Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ICONOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF THE JUGGLER

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

Let us continue. Decker says:

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

He continues:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

SECOND EXAMPLE:  THE WORLD CARD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THIS ANALYSIS GENERALIZED, AND THE REST OF THE INTRODUCTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

And:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapters 1 and 2

CHAPTER ONE: THE TEXTS

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' Hieroglyhica; I will summarize that information when I get to Decker's Ch. 3, in which he deals particularly with that text

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 Phaedrus, a text he said in the Introduction (p. 9) was available in Italy from 1423; Decker cites Michael J. B. Allen, Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer, 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:

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.

Plato, in turn was supposed to have studied in Egypt. Decker writes, p. 27:

According to Clement of Alexandria, Plato was the pupil of Sechuphis of On [footnote 1: Clement of Alexandria [Titus Flavius Clemens], Stromata, I, 15, 69. Plutarch names Sechuphis of On as one of Plato's Egyptian tutors [footnote 2: On the Daimon of Socrates, 578].

After Plato the Corpus Hermeticum combined Egyptian religion with Greek mythology and philosophy, he says. The Corpus 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.

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 Aesclepius, 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 Hieroglyphica  (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 (http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=2457172).

In sum: this is a promising introduction.

CHAPTER TWO: THE SUITS

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.

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 Game of Tarot. 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).

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.

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.

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.

None of this is discussed by Decker, but it seems consistent with his presentation.

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 Corpus Hermeticum; but checking his source, Copenaver's translation with commentary of the Corpus, 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 Corpus Hemeticum 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 Isis and Osiris 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.

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 Poimandres (p. 1 of Copenhaver's Hermetica), in which the narrator describes a vision bestowed on him by Poimandres, the "mind of sovereignty", i.e. the nous (mind) of Platonism and other systems:

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. 

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".

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 Picatrix 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).

There is actually a similar reference that was more accessible than the Picatrix, in The Marriage of Mercury and Philology (II, 174; Stahl & Johnson translation, p. 56), where a divination-related ibis with a staff is described, as part of a description of a guest at the wedding: I put the most relevant parts in bold:

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 (Astronomica 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 that bird of Egypt which the Egyptians call an ibis. It was wearing a broad-brimmed hat, and it had a most beautiful head and mouth, which was caressed by a pair of serpents entwined; under them was a gleaming staff, 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 birds of divination was the gentler. The ibis wore on its front the name of a Memphitic month.

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.

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.

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:

The Mamelukes certainly depicted Mars with a sword.
They knew that gold (as in the Coins) was associated with the Sun.

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.
  
CRITIQUE OF DECKER ON SUITS, AND OF HIS EXTENSION OF THE SAME IDEA TO THE FOUR COURTS

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 (http://a_pollett.tripod.com/cards56.htm). 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganjifa; 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).

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 Rhapsodies of the Bizarre, pp. 55-57; the original is at http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherch ... les_Tarots):

III. Names of various Cards, preserved by the Spanish
One-eyed or the Ace of coins, Phoebea lampadis instar., consecrated to Apollo....
The Serpent or the Ace of batons (Ophion) famous symbol & sacred to the Egyptians.

We saw the serpent before, in the Poimandres, where it was watery fire. De Mellet continues, in section IV:

The Ace of Swords, consecrated to Mars....
The ace of cups indicates a unique joy, that one by oneself possesses.

And for the suits (sections IV-V):

The Cups in general announced happiness, & the Coins wealth.
The Batons meant for Agriculture prognosticated its more or less abundant harvests, the things which should have occurred in or that regarded the countryside.
They [the Batons] appear mixed of good & of evil...
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.
...
The Hearts, (the Cups), portend happiness.
The Clubs, (the Coins), wealth.
The Spades, (the Swords), misfortune.
The Diamonds, (the Batons), indifference & the countryside.

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" (Hieroglyphica 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.

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).

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.

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 (Life and Art of Albrecht Durer, p. 78):

This attitude, denoting a calm and superior state of mind, was actually prescribed to judges in ancient German law-books.

It is true that the image that he is commenting on, a Durer Christ, has solar symbolism top and bottom:

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.

Decker continues

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.

See http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-ima ... en-of-Cups. This detail is absent from any extant 15th century cards, and it is a forced interpretation of a small detail in any case.

He adds, "The armored Knight of Swords would qualify as Mars". But all 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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_cap; compare with http://www.planetlight.com/td/content/page-wands), 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?

So it is hard to believe that there is planetary symbolism in the courts, beyond what might be in their suits.

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."

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". 

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 A Treatise on the Deification of Sixteen Heroes by Marziano da San Alosio, 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.

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.

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."  

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.

In sum: 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.

Chapter 3: the Italian trumps

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.

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.

 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), http://trionfi.com/0/f/x/ and elsewhere, although without crediting him or his colleagues at trionfi.com.

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.

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. 

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.

Decker adds that the 14 card original was first proposed by him in 1974 (Journal of the International Playing Card Society 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. 

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 https://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=17682#p17682.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

One argument he gives for the priority of the Tarot de Marseille is correspondences between the Tarot de Marseille and Milanese fashion and heraldry:

In the Tarot de Marseille, the trump figures wear costumes that are mostly in early Renaissance style (belted jerkins, tights, robes, high-waisted gowns).

Also, the Ace of Swords' blade is  (p. 78f):

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.

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

THE FANTI FRONTISPIECE OF 1526

Later in the chapter Decker gives an interpretation of another frontispiece, this one from Venice 1526, Fanti's Triompho di Fortuna, 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).

Besides Decker's and Place's discussions, I have found two scholarly articles on this frontispiece, a detailed one by Robert Eisler in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes for 1947, pp. 155-159, and a note by Detlev Baron von Hadeln in the Burlington Magazine 1926, p. 301, about the drawing that preceded the woodcut.I will preface my discussion with a summary of these articles.

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.

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):
 :

,,it is remarkable how daringly Sigismondo Fanti represents the insecurity of the Vicar of Christ's position at the summit or Medium Coelum of the slowly revolving sphere...
...The female figure on the left is, of course the Bona Fortuna of the system (Agatha Tyche), turning the handle of the world-axis upward, the other is the Malus Genius (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 Castello S. Angelo while Rome was sacked and plundered by the soldatesca of the rival Catholic great powers.

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).

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:

...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."

And the astrologer next to him is Fanti himself (p. 157).

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 Torre dell' Orologio in the Piazza di san Marco 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.

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.

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.

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 viewtopic.php?f=23&t=404&p=14117#p14117). It is a matter of what is good and bad for the soul, not the body.

The two figures in the foreground, the astrologer and the dice-thrower, in contrast, are separated from the city. For the dice-thrower, Place (Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 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 Isis and Osiris, 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.

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.

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.

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).

The Greeks in the Iliad 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 The God of Socrates (Apuleius Rhetorical Works p. 309), Apuleius relates that Socrates would consult his daemon, 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 daimon, 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.

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 Tabule Cebetis isn't.

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.

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:

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...

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):

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.

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.

THE REST OF THE CHAPTER

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 http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=199&lng=eng.

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.

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.

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.