Rosanne
In 1579 John Northbrooke published a treatise called Spiritus est Vicarius in Terre
It was a tract against dicing/Dancing/Plays/cards/various Sunday Pastimes.
Some plays of that time were Taming of the Shrew, Timon of Athens, The comedy of Errors and various plays called the Apocryphal Plays.
Some of the dancing at that time were Elizabethan Allemandes, Country or Folk,
Italian and French Court dances etc.
Of cards I guess there were Playing cards and as we have not any examples of TdM, but know they were around and decks like the Sola Busca.
If Richard Cavendish in his 1975 book The Tarot is correct about Northbrooke's tract I would like to discuss what he says.
What I am curious about, is although Cavendish is most likely meaning 'Modern theory' as the occult use after 1700- Northbrooke was not meaning that in 1579.
So I am asking for a discussion on 'Pagan Wisdom' at the time of the tracts writing; before the occult Tarot so called re discovery after 1700.
There is a very interesting paper on Gambling and Religion here...
http://www.camh.net/egambling/issue20/pdfs/03binde.pdf
~Rosanne
It was a tract against dicing/Dancing/Plays/cards/various Sunday Pastimes.
Some plays of that time were Taming of the Shrew, Timon of Athens, The comedy of Errors and various plays called the Apocryphal Plays.
Some of the dancing at that time were Elizabethan Allemandes, Country or Folk,
Italian and French Court dances etc.
Of cards I guess there were Playing cards and as we have not any examples of TdM, but know they were around and decks like the Sola Busca.
If Richard Cavendish in his 1975 book The Tarot is correct about Northbrooke's tract I would like to discuss what he says.
I take this is about playing cards as other figures are not mentioned, though I note that Paul Huson has included Hector in his yet to be published deck- a TdM. Hector was a Trojan Prince- a Pagan. I would have more understanding if Northbrooke had said "Kings and his Court" not separate as Tarot has Kings in the 22.For a long time it was quite widely believed that cards had been invented by the Devil. St Bernardino of Siena, a celebrated Franciscan preacher, denounced them as a creation of the Devil in 1423 and the puritanically- minded all over Europe followed suit. In an attack on Gambling and theatre going published in England in the 1570's, John Northbrooke anticipated the modern theory that cards contain the pagan wisdom of the ancient world: The play of cards is an invention of the Devil, which he found out that he might the easier bring Idolatry amongst men. For the Kings and Court cards we use now were in the old times images of idols and false Gods: which since they would seem Christian have changed into Charlemagne, Lancelot, Hector and such like names...
What I am curious about, is although Cavendish is most likely meaning 'Modern theory' as the occult use after 1700- Northbrooke was not meaning that in 1579.
So I am asking for a discussion on 'Pagan Wisdom' at the time of the tracts writing; before the occult Tarot so called re discovery after 1700.
There is a very interesting paper on Gambling and Religion here...
http://www.camh.net/egambling/issue20/pdfs/03binde.pdf
~Rosanne