Marseille Wands

tedglart

Wands

Hi Sherryl. That's a good point about the highly debatable and inconsistent colour schemes in various decks. That would explode my idea about the yellow "joints" implying mental discipline. Like you I have some difficulty accepting the precise application of meanings to specific colours that we find in Jodorowsky's book, but I do like Enrique Enriquez's assumption of a poetic connection between objects of the same colour in a reading. It's another aspect of the language of repeated motifs that allows the cards of the Marseilles tarot to "talk" to each other in a way that is absolutely unique to this deck.
I like your idea of the way the joints decorate and draw attention to the batons, advertising their power. The batons would look more plain and perhaps less authoritative without the joints. Since they split up the batons into 4 sections I wonder whether they might have suggested to a medieval culture the moral direction provided by the 4 gospels, as well as the 4 elements that make up the 4 suits. There are 3s and 4s everywhere in the deck - triangles and squares - the Holy Trinity, and life on Earth? I'm not sure how this connects with the joints on the spokes of the Wheel of Fortune, which only divide each spoke in half. Any ideas about those spokes? There are lots of 2s in the deck as well - couples, man and woman, horses, jars, Sun and Moon, etc. Without the joint the spokes would no longer suggest a unity achieved by two separate entities. I also wonder about the barrel shaped object - which must have a name that escapes me at the moment - at the centre of the Wheel of Fortune where the handle is attached. Of course it looks like the axle of a cart. Maybe that's the only reason for it. But the way it is rendered as a small circle at the centre of a large circle seems significant somehow. Again, I wonder how it would effect our feeling about this card if the barrel was missing. Are there any other barrel-shaped objects on the deck? Or does it look like a big version of the coin in the Magician's right hand, or Coins in general. Earth = Fixity? The planet Earth is round and is at the centre of a spinning zodiac. In his left hand the Magician holds a baton. On his card the two objects - baton and circle - are disconnected, but brought together on the Wheel of Fortune. And "fortune" reminds me that there is gambling apparatus on the Magician's table. Perhaps there is suggestion that the "chance" represented by the Wheel of Fortune is not gambler's luck but something ordained.
 

tedglart

Wands

After a closer look, "barrel" at the centre of the Wheel of Fortune has 3 sections like the sphere on top of the Emperor's sceptre. I think in medieval times the world was thought to consist of three continents, usually depicted like this.
 

Sherryl

The planet Earth is round and is at the centre of a spinning zodiac. In his left hand the Magician holds a baton. On his card the two objects - baton and circle - are disconnected, but brought together on the Wheel of Fortune. And "fortune" reminds me that there is gambling apparatus on the Magician's table. Perhaps there is suggestion that the "chance" represented by the Wheel of Fortune is not gambler's luck but something ordained.

You have my head spinning with all the connections you're seeing. I never noticed the gold cuffs on the spokes of the wheel. In the Pierre Madenie deck they are close to the center, so the divisions aren't even. I wonder if they reinforce the spokes. I like to think there are bells inside that jingle as the wheel turns.

In this deck, the "barrel" in the center has striations on the outer surface that divide it into four parts (I think, I can't see the back side) and it doesn't resemble the Emperor's orb at all.

I like your idea that this card brings together the Magician's wand and round object. The Magician uses the wand to distract us so we don't see what he's doing with the round object in his other hand. In the Wheel of Fortune, everything is visible.The straight spokes keep the spinning rim firmly in place so it doesn't go flying off.

The TdM is loaded with numerical repetitions. If you read French, you'll love Paul Marteau's book on the TdM, as he counts every leaf, then the hash marks in each leaf and petal. Every tiny detail has significance for him.

As for myself, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and something having four segments is no more significant than my car having four wheels.
 

tedglart

Wands

As for the striations on the "barrel" (axle housing?) on the Wheel of Fortune, I try to look at the ink on the card as if the image is just a 2 dimensional shape. From that point of view the barrel is more or less circular. The Tower, for instance is actually 2 dimensional. Our mind assumes it has volume but our eye sees something flat. Maybe the two figures on the card are emerging from it into a 3 dimensional world. I usually work with the Flornoy Dodal. Do you prefer the Madenie? The expressions on the faces in that deck are the most charming of all. And there are some lovely poetic details in the Madenie that I don't see in any other deck.
Interesting about the jingling bells that you "hear" inside the cuffs on the Wheel of Fortune. Check out the 4 little round bells on the Fool's belt. We see 4 bells on this side of his body so there must be 8 bells in total on the whole round belt. The "music of the spheres"? The circuits of the 7 ancient planets (before the discovery of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) plus the eighth sphere of the fixed stars - which must be what is illustrated in the sky above the Star, card 17. So the Fool (or Everyman) is at the centre of the material universe. His belt is the belt of the zodiac. His body is the vertical axis
Unfortunately my French is not good enough to read Paul Marteau. Jodorowsky also likes to speculate about the numerological significance of every tiny detail. But, like you, I tend to think that sometimes "a cigar is only a cigar". The art of the TdM is powerful in the same way that a totem pole is powerful. I don't feel I need to take a microscope to the images to extract their essence. But I do like Enrique Enriquez's technique of identifying similarities shared by the cards in a reading. The mane of the lion on Strength is the same colour as the Hermit's beard and the flame coming out of the Tower. That implies that there is a connection between the three objects, and the mind of each client will work out the nature of that connection in a way unique to him or her. The mind is a meaning-making machine and by its very nature will seek to create a meaningful relationship between two or more bits of information that are presented together.
I work as a hypnotherapist, so I recognise some of the ideas that Enrique borrows from Milton Erickson, the great 20th century innovator in the field of hypnosis as a tool for therapy. One technique Erickson developed for establishing a hypnotic trance - in which the mechanical mind and our turbulent emotions are silent and receptive (like a cup) and therefore open to new ideas and experiences , with no ego-Emperor blocking the way like a traffic cop or argumentative Customs officer (sic) - he called the Yes Response. The therapist makes a series of simple observations about the weather, the colour of the wallpaper, whatever, that are obvious and irrefutable. This sets up a momentum of agreement in the subconscious of the client. That way, when a healthy therapeutic suggestion is made, which may not be obvious or irrefutable, the client is more amenable to it. The advertising industry perverts a lot of Erickson's ideas to sell us stuff we don't need. NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is a codification of Erickson's poetic use of language.
Anyway - I'm rambling - do you see how a tarot reading is like a session of hypnosis? The reader/therapist simply points out a series of "obvious and irrefutable" things about the cards, and then narrows the focus to draw attention to odd, unexpected similarities shared by two or more cards. Then when the Yes Response momentum has been established, perhaps a few less obvious observations or positive suggestions can be introduced into the reading. But this may not even be neccessary or advisable. The subconscious of the client is more sophisticated than the intelligence of the therapist and already knows exactly what is best for him/her, just as the body knows how to heal itself from a wound. The conscious mind of the client asks the question but his own subconscious knows the answer and will LOOK for it among the visual information that you provide. Like the "Aha" moment when you figure out what a dream means, or solve a crossword puzzle clue from the newspaper you threw out a week ago. In the jargon of hypnosis this is what is called a "transderivational search". It's what we do when we stare off into space. The cards in a reading ARE the dream. The reader doesn't need to psychoanalyse the client or even interpret the symbolism on the cards. The TdM is unique among tarot decks because there is a relatively simple language of repeated motifs, so that the cards seem to talk to one another and make puzzling connections that the mind interprets as a metaphor that has relevance to itself - a question or current obsession. None of the modern decks has that. Enrique has said all of this many times but I like to go over it in my own words to clarify it for myself.
The only problem that I have with Enrique's method of reading tarot cards is that he seems to be the ONLY person capable of doing it. He's a born artist with special training in graphic design, which makes him miraculously sensitive to visual patterns. And he's a natural showman with a genius for language. My own readings in his style seem awfully dull and pedestrian by comparison. It has changed how alert I am when I look at the world. But because he works from what is "obvious and irrefutable" to the eye, his style of reading is uniquely powerful. You just can't argue with what is there before your eyes once it's been pointed out. A client who is stuck in his life in some way and comes to a therapist for help is only seeing a fraction of the options open to him. See how similar this is to a tarot reading? All of these visual details are staring at him but he is not seeing them. It encourages him to look for solutions in his life that he has previously missed.
Just to see how his imagination works, I'd love him to publish a book of his "Favourite 100 Tarot Readings" in the same way that chess masters and poets publish their Best Games or Selected Poems. But I'm sure he wouldn't do it. Some of his observations and improvised brilliancies would be taken up by others and transformed into dogma, and that is exactly the opposite of art and creativity.
 

Sherryl

I usually work with the Flornoy Dodal. Do you prefer the Madenie? The expressions on the faces in that deck are the most charming of all. And there are some lovely poetic details in the Madenie that I don't see in any other deck.
The Madenie has become my favorite TdM, partly because of the faces, but also because I get a little tingle of magic from it, and I get killer readings for myself (haven't read for anyone else yet with it). Ordinarily I prefer Italian decks like the Avondo Brothers, and now Il Meneghello's Piemontese that I'm getting ready to review.

Interesting about the jingling bells that you "hear" inside the cuffs on the Wheel of Fortune. Check out the 4 little round bells on the Fool's belt. We see 4 bells on this side of his body so there must be 8 bells in total on the whole round belt. The "music of the spheres"? The circuits of the 7 ancient planets (before the discovery of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) plus the eighth sphere of the fixed stars - which must be what is illustrated in the sky above the Star, card 17. So the Fool (or Everyman) is at the centre of the material universe. His belt is the belt of the zodiac. His body is the vertical axis
I love the connections you make – like the fool's jingling bells as music of the spheres.

I just gave myself a reading with the Ancient Italian Tarot (Avondo Bros.) and was noticing the ornately turned spokes on the Wheel of Fortune. I wonder if the knobs on the TdM version are crude representations of this.

I work as a hypnotherapist, so I recognise some of the ideas that Enrique borrows from Milton Erickson, the great 20th century innovator in the field of hypnosis as a tool for therapy..... The subconscious of the client is more sophisticated than the intelligence of the therapist and already knows exactly what is best for him/her, just as the body knows how to heal itself from a wound. The conscious mind of the client asks the question but his own subconscious knows the answer and will LOOK for it among the visual information that you provide. Like the "Aha" moment when you figure out what a dream means, or solve a crossword puzzle clue from the newspaper you threw out a week ago.

I studied hypnotherapy briefly with an Ericksonian and wish I had gone further with it. It's very true that in a reading session we're trying to jolt the client out of the trance they are in and implant the suggestion that an alternate reality might be feasible. That aha! Moment is pure magic and what I strive for – when things bubble up from the unconscious and everything falls into place.

The only problem that I have with Enrique's method of reading tarot cards is that he seems to be the ONLY person capable of doing it. He's a born artist with special training in graphic design, which makes him miraculously sensitive to visual patterns. And he's a natural showman with a genius for language. My own readings in his style seem awfully dull and pedestrian by comparison.
Enriquez' methods have really opened my mind and have grounded me in the reality of the card, rather than my mental filing system of card meanings. But there is only one Enrique, no one else can read exactly like him; and I don't know if I want too. Sometimes he goes too far out on a limb with his associations. His word play is clever but, for my taste, it's too far removed from the card images.
 

tedglart

Wands

I'm looking forward to reading your review of the Il Meneghello Piemontese. The Avondo Bros. Ancient Italian Tarot is lovely to look at, but while I'm struggling to improve my "Enrique-style" readings - focusing on visual details rather than memorised meanings - the semi-abstract French TdMs are the only available option. I wonder if anyone on the Forum has ever speculated about the influence of those cards on Cubism. Andre Breton, according to Jodorowsky, was an afficianado of the TdM, and didn't he and Braque and Picasso drink at the same bars? The Star card in particular looks to me like Picasso could have painted it.
EE has added a new layer of sophistication to our appreciation of tarot, but at root he's first and foremost an artist. He just happens to have chosen tarot as his medium in the same way that a painter chooses paint as his medium. Readings are a small part of his larger project. His movement into concrete poetry is simply an extension of the way he looks at tarot cards and the way an artist looks at the world, i.e. recognising beautiful or humorous visual patterns and other meaningful connections that are staring us all in the face but are not noticed until an artist points them out.
I'm still thinking about the cuffs or knobs that decorate the wands/batons and wondering about their emotional effect, what they add to each card, how the batons would be different if they were missing. Apart from increasing visibility and therefore announcing authority, they make these simple "sticks" look more sophisticated, add extra weight to each baton, enable someone to grip them better, and make them more destructive as weapons. The contrast to the raw club presented by the Ace seems crucial.
I did notice and odd etymological detail. The spokes of the Wheel of Fortune are like batons and even have the same cuffs as the wands suit. The 6 spokes have the same "chi-rho" shape mentioned in an earlier post on this thread, i.e. the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek that appears on the church tabernacle. The "barrel" at the centre of the Wheel is called a hub, I suppose. But when I looked up the name given to this hub in an article on the making of cart-wheels, the technical name for it is the "nave", the same word used to describe church architecture. The French word for "hub" is the "sanctuaire", or sanctuary, where the altar is placed in a church. I quite like tripping over these Christian images that tie the deck together.
This is way off topic, but I never know what to make of the hand on the inside of the top of the skeleton's thigh on XIII. Any ideas? Maybe it doesn't appear on the Madenie - which I agree may be the great "deck of the future". As for all those hands and feet scattered about. Apparently, the severed hands and feet of prisoners of war were routinely lobbed over the ramparts by besieging armies during the Middle Ages. Very "Lord of the Rings".
How interesting that you studied hypnosis. Milton Erickson was such a profound and original thinker that I'm amazed he's not better known. Perhaps the forces in society that seek to hypnotise us do not want us knowing too much about it. Also I suppose hypnotism has a bad name and is thought of as a fringe discipline. But Freud himself was a hypnotist for ten years before he developed his own language-based approach. He was just not very skillful as a hypnotist. It's such a wonderfully versatile tool. I think it should be taught in schools, as should meditation. In fact, aren't they the same thing?
 

Sherryl

I wonder if anyone on the Forum has ever speculated about the influence of those cards on Cubism. Andre Breton, according to Jodorowsky, was an afficianado of the TdM, and didn't he and Braque and Picasso drink at the same bars? The Star card in particular looks to me like Picasso could have painted it.
I've often thought the Noblet cards look very cubist - you see multiple angles of one figure, and garments broken into fragments.
Breton wrote something called "Arcane 17". I think I have a copy of part of it in my files from a class on the subject. I believe he wrote it when he was in exile in the US during WWII, acting very grumpy and refusing to learn English.
I've heard that when many of France's artists and writers were holed up in hotels in the south of France during WWII waiting for Eleanor Roosevelt to arrange exit visas, they played surrealist games and games involving tarot. I'd love to come across a description of what went on in someone's diary.

I'm still thinking about the cuffs or knobs that decorate the wands/batons and wondering about their emotional effect, what they add to each card, how the batons would be different if they were missing. ...The spokes of the Wheel of Fortune are like batons and even have the same cuffs as the wands suit. The 6 spokes have the same "chi-rho" shape mentioned in an earlier post on this thread, i.e. the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek that appears on the church tabernacle. The "barrel" at the centre of the Wheel is called a hub, I suppose. But when I looked up the name given to this hub in an article on the making of cart-wheels, the technical name for it is the "nave", the same word used to describe church architecture. The French word for "hub" is the "sanctuaire", or sanctuary, where the altar is placed in a church. I quite like tripping over these Christian images that tie the deck together.
I find these Christian connections delicious, since, 99.9% of the people who ever owned a tarot deck were Christian, until my fellow pagans co-opted it for themselves.

This is way off topic, but I never know what to make of the hand on the inside of the top of the skeleton's thigh on XIII. Any ideas? Maybe it doesn't appear on the Madenie - which I agree may be the great "deck of the future". As for all those hands and feet scattered about. Apparently, the severed hands and feet of prisoners of war were routinely lobbed over the ramparts by besieging armies during the Middle Ages. Very "Lord of the Rings".
I've just looked at Heron's 1760 Conver deck and a few other decks, and I cannot for the life of me see a hand at the top of his thigh. There's a sort of triangular shape on his skirt, but I take that to be a fold or smudge, doesn't look like a hand at all. The only hand nearby is one sticking up out of the ground with the fingers near the back of the skeleton's knee, as if to tickle him. Maybe you can help me see what you see - what deck are you looking at?
I like the image of severed heads being lobbed, but I think the Death imagery is probably taken from the Black Death. That's when the Grim Reaper became popular in art. Bodies were not buried very deeply, so you had parts popping to the surface.
 

tedglart

Wands

Thank you for that juicy titbit about Breton and his fellow Surrealists playing games while waiting for visas. I'll definitely be researching that. Of course all the available material will be in French so what Google Translator comes up with should be a Surrealist Manifesto in itself.
The hand on the skeleton's thigh is clearly visible in the Dodal between the top of his blue stocking (which is a weird detail in itself) and his/her/its red loin cloth. I have been staring at the Dodal for so long that I tend to forget about the other decks. I believe it is also in the Jodorowsky deck but I'm relying on memory. I'll check. Why should a sexless skeleton need to be modest and wear a loin cloth/skirt? Although I suppose this skeleton still has flesh on its bones. I've never known what to do with that. Shouldn't the symbol for death be all bones? Maybe it implies that the prerogative of destruction belongs only to living beings - that death can only exist in a world of flesh? His spine reminds me, in the Dodal at least, of the necklace/rope for hanging the Hanged Man/chain of office around the neck of Justice and the Emperor. Those decks where the skeleton seems to have chopped off his own foot are pretty bizarre too.
Your alarming information about buried corpses resurfacing during the reign of the Black Death is a macabre form of resurrection, I suppose. Making fun of materialistic interpretations about the notion of us coming back with perfect bodies on the Day of Judgement? The identity of the heads on the ground are a puzzle. I can understand the guy with the crown - perhaps the guy at the top of the Wheel of Fortune. But who is the woman? The babe on the right on the lovers card? Any other candidates? Shouldn't she have a crown too if the moral is that "death comes to us all"?
I've only recently started to become interested in the Christian content of the TdM. A doomed project to try to see the deck through the eyes of someone of the period, but it's fun to speculate. I like the way EE dodges this debate by treating the tarot as a work of art rather that a history capsule or a myth kitty. I started another thread about the Star card as Mary Magdalene, but no-one has commented yet. Small wonder. I guess the only answer to any of this is, "Hmn, maybe." EE again: "The purpose of the tarot is to tease. (Two "t"s.)" At some point I feel I may have to start incorporating "meanings" into my readings again. EE seems to have an inexhaustible imagination relying solely on visual information to generate metaphors, but it might be more fun for me to go back to the ocean of intellectual information (astrology, cabala, etc) on which to cast my subconscious adrift. I like the way Lee Bursten writes, and the way he tries to blend EE's "purist" approach with, what would you call it, "traditional" techniques (Rachel Pollack). His only touchstone seems to be: what method is most fun or produces the most useful readings.
 

Sherryl

The hand on the skeleton's thigh is clearly visible in the Dodal between the top of his blue stocking
OMG! I see it clearly on the Dodal - a hand from another dimension copping a feel!
On the Jodo and Conver deck there are three lines curving around the top of the triangular shape which could be fingers cupping it (whatever "it" is).

Shouldn't the symbol for death be all bones?
One of the traumas of the Black Death was the reappearance of partially decomposed bodies from their shallow graves with rotting rags hanging off them. The Visconti-Sforza card gives a taste of that.

The identity of the heads on the ground are a puzzle. I can understand the guy with the crown - perhaps the guy at the top of the Wheel of Fortune. But who is the woman? The babe on the right on the lovers card? Any other candidates? Shouldn't she have a crown too if the moral is that "death comes to us all"?
I've always assumed the heads were the Emperor and Empress. I think she has a crown on the Dodal. I wish it remained in later decks. Another shocker from the plague, if you were a commoner, was realizing that the nobility were just as vulnerable as you. Aristocrats were seen as nearly a separate sub-species, closer to heaven than the rest of us and immune from most of the problems that plague commoners.

I've only recently started to become interested in the Christian content of the TdM. A doomed project to try to see the deck through the eyes of someone of the period, but it's fun to speculate.
This is an important project for me. I'm trying to get to the essence of tarot by asking, what would the average guy on the street in mid-15th-century Milan or Ferrara see in these images?

At some point I feel I may have to start incorporating "meanings" into my readings again. EE seems to have an inexhaustible imagination relying solely on visual information to generate metaphors, but it might be more fun for me to go back to the ocean of intellectual information (astrology, cabala, etc) on which to cast my subconscious adrift.
Unless you happen to be Enrique, not having an anchor in some kind of system is the road to madness.
 

tedglart

Christian content

If you're interested in the historical background to the early tarot then you probably already know Michael.J. Hurst and his website http://pre-gebelin.blogspot.ca/ Like his idol Michael Dummet he can be rather withering in his contempt for anything that smells vaguely "occult" when discussing the tarot, i.e the "meanings" that spark ideas for readings. I can enjoy his site without necessarily agreeing with him. Anyway, Christianity itself is occult if it's investigated in the right spirit. Isn't that what "Meditations on the Tarot" by Anonymous (Tomberg) is all about?