Prohibtions, kids and church

[Huck]

A lot of people talk of "neoplatonism, deep roots in the past, horible mysteries, hidden philosophies, archetypes" etc., when talking of Tarot. Occasionally it is talked about Tarot as a suppressed theory.

Nobody talks about kids.

http://trionfi.com/0/p/12/

Often there is thought, that Tarot was prohibitioned and prosecuted. It is not true. Mostly Tarot was mentioned as an allowed game. And somhow that's strange, cause occasionally card-playing was prohibited, but Trionfi allowed.

http://trionfi.com/0/p/01/

Card playing prohibition is well researched by Franco Pratesi around Florence. There it appears, that laws couldn't be seen generally, but differed from town to town, from village to village. And the times changed, after 1450 prohibition was more or less low and Trionfi was explicitly an allowed game. Of course there was a draw-back in the the Savanorola times, but finally Savanorola was burnt and not cards.

http://trionfi.com/0/p/05

There are some great heads of the church involved in playing card history. From their comments we can see a slow walk from prohibition to acceptance.

http://trionfi.com/0/p/13/

All pages are "under development"

[jmd]

Thanks again for those wonderful links, Huck.

Each of these points could well do with various discussions, but again expect that they are first taken and tasted over time without much discussion, allowing their digestion to properly occur with time.

Personally, the three items I find of growing interest is the move towards the Iberian peninsula as an area which, in terms of cards, has not been seemingly as investigated as the north Italian Florentine region; that the links and contacts and card dissemination prior to Visconti-Sforza-type decks seems to have touched various centres such as the Berlin, Provençal and Judean regions; and that the card playing of the young Viscontis and others must have inevitably incorporated more meaningful and progressively more obscure and symbolically loaded imagery with time and their maturing interests.

Again thanks for the links, which I'll need to spend some time in wanting to include and comment on.

[Huck]

Originally posted by jmd
Thanks again for those wonderful links, Huck.

Each of these points could well do with various discussions, but again expect that they are first taken and tasted over time without much discussion, allowing their digestion to properly occur with time.



Again, the state of playing card research is bad. The research of Franco Pratesi went through the Playing Card Journal and wasn't probably spread very far. That's bad. Special ideas like "observe the kids" and "think about prohibition" wasn't, as far we know, never done before. Simply, cause it is already rather hard to get all the entries together, who belong to playing card research, cause they're simply never presented in actuality. That' bad, too.
And simply: Playing card researcj isn't very well organised. We try to change that.
We try to get the things together, best in original form, as far as possible. When that is reached, we guess, that better conclusions could be done, what the Tarot is about. We do a lot, but we cannot do all - we need help for that.


Personally, the three items I find of growing interest is the move towards the Iberian peninsula as an area which, in terms of cards, has not been seemingly as investigated as the north Italian Florentine region; that the links and contacts and card dissemination prior to Visconti-Sforza-type decks seems to have touched various centres such as the Berlin, Provençal and Judean regions; and that the card playing of the young Viscontis and others must have inevitably incorporated more meaningful and progressively more obscure and symbolically loaded imagery with time and their maturing interests.


Probably no region has been better researched than Florence, as far prohibition is concerned. Part of this is, that Florence simply has a lot of material, another part is, that there was a man named Franco Pratesi, who just did the research.
I don't know, why do you see Berlin as a centre of playing card production (actually I even don't know if Berlin was already a city at the critical time and I guess, you've an error there; Nüremberg and other southern German cities were strong in card production, and that very early, also Cologne). From the Provencal and Jewish (or what you think with "Judean" of) early playing card production I also know not much - you feel sure, there was one? From the French production it's said, it came late - perhaps that has changed in the meantime.
That's bad in playing card research, you never know, if you've all data.
]

[Ross G Caldwell]

I am sure that cards early found a use teaching kids to count and do basic arithmetic. I know that my relatives used them this way - they are good because you can play games, with winners and losers, which kids like. We used to like simply putting the deck back in numerical order - even that is fun for kids.

It's not just boring math, with problems and solutions, but living numbers, numbers in action.

I think I was playing with cards by 6 or 7 years of age.

Again, clearly related to gambling, which is numbers in real, money. Gamblers are superstitious. I don't know if Filippo gambled, but he was very superstitious.

Making the cards more interesting - with pictures and such - must have happened early too.

Then there is the "natural" order of things represented by the hierarchy of the court cards. When Ace is high, it is kind of abstract - King is more natural.

You go from counting numbers from low to high, to counting social status from low to high, then perhaps to arranging values or ideas from lowest to highest - the trionfi. It is a form of education, like Marziano wrote, a recreation for a noble intellect (his deck of Deified Heroes).

Ross