Questions about the "Bardic origin of Tarot" theory

le pendu

DianeOD said:
Those from what is called the "Dummett-de Paulis" school of thought

Ah... my dear Alma Mater. DdP DdP Rah Rah Rah! DdP DdP Sis Boom Bah!!

:)
 

Umbrae

DianeOD said:
The tarot consists of 40 + 16 + some number of additional figures.

...

But certainly about a century (or so) after we begin hearing of cards and card-use spreading more widely through Europe, the number for Atouts does seem to settle at 22. It is notable that our earliest handmade cards contain no devil - and most contain no tower. I don't think it right to simply assume that our present 22-card Atout is the original. And this is because the non-devil, non-tower series is not only the earliest remaing, but one that is more internally coherent. To suppose that Atouts in later packs must have been 'lost' from earlier ones is not the same as supposing that a pack without a knave of cups always had one. .. I can just *feel* this statement causing trouble.

I appreciate your postings.

IF there was ever a connection between the 52 card Mamluk/Indian/Chinese decks and tarot, somewhere along the line four courts and twenty some trumps were added.

Does the ‘Bardic’ tradition account for this?

That any alphabet ‘Caused’ the tarot to be invented, either for gaming or esoteric purposes has yet to be ‘proved’.

I see lovely essays on the evolution of the Alphabet here – but no proof.

We may as well prove that the alphabet was responsable for Captain Kangaroo.
 

venicebard

Umbrae said:
okay okay okay....There’s a ton of worthless verbiage here…
To you, anyway, I take it.
The question remains.

What PROOF is there, that ANY alphabet – was the ORIGIN of the Tarot, keeping in mind – the Tarot consists of 52 + 26 cards.
And what 'proof', may I ask, do you have of that? You seem to make no distinction between what has survived and what was. This is a much-traveled (academic) shortcut towards a palpable illusion of proof. But the simple fact is (as Plato pointed out in chapter 19 of The Republic) that the only things for which there is proof are eternal things, all that is of finite duration being capable of residing only in opinion, albeit this can range from solid to tentative.

The solid argument, then, for seriously entertaining the opinion that it was a confluence of bardic and Judaic understanding of the alphabet (and world, I might add) shaped the Tarot de Marseille is the exact fit of what said confluence produces even now when overlaid on TdM. And I already pointed out that the whole argument involves more than just the insular Keltic side of the equation: it requires also the Judaic side and ultimately involves other alphabets, to add depth to our understanding and to show the strength and spread of roughly identical alphabet-traditions in ancient times of which onlly the Irish/Welsh and Judaic survive, sort of.

If the fit of meanings between tree-letters in calendar order -- parsed at least by their place on the round -- and trumps in their ranked order from nothing to 21 based on medieval bardic numbering of said letters (given only up to 16, then a reconstruction that leaps out in obviousness for the rest) is precise enough, doubt weakens.
Umbrae said:
IF there was ever a connection between the 52 card Mamluk/Indian/Chinese decks and tarot, somewhere along the line four courts and twenty some trumps were added.

Does the ‘Bardic’ tradition account for this?
I have said it seems more likely to me that the four court cards per suit already existed but that Mamluks -- who might have gotten them from Moors and thence indirectly from the Provence-Languedoc-Catalonia culture, for all we know, the destruction of the latter having been so utterly brutal and complete (especially west of the Rhone?) -- removed the female from the bunch and even the representations of the rest. It would also have been logical for them to have simply dropped the '5th suit' or trump suit, since it consisted entirely of (forbidden) images.

I don't know that this happened, but at this point it seems much more likely than the other way around. It does, however, at the same time seem likely that the idea of cards -- at least of numbered cards (the pips) -- came from the East, perhaps even through the Mongols (as Huck once suggested), or more likely (from my point of view) through the Persians, to whom polo was big (witness the polo-stick form for the batons).

So my best guess is that Europeans invented everything but the pips, and perhaps even solidified the number of suits at four (though knowledge of the four elements extended also to the Muslim world, certainly).
We may as well prove that the alphabet was responsable for Captain Kangaroo.
Only for part of his subject-matter, methinks (I was too young to judge whether he was a trained bard or not, so I cannot rule that out).
 

venicebard

The double-consonants

Ss-straif-blackthorn, [20]
Salient features: called la mere du bois, 'mother of the wood', because it is the vanguard of vegetation's reclaiming of cleared land left unattended, and Graves connects its name to English strife, whose spearpoints it simulates, being a thornbush.
XX LeJugement: here we see Armageddon, the ultimate strife, with the angel blowing the trumpet emanating from the (dust-and-smoke) cloud of battle out of which many spikes also emanate.
[Edited to add:] Note: its number would indicate two competing desires, two competing sets of 10 grasping fingers, hence a fair combat (of which LeDiable's treachery denies one combatant one of his hands, making it unfair).

Kk(Q)-quert-apple, [18, or 2 x K]
Salient features: fruit of nature, womb, or quest, called 'refuge of the hind' in the Book of Ballymote.
XVIII LaLune: here we see a face that has taken refuge in the moon's orb, the hounds baying below as if they had 'im 'treed'.
[Edited to add:] Note: its number would indicate that the 9 months of human gestation are actually two 9s, those of mother and those of fetus, the womb being the child's refuge from the hounds; and perhaps the drops in the picture are the mother 'losing her water' prior to giving birth.
 

venicebard

Vowels

A-ailm-silver fir, 1
Salient features: tallest of trees, it captures one's attention or concentration more (farther off) than other species, having at a certain point redirected all energy other trees spend extending limbs back into pushing up the central trunk; as yuletide fir, it is celebratory and uplifts (it represents what counters gravity, first prerequisite for anything whatsoever).
I LeBateleur: captures our attention or concentration (as befits the number 1) while raising up a rod in one hand, about to levitate some object no doubt; entertains (in a celebratory fashion) and uplifts.

E-eadhe-aspen, 2
Salient features: called 'quivering aspen', it is sensitive to the slightest breeze, which causes it to shimmer (its leaves being dark on one side and light on the other); vowel of autumn and its winds.
II LaPapesse: a cloistered female, representing sensitivity, especially as the cloister was often the refuge of women in the autumn of life who found the rigors of 'living in the world' a burden; the curtain about her head cushions incoming sounds, and by its shape in conjunction with the long clasp of her robe, said sounds or thoughts she is being sheltered from are those of lovemaking, as suits the sign of mid-autumn, scorpio (the privates), from the duties of which the cloister protects.

I-idho-yew, 3
Sallient features: extremely long-lived (rimes with long-knived), it is the tree of longbows and of death-and-transfiguration, oft planted in graveyards, hence of winter, when nature is largely dead or dormant.
III L'Imperatrice: she is Dame Winter or Death, who rules one's span, 3 being traditionally associated with death (as in 3-headed Cerberus).

O-onn-furze (gorse), 4
Salient features: outer layer is burned off in spring to expose young shoots for sheep to consume (aries being a ram), hence vowel of spring, of the heyday of the 4 elements, or of the 4th element (earth).
IIII L'Empereur: he is obviously not in his winter hall but rather out campaigning in spring; he is the director of the (4) elements.

U-ura-heather, [17]
Salient features: the bed of trysts under starry summer skies, the nearest Greek to her Boibel Loth name being Urania (Queen of Heaven), best appreciated in summer (obviously).
XVII L'Etoille: she is naked and mixing together two fluids; she is (love's) consummation, one's coming of age, 17 being the age of this in ancient Ireland.
Note: ura's number also arises from the fact that she is denied 5, where she would seem to naturally fit based on 1-2-3-4 being A-E-I-O, so we give her 5th-from-the-end, which is obviously correct.

Aa-ailm-palm, [21]
Salient features: to be awarded the palm is to win it all -- the world! -- the far-flung reaches of which palm's tropical nature suggests to anyone from a temperate clime.
XXI LeMonde: symbolizes 'having arrived', and (judging from the alternate early form of this card, showing dwellings through a porthole) physical location, where in the vast field of possible locations (which palm trees symbolize) one is.
Note: number arises from the fact that A is 1, making Aa obviously 1st-from-the-end.

Ii-[ixias?]-mistletoe or loranthus, [19]
Salient features: Virgil's (and Fraser's) 'Golden Bough', under which kissing is held to be innocent.
XVIIII LeSoleil: the sun -- gold itself -- presides over innocents at play; they are the twins, again, struggling or wrestling (training), as mistletoe shares winter solstice -- the only place the twins meet (hence also in B and R, above) -- with the yuletide fir.
Note: its number, 3rd-from-the-end, arises from the fact that I itself is 3, and from the fact that solar and lunar cycles meet every 19 years.

I am not completely sure where to place Aa in the cycle of time, but one further consideration goes a long way towards explaining the vowels and suggests the place Aa goes. It is the following fact.

[Edited to add:] Graves and I both hold that the vowels indicated not just seasons of the year but of any cycle, that is, of the moon as well (and of life, just as today we speak of the autumn of life and so on). As lunar phases, they would be: A-new, O-waxing, U-full, E-waning, I-old, Ii-dark, and Aa-?

Pagan sensibilities, as documented by Grimm (but also, I would suggest, being relevant to Kelts), have it that boys should be weaned during the waxing phase of the moon -- which included the dark phase out of which it sprang -- and girls during the waning phase -- which included the full phase out of which it sprang.

And just so, our Ii-A-O, from dark (Ii) through new (A) and waxing (O), are male figures -- XVIIII LeSoleil, I LeBateleur, and IIII L'Empereur -- while our U-Aa-E-I, from full (U) through waning (E) and old (I), are female figures -- XVII L'Etoille, XXI LeMonde, II LaPapesse, and III L'Imperatrice. This suggests that Aa represents the return from the limit of the 'back vowels' (as O and U are called phonetically) back to the middle in order to advance now on the side of the 'front vowels' (E and I). [Aa's special character, however, is apparent from the fact that in all other alphabets it has become consonantized -- as teyt/theta, and in runic *daguz, 'day', meaning one's present location in time (today).]
 

Umbrae

Okay. Let me back up.

The title of the post is – Questions about the "Bardic origin of Tarot" theory .

Now mind you Venicebard, I appreciate your studies and work on Alphabets. It’s truly fascinating and interesting.

That said, when questioned by Le Pendu, you did not quote Plato.

In the first two pages of posts, I find four other posters who question the Bardic Origins, and none of them are addressed. You did not answer the questions. Their pleas were ignored. You did not quote Plato.

And to me – you quote Plato.

Thanks.

venicebard said:
The solid argument, then, for seriously entertaining the opinion that it was a confluence of bardic and Judaic understanding of the alphabet (and world, I might add) shaped the Tarot de Marseille is the exact fit of what said confluence produces even now when overlaid on TdM.

A confluence is not the same as causality.

The term ‘Bardic Origins’ imply that A led to B which resulted in C.

This has yet to be ‘presented’ in any manner other than pedantic posts about the history of the alphabet.

I don’t think it’s a crime to question. To ask “where’s the proof” is tolerable, and justly, deserves a plain answer.

“It can be seen that the dogmatic mode of thinking fails to recreate any of the qualities that made the traditional mode so attractive. It turns out to be convoluted, rigid, and oppressive. True, it eliminates the uncertainties that plague the critical mode, but only at the cost of creating conditions that the human mind would find intolerable if it were aware of any alternatives. Just as a doctrine based on a super-human authority may provide an avenue of escape from the short-comings of the critical mode, the critical mode itself may appear as the salvation to those who suffer from the oppression of dogma.” George Soros Staying Ahead of the Curve

One is lead to believe the syllogism is fallacious – if ‘proof’ of the causality is avoided through occlusion.

Tarot de Marseille came into being 250 years after the first documentations describing Tarot. “…of bardic and Judaic understanding of the alphabet (and world, I might add) shaped the Tarot de Marseille is the exact fit of what said confluence…”

So by this, what you are saying is that Bardic and Judaic knowledge ‘fit’ with Tarot de Marseille.

What about the Milanese Tarot?

Where’s the proof that any understanding of an alphabet was the impetus for the creation of Tarot?

Now if you were arguing that the Bardic understanding of Mathematics, and the differences between ordinal and cardinal sequences and the illustration as such – and the use of gaming as a teaching tool for both the perfection and beauty of mathematics and philosophy…maybe we’d get someplace.

And what about the pre-TdM Tarot?

Further, perhaps clarification is in order. The alphabets described have twenty some letters. The Tarot Trumps have twenty some cards. Perhaps you should state, “Bardic Origins of the Tarot TRUMPS. Or do we simply ignore the other 56 cards? (not at all dissimilar from honking the horn of a car to determine if it will run).

venicebard said:
I have said it seems more likely to me that the four court cards per suit already existed but that Mamluks -- who might have gotten them from Moors and thence indirectly from the Provence-Languedoc-Catalonia culture, for all we know, the destruction of the latter having been so utterly brutal and complete (especially west of the Rhone?) -- removed the female from the bunch and even the representations of the rest. It would also have been logical for them to have simply dropped the '5th suit' or trump suit, since it consisted entirely of (forbidden) images.

Based upon sentence structure - the above is speculation. How much more content is speculation presented as fact?

That said - I love your history of the alphabets.
 

DianeOD

Bards and others

Flying visit. Term is on.

re:
I have said it seems more likely to me that the four court cards per suit already existed but that Mamluks -- who might have gotten them from Moors and thence indirectly from the Provence-Languedoc-Catalonia culture, for all we know, the destruction of the latter having been so utterly brutal and complete (especially west of the Rhone?)

Well noted.

Somewhere - still, I think - on the web, there might be a paper from me about the story of the card-using woman in the Thousand and one nights.

In it you'll find reference to a kind of 'bardic' verbal contest/game exercise which developed in Provence during the late 11th-to mid 12th century, and remained very popular in all the courts of Europe into the early 15th, when it fell from favour for a while, only to be revived under the Platonic crew in Italy, and linking through Marie de Medici to the French court again.

THe term used to describe the exercise was the "joc partits"... through habit called just a 'joc' - but with this specific meaning of a contest in verbal skills, memory and oratory. (I relate and discuss one called "the joc of the Alphabet".). Tokens are used, and emphasis is on the courtly romantic theme.

The collections are worth considering to see their underlying themes.

Book I read is called "Italian social pastimes of the 16thC and their influence on the literatures of Europe" - think that's right. Its a rare book and I haven't got a personal copy.

This sort of "bardic" training I think came to Provence through Norman Sicily whose orators were ..well known for their unusual style. While I wouldn't argue it in a formal paper, I think the native Sicilian rhetorical style does show similarities to that of the Irish ecclesiastical 'tongue' the Hisperica famina.

Not sure though whether this is how the "obvious bardic origins" have been considered by others up until now.

Sad I probably won't have a chance to follow this thread.
Bye again
 

jmd

I suspect some of the ongoing problems in communication - or at least to my understanding - is reflected in points made such as "My only problem with the Jewish use of tarots is that the greater part of the Kabbalistic corpus simply doesn't develop early enough" - implying that tarot predates the Kabalistic corpus is later than tarot!??!

Are we talking about the same kind of stuff here?

Certainly cards were around in the 13th century. Also images that later appear on tarot were similarly around (on Cathedral as carvings as an example).

But is it tarot as tarot that is being talked about in much of the above? Ie, as a deck of cards of five suits?
 

DianeOD

Alphabets - "5 suits" - Irish bards and (Coptic) Egypt

Aecletic is becoming an addiction. I have no business being up at this (ungodly) hour writing about tarot history. Promised self and family I'd stop when hols. ended.

And here I am.

OK - re Alphabets. I agree with concerns about tarot being invented around an alphabet. More that the alphabet was a 'key' to all the material that had to be committed to memory in an age where literacy and books were not so common. One's memory -especially for the learned - was everything.

So if you have to memorise - say - the whole content of a geography, and a book about the virtues in stones, and your history of the church (or whatever) one way to do it.. and one way we find it done everywhere in the older cultures... is to link all you learn to some unchanging sequence. The Alphabet is perfect for the purpose. So: A = Albania, amythyst, Andrew saint of Scotland... kind of thing. And then people were taught to make vivid memory-pictures "Mentally draw a picture of St.Andrew in an Amythyst cloak and with an Alb over his arm (Alb for Albania).. It gets even more technical than that. People used to memorise an entire book verbatim with the aid of an alphabetic or other sequence. The most perfectly made of hte Charles VI cards are 'memory' pictures of that sort, made literal. And they are so good, that once you know their subject, the very texts built into them can be identified. (It took me a bit of hunting, tho I knew the terminus ad quem for the texts..) So Alphabets are reasonably supposed central to any overlaying of information. But here's the thing. Italian has only 18 letters.

re: 'obvious bardic origins' - Why obvious? I don't think we can beg fundamental questions to our theses like that. What makes you think they are 'obviously' bardic?

However - suppose there is an Irish dimension - how to fill in the gap between the end of Ogham usage and the appearance/dispersion of hte pack through mainland Europe, without evidence of its appearing in that form in Ireland, just then?

On the other hand, if you suppose a continuum between the pagan Celtic, the early Christian celtic, the monastic Irish, and ...., it is actually possible to pose a link between the near eastern stellar moralia and the Irish.

Since I failed to note down the link, please forgive the length of the following, but I can only post it as I have it on disk. It's good to have something to quote, I find, if one mentions Egypt. People treat it as though it were never-never land, sometimes.

------
(Coptic) EGYPT AND IRELAND
START QUOTE:
On the Trail of the Seven Coptic Monks in Ireland - His Grace Metropolitan Seraphim

The Coptic Orthodox Church has long known of the historic links between the British Isles and Christian Egypt, but documentation and solid evidence is thin on the ground for these early centuries of church history. There are learned articles by Monique Blanc-Ortolan of the Musee des Arts décoratifs, Paris, and Pierre du Bourguet of the Louvre on 'Coptic and Irish Art' and by Joseph F.T. Kelly of John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio, on 'Coptic Influences in the British Isles' in the Coptic Encyclopedia which are worth consulting. Other works, like Shirley Toulson's The Celtic Year, which asserts that "rather than adhere to the ruling of the Council [of Chalcedon], some of the most dedicated adherents of Monophysitism fled from Egypt, and some of them most surely travelled west and north to Ireland", in their enthusiasm to establish a link, make up what is lacking in hard evidence with sheer conjecture and fantasy.

The late Archdale King noted the links between Celtic Ireland and Coptic Egypt. He suggests that much of the contact took place before the Muslim Conquest of 640. There exists evidence of a Mediterranean trade in a single passage in the life of St. John the Almsgiver (Ioannes III Eleemon), Greek Patriarch of Alexandria between 610-621...

King observes that the kind of asceticism associated with the Desert Fathers was especially congenial to the Irish but refers to Dom Henri Leclercq's suggestion that Celtic monasticism was directly derived from Egypt, as an "unsubstantiated hypothesis". No serious historian, however, would deny that first-hand knowledge of the Desert Fathers was brought directly to the South of Gaul by St. John Cassian and that the links between the British and Gallican churches were especially strong at this period. King nevertheless admits that the grouping together of several small churches within a cashel or fortified enclosure seems to support Leclercq's view.

King mentions an Ogham inscription on a stone near St. Olan's Well in the parish of Aghabulloge, County Cork, which scholars interpret as reading: 'Pray for Olan the Egyptian.' Professor Stokes tells us5 about the Irish monk Dicuil, who around 825 wrote his Liber de Mensure orbis terre describing the pyramids as well as an ancient precursor of the Suez Canal. It would seem that Egypt was often visited by pilgrims to the Holy Land. Stokes instances the Saltair Na Rann, an anthology of biblical poems attributed to Oengus the Culdee [i.e. Chaldean], but containing the sixth or seventh century Book of Adam and Eve, composed in Egypt and known in no other European country except Ireland.

King also notes that one of the commonest names for townlands or parishes is Disert or 'Desert': a solitary place in which anchorites were established. Presumably the same etymology gives us the Scottish Dysart, just north of Kirkcaldy, and the Welsh Dyserth, to the south of Prestatyn ? This would then present a consistent picture common to Celtic Christianity. The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee, an early ninth century monastic bishop of Clonenagh (Co. Offaly) and later of Tallaght, has a litany invoking 'Seven monks of Egypt in Disert Uilaig, I invoke unto my aid, through Jesus Christ.' [Morfesseor do manchaib Egipr(e) in disiurt Uilaig]. The Antiphonary of Bangor (dating from between 680-691) also contains the text:

" ... Domus deliciis plena Super petram constructa Necnon vinea vera Ex Aegypto transducta ..."

which is translated as:

" ... House full of delight Built on the rock And indeed true vine Translanted from Egypt ..."

Providence undoubtedly put me in touch with Fr. Feargal Patrick McGrady, priest of Ballymena, County Antrim in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Down and Connor. As well as being a native of Downpatrick (the burial place of St. Patrick), .... He was delighted to assist with my enquiries and very soon made contacts with local historians, who are the real source of the information we need.

Dr. Cahal Dallat, Genealogist and Historical Consultant, of Ballycastle, County Antrim, identified Disert Ilidh or Uilaigh with Dundesert, near Crumlin, county Antrim, which is to the north-west of Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, between Belfast International Airport and Templepatrick.

Mr. Bobbie Burns, a local historian living in Crumlin, was another link in the chain. He produced a report in the Belfast Telegraph of 13th July 1936 under the headline "Unique Once Famous Ulster Church: Neglected Crumlin Ruins", which showed the ruins of the medieval church built on the site of an earlier shrine. ....they are excited by its more ancient and possible Coptic connections. ....

We are grateful for the efforts of these local enthusiasts for having preserved these ancient ruins and look forward to making further discoveries about the last resting place of the seven monks of Egypt.

END QUOTE