MikeH
Thanks for the translation of the hexameters, Ross. No, one cannot deduce much from that. Nor does it matter much, except not to rely too much on scholars' conclusions from dubious unquoted evidence
Despite that caution, I have been reading Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, and want to try him out as an authority. Much of the book is not in Google Books, at least not that I can find. His general perspective is to minimize Plethon’s influence. However he is enough of a scholar (as opposed to a polemicist) to provide facts; and these facts lead me in the opposite direction. One line of thought, from Plethon to the Milan-based tarot, goes through Filelfo and would include Alberti, Malatesta, and others not versed in Neoplatonism. Another goes through Bessarion, Ficino and the revival of Proclus, Plotinus, and pseudo-Dionysus.
Here I will focus on the line of thought going through Filelfo etc, as that is where I think I might at least know where I am going.
FILELFO AND PHILOSOPHY
First, I think Woodhouse misled me as to Filelfo’s philosophical sophistication. Rather than spend time retyping long quotes from Hankins' main discussion of Filelfo, I will just post these pages—it is all relevant--, summarize, and add more quotes.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-APxZ-cdVAw0/TnmmmlKe6sI/AAAAAAAADik/R481d5tt17c/s1600/hankins90and91.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tM_7GTGbyVA/TnmmmnQI6JI/AAAAAAAADis/LlgsrKQFYtw/s1600/hankins92and93.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jaVcLTm7YrA/Tnmmm60wQ3I/AAAAAAAADi0/vpU7u9hrT2c/s1600/hankins94and95.jpg
Summary: Filelfo studied classical philosophy all his intellectual life. In outlook he could be described as an eclectic whose “sources were predominantly Stoic, Stoic, Middle Platonic, and Augustinian,” Hankins says. We can look at Hankins’ footnotes, pp. 93-94 for examples: Augustine, Dogenes Laertius, Boethius, Simpicius, Porphyry, Cicero, pseudo-Plutarch, Proclus. He translated Plato’s Euthyphro probably “around 1430,” Hankins argues (vol. 2, p. 407). He also translated three of Plato’s letters “1439/1440”—just the time, of course, of Plethon’s visit to Italy. Hankins has nothing but praise for Filelfo’s translations:
Filelfo’s orientation toward Middle Platonism seems to me the most relevant to the images of the tarot. Of the Middle Platonists, the two most famous were Apuleius, in Latin, and Plutarch, in Greek. Since Filelfo was also a man of letters, in fact was court poet to two dukes and wrote “grossly obscene poetry” (Hankins p. 91), it seems reasonable to me that he would have been attracted to Plutarch’s essays, even if he didn’t quote from them in his De morali disciplina. Plutarch wrote Middle Platonic allegories with much Greco-Roman mythic imagery, of which the most relevant are On Isis and Osiris and On the Face in the Orb of the Moon.
I actually see lots of opportunity for Plutarch’s essays in the Milan-based tarot, from the Cary Sheet to the Marseille. To give details would take me too far afield. If you go to “Bianca’s Garden” at THF and do a search in that forum for “Plutarch,” 14 posts come up, mostly by me, relating Plutarch to particular cards. In the “Research” forum there, see the first 5 posts, which are also mostly by me. Cary Sheet examples are the Popess, the Star, and the Moon. (On Aeclectic, see my post on the Star at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=1968456&postcount=37.) In Noblet and after, many cards fit something in Plutarch. Before reading Hankins, I had no suspicion that this orientation might have gone back to Filelfo.
FILELFO AND PLETHON
Then there is the question of Filelfo’s contact with Plethon. It is clear that Filelfo respected Plethon philosophically. Hankins says
In addition, we know that Filelfo read Plethon’s De Differentiis closely. Hankins says,
Plethon, by his own account, wrote De Differentiis in Florence. See e.g.John Monfasani, George of Trezibond p. 202, http://books.google.com/books?id=qi...q=George of Trebizond de differentiis&f=false)
So he could easily have given (in person) or sent (soon after) a copy to Filelfo.
FILELFO, PLETHON, AND THE PRISCA PHILOSOPHIA
Hankins in one place describes Filelfo’s views in terms that I think probably shows the influence of Plethon. It is on p. 93, one of the pages I posted earlier, but it is worth seeing by itself. For Filelfo, Hanks says:
FILELFO, PLETHON, AND THE TAROT AS HIEROGLYPH
I have no idea how Zoroaster and the Chaldean Oracles, which Plethon called to Ficino's and probably Filelfo's attention, might have influenced the tarot. (Well, there is http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=56819; but that is only one card.). The influence or lack thereof of Plotinus, Proclus, and pseudo-Dionysus on tarot has also been discussed on Aeclectic (on the last=named, there is http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=1887145&postcount=210), but I don’t want to go there. I want to focus on just the theme of the “prisca philosophia,” which as far as I know was introduced to the post-ancient Latin West by Plethon.
What does the “ancient philosophy” uniting Christianity with paganism—for which Ficino after 1467 found a formulation acceptable to the orthodoxy of the time--have to do with the tarot? I hypothesize that Plethon’s high valuation of a primal philosophy, and a primal religion--one not fully realized until Christ, in Ficino’s revision--connects with what the Italians were also reading in ancient authors about hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs were thought to have been the preferred means by which the Egyptians and after them the Romans communicated their most noble ideas, ideas that in that form could be understood and read by wise men anywhere, anytime.
Filelfo was well aware of hieroglyphs and the thinking about them. His friend Filarete, the architect whom Cosimo had sent to Francesco Sforza from Florence, wrote of hieroglyphs
Filarete’s reference to Filelfo is confirmed in one of Filelfo’s letters. Charles Dempsey writes:
The examples these Italian scholars cited, following Horapollo, Plutarch, and Amiannus, were moral teachings, not incompatible with Christianity. But with Plethon’s perspective there could also be seen the probability of religious teachings, from a perspective wider than Christianity. Again, there is Alberti’s “winged eye”—the eye of God, but with pagan-looking wings (for the image, see my post at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2467477&postcount=45). The very word “hieroglyph” meant “sacred carving”—so how could religious matters as well as moral ones not also have been communicated? And could one even separate morality from religion, since the latter was the foundation for the former?
Tarot cards, of course, are also pictures, and the trumps, even in the Cary Yale, mostly depict “noble matters,” in Alberti’s phrase. As such they are capable of being understood by people of various languages; and no doubt some would have thought even by people in the distant future, if the truths communicated were in fact eternal truths and not ephemera. And likewise they mixed pagan with Christian imagery, just as Plethon and those influenced by him did. (By the time of the Cary Sheet, I believe, Egyptianate imagery was added as well (see my post at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=566&p=8116&hilit=Egyptianate#p8116). The result might then be something inexpressible in language, known only by intuition.
So my thought is that one way Plethon could have influenced tarot is not in the images of particular cards, nor through Neoplatonism as such, but merely in the significance of the tarot trump images generally, as communicating profound matters that transcend language, nationality, and particular religious beliefs and practices. At this time of religious warfare and factionalism, the hope of developing a religion that transcended particular places and their history would have been attractive. There were even Chinese in Florence then, with their picture-language, whose philosophical writings must have been imagined as similar expressions of the “prisca theologia” on an even broader scale.
Later, Pico’s and others’ research into Kabbalah would tend to confirm the idea of the prisca philosoophia and prisca theologia (the ancient philosophy and theology at the root of all subsequent ones). God’s spoke in geometrical figures, Jewish-derived examples of which can be seen in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy and also the Sefer Raziel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefer_Raziel_HaMalakh). God communicated the truth to Adam before the fall, and Adam passed down what he could remember to his posterity. God’s language may also be that spoken by angels, whom Ficino described as speaking in a different language that he could understand (Hankins vol. 1 p. 278, in Google Books).
At some point, I think pretty early, alchemy was added to the mix, as part of the prisca theologia et philosophia. So we see enigmatic pictures of Greek myths offered allegoricaly. It, too, was imagined to be descended from divinity. Although this is late, here is Etteilla in the 18th century, holding that the secret of the elixir was first held by Adam (2nd Cahier, pp. 68-69).
I don’t know of anyone clearly articulating the belief in the prisca philosophia before Plethon. In fact, Plethon usually isn’t even mentioned, as opposed to Ficino and Pico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy). Nor is he mentioned in relationship to the prisca theologia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism#The_.22Prisca_Theologia.22)’ but he clearly had that as well. The tarot, in that spirit, could be conceived as a modern version of the hieroglyphs that, it was believed, were used by the ancients, and even God himself, to preserve a universal philosophy and religion which humanity could gradually understand on deeper levels as it progressed.
This is in addition to the Middle Platonic Plutarchian orientation that I see in the individual images of the Cary Sheet and Marseille-style cards, which I attribute more to Filelfo’s influence than Plethon’s.
So by investigating Plethon and Filelfo, we might add a piece or two to this jigsaw puzzle of tarot, or at least learn more of the cards’ historical context.
Despite that caution, I have been reading Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, and want to try him out as an authority. Much of the book is not in Google Books, at least not that I can find. His general perspective is to minimize Plethon’s influence. However he is enough of a scholar (as opposed to a polemicist) to provide facts; and these facts lead me in the opposite direction. One line of thought, from Plethon to the Milan-based tarot, goes through Filelfo and would include Alberti, Malatesta, and others not versed in Neoplatonism. Another goes through Bessarion, Ficino and the revival of Proclus, Plotinus, and pseudo-Dionysus.
Here I will focus on the line of thought going through Filelfo etc, as that is where I think I might at least know where I am going.
FILELFO AND PHILOSOPHY
First, I think Woodhouse misled me as to Filelfo’s philosophical sophistication. Rather than spend time retyping long quotes from Hankins' main discussion of Filelfo, I will just post these pages—it is all relevant--, summarize, and add more quotes.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-APxZ-cdVAw0/TnmmmlKe6sI/AAAAAAAADik/R481d5tt17c/s1600/hankins90and91.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tM_7GTGbyVA/TnmmmnQI6JI/AAAAAAAADis/LlgsrKQFYtw/s1600/hankins92and93.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jaVcLTm7YrA/Tnmmm60wQ3I/AAAAAAAADi0/vpU7u9hrT2c/s1600/hankins94and95.jpg
Summary: Filelfo studied classical philosophy all his intellectual life. In outlook he could be described as an eclectic whose “sources were predominantly Stoic, Stoic, Middle Platonic, and Augustinian,” Hankins says. We can look at Hankins’ footnotes, pp. 93-94 for examples: Augustine, Dogenes Laertius, Boethius, Simpicius, Porphyry, Cicero, pseudo-Plutarch, Proclus. He translated Plato’s Euthyphro probably “around 1430,” Hankins argues (vol. 2, p. 407). He also translated three of Plato’s letters “1439/1440”—just the time, of course, of Plethon’s visit to Italy. Hankins has nothing but praise for Filelfo’s translations:
Filelfo’s merits as a philosopher emerge clearly when one examines his translations of Plato, which display accuracy, elegance, learning, and philosophical understanding. (Hankins p. 91)
Filelfo’s orientation toward Middle Platonism seems to me the most relevant to the images of the tarot. Of the Middle Platonists, the two most famous were Apuleius, in Latin, and Plutarch, in Greek. Since Filelfo was also a man of letters, in fact was court poet to two dukes and wrote “grossly obscene poetry” (Hankins p. 91), it seems reasonable to me that he would have been attracted to Plutarch’s essays, even if he didn’t quote from them in his De morali disciplina. Plutarch wrote Middle Platonic allegories with much Greco-Roman mythic imagery, of which the most relevant are On Isis and Osiris and On the Face in the Orb of the Moon.
I actually see lots of opportunity for Plutarch’s essays in the Milan-based tarot, from the Cary Sheet to the Marseille. To give details would take me too far afield. If you go to “Bianca’s Garden” at THF and do a search in that forum for “Plutarch,” 14 posts come up, mostly by me, relating Plutarch to particular cards. In the “Research” forum there, see the first 5 posts, which are also mostly by me. Cary Sheet examples are the Popess, the Star, and the Moon. (On Aeclectic, see my post on the Star at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=1968456&postcount=37.) In Noblet and after, many cards fit something in Plutarch. Before reading Hankins, I had no suspicion that this orientation might have gone back to Filelfo.
FILELFO AND PLETHON
Then there is the question of Filelfo’s contact with Plethon. It is clear that Filelfo respected Plethon philosophically. Hankins says
In a footnote, Hankins cites the letter in Legrand p. 48 that Ross posted and Woodhouse p. 158, which I posted.Filelfo, we know, met him in Bologna after the Council and was deeply impressed by his philosophical knowledge, but there is no suggestion in any of Filelfo’s writings that he was acquainted with the more esoteric side of Pletho’s beliefs, which Pletho was in any case careful to confine to initiates of his school. (p.437)
In addition, we know that Filelfo read Plethon’s De Differentiis closely. Hankins says,
(Hankins’ reference is “Laur. LXXX, 24; see M. Bandini Cat. Codd. Graec. Bibl. Med. Laur. 3:213-215 and [i[Mostro della biblioteca di Lorenzo nella iblioteca Medicea Laurenzianoa... (Florence, 1949), p. 61, no. 206.)Filelfo too owned a copy of the De Differentiis which he annotated... (vol. 2 p. 438)
Plethon, by his own account, wrote De Differentiis in Florence. See e.g.John Monfasani, George of Trezibond p. 202, http://books.google.com/books?id=qi...q=George of Trebizond de differentiis&f=false)
So he could easily have given (in person) or sent (soon after) a copy to Filelfo.
FILELFO, PLETHON, AND THE PRISCA PHILOSOPHIA
Hankins in one place describes Filelfo’s views in terms that I think probably shows the influence of Plethon. It is on p. 93, one of the pages I posted earlier, but it is worth seeing by itself. For Filelfo, Hanks says:
It was Plethon who, we learn later in Hankins' sections on George of Trebizond and Ficino, had promoted Zoroaster as the original philosophical influence on Plato (Hankins p. 201, in Google Books). Thus Ficino saw Zoroaster as one of the six greatest philosophers of antiquity (Latin on p. 283-4, in Google Books): the others, in succession, were Trismegistus, Pythagoras, Orpheus, someone called Aglaothemis, and Plato). Moreover, Ficino, following Plethon, credited the Chaldean Oracles to Zoroaster. Hankins, on Ficino: .....Plato, the greatest of philosophers, owed his greatness in part to having brought together the physics of Heraclitus, the metaphysics of Pythagoas and the moral thought of Socrates. Even Plato’s doctrine of the Ideas had been borrowed from Pythagoras who was himself following Zoroaster and the Chaldean mages. This suggestion of an esoteric diadoche reminds us of Ficino’s ancient theology, although Filelfo first enunciated it in 1464, too early to have been influenced by Ficino or Bessarion.
It was also Plethon who first promoted the idea of the “prisca theologia”—articulated in embryo by Filelfo in 1464--in the Latin West. Compare Hankins on Filelfo, quoted above, with Hankins on Pletho:He also knew Pletho’s edition of the Chaldean Oracles and derived form it his notion of a “Zoroastrian trinity”...(p. 438)
The next page or so in Hankins is also well worth reading. He describes how for Pletho, all religions, pagan and Christian, have become corrupted.We do not hear of Pletho and his followers sacrificing milk-white bullocks within the citadel of Mistra. His polytheism is the polytheism of late ancient Neoplatonism, and especially of Proclus, wherein the gods, arranged hierarchically from the high god Zeus, stand for transcendental principles or causes of substances and changes in the phenomenal world. Zeus is thus a sign for the principle of being, Poseidon (identified also with Neoplatonic Nous) is the principle of activity, Pluto of the human soul and so forth. The pagan myths and biblical stories, insofar as they have not been corrupted by poets and “sophists”, are not historical events, but shadowy representations in linguistic form of metaphysical (or divine) truths, which may only be grasped truly in contemplative noesis. The myths of Orpheus, the rape of Persephone, and Adam and Eve are thus at root the same story; both of them contain hidden truths about the fixity of human destiny, truths which, though visible to hidden powers of intuition within the soul, are strictly beyond the ability of language to communicate.(p. 200, Google Books)
It is this type of religion which Bessarion defended, first in Greek in 1459 and in more detail in Latin ten years later, in his defense of Plethon against George of Trezibond.But above these corrupted religions, there soared a more ancient and sublime form of religion which had been known to “antique legislators and philosophers” and might yet be known to choice spirits in the modern world through a diligent study of the greatest of ancient philosophers. (p. 201, in Google books)
FILELFO, PLETHON, AND THE TAROT AS HIEROGLYPH
I have no idea how Zoroaster and the Chaldean Oracles, which Plethon called to Ficino's and probably Filelfo's attention, might have influenced the tarot. (Well, there is http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=56819; but that is only one card.). The influence or lack thereof of Plotinus, Proclus, and pseudo-Dionysus on tarot has also been discussed on Aeclectic (on the last=named, there is http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=1887145&postcount=210), but I don’t want to go there. I want to focus on just the theme of the “prisca philosophia,” which as far as I know was introduced to the post-ancient Latin West by Plethon.
What does the “ancient philosophy” uniting Christianity with paganism—for which Ficino after 1467 found a formulation acceptable to the orthodoxy of the time--have to do with the tarot? I hypothesize that Plethon’s high valuation of a primal philosophy, and a primal religion--one not fully realized until Christ, in Ficino’s revision--connects with what the Italians were also reading in ancient authors about hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs were thought to have been the preferred means by which the Egyptians and after them the Romans communicated their most noble ideas, ideas that in that form could be understood and read by wise men anywhere, anytime.
Filelfo was well aware of hieroglyphs and the thinking about them. His friend Filarete, the architect whom Cosimo had sent to Francesco Sforza from Florence, wrote of hieroglyphs
Here is that last part in Italian:They are all picture letters; some have one animal, some another, some have a bird, some a snake, some an owl, some are like a saw and some like an eye, and some with some kinds of figures, some with one thing and then another, so that there are few that can translate them. It is true that the poet Francisco Filelfo told me that some of these animals meant one thing and some another. Each one had its own meaning. The eel means envy. Thus each one has its own meaning...(Curran, The Egyptian Renaissance p. 85)
None of this is very philosophical, to be sure. We’re getting there.Vero e che ‘l poeta Francesco Filelfo mi diesse che quegli animali significavano chi una cosa e chi un’altra, ciascheduno ognuno per se, l’anguilla significa la ‘nvidia, e cosi ognuna ha sua significazione, se gia loro ancora on avessino fatto ch’elle fussino pure come sono l’altre e potessinsi compitare. (Curran p. 320).
Filarete’s reference to Filelfo is confirmed in one of Filelfo’s letters. Charles Dempsey writes:
Alberti, who as a member of the curia was certainly in Florence for the conclave and probably attended Plethon’s lectures, later wrote, in a work thought to have been largely composed in the 1440s:Filarete’s memory, at least on this one point, did not fail him, for a letter written by Filelfo in 1444 to Scalamonti, the biographer of Syriacus of Ancona, refers to Horapollo and specifically cites the eel as meaning envy (“Renaissance Hieroglyphic Studies and Bellini’s St. Mark,” in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe p. 354).
I would expect that this quote, or at least sentiment, would have been known not long after Alberti deposited his manuscript with Nicholas V in 1452; it would probably have been noticed by Filarete, Alberti’s fellow architect, who was writing his own book and who would have discussed it with Filelfo. In fact, it probably was a common idea among Platonistically oriented humanists, which could be found also in Apuleius’s Golden Ass and Plutarch’s Of Isis and Osiris (I gave some quotes at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2457172&postcount=43); and the 1440s was a time when enigmatic medallions started to be in fashion in the northern Italian courts (Curran p. 76), of which Alberti’s “winged eye” was probably the first. In any case, by the late 15th century such sentiments were commonplace; the illustrations of the Hypnerotomachia trade upon it.The Egyptians employed the following sign language: a god was represented by an eye, nature by a vulture, a king by a bee, time by a circle, peace by an ox, and so on. They maintained that each nation knew only its own alphabet, and that eventually all knowledge of it would be lost—as has happened with our own Etruscan: we have sepulchers uncovered in city ruins and cemeteries throughout Etruria inscribed with an alphabet universally acknowledged to be Etruscan, their letters look not unlike Greek, or even Latin, yet no one understands what they mean. The same, the Egyptians claimed, should happen to all other alphabets, whereas the method of writing they used could be understood easily by expert men all over the world, to whom alone noble matters should be communicated (On the art of building in ten books, trans. Rykwert, Leach, and Tavernor, p. 256.)
The examples these Italian scholars cited, following Horapollo, Plutarch, and Amiannus, were moral teachings, not incompatible with Christianity. But with Plethon’s perspective there could also be seen the probability of religious teachings, from a perspective wider than Christianity. Again, there is Alberti’s “winged eye”—the eye of God, but with pagan-looking wings (for the image, see my post at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2467477&postcount=45). The very word “hieroglyph” meant “sacred carving”—so how could religious matters as well as moral ones not also have been communicated? And could one even separate morality from religion, since the latter was the foundation for the former?
Tarot cards, of course, are also pictures, and the trumps, even in the Cary Yale, mostly depict “noble matters,” in Alberti’s phrase. As such they are capable of being understood by people of various languages; and no doubt some would have thought even by people in the distant future, if the truths communicated were in fact eternal truths and not ephemera. And likewise they mixed pagan with Christian imagery, just as Plethon and those influenced by him did. (By the time of the Cary Sheet, I believe, Egyptianate imagery was added as well (see my post at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=566&p=8116&hilit=Egyptianate#p8116). The result might then be something inexpressible in language, known only by intuition.
So my thought is that one way Plethon could have influenced tarot is not in the images of particular cards, nor through Neoplatonism as such, but merely in the significance of the tarot trump images generally, as communicating profound matters that transcend language, nationality, and particular religious beliefs and practices. At this time of religious warfare and factionalism, the hope of developing a religion that transcended particular places and their history would have been attractive. There were even Chinese in Florence then, with their picture-language, whose philosophical writings must have been imagined as similar expressions of the “prisca theologia” on an even broader scale.
Later, Pico’s and others’ research into Kabbalah would tend to confirm the idea of the prisca philosoophia and prisca theologia (the ancient philosophy and theology at the root of all subsequent ones). God’s spoke in geometrical figures, Jewish-derived examples of which can be seen in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy and also the Sefer Raziel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefer_Raziel_HaMalakh). God communicated the truth to Adam before the fall, and Adam passed down what he could remember to his posterity. God’s language may also be that spoken by angels, whom Ficino described as speaking in a different language that he could understand (Hankins vol. 1 p. 278, in Google Books).
At some point, I think pretty early, alchemy was added to the mix, as part of the prisca theologia et philosophia. So we see enigmatic pictures of Greek myths offered allegoricaly. It, too, was imagined to be descended from divinity. Although this is late, here is Etteilla in the 18th century, holding that the secret of the elixir was first held by Adam (2nd Cahier, pp. 68-69).
My translation:La Médecine universelle tire son origine de l'arbre de vie qui étoit en Eden; le texte y est formel. Avant de déluge, on no se servoit que de la Médecine [p. 69] universelle [1: Sans Médecine universelle, on a de la peine à expliquer comment le grand âge des premiers Hommes...]; la science en étoit commune à tous les Hommes, & tous vivoient plusieurs siecles; mais mésusant d'une vie longue jusqu'à s'adonner à des vices sans contredit impardonnables, les Hommes furent submergés.
Par Chanaan, petit-fils de Noé, ceette Science passa seulement aux premiers nés des Chananéens, des Amorrhéens, des Guergésiens, des Hétiens, des Héviens, des Périsiens & des Jébusiens, ainsi par Sem & par Japhet à leurs premiers nés.
I have talked elsewhere about the close relationship of alchemy and tarot (http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=647).The universal Medicine draws its origin from the tree of life that was in Eden; the text there is definite. Before the deluge, one was served only by the universal Medicine [Footnote 1: Without universal Medicine, it is difficult to explain the great age of the first Men...]; knowledge of it was common to all Men, and all lived several centuries; but misusing a long life so as to give themselves to unarguably unforgivable vices, Men were submerged.
By Chanaan, grandson of Noah, this Knowledge passed only to the first born sons of the Chananians, the Amorrhians, the Guergesians, the Hetians, the Hevians, the Perisians and the Jebusians, so by Sem and by Japhet to their first-born.
I don’t know of anyone clearly articulating the belief in the prisca philosophia before Plethon. In fact, Plethon usually isn’t even mentioned, as opposed to Ficino and Pico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy). Nor is he mentioned in relationship to the prisca theologia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism#The_.22Prisca_Theologia.22)’ but he clearly had that as well. The tarot, in that spirit, could be conceived as a modern version of the hieroglyphs that, it was believed, were used by the ancients, and even God himself, to preserve a universal philosophy and religion which humanity could gradually understand on deeper levels as it progressed.
This is in addition to the Middle Platonic Plutarchian orientation that I see in the individual images of the Cary Sheet and Marseille-style cards, which I attribute more to Filelfo’s influence than Plethon’s.
So by investigating Plethon and Filelfo, we might add a piece or two to this jigsaw puzzle of tarot, or at least learn more of the cards’ historical context.