A Dummies Guide to Historical Research

gregory

Hanon ??? You poor bastard ! I got RSI from him..... OUCH.
 

baba-prague

Oh yeh, Baby-Face Scarlatti. Nasty piece of work. Used to hang around with the Dan guy drinking bourbon and kicking up some trouble with those cards. I think he's doing time in Sing-Sing now.
 

Baroli

Tell me about it...that was the warm-up crap for piano. Just give me a Bach invention,...anytime. Then I would rush over to the Student Union sit and read for lunch money. Somewhere along the road I have history courses, both ancient and musical. Yikes I actually liked the them too. lol. Then on the weekends do pick up gigs in the village in cabarets. I guess you could say I have an advanced degree in the School of Real Experience.


Actually,...all of us do.

Baby-face Scarlatti???:bugeyed::laugh: Love it!! ROFL
 

DianeOD

all right, for the record..

From the time I was a child, I was immersed in the language and imagery of Biblical literature.

Formal studies began in the early 1970s, when I read Syriac, middle eastern myth, lore, and literature - as well as early Christian literature in Syriac - under Professor Bowman in Melbourne.

I taught for a while, then went to Japan for personal reasons - but being unable to survive without some kind of academic stimulation, I there studied comparative miniature painting: the Persian, western and Asian 'palette' and systems of allusionsin each. That was for eighteen months. My personal position was such that I did not need to graduate if I didn't wish to. I wasn't after a job; I was interested for other reasons.

Returning to Australia, we started a family. I resumed study again at the University of Sydney in the mid 1980s, this time adding to my (continuing) Syriac Studies, study of classical Hebrew, the archaeology of artefacts' production - sometimes called Industrial archaeology. And fine arts and so forth.

I was - as a matter of record - offered honours in every subject I took.

I was invited, then, to do what was termed an 'MA-PhD' conversion in the department of Semitic studies. This means, in effect, that my undergraduate work was of a standard sufficent for the department's professor to feel that the 'M-A' stage could be conferred retrospectively and my thesis submitted directly at PhD level.

The topic, as I have said elsewhere, was Worship of the host of heaven in pre-exilic Israel'. This was in the 80's.

It was necessary, first of all, to investigate all those regions known to have influenced Israel's social and political culture, since the Biblical text as we have it is a tenth century ad edition, in which one finds clear signs of retrospective editing. - since this has nothing to do with tarot, in my view, I refer those wanting proof of this fact to others whose credentials they will not be so rude as to demand.

To that end, anyway, I spent eighteen months researching. Fortunately, I already had a fairly solid background in the 'fertile crescent' material and was able to concentrate more on the caravan cities and Egypt.

One major difficulty with the project is that to correlate terms, feast dates and practices with the heavens, one has to not only account for precession, but also for 'proper motion' - a non-trivial mathematical problem. At that time, there was no computer programme other than that at places like NASA or the Smithsonian which could model or predict to the necessary degree of accuracy. Apple claimed to be developing a program 'soon' but the promised 12 months turned into 3 and a half years - beyond the university's limit for submission.

I therefore completed in one of my other areas - nothing to do with tarot - and took work in that discipline instead.

My interest in medieval history was partly due to talking about the matter of transmission of Christian moralised astronomy of that period with others in the university department where I worked, who specialised in European history - again, their names and the university concerned is no business of Mr. Hurst's.

Medieval history became a particular hobby, and one guided by those people.

It was not until 1990 that I saw the Charles VI card called 'Le Fou'. It was not for another 8 years -during which i had treated this study as a possible way to complete the PhD through some department of Fine Arts - that I wrote up the results of that research. In the meantime, life had taken an unexpected turn - nothing to do with tarot - and I moved away from that life altogether.

it is now nearly ten years since the research was done. It is of no concern to me whether it is shared or not, except that so much work, and what I felt were such interesting findings, are ones that one wishes to share with others who may be interested in them too.

At the risk of offending, I would like to add that my bibliography contained only three books written by people whose chief interest was the use of tarot cards.

It was a study of medieval art and the culture which produced it, and the influence therein - chiefly through contact with the eastern Christian communities on the one hand and the navigators' lore on the other - of using astronomical 'characters' to inform moralia and patterns of time and direction.

Mr. Hurst and friends are now free to treat this post, too, as they have others. That is, as a basis for a wholly imaginary idea of my character and sources, while at the same time adopting information I have provided into their own theses.

If I understand the situation correctly, it was their equally unbridled attack on another person - who I think may have been introduced by Yahoo itself - which led to the site's being shut down.

Manners are a method by which society prevents all out war.
 

Debra

Thank you, DianeOD.

We can put aside the idea that your expertise is established because you are a professor teaching history at a university with academic publications relevant to tarot history and a manuscript ready for publication that has been vetted by relevant experts.

I can't see the point of the numerous disconnected and seemingly random bits and pieces of images and history that you have posted here, both as comments within threads and as independent threads that arise and go nowhere. For example, http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=88245 and http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=1264158#post1264158

Perhaps you are using the AT forum like a notebook, a place to put pieces of a semi-annotated bibliography, or thoughts and images that catch your fancy but are not (yet, or perhaps at all) connected to tarot.

If so, that takes us back to the topic of this thread--what is expected of discussions on history and historical research?

The world is full of bright shiny stuff that catches the eye--bits and bobs of "look at THIS!" and "did you know?" and "guess what I just learned!" stuff. No matter how old or obscure, it is mere "trivia" if it isn't presented coherently and for a reasonable purpose.
 

prudence

Rosanne said:
But to the question- what do you expect from me as a poster here?
To be exactly who you've been the entire time you have been a member here. The smart, funny and decidedly curious lady from NZ. :D

Okay, now for my credentials....this may be quite shocking to most of you, but I do not hold a PhD in Medieval History!!!!!!:eek: I apologize for turning your world upside down with that bit of knowledge.

But seriously, I do hope that I am able to post here, my own weird imaginings and ideas without having to give my college history. Because man, my college history is a sad and disjointed mess. :confused: (I'll just say that I changed my mind, and my major a lot in college) I promise not to state any of it as fact...
 

mjhurst

Hi, Diane,

DianeOD said:
Mr. Hurst and friends are now free to treat this post, too, as they have others. That is, as a basis for a wholly imaginary idea of my character and sources, while at the same time adopting information I have provided into their own theses.

If I understand the situation correctly, it was their equally unbridled attack on another person - who I think may have been introduced by Yahoo itself - which led to the site's being shut down.

With your indirect locution, it's difficult to be sure what you mean here -- as is often the case when people don't want to be clear for fear of being challenged. Are you suggesting that Yahoo sent a spy into LTarot and they closed the site because I'm a bad man? Is that who you think Lorraine was, a Yahoo plant? Really?! Wow...

For the record, as you put it, Lorraine was a long-time denizen of TarotL and defender of Christine Payne-Towler's brand of neo-occultist Tarot history. She was just acting out on old animosities. She saw your threats were effective in silencing the List and couldn't resist piling on, attempting to settle old scores. For the record, she was tossed off the List for her attacks on the same day I unsubscribed from the List.

For the record, LTarot was subsequently closed by Lothar, and the only outrageous attacks were perpetrated by you and Lorraine, who both posted threats, insinuating legal harassment. As far as I am concerned, your defamation of people like Kwaw with false charges of plagiarism and your threats of legal action against people like me who have the audacity to tell the truth about your methods and conclusions reveal more than you can imagine about your character. The facts speak for themselves.

For the record, after you insisted that my posts be deleted, and I did so and quit posting, Kwaw also deleted some or all of his posts. My understanding is that Lothar shut down the List so that the rest of its history might be preserved. You had managed to destroy enough of his project already, because Kwaw and I were among the handful of fairly regular and fairly productive posters.

For the record, my knowledge of your stated sources in the Gerson fiasco is vastly better than yours. I actually looked at all of them, or at least, all of them that were real books that might possibly have included the passage. You apparently looked at none of them, or else you would have known better than to pretend that you got the phantom Gerson passage from any of them.

And for the record, no one, AFAIK, has adopted any of your ideas. The ones which are novel are also eccentric and even bizarre, while your core ideas, things like the trumps being a geographical game and the suit cards being associated with the four directions and the game being intended as a reference work or ars memoria, etc., derive directly from Antoine Court de Gebelin. The less bizarre notion, ars memoria, has been mentioned by many Tarot authors since the 1970s, and was the centerpiece of O'Neill's influential Tarot Symbolism. Your hopeless ignorance of the relevant literature is no excuse for claiming that anyone got that notion from you.

Overall, you seem to have contributed nothing of value to the general discussion of playing card history or Tarot history. In addition to not having contributed anything new, you also have not bothered with what has previously been learned by playing-card historians. This is not surprising, given that 1) you have generally focused on things unrelated to playing cards in general or Tarot in particular, and 2) you cannot be bothered to do any actual research, as demonstrated so clearly by the phantom Gerson fiasco.

Debra said:
The world is full of bright shiny stuff that catches the eye -- bits and bobs of "look at THIS!" and "did you know?" and "guess what I just learned!" stuff. No matter how old or obscure, it is mere "trivia" if it isn't presented coherently and for a reasonable purpose.

Wish I'd written that. (I might have added, and it is mere "rumor" if no source is cited.)
 

Debra

prudence said:
I do not hold a PhD in Medieval History!!!!!!:eek: I apologize for turning your world upside down with that bit of knowledge.

O thank god, Prudence. Your comments here are always interesting and/or hilarious...two of my favorite flavors....
:D
 

prudence

Debra said:
O thank god, Prudence. Your comments here are always interesting and/or hilarious...two of my favorite flavors....
:D
Oh, Thank you kindly, Debra. :heart: I am glad to know the shock of finding out my academic status did not leave you speechless....:D
 

Debra

LOL I just looked at "Who's Online" and this is the most popular thread at this moment--most of the Gang's All Here! Who knew that Tarot History and Iconography could be so HOT HOT HOT! Coming soon in theaters near you....well, if Beowulf can command the masses, why not History and Iconography?