The Power of Myth

Cerulean

Ah gentle souls...

"The fact that Court de Gebelin's conjectures made sense to him (and to many others) is not due to any historical connection of the cards to Egypt, but to the fact that the universality of the concepts in the cards parallels a large part of Egyptian mythology (which emerged from the same collective source as the cards). ..Among many others, Crowley eagerly embraced this parallelism, knowing full well that it was not a matter of historical origins."

It is gently smiling, when I read how wonderfully stunned Gebelin was when allegorically his mind had a flash of recognition and he thought that he saw "Osirus triumphant" in the Chariot card...and how he felt that associated this Egyptian allegory of what he visually perceived and how a card game he happened upon could hold a long-lost allegorical image that he really saw was an image of wisdom, perhaps a lost truth.

"...It was time to rediscover the allegories which it had been destined to preserve, and to reveal that, among that wisest of peoples, everything, even including games, was based on allegory, and that those sages knew how to change the most useful knowledge into an amusement and make it into more than a game..."

...He (Court de Gebelin) did not pretend to have derived his knowledge from any ancient tradition, orally transmitted. Quite the contrary: according to him, no such tradition existed: for long ages no one had suspected the truth until he himself had with his genius perceived it and uncovered it...

From Dummett & Decker: The Foundation of Tarot Occultism, page 58
A Wicked Pack of Cards

The ability to recognize and use a poetic parallel is a very creative, very human invention. How the first Italian families paraded in triumph in chariots in their marriages and war-worn victorious histories as tribute to their allegorical heritage of "Roman" warriors did--as did Romans did somehow repeat the triumphant ride of chariots as did the Egyptian Pharoahs in their tomb paintings--yes, there was a general truth in being perceive an allegorical parallel, the images that Court de Gebelin recognized and 'rediscovered'.

We might today say that he had a genius moment and a flash of art recognition of a historic allegorical parallel. I'd say his poetic imagination recognition can be loosely generalized as 'genius' and an imaginative triumph.
It was a huge, huge leap that had some half-obscured images of the Egyptian royalty held some resemblence to tarot images--at least in the Chariot, we might see a loose connection.

His overall conclusions were wrong that the trumps were the true wisdom of a golden age that sages and savants hid in plain sight. But they did know that in the Victorian age. Although past associations did also assign their own mythologies to the tarot. For us, we tend to keep assigning psychological perceptions to the parade of images in cards and cartomancy.

It took a few generations and lots of examination of tarot mythology over and over for us twentieth-to-twenti-first century folks to 'rediscover' what tarot writers have written over and over... again and again. Probably our love of psychology and tarot allegories will be seen indulgently by future generations as a kind of folklore of our ages...

You might say one beginning of tarot mythology was an odd circumstance that led a Swiss expatriate pastor with an assumed courtly name to associating these images of a childish, or other folk pastime of human addiction and fate/fortune to be elevated to the realm of a lost wisdom. Isn't that the stuff of myths and romance enough? And it is history...as I now know it right now. Maybe that will change...

And we, who love modern tarot allegories for what they have become through generations of the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenti-first century--we are making the prophesy that we can encode and associate wisdom with old game images and to be true, for some of us. Why not? It's an exercise of creative imagination that is most humanly artful and fun...

This part of the divination and occult history of this 'tarot myth' is true. And we get to be a part of it!

Thanks for the fun questions...what lovely discussion and insights I've read and am checking out.

Cerulean
 

Nevada

Teheuti said:
It is historical *fact* that even people who once knew better, are willing to ignore history in the face of tarot's myths. After the TarotL History Information Sheet first came out, I noticed that most books and many websites were paying attention, but there seems to be a lot of back-sliding.

So, my question for everyone is: What is the power of myth that people keep returning to it? It's not just to 'sell' more - I'm asking about what's behind all that. The tarot myths fulfill a certain need in the human psyche. What specifically do you think the tarot myths in particular are addressing at the deepest level?

I see this as a historical question, because if historians don't have some understanding of the urge that keeps these myths historically reappearing, then we won't ever understand how to address the issue clearly, and we'll never learn from history - the history of tarot myths and their continual re-emergence!
I find that, although I respect the historical end of things, I don't have a particular interest in the history of the Tarot. I use it for divination and introspection, and for those purposes I find the archetypal images important. I can see why for game playing they're simply something interesting to look at while one plays. For me they represent important mythical and archetypal ideas, human processes and situations, that have perhaps less to do with material history than they have to do with the history of the human psyche. That's how I use them, for their psychological appeal, and I try to stay out of the arguments of their material history.

Psychologically, I think we need, and have always needed, these images and what they represent, just as much as we need myth, folk and fairy stories, and the more archetypal plays, operas, movies, music and literature. Story and human shared experience are important to human beings, and they come to us in many forms. For those of us who love Tarot for introspection, it represents one of those many forms.

I was drawn to your thread because of the title, the Power of Myth - which made me think of Joseph Campbell. To me the Tarot is one aspect of what he wrote about, the Hero's Journey and all that. Campbell, as a student of Jung, wrote of that human need for archetypal representations, and he said it all much better than I ever could. :)

So I follow my bliss, with Tarot, and leave its history to the historians.

One thing that tickles me about history, though, is that, like science, it's always changing. New discoveries (of and about old things) continuously change our limited picture of what actually happened back when. New details get added and cause shifts in our perspective of history. Some things remain solid and reliable. Others change and keep us needing to go back and review what's known now. It's a tricky thing to discuss unless one stays right on top of it. It's easy for myths to get passed on, because they generally change so little. Their details change but their themes remain similar and reliable, while history is more work to keep up with.
 

AJ

Teheuti said:
There's been a recent controversy ]


. What specifically do you think the tarot myths in particular are addressing at the deepest level?
without reading what has already been said, because I'll just be intimidated by the big brains here and not say anything...

my thinking is humans are always more willing to believe something if "I read it somewhere", "I heard it somewhere" precedes their thought process/thinking/response to a query.

tarot knowledge is a perfect example and my experience was:
buy a tarot deck..which turned out to be the Druid Animal Oracle...

Read the companion book, buy another deck
read the LWB
And go from there to skimming the web.
I like research and went deep as I could, but for many people the search ends here in tarot talk where we see myths resurface at least once a week.

It's easier to repeat something than search for the truth, particularly in subjects where there is little history to be found.
It is also easier to give the easy answer then explain a deep subject so someone who probably isn't interested anyway.

?

Now I'll read what the smart folks had to say.
 

Teheuti

Nevada said:
One thing that tickles me about history, though, is that, like science, it's always changing. New discoveries (of and about old things) continuously change our limited picture of what actually happened back when. New details get added and cause shifts in our perspective of history. Some things remain solid and reliable. Others change and keep us needing to go back and review what's known now. It's a tricky thing to discuss unless one stays right on top of it. It's easy for myths to get passed on, because they generally change so little. Their details change but their themes remain similar and reliable, while history is more work to keep up with.
Wow! I think you make a really good point. The myths are timeless. History is constantly changing, with the assumptions made by a new set of facts totally upsetting everything we thought we knew before. It can be really exciting for an insider but very confusing for those who don't keep up.
 

Teheuti

AJ said:
It's easier to repeat something than search for the truth,
True.

particularly in subjects where there is little history to be found.
This is a huge misconception - despite the number of books published in recent years that talk about Tarot's history and several forums and websites that discuss history. However, people have to want to read them. It would help if tarot authors were willing to find out more about the background of the subject they are writing about.

How do we change this misconception?
 

Titadrupah

Teheuti said:
This is a huge misconception - despite the number of books published in recent years that talk about Tarot's history and several forums and websites that discuss history. However, people have to want to read them.

How do we change this misconception?

One tendency I've found after years of reading forums and books, is that many individuals that sustain or research historical views are discreetly or openly manifesting that any association of the pack of cards beyond it being a game or a courtly gift, is JUST the despicable work of con men and lunatics. I sometimes don't understand the passion involved in proving that the 22 two letters of the Hebrew alphabet were not in the mind of the original creators, to mention one example. What is interesting for me is the question Why did that happen when it finally happened? (Just because the numbers coincided? How simple.) Historical facts are neutral, but can be used to hide a personal agenda.
 

Teheuti

Titadrupah said:
One tendency I've found after years of reading forums and books, is that many individuals that sustain or research historical views are discreetly or openly manifesting that any association of the pack of cards beyond it being a game or a courtly gift, is JUST the despicable work of con men and lunatics.
I think that attitude is changing now that we have documented evidence of the use of playing cards in divination from as early as the 15th century, plus lots of other kinds of uses that are described - tarocchi appropriati, witchcraft spells, etc. The cards were obviously used in a lot of interesting and experimental ways.

I sometimes don't understand the passion involved in proving that the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet were not in the mind of the original creators, to mention one example.

You can't prove a negative. All historians can say is that there currently is no known indication of such a connection being made before Le Monde Primitif. Until there is it is not under the purview of the historian.
 

Debra

Also, games have magical qualities, partly because of the element of chance. Maybe perhaps also because when a child learns to play a game, it is a big step in the development of consciousness because they can deal with a hypothetical representation of a reality.

In the Judeo-Christian traditions, God doesn't play games. We can play a game about God (with tarot cards), but the monotheistic God has absolutely no sense of humor. So tarot as merely a game isn't really "mere" then.
 

Huck

Titadrupah said:
I sometimes don't understand the passion involved in proving that the 22 two letters of the Hebrew alphabet were not in the mind of the original creators, to mention one example. What is interesting for me is the question Why did that happen when it finally happened? (Just because the numbers coincided? How simple.) Historical facts are neutral, but can be used to hide a personal agenda.

Teheuti said:
You can't prove a negative. All historians can say is that there currently is no known indication of such a connection being made before Le Monde Primitif. Until there is it is not under the purview of the historian.

Well ... common Tarot history (Dummett, Depaulis etc.] manifested, that Tarot existed in the form with 22 trumps inclusive Fool in ca. 1450, mainly based on the existence of the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi, which looked nearly complete. This wasn't in harmony with the development of Christian Kabbala, which is assumed to have started in 1486 with the theses of Pico de Mirandola. This was more than 30 years later, and according this Kabbala unlikely influenced the development of the 22 trumps idea.

The 5x14-theory in contrary stated, that the Pierpont-Morgan-Brergamo Tarocchi likely had been a 5x14-deck in its first stage and was later transformed by the addition of 6 trumps. This theory is based on the generally accepted condition, that the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi
was made by two different painters. Common Tarot history has stated, that this were "replacement cards" for some defect cards, the 5x14-theory in contrary presented arguments, according which this would be highly unlikely. Further ... some evidence was found, which contributed to the direction of the 5x14-theory, a document in 1457 speaks of 70 Tarot cards (70 = 5x14) and not of 78 cards.

From the documentary level there is no clear evidence for the 22 trumps inclusive Fool till the Boiardo Tarocchi poem (this has the common 4x14+22 Tarot structure, but uses quite a different outfit of the cards). Unluckily this poem wasn't really dated, different opinions ranged between 1461 and 1494. Considerable research was done to this point, and the final result was, that the most suspicious date would be January 1487 ... this cause the reason, that in January 1487 Lucrezia d'Este, the illegitimate daughter of Ercole d'Este was married with much festivities and much other contributed poems. In the Boiardo Tarocchi poem the highest trump presented an honor to old Roman Lucrezia, For this reason it was assumed, that the poem was done then - this was a new datring suggestion.

With this a strange coincidence was observed. Pico de Mirandola, the kabbalist with his famous theses, had been cousin to Matteo Boiardo, the poet. Pico de Mirandola published his work in December 1486, just one month before the Tarocchi poem.

If now Boiardo had been really the first, who used the deck structure 4x14-22, then the old counter argument against any kabbalistic participation ("Tarot was too early") would have been become obsolete.

But, anyway, Boiardo, if he really made his poem in January 1487, might have done so, cause the general Trionfi decks already had changed to this form (but evidence is missing). Also it's strange, that Boiardo had made a far different deck than the usual Tarot cards.

However - the possibility exists, that Boiardo invented this deck-form 4x14+22 and influenced the general Trionfi development to follow him. Boiardo - like his cousin - spoke Hebrew and had also interests in this direction.