A look at Tarot as very Ancient, and subject to concerted mis-representation

Huck

baba-prague said:

So I would tend, until I find other evidence, to believe that tarot as we know it (more or less), originated in Western Europe sometime in the medieval period - I don't suppose we will ever know exactly - and was initiallly used for a game. Whatever more romantic version I would LIKE to believe.
Honestly, being a romantic at heart I do in some ways hate to follow the more mundane theory, but my rationale leaves me no choice.

Call me brainwashed :)

:) I guess, as long a medium, which is acquired by many people, is "new", it is interesting in itself as that what it is. Divination arrives and uses the medium, when the medium is old, perhaps with a little authority, but not more totally interesting in its common use.
Most common divination tools have antiquity, nobody likes to divinate with things, that are recently constructed and "defined" - they usually don't sell well. If it is old, it is an accepted methode, when it is new you smell the human spirit :)
 

baba-prague

That's a good explanation Huck.

I mainly posted to throw in my own support for the need for evidence (much as I would love to do everything through my "higher intuition" ;-), but I have in fact been wondering why cards took so long to be used for divination in Russia - when everything else seems to have been so widely used. I like your explanation, it makes sense.

But the whole Russian thing isn't that well researched (in modern times) as far as tarot is concerned. What I need to do over the next year is read more (and in Russian too) and also talk more seriously to the Roma community and those who work with them. I would really like to know how old the association of Rom and cards is. I have a hunch it's not that old, but well, I do need some evidence one way or the other!

By the way, the Rom shop here advertised that it was selling "ancient traditional gypsy fortune telling cards" so I rushed over - only to find the Piatnik set! Ah well :)
 

ihcoyc

I have an entirely unfounded speculation that the images in the Tarot were in fact created for some entirely different purpose --- perhaps, as printer's woodcuts for some religious text? --- and that they were re-used as parts of a card game when their original purpose fell through.

Given that we're here because we look for signs in shuffled decks of cards, I would not discount sheer, fortuitous happenstance as a major factor in the selection of the Tarot images. I would not doubt that perhaps the game players or printers did not understand some of the images they were reusing when they included them. (The Papess, the Tower, and the World come to mind). The order of the trumps differed from place to place in the earliest decks.
 

pan

interesting direction.

the thing is, i doubt there were tarot card users in russia.
i think thats stretching the range rather far.

1800s yes they got there thanks to the modern revolution.

so whats your point?

i like your list very well.

discussions of omens are certainly very apropro to this,
but omens are one sort of divination and cards quite
another.

The history of divination and the idea of divination seems to
me to itself be mired in the thing that i think divination has
been with us since oh...animal instinctive associations.

A batch of deer running one direction could after all have
a life saving consequence to notice...
i hope you see my point.

So the temptation to build all sorts of correspondences in ones
head about the symbolic meaning of events is a tendency that
is more or less a direct consequence of how the brain evolved.

and some of those correspondences are strong,
and some of them are very weak...

theres an interesting side note which is,
i don't have any PHds actually...
i am just a psychic. lol

as a genuine article, discerning the difference between
strong and weak correlations is exactly one of the biggest
problems.

weak correlates are akin to scitzophrenia; they are out of touch
with the genuine nature of the cause and effect of reality.

strong correlates are noticing cause and effect through the
chaos that is thus eminent around us.
 

baba-prague

"the thing is, i doubt there were tarot card users in russia.
i think thats stretching the range rather far"
__________

But do you have any evidence of the use of tarot cards in Russia (one way or the other) to back up that doubt? What I'm saying (in part) is that all this stuff one hears about the Rom bringing cards from Egypt (or India) would be to some extent supported if there was some evidence or trace of this in Eastern Europe - where there were/are many Rom. But in fact, the evidence appears not to be there.

However, I'd like to do more research to see if there are any traces of early Rom use of cards for divination. AsI say, when you ask at the Roma shop here about traditional Rom cards they show you the Piatnik pack - which has a "tradition" going back no further than the late 19th century. But it would be very interesting to know if the Rom were really using cards much earlier. If so, what did they look like and did they have any resemblance to tarot? I doubt they did :) - but in fact I don't think it has been much researched.

By the way, the first recorded use of cards for divination in Russia that I've found appears to be in 1765. Any instances of earlier usage would be very interesting to find.

I'll leave the matter of omens to one side. I don't think I have any more to say about it without getting totally off-thread.
 

pan

i don't have any reason or evidence to discount
the possibility of cards in russia, other than
the basic infor which we now have had people so kindly present for us. Wether you agree with my
general premise or not, if you know a lot about
the cards, you know the info we have is somewhere between china, Europe, and the middle east. Theres
sorta an area there where things are going on.

I think the best reason why russia is too far away
is its too cold. Tarot is all about seasonal and
agricultural worldview, not hunter deep winter world view.

I apologize for being gone for a while, i have been busy er umm. yes, very busy.