reconsidering a cathar connection

Namadev

Teheuti said:
Alain - while you seem to think the Cathar-tarot connection goes back to the 14th or 15th centuries, Swiryn seems convinced by deck changes that appear first in the Conver deck (1760)—the sandaled foot of the Strength maiden, for instance, so I would think there would soon be wars in the Cather-tarot camp, anyway.

Who knows what will happen in the future ?
Are you a psychic?

Maybe you're right maybe not ...

The Elects of the Bogomils dressed like monks (Runciman, 1947) and might be represented as the Hermit--carrying the enlightenment over the mountains. In Provence, the Credentes were craftspersons. Lambert (1998) specifically mentions shoemakers (147)-- possibly hinted at in the Bateleur card. The Church was viewed as evil and was referred to as the whore of Babylon. So the Tower card, seen as the Tower of Babylon or the crumbling House of God, is also suggestive of heretical inputs.

Namadev

Namadev said:
You know, I see a "patarine" or should I say "gibeline" motive in Tarot ...
Emperor /Pope ...

My researches are more on the side of the ancestors of Prince Fibbia...

I do not see a myth about him as the inventor of Tarot...

As I said last night, it is too soon to enter in the debate about Prince Fibbia...
We'll discuss of this on Tarot History Forum

Just two hints from Prof. A;Vitali about "The Prince" as inventor of "Tarots"

1)"Prince Francesco Antelminelli Castracani Fibbia... was a descendant of the celebrated commander Castruccio Castracani's, who was disowned by Pope John XXII in 1327 as opposing Church's temporal power. For this reason we can assume that he could have hardly thought of making up a game about Christian religiousness mystic of the time. The game he invented could have been made by 14 Triumphs as we find it in the early painted cards or by a lower number of Triumphs (probably 8) mostly paired to numbers up to reaching the fourteen cards. However, these are just assumptions. For sure, given the excommunication his family was inflicted, the game might have shown as a parody versus Papacy (remember that in those very years, that is in 1411, there was a revolt in Bologna against papal authority, put down with bloodshed) or, avoiding such assumption, might be revolved around any other different aspect"

2)"Prince Fibbia, whose most reliable date of death, 1419, is documented by the piece of writing reported on the painting (on a later document it is indicated as 1399), for sure made up the game in the early Fifteenth century. That was a very rough period for papal history, with nepotist popes and antipopes. As the most ancient known tarots date back to 1442 (Estense Court), by historical assumption they must date back to at least twenty/twenty-five years earlier, age which matches with the Prince being in Bologna. We should actually not only consider the time needed to this game to get so popular to become the subject of painted artistic accomplishment at the courts (that is, currently practised), but also their contents, to be compared with the cultural contexts of the time and that it is namely made to date back to late Fourteenth or early Fifteenth century by Prof. Cardini. In the same age when the first painted tarots appeared, popularly made cards were used in Bologna by common people as well, proving a long-existing practice. The fact that popular cards failed to survive is due to their manufacture, as paper and carton they were made of would easily deteriorate. "

References :
http://www.letarot.it/The-Prince_pag_pg107_eng.aspx

Ross G Caldwell

foolish said:
Let's go back to one of the main points in this argument: I am not saying (and I don't believe anyone else is) that there is ablsolute proof of Cathar involvement in the creation of the tarot. But I believe that there is enough circumstantial "evidence" out there to consider it as an interesting possibility. And I think there are many more people than just myself who are willing to discuss this as a possibility.

Many people like to discuss The Da Vinci Code as a real possibility too. Or Von Däniken, as you noted. Or whether or not Barack Obama was born in the USA. The popularity of a subject has nothing to do with its truth, nor whether it is worthy of discussion.

There is not only no "absolute proof of Cathar involvement in the creation of the tarot" - there is not the slightest shred of a hint of a suggestion that there is any reason to even think they did. As you admitted:

However, I must stress again that the "symbology" of the Cathars would have been indistinct from that of the orthodox church, since they didn't claim to follow any relgious order other than that of Christianity.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and everybody says it's a duck - it must NOT be a duck! That seems to be your argument.

Mary has gone blue in the face trying to emphasize that this "Cathar hypothesis" is not history - it is mythology. Mythologizing is a form of moralizing; it is a homily or imaginative preaching on the subjects found in texts, games, performances, etc. The concerns of the community or person making the myth, or moralizing on the game, are clearly shown in the content. Mary pointed this out a few posts back. They usually have little to do with history, since the concerns of the moralizer are not historical, but polemical. In the case of Tarot-as-Cathar, it is part of a wider myth, the "Evil Catholic Church" narrative.

In this narrative/myth/morality, the interpreter performs an eisegesis ("reading-into") of the Tarot based on the following sort of syllogism -

I'm only interested in heresy (because it is anti-church)
I'm interested in the Tarot
Therefore the Tarot is heretical.

The eisegete then sets out to prove the thesis that Tarot is heretical.

Historical method works differently. It doesn't set out to prove anything about Tarot (for example); it studies the known facts, and tries to figure out what it is. It draws conclusions, it doesn't impose conditions. In this sense history is like a science, archeology or forensics (as Huck pointed out, it is like a detective trying to figure out whodunnit). Work outward from the facts, not inward from a bias (bias will form as the facts become clearer).

In the case of Tarot, some indisputable facts are -

It is a deck of cards.
It is a game.
It has an extra bunch of cards that distinguish it from the regular decks of cards, and this bunch of cards has a standard set of subjects.
All extant 15th century Italian Tarots are incomplete (Sola Busca is not standard).
The earliest cards and documentary evidence are all in Italy, for over 60 years (1442-1505).
The earliest documentary and physical evidence comes from Ferrara (1442 on), Milan (mid-1440s on), Florence (1450 on) and Bologna (1459 on).

We can draw some conclusions - Tarot was a card game with a standard set of trumps invented in Italy, before 1442. When charted, the evidence shows a pattern of diffusion from one of these centers. The game became popular quickly and was played openly.

We can draw another conclusion - Tarot was invented in an urban environment, one of the ones listed.

Michael Dummett did all of this reasoning, and much more, by 1980.

The content of the trumps - literary references and artistic conventions - suggests it was invented in an educated milieu. Some, like Time, suggest it was invented very close to 1442 (because the earliest iconography for this figure was invented around 1440). The pattern of the evidence suggests it was only within about 5 years of 1442.

And so on...

This is detective work, not story-telling. The only thing mythology and (modern) history have in common, is that they are both presented, at last, in narrative form. In every other way they have different methods and different aims, and just because historians, like moralists, have to use narrative to describe historical processes, does not mean that history is mythology.

Namadev

Amen...

Ross G Caldwell said:
Many people like to discuss The Da Vinci Code as a real possibility too. Or Von Däniken, as you noted. Or whether or not Barack Obama was born in the USA. The popularity of a subject has nothing to do with its truth, nor whether it is worthy of discussion.

There is not only no "absolute proof of Cathar involvement in the creation of the tarot" - there is not the slightest shred of a hint of a suggestion that there is any reason to even think they did. As you admitted:

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and everybody says it's a duck - it must NOT be a duck! That seems to be your argument.

Mary has gone blue in the face trying to emphasize that this "Cathar hypothesis" is not history - it is mythology. Mythologizing is a form of moralizing; it is a homily or imaginative preaching on the subjects found in texts, games, performances, etc. The concerns of the community or person making the myth, or moralizing on the game, are clearly shown in the content. Mary pointed this out a few posts back. They usually have little to do with history, since the concerns of the moralizer are not historical, but polemical. In the case of Tarot-as-Cathar, it is part of a wider myth, the "Evil Catholic Church" narrative.

In this narrative/myth/morality, the interpreter performs an eisegesis ("reading-into") of the Tarot based on the following sort of syllogism -

I'm only interested in heresy (because it is anti-church)
I'm interested in the Tarot
Therefore the Tarot is heretical.

The eisegete then sets out to prove the thesis that Tarot is heretical.

Historical method works differently. It doesn't set out to prove anything about Tarot (for example); it studies the known facts, and tries to figure out what it is. It draws conclusions, it doesn't impose conditions. In this sense history is like a science, archeology or forensics (as Huck pointed out, it is like a detective trying to figure out whodunnit). Work outward from the facts, not inward from a bias (bias will form as the facts become clearer).

In the case of Tarot, some indisputable facts are -

It is a deck of cards.
It is a game.
It has an extra bunch of cards that distinguish it from the regular decks of cards, and this bunch of cards has a standard set of subjects.
All extant 15th century Italian Tarots are incomplete (Sola Busca is not standard).
The earliest cards and documentary evidence are all in Italy, for over 60 years (1442-1505).
The earliest documentary and physical evidence comes from Ferrara (1442 on), Milan (mid-1440s on), Florence (1450 on) and Bologna (1459 on).

We can draw some conclusions - Tarot was a card game with a standard set of trumps invented in Italy, before 1442. When charted, the evidence shows a pattern of diffusion from one of these centers. The game became popular quickly and was played openly.

We can draw another conclusion - Tarot was invented in an urban environment, one of the ones listed.

Michael Dummett did all of this reasoning, and much more, by 1980.

The content of the trumps - literary references and artistic conventions - suggests it was invented in an educated milieu. Some, like Time, suggest it was invented very close to 1442 (because the earliest iconography for this figure was invented around 1440). The pattern of the evidence suggests it was only within about 5 years of 1442.

And so on...

This is detective work, not story-telling. The only thing mythology and (modern) history have in common, is that they are both presented, at last, in narrative form. In every other way they have different methods and different aims, and just because historians, like moralists, have to use narrative to describe historical processes, does not mean that history is mythology.

Namadev

Ross G Caldwell]Many people like to discuss The Da Vinci Code as a real possibility too. Or Von Däniken, as you noted. Or whether or not Barack Obama was born in the USA. The popularity of a subject has nothing to do with its truth, nor whether it is worthy of discussion.

Answer :
Yes, this may well be but it isn't because a thread is "unpopular" to the "official" point of view that it must be dismissed.

Quote :
There is not only no "absolute proof of Cathar involvement in the creation of the tarot" - there is not the slightest shred of a hint of a suggestion that there is any reason to even think they did. As you admitted:
if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and everybody says it's a duck - it must NOT be a duck! That seems to be your argument.

Answer : this point was argueded quite clearly;
Perfects Cathari didn't.
Only believers coud have done so.
O'Neill has explained the possible way of transmission througout spirituals franciscans, fraternities ...

Quote :
Mary has gone blue in the face

Answer :
Your "compassion" is unilateral for the defensor of the ortodox view only...

Quote :
trying to emphasize that this "Cathar hypothesis" is not history - it is mythology.

Answer : if history deals about "facts" and putting them one with another , when a new fact comes out, reconsidering the whole or not - the new facts come out sometimes also for researches - with or without a clear object of inquiry defined a priori - no?

Are all researches "mythologies" beacuse the searcher has an initial intuition or a-priori that is going to be back up or not by the results ?
The appreciation of the validity of the results is often in a first time somewhere subjective - I agree on this point .
So I accept that subjectively I emphase the results of the inquiry where others consider it as meaningless ar best ...

Quote :
Mythologizing is a form of moralizing; it is a homily or imaginative preaching on the subjects found in texts, games, performances, etc. The concerns of the community or person making the myth, or moralizing on the game, are clearly shown in the content. Mary pointed this out a few posts back.

They usually have little to do with history,

Answer : LITTLE do do or NOTHING to do ? That's the question....

Quote :
since the concerns of the moralizer are not historical, but polemical. In the case of Tarot-as-Cathar, it is part of a wider myth, the "Evil Catholic Church" narrative.

In this narrative/myth/morality, the interpreter performs an eisegesis ("reading-into") of the Tarot based on the following sort of syllogism -

I'm only interested in heresy (because it is anti-church)
I'm interested in the Tarot
Therefore the Tarot is heretical.

The eisegete then sets out to prove the thesis that Tarot is heretical.

Answer : I see no one having the belief of Catholic Church as Evil : members of my family were Bishop or priest of this church ; I have met many good men and women in this faith ... What are you arguing or insinuating here ?

Quote :
Historical method works differently.

Answer :

I hope so - I feel so much emotionnal involment and reject in your post that I do not recognize the historian I respect ...

Quote :
It doesn't set out to prove anything about Tarot (for example); it studies the known facts, and tries to figure out what it is. It draws conclusions, it doesn't impose conditions. In this sense history is like a science, archeology or forensics (as Huck pointed out, it is like a detective trying to figure out whodunnit). Work outward from the facts, not inward from a bias (bias will form as the facts become clearer).

Answer :
I do not want to show the "subjectivity" of historians in their manner of emphazising some facts and overlooking others ..

Quote :
In the case of Tarot, some indisputable facts are -

It is a deck of cards.
It is a game.
It has an extra bunch of cards that distinguish it from the regular decks of cards, and this bunch of cards has a standard set of subjects.
All extant 15th century Italian Tarots are incomplete (Sola Busca is not standard).
The earliest cards and documentary evidence are all in Italy, for over 60 years (1442-1505).
The earliest documentary and physical evidence comes from Ferrara (1442 on), Milan (mid-1440s on), Florence (1450 on) and Bologna (1459 on).

We can draw some conclusions - Tarot was a card game with a standard set of trumps invented in Italy, before 1442. When charted, the evidence shows a pattern of diffusion from one of these centers. The game became popular quickly and was played openly.

Answer
About indiscutable facts, I remember that was some discussion about the 5x14 theory and the tenants of the dummett/decker/depaulis official thesis, no?
About indiscutable facts, didn't you discover something about a cartomancic use prior to those admitted?

Quote :
We can draw another conclusion - Tarot was invented in an urban environment,

- one of the ones listed.

Answer : my mythology brings me to another hypothesis : Bologna and circa 1400.
Problem, no?

Quote :
Michael Dummett did all of this reasoning, and much more, by 1980.

Answer:
Yes, he and Decker and Depaulis did a great job.
But you also know some of their "limits" no?

Quote :
The content of the trumps - literary references and artistic conventions - suggests it was invented in an educated milieu. Some, like Time, suggest it was invented very close to 1442 (because the earliest iconography for this figure was invented around 1440). The pattern of the evidence suggests it was only within about 5 years of 1442.

And so on...

Answer
This is the history as we know it from the evidence we have.Now, if we accept the hypothesis of Prince Fibbia as "inventor and bologne as the city, things would be different for sure, no?

Quote

This is detective work, not story-telling.
The only thing mythology and (modern) history have in common, is that they are both presented, at last, in narrative form. In every other way they have different methods and different aims, and just because historians, like moralists, have to use narrative to describe historical processes, does not mean that history is mythology.

Answer

I love story telling ...
I love mythology
I love history ...

Namadev

End of thread : for the moment ...

Foolish

I thank you for initiating this thread.
It has always been a "hot" subject .

I have not read your book and cannot say if there is something worth working on.
The Belibaste reference was incorrect.
About the TDM path, I garre wiith D'Allemagne about Veuve Toulon or VT ... : Ross is right on this point I think - unless you can suggest some kind of alternative.

about my notes relative to catharism, neo-catharism and Tarot , you've understood my hypothesis and maybe appreciated some of O'Neill...

It remains a hypothesis than some will find meaningless others suggestive.

Other debates in perspectives, i'm sure : the Prince Fibbia may well be open soon.

Best to you all and thanks to Mary for her patience.

Alain BOUGEAREL

Ross G Caldwell

The assertion that Cathars (or "neo-Cathars" or whomever) invented Tarot is like a debate team discussion. Any absurd proposition can be used, just to demonstrate debating skills.

For example:

Assertion : The Moon is made of green cheese.

Debater 1: The Moon is made of green cheese.
Debater 2: No it’s not.
Moderator: Debaters, please provide evidence for your assertions.
D1: The Moon looks like green cheese.
D2: We have been to the Moon, and it is made of rock.
D1: Have you been there?
D2: No
D1: So how do you know that it's made of rock?
D2: Astronauts have been there and brought back samples.
D1: Have you seen those samples?
D2: No, I have seen pictures of them, and I trust the scientists who have examined them.
D1: So your argument is anecdotal, and rests on authority, and is therefore weak if not invalid.
D2: No, it is the consensus of the scientific community. It is not questioned by anyone.
D1: Still arguing from authority. Truth doesn’t depend on a vote, even a unanimous one.
D2: If I said I had been there or handled the evidence myself, would you believe me?
D1: Irrelevant, since you have already admitted you haven’t done either.
D2: I can prove it from logic: cheese is made from milk, and milk comes from cows, and sheep, and goats, mammals in general. There is not enough milk on earth to make enough cheese to make the Moon. Secondly, there is no way that cheese produced on Earth could have been put up into space during enough time to make something as large and heavy as the Moon.
D1: Do you know how much milk, by volume, has been made on Earth?
D2: Not offhand, no…
D1: Do you know how much cheese has been made on Earth?
D2: No…
D1: Do you know how long we have been able to go into space carrying payloads?
D2: Yes! Since 1957!
D1: Do you know how much cheese has been made since 1957?
D2: No, but that is irrelevant, since the Moon already existed long before that! It is proven by photography.
D1: Did you make those photographs?
D2: No.
D1: So they could be forged.
D2: There is overwhelming documentary evidence that the Moon existed prior to 1957.
D1: Do you have that documentation?
D2: Not ON me, but I own many books published before that date, with photographs, that also mention the Moon.
D1: Did you personally see those books printed?
D2: No, I wasn’t even BORN then, and neither were you!
D1: Thus your argument is again open to doubt, since you are not an eyewitness. All of that evidence could have been made after 1957, in order to promote the idea that the Moon existed previously.
D2: This is absurd. The Moon is a fact of science, it controls the tides, it is part of the human imagination since written language began…
D1: (Makes a tiny finger-violin) how poetic! But it is not proof. You don’t know, you weren’t there.
D2: Then nothing is provable if I haven’t seen it personally!!!
D1: We are talking about the Moon here.
D2: But your standards of evidence don’t permit it to exist prior to your first observation of it!
D1: We are also talking about what it is made of, not the date the when it came into being.
(Etc.)…
……………..
Moderator: Since Debater 2 cannot show immediate and incontrovertible evidence that the Moon is not made of green cheese, the assertion “The Moon is made of green cheese” has won the argument.

That's what this kind of debate is like.

But the forum is called "Historical Research", not "Create Your Own Tarot Myth", so we should expect that if there is no evidence for a proposition, nothing to suggest a new direction, then the standard model is correct and we should continue working in it.

mjhurst

The Cathar Secret of the Tarot

Hi, Alain,

Alain said:
It has always been a "hot" subject .

I have not read your book and cannot say if there is something worth working on.

I have read the book. His historical presentation is without any substance. There is nothing in it about the history of Tarot even vaguely suggesting a connection with Cathars. In terms of iconography, he repeats standard ideas about the trump cycle being a spiritual journey from the Magician to the enlightened Fool for God, but at each card he fails to develop the idea. In fact, he does virtually no iconographic analysis at all. For each card he offers a simplistic associative exercise attempting to find any imaginable relationship between the card and some random person or event in his narrow field of interest. Worse yet, he doesn't even attempt to select the best one and develop an argument. He merely tosses out a number of vaguely conceived connections and moves on.

Swiryn refuses to be pinned down to an actual thesis. Having failed to even attempt to identify the subject matter of the trumps, in favor of a drive-by scatter-shot of "possibilities", he is naturally in no position to attempt to link them into a unified meaningful sequence of any sort. That is to say, he doesn't even try to solve Dummett's "riddle of Tarot". As you have seen in this thread, he never bothered to learn anything about Tarot, (TdM has 72 cards per deck? Really?!), and didn't even pay attention to the books he read about Cathars. For example:

Alain said:
The Belibaste reference was incorrect.

It is not merely that he made a huge mistake. He failed to do any real research at all, instead repeating whatever he came across in New Age books. This included things like the long-debunked 1392 Tarot deck. But the damning aspect is that he didn't even try! The 1313 manufacture of playing cards by a famous Cathar figure would have been a monumental discovery. This would revolutionize both playing-card history and the history of the Cathars -- HOLY SHIT!!!

But for him, it was just another factoid, cherry-picked while skimming different books. He didn't even know enough to be stunned, and he has so little actual interest in the history of the subject that he didn't bother to follow up on it -- not at all! He didn't bother to ask himself whether someone else had mentioned it, perhaps in the history of Cathars, the history of playing-cards, the history of Tarot... he didn't care enough to think about it, much less do any research. He believed that he had documentary proof of Cathars and playing cards, closing not only the gap in chronology but putting the manufacture of cards directly into the hands of the Cathars, and he didn't bother to read any further. He couldn't even bother to read the footnote on the same page!

Alain said:
It remains a hypothesis than some will find meaningless others suggestive.

It remains a fairy tale that was laughable when Waite invented it. Waite did, in fact, present it as a joke about how gullible some "researchers" are. It was investigated in depth a decade ago, and Swiryn has added nothing of value to that investigation. It is myth, not history, and making up stories about long-standing Tarot folklore is not historical research.

If you want to read a better fictional account ("myth") of heretics and Tarot, there are numerous places you can go. My favorite heretical tale is the Graham Phillips story, (cf.The Chalice of Magdalene). The Tarot section is based on La Folie Perceval supposedly in B.N. Ms. 12577 but unknown to actual Grail scholars. Phillips thesis is expanded upon by Justin E. Griffin's books (2001, 2004), including a card-by-card analysis that is much more focused and interesting than Swiryn's. If you are interested in an actual iconographic argument supporting a prominent Millennialist belief in TdM, look up my own analysis of the Pope-Devil-Tower cards in that deck. If you want a traditional occult-correspondences view tied to the HBHG, look up Christine Payne-Towler's stuff. And so on.

Best regards,
Michael

foolish

there is so much misinformation being tossed around here, I hope I can begin to sort through some of this.

Huck said:

alright, I don't belong to those, who are interested to discuss this possibility,

Thank you for finally admitting your level of interest in this topic. It's been pretty clear from the beginning that you had no interest in this, other than to attempt to debunk the whole idea. What's confusing is why you would spend any of your time in this thread in the first place. It's like someone who is complaining about listening to some country western music on the radio, but doesn't bother to simply change the station.

Ross:

Many people like to discuss The Da Vinci Code as a real possibility too. Or Von Däniken, as you noted. Or whether or not Barack Obama was born in the USA. The popularity of a subject has nothing to do with its truth, nor whether it is worthy of discussion.

This points to a bigger issue: Apparently, you have set up a limited scope of topics which you deem "worthy" of discussion. You probably should have placed a "Do Not Enter" pop-up window in your history forum, warning people who may be thinking of discussing something which may be inconsistent with your own point of view to stay out. (Not unlike the medieval church which simply excommunicated those who dared to disagree.)

My initial mistake may simply have been to post this topic within the sanctity of the walls of your "Church of Tarot History." The original intention of opening up a civil discussion about this subject seems to have been broadsided by the question of whether it is even worthy of this honor. So, if this was a topic which didn't deserve your attention, then you probably should have made that clear at the outset.

My presumption that this could be of interest to tarot historians was in a large part due to the fact that a respected scholar like Robet O'Neill has considered its possible associations and has taken the time to write about it. However, if you feel that strongly about its lack of validity in academia, then I'm sure you would have written to Dr. O'Neill by now, rebuking him for his frivolous interest in such a ridiculous idea. no? The fact that there are other people out there like Dr. O'Neill investigating this topic should tell you that the discussion is not shut. To think you have some exclusive handle on the "truth" is a bit arrogant, don't you think.

There is not only no "absolute proof of Cathar involvement in the creation of the tarot" - there is not the slightest shred of a hint of a suggestion that there is any reason to even think they did.

And so scholars like O'Neill are just displaying their level of ignorance?

I'm only interested in heresy (because it is anti-church)
I'm interested in the Tarot
Therefore the Tarot is heretical.

You can "prove" anything by logical argument, as long as you accept the premise. Your mistake here is in trying to show that I am wrong by setting up a false premise. I'm not only interested in heresy - and definitely not simply because of some anti-church theme. This argument is simply wrong.
And please refrain from lecturing us on the rules of logic. It's condescending, and unflattering to you.

Michael said:

His historical presentation is without any substance. There is nothing in it about the history of Tarot even vaguely suggesting a connection with Cathars.

In the first part of the book about the history, I have presented facts about the people and events of the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition, including information about Cathar beliefs. Other than the fact that you don't like my interpretation of the cards and their possible associations to history, where do you find my presentation of history as inaccurate?

As far as some of the errors regarding the history of the tarot is concerned, we have already pointed some of them out. This may reveal my lack of expertise as a tarot scholar (something I have never pretended to be), but it does not diminish the larger concept of the Cathar-tarot connction.

The fact that you are so intently focused on the fact that Belibaste was not a "card maker" shows your scope of interest in this matter, which is limited to the importance of dates regarding the origins of the tarot, but has not much to do with the rest of the idea. The fact that I wasn't "stunned" by this is just an indication of where our interests differ.

Swiryn refuses to be pinned down to an actual thesis. Having failed to even attempt to identify the subject matter of the trumps, in favor of a drive-by scatter-shot of "possibilities", he is naturally in no position to attempt to link them into a unified meaningful sequence of any sort.

My theory is simple - That some of the events, personalities and religious messages of the Cathar persecution could have been incorporated into the tarot. I did not say that the Cathars or neo-Cathars "invented" the tarot, as was suggested by someone previously, but only that they may have found it as a tool to "disguise" their messages. This probably evolved over time, as the tarot was brought from Italy (where it may have already begun to assume a heretical theme) to France, where it was altered to present a more "Cathar" story. "The subject matter of the trumps" is one which can be seen through the eyes of a heretic - in a different way than an orthodox Christian may see the images. I never said that they were supposed to be placed in any "meaningful sequence". To demand that a theory can only make sense if it passes this qualification is simply incorrect. But the cards can be read as a story. The first part about the events of the Albigensian war and then leading into the spiritual messages at the end of the deck.

The fact is that there was a large amount of anti-papal sentiment in the Middle Ages, along with many different groups of "heretics" living thoughout Europe (and especially in Italy and France/Languedoc) This is evident on a spiritual level, as seen by the popularity of not only the Cathars, but the Spiritual Franciscans and the Umiliati, and also on a political level, as seen in families such as the Visconti, who had a long history of tension between themselves and Rome. To what extent this may have played in the creation of the tarot, we may never know. But it would be naive to dismiss it as an unreasonable possiblity. The idea is not mine, but has been suggested by others in the past.

Swiryn has added nothing of value to that investigation

What I have tried to add to this investigation is to show that the images of the cards can actually be seen within this context. The iconography is not always clear, and it doesn't seem unreasonable that in many cases, some of the images can have more than one reference, or be taken on more than one level (i.e. spritual and hisrorical). My attempt to interpret these images is simply that - my interpretation. Your insistence that I come up with some absolute proof before this is worthy of discussion is (sorry, I couldn't think of any other way to put it) lame.

Teheuti

Robert -

You have posted in a "tarot history" section not the "talking tarot" or "books & media" section. The history section reserves the right of people to ask for references and documentation and for the use of at least elementary historical standards.

BTW, Bob O'Neill, who has had his own ups-and-downs in the various tarot history discussions (as have we all), concluded that he could find no evidence for a Cathar connection. He also argued for historical standards. He prefers a theory relating to the confraternities, as per the Dance and Triumph of Death pictures on the chapel in Clusone, Italy. I've been there. The walls of the whole town were painted in the 15th century with images of saints, some of which are similar to tarot images. Also the town is built on four levels of a hillside and each level was assigned to a level of society: the farmers, the merchants, the local nobs and then the clergy (church & chapel) at the top. Interesting!

I think I could say we all stay open to the possibility of some evidence turning up some day, but nothing substantiates it now.

Personally, I don't know enough about Cathar history to critique all your Cathar facts. Many of us know enough about tarot history to recognize that there is no currently known connection between the Cathars or their story and the tarot and its specific imagery.

What are you expecting from us? Are you hoping we will say: "We believe! You have convinced us!"?

reconsidering a cathar connection

Namadev

Namadev

Ross G Caldwell

Namadev

Namadev

Namadev

Ross G Caldwell

mjhurst

foolish

Teheuti