I was experiencing some difficulties with the concept of TdM as the Ur-Tarot, but I think the whole question is now clearer to me, so I’ll finally dare to post here.
The Ur-Tarot is not a material reality, but a concept. And this by no means lessens it! I don’t think any Ur-phenomenon can be material. I think that when it is materialized, it becomes a demonstration of itself – which is not the same. Here is where I place the TdM: as the more adequate presentation of the Ur-Tarot we have. Not necessarily the first ever, but simply the most adequate we have at present.
Darla wants to know why.
Well, all I can say is this: There are several religions, and each of them has a way of presenting the path that might lead a man towards God. There are spiritual schools, not exactly – or not at all – religions, which also present their own path for mystical union and spiritual fulfilment of Men. I believe Tarot also presents a path. I don’t know if it is a Royal Way or a minor trail, I don’t even know if it is complete, in the sense that it eventually leads directly to the Divine, or it is partial, and at a certain point we will have to catch another train if we want to continue our journey. Anyway, each true path (there are lots of false ones) has a “perfect” structure underneath its concepts, which is the hallmark of the divine idea from which it issued. If it didn’t issued from a divine, pristine idea, then it will never take us to the divine realms, but that is another story. If Tarot (and not TdM) is a true spiritual path, than it also includes such perfect structure. A structure to which every station of the path can be related to, as a sort of road map, so that we can understand the nodal moments on our evolution as universal, no matter the tradition we are in, because – another thing in which I believe – all those structures are ultimately one, common to any religion or any spiritual path. What is that I see in the Tarot of Marseilles? I see the more adequate presentation of Tarot’s structure, essentially. Where do I see it? In the fact that its archetypes are tremendously pure and intense, directly referring to the most basic and powerful symbols that form the substrate of man’s psyche.
Now, do they have to come to us in medieval clothing or in crude and archaic traces? No, of course not. I like them this way, but those beautiful major cards Oswald Wirth created are a great idea, and by no means a sacrilege... And Major Tom’s Tarot de Marseilles could be another answer for those who dread the medieval look! All this to say, it’s not because they are ancient that they represent the purest archetypes of mankind, it’s because they are primal, they belong to the deeper layers of our psyche, those layers that, being so powerful, undiluted, and primeval, were able to shape and form the rest of our human structures: our mental processes, our emotional responses, our instinctive attitudes.
I myself believe in this: if I am to choose Tarot as a path for seeking spiritual knowledge, than I am into Marseilles. But this, of course, has nothing to do with the relative value of TdM and other decks are divinatory tools – though the divinatory use of the cards is deeply connected to their spiritual study, of course ( ora et labora ...).
Silvia