Dante Tarot EXPLAINED (Lo Scarabeo)

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 31 Dec 2002, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Cerulean	31 Dec 2002
AT LAST, great news...Giordano Berti's writeup of the Dante Tarot, as outlined in English: http://www.giordanoberti.it/english/html/giochi_tarocchi_dante.htm YEAHHHHHHH.... Mari H., whose happy dance contrasts strangely with starting Inferno through Purgatory in her humanities seminars this quarter... P.S. The roman numbers in parenthesis is the canto and verses of the three books of Divine Comedy and Convivo. The Digital Dante will provide online resources...that's an easy google search...

Ophiel	31 Dec 2002
Thanks! I ordered this deck the other day and this will be helpful. IT should be here by next week. Hmmm...perhaps now is a good time to brush up on Dante! I ordered it because I thought it would make good cold drink coasters, if I laminate them! (Just kidding, of course...Tarotbear.)

Cerulean	31 Dec 2002
Ophiel, The cold drink coasters are the fun idea ONLY if you use clear glass or perhaps a fiery tone, so that the tarot characters are magnified mysteriously in the bottom of the glass. If any of the more naughty characteristics of the cards are magnified, you can brush up on your Inferno cantos. Guess the minors would make an interesting conversational coaster... Were you the one that does mostly reading with the majors? My only concern for such a reader is that Inferno/Purgatory/Paradiso are in the minor suits. When I glance at Berto's outline, the scene and canto selections that are pivotal to the Divine Comedy seem to turn on the fives of the three suits selected. I'm actually going to have to take a few days to check my references, so I'll explain in detail later...unless what I say rings a memory for you, offhand. I was actually in a class review and then a ten-week Paradiso seminar, so we kept referring back to Inferno and Purgatory...it wasn't until Berto's English outline came up today that I could really start making use of the deck. Best wishes, Mari H.

Ophiel	31 Dec 2002
Mari_Hoshizaki wrote: "Were you the one that does mostly reading with the majors? My only concern for such a reader is that Inferno/Purgatory/Paradiso are in the minor suits." Not to worry, M_H. Yes, I hang with the majors mostly, but I never seem to have any problems finding Inferno/Pargatory. Actually, it is MUCH worse than that...I'm the black sheep of this group because I don't, um, "read" the cards. I do smell the coffee, but don't read the cards. However, read or not (though I decided I do 'read' the cards, just differently than most in the group) I do want to know how the cards synchronize with Dante's world. The imagery does look fascinating in this deck. Ophiel

Cerulean	04 Jan 2003
I had some time to do a reading for someone and digest how to use both Berti's outline and some Dante resources. My suggestions follow---and this sounds like more work than it was. The short version is that I am explaining why some supplementary material might be valuable to some English-speaking people and I list a few sources if the Dante Tarot seems like a worthwhile card deck to study. I definitely can be corrected in any of the below: 1) This allegorical journey was set up as a complete work of fiction, using bits and pieces of Dante's experience to make it seem more real. Dante's three volume epic was supposed to be a seven-day journey that went from Palm Sunday to Easter. If you were to look at Dante's first prelude, The New Life, as a flawed mirror to his experience and ability to do poetry, the Divine Comedy is actually his perfected attempt, even with some corrections to his earlier work as The Banquet* (Statius in point number 6). My suggestion is to look at the Divine Comedy as a three-fold mirror of events in Dante's life and remember he was trying to fit in many teaching concepts in every canto. When we come to the Dante Tarot, it can become a fivefold mirror...more later. 2) Inferno, Purgatory and Paradiso volume opens with commentary to the reader and soft, gentle-voiced suggestions that he as a struggling soul would try to make it the allegory or ideal of each of his cantos easier to understand. He presumed that Italian Catholics would be familar with the religious ethics, ideas, politics, medieval hiearchies and personalities of the day. We moderns have to read lots of commentary because we aren't his original audience. My teacher's website at www.motwm.com has a section on Dante, Inferno, Purgatory and Paradiso that can be likened to the paraphrasing of each canto in some translation. 2) We used Allen Mandelbaum's translation of the Divine Comedy in three paperbacks with Italian. You might also look at the Everyman's Library edition, because it has Botticelli's sketches to illustrate some of the cantos and Mandelbaum's commentary. 3) By the time of the writing of Paradiso, Dante's work had been widely circulated and he was in very comfortable circumstances in Ravenna. He had both the poetic mind and time to write the final book in a way that echoed events, language and metaphors introduced in the earlier two books. I used to rush to through the introductions, but then it was pointed out Dante takes time to set up parallels and address his readers. 4) An example of an escalating parallel for a reader address--Dante says that he is in a bigger boat of understanding than our smaller vessals and he has pity for those swimming in other depths. He mentions Jason and the Argonauts and the Argo. The Argo in it's celestial glory appears later at a pivotal point when Triton wakes up and looks upward to the heavens. Jason is also Paradiso's parallel to Ulysses in Inferno..Ulysses took a crew of people from the known world and forsook his kin to for his own gain, was wrong to Troy...Dante's choice of who went where can be guessed at, but some of this backstory is useful to also understand the stories and how choices within the Dante Tarot might seem significant. I noticed Charon the Ferryman and Ulysses was chosen in the Dante Tarot at the appropriate Inferno areas and I was a little disappointed not to see Jason in the Paradiso section... 5) I found RWB Lewis' Dante (Penguin Lives from the Viking Press, ISBN 0670899097) and Robert Hollander's Dante: A Life in Works (Yale University Press ISBN 0300084943) valuable as well. Margherita of Brabante is chosen in the Dante Tarot, but I had to use RWB's Dante small biography to find a good reference for her as wife of the Emporer that Dante had hoped would oust the 'villian's who booted him out of Florence. Dante had written letters to Margherita before Henry died, without invading Florence. In this way, I think the Dante Tarot can be a fourfold mirror--the characters that are pivotal to Dante in the Divine Comedy or his life can be interesting as a point of discovery and used as an allegory if you drew the card that had Margherita--by the way, her name is written differently in G. Berti's website. I used RWB Lewis' spelling. The use of the Dante Tarot as a fivefold mirror follows. 6) I used both RWB Lewis and Hollander's Life in Works to understand commentary in Purgatory from Statius--Statius is also a character in the Dante Tarot. *Statius is one of the characters that points out some corrections to some of Dante's earlier writings. Divine Comedy, but the fourfold view would tell you Dante's view of the character and his use of Statius. You could see this as an archetype that corrects a mistaken belief. But Hollander and Lewis' commentary is also valuable for a different reason. Statius also illustrates a medieval view of Virgil--Dante's guide in the lower regions. People at the time thought Virgil foresaw Christ and Statius as a Virgil fan seems to be talking from this view. So if you drew Statius in a reading and had read Hollender and Lewis, this would be some card. You could look it from a fifth level of knowing...You could see the archetype as not only as someone who helps correct a mistaken belief, but also someone who might also has some mistaken beliefs in other areas...an all too human thing. I was very fortunate, as my teacher and guide in an evening Paradiso seminar was a Fulbright scholar with sponsors that include Florentine Dante presenter... I hope these are useful... Mari Hoshizaki

Ophiel	08 Jan 2003
Thanks Mari_Hoshizaki for all the work you did here. There is a great deal of work necessary to understand the background for this deck, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. A lesser mind might go for the Tarot of Oz, because the background book to that is only one volume! This is quite a lot of work, but in the end, not only will I look at my deck with new eyes, but I'll have an idea what the Devine Comedy is about.

Cerulean	13 Oct 2003
http://www.giordanoberti.it/english/html/giochi_tarocchi_dante.htm I think this means a book may come out sometime. The update in English seems to imply a 94 page text might be in the works if all goes well... Anyway, it's one of my underdog favorites that I'm wistful about, because I carry so many texts to use it like I would like... Mari Hoshizaki

The Dante Tarot EXPLAINED (Lo Scarabeo) thread was originally posted on 31 Dec 2002 in the Tarot Decks board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Tarot Decks, or read more archived threads.