Intégrisme

Jodorowsky and Costa's La Voie du Tarot arrived from Canada today. Despite Diana's negative review, I was interested in this, it seemed fairly comprehensive. Browsing through it, it looks like he does a fair amount of creatively visualizing and imagining conversations with the cards. This is congenial since it strongly resembles Gareth Knight's method. I enjoyed his story about growing up in Chile.

But he started losing me once I actually started reading it and came to page 20, where he makes the somewhat startling assertion:

Une oeuvre sacrée est par essence parfaite; le disciple doit l'adopter tout entière, sans essayer de lui ajouter ou retirer quoi que ce soit.

A sacred text is necessarily perfect; the disciple should take it as it is, as a whole, without trying to adjust or remake what it is.

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This is crystal clear, and it appears in the course of an argument against the alterations made to the deck by Waite and Crowley. Still, living in the USA, where there's a great deal of That Sort of Thing in the air, these assertions that the TdM is a "sacred work" to which we must bend the knee and accept as a revelation that must be swallowed whole or not at all, is rather off-putting. Conver said it, I believe it; that settles it!

Especially since, in a later passage, he also refers to the TdM as a folklore transmission, and observes that as a part of the folk process, lore is passed from one generation to another without being perfectly understood. This is part of the appeal of the TdM, a genuine reason to respect general fidelity to its outline — and also an argument against what Christians would call "proof-texting" the small details of one variant, imagining that this colour or this leaf is the key to the mystery, and its alteration or absence makes some other deck an imperfect and impure thing.

I've always liked the French word intégrisme, probably because it doesn't carry the social and political baggage of "fundamentalism," its imperfect twin in English. Its metaphor of intact preserved purity reminds that there are arguments in favour of holding such a position. But still, it is something I think it's best to be leery of. There are those who uphold the Marteau deck as The One, and attach great meaning in its colour scheme, even though it does not date from before the 1930s. What would appear to me to be quite serviceable decks like the Hadar deck have been accused of deviance, and I seem to remember some posts that say that the Camoin and Jodorowsky deck itself contains error.

I came back to pip card decks generally because I came to find the English RWS mainstream tradition confining. Is it possible to maintain an appropriate respect for the TdM tradition without taking one form or another of it and giving that version the spurious virtues of "inerrancy in the original autographs?"

I think that in a “sacred work” (whatever that might be) there is a perfect essence. Still, even that essence is NOT entirely present even in the best form this work might adopt, whether we consider that best form to be the original (almost always easily lost), or a latter one that, through direct connection to the source (meditation, etc.), was able to correct the original in order to achieve a more archetypical presentation. And that essence cannot be modified, or taken partially, because it is unitary. But I also think that this perfect essence is (unitarily) present in ANY aspect of its form, or the work we are talking about, because that form is definitely multiple, fragmented, non-unitary (and unperfect). If this is even remotely true, then we don’t need to build an altar to “one form or another” of TdM. Of course, to decide if a deck deserves the designation Tarot de Marseille or not, that is another story…

Silvia

I personally agree with smleite.

For myself, the Ür-Tarot resides not in any instance of formed deck, but in its ... how shall I call it, its 'being'.

If one looks merely at the form, then 'errors' in both categorisation and understanding may arise. Is a whale or dolphin a fish or a mammal?

At times, it is the deeper reflections, which may indeed be easily criticised as each of the forms themselves may, that points in the direction of greater understanding.

In that sense, certainly each of the Conver, the Dodal, the Marteau, the Hadar and the Camoin are real Marseille decks. And each may also be critically appraised.

Can one, analogically, find a perfect rose? Yet each rose remains a full and true rose indeed.

Thanks for the critique of the book, ihcoyc - at least where you live your word should be taken as gospel

ihcoyc said:

There are those who uphold the Marteau deck as The One, and attach great meaning in its colour scheme, even though it does not date from before the 1930s. What would appear to me to be quite serviceable decks like the Hadar deck have been accused of deviance, and I seem to remember some posts that say that the Camoin and Jodorowsky deck itself contains error.

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This is interesting, because Jodorowsky's deck itself contains many examples of changes made which are obviously not based on any antique deck at all, such as the Tree of Life encoded in the Hanged Man's buttons.

I think the problem some people (including me) have with the Jodorowsky and Hadar decks is not that they contain "errors" but rather that they are created very subjectively, according to the esoteric beliefs of their authors, rather than being based only on elements from antique decks. This wouldn't be a problem, in fact I consider these decks to be attractive modern decks, which are just as reflective of their designer's ideas as the RWS or any other modern deck. The problem is that both Jodorowsky and Hadar represent their decks as being "restorations" of antique decks. I know they both insist on this, but I'm not convinced.

-- Lee

I was aware that Camoin and Jodorowky present their deck as being a 'restoration' - and in part, it is in terms of seeking to 'restore' to clarity what they discovered as only ambiguously depicted (such as the platform under the knees of the Star maiden, or the hind legs ambiguously but still clearly depicted on some early Chariot Marseille depictions), I would have to agree.

With the Hadar, however, does he actually make such a claim? I just do not recall if he does (he may, of course, but my memory here fails me).

There is also a distinction between 'restoration' in the sense of seeking to bring to absolute clarity an old deck (such as the wonderful works of J-C Flornoy does), and the 'restoration' intended to the impulse of the tradition. I would suggest that both the creators of the Camoin and the Hadar would use the term 'restoration', if at all in the case of the latter, only in its second sense.

And of course it is in this latter sense that greater criticism may likewise be levelled at Camoin and Jodorowsky than at Hadar - especially in not so much the buttons on Le Pendu, but on especially the door of La Maison Dieu.

The difference between these decks and such deck as the WCS (no matter how wonderful the works of Waite and Colman-Smith may be considered) is that Camoin and Jodorowski have played with the minute details (except in the example just given), not the overall schema... and that is a very great difference, and thus the Camoin Marseille is far less prone to the personal whims and ideas of its creators than, for example, the WCS (again, no matter how wonderful a personal work W & CS have achieved in their deck).

Re: Re: Intégrisme

Lee said:

I think the problem some people (including me) have with the Jodorowsky and Hadar decks is not that they contain "errors" but rather that they are created very subjectively, according to the esoteric beliefs of their authors, rather than being based only on elements from antique decks.

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In this case, what Hadar and Jodorowsky did isn't far removed from what Smith and Waite or Harris and Crowley did: they remade a Tarot based on an assumption that esoteric ideas lie behind its designs, and their versions were made to represent those ideas. The fact that TdM designs were deeply rooted in parts of France, while any Tarot was exotic in England, goes far to explain the far freer adaptations made in England.

Restoration is frequently heard by those who are making changes while wishing to deny that they are doing anything of the sort. Again, religion suggests analogies: the Mormons claim that they have "restored" the true original practice and doctrine of Christianity, even if it seems obvious to outsiders that they have made highly original changes.

Attempting to make the true Tarot an ideal for which any extant deck is but an imperfect approximation is again something that is analogous to religion. The hard-core Bible thumper affirms that the Bible is infallible "in the original autographs", which are conveniently unavailable; this gives him an escape hatch if cornered. The Roman church wishes us to have vast respect for the teachings of the Pope, but he is only infallible when he speaks ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals. This gives them quite a bit of wiggle room, especially when dealing with statements by popes before the doctrine was announced. The number of statements covered by the doctrine varies by who you're talking to.

Myself, I consider that there was a great deal of folk transmission and historical contingencies in both the selection of particular designs to be the TdM "ur-text"; and also the selection of the TdM, as opposed to the Tarot de Besançon, or even a North Italian deck, as the foundation of the esoteric tradition. Preserved older decks seem to show a range of variety not found in the eighteenth century TdM, and the development of a playing card industry in the city and the selection of the TdM pattern as a standard had something to do with tax laws and the areas where the tarot game was popular, not because the people of Marseilles were better acquainted with Thoth and Hermes Trismegistus. These are among the reasons why I do not consider myself a TdM intégriste; I'd be prepared to accept other historic decks, or engraved decks generally faithful to the traditional images, as quite adequate embodiments of the Tarot.

--- Steve, weeping for John Peel

Excellently put, Steve! I agree with every word.

-- Lee

jmd said:

There is also a distinction between 'restoration' in the sense of seeking to bring to absolute clarity an old deck (such as the wonderful works of J-C Flornoy does), and the 'restoration' intended to the impulse of the tradition. I would suggest that both the creators of the Camoin and the Hadar would use the term 'restoration', if at all in the case of the latter, only in its second sense.

And of course it is in this latter sense that greater criticism may likewise be levelled at Camoin and Jodorowsky than at Hadar - especially in not so much the buttons on Le Pendu, but on especially the door of La Maison Dieu.

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Camoin and Jodorowsky start with the line-drawings of the 1760 Conver and the colours of the Héron exemplar of the 1760 Conver. While certain changes were admittedly done by Camoin-Jodo such as the change re: the buttons on Le Pendu, other changes are made consistent with oral tradition or details in other decks (e.g., the door is consistent with the Tower card in the Besançon deck and possibly oral tradition) or with respect to arguable ambiguities in the 1760 Conver linework.

In my view, I don't think it's fair to level "greater criticism" at Camoin and Jodorwosky than at Hadar.

Some examples:

• At least Jodo and Camoin start with one traditional pattern (i.e., Conver) for the minor arcana. In the case of Hadar, the starting point for a given minor arcana card is an amalgam of elements from the Conver pattern and elements from the Dodal/Payen patterns. For those who don't think that departures from pattern are important, recall the case of the Tarot of Bologna (Lo Scarabeo Ancient Tarot of Bologna) which follows the Conver pattern rather closely yet is considered a mere cousin of the Tarot de Marseille, whereas Hadar styles his deck as the Véritable Tarot de Marseille. In a given court card or numerical pip card in Hadar's deck, one may find some elements from Conver and other elements from Dodal/Payen, on a mix-and-match / hodge-podge basis.
  
  
• Convinced that every flower in the Marseille deck is a rose, Hadar, throughout his deck, turns an amorphous flower with a certain number of petals into a flower that has a differerent number of petals and that's unmistakeably has morphed into a rose.
  
  
• Yellow alien light beams emanate from the tops of the heads of the Popess, the King of Rods and the King of Cups, whereas such a detail doesn't appear in the traditional patterns, as far as I know.
  
  
• Crowns appear out of nowhere on the Hadar 10 of Rods.
  
  
• Hadar devises his own structural symbolism for the centre coin of the Ace of Coins.
  
  
• In the top of Hadar's Tower card we see the added touch of a distinct arrow [green arrow]. What historic deck is that from?

And so on.

Is it possible to maintain an appropriate respect for the TdM tradition without taking one form or another of it and giving that version the spurious virtues of "inerrancy in the original autographs?"

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I'm discovering something at the moment that I think relates to this question ihcoyc.

I recently bought my second TdM deck; a Grimaud. I have begun comparing the differences between this deck and my Hadar deck. It feels as though I am discovering new layers of meaning through exploring the inconsistencies and differences in the details of the cards.

As soon as I can afford it, I am going to buy a Heron Conver. My guess is that the same thing will happen again. That the differences will add something, some depth, to my understanding. I imagine that through time and study, if I am to picture the cards in my mind, that picture will contain elements of each deck I have studied, rather than being an exact replica of my first deck, the Hadar.

This leads me to suspect that the True Tarot is somewhere in between the individual decks. Does that make sense? I think that truths can be found in the inconsistencies.

Integrisme

Isn't any Tarot deck an Oracle in the form of a series of visual metaphors? In other words, isn't the perfect Tarot deck the perfect interactive resonance between the reader or readers and the deck itself? When the observer and the observed are in close or closest communion?
Isn't the Tarot not the object but the process of discovering both the object and the subject in the flow of observing, interpreting, and intuiting?
Why separate ski from skiing when skiing, Tarot from Taroting when Taroting? Of course, one can appreciate the art and symbol of it, but, ultimately, isn't the "Perfect Tarot" taking a deep dive down into it, with no need to lecture about its perfection over other deep dives?
Please consider this perspective.