'Tarot' meaning 'hole-maker'?

Huck

Nabatean calendar-pedding ? ....

Looks like an Abacus and seems easily usable this way. The three horizontal lines (3x10 holes) in the middle work for the calculations between 1-1000, the 5 and 6 left and right holes might be additional mark-places for higher numbers.

Naturally it could also serve as Calendar notation, especially, when you've monthes with 30 days. 11 holes at the side are enough to present 12 monthes
 

DianeOD

Lunar months

Yes, and by using the diagonal and adjacent, you've got a means to calculate according to the lunar (agricultural, trading, religious) calendars too. Even to correlate them, as was routinely done in the east, and as ecclesiastics had to do in the west to calculate easter.

I've mentioned before that the number of the arcana minor is equal to a double circuit of the '28' lunar series, making perhaps that "720" )i.e. degrees) mentioned in Kwaw's "Jew Cisian" thread.
 

DianeOD

Court de Gebelin - how does he do it?

You know how CdeG said the real origin of the word 'tarot' was 'Tarosh' and that it came from Egypt... well how about this...

"How many times has my hand written, by tarsh of tin, Syriac followed by the language of phylacteries.." Sadi al-Hilli (14thC)

and this, even earlier:
Among us, without publicity or boasting, is the engraver of tarsh..
Abu Dulaf al-Kharraj (10thC)

- sorry, still haven't worked out how to make diacritics appear on forum posts.

Both these quotations are given in an article written way back in 1987. Can't think how I've overlooked it till now.

JSTOR article, but anyone with access - just google the phrase "Medieval Arabic tarsh"

I quote the abstract for others:
[These] verses suggest that unethical ... peddlers printed amulets [apotropaic objects] from wooden blocks and cast-tin plates to seel to naive buyers who thought they were getting handwritten [ones]. This is the likely origin of printed amulets identified in various collections since the 1890w. If the tarsh...were indeed print-blocks ... the locus of printing technology among the Banu Sasan "underworld" would probably explain the lack of broader influence...

Article by Richard Bulliet, Columbia University.


Now - I'm trying to find out more about this technique of rubbing a figure from a tin-type form. See if it is documented in Europe. I imagine the forms would be a bit like those German biscuit-forms, medieval ones often showing figures of saints - but maybe flatter if for rubbing off onto paper.

Anyone know about this printing technique? Or about the eastern 'tarsh'?

WHERE did de Gebelin get so much information - he continually astonishes me... when he isn't making me gnash my teeth at him.
 

arya ishtar

Perhaps "auger" was referring to how tarot digs deep inside one for their truth?

Also, there is no historical proof it came from egypt. That was a "mistake turned marketing tool of mystery" that someone ran with. Nor was it jewish in origin, tho many decks have added that aspect. Cards came from india to eastern europe, then to italy, where the first actual "tarot" deck was made. The fact that cards came from eastern european immigrant "gypsies" may have caused the confusion, as they were called that because they were thought to be 'gyptian.

the only actual decks ever discovered were italian, and if there is no proof, they are just stories...
 

venicebard

Cards came from india to eastern europe, then to italy, where the first actual "tarot" deck was made.
You (and many others on this site) state this hypothesis with such certainty, and yet in Italy they couldn't even agree on the order of the trumps, whereas north of the Alps the order was so fixed and unchallenged that evidence shows the rankings (numbers) weren't even needed on the originals but were added later. Since so much of the iconography of the Tarot of Marseilles trumps is both unique and meaningful (especially when interpreted according to bardic numeration of the corresponding letters), and so superior to that of the Visconti paintings (which show Fortitude as the slayer of the lion, rather than the controller of its jaws), tarot's Provençal origin remains, in my mind, unchallenged.
 

Richard

........Nor was it jewish in origin, tho many decks have added that aspect........
Why would people think that Hebrew letters on the cards indicate a Jewish origin, any more than English titles on the Trumps and Courts indicate an English origin, or astrological glyphs indicate that Tarot originally came from outer space? :D Rhetorical question. No need to answer unless you want to.
 

arya ishtar

I don't know where people get their ideas. Personally, I am an open-minded skeptic. But I would not have made that comment if i hadn't read so much about tarot and qabala and Egypt and been a little annoyed over the lack of proof...
 

Richard

I don't know where people get their ideas. Personally, I am an open-minded skeptic. But I would not have made that comment if i hadn't read so much about tarot and qabala and Egypt and been a little annoyed over the lack of proof...
Why be annoyed merely because correlations and parallels have been discovered between Tarot and Kabbalah and Egyptian mythology? It does not constitute proof of anything at all. However, cross-cultural parallels may enhance our visualization and understanding of certain concepts. I think what annoys a lot of people is that they don't want to expend the effort to find out what the hell it is all about.

ETA. The fact that the Kabbalah stuff may annoy some people is one of the advantages of keeping it secret, which the Golden Dawn tried (and failed) to do. Of course, then the fact of secrecy itself may be annoying to the same people, so it may be impossible to avoid annoyance and disapproval with respect to certain matters.
 

arya ishtar

I find the tarot in itself enough, without heaping layer upon layer of extra stuff on it. And i also don't care for the holier-than-thou attitude of some of its adherents. But what do i know, I've only been studying tarot for 20 years...
 

ravenest

I find the tarot in itself enough, without heaping layer upon layer of extra stuff on it. And i also don't care for the holier-than-thou attitude of some of its adherents. But what do i know, I've only been studying tarot for 20 years...

Hi again :)

I would really like to know what tarot is without the layers of stuff.

Could you please explain that to me ( keep in mind I consider numbers, meanings, , suit meaning and association, all those different strange picture on the cards that don't have a suit {and actually why are there two different decks minor and major in one tarot} and all that being effected by intuition as layers of stuff. )