Cards as "hieroglyphs"

Teheuti

As an interesting aside I googled Thoth + Primaudaye and came up with the following footnote in an article on Bacon-as-Shakespeare:
http://www.sirbacon.org/NigelCockburn/ncbookpartone.pdf

It discusses Bacon's use of a pseudonym in a work entitled:
"Valerius Terminus
of
The Interpretation of Nature
with the
Annotations of Hermes Stella"

Note below the odd synchronicity of the idea of "Triumphs of Man" connected with Thoth /Hermes:

7. “It is impossible to ascertain the motive which determined Bacon
to give the supposed author the name of Valerius Terminus; or to his commentator, of whose
annotations we have no remains, that of Hermes Stella. It may be conjectured that by the name
Terminus he intended to intimate that the new philosophy would put an end to the wandering of
mankind in search of truth that it would be the terminus ad quem in which, when it was once attained,
the mind would finally acquiesce”. Ellis was of course right as to “terminus”. But it seems remarkable
that neither he nor Spedding could explain “Valerius”. The explanation is simple. There was a Roman
historian with a philosophical bent called Valerius Maximus and Bacon wrote of him in De Augmentis
Book 4, Chapter 1 (Spedding 4.375): “The miracle of human nature, and its highest powers and virtue
both in mind and body, should be collected into a volume which should serve for a register of the
Triumphs of Man. In which work I approve the design of Valerius Maximus and C. Pliny, and wish for
their diligence and judgment”. Bacon no doubt chose “Valerius Terminus” to go one better than
“Valerius Maximus” - his philosophy would be the last word, not just the maximum word. “Hermes
Stella”, the supposed annotator, can also be explained. Hermes was the Greek God of science and
many of the arts of life, and interpreter of the Gods. Hermes Trismegistus was the name given by
devotees of mysticism and alchemy to the Egyptian God Thoth, who was regarded as more or less
identified with the Grecian Hermes, and as the author of all mysterious doctrine. Thus Hermes would
have been a fit annotator of the mysterious doctrine of Bacon’s work. As to “Stella”, Hermes was
identified by the Romans with Mercury. Mercury is of course a planet. The Latin word for planet or
star is stella. There is thus a link between Hermes and Stella and Bacon probably meant Hermes Stella
for a brilliant star who would illuminate the text."

This is even more interesting when the article continues directly with this quote from Bacon:
"Those works of the Alphabet are in my opinion of less use to you where you now are
[Spain or Italy?] than at Paris."
About which the author of this article then comments: "The Baconians have always maintained that Bacon was a founder member of
the Rosicrucians, a secret society for the propagation of learning."

"Triumphs of Man," Thoth, "those works of the alphabet." Curiouser and curiouser.

Mary
 

Ross G Caldwell

Hi Michael,

mjhurst said:
Hi, Ross,

I'm not sure what you're saying here.

My view is that de G and de M are "just another morality." One that has consequences into our time, and an esoteric one instead of an orthodox one, but a morality nonetheless. Formally the 16th century moralities and these later two are identical. They take the cards as is, and moralize. De G and M actually leave the cards relatively undamaged (except for De G's overturning of the Hanged Man). If the 16th century authors had been French free-thinkers and had had the 200 years extra tradition behind them and the same contemporary conditions, they could have come up with the 18th century moralities as well. Fortunately for us (at least historians interested in plausible interpretations of the *original* tarot), they were Italian and Catholic and much closer in time to the original.

As is often the case, there is an ambiguous term at the middle of this paradox. The term "hieroglyphs" may be taken in at least two senses: that commonly used by people today, meaning a kind of Egyptian writing, and that used during the emblematic era, in which it means no more (nor less -- it was a rather extravagant Neoplatonic conception) than "symbolic images". It would be amazing if someone of that era did not consider the trumps, and any other group of allegorical images, to be hieroglyphs.

Maybe so. I know I've worked hard for this insight, and the proofs aren't provided in any previous playing card author I've read. Is it so banal I should have picked it up somewhere?

On the other hand, Court de Gébelin's seemingly singular (and certainly seminal) contribution was not the use of the term "hieroglyphs". It was the association of Tarot with ancient Egypt and assorted fatuous interpretations along those lines, including an absurd etymology. In any but the most tenuous sense, that connection would seem to be ludicrous.

I have to correct myself technically here (on your suggestion privately) - de Gébelin doesn't say "hieroglyphs" anywhere - it is the Comte de Mellet, who mentions it twice (presuming a footnote is his and not his editor's).

De Mellet seems to have been reading either Horapollo or Piero (I'm sure I'll find it somewhere) -

Page 395 - "The Gods, in the Writing and Hieroglyphic expression, are the Eternal and the Virtues, represented with a body."

Page 400 - "These first twenty-two cards are not only so many hieroglyphs, which placed in their natural order retrace the History of the earliest times, but they are also so many letters..."

It's clear he doesn't regard the word hieroglyphs to mean writing, but symbolic images in the emblematic sense.

Originally Posted by Ross G Caldwell
In reality, he was just the first I know of to work out the meaning of the term to its logical conclusion - if the cards are hieroglyphs, they must be Egyptian (other people before him, including the Anonymous author and Beneton de Peyrins in 1738, thought tarot was ancient - I mean, from at least classical times). He was the great synthesizer, the right man at the right time, but he did not invent everything.

Here it sounds as if you are saying that Court de Gébelin was the first to mistake Renaissance and emblematic-era hieroglyphs for Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Maybe I missed something. The term "hieroglyph" would *always* have had an Egyptian connotation, whether in Latin or a vernacular language. It only came into vernacular use *because* of Horapollo and the emblems. The earliest users knew it meant sacred writing, and it wasn't Kabbalah they were talking about - it was the mysterious writing of Egypt, or more specifically, and in our context, images which "spoke" with a moral (Kwaw's author says it better than I can). Secondly, the Anonymous (for example) believes that "the ancients" set up three games - Chess, the Ball Game, and Tarot. He doesn't specify which ancients, but he gives a Greek etymology for the word Tarocco. So what is missing? Why not name the Egyptians?

Because in the 16th century, there was no Egyptomania. Nobody believed the Egyptians had the most ancient civilization and everything sprang from there. Erudites could tell you that Mercury or Theuth taught letters and laws to the Egyptians, but those same erudites would tell you that Mercury was one of the post-diluvians. Egypt didn't have the place that it had in the late 18th century, until well into the 17th.

Lastly, the "Egyptian" understanding was the books preeminently of Horapollo and Piero, not lists of signs from monuments. But in their time, the association between the term "hieroglyph" and "Egyptian writing" *in the technical sense*, had become much closer than it was in the sixteenth century. Just as it progressed for us, so that now, hieroglyphs *primary* meaning is Egyptian writing in the true sense, not emblems and symbols.

Originally Posted by Ross G Caldwell
I think de Gébelin understood "hieroglyph" to mean what generations of emblematists and symbol-interpreters took it to mean, that is a symbol with an obscure meaning that had to be interpreted. As we have seen, other people into the 17th century took them that way too, although it never became a mass movement.

Here, on the other hand, it seems as if you are saying that he did not make that mistake, (or that others did too), that he took the term the same way they did.

Corrected to de Mellet (sorry to use "Gébelin" as a catch-all), that's right, he didn't make any "mistake". He wasn't trying to interpret the hieroglyphs on the tombs of Saqqara, he took it to mean emblems. This was the tradition they used the term in.

In addition to not making the association with ancient Egypt, I'm also not sure they inflicted such tortured interpretation on the cards, such "interpretative debauchery" as was indulged by Court de Gébelin. That passage you quoted from the 1570 commentary re the Hanged Man and his friends seemed pretty sober and consistent with the whole body of contemptu mundi sensibilities and works that are at the heart of the trump cycle.

I agree with you, but that is beside the point in this case. The historical value of the 16th century moralities is their proximity to the original game; the historical value of the 18th century moralities is to give insight into how the distance has changed possible moralities (i.e. the times). I can't judge a morality based on how closely it resembles my favorite theory about the original meaning; they have to be taken at face value, like the Chess moralities.

And this can be taken as supporting either of the above two readings of your post. On the one hand, it sounds as if you are again distinguishing Court de Gébelin from earlier writers, as if Egyptomania was a novelty of his time and not theirs.

That's right, Egyptomania (or maybe better "Egyptocentrism") was not a feature of the 16th century. But by de G's time it had been growing for over a century.

On the other hand, Egyptomania appears to be a commonality of antiquarians of many eras, a tendency to believe that everything interesting is ancient and everything ancient is ultimately Egyptian.

You'll have to give examples to prove that statement. It doesn't follow, for the 16th century (or earlier), that everything ancient comes from Egypt.

Ancient games were traced to Palamedes in most instances (Troy was in the running for antiquity with Egypt). The Plato Thoth myth was not widely known.

So I'm just not sure to what extent you are comparing Court de Gébelin with earlier writers and to what extent you are contrasting them.

The greatest novelties formally are the inclusion of comparative historical data (like the "Chinese monument"), and the divination. But the morality is not really surprising, given the men, the time, and the place. Just as the Italian ones aren't. To our great benefit, I might add.

Best regards,

Ross
 

mjhurst

Hi, Ross,

First, given your comment here, let me say that I'm not dismissing your findings in the least. As you may recall from the last 6-8 years, I'm a big fan of ALL new findings, and the popularization of older ones as well.

Ross G Caldwell said:
I know I've worked hard for this insight, and the proofs aren't provided in any previous playing card author I've read. Is it so banal I should have picked it up somewhere?
The notion that people interpret and revision archaic things in terms of their own values, attitudes, beliefs, etc., is in some ways the central presupposition of the historical viewpoint. (It is also directly opposed to the notion of universals, whether Neoplatonic, Neojungian, or whatever.) The emblematic/hieroglyphic tradition was an extraordinary element of pop-culture for a period of centuries, and it would be the natural approach to describing something like a cycle of images that were not actually well understood.

That said, the actual finding of such commentaries prior to 1781 is fantastic. Just because we might expect any such commentary to reference Neoplatonic ideas about symbolic images and make vague comparisons to hieroglyphics and emblems, there is no way to guess, a priori, what direction such a reading might go. It's like the various other writers around Court de Gébelin's time who were fantasizing about ancient history. Some were Christian apologists and some were Pagan apologists, and their results were very different despite ostensibly claiming the same reliance on contemporaneous methodologies, like philology.

Ross G Caldwell said:
The term "hieroglyph" would *always* have had an Egyptian connotation....
Certainly. But there is a difference between interpreting ancient symbols and making up new ones. These were not morons, even if they did imagine they could "read" ancient hieroglyphics.

Ross G Caldwell said:
Because in the 16th century, there was no Egyptomania. Nobody believed the Egyptians had the most ancient civilization and everything sprang from there.
No Egyptomania among the Renaissance humanists? Hmmm...

Ross G Caldwell said:
The historical value of the 16th century moralities is their proximity to the original game; the historical value of the 18th century moralities is to give insight into how the distance has changed possible moralities (i.e. the times). I can't judge a morality based on how closely it resembles my favorite theory about the original meaning; they have to be taken at face value, like the Chess moralities.
That presupposes that you are studying 18th-century sensibilities. If so, that's certainly a fine study. Conversely, if one is looking for the intended meaning of the trump cycle, then early 15th-century sensibilities are the proper context. There was a sea-change among the elite in the late 15th-century, and subsequent dramatic developments in the mid-16th and later. (Some of this history is documented by WPC.)

Ross G Caldwell said:
You'll have to give examples to prove that statement. It doesn't follow, for the 16th century (or earlier), that everything ancient comes from Egypt.
Thanks anyway -- LOL! I've got enough distractions for the moment. But I'd always read that the first wave of Egyptomania was with the Greeks and Romans, and that one of the big subsequent revivals was these same guys you've been talking about with their "hieroglyphics", the pure language of the pure religion... that stuff.

Here's the Table of Contents for Egyptomania: The Egyptian Revival : A Recurring Theme in the History of Taste by James Stevens Curl. There are a couple chapters (as well as the title) that suggest such waves of, well, "Egyptian Revival".

Ch. I. Egypt and Europe
Ch. II. Some Manifestations of Egyptianisms from the End of the Roman Empire to the Early-Renaissance Period
Ch. III. Further Manifestations with Egyptian Connotations in Europe from the Renaissance to the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century
Ch. IV. Egyptian Elements in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe to the Time of Piranesi
Ch. V. The Egyptian Revival from the Time of Piranesi until the Napoleonic Campaigns in Egypt
Ch. VI. The Egyptian Revival after the Napoleonic Campaigns in Egypt
Ch. VII. Applications of the Egyptian Style
Ch. VIII. The Egyptian Revival in Funerary Architecture
Ch. IX. Aspects of the Egyptian Revival in the Later Part of the Nineteenth Century
Ch. X. The Egyptian Revival in the Twentieth Century

Regardless, your findings and translations are great. Thanks again.

Best regards,
Michael
 

Rosanne

Sorry to be dense- but I thought when Pizarro went to Brazil? in the first contact with the Incas- he wrote about the jeroglifico of the tribe- the word pictures- same with the Portuguese in Japan. Was that not a term(Hieroglyphic) taken for granted for written symbols and pictures they did not yet understand?
~Rosanne
 

Ross G Caldwell

Hi Rosanne,

Rosanne said:
Sorry to be dense- but I thought when Pizarro went to Brazil? in the first contact with the Incas- he wrote about the jeroglifico of the tribe- the word pictures- same with the Portuguese in Japan.

I don't know about Japan, but characterizing Mayan writing as hieroglyphic goes back pretty far, and is still used today.

I see Pizarro lived to 1541, so it would be interesting to find out when he wrote that. It would be an interesting and early reference - do you have it?

Was that not a term(Hieroglyphic) taken for granted for written symbols and pictures they did not yet understand?
~Rosanne

I think "hieroglyphic" has to mean "picture writing" (that's why I'd be puzzled to see Japanese (or Chinese) described that way (although of course Chinese characters developed from real pictures, like Cuneiform and Demotic did, although in all these cases the final form is usually very hard to relate to its original picture); but I'm sure that it could also just mean "engimatic writing" of any kind.

Ross
 

Rosanne

Thanks Ross- I found the term when looking through the codices/codex that are left from copies by some Jesuit Priests. Pizarro came up then- will trace backwards to find it.~Rosanne
 

Ross G Caldwell

mjhurst said:
First, given your comment here, let me say that I'm not dismissing your findings in the least. As you may recall from the last 6-8 years, I'm a big fan of ALL new findings, and the popularization of older ones as well.

LOL - indeed! But the point is that while YOU and I and a few people here and there have figured this out, a few years ago on TarotL would a statement like "Some people saw the cards as hieroglyphs in the 16th and 17th centuries" have gone unchallenged? Of course not - because it is not common knowledge some that people in those centuries interpreted the cards as pure allegory and moralized them, let alone that the term hieroglyph had the more common meaning of "symbolic picture" and not primarily the narrow definition of today "Egyptian writing".

Piscina's commentary, although printed, seems to survive in fewer copies than the manuscript Discorso, of which we have four now, in Bologna, Florence, Paris and Vienna. I have no doubt a few more will be found. Among some cognoscenti, it must have been the "standard" allegorical interpretation (they shared copies after all). We are provided with a terminus post quem as well in the text - he mentions "Vida Cremonese" as writing a morality on Chess in "heroic verse". This turns out to be Marco Gerolamo Vida (Marcus Hieronymus Vida Cremonensis) who wrote this "Scacchia Ludus" in 1559 -
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/vida.html

I don't know why the date "1570" yet, but as far as I can tell from my own reading within the text, 1560 would be the earliest plausible date (the existence of moralities on Chess and Ball is his apologia for writing one on the hitherto neglected Tarocco).

The notion that people interpret and revision archaic things in terms of their own values, attitudes, beliefs, etc., is in some ways the central presupposition of the historical viewpoint. (It is also directly opposed to the notion of universals, whether Neoplatonic, Neojungian, or whatever.)

I don't know that you have to hold your corollary to be historical. It's just a matter of wearing different hats - the historical (including the accidents of time and place) or the philosophical (which might include notions of universals). You shouldn't try to do history as a mystic or philosopher - at least, you won't find out anything you didn't already know. It's a finger-pointing-at-the-moon thing. E.g. death is a universal. It is represented differently in different cultures. There are symbols, words, attitudes, habits, etc. that are accidents of time and place - that is the proper study of history. But all the different ways of symbolizing death are pointing to the same universal experience.

If you start from the Moon you won't find the finger, but - and this is why I think so many misunderstand how I mean "history" - the historian is *really* looking at the finger, and who is doing the pointing, and how they are doing it, and their explanations as to why they are doing it (i.e. pointing at the Moon). Once I've found some of that, I begin to understand some small part in a long chain of causality.

The emblematic/hieroglyphic tradition was an extraordinary element of pop-culture for a period of centuries, and it would be the natural approach to describing something like a cycle of images that were not actually well understood.

Exactly right. And because it is not well known that it *was* done, is why I brought it up on this thread.

That said, the actual finding of such commentaries prior to 1781 is fantastic. Just because we might expect any such commentary to reference Neoplatonic ideas about symbolic images and make vague comparisons to hieroglyphics and emblems, there is no way to guess, a priori, what direction such a reading might go. It's like the various other writers around Court de Gébelin's time who were fantasizing about ancient history. Some were Christian apologists and some were Pagan apologists, and their results were very different despite ostensibly claiming the same reliance on contemporaneous methodologies, like philology.

Well, the Anonymous is much more (neo)-Platonic, while still being Christian, than Piscina. Piscina is overtly Catholic and Christian, while Anonymous centers on "God" and man as microcosm.

"And then increasing with the eyes and the intellect to the Heavens, the Star, the Moon and the Sun, the supernatural creations of God, thus is fixed in the Starry (fixed stars), like the Earth among the moving Planets, of which each one depends upon its proper intelligence, which the Angel, who governs and moves them by virtue of the Prime Mover, which is the great and immortal Deity; represented by Justice, because on the day of Judgment the most just Judge will appear, and severe retribution to everyone according to his works.

The final figure is the World, made by him from nothing, which, because it includes everything, so also this game, which is a true image, and natural representation of everything that is contained in man, who is a little world."

(e quindi accrescendo con gl'occhi, e con l'intelletto a i Cieli, la Stella, la Luna, et il Sole, le sopranaturali fatture di Dio, cosi nello Stellato, è fisso, come nelli mobili Pianeti il mondo, de quali dalla propria di ciascuno intelligenza dipende, che l'Angelo, il quale li governa, e muove in virtù del primo Motore, che è il grande, et immortale Iddio, rappresentato per la giustizia, percioche nel giorno del Giudizio si mostrarà giustissimo Giudice, e severo retribuendo à ciascuno secondo le opere sue.

L'ultima figura è il mondo, li niente da Lui fatto, il quale, siccome ogni cosa comprende, cosi anco questo giuoco, il quale è una vera imagine, e ritratto del naturale di tutto quello, che nell'huomo, il quale è un picciol mondo, si contiene.
)

(that's the last page)

Certainly. But there is a difference between interpreting ancient symbols and making up new ones. These were not morons, even if they did imagine they could "read" ancient hieroglyphics.

I think, more or less, de G and de M simply moralized on the images in front of them, from a hermetic-masonic perspective. It was an occult moralization of the tarot. The original is still there, recoverable under all the baroque trappings. Etteilla actually changed the symbols; he is like Boiardo or the Sola Busca. You couldn't recover the standard tarot from under their changes.

No Egyptomania among the Renaissance humanists? Hmmm...

Not really. I don't doubt isolated instances, but by "Egyptomania" I mean a pervasive cultural influence. The 16th century, as far as I know, didn't have a revival of any Egyptian styles, directly influenced by ancient Egypt. I think Pope Alexander VI loved Egypt, but of course from Roman and Greek sources, depicted in neo-classical style, not with faux hieroglyphs. The influence of the Bembine Tablet was also minimal.

LOL! I've got enough distractions for the moment. But I'd always read that the first wave of Egyptomania was with the Greeks and Romans, and that one of the big subsequent revivals was these same guys you've been talking about with their "hieroglyphics", the pure language of the pure religion... that stuff.

That's true, the Prisca Philosophia. That could be called in a sense an Egyptomania, but it didn't have much to do with *real* Egyptian things, interpretations of actual hieroglyphs, that sort of thing. It was "emblematic Egyptianism" or something. And they considered it older than Egypt (of course, since Egypt was just a nation that came from one of Noah's sons). A conflation came to be made between Moses and Hermes Trismegistus.


Here's the Table of Contents for Egyptomania: The Egyptian Revival : A Recurring Theme in the History of Taste by James Stevens Curl. There are a couple chapters (as well as the title) that suggest such waves of, well, "Egyptian Revival".

Ch. I. Egypt and Europe
Ch. II. Some Manifestations of Egyptianisms from the End of the Roman Empire to the Early-Renaissance Period
Ch. III. Further Manifestations with Egyptian Connotations in Europe from the Renaissance to the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century
Ch. IV. Egyptian Elements in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe to the Time of Piranesi
Ch. V. The Egyptian Revival from the Time of Piranesi until the Napoleonic Campaigns in Egypt
Ch. VI. The Egyptian Revival after the Napoleonic Campaigns in Egypt
Ch. VII. Applications of the Egyptian Style
Ch. VIII. The Egyptian Revival in Funerary Architecture
Ch. IX. Aspects of the Egyptian Revival in the Later Part of the Nineteenth Century
Ch. X. The Egyptian Revival in the Twentieth Century

Well, he talks about "some manifestations" and "further manifestations" during our period - he doesn't seem to mention a full-blown "revival", which is what I mean by "Egyptomania". I don't think it contradicts what I'm saying.

Best regards,

Ross
 

Rosanne

Ok- here is what I have in notes Ross. I have not sited the Book/manuscript- but I noted it from somewhere- likely the Maya codices.
Histoire d'un Voyage Fait en La Terre du Brazil by Jean de Lery 1534-1611 (1568??) Written in Latin (why title is in French?) Chapter on Tupi Language
Heiros Glyphos words first used by Clement of Alexandria in the 2nd Century. Spanish is Geroglyphpos. (which looks like my typo lol) I think I must have been looking for an alphabet.
~Rosanne
 

John Meador

tats for theuth

"At Venice some of the leading houses specialized in publishing books in Greek and Hebrew characters, and the publication in 1505 by the Aldine press of Horapollo's Hieroglyphica made Venice the Italian center of Egyptian studies."
-Donald Lach: Asia in the Making of Europe, 1977
http://books.google.com/books?id=VT...JzrpR6Z&sig=yvAqRnFmDgo9TG8-GJ0sX5N-pfE&hl=en

pp.519-527 &ff have some interesting tidbits regarding hieroglyphs ca 16th c.
Postel knew coptic but whether he studied hieroglyphs while he was in Egypt I haven't determined. If he had encountered them, it would have been irresistible for him. p. 522 concerns John Dee & de Vigenere's observations.

-John
 

kwaw

Ross G Caldwell said:
I think "hieroglyphic" has to mean "picture writing" (that's why I'd be puzzled to see Japanese (or Chinese) described that way (although of course Chinese characters developed from real pictures, like Cuneiform and Demotic did, although in all these cases the final form is usually very hard to relate to its original picture); but I'm sure that it could also just mean "engimatic writing" of any kind.

Ross

Likw Hebrew, Chinese characters were considered as pictograms thought to have sacred meanings and were described as hieroglyphs, see for example:

http://books.google.it/books?id=VTo...dq=ISO-8859-1&sig=ak2i7IvjU3VB-tGHm9QXTyt63cU

Kwaw