15th Century Italy: How confident are you?

Fulcanelli said:

Perhaps If they were written as late as Yates suggests, there was no intention of deception, as your comment seems to imply.

Just a thought.

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I was really joking when I said deception (did I actually say deception? - sorry must read my original post. Edited to add, no, I said "masquerading" - with the implication of something or someone wearing a mask - not always with the intent to deceive I think.) But it wasn't meant to be pejorative, more a piece of lightly intended irony. However, it does seem as though the Hermetica was a Greek work from 2-3 century AD that claimed to be much earlier, and Egyptian.

However, I haven't yet had time to read the information that John added, and as I understand it there is now a theory that the Hermetica as we know it may indeed have drawn from an earlier work. But as I say, I won't be able to read more for some time (very busy writing rather than reading right now).

Hi Ross,
thanks for taking the time to respond at length.
I find myself eager for an elegant epistemological dialectic between these two approaches. ie: 'historical' & (what we are calling) 'philosophical'. This is probably not the opportune astrological moment to embark on such a venture, however... I will let it simmer in my head.

I will say though, that I have pretty much always regarded Tarot as an artifact from (what Henri Corbin termed) the Imaginal realm, or Alam al-Mithal
that aggregates a historical parallel in 15th c. Northern Italy trionfi.

And of course, it continues to morph, as the dictates of Imagination demand.

Peace,
-John

interludi at the opera: Mundus Imaginalis

"Humanity would be led back to its true home in the realm of the imagination where it would be liberated to live in mythic time and no longer be incarcerated in the doomed prison of historical time... (less) a new heaven as an imaginal earth."
http://www.magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/90/brimstone.htm

"The mundus imaginalis is our true home, which we are once more beginning to see and to experience directly. Again, as Avens has said: “Only soul (the imaginal realm) is not reducible to anything else and so constitutes our true, ontological reality” "
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/articles011.html

baba-prague said:

I was really joking when I said deception (did I actually say deception? - sorry must read my original post. Edited to add, no, I said "masquerading" - with the implication of something or someone wearing a mask - not always with the intent to deceive I think.) .

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Hi Baba Prague,
Might Tarot also be considered as an Art that masquerades as a Game?

-John

Or is it a game that masquerades as art?

Or can it be both?

I think we can be certain that tarot has often been regarded as something playful - though that leaves an awful lot open to interpretation, doesn't it?

We may be getting a little too far off the original subject of the thread though?

For me personally, I believe the images of tarot have been with us for thousands of years; I can see things that look 'like' Tarot as far back as the Phoenicians or Idionysus/Bacchus. That does not mean I see the actual Cards of Tarot that far back. In saying that, I believe there was a model for Tarocchi prior to the 15th century, that we no longer have physically.
If you look at Art images that portray Tarocchi, you get about somewhere about 1400-1450. Those Artworks have a commonplaceness about the game in the paintings, that does not shout NEW GAME illustrated here. Even a letter in 1450 asking for trump decks indicates that they were about, in various degrees of quality.
So for me, I think the model of the cards of Tarot where known in the 1300's.
They were probally pasteboard and easily corruptible. I believe they were 5x14 suits, and I think they may have come to what we now call Italy from the direction of France with the return to Rome of the Pope. Inherent in this, was a general lampooning of the Roman Catholic church, by the ordinary Joe Citizen and Moorish influence via Spain. So to answer the question 'Am I confident that Tarot started in the 15th centuary in Milan, by a young 15 year old girl who loved Cards'? No I am not. ~Rosanne

Assume Nothing ~ Suspect Everything

Cool Rosanne!

My first question here would be... was there ever
such a place even as 15th century Italy to begin?

And then "confident" might as well just say "sold"
so far as buying into the idea~ in the first place.

I see a need by some people to reduce Tarot thus,
to define it and diminish it until it has no meaning~
and then of course, why not just use Golden Dawn
attributions since attributions are arbitrary anyway.

For me the answer is~ I won't bow to assumptions.

I think it can be proved that the 15th Century Italy existed...

and that it is the first time tarot (as a deck of cards) is mentioned, exibited, discussed.

I'm only sold or confident because all of the historical data points to then.

I'm VERY willing to look elsewhere, elsetime... just point me in the historically verifiable direction.

best,
robert

Now that's a good basis to perhaps begin to check our own preferences and views. As Fulgour says, 'assume nothing, suspect everything'.

Of course, the 'assume' and the 'suspect' can here be read in many ways.

Many early Tarot-like images, disparate (ie, simply as imagery), of course arise in times far earlier than Tarot itself. For example, representations of the cardinal virtues, and descriptions, occurs in ancient times.

This shows that the influences on European soil is at once not something that arises instantly nor in a vacuum, but that its fruits reflect the myriad impulses working in either popular imagination or the specific interests of the creative culture.

Tarot's earliest extent decks (and partial decks) that includes specific Atouts imagery that has come to be characteristic of Tarot are northern Italian. Is that an assumption? only in the sense that much evidence suggests they are, including stylistic design, documents, and earliest known location of extent decks. Should this be questioned? of course, but a questioning mind is also open to the clearest possible evidence presented.

Non-atouts cards of course occurs in Mamluk lands, and that precedes tarot. And imagery, as mentioned, also precedes Tarot.