Chess as a factor in the origin of Tarot

Huck

Games are often naturally sequential, as one move follows the other and in time one moment follows the other. Players don't need any didactic activity from the side of the church to learn that, neither in 1400 nor nowadays. Still games are mostly sequential and life also.

... maybe in dharmakaya this might be different ...

Huck

Rosanne said:
My reasoning takes another basis Huck.
The Catholic Church and life in general in the 1400-1550 was built on 'sequence'
and these sequences in pictorial things became set.
For example The Mass.... The Way (Stations of the Cross)...The Rosary.. The Liturgy of the Saints or the Catholic year.....
In The Way, the pictorial versions of sequence ranged from 11 - 30 steps and finally settled on 14 during this time.
The steps in the Mass 2 parts each with 7 progressions became settled in this time.
The Golden Sequence called dies irae poetry 57 lines and 19 stanzas was applied to the Missal during this time.
So sequence had development...it did not start out as confirmed- this number or that. I see this as naturally influencing games as well. The Humanist Fazio said that painting was like a silent poem and you can see sequence expand and contract and finally settle to a pattern during these hundred or so years. This concept would naturally apply to cards games.

~Rosanne

Well, considering this idea again ... it's likely true, that in 14th century and after education generally jumped up by the increasing number of citizens.
A little reading and some math for private use increased the abilities in number use. This development might have been mirrored in church customs of the time, in which possibly "number sequences" more often appeared as before.
Generally I think, that the medium playing cards is good for counting abilities and simple techniques like addition and multiplication. So actually it's a question, if the game taught the church, or the church taught the players to use numbers and sequences ... .-)

Rosanne

Huck said:
So actually it's a question, if the game taught the church, or the church taught the players to use numbers and sequences ... .-)

I think the jump in education, the availability of printed matter and the understanding of sequence via Church pictorial sequence and availability of calenders with their symbols etc made understanding a game of Trumps a much easier task, especially before titles and numbers. This is much what I was trying to explain in "natural' places for card images. For example in The Way station 13 is dead Christ removed off the cross. So if you placed the Death card before someone, it would be natural for them to place it at 13, regardless of the Italian view that another number was considered unlucky.

This is not Chess and it's influence, just the reason why I think that 21+1 was not originally the first sequence or amount of cards. It settled at that for making play more playable.
At least that is what I think.
~Rosanne

Huck

Well, numbers have some associations since old time, and these existing "archetypes" surely worked on the mind of those, who factually took some influence on the final row of Tarot cards. But likely not all numbers were based on "very old interpretations".

In German card games still nowadays:

A King has 4 points
A Queen has 3 points
A Jack has 2 points

In Tarot playing tradition:

A King has 5 or 4 points
A Queen has 4 or 3 points
A Cavallo has 3 or 2 points
A Page has 1 or 2 points

In the Tarot sequence:

Emperor - number 4
Empress - number 3
Popess (not like a Cavallo) - number 2
Magician (somehow like a Jack) - number 1

This are a few numbers of the Tarot sequence, and I would think, that these neither were "very old" nor influenced by the church, but jumped from a habit with usual cards into the Tarot and Trionfi decks.

It has some game logic to develop the idea of "points" in card games with simple, low numbers. There are no lower numbers than 1-2-3-4. And there were no other remarkable card motifs at the beginning beside the court cards ... so simple logic demanded, that these got the numbers 1-2-3-4. And it survived till today.

Johannes of Rheinfelden described the points in his favoured 60-cards-deck with 5 court cards. In this model the 5 courts got 11-15 and the number cards (which showed professions, the first known fiures at number cards long before the Sola Busca deck) got 1-10.
By this we see, that the long sequential counting in card games also was very early and it later reappeared in 5x14-decks and some time later in the Tarot sequence.
Though from the practical view: It's difficult in game to count +15, + 14 etc. ... and the humbler normal game surely didn't use these numbers.

Well, chess figures have no sequence, as the game doesn't demand it. In the very early Trionfi we don't find numbers.

Huck

The old style of Chess Kings and Queens showed

... this style was repeated in two decks, which are assumed by the Tarot Chess theory to belong to a sort of Chess Tarot development, in which the number of special cards (= trumps) was 16.

CARY-YALE

Charles VI

The Charles VI was made in Florence - at least this seems now an accepted theory. The later Florentine Minchiate didn't use an Empress nor a Papessa.
In the 16 trump cards of Charles VI, which are interpreted as a complete trump set by the Chess Tarot theory, Empress and Queen are also missing.

This seems to say, that the Queen position was filled in Florence by the Pope, such balancing the dominant "meaning" of the Chess king in the game by a counter-force.

It's not sure, but a plausible assumption, that the Cary-Yale possibly used Pope and Papessa as bishops in their chess game, this composition reappears later in the PMB-deck with ... 2 Papessa - 3 Empress - 4 Emperor - 5 Pope ...
This composition might have been interpreted as degrading for the pope especially in Florence, which often had a closer relationship to the pope in Rome than Milan, and so possibly caused, that in Florence the female elements Empress + Papessa disappeared and moved the Pope to the balancing position at the usual Queen place.

Huck

Andrea Vitali's recent article

Tarot in Literature - The most important documents
http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=199&lng=ENG

contains a report to Emanuele Tesauro (1595 - 1675), titled The Aristotle Telescope. It compares Tarot and Chess, as far I see it, somewhat indirectly.

Instrumental Reasons - Chapter II
About the Oratory, Symbolic & Lapidary witticisms (pages 57 - 58)

“Finally from the same origin proceeds what is agreeable and ingenious in the MUTE GAMES, representing no heroic matter. As it is the game of Tarots; worthy concept of barbarian genius: where you see every person of the world becoming ruffle in a mix way with uniforms, Rich people with Money, Drunk with Cup, Warriors with Spades, Shepherds with Batons. Emperors, Prelates, Angels, Demons: as the player holding a card deck in his hand had the whole world in a punch: & playing metaphorically is just putting the universe in confusion; & the one who more ruins is the winner. But the game the most heroic and witty; even a war school is the Chess; where in a small battle Field there are two armies, one of White Assyrians, the other of Black African Moors: & here there are Kings, Queens, Soldiers, Knights, Towered Elephants; and Infantrymen: at the sign of the two players, as War Masters, facing, assaulting, ling in wait, surprising, running, helping, hurting, covering, imprisoning, getting out of the world: finally after having won the adversary army & imprisoned the King (the only one whose life is preserved) there is a difficult but sweet victory, a conflict with no blood, but not without the looser’ rage. A game really born from the war intellect of Palmed among the Greek tents, to fight against idleness, so you have not to be surprised, if from Zeus brain was born Pallade warrior, since by a soldier’ brain are born armies. So, what is this game, but a heroic symbol, a continuous metaphor? Those little images animated by a living hand allegorically represent the conflict of ingenious; they have the moving for the Word. So the player identifies in the characters represented by wooden soldiers: & in our images lives the player’ mind” (27).

Tarots and Chess therefore, according to the author, belong to the Heroic Matters; they are Mute symbols (images of words) and are Composed. The author writes about Composed Symbols: “In the COMPOSED WITTICISM there are two or more of the simple witticisms…; so the Witticism which is nothing but a poetical Imitation; with the mix of MUTE and TALKING methods, & of these or the ones into them; gives birth to a numerous and various and pretty offspring of Symbols; many of them even today are know more by opinion than by their name by literati” (page 39).

I would say: It's too late to serve as a sort of evidence for the Chess-Tarot connection, as it appears in our researches, but anyway it's of interest, that somebody about 200 years later got a sort of similar perception.

Rosanne

Huck Cerulean posted a link for a BonDoyt motto, but I was interested to read in this book on page 39........
http://books.google.com/books?id=dt...&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

About a manuscript that had multiple copies in the Visconti Library as well as multiple copies in King Charles V of France and the Duke of Berry Libraries.
It is called Libellys de Ludo Scacorum written by a Domincan Friar Giacomo da Cessole at the end of the 13th Century. It is about the seven Liberal Arts, of Grammer, astrology, mathmatics, science...etc.
One section is about Chess as an Allegory of the Court and ranks.
I am going to see if I can source a copy, my Latin is passable if not literal.
Maybe you already know of it?

~Rosanne

Huck

Of course, it's a famous book and a sort of bestseller for 14th and 15th century. There is an English translation and edition of 1474 by Caxton in the web, it's about the oldest printed book in English language.

The Master Ingold text is partly a Cessolis edition.

From the Cessolis description developed a sort of "chess figures iconography" with repeating types (in this way similar to Trionfi cards motifs), the 8 pawns had then individuality ("professions" somehow "in idea similar" to those, which are described for the Johannes of Rheinfelden deck, and shown in the Hofämterspiel). Naturally the number of these figures was 16, as the trumps in the Michelino deck and as it is assumed for Cary-Yale and Charles VI Tarocchi.

Huck

If I attempt a somewhat "blind evaluation", how important something is, as a "social factor", I would assume, that currently, if I take the phenomenon "Tarot" as "100 %", that Tarot History has something of "1-2 %" of it.

If I would interpret in a similar way the social factor "games" in 14th or 15th century, I would clearly estimate, that chess, dice, tables would range with higher percentage values above playing cards. If I would estimate "Italian games", I would see a worse percentage relation for playing cards (too much prohibitions), if I would estimate "German games", I would assume better relations (more productivity, less prohibitions).

If I would estimate the value "surviving original words about chess from 14th + 15th century" against the value "surviving original words about playing cards from 14th + 15th century" I would assume a rather bad relationship for playing cards, which itself wouldn't really display the reality, as chess likely attracted "surviving words" as an accepted medium and playings cards didn't as an often prohibited medium. If it was played with playing cards, there was mostly no interest to make much words about this activity.

But anyway, playing cards are only a small brother of chess.

And if I compare playing cards with Trionfi cards, then Trionfi cards are only a small brother of the phenomenon playing cards.

However, if I compare the number of "surviving cards" from the Trionfi decks to the number of the number of surviving playing cards, then the "small brother" doesn't look very small ...

... Well, we know the reason, these cards were very expensive and cause they were expensive, their chances to survive had been far better then those of usual playing cards, well, we get very wrong numbers, if one would take them as an "absolute value".

... .-) ... Well, with Chess as big brother the small Trionfi card questions gets another, far bigger public ... .-)

Rosanne

Lol Huck, that is an interesting way to look at things.

There is another interesting aspect - a woman's way of keeping small pretty things and valuing them. It is due in great part the survival of Books of Hours, illuminated scrolls and miniatures of all sorts. What joy in wooden pieces of Backgammon and common plain old Chess pieces? It is also a game of War in a female mind- something for men- whereas pretty little playing cards are a joy.
Women's playthings were not written about. Mere trifles!
So Chess is Big brother to Little sister trionfi cards

~Rosanne