Mark Filipas - The Pasteboard Masquerade

kwaw

venicebard said:
However, none of these words are attested anciently, according to my source, so the question is: did you get these from medieval word-lists, or modern?

Jastrow [the same source Mark uses for most of his words], words to be found in the Targunim, Babylonian Talmud, Yerushalmi and Midrashic literature. The reason they may not be in your source is because they are Rabbinical Hebrew (and closer thus to the language as it was spoken), not Biblical.

Kwaw
 

venicebard

So I don't have to keep going to the Lingua-Franca thread, here is Mark's site address:
kwaw said:
Now:
kwaw said:
Six out of the twenty I find, how about you?
And:
venicebard said:
I will try to answer you in good faith on the morrow: I'll go through them all a second time and give you my honest take.
Here goes.

Discarding a half-dozen or more purple terms, I find that in context (that is, considering the weight of so many well-matched items given this order) there is only one weak section, namely 2-5. Before going there, let me say I don't quite grasp 'thread' and 'eye of needle' for VIII Justice (not having my cards with me), nor 'sea' for X Fortuna (unless it refers to wavy 'ups and downs'). And XIII could use the remaining 4 unattested ones: 'crown', 'hand', 'foot', and 'turf'. And XVIII LaLune could use the unattested 'conjunction', 'baying at moon', and 'castles, rooks' and perhaps a word for either 'crustacean' [sp?] or 'galley', whichever we take the creature in the foreground to be. And I am of course disappointed that he gives no N-word for 'strapped-on wings' under XIIII Temperance. But I will say that VIIII L'Hermite ('Old Man') does not need 'time', since it has 'elder' -- and I like his list for this trump as it relates it directly to Aesop, a trained bard (or rather a name into whose corpus many genuine bardic fables have been gathered).

Now, as to 2-5. It is rather interesting that this is the weak area, as 2 and 5 are merely reversed from bardic to Hebrew: B-h2-b5, and H-h5-b2. This reversal is important, as it appears as part of the pattern encoded into the order of the elder Futhark of runes . . . but that's another story. And 2 and 5 surround 3 and 4, which are good and evil in Sefer Yetzirah and the two one switches to Hebrew numeration for when laying out the levels of valence in the old bardo-Qabbalistic system inherited from the very-ancients . . . also 'another story'. But anyway, yes, I find these four very weak, although I will say that it is only natural that some common ground be covered between 2 and 5, in that both are religious figures: e.g. both wear the mitre, which is Phoenician beyt, not heh (note under heh 'headdress' includes also the meaning 'crown').

Moreover, I am finding (having only had this 'Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon' less than a year, else I'd be kicking myself for only confirming it at this late juncture) that the original structure of Hebrew is based primarily on the bardic significance of the letters (confirmed so far only for gimel, teyt, nun, and dalet but expected, now, with regard to the rest) and not, of course, on which trumps they fall on by their alef-bet numeration. So understand that I see this new (to me) revelation of the Jewish-lexicon implications based thereon (Mark's theory) as a thin overlay to something much more profound and striking, and deep. [The fact that so far only I appear to see it makes it I guess what you would call a ghost: the ghost of civilizations past.]
 

venicebard

OH, and I certainly don't buy his VV 'hook' as Cupid's arrowhead (nor 'poker' as its shaft).
 

kwaw

venicebard said:
But I will say that VIIII L'Hermite ('Old Man') does not need 'time', since it has 'elder' --

YVM – LIGHT, TIME, DAY, SEASON, PERIOD,
YVMNA –THIS DAY, THIS LIFE (IE, THIS LIFETIME)
YChYD – INDIVIDUAL, ONLY, SINGLE; ONE DEVOTED TO A SCRUPULOUS MANNER OF LIFE, A LIFE OF SELF-ABNEGATION;
YChYDY – SINGLE, SINGULAR, ISOLATED, A BELIEVER IN ONE GOD
YFO – TO BRING ABOUT, TO BRING TO LIGHT, REVEAL, LIFT UP, RAISE, TO SHINE, SHINE FORTH OR OUT, CAUSE TO SHINE, SEND OUT BEAMS, TO SHOW THYSELF, LIGHT
YShYSh – OLD, VENERABLE, ANCIENT, AGED ONE, OLD MAN
YShRA – UPRIGHT MAN, FIRM BELIEVER, RIGHTEOUS
YShYMVN - DESERT, SOLITARY, EREMITE.

Kwaw
 

Rosanne

Not that you will believe me VeniceBard- but I read all your posts- then re read them. Your studies soar and sometimes above my head for sure. Are you saying that Hebrew (therefore early proto semitic/phoenician)written phonemes is based on a prior bardic form of written phonemes? My heart likes the idea of a previous civilization. The trouble I have with this is that human language has between 20 - 50 sounds if you exclude clicks and whistles. English has about the highest range.(excluding say Chinese with tones of same sound) But the signs of the sounds can be reduced by more than half to get something usable in written form. So are you saying- the Hebrew sound (phoneme) covered by "G" for example has the same meaning as the sound "G"in bardic form? Could this not be a. Coincidence or b. Bardic came after not before? ~Rosanne
 

kwaw

kwaw said:
AVVLTh - FOOL

BDYM – CONJUROR

GBYRH – MAIDEN, QUEEN MOTHER (Bride and Mother of the Lord. A title of the Shekinah, often imaged dressed as a ‘Bride' of the Lord’)

DBR – LEADER, TO LEAD [THE FLOCK], COMMAND; DBRH – TO LEAD, ALSO BEE, BIBLICAL HEROINE LEADER , AND PROPHETESS [DEBORAH - FEMALE LEADER], DBR – LEAD THE FLOCK, THE SWARM; DRIVE, COMMAND; LEADER

HGMN – GENERAL, HGMNYA –COMMANDERSHIP, COURT, ADMINISTRATION, HGMNYVT – STAFF OF COMMANDERSHIP,

VDAY, (VYDY) – THOU THE KNOWN ONE, WELL KNOWN, DISTINCTION (CONFESSION, FORGIVENESS [BY THE HIGH PRIEST], BENEVOLENCE)

ZVG – JOIN TOGETHER, COUPLE, MATCHMAKE, TO WED, JOIN IN WEDLOCK, PAIR, SET

ChBH – TO BE BELOVED, HELD IN HIGH ESTEEM, HONOUR;ChBSh – TO SADDLE, TO HARNESS [TO BRING UNDER CONTROL, INTO OBEDIENCE].

If a vessel is marked with a Teth, it means:
TBL – SUBJECT TO A TITHE [A MEASURED SHARE]; TRVTNY – A BALANCE FOR WEIGHING ACCURATELY.

YVM – LIGHT, TIME.

KVSh – SPINDLE; KRKR – TO MOVE IN A CIRCLE; ROUND; KLYL – CIRCLE, CROWN, TO CROWN.

LYBB – TO STRENGTHEN, MAKE COURAGEOUS ("the king took his son and made him courageous by making him attack the (tamed) lion"); LBYA - LION.

MYTH – PENALTY OF DEATH ; MYTVTA – DYING; MYTR – CORD, ROPE; MYTNA – DEATH, ROPE, DRAWING TOWARDS ONESELF.

NBLH – NATURAL DEATH; NFSh – DEATH.

SVD – DELIBERATION, COUNCIL, MYSTERY, SECRET (where the wine enters (where there is intemperance) counsel [SVD] leaves; where the wine has left (where there is temperance) deliberation [SVD] enters. He that is abstinent [temperate] is granted the counsel [SVD] of divine wisdom.
SVK – TO POUR; SVFQA – LARGE WINE VESSEL; SChT – CAUSE TO FLOW; SChF – TO TILT OVER, INVERT (“like two cups inverted one over the other:” :- v. SChYFA ‘AN INVERTED VESSEL’

OBVT – CHAIN, ROPE used to yoke (“at first the evil inclination resembles a thread of cobweb, and at the end it is like a wagon rope”); OBVDH – IDOLATRY, AN IDOL, A HEATHEN DIETY, STRANGE SERVICE/LABOUR (BENEATH ONE’S STATION); OBD – SLAVE, SERVANT, TO WORSHIP AN IDOL,

FAR – TO CUT THE CROWN OFF; FGVM – SEMI-CIRCULAR TURRET; FGYOH – STRIKING AGAINST.

TzVF – FLOOD, INUNDATE, CAUSE TO OVERFLOW; TzBO - HOSTS (of heaven = stars)

QBOA – PROCLAMATION OF NEW MOON DAY, BY WHICH THE LUNAR CALENDAR IS REGULATED. QDR - black, blackish, dark, darkened, heavily, mourn.

RShF - BURNING HEAT; RVMVLVS / RVMVS – ROMULUS AND REMUS THE TWO ORPHANS FOR WHOM THOU DIDST APPOINT A WOLF.

ShFVT, ShVT – JUDGEMENT; ShFR – TRUMPET

ThBL – WORLD

Kwaw

That is not meant to be an exhaustive list of course, just one or two words for each card to show that different alphabetic sequences are possible, nothing exceptional or beyond what may be expected by chance. Each of the above is extendable, and probably you could create a completely different order again if you wish [a gebelin order may be, starting alef - world and working backwards, or anything to suit your own fancy]. Here from a previous thread is a more extended list for another of the cards, shin - judgement:

"Grace is deceptive,
Beauty is illusory;
It is for her fear of the Lord
That a woman is to be praised."

Proverbs 31.30.

Proverbs 31 ends the book of proverbs and the last 22 verses are an acrostic, each verse starting with a word beginning with a letter of the alphabet, alef to tau. The above paragraph is the letter Shin paragraph, the verse beginning with the word ShQR meaning 'deceitful'. Positing an alphabet sequence starting alef-fool the letter Shin corresponds to the card 'Judgement'. Some words beginning with Shin which relate to the Judgement card are:

ShVFR - trumpet
ShVF - to blow
ShVFT - judge, judgement

So the words for Trumpet, to Blow and Judgement all share the same three initial consonants shin - vau - pei [Ph or F], which are also the first three letters in ShVFRA, which means 'Grace'.

The root of both ShVFRA [grace]and SHVFR [trumpet] is ShFR - to cleanse, make pleasing, to beautify; conciliate, harmonize. As in Sotah 11b [Talmud]where it says :"The Lord sent an angel from on high who cleansed them and made them beautiful, like a midwife that cleanses a child." So we may say the blow of the trumpet not only awakens, but is simultaneously an act of Grace that like a wind cleanses away the dust of the earth, the stain of our sins; like a midwife that cleanses the newly [re]born; and makes us beautiful before G-d.

A word for dust, ShChQ, also means heaven, sky, cloud:

Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together;I the LORD have created it.

So we may perhaps see a parallel between the cloud as ShChQ in the upper world in which the Angel (ShNAN) appears and man the sleeping corpses (ShKDA) awakened by the call of the Angel in the cloud (ShChQ) above from the dust (ShChQ) of the earth below. There are a couple of words beginning with Shin that refer to the underworld or the grave:

ShAVL – the underworld, grave, pit:

The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. 1 sam. 2:6

ShQT – pit, grave:

Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit:I have found a ransom.
He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.
To bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living.
Job 33:24 / 28 / 30.

The name of the letter ShYN itself is the root of the word ShYNH - second coming, and of ShYNA – sleep, ShYNAN angel.

ShAVL [and /or ShChVThA] - netherworld, pit, grave [pit, grave];
ShKDA - asleep, corpse;
ShVLL - Naked;
ShV - change, reverse, something bewildering;
ShY - repeat, do a second time; ShYNH - second coming;
ShMYA – heavens;
ShChQ – sky, heaven, cloud, dust;
ShYNAN – Angel;
ShVFR – trumpet;
ShVSThG - a piece of cloth (the flag);
ShShR - Painted red;
ShVF – to blow;
ShVFT – judgement;
ShVFRA – Grace (divine love whereby we are reborn).

Of course you will find that you can find a lot of words for some cards and fewer for others; and these will be different in different orders, order a for example having more words to match the world than order b, but order b or c having more words for hermit or some other card - at least this is what I would expect to find by chance. One order will of necessity have more words overall than the others, but it would need to be significantly greater to demonstrate anything beyond chance.

Kwaw
 

venicebard

kwaw said:
That is not meant to be an exhaustive list of course, just one or two words for each card to show that different alphabetic sequences are possible, nothing exceptional or beyond what may be expected by chance.
. . .
The root of both ShVFRA [grace]and SHVFR [trumpet] is ShFR - to cleanse, make pleasing, to beautify; conciliate, harmonize.
. . .
The name of the letter ShYN itself is the root of the word ShYNH - second coming, and of ShYNA – sleep, ShYNAN angel.

ShAVL [and /or ShChVThA] - netherworld, pit, grave [pit, grave];
ShKDA - asleep, corpse;
ShVLL - Naked;
ShV - change, reverse, something bewildering;
ShY - repeat, do a second time; ShYNH - second coming;
ShMYA – heavens;
ShChQ – sky, heaven, cloud, dust;
ShYNAN – Angel;
ShVFR – trumpet;
ShVSThG - a piece of cloth (the flag);
ShShR - Painted red;
ShVF – to blow;
ShVFT – judgement;
ShVFRA – Grace (divine love whereby we are reborn).
Okay: I don't buy your list in your Quote. An example of why (beyond my looking for the deeper meaning in the bulk of the ancient 3-letter roots, via the proto-bardic current [Rosanne forces me to use more exact terminology]) is GBYRH, whose root has the sense rather of strength or power, I believe, and yields as many (or more) masculine forms as feminine.

This list above does not grab me either: how can you interpret the battle taking place in trump XX as "ShFR - to cleanse, make pleasing, to beautify; conciliate, harmonize"? (And doesn't ShVFR specifically refer to a ram's horn trumpet?)
One order will of necessity have more words overall than the others, but it would need to be significantly greater to demonstrate anything beyond chance.
Kwaw, I'm going to basically agree with you. If your point is that Mark has not proven or demonstrated his hypothesis beyond reasonable doubt, you are certainly correct. My enthusiasm for his hypothesis is based simply on his having given some basis for thinking it likely, and it was already clear to me that any exoteric application of trumps to Hebrew letters must surely follow the Fool-last sequence, else all would be offset by one (contradicting their sequential use as chapter-numbers in the Book of Revelations, for instance). [The Fool-first scenario has but one attraction for me, that being that 13-ash, the World Tree in northern lore, gets its proper trump.] But yes, you are right in saying the issue (of Mark's hypothesis) is not settled.
 

kwaw

venicebard said:
Okay: I don't buy your list in your Quote. An example of why (beyond my looking for the deeper meaning in the bulk of the ancient 3-letter roots, via the proto-bardic current [Rosanne forces me to use more exact terminology]) is GBYRH, whose root has the sense rather of strength or power, I believe, and yields as many (or more) masculine forms as feminine.

Not asking you to buy anything VB - I don't 'buy' yours either. My point is it is all an accident of the richness of language anyway, there is nothing to 'buy' apart from the process: so take the process and apply it to which ever system suits you. There isn't one true way, at least none that has remotely approached the requirements of proof; although people seem to be seduced by the elegance of these self-referential systems into believing there is.

Yes - GBVRH - geverah = strength, name of the sephiroth on the feminine side of the tree (H the feminine ending), the left hand of god and of fire and of judgement (considered 'feminine' in Jewish kabbalistic tradition, which is often seeming counterintuitive for people of non-jewish cultures).

If you don't believe there is any relation to divine grace and the resurrection thats fine by me, I certainly don't feel in any position to argue about the details of such specific christian doctrines in all their complexities and variations from one sect to another. The reference to grace is because the post was originally in a thread on the subject of grace, and I refer you to the discussions there:

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=18800&highlight=kwaw+grace

Kwaw
 

venicebard

Rosanne said:
Are you saying that Hebrew (therefore early proto semitic/phoenician)written phonemes is based on a prior bardic form of written phonemes? My heart likes the idea of a previous civilization. The trouble I have with this is that human language has between 20 - 50 sounds if you exclude clicks and whistles. English has about the highest range.(excluding say Chinese with tones of same sound) But the signs of the sounds can be reduced by more than half to get something usable in written form. So are you saying- the Hebrew sound (phoneme) covered by "G" for example has the same meaning as the sound "G"in bardic form? Could this not be a. Coincidence or b. Bardic came after not before? ~Rosanne
I am delighted beyond measure you still speak to me, Rosanne (even if in Sinaitic, yuk yuk). Let us call it proto-bardic, as I simply mean the strand or strands (from the same rope) of tradition surrounding letters that yielded the bardic tradition of Ireland and Wales by the first millennium C.E. and extends back with ogham to the early Bronze Age, showing kinship with Tifinag and Libyan (which are themselves closely related). Egyptian hieroglyphs show kinship to this current (which carries us back pretty far), and the fact that hieratic shapes exist that are very close to proto-Phoenician and have the same sound (save samekh, which is s in Hebrew, ks in eastern Greek, and surely comes [unbeknownst to 19th-century scholars] from the hieratic for 'wick of twisted flax', an h or ch sound in Egyptian) make it more likely the Habiru who resided in Egypt for a time would have adopted hieratic shapes including some used only in transcription of foreign words than that the consequential Phoenician alef-bet derived from the scratchings of laborers in the desert to the northeast, only one agreed-upon example of which exists after a century of effort by its enthusiasts.

Now, phonemes. The tree-letters (w/ P for ogham's Ng and with an initial order B-L-N-F-S rather than ogham's B-L-F-S-N) have all seven of the sounds classified as 'doubles' in Hebrew attached to the bottom half of the year, with only M intervening at libra: D-T-K-M-G-P-R-B, with R 13th (tree-month) and thus free to return to libra upon reduction to 12 (signs). These (minus M) are the stops, R being rolled (a repeated stop). That Hebrew has hard and soft versions of them merely emphasizes their corruptible nature (and man's). Vowels in the eastern and southern Mediterranean area all (or almost all) hardened into consonants, a sort of hardening of the arteries, and yet this does not preclude kinship between the individual letters, as their 'rebirth' in Greek demonstrates. Vowel-equivalents are: A-alef, O-ayin, U-vav, E-heh, I-zayin (Gr. zeta being erosion of D by I or Y), Ii-yod (mistletoe/loranthus), and the one that is a consonant in all but Graves's reconstructed complete (22-letter) sequence, Aa-teyt/theta -- all confirmable by solid argument, though as phonemes consonants, of course, are not vowels.

It is the extremely simple phonetic scheme below that preserved the set of 22: the round is the tongue, and it sits in a mouth turned towards heaven (using Mark Filipas's transliteration except for bardic vowels).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - M

--

--

--

P - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S/Sh - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - B
- - - - - - - - - - - - - Tz - - - - - N
- - - - - - - - - - - H - - - - - - - - - - L
- -
- - T - - - - - - U - - - - - - A- - - - - - - Ii - - - - - - - D
- -
- - - - - - - - - - - O - - - - - - - - - - I
- - - - - - - - - K - - - - Q - - - - E - - - - G
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R/Aa

The S on tip of tongue becomes F for pagans (beyond tip of tongue), and Q has replaced A at virgo, while P and D trade places in the calendar (for reasons I won't go into here).

Phonetic changes then of course obscured the above pattern, yet its residue can be traced (through letter-shapes and tree-symbolism). In a sense phonemes shade from one to the next without partition (as is obvious with vowels), yet just as the round has a finite number of 'nodes' (12), so does speech according to (proto-)bardic analysis. Hope this has helped.
 

Rosanne

Thanks VeniceBard, That was a clear statement that I could grasp. Either my understanding of you has grown, or your long screeds of explanation, you have pared down to become clearer. I am glad I have been persistent.
make it more likely the Habiru who resided in Egypt for a time would have adopted hieratic shapes including some used only in transcription of foreign words than that the consequential Phoenician alef-bet derived from the scratchings of laborers in the desert to the northeast, only one agreed-upon example of which exists after a century of effort by its enthusiasts.
I have often wondered exactly this, or that those Habiru miners were unschooled; much like the idiots who tagged my white car with blue expletives.If my car was found thousands of years later, they would consider it pre-english, and based on an obscure stick language that did not have vowels. Fortunately, the words did not look complete and what they were rudely telling me to do was missed by the local population :D (I hope)
The mouth in the sky hypothesis, makes far more sense to me than the cauldron of some other of your posts. If you look at the signs of the zodiac and the names that have come down to us- it is amazing that the names cover the sounds of language. Like a lexicon in the sky hehehe.
Back to the subject. I think the TdM is most likely a lexicon, but not like a Abcedarium of things on the image- but more like a rebus for ideas, to make statements like the 'Grace' one Kwaw talks about. I think it had an order or sequence for memory aid and it is the sequence that Mark Filipas has seen, not necessarily cues of names on cards of things. I could do that with Italian on the Baggatel/aleph card in the Tarrocco Milanese- it makes no sense to do this unless it was describing in a mutual language like LF of the sequence describing the cards. If it jerks the mind to think of a statement that was pertinent at the time- like emblems of the age, then I would agree with the sequence. The mouth in the sky does not give me enough order to see the sequence. I will plod on, and prod you from time to time. ~Rosanne