seems to follow no order at all, unlike the tarot sequence. For that, Decker will need something else, something that puts the meanings so far adduced into numerical order. His next chapter is entitled "Numinous Numbers".<br />
<br />
When I posted this defense of Decker on the Tarot History Forum, it aroused a storm of opposition. If you would like to read the objections and my replies (some of which I have tried to incorporate here), they start at <a href="http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&sid=db26aa373bb9c2ccd6fa1a38f0531e5a#p14161">http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&sid=db26aa373bb9c2ccd6fa1a38f0531e5a#p14161</a>.<br />
<br />
To continue reading, click on "Older Posts" </div>
<span class="corners-bottom"></span>Michael S Howardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488567669455421279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-230755636669834672.post-4134079696253593632014-04-28T20:11:00.005-07:002022-10-12T18:16:55.961-07:00Chapter 5: Numinous NumbersDecker's chapter 5 deals with the
historical meanings of the numbers, stemming from
Pythagoreanism, in relation to the cards. The meanings of the numbers shapes not only the meaning of the corresponding major arcana cards, but also their numerical ranking in the sequence: Decker in fact insists that since the
correspondences work only for the order of the Tarot de Marseille, that order is the
original one for the tarot. It seems to me that such an inference is not valid. It could just as well have been the other way around: the TdM order was developed after the original order for the express purpose of drawing numerological associations. <br />
<br />
In listing the correspondences in question,
Decker gives few references. He merely gives a few sources at the
beginning, without page numbers. Most of these were in Latin and were indeed available before
1440 in Italy. However he does not always stick to that list, e.g. in
the case of Philo of Alexandria; I don't know when he was available, nor
does Decker say. Other Greek sources were definitely not available until
late in the century: the full text of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Theologumena Arithmeticae</span>
entered Italy after Bessarion arranged for its purchase in Greece and
made it available to people first in his circle of friends in Rome,
1455-1467, and then as part of the library he willed to Venice. An early
copy exists in the Laurentian in Florence and so must have been part of
the Medici Library in the late 15th century. <br />
<br />
A Pythagorean
interpretation of the tarot would seem to be on good grounds
historically, since one of the few writings about the Tarot in the 16th
century, namely the 1584 <span style="font-style: italic;">Numeralium Locorum Decas</span> (The Ten Numeric Positions), puts it in just such a context. I will elaborate on that in another place. <br />
<br />
Decker's
account of how number philosophy (arithmology) applies to the cards
divides into several parts, depending on his source. To get the full
picture for each card in relation to what came before, I will try to
combine the sources. <br />
<br />
First is a discussion of Macrobius on the
first seven numbers. For the One, he simply repeats what he said in the
Introduction to the book, that One, corresponding to the Juggler, is the
Agathodemon, the good genius. <br />
<br />
Later, in discussing the number Two, he says more. Now his source, he says, is Philo of Alexandria (p. 118):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Trump
Two refers to God's Wisdom...The Popess is a latter-day version of
Sophia, the hypostasis of Wisdom. According to Philo (ca.20-BC-ca AD
50), the Monad (absolute Oneness) is assisted by the Dyad (absolute
Twoness). He associates the Monad with God, the Dyad with Sophia. This
context gives Wisdom a spiritual mystique, which may contribute to the
ecclesiastical costume for the Popess.</div>
</blockquote>
I spent a
good half hour in the library trying unsuccessfully to find where Philo
said that the Monad was assisted by the Dyad. Looking in Dillon
(<i>Middle Platonism</i> pp. 155-166) I see that he would very much like
Philo to have that Sophia is the Dyad, but it is all inference,
contradicted by other inferences, e.g. where Philo says that the Dyad is
two powers that are offspring of Sophia (Dillon p. 165). Also, I don't
know if Philo's text was available in the 15th century. <br />
<br />
But
another Latin author, Martianus Capella, calls the 2 "Juno or Wife or
Sister of the Monad" (Decker did not cite this information); with the 2
as "wife or sister of the Monad", humanists could have easily made the
association to the Biblical Sophia without help from Philo. The exact
relationship, sister or daughter or whatever, isn't important; nor is
the apparent age difference between the Bagatto and the Popess; she is
eternally old, just as he is eternally young. If Dante can address the
Virgin Mary in Heaven as "figlia del suo figlio" (<a class="postlink" href="http://italian.about.com/library/anthology/dante/blparadiso033.htm">http://italian.about.com/library/anthol ... iso033.htm</a>),
anything is possible. Martianus at least makes the
Dyad feminine, just as the nouns "Hochma", "Sophia", and "Sapientia"
are.<br />
<br />
The next time he discusses these same numbers, Decker does
cite well known Latin sources, in fact, they were in most arithmetic
books of the Middle Ages (for an example, click on the links <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmv9fcu2Rntclhi0VJNN9gT5rp3ybFWWhoAx-plL9X0fQ0XzxbxQ9din3w-c17772KCy2ZOe4C3LvIaJXORvA1KHUZD6V6tJ8o2fjiDAb3X2tOwzVfW_RxGj63NCOuv9i8IXxBjAB1avg/s1600/05scan0085linplannumA.jpg">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-h5Q-Ol0kbng/T ... annumA.jpg</a> and <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJp8bZC5ZpzQ1bbUWlF-jF7KLj93UIVgVZkIzWdAUxHGdPd0Mc0G4k48MRRs7gdxpC9atICr1mQPGFcR2M6BSM22T0gDFDKAjWQHz-QOrp4-9jam3WO9CeVQ9U9botIkz47x4chpLoo0k/s1600/05scan0085solidA.jpg">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HA55FHwDlAc/T ... solidA.jpg</a> (from Heninger, <span style="font-style: italic;">Sweet Harmonies</span>, p. 72f, originally from Joannes Martinus, <span style="font-style: italic;">Arithmetica</span>,
Paris 1526). Decker says that 1 is the number of the point, 2 of the
line (the shortest path between two points), 3 the number of plane
figures (requiring at least 3 numbers to specify a figure, the triangle)
and 4 the number of the solid (requiring at least 4 numbers to
determine, as in the tetrahedron).<br />
<br />
Applied to the Bagat he says (p. 120):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The
Tarot designer would have trouble indicating a dimensionless point, but
it could be implied as the center of the ball or disc in the Juggler's
hand. However the Tarot's designer may have felt no obligation to
include an explicit symbol for Oneness in this card, because One is not a
number.</div>
</blockquote>
Well, there is no reason to have "an explicit symbol of Oneness" in the card in the first place, as far as I can see. The important thing is that what is on the card be a symbol of "the beginning" or some such thing. The figure on the frontispiece does stand at the beginning of life, handing his map to the naked infants about to enter. However the mere presence of a floppy hat and a stick does not make him the Tarrot Magician/Bagatella, who is not handing anybody anything. Normally street formers are not at the beginning of anything, unless it is of a trick or two.<br />
<br />
Later n the book he says more about this figure, that he stands for the Egyptian creator god Khnum, who made humans' souls
on his potter's wheel . That would be at the beginning of something, to be sure. It would be even better if he stood for the creator of the universe itself. Decker says (p. 165):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In Egypt the Good Demon was associated with several gods but especially with a creator god, Khnum or Keph. This association could have been known to the Renaissance through Philo of Byblos (fl. AD 60), quoted by Eusebisu of Caesarea (ca. 260-ca. 340), a Christian apologist. I elsewhere related Khnum to one of the earliest versions of the Juggler. Khnum appears in Egyptian art as a ram-headed crafstman seated at a potter's wheel on which he forms children representative of the human race. This is somewhat reminiscent both of the Juggler who sits or stands at a table, and of the Genius in figure 0.2, who greets numerous babies (prenatal souls). Some Juggler trumps include two or more children. Here we have allegories about human beings as expressions of the Supreme Being, the Neoplatonist "One."<br />
_________________<br />
2. Eusebius of Caesarea, <i>Preparation for the Gospel</i> I, 10, 48.<br />
Ronald G. Decker, "The tarot: an Inquiry into Origins," <i>Gnosis Magazine</i>, no. 46 (winter 1998): 16-24.</blockquote>
Was the Good Demon associated with Khnum in Eusebius? Here are the relevant part of Eusebius's excerpts from Philo
of Byblos (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eusebius_pe_01_book1.htm">http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/euseb ... _book1.htm</a>; I put in bold the key parts):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
.<span style="font-weight: bold;">Tauthus, whom the Egyptians call Thoyth, excelled in wisdom among the Phoenicians</span>,
and was the first to rescue the worship of the gods from the ignorance
of the vulgar, and arrange it in the order of intelligent experience.
Many generations after him a god Sourmoubelos and Thuro, whose name was
changed to Eusarthis, brought to light the theology of Tauthus which had
been hidden and overshadowed, by allegories.'<br />...<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The nature then of the dragon and of serpents Tauthus himself regarded as divine</span>,
and so again after him did the Phoenicians and Egyptians: for this
animal was declared by him to be of all reptiles most full of breath,
and fiery. In consequence of which it also exerts an unsurpassable
swiftness by means of its breath, without feet and hands or any other of
the external members by which the other animals make their movements.
It also exhibits forms of various shapes, and in its progress makes
spiral leaps as swift as it chooses. It is also most long-lived, and its
nature is to put off its old skin, and so not only to grow young again,
but also to assume a larger growth; and after it has fulfilled its
appointed measure of age, it is self-consumed, in like manner as Tauthus
himself has set down in his sacred books: for which reason this animal
has also been adopted in temples and in mystic rites. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
We have spoken
more fully about it in the memoirs entitled Ethothiae, in which we prove
that it is immortal, and is self-consumed, as is stated before: for <span style="font-weight: bold;">this
animal does not die by a natural death, but only if struck by a violent
blow. The Phoenicians call it "Good Daemon": in like manner the
Egyptians also surname it Cneph; and they add to it the head of a hawk
because of the hawk's activity.</span></div>
</blockquote>
It's not a
creator god. In any case, as a combination snake and hawk, there is no
way one could get to the god creating humans on his potter's wheel from
this.<br />
<br />
So is there any connection at all between the Magician and an Egyptian god somehow at the beginning of things? I think there is, but to explain my point requires a long digression.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>THE MAGICIAN AS AN EGYPTIAN GOD OF BEGINNINGS</b><br />
<br />
In his <span style="font-style: italic;">Gnosis Magazine</span> article, Decker says of Khnum: <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUrZetH7QBIfrIuqC9Rz7ihA7anzjcP7WI8XR4V0UmfbG-QcICF1Lj6kLtnSDoQZOTkVmCy07DUdNpCq57LunwxKhIcEff0qn4HNQ0aU6hoImvtWO2m-YTnvym7hVNlGxMP6cJn1iefrk/s1600/GW406H382.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUrZetH7QBIfrIuqC9Rz7ihA7anzjcP7WI8XR4V0UmfbG-QcICF1Lj6kLtnSDoQZOTkVmCy07DUdNpCq57LunwxKhIcEff0qn4HNQ0aU6hoImvtWO2m-YTnvym7hVNlGxMP6cJn1iefrk/s320/GW406H382.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
The early Hermetists identified their Agathodaimon with Khnum, an Egyptian creator god (footnote 13: <span style="font-style: italic;">Ibid </span>[Brian P. Copenhaver, <span style="font-style: italic;">Hermetica</span> (Cambridge University Press 1992)], pp. 141, 153, 164 <span style="font-style: italic;">et passim</span>).
In ancient depictions, Khnum is a ram-headed craftsman seated at a
potter's wheel or workbench on which he fashions human beings (figure
3). I view this divine potter as an ancestor of the Bagatella, and we
can now suspect that the white mass on his table in the Visconti-Sforza
Tarot is a lump of clay. The Bagatella is indeed emerging as an exotic
figure <span style="font-style: italic;">par excellence</span>.</div>
</blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmJnUDJC7KTsumjhy_ZjuMMi7O4rb4jixGAEM9sDdveQJ3EfYE3XvIYeDsjkPtbeyZQIGjX7H2yARMHm_ud8IY03X6kV6Nx2MgKZtVVFW8k0UcapPYNDPaYwwQH9q3aRakbZv_bYPsygE/s1600/01akhnumSforzaNoCapt.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmJnUDJC7KTsumjhy_ZjuMMi7O4rb4jixGAEM9sDdveQJ3EfYE3XvIYeDsjkPtbeyZQIGjX7H2yARMHm_ud8IY03X6kV6Nx2MgKZtVVFW8k0UcapPYNDPaYwwQH9q3aRakbZv_bYPsygE/s320/01akhnumSforzaNoCapt.jpg" width="320" /></a>His
figure 3 is a drawing from Wallis Budge (1904) of a ram-headed god with
horizontal horns (I have taken it from <a href="http://wwwtheblogking.blogspot.com/2014/04/clay-creation-myth-then-lord-god-formed.html">http://wwwtheblogking.blogspot.com/2014/04/clay-creation-myth-then-lord-god-formed.html</a>; Khnum is in the center, Thoth to the right, recording the person's allotted years). I have found no indication that it was known in the
Renaissance. I looked at Decker's page references, including the <span style="font-style: italic;">et passim</span>.
They are all to Copenhaver's notes to the Corpus, not to the text
itself. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmJnUDJC7KTsumjhy_ZjuMMi7O4rb4jixGAEM9sDdveQJ3EfYE3XvIYeDsjkPtbeyZQIGjX7H2yARMHm_ud8IY03X6kV6Nx2MgKZtVVFW8k0UcapPYNDPaYwwQH9q3aRakbZv_bYPsygE/s1600/01akhnumSforzaNoCapt.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
Even more similar to the image from Budge is an image of Khnum from an Egyptian relief that I got off the Internet, which I put next to the first known Magician card, the PMB of 1450s Milan, done by the Bembo workshop in Cremona.<br />
<br />
Modern scholars have noted similarities between the language of
the Corpus Hermeticum, especially about the god who is "father of all", and a <span style="font-style: italic;">Hymn to Khnum</span>
found in Egyptian papyrus texts translated after Champollion. But the
Hermetic texts, either the Greek one or the Latin <i>Asclepius</i>, do not mention Khnum or any potter-god. The
Greek Tractate V, 6-8 credits the Good Demon as being the first-born (p. 44) and
the mind, nous, that pervades all things. That certainly qualifies it as a god of beginnings? Then it surveys the
lineaments of the human newborn:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Who
traced the line round the eyes? Who pierced the holes for nostrils and
ears? [and so on] ...What sort of mother or what sort of father if not
the invisible god, who crafted them all by his own will?...so great is
the father of all. ... You are the mind who understands, the father who makes his craftwork, the god who acts, and the good who makes all things.</div>
</blockquote>
So the Good Demon did indeed form human beings. This is in a text unknown in the West until 1460, immediately given to Ficino to translate, and unpublished until 1471. It is surely too late for the Magician card. Also, while it is <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> the "Hymn to Khnum", but Khnum is never mentioned; and we
are told nothing about how this god can be identified pictorially.<br />
<br />
In
search of clues, I also looked in Copenhaver's index under "lots",
"divination", "foreknowledge", etc. Lower-level spirits are indeed
described as doing divination with lots, for example in <span style="font-style: italic;">Asclepius</span> 38 (p. 90f; this Hermetic text, in Latin, was readily accessible in the West during the Middle Ages) :<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Heavenly
gods inhabit heaven's heights, each one heading up the order assigned
to him and watching over it. But here below our gods render aid to
humans as if through loving kinship, looking after some things
individually, foretelling some things through lots and divination, and
planning ahead to give help by other means, each in his own way.</div>
</blockquote>
But none of this is before birth, or says anything about what these gods looked like.<br /><br />I looked to see if Decker mentioned
these horizontal horns in relation to the hat. He does not. Although
Khnum is an Egyptian god that fits the arithmological account of the
Monad, and Decker's attempt to give a textual basis in Hermetism for the
Bagatella as Khnum points in a good direction, all he has is an
observation from modern scholarship. For something the Renaissance is
likely to have known, it is the horns that are key, of a special sort like in the drawing, and on a ram-headed god.<br />
<br />I kept looking in Decker's sources for other
references to spirits in relation to prenatal lots. I didn't find
anything. But there are three possible connections. One is by way of the Greek historian Herodotus, who speaks of a ram-headed god who was the Egyptian equivalent of Zeus (<a class="postlink" href="http://perseus.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/GreekScience/hdtbk2.html">http://perseus.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/GreekScience/hdtbk2.html</a>; I put the most relevant parts in bold): <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The
Thebans, and those who by the Theban example will not touch sheep, give
the following reason for their ordinance: they say that Heracles wanted
very much to see Zeus and that Zeus did not want to be seen by him, but
that finally, when Heracles prayed, Zeus contrived [4] to show himself
displaying the head and wearing the fleece of a ram which he had flayed
and beheaded. It is from this that <span style="font-weight: bold;">the Egyptian images of Zeus have a ram's head</span>;
and in this, the Egyptians are imitated by the Ammonians, who are
colonists from Egypt and Ethiopia and speak a language compounded of the
tongues of both countries.[5] It was from this, I think, that the
Ammonians got their name, too; for <span style="font-weight: bold;">the Egyptians call Zeus "Amon"</span>.</div>
</blockquote>
That is not specifically a creator god. Nor are its horns described. But it is the chief god, which in Judeo-Christian monotheism is the same as the creator-god. <br />
<br />
Another possibility is by way of the antiquarian and merchant-traveler Cyriaco of Ancona, who had made oluminous notebooks of drawings and
inscriptions he wrote down visiting Egypt. They subsequently were deposited in the library of one of the Sforza, where they were destroyed in a fire.. He spent his last years
1450-1452 in Cremona, where the workshop that did the early hand-painted tarot cards for the Visconti and Sforza lived.. The year before, Cyriaca visited Sigismondo Malatesta (Woodhouse, <span style="font-style: italic;">Gemistos Plethon</span>,
p. 161), the man for whom the first recorded tarot was made (1440) and who in
1451 wrote a letter to Francesco Sforza requesting that he have the
Bembo make him a deck in the Milanese style. When
considering the meaning of the tarot, it is worth recalling Malatesta's
eclectic
taste in religion, as reflected in the Templo Malatesto, which is full
of Greco-Roman mythological figures. In that same year Cyriaco visited Duke Leonello of
Ferrara at Belfiore (Adolfo Venturi, <span style="font-style: italic;">North Italian painting of the Quattrocento: Emilia</span>, 1931, p. 29). IThere is a certain resemblance between the so-called "Belfiore Muses" of Ferrara which Cyriaco described and some of the "second artist" PMB cards, as well as with a painting of a Madonna and Child by Benedetto Bembo now in La Spezia. Cyriaco might have shared sketches of both the Muses and of an Egyptian ram-headed god.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRi0iMaiB4HUI_WgYdoU7hU8LzR6RSHLsoEPxS0pfXPOXVKENG2oq_EHElaKUo4g2zOTOwvSROkclfCsgVbBIO7YJJa-b8zEkYN_RaNwaU5BP1hBAgPzB_vXuOM5b1H7eslFWFi6di1eI/s1600/01BembineDET2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRi0iMaiB4HUI_WgYdoU7hU8LzR6RSHLsoEPxS0pfXPOXVKENG2oq_EHElaKUo4g2zOTOwvSROkclfCsgVbBIO7YJJa-b8zEkYN_RaNwaU5BP1hBAgPzB_vXuOM5b1H7eslFWFi6di1eI/s1600/01BembineDET2.jpg" /></a></div>
Another possibility is by way of the so-called "Bembine Tablet" or something like it. This is an authentic Roman-era engraving of a multitude of Egyptian religious scenes and pseudo-hieroglyphs (and so not authentically Egyptian), probably of Italian origin (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bembine_Tablet">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bembine_Tablet</a>). On it are depictions of deities with peculiar horizontal way horns. While the tablet's first known owner was Pietro Bembo (no relation to the artists) in c. 1528 Venice, it certainly was in existence before then, perhaps stolen from someone in the "Sack of Rome". These images, or others like it, might have reached Cremona, ; again Cyriaco is one possible source.<br />
<br />
Finally, for an explanation of why a slight of hand artist in particular was used, there is the account in Horapollo cited in his previous chapter, that the image of a hand represented "one who enjoys building". That would be someone whose main asset was his hands--a slight of hand artist-- standing for someone constructing three-dimensional structures--of which the creator-god is the ultimate example.<br />
<br />
There is also one other thing, about a hat rather than horns: Martinus Capella,<span style="font-style: italic;"></span> describing a guest at the wedding. he says (<span style="font-style: italic;">Marriage of Mercury and Philology, </span>II, 174; Stahl & Johnson translation, p. 56; I put the most relevant parts in
bold):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
There came also a girl of
beauty and of extreme modesty, the guardian and protector of the
Cyllenian's home, by name Themis or Astraea or Erigone [translator's
note: This figure is identified by Hyginus (<span style="font-style: italic;">Astronomica</span>
1.25) with the zodiacal sign Virgo]; she carried in her hand stalks of
grain and an ebony tablet engraved with this image: In the middle of it
was <span style="font-weight: bold;">that bird of Egypt which the Egyptians call an ibis. It was wearing a broad-brimmed hat</span>, and it had a most beautiful head and mouth, which was caressed by a pair of serpents entwined; under them was <span style="font-weight: bold;">a gleaming staff</span>,
gold-headed, gray in the middle and black at the foot; under the ibis'
right foot was a tortoise and a threatening scorpion and on its left a
goat. The goat was driving a rooster into a contest to find out which of
the <span style="font-weight: bold;">birds of divination</span> was the gentler. The ibis wore on its front the name of a Memphitic month.</div>
</blockquote>
This
tablet is of course a present for the bride, Philology. The "Cyllenian"
of line 2 is Mercury as guide of the dead, identified as such in the
last book of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Odyssey</span>
(Copenhaver p. 94). The Capella translator says in a footnote that "for
the connection of the Ibis and the Egyptian Thouth or Mercury, see Plato
<span style="font-style: italic;">Phaedrus</span> 274c-d and Hyginus <span style="font-style: italic;">Astronomica</span>
2.28." Hyginus gives the correlation of Greek gods to Egyptian
creatures, by way of explaining how the gods hid from the monster
Typhon: "Mercury became an ibis..."; and a a result the Egyptians
considered such creatures the representatives of those gods. Plato
speaks of "the god to whom the bird called Ibis is sacred, his own name
being Theuth". Given those texts, readily accessible by the time of the
PMB Bagatella, it would not be hard for a humanist to connect a young
(hence unaging) figure with a broad-brimmed hat and a staff to
Thoth/Hermes in his human form. No speculation about access to Egyptian
images is required. <br /><br />So which is it, a humanized ram-headed god with horizontal horns
or a fortune-telling bird? It depends on what sources the designer or viewer had access to. It doesn't really matter; they are both
Egyptian gods. The Egyptian Hermes was even a kind of creator god; the story told by Plutarch was that in playing draughts with the Moon, he won five days' worth of light, which he used so that the Moon could give birth to the five gods of the Isis-Osiris myth. They might even have been seen as two aspects of the same god: one of the interlocutors in the Hermetic
texts is named Ammon (p. 58) or Hammon (p. 67), in the Latin <span style="font-style: italic;">Asclepius</span>; two others are named Tat and Hermes Trismegistus.<br /><br />
If the Magician is meant to suggest a god responsible for beginnings, that is at least fits the Magician's place in the sequence, if not the Neoplatonist One (who in fact was several steps higher than the Demiurge, creator of the world).<br />
<br />
<b>TWO THROUGH FIVE</b> <b>AND ELEVEN THROUGH FIFTEEN </b><br />
<br />
Next, for the Two, Decker says (p. 120):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
A
line can be a boundary producing two domains. Twoness allows for
Discernment. That is a mental process, and mentation may be implied by
the book that the Popess consults. Historically, the book had first
belonged to personifications of Sophia (Wisdom) but later was
transferred to Prudence, the Virtue that requires clear reasoning.
{Footnote: For a dozen examples of Prudence with a book, see Adolf
Katzenellenbogen, <span style="font-style: italic;">Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Medieval Art</span> (London: Warburg Institute, 1939).</div>
</blockquote>
Looking
in Katzenellenbogen's index under "book", I see that Prudence does have
a dozen entries, along with 3 for Sapientia. By comparison, "Fides" has
a book once, for a "book casket", and "Pietas" just a book, once. It
was an attribute for Prudence established in Carolingian times and
reaffirmed by Hugh of St. Victor at Chartres. Still, it would be nice to
have an Italian example closer to the time of the tarot. I checked
Bartolomeo's 14th century "Song of the Virtues and Liberal arts"; both
Justice and Prudence have books; Faith doesn't (<a class="postlink-local" href="http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=862&p=12631&hilit=Bartolomeo#p12612">viewtopic.php?f=11&t=862&p=12631&hilit=Bartolomeo#p12612</a>).
For Prudence with a crown--although not a tiara--Decker cites Psalm
14:18, "The simple acquire folly, but the prudent are crowned with
knowledge", and also the fresco of Good Government in Siena. There,
however, all the virtues have crowns. Similarly I am sure others besides
the prudent have crowns in the Bible. It is a common expression.<br />
<br />
Aside
from the tiara, which is related to her name "Popess", however
acquired, what makes the case to Prudence is the prominent book. There
is also, not very visible, a cross on the end of her staff. I find in
Katzenellenbogen only one reference to a cross-staff; it is to a
Prudence with both a cross-staff and a book. The text it illustrates is
from Proverbs Chapter 8, most of which is a speech by Wisdom, Sophia,
urging people to be instructed by her teachings: hence the book.
("Accipite disciplinam meam, et non pecuniam; doctrinam magis quam aurum
eligite". Douay-Rheims translation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Receive my instruction, and not
money: choose knowledge rather than gold. </blockquote>
It seems to me that
"doctrinam" means "teaching" or even "doctrine" [as "doctrinam" is
translated elsewhere in Proverbs] rather than "knowledge"; I am not sure
about "disciplina"; maybe "discipline".) The cross, whether or not
there was a tradition to that effect, emphasizes that what is being
referred to is a Christian version of Wusdom's "teaching", prudence in the sense in which one's immortal
soul is the primary concern, as opposed to those of the world.<br />
<br />
In
most Neopythagorean sources available in the Renaissance, 2 is
associated with the material universe rather than Wisdom (in Macrobius,
it is with "perceptible body" e.g. the planets; Martianus 732, "It is
also the mother of the elements"; the <span style="font-style: italic;">Theologumena</span>:
"it...resembles matter" and "Each thing and the universe as a whole is
one as regards the natural and constitutive monad in it, but again each
is divisible, in so far as it necessarily partakes of the material dyad
as well". Some tarot Popesses might reflect that. The Dodal's title for
the Popess is "Pances", meaning "Belly", which of course is the location
of the womb (<a class="postlink" href="http://newsletter.tarotstudies.org/2005/08/jean-dodal-1701-tarot/">http://newsletter.tarotstudies.org/2005 ... 701-tarot/</a>).
It could be a reference to the belly of the Virgin Mary, who provided
the matter, as opposed to the form or spirit, of Jesus, and who was told
of her pregnancy while reading Isaiah. But the Popess is an old lady,
more suitable for Wisdom than for the Virgin, so I doubt if this latter
interpretation was widespread <br />
<br />
Another
place where the One and the Two apply for Decker is in the 11th, 12th,
and 21st trumps. In the tarot, he says, the series simply repeats after
10 (p. 125). I was happy that he recognized this principle, as
the other, gematria, does not fit the cards at all. While Martianus does recognize
gematria, i.e. the adding up of digits, as in 12 = 1 + 2 + 3, mostly
the Pythagoreans do not resort to that. In the Greek way of writing
numbers, 10 is the highest number written with one letter, the tenth
letter iota; the next number is iota alpha. <br />
<br />
For 11, Decker argues that the ladies on the Strength and World cards are female counterparts of the Bagat (p. 125): <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Strength provides a new integrity comparable to the Juggler's. She is his female counterpart.</div>
</blockquote>
And (p. 129):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The
Juggler supports the soul as it embarks for earth; Fortitude supports
the soul in the midst of its earthly journey; the World supports the
soul in its reunion with the World Soul. Each of these cards, in its own
domain, embodies Unity.</div>
</blockquote>
Fortitude is indeed necessary, if the Wheel has turned against one. It is also necessary in the face of the Hanged Man's shame and what the Grim Reaper has in store for us. <br />
<br />
For the 12, Decker invokes the 2's principle of separation from the One (p. 126):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The Hanged Man embodies the negative aspects of Two: division, separation, alienation, antagonism.. </div>
</blockquote>
He gives no reference, but the source seems to be Martianus (p. 277):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Discord and adversity originate from it, inasmuch as it is the first to be able to separated from that which clings to it.</div>
</blockquote>
By "that which clings to it", he means the One. Again, I have no problem. <br />
<br />
Next come the 3 and the 4. I have already mentioned that 3 was the
number of two-dimensional figures and 4 of three-dimensional. From this
Decker derives that 3 is another number of mentation, while 4 has to do
with the realm of the senses, since that world has three dimensions, of
which flatness is a mental abstraction (p. 126). He has another argument
in this regard in Chapter 7. Decker assigns the Empress to
"Intellectual Manifestation" and the Emperor to "Material
Manifestation", corresponding to the Intelligible Realm and the Sensible
Realm in Platonism (p. 165). He draws on Apuleius, in an essay I had not known, which although obscure was available throughout the 15th
century. Decker says:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The distinction is found in the two aspects of God, transcendent and imminent. Apuleius is remarkably helpful in <span style="font-style: italic;">De Mundo</span>, his Latin translation of the Greek <span style="font-style: italic;">Peri Kosmou</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Concerning the Cosmos</span>), incorrectly credited to Aristotle. In Apuleius's rendering of <span style="font-style: italic;">De Mundo</span>, God's transcendent aspect becomes <span style="font-style: italic;">maiestas</span>, while God's imminent aspect becomes <span style="font-style: italic;">potestas</span>.
Here is a perfect explanation for the imperial bearing of trumps Three
and Four. Additionally, in the Tarot de Marseille, the Empress (as
covert Majesty) is partially hidden by her shield, while the Emperor (as
overt Power) is not at all hidden by his shield.</div>
</blockquote>
You can see what he means about the shields below:<br />
<img alt="Image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFjTYMUu6p9rptC5i7nTAT600UYcxT4ITwTXH2ARRf1Z_DSyqI4ndDiulCeJ_oDTQHRyZN_HEMn_cXv4JWZbogskos8owm_n56dfKSefsOp4sQ8HFm5Opz92iTbzc6qUIStzyMyIC2OgY/s300/EmpressEmperorConver.JPG" /><br />
I
have some questions here. How did the transcendent become more covert
than the imminent? The imminent divine is hidden behind appearances, in
Platonic thought, while the transcendent is beyond them. When I look at
the two cards, if the shield is to represent what is not hidden, I see
the Emperor above his shield, and thus transcendent, and the Empress at
the same level, i.e. imminent. In any case, this distinction is not part
of the original tarot; in the PMB, the Emperor has no shield, just an
Imperial eagle on his hat. <br />
<br />
However "potestas" would seem like a
good name for the Emperor. And "majestas" suits the Empress. I don't
quarrel with the idea that Apuleius's concepts might apply to the cards,
just with how Decker makes the link.<br />
<br />
Apuleius's analysis of the 3
and the 4 does correspond to what Philo says about the "Dyad" of two
powers created by Sophia, who seems to be the second power after the
Logos (or his imminent aspect), which in turn is the only-begotten of
the Speaker. These two powers are the "creative" and the "royal". And
from these are generated the "merciful" and the legislative or
"punitive", which might correspond to the Emperor (who has the power to pardon) and the Pope. However I would
have to see a Renaissance exegisis of any of this before I would
believe it was consciously applied to the tarot. What we have, I think,
is the genesis in Philo of what would later be the Tree of Life. I will
explain, although I can't make my explanation very clear, as the
concepts are imbedded in Middle Platonic hypostases.<br />
<br />
In Kabbalah,
the En Sof is Philo's Speaker and tarot's Fool, in its positive sense;
next is Kether, the Logos and Bagat, along with Hochma, Hebrew for
Wisdom, as Popess. Then comes Binah as Intellect/Understanding, i.e.
Decker's "intellectual manifestation" ("gates of intelligence" in Pico, <span style="font-style: italic;">900 Theses</span>,
13th of his "Hebrew" theses, as interpreted by the translator Farmer;
"understanding" in Reuchlin). She is also called the source of what is
below her (4th through 10th theses), as a kind of mother, and so Philo's
"creative" power. Then the fourth sefira, Chesed, is the material
expression of "loving kindness" (Reuchlin), expressed by Philo's "royal"
(or 'merciful"), the planet Jupiter in Pico (number 48 of his
"Cabalist" theses)--hence in the realm of the senses--and acted upon by
Abraham (14th of his "Hebrew" theses, as interpreted by the
translator (Farmer, <span style="font-style: italic;">Syncretism in the West</span>).
Binah, sefira 3, is represented, like trump 3, as female; and Chesed as
male. And the Pope, of course, would be Philo's "punitive" and
Kabbalah's "severity".<br />
<br />
After Pico's <span style="font-style: italic;">900 Theses</span>
in 1486, and especially after the new pope gave it his blessing in
1494, the Kabbalist version of the series of powers was well
known, although it would be too great a diversion to discuss them in
more detail here (see my essay at <a class="postlink" href="http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/">http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/</a>
for more.) Decker rejects this Kabbalist route, objecting that Pico, as
well as Agrippa "makes no mention of Tarot cards" (p. 19). But of
course no Renaissance writings on ancient hieroglyphs and Platonism make
mention of tarot cards, so I can't see this as a valid
objection. I don't see any other way of making "intellect" feminine and
"sensible manifestation" masculine, except by tortuous exegesis. But it
is plain in Pico and Reuchlin. <br />
<br />
The arithmology of 3 and 4 also applies to 13 and 14. For 13, Decker says (p. 126):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Whereas the Empress competes conception or gestation, Death completes decline or mortality.</div>
</blockquote>
Decker's idea here comes from the Pythagorean idea that threeness
introduces the concept of things' having "a beginning, middle, and end"
(e.g. Martianus 733). It is a good doctrine to apply: 3 pertains to the
beginning of life, i.e. birth, 13 to the end. The application of the 3
to birth is especially good, although I prefer not to see the bird on
the shield as a vulture, but rather as imitating the scenes of Horus
(whose animal-form was a hawk) on Isis's lap. In the PMB, the Empress
wears a green glove; green is the color of fertility (as in the song
"Greensleeves"). 13 is then an appropriate complement to these symbols.<br />
<br />
For
14, Decker continues the idea of 4 as the material world of four points
needed to specify a solid, and of the four elements. He does not take
14 as pertaining to the world of material appetites, but rather to the
transformation of the four elements, which is what medicine of the time
tried to do. It seems to me that in this same vein he might have said
that the card represents the transformation of the four elements of
matter into spirit, as part of the ascent of the soul. On the descent,
he does say that the card corresponds to reincarnation (p. 126). The
Pythagorean term for transmigration was μεταγγισμος [<span style="font-style: italic;">metaggismos</span>], he says, the pouring of water from one vessel (αγγος, <span style="font-style: italic;">aggos</span>)
to another. He gives no reference for that claim, and I have no idea
how to check it. But certainly the image of pouring from one vessel to
another is suggestive of the change of the spirit from one vessel, that
of the one kind of body to another. On the way up, it is from the physical body to what was called the "aerial" body, a kind of transparent issue that Dante compared to the rainbows seen in water sprays and which ghosts were said to have.<br />
<br />
For Five, Decker says
that the five loaves of bread that fed 5000 people in the Gospels is an
example of Christian Pythagoreanism (p. 117). There were also five points
associated to the Cross, the four extremities and the center; and the
five stigmata. Decker sees the Pope's gesture of giving blessing on the
card as an indicator of God's blessing the Universe, and of the
"quintessence" i.e., "the spirit that unites the four elements". From
Martianus's observation that "five pops out everywhere" he says also
that Five, besides referring to the universality of this quintessence,
refers to the universality of the Catholic (i.e. universal) Church (p.
121). So (p. 166) <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The Creator
blesses his creatures and confers a fifth element on the basic four and
so unites them within a harmonious and organic universe.</div>
</blockquote>
Checking
Martianus (735), I see that when he says "five is always cropping up",
the context is that when five is multiplied by an odd number, the result
is always five. That is not the same thing as saying that five is
"everywhere": it only occurs one tenth of the time. However Martianus
does say that five is the number of the universe, meaning that it
includes Aristotle's fifth element. That element is aether, filling the
space between celestial bodies.. I
would improve upon Decker here by noting that the <span style="font-style: italic;">Theologumena</span>
(p. 68) says that as the medium of the celestials, five
represents that which is "without strife", i.e. eternal and unchanging.
So it is like God. Another way in which 5 might be interpreted (although
I have not seen this) is as the number halfway between the One and the
Ten, and so as the mediator between God as creator and God as goal. However this is all rather strained.<br />
<br />
Five also determines card 15, the Devil. Here is Decker (p. 128):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The fifth trump personifies universal blessings. The fifteenth trump personifies universal testing.</div>
</blockquote>
People
have often noticed the parallel composition of the two Tarot de
Marseille cards: one figure at the top, two smaller figures below. This
is actually the structure of many cards: Love (before the third person
was added), Chariot, Justice (blade and scales), Wheel, Death (two
heads), Star (two jugs), Moon (two dogs), Sun (two people), Judgment
(two people facing us). It is as though two figures were going through
an initiation, starting with the Pope as Hierophant and the Hermit as
the one who leads them through. So in that sense he might be giving a
blessing: not to the universe, but to human beings in particular. On the
Tarot de Marseille card, the Pope has two monks below him; most early
cards don't have these people, but one can just as well imagine that he
is blessing us all. As initiation-master, God gives us his blessing as
we enter life as an adult, saying: If you play my game in the world I
have set up for you (i.e. life), you have a chance of becoming like me,
godly. God in blessing humanity approves human beings as candidates for
such a transforming initiation. <br />
<br />
Decker's overall schema for the
sequence is three groups of seven. He gets that number from two
Pythagorean considerations. First, Macrobius discusses the numbers as
pairs of numbers where each pair adds up to 7. Second, in discussing the
number seven, the sources pointed out how human life develops in groups
of seven: "Macrobius relates Seven to stages of human gestation,
maturation, and time cycles in general" (p. 117).<br />
<br />
In terms of the
tarot, the first group of seven he calls the "descent of the soul". I
will report what he says with my own views in parentheses. From the One
of 1 we go to the Wisdom of 2 , the teachings of which it is our job to
recall on earth; then to the Intellectual Manifestation of the world's
mother in 3 (I'd call that Binah, or simply birth and life in the home)
to the sensory world of 4 (I'd call that Chesed = Love, Goodness, or
one's relationship to the world outside the home), the divine blessing
of 5 (I would say Gevurah = Severity, or the beginning of initiation),
and so on, through the chariot; I'll talk about them later. Then comes
what he call's the soul's "probation", i.e. trials in life, through 14,
regeneration (although I would say that 13 and 14 seem to initiate a new
phase). Then, with 15, comes the "ascent", ending in 21. He considers
the Fool to be outside the sequence, or, what comes to the same thing, a
way of seeing all the trumps, any of whose place in the game it can
take. Andrea Vitali has given an amusing interpretation of the sequence in such
terms at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=388&lng=ENG">http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page. ... 88&lng=ENG</a>.<br />
<br />
It is not clear how the Devil card fits into the system of three 7s. He says card 15 is about "universal testing", but the "testing" section is 7-14. 15 is what starts the ascent. How do two little imps chained to the Devil's platform start an ascent? <br />
<br />
I can think of one way to make the Devil is part of the ascent. The soul once free of the body naturally rises, and the Devil is what flies up and grabs us when we are on the ascent. The
"testing" goes on even after death, and in this life even after we have turned away
from the body and toward higher things. Medieval and Renaissance painters often showed souls in the air being snagged in the air by devils (e.g. the "Triumph of Death" in Pisa, the Orvieto Duomo, Bosch's "Seven Last Things"). <br />
<br />
There is another Pythagorean way of making the division, more in keeping with the imagery on the cards. That is, the soul's descent, which
includes before birth and part of life, goes to card 10, the Wheel (circular like the 0), and
then reverses. So there are 10 before and 10 after this card, if the
Fool is counted as 0 Likewise, in Pythagoreanism it is the first 10
numbers that are of concern, and the others merely repetitions. These
are not descent and ascent in the sense of before birth and after death,
but rather a steady movement toward engagement in this world in the
cards before 10, and then away from the world in the cards after that.<br />
<br />
In that case, the Hermit, who has a Sun depicted in the folds of his robe, is a warning on the descending side not to be deceived by appearances, because the Wheel of Fortune turns. It is preparation for the ascent, even if the warning is not heeded and the soul falls even further.<br />
<br />
But
there is one card for which this schema is even more strained, in the TdM
order. That is Temperance,
which traditionally is an admonition to moderation, and so in this
world as part of the soul's "probation", than a suggestion that the transition between life and the
afterlife is like being poured from one vessel to another. As it
happens, in some early lists Temperance does appear
before the Wheel, That might indicate that the TdM was not the original order. The
first indication of the TdM order is Alciato 1544, well after some other lists in which Temperance comes before the Wheel (although there it is called Fama; in some decks card 14 has both "Fama" and "Temperance" on them). However if the Devil can be seen as a force trying to prevent the ascent, Temperance can be seen as a force trying to aid it, even when the soul is free from the body. That is because even then the immoderate desires we have not mastered in life can pull us downward. In Plato and Macrobius, for example, reincarnation in another body is not the goal of life; the goal is to "get off the wheel" of incarnations altogether. But that does not sound like the usual meaning of Temperance. To that extent, the card was not originally at number 14. And if not, then many other cards would have originally had different numbers. It looks more and more like the TdM order, to the extent that it consistently follows Pythagorean principles, was adopted after the sequence had already been formed.<br />
<br />
At
this point I am halfway through the Pythagorean numbers, with 6 through
10 to go, plus the Fool. This is a good place to break.<br />
<br />
<b>TRUMPS 6-10 AND 16-20</b><br />
<span class="corners-top"></span>
<br />
<div class="postbody">
<div class="content">
On trump 6, Decker observes that the "Hercules
at the Crossroads" theme that he sees in the Tarot de Marseille trump 6
was known at the time as "the Pythagorean Y", the two diagonals of the Y
being the two choices, Virtue and Pleasure. For the Cupid at the top,
he shows us his drawing of a c. 1500 painting by Girolomo di Benvenuto
of "Hercules at the Crossroads" topped by a the Good Genius, a robed
youth holding a torch (<a class="postlink" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Girolamo_Di_Benvenuto_-_Hercules_at_the_Crossroad_-_WGA09524.jpg">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... A09524.jpg</a>,
given there as "first half of 16th century"). If you think the upper
figure is not very close to a nude boy with a bow and arrows, Decker
cites a Cristofano Robetta print on the same theme that has a winged
Cupid in the same role. Looking on the Web, I find by him an "Allegory
of Carnal Love", as the Chicago Art Institute calls it, c. 1530, (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.artinstituteimages.org/searchresults.asp?searchtxtkeys=robetta">http://www.artinstituteimages.org/searc ... ys=robetta</a>).
It is not clear to me that this Cupid is a "Good Genius", or that
either of the maidens qualifies as Virtue and Vice; there is no choice,
because each of the two maidens has her own male companion. The winged boy at
the top is simply Cupid. Yet it remains true that the "Choice of
Hercules" was a Renaissance theme.<br />
<br />
There is also a problem of
how this "choice" fits into Decker's division into three groups of
seven. He calls the first seven "descent of the soul" and the middle
seven "probation". "Probation" suggests tests of one's mettle, whatever
that might be. If anything is a test, it is this "choice of Hercules".
Yet Decker has it on the "descent". How is it part of the soul's
descent? It seems to me that we have already left the first group and
entered the second. <br />
<br />
What saves Decker's 7-7-7 schema here is
another attribute of the 6, namely, that it is a perfect number, defined
as one whose factors added together equal the number, i.e. 1+2+3 = 6.
This suggests to him the perfection of reuniting with one's other half.
Decker says (p. 121):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Marriage could
be regarded as the restoration of the soul's perfection. The soul, when
created, was perfect and was spherical (infinitely symmetrical). But
events in the world's Creation divided the unisex soul into a male and a
female with contrasting bodies. Thus all humans search for completion
by union with a mate..</div>
</blockquote>
He is drawing on Plato's <span style="font-style: italic;">Symposium</span>,
a familiar enough text in the late 15th century. However Plato there
put this idea of the original "spherical" body--which might include two
males or two females, not just a male and a female--in the mouth of the
comedian Aristophanes and did not mean it as the soul's true yearning,
which was higher. A better image, which Decker's language also suggests,
is that of Adam's perfection before the creation of Eve from one of his
ribs, Adam as a being made in God's androgynous image in a world of the
senses that is unblemished and so not quite our own, a "terrestrial
paradise" created by God on the 6th day, after which, his work
perfected, he rested. But after that, we know, things got worse, and God
made some adjustments. So in the 6, the soul is still descending.<br />
<br />
God
creates woman originally as a helpmate to man, so that he will not be
alone. Decker says correctly that 6 is dedicated to Venus and as
such is dedicated to marriage. He offers no references; perhaps it is
Martianus (736): <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The number six is
assigned to Venus, for it is formed of a union of the sexes; that is, of
the triad, which is male because it is an odd number, and the dyad,
which is female because it is even; and twice three makes six.</div>
</blockquote>
Plutarch, <span style="font-style: italic;">On the E at Delphi</span> VIII (<a class="postlink" href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/misctracts/plutarchE.html">http://penelope.uchicago.edu/misctracts/plutarchE.html</a>), says that 5 is the number of marriage. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Theologumena</span>
says that both are numbers of marriage, one by addition and the other
by multiplication (Waterfield trans. p. 75). I'll go with that.<br />
<br />
Marriage
is clearly a theme of the early Milan cards, extending into the 16th
century with the Shoen Horoscope's House of Marriage, which is very
close to the 1650 Vieville (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ue0v9oOurHsfmP79NXBHUfYacoXd4MuZufDy0c2qT847gVR_lZYqZk3PaiUzMQBh6vKkHz_AV5h5-hWhubs2c6grYHu1o86SY_yR2LD4TWAtT1RyXLGNkMyB9-n9p6lzQuMVUWBIgBM/s1600/06schoenVieville.jpg">http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... eville.jpg</a>).
In fact it looks to me that the figure that Decker calls "Virtue" in
the Tarot de Marseille is the marrying priest with a sex change; it
could even be a priestess, as the Italian painter Sebastiano Ricci suggests in his 17th century
Dionysian take on the card (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHBcS2iPj416Bvudgu93ABb0EiFVmXvJMIfr4Q6jRDzcM0lA3aAgm4_FWvjOk6BraiZCZSPuZiDTtUtfk1jbAVMCuw3LjKNEVuXdL-wp1EYB-v4PgF4TnLz6lgwf0_RW2pi9q1ROjBkNxl/s1600/06Sebastiano_RicciChosson.jpg">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lu-6PwakMv0/S ... hosson.jpg</a>), showing the marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne with a Bacchante as either witness or officiant.<br />
<br />
16
relates to the 6 as being "perfection, disagreeably obtained", in
comparison to the work of purification through suffering. But the card does not show "perfection"; it shows the process of removing impurities. I have never seen correlations of this type in
Pythagorean documents, nor 16 as 10 + 6. Usually it is analyzed as 4 x
4, the square of the first square.<br />
<br />
7 is the number of Minerva,
the goddess of wisdom, also a warrior-goddess, a "manish goddess",
because it is not generated by multiplication of other numbers within
the decad and does not by multiplication generate any other number in
the decad. Similarly, Minerva is born of no parents (except the One, he
should have said, i.e. Jupiter: "it is called Pallas because it is born
only from the multiplication of the Monad", Macrobius says at VI.11);
nor does she have any children. She is the patroness of strategic
warfare, Decker says. Appropriately the charioteer in the Tarot de Marseille
wears armor. That is also true of some early Italian charioteers, e.g. the "Charles VI", although not of the lady in the painted Milan decks.<br />
<br />
Also, Decker says, 7 is 3 plus 4, for the three
parts of the soul plus the four elements of the body, which is what we
see n the Chariot. The three parts of the soul are the two horses plus the charioteer. The four elements are the four corners of the square made by the upper part of the chariot. This is a correlation that the Pythagorean texts do
not make as far as I can see. However this doctrine appears many times
in medieval Christian writings. Albertus Magnus (quoted in Hopper, <span style="font-style: italic;">Medieval Number Philosophy</span>, p. 112): <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
For
the human body is composed of 4 humours, and varies through the 4
seasons of the year, and it is composed of 4 elements. On the part of
the soul, on the other hand, are 3 powers or forces by which the
spiritual life of man is ruled. [Hopper's footnote: <span style="font-style: italic;">Commentary on Psalm 6</span>, ed. by Borgnet, XIV, 72.]</div>
</blockquote>
There is also Honorius of Autun, explaining why the 10 commandments divide into one group of 3 and another of 7 (Hopper p. 114):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The
other, of 7, concerns the love of neighbor. It is 7-fold, to signify
the 3-fold soul added to the 4-fold body. [Hopper's footnote: <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesia</span>, P. O. 172, 873.]</div>
</blockquote>
Decker's
point is that the Chariot marks the end of the descent of the soul. It
is now on the level of material reality, with the chariot as an allegory
of the body (hence the four elements, and the 2 lower parts of the
soul). It is the space in which Macrobius says that there are seven
directions of motion: right, left, up, down, forward, back, and
rotational. It is also that world in which development happens, i.e.
growth. "Macrobius relates Seven to stages of human gestation,
maturation, and time cycles in general" (Deckerp. 117). So in the tarot
there are three cycles of seven.<br />
<br />
7 is the number of the Star
card, with its seven small stars on it and its position as 17th in the sequence. It is that by which the soul
"ascends to its repose in heaven". How that relates to the number 7 seems to be as the opposite of the Chariot, which represents the soul's descent into matter. If so, card 17 should represent the beginning of the "ascent" part of the sequence. Instead, he has given that role, inexplicably, to the Devil card. Also, the Chariot represented the descent by means of its division into 3 and 4, 4 being the number of matter and the 4 elements. There is no such division in the Star card. <br />
<br />
8 is Macrobius's number of
Justice (I found it at V.17); and Nichomachus' number of "the law"
(reference unknown). Although there are other numbers of Justice in
Pythagoreanism (2, 4, and 5 in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Theologumena</span>),
8 is the one that the tarot designer apparently chose, according to
Decker. Macrobius was certainly a better known text than the <i>Theologumena</i>. I notice that 8 is identified with Judgment by Albertus Magnus
(quoted in Hopper, p. 112):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
From
this it follows that the day of Judgment will be 8. Or better, it is
called 8, because it is the consequence of this life which runs the
circuit of 7 days. [Hopper's footnote: <span style="font-style: italic;">Commentary on Psalm 6</span>, ed. by Borgnet, XIV, 72.]</div>
</blockquote>
18
then draws on Eight as the number of "untimely birth", as it was
believed that seven month and nine month foetuses would survive outside
the mother's womb, but that a birth at eight months carried more danger. Decker compares the crayfish in
is lake with a fetus in the womb, now subject to danger.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I regard the Moon in the T de M as somewhat sinister. the shadowy landscape and hte fluctuating crescent bespeak uncertainty--or worse.</blockquote>
That the crayfish represents a fetus seems to me rather far fetched. At 8 months the infant is rather well formed. If anything, the crayfish, giant sized, seems like a source of danger, a monster of the deep.. Yet the association of 8 with danger might well be a good reason for its number as 18. The Moon is associated with danger by virtue of an association with lunacy. Darkness is also the time of danger, when things can't be seen clearly. Guard towers are a protection against danger. The situation is still like on the Devil card: the danger that the soul will lose its way in the darkness. <br />
<br />
9 is near the end of the
sequence from 1 to 10; so it is fitting that an Old Man be there, to warn us of the dangers of materiality implied by the next card, the Wheel. There is the suggestion of a sun in the folds of the T de M Hermit, which is the antidote to that danger. For
19, the Sun is the close of the soul's celestial life, Decker says, just as the Hermit represents the close of the soul's material life. Presumably this is because the man is old. In the sequence, however, it is not the end of material life; there are three more cards until Death. Also, Decker has not related the Sun to the end of the
soul's celestial life in any Pythagorean-inspired document. It is apparently obvious from its place before 9. But it is not clear to me what "the end of the soul's celestial life" means in this context. The Sun in the Ptolemaic univrese was not even at the end of the planets, but in the middle. Decker's analysis is too short. I think it
can be argued in terms of Plutarch's <span style="font-style: italic;">On the Apparent Face in the Orb of the Moon</span>; but that is another story (see my essay "Platonism and the Tarot", <br />
<br />
10
is the end of a cycle, appropriately pictured by a Wheel. It is the
number of "mundane changes", whereas 20 is the number of "miraculous
changes", Decker says. My only quarrel is that if it is the end of a cycle, then the
sequence should be seen as 1-10-10-1, not 7-7-7. <br />
<br />
With 21, we are
back to the One, this time envisioned as female and as goal instead of
beginning; it is "reunion with the world-soul". The world-soul in Plato's <i>Timaeus </i>and subsequent Neoplatonism was the soul of the material universe, giving it motion and life. It is not very high on the hierarchy of being, considerably below the One. That is not to dispute the interpretation that 21 represents return to the One, however.<br />
<br />
<b>THE BROADER PICTURE</b><br />
<br />
Decker
maintains not only that Pythagoreanism of the first ten numbers fits
the tarot in the TdM order, but that its designers had Pythagorean number
theory in mind when they created it. Unlike the actual look of
the cards, the order of the cards in Milan is not contra-indicated by
known facts. Nobody knows the order of the first Milanese decks. There
were no numbers on the cards, or even titles, and no lists in
consecutive order until Alciato in 1544. So by default, the facts do not
suggest anything different for Milan decks. <br />
<br />
The only facts to
suggest otherwise pertain to other regions: The first known list, from
the Ferrara area, is somewhat different: the Popess is at 4, Temperance
is early, and Justice is at the end. Justice was next to last. Other lists, and numbers written on
cards, had other arrangements.<br />
<br />
Decker, however, insists that the Milan order was the original one. What chance is there that such a claim is true?<br />
<br />
The
Milan order certainly fits Pythagorean philosophy the best, at least
for the first 10. After that, Pythagorean teachings are less clear. I
find no doctrine of antitypes in Pythagorean
writings, which are needed to justify the numbers from 13 through 19. Antitypes were familiar enough in discussions of virtues and vices. from Plato on. The interpretation then, becomes rather ad hoc; it requires the combination of two different traditions. In fact, however, Plato and those after him used both traditions, the moral philosophy of types and antitypes, and Pythagorean analyses of numbers. <br />
<br />
There were many variations in Pythagoreanism.
The number of justice is variously 2, 4, 6, and 8. Even the 1 pertains
to justice, according to Macrobius, in that it is God. Thus 20, the repetition of 1 and 10, is also a
possibility, the number of Justice in the early order of Ferrara. The number of
marriage is 5 or 6. 5 is the number of the Lover card in some decks, e.g. Minchiate.
The number of wisdom, which Decker assigns to 2, is in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Theologumena</span>
3.Neither of these is that of the Popess in the Ferrara order, where she
is 4. But at least both the Popess and the Empress, 4 and 2, have
feminine numbers, since even numbers are feminine.<br />
<br />
It thus
remains a realistic possibility that Pythagoreanism as such figured into
the ordering of the tarot, or at least in people's interpretations of
this ordering, if only because arithmology was applied to almost
everything, not only by pagan writers but even more by Christian ones
(as amply documented in Hopper, <span style="font-style: italic;">Medieval Number Philosophy</span>).
All the same, for Decker's interpretations it seems to me that we
should look at when, where, and with whom in 15th century Italy
Pythagoreanism as such was popular, and what was said. Here Decker is
not much help. He does not concern himself with the historical setting
of Pythagoreanism in Italy, beyond verifying that at least the ones in
Latin (which he by no means restricts himself to) were extant by the
1430s. <br />
<br />
So I did a little reading on the subject, not nearly as much as there is, even in English, but at least something. In <span style="font-style: italic;">Pythagoras and Renaissance Europe: Finding Heaven</span>,
Christiane Joost-Gaugier discusses who the champions of
Pythagoreanism were in 15th century Italy. They include most of the same
people who would have had copies of Horapollo at that time: Filelfo,
Cyriaco da Ancona, Gemistos Plethon, Pogio, Alberti. There were also
others, starting in Florence with Salutati, the admirer of Petrarch and
great Chancellor Florence in the early 15th century. His successor
Leonardo Bruni, was so as well; after him came Pogio, whom I've already
mentioned. In Padua in Salutati's time there was also Vergerio, editor of
Petrarch; there was much interaction between Salutati and Vergerio. It
would perhaps not be correct to say that these people were Pythagoreans;
but they at least thought that Pythagoras had things to say worth
studying.<br />
<br />
Salutati is surprisingly specific in his account of
Pythagoreanism, discussing not merely the scientific and moral qualities
of Pythagoras but the numbers themselves, which is what we want to see.
Although he does not name Pythagoras, when anyone talks of 1 as the
number of the point, 2 of the line, etc., the reference is to
Pythagoras. In a letter couched in such terms, we see a detailed
discussion of 1, 3 and 6 (see <span style="font-style: italic;">Humanism and tyranny: Studies in the Italian trecento</span>, by Emerton, pp. 363-365, at <a class="postlink" href="http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015000661432;view=1up;seq=379">http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=m ... up;seq=379</a>). </div><div class="content">3 stands out in particular because it expresses the Trinity. This
doctrine was stated by many theologians. Roger Bacon, for instance
(Hopper p. 107): <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
For unity
multiplied into itself cubically, that is, thrice, as once one taken
once, does not multiply essence, but remains the same although it is
produced equally in 3 directions. And so by a familiar example
theologians designate the blessed Trinity. [Hopper's footnote: <span style="font-style: italic;">Opus majus,</span>, Burke, I, 245.]</div>
</blockquote>
That
is one of Salutati's points, that the three dimensions of the cube show
how one thing can also be three. He also uses the sides of the triangle
to the same effect.<br />
<br />
There was also the good Dominican Thomas Aquinas, repeating the Pythagorean litany:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
...by
his rising on the third day, the perfection of the number 3 is
commended, which is the number of everything, as having beginning,
middle, and end.</div>
</blockquote>
In addition, we can see
Pythagorean ideas reflected in the art and architecture of the time.
Art became intensely mathematical starting in the 1420s, with
Brunelleschi's rediscovery of the techniques of perspective around 1415
and the resulting need for geometry in laying out a painting. One of the
first to put Bruneleschi's ideas in practice was Masaccio. After that,
Alberti simplified the procedure in his <span style="font-style: italic;">On Painting</span>,
developing what is now called one-point perspective. He then wrote on
architecture, following Pythagorean ratios that were founded in musical
theory (for details see the links at <a class="postlink" href="http://go.owu.edu/%7Ejwbiehl/architects.htm">http://go.owu.edu/~jwbiehl/architects.htm</a>). Filarete in Milan and Palladio in Padua in their writings followed in Alberti's footsteps. <br />
<br />
In
relation to the tarot, there is also Sigismundo Malatesta, the
recipient of the first recorded tarot deck, made for him in
1440 Florence. In around 1450, judging from a medal of the design made
in that year, he commissioned Alberti to remodel an existing Gothic
church. Rudolf Wittkower (<span style="font-style: italic;">Architectural principles in the age of Humanism</span>,
1952) discusses the innovations that Alberti applied to the exterior of
that Church, which remained unfinished at Malatesta's death in 1466,
concluding (p. 41):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
No later
architect has come nearer to the spirit of Roman architecture, as found,
say, in the inner arcades of the Colisseum. [footnote: Alberti may have
been influenced by arcades of Theodoric's Tomb at Ravenna wwhich he
calls a 'mobile delubrum' (Bk I, ch. 8). Nor had any earlier architect
so thoughtfully welded together an entire bulding by the flawless
application of Pythagorean proportions. [Footnote: The Pythagorean theme
was convincingly demonstrated by Gerda Soerge, <span style="font-style: italic;">Untersuchungen ueber den theoretischen Architekturentwurf von 1450-1550 in Italien</span>, Munich, 1958 (Dissertation), p. 11, and, abbreviated in Kunschronix, XIII, 1960, p. 349f.]</div>
</blockquote>
I
might add that the 1450 medal was done by de Pasti, who also supervised
the work in Rimini. De Pasti is known to tarot researchers for his 1440
letter to Piero de' Medici about his work on cassoni paintings of
Petrarch's <span style="font-style: italic;">Triofi</span>. <br />
<br />
Although
Wittkower's book is on architecture, he doesn't confine his remarks to
that field. He begins his discussion on "Religious Symbolism of
Centrally Planned Churches" as follows (p. 27):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Renaissance
artists firmly adhered to the Pythagorean concept 'All is Number' and,
guided by Plato and the neo-Platonists and supported by a long chain of
theologians from Augustine onwards, they were convinced of the
mathematical and harmonic structure of the universe and all creation.</div>
</blockquote>
Later
in the book he discusses this point in relation to Brunelleschi (p.
117), Leonardo (p. 118), Michelangelo (p. 119), Agostino Carracci (p.
119), Raphael (p. 125), and a host of architects and architects'
consultants. Earlier he had discussed Giovanni Bernini's drawings (p.
15). He could have included Mantegna, Piero della Francesco, and many
others. <br />
<br />
<b>MASACCIO AND PYTHAGORAS</b><br />
<br />
I want to expand on the
above with particular reference to Masaccio, in part because he was so
early--he died in 1428--but also because of connections to the tarot.
First, his fresco of the expulsion from Eden seems to be the model for
the Minchiate "Tower" card, with its woman fleeing in fear. Why that is
so is a mystery. It might simply be that the image was admired and thus
copied by others for a different purpose. Another connection is that his
younger brother, known as "Lo Scheggio", is a known painter of playing
cards, probably including tarot, in the early 1450s or 1460s (his name appears in the acount records studied by Franco Pratesi).<br />
<br />
The most mathematical of Masaccio's works, and the most influential as well, is his <span style="font-style: italic;">Holy Trinity</span>
of c. 1425-1427, the first known work to employ Brunelleschi's
perspective techniques, combined with the use of
shading--chiaroscuro--to create naturalistic depth. I could find no
satisfactory online reproductions, as they all lose either the color or
the bottom of the painting; the best is probably at <a class="postlink" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Masaccio%2C_trinit%C3%A0.jpg">http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... %C3%A0.jpg</a>), although the colors are too dark; Mary's robe should be blue, for example. <br />
<br />
To
me its geometry suggests Pythagorean influence, especially as stated in
Salutati's explanation of the "inexpressable Trinity" in terms of the
triangle and cube (see the whole long paragraph at p. 365 of <a class="postlink" href="http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015000661432;view=1up;seq=381">http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=m ... up;seq=381</a>). This is a point made in passing by Joost-Gaugier (p. 172), expanded on by Bruskewietch, <a class="postlink" href="http://archive.org/detail/TheSearchForMasaccioHisTrinityAndTheHiddenMessageWithin">http://archive.org/detail/TheSearchForM ... sageWithin</a>)--to an extreme I am not prepared to follow.<br />
<br />
First,
there is the circle formed by the hemispherical vault, with the
forehead of God the Father as its center--the mind of God. This serves
to fix one of the apexes of the triangles formed starting at that point.
The circle does not correspond to any of the numbers as far as I can
tell, except that if "God is a circle whose center is everywhere and
circumference is nowhere," as Cusa unoriginally said (Wittkower, p. 28),
it is related to God. In Ptolemaic astronomy, for another example, the
planets were held to follow circular orbits due to the perfection of
that figure. Wittkower adds that <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The geometrical definition of God through the symbol or sphere has a pedigree reaching back to the Orphic poets.</div>
</blockquote>
He
then cites Plato, Plotinus, and pseudo-Dionysus. So the circle became
the dominant organizing principle of sacred architecture, a striking
contrast to the Middle Ages, with its organization around the shape of a
Latin cross and an emphasis on the vertical, away from this world. The
circle, in contrast, puts God everywhere, including the human soul, as
Wittkower points out; it exemplifies the correspondence of microcosm to
macrocosm. <br />
<br />
Salutati, it will be recalled (again, here is the link: p. 365 at <a class="postlink" href="http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015000661432;view=1up;seq=381">http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=m ... up;seq=381</a>),
uses the triangle to illustrate the three in one principle of the
Trinity. In the painting, one triangle is formed if you go from the
forehead of God the Father down to the heads of the Virgin and the
Evangelist. You can also go up in a straight line from the heads of the
lower figures to the apex of a triangle at the level of the heart of
Christ.In Pythagorean terms--although this is not necessary to
appreciate the theme of the Trinity--the Virgin represents his
beginning, the Evangelist his middle--i.e. his period of teaching--and
the crucifixion his earthly end. Another triangle is made by the nails
in Christ's hands and feet.These two triangles overlap to form a
6-pointed star; this is one of the 6s in the painting. Another 6 comes
if you add the two donors and the skeleton to the pair of the Virgin and
the Evangelist plus Christ; it forms a large triangle similar to that
showing 6 as a triangular number in the arithmetic textbooks, i.e.<br />
_____x____<br />
___x___x__<br />
x ___x___x<br />
or
two triangles, formed by the two donors and the skeleton beneath, along
with its mirror image, the upper triangle of Christ with the Virgin and
the Evangelist, the lower a kind of mundane reflection of the upper:<br />
_____x____<br />
___x___x__<br />
___x___x__<br />
_____x____<br />
There
is also the 3 of the Trinity, of course: the Son, the Father, and the
white dove of the Holy Spirit (between the Father's beard and the Son's
head), each on its own plane as a single One. And at the bottom, the
tomb on which the skeleton sits has three vertical bars.<br />
<br />
With the
dove, there would be 7 living figures in the painting, a sacred number
in both pagan Pythagoreanism ("they give it reverence" says the <span style="font-style: italic;">Theologumena</span>) and Christianity (i.e. seven days of creation, seven sacraments, etc.) The addition of the skeleton makes 8.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLL-KAdrfmWnF5E3L3HcQHnLHOnsKFRg9f-rzu38JXkF07SBk2HUYfwACCokisMqvP91TDDJPvKAzhEoAdRjbzSwpB7B1oOlhWRePsSg6Gf7mGJQuGtYgVmMWdUPFiA9UGBUX_vEo8stc/s1600/Schlegel.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLL-KAdrfmWnF5E3L3HcQHnLHOnsKFRg9f-rzu38JXkF07SBk2HUYfwACCokisMqvP91TDDJPvKAzhEoAdRjbzSwpB7B1oOlhWRePsSg6Gf7mGJQuGtYgVmMWdUPFiA9UGBUX_vEo8stc/s400/Schlegel.JPG" width="186" /></a></div>
In
the vault, there are 7 rows. 8 deep, of coffers on the vault (the dark
rectangles), each of which is a square when seen as the surface of a
solid rather than on the plane of a photograph. Besides that, there are 9
lines in the vault forming the boundaries of the coffers. 9, besides
being the square of 3, is the number before 10, i.e. the number that
ends the cycle begun at 1. It is also the number of choirs of angels in
pseudo-Dionysus, etc.<br />
<br />
These numbers are not so clear in
photographs of the painting, due to damage, including cutting off the
top border of the fresco. I invite people to consult the reconstruction
of the original paintings as proposed by Ursula Schlegel (at left, reproduced by H. W. Janson in his essay "Ground Plan and
Elevation in Masaccio's <span style="font-style: italic;">Trinity</span>," in <span style="font-style: italic;">Essays Presented to Rudolf Wittkower</span>).<br />
<br />
Joost-Gaugier
(p. 172) suggests that the 8 coffers represent Justice, as 8 is the
number of Justice in Macrobius. But what does the scene have to do with
Justice? The 8 could be merely a consequence of being between the 9
lines that serve to create the illusion of depth. 9 is significant as 3
squared. On the other hand, 8 as Albertus Magnus's number of Judgment
might possibly work. <br />
<br />
The number 5 (of the 5 loaves for 5000
people) is also present, in the number of cornices on the two outside
columns; this may be mere coincidence, as I don't see 5 elsewhere. The
same may be true for the instances of 7 and 8 that I have identified.<br />
<br />
The
floor and sides of the painting are dominated by the number 4. This
point has been emphasized by H. Janson in the essay already cited.
With its architectural structure clearly influenced by Brunelleschi,
the painting is an early example of how the square was of central
importance in Renaissance architecture. Janson notes (footnote 6, p.
84):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
On the pervading importance of the square as a perfect figure in Renaissance religious architecture, see Rudolf Wittkower, <span style="font-style: italic;">Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, </span>London 1952, <span style="font-style: italic;">passim</span>.</div>
</blockquote>
The
fresco is a series of rectangles and squares: the tomb, the three
floors on which the various figures hang, stand, kneel, or lie. There is
also the vault, with a square floor, with 4 columns that perhaps form a
cube. The coffers on the vault are also squares (rectangular only if
not imagined in a space defined by the laws of perspective). <br />
<br />
This goes to confirm 4 as the number of material reality, I think. As Schlegel says (<span style="font-style: italic;">Art Bulletin</span> 45:1, March 1963, p. 27):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Although
God's throne is in heaven, the scene depicted by Masaccio has nothing
to do with the heavenly realm, but rather as a sacred space on earth.</div>
</blockquote>
Yet the three-dimensionality also reflects the Trinity. <br />
<br />
The
members of the Trinity are above, each alone its own plane, as opposed
to the 2 male-female pairs below them, while counterbalancing the one
skeleton beneath them.<br />
<br />
Janson continues:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
What could be the purpose--or better, purposes--of the numerical relationships pervading the <span style="font-style: italic;">Trinity</span>?
They bring to mind, of course, the Pythagorean tradition of harmonious
numbers, whose significance for Renaissance architecture has been
pointed out by Rudolf Wittkower [footnote 15: <span style="font-style: italic;">op. cit.</span>]</div>
</blockquote>
Janson
gives two other reasons: to correlate ground plan and elevation, and
surface and depth; and also to transfer the design easily and quickly
from small preparatory drawings to the large fresco. These are not
negligible; but the first is omnipresent and appears much more
abundantly in the painting than is needed for the practical purposes
Janson mentions. <br />
<br />
There may be other things in the painting. Not
only did Masaccio die mysteriously in Rome at the age of 26 or so, but
the painting itself was completely covered over by an altar that Vasari
installed in 1570--after first praising it to the skies in his book! Why
was a painting generally considered to be the pioneering work in the
new Renaissance style suddenly hidden from view? The only explanation I
have seen is "modernization". I read that as a shift in values marked by
the Council of Trent. As a sign of the times, Wittkower (p. 31f) cites
Cardinal Carlo Borromeo's c. 1572 application of the Council's edicts to
church building; he recommended a return to the "formam crucis" of the
Latin cross and called the circular form "pagan". That might indicate
that the principle of "the macrocosm in the microcosm" was now out of
favor. Either that or, as Bruskewietch proposes, too many 6s were
interpreted by someone as an unfortunate number.<br />
<br />
One other
consideration: Mary has an unusual facial expression in the painting,
rather unique, not only imperious but with her eyes on the viewer rather
than her son (<a class="postlink" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Masaccio%2C_trinit%C3%A0%2C_dettaglio_01.jpg">http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... lio_01.jpg</a>). Rona Goffen (<span style="font-style: italic;">Masaccio's Trinity</span>,
p. 18) interprets Mary here as a symbol of the Church, in effect
repeating her words at Cana (John 2:3), "Do whatever he tells you",
directed now at the viewer. So another reason for covering up the
painting might be that the Church now, in the fight against
Protestantism, preferred a gentler image for itself. </div><div class="content"> <br />
I conclude that
although the precise Pythagorean correspondences needed for the tarot
are not present in the art and art theory of the Renaissance, the
omnipresence of Pythagorean arithmology suggests that such application might have taken place. If so, however, its application in one place would seem not to have been respected in another, because the numerical value of individual triumphs varied considerably from one region of northern Italy to another. The only constants were the Bagatella at 1, the Old Man at 11, the Hanged Man at 12, and Death at 13. If numerology was involved for the last two, it was not of a Pythagorean nature. The number 12 was associated with Judas, while 13 may have had a negative connotation. It may also have been associated with Jesus, in the center of the 12 at the Last Supper. If an Old Man, approaching death, is one place before someone actually dying, that alone can explain its placement. Moreover, numbers seem not to have been put on the cards until late in the 15th century<br /></div><div class="content"><br /></div><div class="content">This is not to say, however, that numerological associations to the cards were not made early on, in various ways that reflected the numerical order. But except perhaps for the first trump, the Bagatella, it is much more likely to have occurred later on, in the 16th century. <br /></div><div class="content"> <br />
My own prior contribution to these issues, from 2010, is at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=530&p=8518#p8518">viewtopic.php?f=12&t=530&p=8518#p8518</a>. It is not bad, but Decker has certainly moved things forward. <br />
<br />
I also have a more extended application of Pythagoreanism to all 78 of the cards, at <a class="postlink" href="http://neopythagoreanisminthetrot.blogspot.com/">http://neopythagoreanisminthetrot.blogspot.com/</a>.</div>
</div>
Michael S Howardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488567669455421279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-230755636669834672.post-39871425318995218362014-04-28T20:10:00.013-07:002022-10-14T04:06:23.302-07:00Chapter 6: Astral Archetypes<div class="content">
Decker maintains that one part of one astrological text influenced the original
designer of the tarot, namely, the part on "lots" in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Astronomica</span>
of Manilius. This is a text that Poggio Bracciolini found in a monastery, documented in a letter
to him of 1417 (Decker. p. 38). Decker sees a correspondence between the
12 lots, a variation on the idea of astrological Houses, and 12 of the first 14
trumps of the Tarot de Marseille. Unlike Houses, however, these lots are
calculated in terms of the positions of the Sun and the Moon in a
person's natal horoscopes. <br />
<br />
For the other 2 cards, he assigns two
of the "cardinal points" of the natal chart, the western horizon,
called the "horoscope", and the midheaven. Here is the picture of the
cardinal points and their assignments that Goold, the translator, gives
in his Introduction: <br />
<img alt="Image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Ru0thQXp18R-Yj5HKbWz8kjKn85h0UrhzKZGAcijxqaZu3vHt-x79uvIhXgO6EM7Km0bmrFOZCCls7UiCn1ubtFvAluull6oHL59cJGJRb6nDV01b4Q-f8931BOWPI7-YlsjzI5wrGo/s300/GouldCardinals.JPG" /><br />
These
are not dependent on the positions of the Sun and Moon, but for Decker
they fit two tarot cards. "Horoscopos" (abbreviated "HOR" above) is a
term he has already associated with horoscopos = hour-marker and
assigned to the Old Man as personified Time. The other, the midheaven,
Manilius characterizes as follows (Goold translation, p. 147):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
...enthroned
on high this post is occupied by Glory (truly a fit warden for heaven's
supreme station); so that she may clam all that is pre-eminent,
arrogate all distinction, and reign by awarding honours of every kind.
Hence comes applause, splendour, and every form of popular favour; hence
the power to dispense justice in the courts, to bring the world under
the rule of law, to make alliances with foreign nations one one's own
terms, and to win fame relative to one's station.</div>
</blockquote>
Since this description includes the power to dispense justice. Decker assigns the midheaven to the Justice card, in 8th place. <br />
<br />
For the other 12, some of these relate well enough to tarot cards: Others are a strain. <br />
Here is Decker's picture of the 12 lots and their meanings.<br />
<img alt="Image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtpkuTHeRA_pbZ6GoxrUZX4t6e9Aypd7Pzxl1TmfzQT0o6YPgLiX_Np7BmR6Nhe7foMyET83ktqK69eEu1hAIpyBX6LVLMFbzbJixWnjk1eek0QvpYxo9don4tN5_j9VcJgKwYkIl0yrk/s300/DeckerLotsP140.JPG" /><br />
This is a modified version of Goold's picture of the Lots, which Manilius also calls <span style="font-style: italic;">athla</span>.<br />
<img alt="Image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpCucqNkCncy1F4FMfK31SfQvl6XnfeRF1vuQ8HCdlMSZ9hAdOSn3VcSUzXayM4eKvCiFvExZRwbookqW46zQ-txePLit_m44gq4l4-OUbIXIe3JYF-Fb8YIy66CtsmoceP5N-EtRa5ZA/s350/GouldLots.JPG" /><br />
Decker
has changed some of the words, but justified each in the text;
sometimes it is a bit of a stretch. Lot 1, relating to Home, has as an
alternate name "Fortune", because one calculates it first in order to
determine the rest of the circle. Thus Decker says the designer would
have seen it as the Wheel of Fortune, a circle pertaining to fortune (p.
140). Lot 2 has to do with warfare. Decker assigns it to the chariot, as
the symbol of military triumph. Lot 3 has to do with the business of
the city, "a kind of warfare, one made of civil engagements"; it
"contains ties dependent on trust" and "reveals the size of rewards for
devotion" (these are all from Manilius, Goold tgrans., p. 171). Devotion
and trust is associated for Decker with the Pope. Lot 4 has to do with
the law-courts, accusers and defendants, and the eloquence required in
this and in advocating for legislation. Decker assigns this to the
Hanged Man, as the object of legal action. Lot 6 has to do with
marriage, so Love. Lot 7 determines the "abundance of means" in an
undertaking, and the "duration of one's resources". Decker says this is
what determines the end of a process, thus Death. 8 is "grim with Danger
dire, if the planets are located in the signs of ill accord". Decker
says that <span style="font-style: italic;">periculum</span> also means
"risk", hence the Juggler. Then come three that make fair sense:
Children (Decker's Parenthood) to the Empress, Character to the Popess,
and Health to Temperance. Lot 12 has to do with "the attainment of our
ends" in Manilius, whether our efforts will meet with success. Decker
says that since it has to do with effort, it would be associated with
Strength.<br />
<br />
Of these, perhaps six actually fit the card in
question. The others seem to me quite strained, too much for us to say
whether these Lots have anything to do with the cards. Since five of the
six or so that do fit also characterize the standard Renaissance Houses
(fortune, marriage, social position, health, family tradition), there
are other more conventional possibilities, equally strained. It is hard for me to imagine Manilius as a source. But it could have been a means by which to do divination using the tarot, after it had already been invented.<br />
<br />
In this case, Manilius's Lots,
like conventional Houses, are incomplete prognosticators. They require being filled in with planets and zodiacal signs that are in those
houses. If cards are assigned to lots/houses, then there are no zodiacal
signs left for the interpretation, which in any case is going to be
complex, involving either a spread, i.e. 12 places to put cards assigned
to planets and zodiacal signs, or at least two cards, the first
indicating the lot and the next the sign or planet associated with that
lot. It could be a rather complex procedure; but then astrology was always complex.<br />
<br />
For the last seven trumps, Decker refers to another section of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Astronomica</span>,
in which Manilius associates the six of the planets (probably meaning
to associate all seven) with six out of twelves "temples", which are the
same as Houses in standard Renaissance astrology--except that Manilius
does not always follow the usual characterizations. The application to
the planets is only occasionally strained. For the Devil card, he
associates Manilius's Saturn, parents, and "Daemonium", a word that
Goold has not found elsewhere in the text. Decker decides that the tarot inventor
would have seen it as a devil. (I would think anyone reading Manilius
would see Saturn here as an older parent.) For the Tower, what Decker
sees is Mars (not mentioned by Manilius, but assigned there by Goold)
and Manilius's "House of Toil", which Decker says is the same as
suffering. For the Star, Decker has Venus, which Manilius assigns to
"Fortune" and marriage. For the Moon, it is Manilius's "brothers",
"human mortality" and "Goddess"; this last is close enough for Decker.
For the Sun Manilius has "God" and bodily ups and downs; Decker says
that good health and God are both associated with the sun. For Judgment
he has Mercury, Manilius's "Stilbon" (which Goold p. 157 says means
"Glistener", a common name for Mercury) and children; Decker interprets
this as "Ascendant" (Mercury as the morning star, I imagine), and people
are ascending on the card. For the World he has Manilius's Jupiter,
Good Fortune and what Decker says is achievement (Manilius has
"consummation", even better). <br />
<br />
Decker draws on the "children
of the planets" series of illustrations that were popular in the 1460s to support his assignments. Thus the Devil is associated with
Saturn because of Saturn's unwholesome "children"; the Tower with Mars,
for the ruined towers on the "children" illustrations; the Moon card
with the Moon, with its crayfish, etc.; the Sun card, for its two
"children" whom Decker identifies as wrestlers, because the Sun's children include athletes. For the
highest two he goes to mythology without referring to the "children"
series: Judgment with Mercury (as the conveyer of souls) and children;
and the World as Jupiter (the highest god, with a scepter) and Greater
Fortune. <br />
<br />
<div class="content">
The rest of Chapter 6, after Manilius, is devoted to the Picatrix. Like
Manilius, this is a text that was used in the design of the Schifanoia
in Ferrara; the images of its middle section are derived from the
book's descriptions of the decans (the 36 divisions of 10 degrees each
in the zodiac). Decker finds that the same correspondences that worked
for Manilius also apply to the Picatrix: the prescription for offerings
to Saturn includes dead bats and black goats, and the Devil has bat
wings and, "possibly, the face and ears of a goat or stag". Saturn's
scythe corresponds to the Devil's hook on the card. Mars relates to the
Tower, because it has Mars "as a red spirit that looks like a torch of
fire". Venus relates to the Star card; one who wishes to conjure her,
the <i>Picatrix</i> "should possess two vessels, one for wine and one for
perfume". The Moon is the moon, whose talisman has crescents and watery
settings, and the Sun is the sun, a talisman for which shows a man
"stretching his hand as if he wants to shake the hand of the person next
to him". The Angel is Mercury, because the <i>Picatrix</i> "describes a figure
with outstretched wings". And the World is Jupiter, because the
talisman shows a man sitting on a chair with four legs, each of which is
on the neck of a standing winged man. The four winged men would be the
four creatures in the corners. And Jupiter was sometimes depicted in a
mandorla, e.g. in the "Tarot of Mantegna", which was based on earlier
imagery, as Seznec showed.<br />
<br />
It seems to me that these resemblances
are all rather loose. For example, the Temperance-lady's vessel does
not look like a perfume bottle in particular; the Devil card more usually has a
pitchfork, while there is a man with a scythe on the Death card. Also,
if the soul is ascending to heaven, as he says in the next section, the
planets are not in the recognized order. That is not to say, however,
that someone might not have made these associations once the tarot was
established. Ross Caldwell makes a good case (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.trionfi.com/0/i/r/11.html">http://www.trionfi.com/0/i/r/11.html</a>) that the image of the PMB Fortitude card is related to the image for the 26th degree of Libra in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Astrolabium Planum</span>
of Johannes Angelus, 1494 Venice, derived from Petrus de Abano. Abano
was the basis for the Schifanoia's astrological images (of the decans),
too, as well as Giotto's in the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua, Caldwell
says.<br />
<br />
I am not knowledgeable enough about astrology to evaluate Decker's proposal except to say that it does not seem a source for the tarot, but rather something after the fact, as a means of prognostication.<br />It is no better or worse than other systems that have been suggested. Its main advantage is that it is in fact a system that came to the attention of humanists in Italy and elsewhere in the period just before the first documentation of the tarot, as Decker points out. However there is no sign of its influence until Lorenzo di Giovanni Bonincontri wrote a poem based on it in 1469 and the Schifanoia Palace utilized its astrological assignments 1469-1472. Bonincontri later lectured on it in Florence,1475-77, and published a commentary in 1484. Also, two of Ficino's works show the work's direct influence (Carol V. Kaske, "Marsilio Ficino and the Twelve Gods of the Zodiac,"<i> Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes</i> 45 (1982), pp. 195-202). A few other astrological frescos in Italy were made based on it, but after the mid-16th century it went back into obscurity, except for a few scholars publishing improved editions.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKUFEfCHXQdkKb6K09x7jVd6iPayb_kxxD4odGKUSdkhatr2wA4ihwJDgo9lKtWi5ByG_heYuOqznYL5vsMhvcwXrrOuCLgaIeTMl07dQxOdrmRoIJrv2dHzWKUqGmXdabV2BK1Z8d38s/s1600/Caryimagehandler2.php.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKUFEfCHXQdkKb6K09x7jVd6iPayb_kxxD4odGKUSdkhatr2wA4ihwJDgo9lKtWi5ByG_heYuOqznYL5vsMhvcwXrrOuCLgaIeTMl07dQxOdrmRoIJrv2dHzWKUqGmXdabV2BK1Z8d38s/s640/Caryimagehandler2.php.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
It is clear to me that astrology relates to three of the cards, the so-called "celestials", starting in the Cary Sheet (the relevant row of the sheet is above) and the later decks influenced by that document. The CS Star card has on it symbols of Venus (the lady with a star on her shoulder) and Aquarius (as a figure pouring out water from jugs). The four smaller stars at the top could represent the other planets, excluding the Sun and the Moon. The large star on the card might be a religious allegory, the "Morning Star" of Christ transcending fate; but this is not part of astrology. The Moon card has on it, besides the Moon, the crayfish of Cancer, a sign governed by the Moon; it also has a body of water, and the Moon falls under that element. There also seem to be two fish, which might suggest Pisces, the sign adjacent to Aquarius. The Sun card has on it the Sun. In the TdM this was expanded to have something resembling the Gemini, even though the Gemini are not governed by that planet. As for the other cards, any astrological influence on their design is problematic, even if such relationships can be constructed based on the imagery or order in the sequence. The same holds for other decks. They do show the Sun, the Moon, and a Star, but these were common symbols in many symbol-systems; the symbolism at the bottom of these cards is not astrological. </div>
</div>
Michael S Howardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488567669455421279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-230755636669834672.post-6765827057877379552014-04-28T20:10:00.012-07:002022-10-14T04:05:36.965-07:00Chapter 7: Sacred Symmetries: In Chapter 7 Decker presents his theory that the tarot is three sets of seven, one for the descent into matter, one for life in matter, and one for
the ascent to heaven. Here he follows Robert O'Neill, who presents
this same idea in <span style="font-style: italic;">Tarot Symbolism</span>, 1986. What is of interest is how it is justified. Decker's main new text is the Latin <span style="font-style: italic;">Asclepius, </span>sometimes spelled<span style="font-style: italic;"> Aesclepius</span>,
which existed throughout the Middle Ages in Latin translation. The deck
he mostly refers to for evidence on the cards is still the Tarot de Marseille
(of which there is no evidence that it was the original tarot, other
than it serves Decker's purpose).<br />
<br />
I have already alluded to how
the descent works: We go from the "Good Daemon" creator god, the
Juggler, through Wisdom in the Popess. Then the soul goes into
Intellectual Manifestation--the Ideas--in the Empress and Sensible
Manifestation in the Emperor. These two come from Apuleius's <span style="font-style: italic;">De Mundo</span>. The Pope, for Decker (p. 166),
is Beatitude, the blessing of creation, and the Quintessence above the
four in matter. Appropriately, the Pope usually is shown giving a
blessing. <br />
<br />
Love is the World-Soul, of which our individual souls
are a part. He does not say how that is expressed in the card.
"Aristotle taught that the material world desired to draw close to God,"
he says. But in that case, the card would not be part of the descent;
God is the other way.<br />
<br />
It seems to me that it would have been better if
he had used some other quotation about the World Soul, one that supported
his idea that the principle of Love entering the soul urges it closer to
other souls, which are embedded in the world. Plato's <i>Timaeus </i>speaks of
the world-soul as "fairest and best" (30c), made after God's image, but
does not talk about individual souls being drawn to the world for that
reason. But there is Logion 38 of the Chaldean Oracles, embedded in
Proclus's <span style="font-style: italic;">In Parmenides</span> 895 (Ruth Majercik translation, 1988):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
For after he thought his works, the self-generated Paternal Intellect sowed the bond of love, heavy with fire, into all things.</div>
</blockquote>
If
so, the love-infused individual soul descending into matter would be
drawn into the cosmos, where the "bond of love" had taken root. The
sunburst behind Cupid would be an indication of the divine origin of
love, because the sun, in Platonism, was the standard image of the One. Whether the designer of the original tarot would have known the Chaldean Oracles. They weren't
appreciated, or probably even known, in the West until Plethon's edition, and there is no
evidence of its being paid attention to in Italy before the 1460s.
However, there is the question of how it got to Italy in the first place. The logical way would have been for Plethon to have brought it with him when he visited in 1438-1440.<br />
<br />
There is also the passage in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Poimandres</span>, section 14 (<a class="postlink" href="http://gnosis.org/library/hermes1.html">http://gnosis.org/library/hermes1.html</a>, also in Copenhaver, <span style="font-style: italic;">Hermetica</span>, p. 3, a part not in Google Books)
in which Anthropos looks into the water of his own reflection, reaches
down to embrace it, and Physis, Nature, draws him into her iron embrace.
But the original tarot was before this text was known in the West.<br />
<br />
The
Chariot, Decker says, is the ensouled body, combining the number 3 for
the three parts of the soul with the number 4 for the elements, as he
said in an earlier chapter. <br />
<br />
Again, there is additional support
for this view in the Oracles, although this time they would have had to go to the source, Proclus. In Vol. 1
of his commentary on the <span style="font-style: italic;">Timaeus</span>, Proclus says (Logion 201 in Majercik; the quotation is taken to be from the Oracles)<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Particular souls become mundane through their "vehicles."</div>
</blockquote>
The next seven cards Decker calls "Probation" (p. 167). He sees the soul moving under the influence of supernatural powers as described in the Asclepius.<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> I</span>n what follows, Decker refers to specific
sections in the Asclepius, mostly using an obsolete translation by
Scott, in one case correcting it. For people who want to follow his
argument, and mine, while reading along in a good translation of the
Asclepius, I have used the current standard translation by Copenhaver (<span style="font-style: italic;">Hermetica</span>, at <a class="postlink" href="http://books.google.com/books?id=OVZP6b9cqLkC&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=Asclepius+Copenhaver&source=bl&ots=u6BpDIqB9S&sig=nmf1JEbTPWAU6788kRgehIfzgRk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NqjEUojYE4HnoATfo4DoBw&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Asclepius%20Copenhaver&f=false">http://books.google.com/books?id=OVZP6b ... er&f=false</a>).
Since originally posting, I have put in all the page numbers and
section numbers. In a couple of cases where Decker has interpolated
comments in brackets and ellipses (in dots) I have used Decker's
translation followed by Copenhaver's. Unfortunately many of the
quotations come from pages that are not in Google Books' version. In
these cases I have included a link to my scan of the relevant page. <br />
<br />
In this "Probation" section (cards 8-14),
the first of the supernatural powers is the light of the sun, which
Decker (p. 169) identifies with Justice (as in Durer's <i>Sol Iusticiae</i>,
which shows Christ holding the attributes of Justice, with a sun
behind). There is no mention of Justice in the passages of the Asclepius
that he cites (section 19 and 27; in
the Copenhaver translation, these are p. 77, sentence at bottom of
page (in Google Books), to the end of that paragraph, on p. 78 (<a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimXS3wl9iroC8pVnwrwzD7hOc8MDH89VaI7BIY4ouOc48SsO4o6IMSCT6wY4Tsgl_lEU5EqtYLo4p62SwGvGqJzhJrI7vnbs69GQecK7fTCxSmLCX9C2SEVUtOeejc6VPCK5pxcOWiceE/s1600/Copenhaver78&79.JPG">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kp9DQNZqD1o/U ... r78&79.JPG</a>); and 83 (in Google Books), starting with "the one who dispenses" and ending "all things that are").
Decker identifies the two concentric circles on Justice's crown as a
solar symbol. In a hand-painted Justice by Bembo, he says, both the
upper corners contain stylized suns or bursts of light. I have no idea
what Justice he means; the PMB has no such thing. The unpainted woodcut
of the Beaux Arts-Rothschild sheet has something corresponding to his description, but something
similar is on many of the cards.<br />
<br />
The Hermit, Decker had said
much earlier in relation to Horapollo, represents the "horoscopus", the
horoscope-caster and "keeper of the hours". In the <span style="font-style: italic;">Asclepius</span> (Copenhaver translation, top of p. 78, <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimXS3wl9iroC8pVnwrwzD7hOc8MDH89VaI7BIY4ouOc48SsO4o6IMSCT6wY4Tsgl_lEU5EqtYLo4p62SwGvGqJzhJrI7vnbs69GQecK7fTCxSmLCX9C2SEVUtOeejc6VPCK5pxcOWiceE/s1600/Copenhaver78&79.JPG">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kp9DQNZqD1o/U ... r78&79.JPG</a>),<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span> the horoscopes are the decans. The ruler of the decans is the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pantomorphosis</span>, the all-form. Not able to picture such an entity, the tarot relies on Horapollo, Decker says.<br />
<br />
Again, I think a reference to something else in the Platonic world would have been more appropriate. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Timaeus</span> famously said that "Time is the moving Image of Eternity." (<a class="postlink" href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html">http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html</a>).
So the Hermit, if embodying Time, would be the image of the Deity. It
is perhaps with this idea in mind that the Marseille Hermit, starting
with "Chosson" and Dodal, show the image of the sun on the inside of his
robes. The Oracles support such an interpretation. Proclus says
(Majercik, Oracle 195, from <span style="font-style: italic;">In Tim.</span> III, 45), <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
But
(the theurgists) have praised Time itself as a god, and one (Time god)
(they praise) as 'Linked to the Zones' ...the other as Independent of
the Zones".. </div>
</blockquote>
I presume that the "Zones" are the
spheres of the planets and fixed stars. The one "linked to the Zones"
would be Time; the other is eternal. <br />
<br />
The Wheel, Decker says
(still p. 169), is Fortune, which this section of the Asclepius
describes as ruler of the entire system of six planets (excluding the
sun), which Decker says is indicated by the six knobs of the Tarot de
Marseille. Actually the Asclepius (p. 78 again, <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimXS3wl9iroC8pVnwrwzD7hOc8MDH89VaI7BIY4ouOc48SsO4o6IMSCT6wY4Tsgl_lEU5EqtYLo4p62SwGvGqJzhJrI7vnbs69GQecK7fTCxSmLCX9C2SEVUtOeejc6VPCK5pxcOWiceE/s1600/Copenhaver78&79.JPG">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kp9DQNZqD1o/U ... r78&79.JPG</a>)
refers to "seven spheres". What is the justification for separating out
the Sun? Again, Proclus, citing the Oracles, seems to provide such a
position (Majercik logion 200,<span style="font-style: italic;">In Tim.</span> III, 132): <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
Regarding
the planets, (Julian the Theurgist says) that (God) established them as
six, "intercalating" the fire of the sun as the seventh.</div>
</blockquote>
The <i>Asclepius</i> (still p. 78) says that Unity governs the sphere of Air. Decker says (p. 170)
that there is a gap in the text just at this point in the <i>Asclepius</i>, allowing
the tarot designer to insert Fortitude here, air being indicated by the
feathers on the hat of the Tarot de Marseille lady. That interpretation
of the text of course is quite arbitrary, not to mention that the
interpretive jump from hat to air is rather long. And actually, in
Copenhaver's translation of this passage <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span>Copenhaver p. 78, end of first paragraph), <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimXS3wl9iroC8pVnwrwzD7hOc8MDH89VaI7BIY4ouOc48SsO4o6IMSCT6wY4Tsgl_lEU5EqtYLo4p62SwGvGqJzhJrI7vnbs69GQecK7fTCxSmLCX9C2SEVUtOeejc6VPCK5pxcOWiceE/s1600/Copenhaver78&79.JPG">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kp9DQNZqD1o/U ... r78&79.JPG</a>) what governs the air is "all the gods". How either Air or the god" relates to Fortitude remains unclear.<br />
<br />
The Hanged Man, Decker says (p. 170),
is the result of "celestial Jupiter" administering the law, which he theorized in
relation to Manilius, is "the unseen power that causes the man to suffer". <br />
<br />
Death is Plutonian Jupiter, a merger of the two gods, also mentioned in Hesiod's <span style="font-style: italic;">Works and days</span>. Decker does not quote from the Asclepius, but this god is described in section 27 (Copenhaver p. 83, in Google Books):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The
one who dispenses (life), whom we call Jupiter, occupies the place
between heaven and earth. But Jupiter Plutonius rules over earth and
sea, and it is he who nourishes mortal things that have soul and bear
fruit.</div>
</blockquote>
Thus we see vegetation on the Tarot de
Marseille card, Decker says. So in Decker's hands, the Death card is
Nourishment. However his quote only gives the god power of nourishment
over "mortal things", and if Death nourishes anything, it seems to me,
it is only an immortal thing, the soul. <br />
<br />
Temperance is for Decker (p. 171)
Kore, the maiden Persephone, a fertility goddess and regenerator of
life, because that is what mixing the elements results in, as pictured
on the Temperance card. Actually, the Asclepius does not mention Kore or
Persephone. The fertility goddess mentioned is Venus (Asclepius 21, Copenhaver p. 79, <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimXS3wl9iroC8pVnwrwzD7hOc8MDH89VaI7BIY4ouOc48SsO4o6IMSCT6wY4Tsgl_lEU5EqtYLo4p62SwGvGqJzhJrI7vnbs69GQecK7fTCxSmLCX9C2SEVUtOeejc6VPCK5pxcOWiceE/s1600/Copenhaver78&79.JPG">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kp9DQNZqD1o/U ... r78&79.JPG</a>):<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
For
each sex is full of fecundity, and the linking of the two or, more
accurately, their union, is incomprehensible. If you call it Cupid or
Venus or both, you will be correct.</div>
</blockquote>
That would more naturally be the Love card, I think. <br />
<br />
Next
comes the soul's ascent (Decker p. 171). What corresponds to the Devil
and Tower cards is what happens to the soul if negatively evaluated by
the Good Demon; it goes "tumbling down" into storms of fire, water, air,
and earth, as the Asclepius indeed says (section 28, p. 84 of Copenhaver, in the link to Copenhaver's translation already given).
If judged positively, it ascends through a pagan version of Purgatory.
He sees the figures on the Tarot de Marseille Tower card as tumbling to
Hell. But he also mentions purgatory for this card, purgation through
fire. <br />
<br />
The Star is divine providence, promising that the
purgation will not be unduly extreme, but will fit the offenses
committed in life (<i>Asclepius</i> 28, as Decker quotes it, p. 172). <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The divinity <span style="font-style: italic;">foreknows</span> all [of one's deeds], so the penalties inflicted will accord with the offences.</div>
</blockquote>
(The
corresponding quote in Copenhaver is on p. 84: "The divinity foreknows
all of it, so one pays the penalty precisely in proportion to one's
wrongdoing.")<br />
<br />
It is a pagan Purgatory. Earlier he had
identified the Star of the card with Providence. To me the Asclepius
quote sounds more like divine Justice. <br />
<br />
Then, for the Moon card, Decker quotes the Asclepius as follows (section 29)<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
When
the shadows of error [cf. the Moon card] are dispelled from the man's
soul, and he has perceived the light of truth [cf. the Sun card], his
senses are wholly absorbed in the knowledge of God.</div>
</blockquote>
(The sentence in Copenhaver's
translation, bottom of p. 84, reads: "And when the shadows of error have
been scattered from a person's soul and he has perceived the light of
truth, he couples himself with divine understanding in his whole
consciousness.") <br />
<br />
Decker observes: "The sun, of course, dispels shadows and sadness." Thus the Asclepius says, as Decker quotes it (still section 29); <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
"The sun illuminates...by its divinity and holiness...The sun is indeed a second god.</div>
</blockquote>
The
full quote, in Copenhaver, p. 85, is<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In fact, the sun illuminates the
other stars not so much by the intensity of its light as by its
divinity and holiness. The sun is indeed a second god, O Asclepius,
believe it, governing all things and shedding light on all that are in
the world, ensouled and soulless.</blockquote>
(I have reproduced the page at <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvCWHvurFihccWKbW4uqHO3dSbCoMwC4BfeNELy4FWU5i5pTdnlzTm76gquJaI_ACm1Qvy5sIJNfAYswwNGJs89gO9E49PIql5tkzkhyphenhyphenEBbUAs-KU-KFj6zKTEzQVNhFFkInVNB01f9xs/s1600/Copenhaver85.JPG">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bJQ2TDAlyCU/U ... aver85.JPG</a>; this passage is at the top.)<br />
<br />
At
the Angel, the soul rediscovers its immortality, Decker says. There is
in fact no mention of an Angel at this point in the Asclepius. The Good
Daemon did his work earlier. The part about immortality is the rest of
the sentence about his perceiving the light of truth (Copenhaver, bottom of p. 84 in Google Books, top of 85, <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvCWHvurFihccWKbW4uqHO3dSbCoMwC4BfeNELy4FWU5i5pTdnlzTm76gquJaI_ACm1Qvy5sIJNfAYswwNGJs89gO9E49PIql5tkzkhyphenhyphenEBbUAs-KU-KFj6zKTEzQVNhFFkInVNB01f9xs/s1600/Copenhaver85.JPG">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bJQ2TDAlyCU/U ... aver85.JPG</a>): <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
...and
when his love of it [divine understanding] has freed him from the part
of nature that makes him mortal, he conceives confidence in immortality
to come.</div>
</blockquote>
But perhaps the Last Judgment and recognizing one's immortality come to the same thing, for a Hermetic.<br />
<br />
There follows, after skipping several pages of the text, a mystical passage about the world. Decker quotes it without comment (beginning of section 30, corresponding to the first sentence of the section in Copenhaver, p. 85, <a class="postlink" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvCWHvurFihccWKbW4uqHO3dSbCoMwC4BfeNELy4FWU5i5pTdnlzTm76gquJaI_ACm1Qvy5sIJNfAYswwNGJs89gO9E49PIql5tkzkhyphenhyphenEBbUAs-KU-KFj6zKTEzQVNhFFkInVNB01f9xs/s1600/Copenhaver85.JPG">http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bJQ2TDAlyCU/U ... aver85.JPG</a>): <br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
The
world must be full of life and eternity...Eternity's life-giving power
stirs the world, and the place of the world is within that living
eternity....The world will never stop moving or be destroyed.</div>
</blockquote>
All
in all, the fit to the <i>Asclepius</i> is very loose. When there is nothing
in the <i>Asclepiu</i>s, as happens frequently, Decker uses something from
another text. I don't see anything objectionable about this, since they
are all from the same era and roughly the same perspective, the
Platonism of the Roman Empire (even if the Renaissance didn't know
that). But such a wide assortment of texts weakens his case that the
<i>Asclepius</i> is a source for the tarot, because what he does cite is common
to the whole tradition. <br />
<br />
In fact the <i>Asclepius</i> does talk about devils, called "baleful angels" in Copenhaver's translation (p. 82 in Copenhaver, end of section 25, in Google Books),
in a section whose language is very close to that of the Bible's Book
of Revelation. It describes how "Egypt" will be taken over by them,
until God finally has had enough, "washing away malice in a flood or
consuming it in fire or ending it by spreading pestilential disease
everywhere" (section 26, still Copenhaver p. 82).
Then the old order will be restored, in a kind of this-worldly New
Jerusalem. The world that Decker quotes, the one that "will never be
destroyed" is something else, the world of the senses; it is part of a
denial that there will be an "end of the world" either in the material
or non-material sense.<br />
<br />
Another problem, of course, is Decker's
reliance on the Tarot de Marseille, even to the number of spokes on the
wheel. There is no evidence for that deck being the original tarot, especially in such detail.. All
of his arguments fitting the various texts to the Tarot de Marseille, to
extent they are valid, could be explanations for why these details were
added later, as opposed to being original. Except for the texts that explain the order, all relate to small
details on the cards. As far as the order of the trumps, there is no
evidence for the Tarot de Marseille order until 1544, over a hundred
years after the original tarot. This is not to say that better arguments
cannot be found. Decker simply doesn't provide them.<br />
<br />
The 3x7
array is another issue. It is generally agreed that there are three
sections to the sequence, but usually Love and Chariot are put in the
first section (this was first articulated by Dummett in <i>Game of Tarot, </i>1980). A case could be made for Love and Chariot on the descent,
as I have suggested, but one has to assume that the deck's designer was
alert to Proclus's citations of the Chaldean Oracles. Other than that,
the sequence descent-trials-ascent, as grounded in Hermetic-Platonic
texts of the first two centuries of the common era, is still worthy of
consideration.<br />
<br />
I myself would have made more use of the Chaldean
Oracles, both by way of Plethon's edition and Proclus, although not for
the time period of the tarot's invention. For more on this, see Chapters
1-3 of my "Tarot and the Chaldean Oracles", at <a class="postlink" href="http://tarotandchaldean.blogspot.com/">http://tarotandchaldean.blogspot.com/</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>SUMMARY EVALUATION OF PART TWO OF THE BOOK ("THE TEXTS APPLIED TO THE TRUMPS")</b><br />
<br />
As
far as influencing the tarot at the time of its invention, there are
only two areas where it seems to me, after reading his argument, there
might be a case, and even then only for the time when it took its
present shape of 22 cards. <br />
<br />
One area that still seems to me
relevant is that pertaining to Egyptian hieroglyphs, especially
Horapollo, because of (1) the Egyptomania of the times, (2) the good fit
with some of the imagery, i.e. the Bagat in the PMB and several in the
Cary Sheet, and (3) the presence of Ciriaco in Cremona at the right
time, Sept-Dec 1451, a very good time for both Filelfo and he to give
input to the Bembo on the PMB; also, Simonetta, his chancelor, was there
at least in July and Francesco in December, per letters written by them
(Phaeded at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=976&start=20#p14396">viewtopic.php?f=11&t=976&start=20#p14396</a>). Filelfo had the full Greek text of Horapollo, and Ciriaco likely the Latin 37 sign version.<br />
<br />
Another
group of texts with a persuasive case is that of
ancient arithmology, notably Macrobius, Martianus Capella, possibly also
Philo. This Pythagorean-based "arithmetical theology" (<span style="font-style: italic;">Theologumena Arithmeticae</span>,
as one 4th century text is called) is really the best account I know
for why the Popess is number 2, Justice is 8, and the Wheel is 10 (as
the end of a cycle); the other cards from 0 to 9 also fall in line. For
the cards above 10, the correspondences are looser. But once the
precedent had been set in the first ten, the remainder could perhaps
afford to be such.<br />
<br />
That Filelfo was in Cremona in late 1451
increases the probability that Pythagorean arithmology influenced the
order, at least of the PMB. A letter by him quoted by Robin in <span style="font-style: italic;">Filelfo in Milan</span>
(pp. 49-50) shows him quite adept at the playful use of its
correspondences. Filelfo would also have known the relevant dialogues of
Plato and the Latin works of Apuleius, Macrobius, and Martianus
Capella. <br />
<br />
Filelfo would also have had some familiarity with
Proclus, at least to the extent of familiarity with the Chaldean Oracles
imbedded there, some of which Plethon had called attention to.
Filelfo's own philosophical writings are closer to Proclus than they are
to Augustine. Robin (<span style="font-style: italic;">Filelfo in Milan</span> p. 151) paraphrases his 1473-1475 <span style="font-style: italic;">De Morale Disciplina</span>:<br />
<blockquote class="uncited">
<div>
God is pure mind, light, and fire. This being is the light that illuminates truth, the fire that kindles the love of virtue.</div>
</blockquote>
Filelfo
here makes no reference to Christ, the Trinity, etc., she says. From
God comes the eternal forms, including those of the virtues, and it is
through love of those, God's works, that virtuous action occurs, without
which knowledge of the virtues would be meaningless (p. 157) and by
means of which, among other things, the soul grows closer to God. That
doctrine, close to that of Proclus and the Chaldean Oracles (see
Majercik's Oracle 51), would also apply to the virtue cards in the
tarot, which Decker had so much trouble pulling out of the Asclepius.
This is Filelfo of the 1470s. Whether he had such an orientation in the
1450s, when the full 22 card tarot was probably born, is a difficult
question.Michael S Howardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488567669455421279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-230755636669834672.post-84271738285826535652014-04-28T20:10:00.010-07:002022-10-14T04:01:36.470-07:00Chapters 8 - 11: Etteilla and Cartomancy<p><b> I am still editing this part.</b><br />
<br />
The second half of the book is taken up with cartomancy, and in
particular with Etteilla and his followers. He sees divination with
cards as practiced on a very limited basis in the 15th-16th centuries,
with one card "sortilege" books, but also occasional five card "spreads"
that served as a way of delineating someone's character traits in their
current life-situations, as in Folengo's <span style="font-style: italic;">Triperuno</span>.
That tarot divination suddenly appeared as elaborate systems at the end
of the 18th century, as if from nowhere, is a topic he covered, with
Dummett and Depaulis, in <span style="font-style: italic;">Wicked Pack of Cards</span>. Since then, he has more information. I have given a summary of some additional facts about Etteilla's followers at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=827&p=14071&hilit=hugand#p14071">viewtopic.php?f=11&t=827&p=14071&hilit=hugand#p14071</a>, <br />
<br />
Decker has also consulted one additional source since <span style="font-style: italic;">Wicked Pack</span> about Etteilla and his system, a <span style="font-style: italic;">Course Theorique et Pratique</span>
by Paul Hugand, aka "Jejalel". In it he finds both a 54 and a 66 card
spread that Papus had attributed to Etteilla. The 66 card spread is
actually substantiated in Etteilla himself, although Decker seems
unaware of that fact. Papus's account (p. 146 of Stockman's translation
of <span style="font-style: italic;">Divinatory Tarot</span>) is an almost word for word transcription of Etteilla in the 3rd Cahier (see my translation of Corodil's transcription at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=3243686&postcount=23">http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... stcount=23</a>).
Decker notes that the reading involves taking the cards in pairs from
each of two rows of 11. From that he suggests that Etteilla's spreads
evolved from a form of divinatory solitaire that depended on taking
cards in pairs, as described in Vojtech Omasta's <span style="font-style: italic;">Patience: neue und alte Spiele</span>,
Bratislava 1985. He notes that an old word for solitaire in French was
"la Cabale" (no source given). On the other hand, Etteilla's directions
often do not specify pairs.<br />
<br />
Decker also cites "Jejalel" for his
account of the mentor that Etteilla had said taught him the ancient
Egyptians' system of tarot divination: he was a "descendant" of a famous
16th century writer who used the pseudonym "Alexis Piemontese". In fact, Etteilla himself wrote in the<i> 2nd Cahier</i> [notebook] that his mentor in 1757, also named
Alexis, was the grandson ("petit fils") of the 16th century author. See
my transcription and translation at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2805500&postcount=130">http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... tcount=130</a>.
Perhaps after he published the <i>2nd Cahier</i> Etteilla thought about the
time-span between the two Alexises and realized that there had to be
more than two generations from one to the other. Or else "Jejalel"
decided that for the sake of credibility, "descendant" was better than
"grandson".<br />
<br />
In Etteilla, as opposed to Decker's account of him,
what is at least important as the array of cards in the spread is the
order in which the cards appear, which is from right to left. The cards have a
grammatical order which Etteilla thinks it is important not to disturb,
just as with the three words "John", "Richard" and "kills", it makes a
difference whether we combine them to say John kills Richard or Richard
kills John. Decker omits this point. In general, if one wants to learn
how to read the cards in Etteilla's manner, it is best to read Etteilla himself, now available at the
above links.<br />
<br />
Decker devotes much effort to tracking down sources
of Etteilla's imagery and interpretations. The sources for Etteilla's
trumps, except six of them, are the Tarot de Marseille and its variant
the Tarot de Besancon. This is not new information. He does not mention
the source for card 1, it would seem to be card 1 of a French "Minchiate" that "Huck" called attention to on Tarot History Forum (at left below), called "Le Chaos." While "Chaos" was not included as a meaning of the card in his first explication of the card (In the <i>Third Cahier</i>), as opposed to "Questionnant", i.e. male querent (middle below), it was one of the "reversed meanings" in the lists of "synonyms or related meanings" drawn up by his followers, and does appear on a version of the same card as published in c. 1838 (below right). Perhaps the term "chaos" is meant to apply to the male querent, namely his mental state in coming to the card-reader.</p><p class="MsoPlainText"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm2NwQj8urdxkSGmD-4tQhFMgtRbBcPjPzuKthynzhBEmEmRRwu0Y50MnIxnE8enCUjoeDLjrHsWEPkbsfDq8YN_76vhzoLQ6xqHMjfV2DgR7nQ7wa124IV42RJHuDV1Svs82q9FARdrSQ2Uq3_07OmuEBIf4oVB7o5TQeNI0WHeI9pJuUvo-jVXNb/s571/imgonline-com-ua-twotoone-LDbfLt2rSB.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="571" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm2NwQj8urdxkSGmD-4tQhFMgtRbBcPjPzuKthynzhBEmEmRRwu0Y50MnIxnE8enCUjoeDLjrHsWEPkbsfDq8YN_76vhzoLQ6xqHMjfV2DgR7nQ7wa124IV42RJHuDV1Svs82q9FARdrSQ2Uq3_07OmuEBIf4oVB7o5TQeNI0WHeI9pJuUvo-jVXNb/w640-h358/imgonline-com-ua-twotoone-LDbfLt2rSB.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Decker then faults Etteilla needlessly for his
"forced" identification of the French suit of diamonds with the Italian
suit of "sticks" (bastoni), and of clubs with coins (denari). It seems
to me that the diamond shape may well be from the pattern that
crisscrossing staves make on the cards; and the clover design of the
French clubs suit from that pattern on the depictions of coins in
the Italian cards; it is not forced at all. I have illustrated this point with cards of the time at the end of <a href="http://dummettsmondo.blogspot.com/2015/07/chapter-1-part-of-4.html">http://dummettsmondo.blogspot.com/2015/07/chapter-1-part-of-4.html</a>. In any case, it is not Etteilla's innoation. De Mellet, in his companion essay to de Gebelin's, made the same identification, a conclusion he says he reached from looking at what fortune tellers said about the meanings of the French cards and the corresponding tarot cards. Of "our fortune-tellers" he says, giving the correspondences in parentheses (de Gebelin, Le Monde Primitif, vol. 8, p. 403, originally<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> “Les Coeurs (les coupes), annoncent le bonheur.
/ Les Trèfles (les deniers), la fortune. /Les Piques, (les epées), le malheur.
/ Les Carreaux (les bâtons), l’indiffèrence & la campagne"):</span></span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 31.5pt; margin-right: 43.6pt; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 436.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hearts, (cups), announce happiness.</span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><p class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 31.5pt; margin-right: 43.6pt; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 436.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Clubs, (coins), wealth. </span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><p class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 31.5pt; margin-right: 43.6pt; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 436.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Spades (swords), misfortune.</span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><p class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 31.5pt; margin-right: 43.6pt; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 436.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua",serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Diamonds (batons), indifference &
the countryside.</span><a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""></a>
</span></p>
<br />
A novel claim of
Decker's is that the order of Etteilla's 2nd through 8th trump cards and
the keywords on the number cards (Ace-Ten in each suit) come from
"Cabala" (as it was spelled) as known by the early 18th century. <br /><p></p><p>For the
trump cards, he first says, uncontroversially (it is on the cards
themselves), that the images correspond to the seven days of creation.
He then says the seven days of creation are the days of the week, which
since Babylonian times were associated with the seven planetary gods.<br />
<br />
So
we have the Sun on card 2, the Moon on card 3. This much Etteilla
himself says (<a href="http://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/2012/05/introduction.html">http://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/2012/05/introduction.html</a>). Then card 3, taken from the Besancon Star card, which
shows a maiden pouring liquid next to a butterfly, is also Mars,
because Mars was a god of spring (March); he is contradicting what
Etteilla says (above link), that it represents the Stars. Card
5, which he says is of Isis, taken from the Marseille/Becanson World
card, is also Mercury, representing Divine Mind (he is surely thinking
of Hermes Trismegistus in his godly form). Etteilla himself says it
represents the 6th day, when God created man in his own image, and shows
human physicality in its perfection. Card 6, which shows the seven
planets in the sky, is, according to Decker, Jupiter, the sky god.
Etteilla himself says that it represents the "two great lights" of
Genesis, i.e. Sun and Moon together, and that originally it represented
the Zodiac. (I don't know who is odder, Decker or Etteilla; perhaps
Etteilla meant the rulers of the Zodiac.) Card 7, showing sea and air
animals as well as a snake, Decker says represents Venus, for fertility;
Etteilla himself says it was supposed to represent sea and air animals
only, created on the fifth day. Finally card 8, showing Eve in a garden,
Decker says signifies Saturn, the Jewish creator god, on his day of
rest. Etteilla, discussing this image, does mention "repose" (it is on
the card, too) but mostly talks about the Pymander, the first text of
the Corpus Hermeticum, and quotes (without indicating a source) from the
Myth of Er in Plato's <span style="font-style: italic;">Republic</span> (<a href="http://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/2012/05/introduction.html">http://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/2012/05/introduction.html</a>).
No doubt Plato's demiurge is the same, minus reincarnation, as the
Jewish creator god.<br />
<br />
All I can say is that if this is the pattern, Etteilla certainly hid his
intentions well, not only on the cards but also in his own analysis of
them.<br />
<br />
If that were not enough, Decker goes on to say that these
seven gods, in order from Sol (Sunday) to Saturn (Saturday), correspond
to the seven lower sefirot in Cabala. I know of two correspondences
between sefirot and planets in Christian authors popular at that time, plus one more hinted at in a Jewish author.
One is Pico's in his <span style="font-style: italic;">900 Theses</span> of 1486 (thesis 11>48) and the other is Kircher's Tree in the tree of 1652 (<a class="postlink" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kircher_Tree_of_Life.png">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... f_Life.png</a>).
Pico's order (from Chesed to Malkhut) is
Jupiter-Mars-Sun-Saturn-Venus--Mercury-Moon; Kircher's (also Chesed to Malkhut) goes
Jupiter-Saturn-Sun-Mars-Venus-Mercury-Moon. They are the same except for
interchanging Mars and Saturn, the two maleficent planets.<br />
<br />
The third, which I say is hinted at, I get from Moshe Idel's account of Pico's Jewish colleague Yohannan Allemano, who apparently identified Saturn with the second sefira, that would make 6 of the lower sefirot planets and one the earth. The only difference in these three orders is in where Saturn goes, and whether there is a place for the earth. In none of these orders does the order of planets correspond to the order of the days of the
week.<br />
<br />
The order that Decker suggests, moreover, does not fit the symbolism of the sefirot. The character of the Sun might correlate with Chesed, the 4th sefira, which means kindness or charity. But the Moon does not fit the characerizations of the 5th sefira, Gevurah, meaning Power, and Din, meaning Severity. Nor does Mars fit Tiferet, meaning Glory or Beauty. Mercury does not fit Netzah, meaning Victory. Jupiter, the most powerful of the gods, does not fit the lower administrator of Justice on the Tree, Hod. Venus does not fit Yesod, which is the Righteous and the Covenant of circumcision. The female Malkhut, the Shekinah, certainly does not fit Saturn, who mythologically is a god distant from humans; whereas the Shekinah is "God's presence" with Israel, which may be little or much.<br />
<br />
The correspondences that are actually suggested by the evidence (in Pico, Kircher, Allemano), all have much more plausibility than Decker's. They all have Jupiter=Chesed, Mars=Gevurah/Din; and Sun=Tiferet. Saturn is plausible anywhere on the left side of the Tree, that of Judgment. For Pico Netzah meant Eternity and Hod meant Adornment (eternitas and dora) . That would give Pico a plausible motive for making Netzach=Saturn and Hod=Venus. But Venus could also be Netzah=Victory, the victory of love (or eternity of love), and Hod=Praise, can be Mercury. Either Mercury or the Moon is plausible at Yesod, as the mediator between heaven and earth, and either the Moon or the Earth as Malkhut. See my blog <a href="http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/">http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/</a> under the individual sefirot (the sections on the right of the page) for the justification of these assignments.<br />
<br />
One might want to argue that the planets listed for the double letters in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Sefer Yetzirah </span>correspond to the sefirot; but a comparison chart at <span style="font-style: italic;"><a class="postlink" href="http://www.psyche.com/psyche/yetsira/sy_planetaryattributions.html">http://www.</a></span><a class="postlink" href="http://www.psyche.com/psyche/yetsira/sy_planetaryattributions.html">psyche.com/psyche/yetsira/sy ... tions.html</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>(which includes the Zohar somehow) shows no order corresponding to the planets that Decker associates with days of the week. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Sefer Yetzirah</span> does assign planets to the days of the week, but in most versions uses the standard Ptolemaic order of the planets to do so, with Saturn as Saturday, Jupiter as Sunday, etc., down to the Moon as Friday (see Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, pp. 265, 275-6, 290). The order in all versions is the same as the alphabetical assignment (in Hebrew), none of which fits Decker's order. It is possible that some Kabbalist
somewhere associated the sefirot with the planets in days of the week order, but if so it needs to be shown, given
that all the evidence contradicts that supposition. <br />
<br />
For the card
interpretations, Decker decides that the keywords and "synonyms and
related words" given by Etteilla come from a Kabbalist work of the 13th
century, Gikatilla's <span style="font-style: italic;">Gates of Light</span>,
of which a "free" Latin translation (actually, an abridgement) was
published in 1515. Decker says that someone in the early 18th
century must have written down key words and phrases, translating them
into some European language, for each of the ten sefirot (discussed in
each of ten chapters) in the Hebrew edition of the book, establishing a
cartomantic tradition which Etteilla took over for the number cards of
his deck. Decker insists that the Hebrew edition would have been used
because in some cases the correspondences he finds are with modern
translations of biblical verses, at variance with how the relevant verses
were generally understood then, in the Vulgate and other translations.
So whoever was taking notes understood "the subtleties of the Hebrew".
He demonstrates his thesis by comparing the keywords that Etteilla gives
for the number cards with the text of the English translation of <span style="font-style: italic;">Gates of Light</span> and finding correspondences between specific words in both, 100% of the time. <br />
<br />
As
usual, there are are problems with Decker's thesis. The words he picks are typically
not those of Etteilla
but of the "synonyms and related words"--including homonyms and
antonyms--added later by his followers. Decker, who may have had access to rare copies of
Etteilla's followers' works, would have made a useful contribution if he
had given a source in one of the followers, but he does not do so. Most probably he used Papus in La Tarot Divinitoire of 1909, who credits Etteilla's one-time pupil d'Odoucet.Thanks to archive.org, we can now verify that Papus's list is indeed that of d'Odoucet of around 1800. So for the 4 of
Cups, Etteilla has "ennui", boredom. D'Odoucet, and Papus, however, also list
"concern". Decker decides
that when Gikatilla says that God "warns" humanity, that is a clear
correspondence to Etteilla. It is perhaps of little use to report that Etteilla himself called d'Odoucet a "dodo", and that the correspondence is rather loose.<br />
<br />
Also, many of the words Decker links
the keywords to are not very key to the sefirot at all, but occur in
biblical quotes where the actual word identified has little relationship
to the chapter's main ideas; and they are typically biblical quotes
that Gikatella cites numerous times, in relation to other sefirot. In
fact, as I found by producing a searchable version of "Gates of Light"
on my computer, at least one of the "Etteilla" keywords for most of the
number cards can be found in almost every chapter of the book, and so
relating to almost every sefira. The "correspondences" are just too
numerous to be meaningful. <br />
<br />
Occasionally none of the keywords occurs in the relevant chapter of <span style="font-style: italic;">Gates of Light</span>,
for example Etteilla"s keyword "critique" (which Decker translates as
"crisis") for the 8 of Swords. In that case, Decker blithely substitutes
a vaguely related word that does occur in the right chapter of
Gikatilla, e.g. in this case "jealousy". These substitute words are
invariably common biblical words found in many chapters of Gikatilla's
book.<br />
<br />
It may be possible to save Decker's thesis in some other
way by reference to Kabbalist works, or other esoteric writings available
in the 18th century . It is at this point only clear that his arguments
as they stand are quite inadequate.<br />
<br />
<b> ETTEILLA AND GIKATILLA, MORE THOROUGHLY </b><br />
<br />
From my summary of Decker on the derivation of Etteilla from Gikatilla, I
left out something I want to comment on. Decker says that branches,
i.e. wands, represent duty and work in Gikatilla (corresponding to
"material challenges" in Etteilla); vessels are blessings ("spiritual
blessings" in Etteilla); swords are affliction ("spiritual challenges"
in Etteilla); and coins are blessings ("material blessings" in
Etteilla). Is this true?<br />
<br />
Using my searchable version of <span style="font-style: italic;">Gates of Light</span>
I looked at every occurrence there of "branch". Gikatilla speaks of the
sefirot as branches on a tree. He speaks of a palm branch that is
waved in a ritual. He speaks of someone being so angry he uproots a
tree, roots, branches, and all. I do not see duty and work. For "vessel"
Gikatilla speaks of a Babylonian priest pours the contents of vessels
into the mouth of an idol. Gikatilla also speaks of "sacred vessels" and
"vessels for every kind of use". For "cup", God gives a cup of
consolation and also one of poison, i.e. not just blessings but
punishments. I did not find "coin". Yes, swords are affliction. But in
general Decker's correspondences don't amount to much.<br />
<br />
Now I want
to see if anything can be salvaged from Decker's herculean attempt to
correlate Etteilla's keywords with a Cabalist source. I have myself done
something similar to what Decker imagines some reader of <span style="font-style: italic;">Gates of Light</span>
having done; that is, I once took notes on the main points of each
chapter in the form of key words, to see if I could find any
correspondences to trump cards (on the side at <a class="postlink" href="http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=13">http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/searc ... results=13</a>).
I used the same English translation that Decker used and also the Latin
edition of 1515; even though I don't know Latin, there is enough
similarity to English and what I can look up to find corresponding
phrases. Gikatilla himself seems to encourage such notes, or so it
appears in the Latin version, in which key words are presented in Hebrew
as well as Latin and capitalized. <br />
<br />
Below, I have first put
Decker's characterization of Gikatilla. Then I put a summary of my notes
on Gikatilla (see the chapter headings at the side on my blog . Then
come the actual Etteilla keywords, taken from the 3rd Cahier and
Etteilla's first cards; sometimes they are different, in which case I
put both, separated by the sign //. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Malkuth</span>:
Decker has "community (place and governance), kingdom". My notes have:
kingdom; rich when Israel is righteous, or meager when not; expelled and
returned; sphere that governs all creatures, gives life and death,
bequeaths and enriches, brings low and exalts, makes sick and heals;
tabernacle. merciful judgment; well; container.<br />
...Swords................Batons<br />
10
Pleurs (Tears)/Avantage//Evènement fâcheux, qui tournera à profit
(Unfortunate event that turns to advantage).........Trahison
(Betrayal)/Barres (Bars)//Obstacle<br />
.....Cups.....................................................................................................Coins<br />
La ville où l’on est/Pret à perdre (Prepared to lose)//Courroux (Anger).....La maison (House)/Loterie<br />
<br />
Conclusion:
it is possible to relate all of these to Malkuth. as the ups and downs
of Israel. "Ville" and "House" relate to Decker's "community".<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Yesod</span>:
Decker has "individuality (self and circumstances); foundation". My
notes: foundation, covenant, circumcision, links Malkuth with upper
sefirot, redeeming angel, righteous one, giving justice or care which
Malkuth receives. <br />
......Swords................................................................................................................Batons<br />
9
Ecclesiastique/Se défier, ou Juste défiance (Be wary, or justifiable
wariness)......Retard (Delay)/Traverses (Crossings)//Obstacles<br />
.....Cups.................................Coins<br />
Victoire/Sincérité...................Effet (Appearance)/Duperie (Deception)<br />
<br />
Conclusion:
I can see "Ecclesiastique" and "crossings/obstacles" but not the rest:
1/4. I do not see "individuality" in Gikatilla.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Hod</span>:
Decker has "Place of Counsel; honor". My notes: honor, praise, majesty:
carries out decisions from Gevurah, agent of severity. Wages war,
destruction, accepts praise, prayers, submission, affords counsel with
higher powers; place of prophecy. <br />
......Swords..............................................................................................................................Batons<br />
8
Maladie dit de N. (Illness said of N.) Critique//Trahison passée (Past
betrayal)//Incident......Partie de Campagne (Party in the
Country)//Campagne (Country, Campaign)/Disputes Intestine (Internecine
disputes)<br />
..Cups.........................,,,...................................Coins<br />
Fille blonde (blond girl)/Fêtes, Gaieté.............Fille brune/Usure (Usury)//Plus (More)<br />
<br />
Conclusion: about half fit, including "campagne" in the sense of military campaign, but that wasn't Etteilla's original thought.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Netzach</span>:
Decker has "place of counsel; victory". My notes: victory; place to
direct prayers for mercy; place of counsel; unmerited benefits; positive
decrees; luck; nurturing of prophecy; grace of Abraham.<br />
......Swords...............................................Batons<br />
7 Esperance (Hope)/Sage(s) Avis..........Caquets (Prattle)//Pour Parler (for speaking, negotiations)/Indécision<br />
.....Cups.....................................................Coins<br />
La pensée (thought)/Projets (Plans)..........Argent (Money)/Inquiétudes (Anxieties)<br />
<br />
Conclusion:
these, to the extent they are positive, fit in a vague sort of way.:
1/2 . Decker does not notice that for Gikatilla Hod is negative, Netzach
positive.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Tifereth</span>.
Decker has "central to time and space". My notes: glory or beauty;
combines judgment and mercy; awesome and horrible; delivers positive and
negative decrees. <br />
......Swords............................................Batons<br />
6
Envoyé, Commissionaire (Envoy, Messenger)/Route/Déclaration
d’amour//Declaration..........................Domestique (servant)/Attente (waiting)<br />
.....Cups...............................................Coins<br />
Le passé/L'avenir (the future)............Le présent/Ambitions<br />
<br />
Conclusion: swords and batons fit vaguely, so 1/4. Decker's "time and space" is not in Gikatilla at all. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Gevurah</span>.
Decker has "heavenly court, judgment". My notes: judge; fear, severe
judgment, based on merit; informants and prosecutors; place of
destructive angels; emits flames of fire; destructive beasts.<br />
......Swords..........................................Batons<br />
5 Perte (Loss)/Deuil (Grief)...........Or (Gold)/Procès (Trial, Court Case)<br />
.....Cups..................................................................................................Coins<br />
Héritage (Inheritance)/Faux projets (Flawed or bogus plans)//Parent.....Amants ou Maitresse/Manque d'ordre (lack of order)<br />
<br />
Conclusion: Gold, inheritance, and lovers don't fit. So about 5/8 appropriate.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Chesed</span>.
Decker has "heavenly court; mercy". My notes: grace, mercy,
loving-kindness, positive commandments, magnificence, granting
exceptions, long-forebearing, <br />
......Swords.......................................................Batons<br />
4 Solitude/Economie (wise administration).....Société (Company, Organization)/ Fleurissement (Flourishing)//Prosperité<br />
.....Cups.................................................................................................Coins<br />
Ennui/Nouvelle
connaissance (New acquaintance or knowledge).........C’est un présent
(It's a gift)/Clôture (Closure, Closed, Enclosure, stuck)<br />
<br />
Conclusion: Maybe 1/4 fits. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Binah</span>.
Decker has "Path of Love; understanding." My notes: providence,
foresight, source of life, repentance and return, highest source of
justice, atonement, city of David, gate to upper triad.<br />
.....Swords........................Batons<br />
3
Religieuse (Nun)//Eloignement (Separation)/Effet égaré (Appearing lost
or confused)//Egarement (Misconduct, lost)) ..........Enterprises/ Peine
court à sa fin (Trouble shortly to end)<br />
.....Cups.........................................................................................................Coins<br />
Réussite (success)/Expédition d’affaires (expedition of business)...............Noblesse/Enfant (Child)<br />
<br />
Conclusion: maybe 1/2.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Hochma</span>.
Decker has "Path of Love; wisdom". My notes: wisdom, deep thoughts,
will, fear of unworthiness, pleasure, "whoever reaches this place will
be able to do or have whatever he desires", source of river that is
Binah<br />
......Swords.......................................................Batons<br />
2 Amitie
(Friendship)/Amis inutiles ou faux amis, ou parents peu utiles
(Unhelpful or False Friends or Relatives of Little Help)//Faux
(False)..............Chagrin (Sorrow)/Surprise<br />
.....Cups...................................Coins<br />
Amour/Désir ............................Embarrass (Embarrassment)/Lettre (letter, note, document)<br />
<br />
Conclusion: 1/4.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kether</span>.
Decker has "supreme sefira; crown". My notes: source of sources,
beyond thought, joy and rejoicing, pure mercy, source of light.<br />
......Swords......................................................................................................Batons<br />
1
Amour Folle (Crazy Love)//Extrème/Grossesse (Pregnancy.
fecundity).....Naissance (Birth)/Se défier de la première victoire
(Distrust the first victory)//Chute (Fall)<br />
.....Cups......................................................Coins<br />
Table (as in Gastronomy)/Changement......Parfait contentemment/Bourse d'argent (purse of money)<br />
<br />
Conclusion: about 3/4 .<br />
<br />
Average:
About 5 out of 10. I have no idea whether this is higher than chance or
not. I think that the correlations are not just positive to positive
and negative to negative (for which the probability would indeed be one
half). But there may be influences that affected both Gikatilla and
Etteilla.<br />
<br />
The high correspondences between Etteilla and Gikatilla
for the Tens and Aces, which skew the results in a positive way, might be explained as a result of a shared Judeo-Christian
monotheism in the context of an "ascent" narrative at different times
and places. The Aces reflect God, the One, on the descent, and the Tens
reflect the Decad on the ascent, the soul's union with that God. <br />
<br />
In
addition, there may be influences from Pythagoreanism, which was very
much part of the Neoplatonic foundation of Kabbalah (according to what I
read in Moshe Idel, <span style="font-style: italic;">Kabbalah in Italy 1280-1510</span>). <br />
<br />
The
words on the cards and those added by Etteilla's followers fit slightly
better than Etteilla's in the 3rd Cahier. That suggests to me that he
and his followers might have tried to fit what was not originally Kabbalist into a Kabbalist framework later. <br />
<br />
My contention is and
has been that the source for the cartomantic tradition which Etteilla is
reporting for the number cards is Neopythagorean. When Etteilla said at
one point that his source was a "Greek manuscript", he might have meant
the edition, in Greek, of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Theologumena Arithmeticae</span>
printed in Paris in 1543; after all, he was a dealer in printed material acquired in bulk; but he would
have known its contents only vaguely and second or third hand. The
associations in this text seem to me reflected in the cards as early as
the pips of the Sola-Busca (which are only superficially alchemical). I
have worked this out at in the thread "Deciphering the Sola-Busca pips",
starting at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=530">viewtopic.php?f=12&t=530</a>.
When I did it, I didn't have the information from the 3rd Cahier; nor
did I use other Pythagorean sources, such as the ones that Decker
applied--correctly in my view--to the trumps.<br />
<br />
The odd thing is that while Gikatilla does
not fit the number cards as well as they should, his account of the
sefirot does seem to fit the Tarot de Marseille trumps--a view Decker
explicitly rejects. The Bagatella, as creator god, fits Kether. The
Popess, as wisdom, fits Hochmah. The Empress as understanding mother
fits Binah. The Emperor as pardoner, i.e. mercy over justice, fits
Chesed. The Pope as severe judgment, justice according to merit, fits
Gevurah. The Lover as beauty and glory, balancing severity and love,
fits Tifereth. The Chariot as Victory and all things positive fits
Netzach. Justice as submission to the sword of judgment fits Hod. The
Hermit as redeeming angel and commitment to God fits Yesod. The Wheel as
the bringer of good and evil to God's community fits Malkuth. Papus
made these observations in <span style="font-style: italic;">Tarot of the Bohemians</span>, and he was right.<br />
<br />
Papus
did not go any further. But Fortitude, as what is needed in the face of
adversity, also fits Malkuth as the community of Israel. The Hanged Man
as a betrayer does not fit Yesod; but it seems to me that it does fit Yesod as righteousness in the face of institutions, their betrayal to serve a higher good. The father of Francesco Sforza, who probably commissioned our earliest example of a deck with a Hanged Man, the PMB, was Muzio Attendola, whose switch from
the Roman anti-pope to the claimant in Avignon - an act that contributed to resolving the schism- occasioned the anti-pope to denounce him as a traitor and plaster Rome with posters of him hanged upside down, the traditional symbol for betrayal. (For the story see Moakley on the card at <a href="http://moakleyupdated.blogspot.com/2017/03/coins-hunchback-through-tower-g-moakley.html">http://moakleyupdated.blogspot.com/2017/03/coins-hunchback-through-tower-g-moakley.html</a>. Another example is
Christ's betrayal of institutionalized Judaism, the Sanhedrin, his blood sacrifice as an act of redemption substituting
for circumcision and a new covenant, so a kind of
Christianization of Kabbalah. Death is the destructive power of Hod.
Temperance/Fame is the positive antidote to Death, liberation from the
body into a new body that can ascend. The Devil card corresponds to the
demons of the air, which are both positive and negative, both bearing
the soul up and punishing. The Arrow is the purifying fire of Gevurah's
judgment. The Star (of Christ in the tarot) corresponds to Beatrice's
merciful love in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Purgatorio</span>,
where Dante's soul is given the water of eternal life. The Moon is
where that water comes from (the lake on the card), and so Binah, the
river that flows below. The Sun is the higher destination, beyond the
Moon, where the spirit comes from. The Trumpet is the act of approaching
the goal, in ever increasing joy, and so corresponds to Kether. The
World is the oblivion of the individual spirit as it merges with the
spirit-substance beyond every particularity, the En Sof.<br />
<br />But of
course this has nothing to do with Etteilla, whose order of trumps is
altogether different. At present I have no one theory as to why the
correspondences to the Tarot de Marseille work. The particular order of that tradition may have been chosen with the sefirot in mind; but the two sets of subjects must have been at least close in meaning before that. Perhaps it is a matter of Christian and Jewish steps on the "mystical ladder" to salvation being roughly similar, and both similar to Greco-Roman mystical traditions.<br /></p><p>A danger when making correspondences is of making them so loose that something will work no matter how you draw them. But I tried many other combinations, none of which worked, before I realized that the "tree of life" going first down and then up was what fit the TdM order best, even if some of it is strained. It is as though the order were tweaked so as to make it fit. A certain subjectivity
enters in no matter how hard you try to keep it out; so it would be
useful to know other people's impressions, especially for the last 11,
where I go where even Papus feared to tread.<br />
<br />
The same seems to me true of the correspondences between the Neopythagorean meanings of the number cards from 1 to 10 and the Etteilla meanings. They, unlike Decker's use of the <i>Gates of Light</i>, fit all the sefirot, and at the same time it is not possible to draw similarly credible correspondences between Neopythagorean meanings for a particular number and the corresponding Etteilla meanings for some other set of four number cards (for each of the four suits). I noticed this while working out the parallels; occasionally they wouldn't work at all. When I investigated further, I invariably discovered that I had pulled one or another set of meanings from the wrong number. </p><p>Here I think we have to realize that cartomancy with the regular deck alone was practiced at least as often as with the allegorical cards. In that case, the majority of the cards were number cards, with very little to differentiate them except their number and suit. In this situation numerological associations become primary in a given suit. Numerological distinctions can also apply to the court cards, based on their order in most card games:Jack/Page, Knight, Queen, King. Then when numbers are put on the allegorical cards, in a place such as France where the order is the same everywhere, the same associations that worked for the number cards can work for the allegorical cards, at least up to 10. After 10, there are several possibilities: counting back down to 0, as I have found most natural, repeating the numbers from 1 to 10 over again, or using gematria, which has the effect of reducing 11 to 2, etc. In any case, it is the commonality of the numbers to every card that gives numerology such prominence. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2st24HXaFuvgzh_dwCrrQfCYNMJ7vqv4EaMk6VvEkj_-poG9aMi1mJtc-54JsR0QrmlAcqfMwfR74eehIXIN4Mft3XDOTf-Xb2EvA6t4fy9CRbE5ecstjPKVc99dCVRDTUBBcrN-WQsokA2z6YaBUHQO6SHai0-crKQYJ6cq3WSHUt0DFXrNyB9ic/s744/01SforzaChosson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="744" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2st24HXaFuvgzh_dwCrrQfCYNMJ7vqv4EaMk6VvEkj_-poG9aMi1mJtc-54JsR0QrmlAcqfMwfR74eehIXIN4Mft3XDOTf-Xb2EvA6t4fy9CRbE5ecstjPKVc99dCVRDTUBBcrN-WQsokA2z6YaBUHQO6SHai0-crKQYJ6cq3WSHUt0DFXrNyB9ic/s320/01SforzaChosson.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Perhaps some concluding words are in order. While Decker was stimulating to read and argue with everywhere, I found him most helpful in two areas: his application of Horapollo, along with other Egyptian-oriented Greek and Latin sources; and that of numerology, which unlike many such applications is not made up to suit the writer's fancy. Here it seems to me that Christian and folk numerology also would have played a role. In the early tarot, the only cards that had the same number everywhere were the Bagatella (Magician), the Hanged Man at 12, and Death at 13. The Hanged Man, early on called the Traitor, was associated with Judas, considered the 12th disciple in all the gospel lists. It may be that Death was 13 to indicate that the man of 12 was on the point of death; or there were inauspicious associations from one source or another. There is good reason to associate the number 1 with the Bagatella: as a thing of little value, as the sinful deceiver who must climb the mystical ladder, or as the creator-god of lives in a game of cards, laying out individual combinations, advantageous and not, in terms of the four types of objects on his table and the special teachings hidden under his straw hat (in the Visconti-Sforza, at left) or in his purse (the Chosson, at right). <br /><p></p><p> </p>Michael S Howardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488567669455421279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-230755636669834672.post-44728410798323272332014-04-28T20:07:00.002-07:002015-07-26T18:47:24.713-07:00ConclusionThis is a rather fuzzily reasoned book, more so than this inherently fuzzy subject demands. His discovery of the <i>Tabula Cebetis</i> frontispiece was quite helpful for seeing the role of the Magician card. Chapter One, on Horapollo was eye-opening for me, as I had not realized how many correspondences to the cards there are. I also found Chapter 3, on numbers, worthwhile in that I had not examined some of his sources, such as Martianus Capella. The same is true in a lesser way for the chapter "Secret Symmetries". The second half of the book largely recapitulates what is in <i>Wicked Pack of Cards</i>, except when he tries to justify the assignment of meanings to the number cards in terms of the sefirot as characterized in a Jewish source, a venture that I don't think succeeded. But at least he tried, unlike most who have advanced the same idea. My personal working hypothesis, which seems to fit, is that the sefirot govern the trumps (which Decker denies, in favor of Pythagorean number symbolism) and Pythagorean number symbolism governs the number cards (which Decker denies, in favor of the sefirot).<br />
<br />
I suspect that the meanings of the courts are partly the Pythagorean 1, 2, 3, 4, all over again (Page through King) in each suit, partly natural associations to these particular ranks in society of the times, and partly associations to particular personnages who were identified with these cards. In the French tradition they were given names drawn from French history and classical history and mythology. But I have not carried through this hypothesis to see if it fits Etteilla's meanings.Michael S Howardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488567669455421279noreply@blogger.com0