The History of Things

Rosanne

Hi Amber Lamps.

Firstly my name is Rosanne pronounced ROwZan not Rose- Anne. Small thing really,dropping an E, but important to me.

I understand what you are trying to say, but I ask of you this....
Please give me an example of this series of images in the order we use today before 1425, in any medium. An abjab is not acceptable.
I think I can cope with a dump truck. It has happened before, I have not heard a rumble of wheels as yet.
I actually do not mix with anyone (as far as I know) that hates Tarot.
As Ellen de Generes says......Good bye and be kind to one another. I like that.
~Rosanne
 

Debra

As for when did cards begin to be used for fortune-telling? No doubt by individuals in an ad hoc, lottery, sortiledge sort of way from the moment the game appeared. There is no evidence of a widespread systematic form of reading with the cards however until the 18th century.

I agree. It seems to me that in the context of an entertainment where skill and luck intersect, that "reading in" meaning to the cards that one is dealt--at least the symbol-laden trumps--would be hard to resist. I don't know how important it is whether divination with cards is systematic, or just "choose one, let's see what comes up." I have a number of playing card decks annotated for fortune telling. For someone wondering "Where is my life going?" or "What happens next?" reading trumps is certainly easier.

Tarot history (I mean, the history of tarot history) is much like the history of religious institutions insofar as political and personal agendas abound, including motives to both invent and conceal. So it's understandable (well, to me) when, deserved or not, claims to objective expertise are met with skepticism.
 

Rosanne

What you say Debra is true, and funny as it seems- there is a History of 'Tarot History'.
, and in the small pot that is 'Tarot History' people have such precious views of their own importance and reputation, that they have alienated many with worthy views. I think it is called having a Bombastic personality. Or maybe 'big fish' in 'little pond' syndrone.

So for me, who believes it is most likely that simple fortune telling was there, once an image was there, as Kwaw says 'in an ad hoc fashion' then finding concrete information about the game points to the same thing.

Why should that be important to me? Well in a way, customary usage gives credence to something I believe in.
The ancient paintings of the hunt in caves, today is called by sportsman 'visualization of winning technique' lol takes the hocus pocus out of it when one looks at it that way.
That is my goal. Demystification. Some hocus pocus people will not like that either.
~Rosanne
 

Zephyros

Even if there was a secret fortune-telling tradition with Tarot that existed without leaving any trace or trail, it still may not have been "spiritual" as we define it today. Those were superstitious times, everything was a bad omen, all could be fixed by a round of confession at the church (or the actual purchase of indulgences). In addition to rewriting history, there may also be a trend of "paganizing" things that weren't, bringing earth-based faiths into the fold, when those who probably divined were perhaps superstitious Christians. I doubt, with all the divination techniques available, Tarot would even be important enough to risk doing in it secrecy for fear of persecution or death. These weren't that Marranos of Spain, after all.

Besides, history isn't at an end. Even if there was no tradition before those times, a tradition has evolved since then. Why should that be less valid for those seeking validation in antiquity?
 

kwaw

I agree. It seems to me that in the context of an entertainment where skill and luck intersect, that "reading in" meaning to the cards that one is dealt--at least the symbol-laden trumps--would be hard to resist.

You would think the trumps would lend themselves particularly to reading a meaning into them, but of the examples we have of fortune-telling with cards pre-1780's they are all with ordinary playing cards (as far as I recall).

There are some early Italian tarot parlour games described in which one describes the character of another player, or makes a verse about them, according to a trump drawn - but that is not really fortune-telling as such...
 

Ross G Caldwell

You would think the trumps would lend themselves particularly to reading a meaning into them, but of the examples we have of fortune-telling with cards pre-1780's they are all with ordinary playing cards (as far as I recall).

Don't forget the Bologna Tarocchino divination discovered by Franco Pratesi (WPC, pp. 48-50; Paul Huson, Mystical Origins of the Tarot, calls this "Pratesi's Cartomancer (1750)" in his list of divinatory meanings (passim)). The reason for the dating to "1750" is explained in WPC, p. 50: the term "fantesca", the female valet, is used for that figure in the suits of Denari and Coppe; this term dropped out of use in Bologna before 1750, giving a terminus ante quem for the document.

There are some early Italian tarot parlour games described in which one describes the character of another player, or makes a verse about them, according to a trump drawn - but that is not really fortune-telling as such...

Obviously it could tend towards revelation or prediction, but that would depend on the mood of the maker and receiver of the verse. Those details are not preserved in any source I know, unfortunately.

Like with ordinary playing cards, it is reasonable to think that divination with Tarot cards only happened where those kinds of cards were in common use as normal cards. Divination is always a secondary use of why the cards were made, until specially made divination decks, like Lenthall's, were invented in the late 17th century.

The earliest suggestion that cards could be turned to fortune telling comes from about 1450, in a document I suppressed and concealed in 2010, in the article "El Juego de naypes of Fernando de la Torre: A Fifteenth Century Card Game" (The Playing Card 39.1 (July-Oct. 2010, pp. 35-56), where Fernando says that with his new card game (a Spanish deck with poems and a single, extra trump card), besides all the normal games, "puédense echar suertes en ellos á quién más ama cada uno, e á quién quiere más" - "we could tell fortunes about who loves who and also about who they love the most" (p. 42).
 

kwaw

The earliest suggestion that cards could be turned to fortune telling comes from about 1450, in a document I suppressed and concealed in 2010, in the article "El Juego de naypes of Fernando de la Torre: A Fifteenth Century Card Game" (The Playing Card 39.1 (July-Oct. 2010, pp. 35-56), where Fernando says that with his new card game (a Spanish deck with poems and a single, extra trump card), besides all the normal games, "puédense echar suertes en ellos á quién más ama cada uno, e á quién quiere más" - "we could tell fortunes about who loves who and also about who they love the most" (p. 42).

Yes, it was terrible of you suppressing that by publishing it;) I remember several of us discussing the translation of that phrase in a secret cabal of historians (i.e., on another tarot forum open to all).

I can't remember off hand - does the Bologna Tarocchino keywords list include trumps? i.e., It's not just a latin suit of ordinary playing cards?
 

Richard

Even if there was a secret fortune-telling tradition with Tarot that existed without leaving any trace or trail, it still may not have been "spiritual" as we define it today. Those were superstitious times, everything was a bad omen, all could be fixed by a round of confession at the church (or the actual purchase of indulgences). In addition to rewriting history, there may also be a trend of "paganizing" things that weren't, bringing earth-based faiths into the fold, when those who probably divined were perhaps superstitious Christians. I doubt, with all the divination techniques available, Tarot would even be important enough to risk doing in it secrecy for fear of persecution or death. These weren't that Marranos of Spain, after all.

Besides, history isn't at an end. Even if there was no tradition before those times, a tradition has evolved since then. Why should that be less valid for those seeking validation in antiquity?
Agreed.

Another point. Instead of desperately wishing that historical evidence were other than it is, even to the point of accusing historians of intellectual dishonesty, there is another avenue open.

Among many Tarot fortune tellers there is a tendency to be very superstitious about the cards, attributing to them properties such as vibrations or resonances ;). Some even use the cards mediumistically, communicating with the dead and such like. People also believe that the answers in a spread come from God or a spirit guide.

Why not turn all this superstition and quasi spirituality to a more creative use and devise an even more wonderful origin for Tarot than mere physical history? For example, perhaps there are spiritual entities in the universe who wished for humans to have the Tarot. As with other such phenomena, such as the Bible, it needed a vague historical origin. Thus these spiritual beings controlled the evolution of the Tarot deck by planting certain images in the minds of the creators, who were led to believe that they thought them up on their own as clever ideas for Trump card designs.

Or something like that. It's a lot more exciting than dry as dust history, which only scratches the surface anyhow. })
 

Rosanne

Shame on you LRichard! History is not dry as dust.......some writers of History are dry though.

Enough of cabals of deceit and alien Tarot. Things are always taken the wrong way.....
A famous one is the saying 'You cannot make bricks without straw'......well of course you cannot- But the Pharoah did'nt tell the Hebrews to make bricks without straw- he told them to gather their own straw, instead of him providing it. He was not oppressing them with dumb edicts, he was tiring them out. Still today it is used as an excuse when you cannot find some essential material to finish an article, or one thinks someone has told you to do something impossible.

So- I do not think I was online in 2010, I certainly did not know of the "El Juego de naypes of Fernando de la Torre: A Fifteenth Century Card Game"
That is very interesting.
The Spanish (and hence South Americans)seem a lot more prone to supernatural beliefs- which some call superstitious. Or is that just an impression? Maybe I should say Catholic countries seem very superstitious.
~Rosanne