Great thread
To introduce my comment, I myself see tarot as explicitly based on a bardic tradition (concerning sound and the universe) that entered the culture of the Continent on the backs of Arthur’s 12th-century ‘knights’ (who were originally 5th-century Brito-Sarmatians). It is recoverable still, by putting what has survived of ancient Irish and Welsh poetic tradition together with its kindred tradition in Judaic circles, Kabbalah. These fill each others’ holes and together easily explain the origin of tarot, in my not so humble opinion. (And as a consequence, obviously, I am not of the Italian school of tarot’s origin, which seems the dominant one here.)
So it was interesting to me when Graves (Robert) mentioned that Shakespeare grew up near Wales. Now bardic tradition never really died out, in the sense that bits and pieces are preserved in all sorts of places: mythology, letters-and-epigraphy, and transcriptions by monks of ancient druid books, or memories thereof (e.g. the Irish ‘cycles’). And in Shakey’s day, there were still evidently poets of the old school wandering the Keltic backwaters. So it is quite conceivable to me that Shakespeare—the grandeur of whose poetry I was introduced to at an early age, my father eventually writing a book on the handling of his verse (Shakespeare Sounded Soundly)—may indeed have been an initiated bard. I have long wanted to find time to study his use of tree symbolism, for example, which might yield specific clues.
In a sense it is as Lady Orchard says, that he speaks of life, and so does tarot. Yet it would seem both poet and deck are oriented towards life in a singularly archetypal way. I know my early familiarity with his plays, especially histories, produced a view of life and kingship and love—and heroism—that has made the simple yet archetypal structure of the bardic worldview come alive for me at times, even though I do not live in a pre-industrial age nor... (I started to say ‘nor a heroic culture’, yet there are heroes amongst us, even now).
Sola Busca tarocchi shows hints of being a sort of pagan version of tarot. We see the world-dragon in XXI. XX shows Armageddon as it would appear to an individual—a sinner perhaps? VII is the throne-chariot (here a four-wheeled Merkavah). XVI does feature a crown. VIIII shows the wisdom of age. Most telling is that V has (as its ‘Pope’) CATVLO: now this poet was a Kelt by birth, suggesting that the highest spiritual authority being recognized here is the same as produced Tarot de Marseille, namely the Keltic strand of poetical-metaphysical tradition, yet here coupled with pagan sensibilities, not Christian. But it is very striking, for example, that the Jack of Cups is a thief of the same sort as that in the Marseille, though the ‘Grail Knight’ is hardly recognizable in his shamanic ‘garb’. But after viewing all the pips, I am more convinced than ever that its creators knew (the pagan form of) Qabbalah, meaning the lost teaching of the four ‘Trees’ in the four worlds (corresponding to the four wheels of Ezekiel). But I would only bore most of you with my reasons: they would be attempts to render in words what is quite forcefully portrayed through image, and based on a reconstructed tradition that would have to be explained in detail.
Though the Christian sensibilities of the Marseille are of decidedly Gnostic character, they do not strike a particularly rebellious note, more simply one of the commoners’ idiom. I use the term Gnostic here mainly to indicate that which utilized the pre-Christian tradition of letters and symbols, rather than destroying all records of same wherever found, which was the path of ‘orthodoxy’ (as when St. Patrick reputedly initiated a frenzy of burning of old druid books, which consisted of branches with ogham carved on them). In the Sola Busca, then, the trumps are reinterpreted (or interpreted) in terms of classical figures (many of whom I do not recognize). I should like to know more about the individuals portrayed in these cards, as I suspect an important deeper content not revealed by the forms of the figures alone, many of these being rather similar (bearing shields, etc.).
And namesoftrees (intriguing name: based on the bethluisnion?), I recall a line from the prologue to Henry V: “...Can this cockpit hold / The vasty fields of France? or may we cram / Within this wooden O the very casques / That did affright the air at Agincourt?” (emphasis mine).
Sorry to have rambled on so long.
