XIII

Yep, we've reached this one -- the card that always shows up in tarot readings that happen in movies.

Other trumps have changed their positions in the sequence, but not this one. It's always number 13, and it's never titled. It's with the Marseilles decks that we see the origins of cards with their titles printed below the pictures, but apparently none of the Marseilles artisans wanted to say the D-word.

The number 13 is a clear and unambiguous holdover from paganism. The 13-month pagan calendar, based on the solar year's thirteen lunar months (except for that rare year when there's a 14th, "blue" moon) has proved impossible to completely eradicate from even the most thoroughgoing Christian culture. It's the mysterious prime number that inevitably signals the end of a cycle, and the beginning of a new one.

Death's scythe gives us the deck's second reference to Cronos, and the relentless passage of time.

The iconic presentation of this card is very consistent, with one major variation: in some decks the death figure moves from right to left. When pictured on horseback, he almost always moves this direction. In some of the very oldest decks, he simply stands directly facing the viewer. In Marseilles decks, he is generally shown moving from left to right, and that's the presentation I prefer. I always think of left on a tarot card as west, and right as east. So if death is moving from right to left, he is moving toward the sunrise.

CB

cary yale visconti

indeed on a horse, moving from right to left with scythe.

visconti sforza

kaz

soprafino

kaz

edited

Diana:

Thanks for that fascinating information re: the history of the skeleton as the standard European death emblem. I do believe you're right about the initial association of this symbol with the plague. On reflection, I can't remember seeing it used before then. I think in medieval times, death was always signified in painting and sculpture by people being carried off by devils or angels.

This is all new information for me because I never really thought about it before.

The only other people I can think of who used the skeleton as symbolic shorthand for death were the Aztecs.

The death figure in the Visconti-Sforza pack is holding a very long bow in his left hand and a very long arrow in his right. You probably noticed how different he is from the mounted skeleton in the Cary Yale deck, with his scythe and its implications of Cronos. Another very early tarot from the Milan area, of which only four cards remain (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London), adds another wrinkle to the icon of the skeleton by dressing him in a cardinal's hat and robes (see attachment). This is I think my favorite death card of all time, and may have been an anti-clerical statement. The artist -- I've seen the name Antonio Cicognara associated with this deck -- had a much better grasp of anatomy than the artist who painted the Visconti-Sforza. I have no idea of the meaning of those outrageous tassels, if there is a meaning -- they might have just been an artist's exercising his license, but I doubt it.

CB

A Scorpio jumps in and . . . .

Stumbled blindly in, as I do w/threads- and being in love with the decks
I call the "old world decks" for the first time in my 15+ yr tarot
fixation~
conversion~
redemption~

I have to applaud catboxer

for preferring his death card depicted in Papal robes...


Yes- definitely an anti-papal statement... and I hear the Taro was so under cover at the point of the plague that no one could have
gotten caught for it, thus it was open season.

During the plague, the slergy were (did I type slergy?) uh~

the Clerical Emmissaries~~~

were secluded to the point of absurdity...but for a few zealots- who died
for their dedication to the masses.

Of all the ~~Trippy Decks~~

I never considered how political the decks could be. . .

(see Emperor as The Actor, 'I am One' Tarot)

{hope I did not, by my entrance to the thread
- Scorpio Vibes -
turn it into "Drugs and Tarot" . . . . spooky thing}

Goat bell tassels

forgot:

In Italy and Greece and Turkey, goatbells are
shaped like the individual
tassels or the smallest unit visible on the bell shape hanging
off of His Eminence's hat. . . .

which is not research unless you count knowing
a goat bell when I see it. . . or hear it.
major insult to the Papal Powers That Were~


adds fuel to the ideas cb was following----
re: anti Papal statements (and goatbells)

"Son Fine"

AIO:

Goat bells is an interesting take on those weird looking tassels. Thinking about them further, I came up with the possibility that they're some sort of Renaissance funerary accoutrement.

This card, from the mostly-extinct deck Stuart Kaplan calls the Lombard II, raises several issues about the XIIIth trump we usually avoid discussing. The card is frightening and sinister, from the wicked-looking long-bladed scythe the skeleton carries over his shoulder to the oversized left hand, which seems to extend outward from the picture plane, beckoning the viewer to step into the picture. And there is something truly ominous about seeing this figure dressed in clerical robes, as if death is the only genuine high priest, the one that presides over us all.

Modern day tarotists usually avoid confronting the scary aspects of the death card. We prefer to interpret it as signalling "new beginnings," or rebirth. One of the first instructions any new tarot devotee receives, and I've seen it in nearly every book on the subject I've ever opened, is to abstain from interpreting this card in a reading at face value. (Actually, that's good advice; I can't imagine saying to a querent, "Well, you've got the Death card in your outcome spot, so I guess you're going to die soon.")

There is a certain virtue and accuracy to this approach, but also, I think, a certain degree of denial naturally creeps into our approaches to an image which the Renaissance mind must have taken at face value. This is a subject nobody wants to talk about, and there are good reasons why this trump is never titled.

All of this is underscored by the words in the speech banner issuing from Death's mouth on the Lombard II card. Kaplan sees the words as "San Fine," which would be "without end," but the words look to me like "Son Fine," which translates as "I am the end."

In the Marseilles decks the emphasis of the picture is on the various crowned and tiara'ed heads on the ground, being harvested by Death's scythe. This is a graphic representation of the biblical message that the mighty and powerful treasure their high stations in life out of vanity, for ultimately their fate is exactly the same as that of the most humble of their subjects.

CB

The thread was started the day I left to spend some time in New Zealand, and I come back to find, as usual, so many wonderful contributions!

What I post is only to add to the posts above. I'm also going to post two items which somewhat challenge what has been posted above. The first is related to catboxer's Blue Moon comment. The solar year contains, not thirteen, but approximately twelve and a third lunar cycles, so a Blue Moon occurs approximately once every three years. Given that we use a calendar to also easily note time, the Blue Moon has come to be distinguished as whichever second Full Moon occurs within a calendar month, irrespective as to which time of the year this occurs.

Most years only have twelve Full Moons, and thus no Blue Moons, but every third year there are thirteen, so one of the months must contain a Blue Moon (there is only one exception to the above, in which it is possible, as occured in Australian longitudes two years ago, for January and March to each have a Blue Moon, and February no Full Moon at all!).

The second point is that, though as pointed out by catboxer, most (Marseilles) decks leave this card untitled, some in fact do name it! As an example of this, I have attached the ('restored') 1650 Noblet version.

As Diana points out, the skeleton often has its spine very much in the form of ears of corn (in the traditional sense of 'corn', meaning any 'cereal', and often referring to wheat).

Catboxer also points out the very important direction of the movement of the skeletal figure: towards the right. It is interesting, however, that we tend to 'face' North, and hence towards the right is East. This, however, is modern. In European late Mediaeval times, one faced South, the mid-day Sun. The left was therefore Sunrise, and the right Sunset.

The sunset of the West, however, plays very much in the psyche, and as a true and living Imaginative picture. With catboxer, I too prefer to see the figure moving towards the right, and see it heading towards this re-birth of the Sun in the East, irrespective as to how the mediaevals may have seen it. It is, however, interesting that the attached Noblet card, facing left, would also have been seen to be facing the rising Sun.

Another deeply interesting aspect to this representation is that the ribs, if seen from above, appear to be connected in a lemniscatory form, rather than properly connected to the spine. This again points out, in some ways, the ever flowing passage of time, of life and death, of the day and night flow of our existence.

Again, attached, is the (restored) 1650 Noblet version.