Punchinella,
I think your remarks about the minor arcane are very important. I don’t know much about their possible Mamluk origin, but since it looks so plausible, maybe we could focus on the way they could have been adopted by European symbology, and what lays underneath that symbology. Like most people, I’ve read that the four suits could correspond to the classes of feudal society - the clergy (cups), the royalty (coins), the nobles, here presented as knights (spades), and the peasants (wands). This same social structure is found in the court cards, of course. Well, this sounds true, but remains a very limited and superficial analysis. I would prefer to say that the four-classed medieval society (latter shattered by the emergence of the “fifth” class of the merchants) represents a symbolic ideal, the vision of a perfect “squared” and stable society, a material image of the Heavenly City, and a creation destined to provide steady ground for the spiritual influences represented by the Church. It was the ideal of a perfect, squared society that was represented in the cards, because they (the minor arcana) were also supposed to stand for this very ideal, providing a ground for spirit. That is, I don’t think the cards represent society; I think they represent an ideal. I also think lots of monarchs tried to mold their societies into this ideal, not only for social and material reasons, but also for spiritual ones – they were trying, with various degrees of consciousness, to perfect the world according to an ideal that was supposed to invoke, in its perfection, its heavenly archetypes.
But I would like to deepen this analysis. For me, batons (wands) provide a great example: maybe they were polo sticks, but in European iconography they are essentially depicted as rough clubs taken from a tree, like in the Ace or in the court cards, that I believe represent the Western appropriation of the symbol much better than the rest of the stylized minors. I would say that the European model, and the symbolic reference, of this wands is to be found in the Wildman, or the Green Man, and incredibly obscure and complex figure that refers to ancient rites of male initiation, to popular and pre-Christian religion, to the primal nature of man. The Wild Man is linked to the image of the Green Knight, thus becoming a sort of knight who uses a “green spade” (a club) instead of a metal blade… This figure is therefore balancing between its savage nature, and the ideal of redemption to which refers the color green, the relation to chivalry, etc.
The “club” appears all over in Western art, usually as a pruned branch or a dead tree, these being the most significant images. The pruned branch is mostly used in heraldry, referring to a lineage that has been kept pure and strong, and to the idea that “in spring” the most vigorous buds will blossom from it. The dead tree is obviously the tree of the cross, a symbol of Christ Himself, only apparently dead, but about to become green when the proper time arrives.
This is the kind of Western symbols I believe to be at the base of the Tarot appropriation of possible Islamic images. Maybe we could also explore the cups symbology, so important to you?
Silvia