XVI - La Maison Diev

jmd

X V I - La Maison ? Diev

Here we come to one of those cards which has had the most pronounced impact on my early historical interests - piqued by comments penned by Fred Gettings many years ago, and which I mentioned in another thread on Marseilles Decks (in the Tarot Decks section). As I mentioned in that thread:
Fred Gettings's Tarot: How to read the Future (originally published in 1973 under the far better title The Book of Tarot) has a number of quite interesting material [...]. Unfortunately, he makes some quite important mistakes. For example, he has a photo of a sculptural bas-relief from a Cathedral which clearly depicts the Tower. He mentions that it is from the Reims Cathedral... it isn't [if it is, neither I nor locals could locate it!] (I 'wasted' great time a few years ago making a detour to Reims to check it out for myself, only to be disappointed. When I arrived back in Melbourne, checking other sources, I presume the photo shows a depiction from the Amiens Cathedral ... I'll have to check this when I am next in that area of the world).
If anyone has access to either of these Cathedrals, especially the Amiens one, digital photos would be highly welcome :)!

Discussion on this card will, I'm certain, take, as usual, numerous twists and turns. Also, as with XV the Devil, this is another card which is not part of the known Visconti-Sforza decks (either lost or never made), but which is, in my opinion, an essential and integral part of the Tarot.

As I'll attach in another post, the version of this card in my favourite Marseilles deck - the Camoin - is disappointing: though there may be an oral tradition which claims a door from which the lower figure falls out of, it usually remains ambiguous and hidden from the viewer's side (I also mention this in my Aeclectic Camoin deck review).

As catboxer will undoubtedly discuss in greater detail, other depictions arise in early decks - which we had already mentioned in the early discussions (I - the Magician) in this wonderful study group.

Attached is the (restored) 1650 Noblet Tower card.
 

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jema

just adding a link to the painting by Pieter Bruegel (wich of course is a lot later then the tarot card)

http://w1.910.telia.com/~u91024037/babel.jpg

the story of the tower of Babel always fascinated me as a child and it is one that made me really upset with God. what could we possibly do to make him so mad and jealous of us that he had to divide us all like that.

the interesting thing with this painting is that the fall of the tower is not a sudden one but a constant degeneration. we see how the structure is built upon althought parts of it is falling and part are already in ruins.
in the case of the tarot card the Tower - the fall is sudden and violent.
but i still see them as linked these two images.
i also see the parallells to the first sin - the eating of the fruit in the garden of Eden - that made us like God - free to think and see what was right or wrong.
this is the second sin - to think we really ARE like God and we (or our structures) are struck down and the punishment/reward is a sense of individuality. we are yet again human and we are diverse and we can revolt and go our own ways and we are no longer God's sheep. we are free to follow which ever shepard we choose.

sorry for rambling:)
i hope someone get what i am meaning - my english feels too limited today.
 

catboxer

jema:

No apologies necessary; your English is fine (a hell of a lot better than my Swedish), and the illustration of the wonderful painting by Pietr Brueghel the Younger is indeed highly appropriate. I believe Richard Cavendish used the same picture to illustrate the concept of the Tower in his book "The Tarot," although it's been years since I've seen the book.

The general configuration of the building in the Brueghel painting as well as some of its specific details leave no doubt that the Roman Colosseum was the painter's model. Brueghel had either traveled to Italy and seen the building or worked from pictures of it he had seen, and the content of the picture parallels the lesson taught by the Tower card: even the mighty Roman Empire is nothing more than a cherry blossom in the context of eternity, and the vanity of humans is casually and nonchalantly brushed aside by the hand of God.

However, as has been pointed out before, this trump is not always a tower, and none of the other 22 cards under consideration has seen as much variety in presentation or travelled under as many different names as this one. During the first two centuries of tarot, it was variously called "the Fire," "the Arrow," "the Lightning," "the House of the Devil," "the House of the Damned," "the House of God," and "the House." Decker, DePaulis, and Dummett report that in some early texts it is called "Hell," and they offer the opinion that this was probably its original meaning, "although it possibly may rather have represented purgatory" ("Wicked Pack," p. 46). Its presentation has included, besides the lightning-struck tower, simply a tower standing peacefully undisturbed with no human figures present, a burning building with corpses on the ground in front of it, a hell mouth spouting flames, into which a devil is pulling a man or woman, and a young man being struck by lightning.

As with so many other tarot concepts, the tradition of iconography established by the Marseilles family of decks firmly and permanently encoded the picture (but not the name) into the tarot vocabulary. The usual interpretation relates somehow to the shock of revelation. I like to think of it as the trauma that accompanies the learning of an unpleasant truth, keeping in mind that knowing the truth, even if we don't like it, is preferable to living under illusions. And of course, the meaning already alluded to is never far away: pride and vanity end in disaster.

Of all the representations of trump XVI, the one I find most interesting is in the seminal Marseilles deck of Jacques Vieville. This pack is unique in that it's the only Marseilles deck I know of that doesn't always follow the designs of the Cary Sheet (not to be confused with the Cary-Yale Deck). It also does not have the names of the trumps printed at the bottoms of the cards, a practice begun by the Marseilles cardmakers and generally faithfully adhered to. Vieville's card shows a youth walking through a lightning, fire, or hail storm toward a tree under which sheep are sheltering. To me, this indicates that the meaning of this trump, like its pictorial elements, has evolved over time, was characterized by a lack of clarity early on, has been a source of confusion, and alone among the trumps was not clearly conceptualized by its originators.

This should be an interesting thread.
 

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Kaz

cary yale visconti

kaz
 

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Kaz

visconti sforza

kaz
 

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Kaz

soprafino

kaz
 

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jmd

[the question mark appearing in the title of this thread is because the Forum did not recognise my mid-positioned dot (option-8 on a Mac)]

A question which needs to be seriously considered, in my opinion, is whether the Vieville depiction is:

  • [a] a deviation/alternative from/to an already existing tradition;
    whether it is an addition to a previously existing sequence (eg, the Visconti-Sforza, from which the Tower is either missing or never existed); or
    [c] whether it is a re-design of a card which was known to be of the series, but missing.
Each of these is certainly possible.

What I find highly fascinating is the third of these options. The Vieville deck certainly seems to attempt to stick a tradition, yet many parts are poorly executed. It seems that it is highly probable that the Vieville drew from a tradition, but had to design a pattern for possible missing cards... given that one of the discussed images or its meaning may very well have been of destructive thunderbolts from the heavens, whether a building or open-air scene may have been forgotten.

With the Marseilles, however - and I do not consider the Vieville to be a Marseilles deck, but rather one similar to it in many details - we have a far more potent portent! The Lightning-Bolt struck House of God - to combine a number of appelations.

Attached is the Marteau/Grimaud version.
 

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catboxer

jmd:

Your observations are, as usual, very well put. And since trump XVI in all true Marseilles decks follows the precedent established in the Cary Sheet (the sheet's Tower card is fragmentary, but enough is visible to confirm that it showed the familiar lightning-struck building), Jacques Vieville's tarot would have to be considered a sort of semi-Marseilles product.

Besides the three possibilities for the origin of Vieville's number XVI you mentioned, there is one other: that Vieville was using a lost model similar in most respects to, but not altogether identical with the Cary Sheet's cards. Considering the great variety among Italian patterns, pictures, and sequences, it seems likely that there are some which are irretrievably lost.

Vieville's celestial bodies -- Star, Moon, and Sun -- also differ from those of a true Marseilles deck. The Star and Sun use elements I've seen on obscure Italian cards, but the Moon appears to show a woman sitting by a tree, spinning wool as she is showered by the Moon's droplets. As far as I know, I've never seen anything like this picture anywhere else.

This is a fascinating and singular deck. By the way, have you seen this on the R. Somerville site?

[11081 Tarot Jaques Vieville (duplicated as a Fortune Telling pack) by Boechat Freres, 1984. £9.50]

Somerville also carries the Heron Conver 1760. Can I get that same deck from the Camoin site that the order button at the bottom of your review calls up?

Allah Prochaine,
C. Boxer
 

jmd

How tempting it is to play with the signature you used in your last post, catboxer! - let me succomb for a moment - I'll justify it by its relevance to this card!

('A la prochaine' means 'until next time' in French)

XVI La Maison Diev is described, at least by Gettings, as being similar to a representation on a 12th century Cathedral in northern France, in which two figures are seen to be falling from a collapsing minaret. Certainly a comment both about their view of Islam, and their view of Allah as more truely the Devil of the previous card, to which are chained (pro-chaine?) the two smaller figures.

I will probably be able to scan the image over the next week, and show what I am but poorly describing here.

With regards to your question, I bought my Heron during a visit to France, as I do not know if the Camoin site would provide the Heron Conver deck (but I doubt it). The Camoin site does, however, have a limited print of the Conver, on thick cardboard, which is, in my opinion, worth obtaining - and available through the Aeclectic (order) link.

I am particularly interested in your mention that the Vieville is in print, as I was not aware of this, and will order a copy!

so thank you.