BrightEye
In early decks like the Visconti the sequence of trumps is not clear or fixed. The Hebrew alphabet, on the other hand, is a fixed sequence of letters.
Oops - you did state your reason - thanks for pointing that out to me.gregory said:I think I did didn't I ? I don't know because I don't FEEL it is true, but I don't think there is - or is ever likely to be - enough evidence either way.
Ross, would you say this about any alphabet, or just the Hebrew?Ross G Caldwell said:We can "know" that Tarot was not originally based on the Hebrew Alphabet as well as we can know most things in distant history - by gathering evidence and drawing conclusions. There are many kinds of evidence, and many methods for evaluating it. In early Tarot's case, all of the evidence is silent on a connection with the Hebrew alphabet, and all of the methods of evaluating the evidence make it implausible that there was a connection.
Don't you think there is a certain symmetry in taking the deck as 40 numbered cards, 16 titled cards, and 22 that are both except for one that lacks a number and one that lacks a title?The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters; the standard Tarot deck has 21 ordered trumps and a Fool, which are often taken together as 22 Trumps.
What evidence do you have of its being coincidence? or is it an argument from silence?This is the only "connection", and is at the very least a coincidence.
If the inventor of the sequence noted it, then it can hardly be ascribed to coincidence, now, can it.Thus it cannot be ruled out as a logical possibility that either the inventor of this sequence of cards or an early interpreter noted the coincidence and found it meaningful in some way.
I am somewhat interested in whether or not you think my indirect theory irrational?Any disinterested historian can therefore say with complete confidence, as much as can be expected in history, that the Tarot was not originally based on the Hebrew alphabet. That's the only rational conclusion.
This is what indeed makes it unlikely for the connection to be direct. But another perfectly correct numbering system for those times is through their tree-letter 'equivalents', that is, with seven Hebrew semi-vowels and consonants correlated with their vowel-equivalents in bardic, and with three initially problematic correlations carefully reasoned out, namely samekh with Ng (its Canaanite form is ogham Ng* and was used as ñ in the Lycian alphabet of Anatolia), zayin with I (zeta was Zeus’s initial due to breakdown of D by I or Y), and teyt with Aa (by default, and by the fact that the crossed circle suggests the equator, as does Aa the palm):Kilted Kat said:I voted "no."
. . .
The correct system is this:
א =1
ב =2
ג =3
ד =4
ה =5
ו =6
ז =7
ח =8
ט =9
י =10
כ =20
ל =30
מ =40
נ =50
ס =60
ע =70
פ =80
צ =90
ק =100
ר =200
ש =300
ת =400