AJ
Boy, I hate the term Dummies.
A Dummies Guide to Historical Research
mjhurst
Hi, Diane,
Perhaps... perhaps not.
You've made an assumption, whether true or false I don't know, about your routinely sloppy and often bogus citations being questioned. You attribute this criticism to me presumably because I took the time and trouble to document one amazing example in detail. However, everyone who has read your writing in any forum is aware that you routinely post two kinds of "information": unsubstantiated claims without quotes or any specific references, and unexplained reference works, sometimes random lists of them, with no indication of their connection with Tarot history. That can be seen in your older essays, your posts on TarotL, your posts on LTarot, and on a daily basis here at Aeclectic. So it is far from clear nasty Michael is the source of your problem. However, since you want to talk about the little research study I did on LTarot, I'm certainly willing to do so. As noted in my previous post, I am happy to answer questions and defend my positions. You go first... oh, you already did.
As long as you want to recount the tale in this forum, I should warn both readers and moderators that this discussion *shut down* the LTarot forum when Diane and her cohort Lorraine threatened both myself and Lothar, the List owner, with legal harassment. That was despite the fact that no false or unsubstantiated claims were made, nothing, that is, meeting the definition of defamation. (FYI, truth is by definition NOT defamatory.) I only quoted her posts and pointed out the obvious, (along with a few well-deserved insults and a bit of mockery). As I noted in my previous post, quoting people can be fun; it can also be educational.
I don't know the fate of LTarot. When the threats and intimidation began, in the interests of the forum I accepted her demand that I remove my posts and did so. I agreed that I would not post further to that forum. When the threats continued despite my lurker status, I then unsubscribed from the forum. It was at some point closed down, but may, one hopes, have been reopened by now.
AFAIK, you never did find the source of your claims. (I reviewed every LTarot post you made over the two-year period that had the name Gerson or certain related keywords in it.)
AFAIK, you never saw the actual quote from Gerson until I found it and Ross translated it for the List. Your anonymous "eminent scholar" did track down the treatise from which the passage was taken, but he apparently didn't quote the passage for you!
AFAIK, You never recanted any of your many assertions on this theme prior to *today's* post, where you claim to have "misinterpreted" something. In fact, you just made stuff up, repeatedly over a period of many years, different stuff from one imagining to the next. Among your earliest and most interesting assertions were that Jean Gerson had stated that fortune-telling cards, with images of the Pagan gods, were a fad in 1395 Paris. Many other speculations were tried out as the threads continued from late 2005 until late 2007, but they began years earlier in some of your essays. The passage quoted on trionfi.com is typical.
In an earlier post here I made a passing comment, a sardonic aside (it's called "humor" and is presumably banned in this forum -- I assume that I'll be asked to edit that post at some point) in my post congratulating you on citing a genuine and genuinely informative work. However, since you have brought it up and claimed that "such problems occur in research", I think it only fair to explain what is meant by "such problems", in case any are interested.
For most of her two years on LTarot I largely ignored Diane. The main exception was when she claimed that Kwaw plagiarized her, despite the fact that the geographical game analysis of Tarot which Kwaw was developing was first presented in 1781, despite the fact that he presented a different analysis than Diane's, more cogent and coherent, that he came to different conclusions, and despite the fact that he cited her. (Typically, she offered no quotes; quotes are the heart of any plagiarism claim, and without them you have nothing but rank defamation.) I also demurred when she accused me of plagiarism for using the word "artifact" and mentioning maps as one of many examples of complex didactic art. She claimed that anyone talking about anything she ever mentioned must cite her absurdly obscure 1999 essay, which I've still never seen! (Presumably that belief is also behind her endless shotgun posts where she simply mentions many random subjects and claims that they are important. That way, if someone actually does the work which she does not, and finds something important in one of the hundreds of works she alludes to, she can come back and claim they got it from her.) She also claims to have first connected Tarot to ars memoria, conveniently ignoring Court de Gebelin, Alfred Douglas, Bob O'Neill, and probably dozens of others, (lots of Tarot writers but no writers like Yates or Carruthers who actually know something about ars memoria), and insists that anyone mentioning that possible connection must cite her insipid and unavailable essays or stand convicted of plagiarism.
The hilarious hypocrisy of this is that while she considers her own vanishingly obscure screeds to be of profoundly influential, she refuses to make them public or to credit those whose work has *actually* been influential. Her double standard is breathtaking. In a concurrent post to another thread just today, she has reasserted her view that no credit is due to Court de Gebelin for the things he contributed to Tarot folklore, hysterically taking offense at Ross for merely *mentioning* this seminal writer. Imagine a "scholar" who considers herself to be an influential researcher in a field of study but who has never bothered a basic literature review of that field!
Anyway, I ignored the Gerson threads during their first 22 months on LTarot because she never provided a quote nor a source that anyone could follow up on. As with most of her postings, here and elsewhere, there is no apparent factual basis for the interesting stuff, and no connection with Tarot for the factual stuff. As with the Holy Blood, Holy Grail folklore, what is new is not true, and what is true is not new, although they are somewhat better at citing sources. Lothar and Ross tried, from her first post, (yes, this phantom Gerson quote has been so important to her over the years that it was the entire subject of her very first post to LTarot). They never got anywhere, so there was no factual basis for the repeated speculation offered by her and Lothar. Finally she claimed to have found *a* source, but still didn't have the quote nor any idea of who *the* source was. That's when I got interested, which led to two main results.
First, I discovered where she got the original idea, and pointed out that she copied a 27-word description (in an essay from a few years earlier) verbatim from Johan Huizinga. (Like a high school teacher reviewing term papers for plagiarism, I just Googled unusual-sounding phrases, looking for a match, and *Bingo!*) Looking up that source led me to a number of other sources, (Huizinga actually *did* cite sources), one of which included the original passage in Latin, which Ross translated for the group. (Google Books is pretty cool. For example, an English translation of the Durand work Diane mentioned is available, both in photocopy and an OCR transcription.)
Second, I read through all her LTarot old posts on the subject and collected all of her pseudo citations. To this day she denies that she got the 27-word Huizinga quote from Huizinga, although today she is for the first time (AFAIK) admitting that the passage does come from the 1924 translation of his book. But getting back to her point, "such problems occur in research", the short answer is no, they don't. They occur when people refuse to do research and just make things up. This phantom Gerson passage was a major point of interest for Diane over a period of many years, as illustrated by the fact that it turned up in various essays, in her first post to LTarot, and in many subsequent posts over a two year period, and she had NEVER SEEN IT! This would be a bizarre aberration in real research, where things are routinely tracked down to *at least* a secondary source. She had nothing, yet continued to present her speculations about it if it were something.
Because such a claim of fortune-telling cards being a fad in 1395 Paris is a HUGE finding, if true, Lothar and Ross immediately tried to get her to tell them her source. She ignored such requests for a couple weeks, then the fun began. Over the two year period she has offered eleven different alternatives. I took the time to check them out, as best I could, although some defy definitive refutation.
This is the part that I found most interesting, given her pretensions to scholarship. The online Tarot community has a great number of crackpots and more than a few trolls and other unsavory types, (including mean SOBs like me), and they are usually best ignored. If Diane were just another one of the many, there would be no point in systematically documenting her crimes against scholarship. However, her reappearance on LTarot coincided with her appearance on Aeclectic, scattering random ideas and references in great profusion, and becoming an overnight sensation, the most prolific poster on the biggest forum. So... I thought it worthwhile to take a look at her methods and results. Given the immense diversity of her many posts, and the substantive shallowness of most of them -- that is, they tend to be pointless -- I selected the Gerson quote for detailed examination. It was clearly important to her and had been for many years; it actually related to the history of playing cards; it seemed plausible and, if true, would be extremely important to playing-card history; and, because it was so important to her, she had written a lot about it. So I checked out her sources.
1. The first source she suggested on LTarot was her phantom original author, to this day still unnamed by her. Needless to say, this is useless -- there is nothing to check out. Her initial claims included no quote and no indication of *any* source.
Two weeks later, (12/19/05) when she finally bothered to reply to the repeated requests for documentation, she made a point of *not* citing her supposed source, but instead offering alternatives. She replied to Lothar as if she were not even a member of the list, talking about *his readers* and suggesting sources that such lesser folk might find useful. This is in keeping with her claims to use only primary sources, etc. Her phantom source was thus established in 2005 as a secret. Mysterious claims of secret information are, of course, typical of Tarot cultists, holding out the promise of something kept in reserve, "for initiates only". As discussed below, in addition to her own source being kept secret, both of the other sources she alluded to in that first post turned out to be bogus.
2. Christian Dictionary of Biography
In a post of 6/19/06 (LTarot 3919, if LTarot still exists and if she has not destroyed her factual history) she cited "the Christian dictionary of biography." This reference turned out to be false. There does not appear to be any book with this title. WorldCat, Amazon, and Google find no book titled "Christian Dictionary of Biography".
3. Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
On multiple occasions, including 2/7/07, (LTarot 5199, 3231), she cited "recent edition "Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church". This reference turned out to be false. The only remark that could be taken as an allusion to the treatise in question is, "Gerson... was deeply concerned over the religious education of children." (The Gerson passage in question actually refers to the corruption of youth by dirty pictures, as does his 1402 treatise as a whole.)
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
ed. F.L. Cross; Oxford University Press, 2005.
4. Oxford Dictionary of Christian Biography
In a post of 10/14/07 (LTarot 5477) she cited "the Oxford Dictionary of Christian Biography." This reference turned out to be false. There does not appear to be any book with this title. WorldCat returns numerous entries for "Dictionary of Christian Biography", but none of them are published by Oxford.
5. Dictionary of Christian Biography
In a post of 10/26/07 (LTarot 5546) she cited "Dictionary of Christian Biography". This reference turned out to be false. The Gerson entry in this book is a single paragraph, which says nothing conceivably relevant to the passage in question.
Dictionary of Christian biography
ed. Michael Walsh; Liturgical Press, 2001.
Note the similarity of those four titles. Two of them are real books, two of them are not, and none of them are real sources of the Gerson passage in question. She was not actually referring to *any* specific book, but just evading the question, hoping no one would check. That's why the specifics of the book title matter no more than a page citation or a quoted passage. When it's all posturing and bluffing, there are no points deducted for outrageous sloppiness.
6. Gerson's memoires.
In a post of 2/7/07 (LTarot 5200) she cited "From memory - in this case 90% certain - I found the reference in Gerson's memoirs." This reference turned out to be false. In fact, the passage comes from a 1402 treatise on the corruption of youth. (Ask yourself, if a high school kid made up sources for a research paper, what grade would they deserve? If a grad student persistently made up sources for his research, what action might the department take?)
7. Michael Dummett
On multiple occasions, including 12/20/06, (LTarot 4769, 5132), she cited "Dummett's Game of Tarot which first alluded to Jean Gerson's comment." This pseudo-reference was repeated in other posts as well, usually as an excuse to deplore Dummett's shabby and biased work. Upon investigation, this reference appears to be false, although no page number, nor even chapter reference was provided. It is not surprising that he failed to mention it, given that the Gerson passage in question is not about playing cards.
8. Gertrude Moakley
In a post of 2/3/07 (LTarot 5182) she cited "Moakley". As with the other "citations", I am quoting the entire substance -- no more and no less --of her citation. Like Dummett, this reference appears to be false, although again there is not page number or even chapter reference. Again, that is not surprising, given that the Gerson passage in question is not about playing cards.
The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza family: an iconographic and historical study
New York Public Library, 1966.
9. David Parlett: Pt.1
In a post of 2/3/07 (LTarot 5182) she cited "the Oxford History of card-games". According to David Parlett's website, The Oxford Guide to Card Games was republished in paperback as A History of Card Games. On that page, Parlett himself refers to both books as The Oxford History of Card Games, despite the fact that neither of them is so named, and search engines such as WorldCat and Amazon return no entry for that specific title. Like the others, this citation lacks any useful specificity, but upon inspection, this reference appears to be as false as the others. Again, that is not surprising, given that the Gerson passage in question is not about playing cards.
The Oxford Guide to Card Games
Oxford University Press, 1990.
10. Gerson: Complete Works.
After 22 months and nine wholly bogus references, Diane finally got it right. This was the post that got me involved. It claimed to have found the passage, BUT STILL DIDN'T QUOTE IT!!! Pretty suspicious, especially when the work cited is the Complete Works, (DUH!), and when that is such a difficult book to access. (For example, WorldCat suggests that the nearest copy to me is 416 miles away at the University of Arizona.) Given the fact that O'Donovan had still not produced the passage, nor even seen it, it remained a phantom passage. Given the fact that this is clearly not the source used by her, (Huizinga is), this is yet another bogus source for her essays and posts.
11. David Parlett: Pt. 2
But wait -- there's more! On 11/2/07, after the fireworks started on LTarot, she offered one more bogus reference: "the Oxford Dictionary of Card Games", (which was republished in paperback as A Dictionary of Card Games). Being so sloppy, unable or just not caring to get anything correct, she probably assumes that this is the same book as The Oxford Guide to Card Games, mentioned above. They are, however, two different books, adding another layer of manure to the steaming heap.
That's a revealing illustration of O'Donovan's "methodology" at work, over a 2-year period of posts, (not counting the prior years when the phantom quote was being presented by her), and a VERY revealing illustration of her results: bupkis, nothing. This is how she proceeds, this is what she achieves -- at the end of all that, she still had no idea what Gerson actually wrote!
The bottom line on Diane's eleven (11) references is that not one of them was her actual source, not one of them provided any insight into what was actually in the passage she alluded to, and ten (10) of them appear to be... well, I guess you can't use the proper descriptive term on Aeclectic, so I'll use the archaic "humbug". She just made this stuff up off the top of her head to avoid answering a question the answer to which would be embarrassing for her. The final proof of her "scholarship" is that she has never even *attempted* to substantiate any of these claims by cracking a single book and *looking* for this supposedly amazing reference. If she bothered to look, she would have found what I found when I did look: nothing.
Not exactly, Diane. I began doing some actual research, something that you apparently don't understand. I began posting the results of that research in your own words, including the names of essays, dates and ID numbers of LTarot posts, and the results of actually looking stuff up -- something you failed to do despite many years of musings on this phantom passage, and many requests for your source. The FACTS, in your own posts, called into question your character and integrity, and destroyed any title you might claim to competence.
DianeOD said:
Perhaps... perhaps not.
You've made an assumption, whether true or false I don't know, about your routinely sloppy and often bogus citations being questioned. You attribute this criticism to me presumably because I took the time and trouble to document one amazing example in detail. However, everyone who has read your writing in any forum is aware that you routinely post two kinds of "information": unsubstantiated claims without quotes or any specific references, and unexplained reference works, sometimes random lists of them, with no indication of their connection with Tarot history. That can be seen in your older essays, your posts on TarotL, your posts on LTarot, and on a daily basis here at Aeclectic. So it is far from clear nasty Michael is the source of your problem. However, since you want to talk about the little research study I did on LTarot, I'm certainly willing to do so. As noted in my previous post, I am happy to answer questions and defend my positions. You go first... oh, you already did.
As long as you want to recount the tale in this forum, I should warn both readers and moderators that this discussion *shut down* the LTarot forum when Diane and her cohort Lorraine threatened both myself and Lothar, the List owner, with legal harassment. That was despite the fact that no false or unsubstantiated claims were made, nothing, that is, meeting the definition of defamation. (FYI, truth is by definition NOT defamatory.) I only quoted her posts and pointed out the obvious, (along with a few well-deserved insults and a bit of mockery). As I noted in my previous post, quoting people can be fun; it can also be educational.
I don't know the fate of LTarot. When the threats and intimidation began, in the interests of the forum I accepted her demand that I remove my posts and did so. I agreed that I would not post further to that forum. When the threats continued despite my lurker status, I then unsubscribed from the forum. It was at some point closed down, but may, one hopes, have been reopened by now.
AFAIK, you never did find the source of your claims. (I reviewed every LTarot post you made over the two-year period that had the name Gerson or certain related keywords in it.)
AFAIK, you never saw the actual quote from Gerson until I found it and Ross translated it for the List. Your anonymous "eminent scholar" did track down the treatise from which the passage was taken, but he apparently didn't quote the passage for you!
AFAIK, You never recanted any of your many assertions on this theme prior to *today's* post, where you claim to have "misinterpreted" something. In fact, you just made stuff up, repeatedly over a period of many years, different stuff from one imagining to the next. Among your earliest and most interesting assertions were that Jean Gerson had stated that fortune-telling cards, with images of the Pagan gods, were a fad in 1395 Paris. Many other speculations were tried out as the threads continued from late 2005 until late 2007, but they began years earlier in some of your essays. The passage quoted on trionfi.com is typical.
In an earlier post here I made a passing comment, a sardonic aside (it's called "humor" and is presumably banned in this forum -- I assume that I'll be asked to edit that post at some point) in my post congratulating you on citing a genuine and genuinely informative work. However, since you have brought it up and claimed that "such problems occur in research", I think it only fair to explain what is meant by "such problems", in case any are interested.
For most of her two years on LTarot I largely ignored Diane. The main exception was when she claimed that Kwaw plagiarized her, despite the fact that the geographical game analysis of Tarot which Kwaw was developing was first presented in 1781, despite the fact that he presented a different analysis than Diane's, more cogent and coherent, that he came to different conclusions, and despite the fact that he cited her. (Typically, she offered no quotes; quotes are the heart of any plagiarism claim, and without them you have nothing but rank defamation.) I also demurred when she accused me of plagiarism for using the word "artifact" and mentioning maps as one of many examples of complex didactic art. She claimed that anyone talking about anything she ever mentioned must cite her absurdly obscure 1999 essay, which I've still never seen! (Presumably that belief is also behind her endless shotgun posts where she simply mentions many random subjects and claims that they are important. That way, if someone actually does the work which she does not, and finds something important in one of the hundreds of works she alludes to, she can come back and claim they got it from her.) She also claims to have first connected Tarot to ars memoria, conveniently ignoring Court de Gebelin, Alfred Douglas, Bob O'Neill, and probably dozens of others, (lots of Tarot writers but no writers like Yates or Carruthers who actually know something about ars memoria), and insists that anyone mentioning that possible connection must cite her insipid and unavailable essays or stand convicted of plagiarism.
The hilarious hypocrisy of this is that while she considers her own vanishingly obscure screeds to be of profoundly influential, she refuses to make them public or to credit those whose work has *actually* been influential. Her double standard is breathtaking. In a concurrent post to another thread just today, she has reasserted her view that no credit is due to Court de Gebelin for the things he contributed to Tarot folklore, hysterically taking offense at Ross for merely *mentioning* this seminal writer. Imagine a "scholar" who considers herself to be an influential researcher in a field of study but who has never bothered a basic literature review of that field!
Anyway, I ignored the Gerson threads during their first 22 months on LTarot because she never provided a quote nor a source that anyone could follow up on. As with most of her postings, here and elsewhere, there is no apparent factual basis for the interesting stuff, and no connection with Tarot for the factual stuff. As with the Holy Blood, Holy Grail folklore, what is new is not true, and what is true is not new, although they are somewhat better at citing sources. Lothar and Ross tried, from her first post, (yes, this phantom Gerson quote has been so important to her over the years that it was the entire subject of her very first post to LTarot). They never got anywhere, so there was no factual basis for the repeated speculation offered by her and Lothar. Finally she claimed to have found *a* source, but still didn't have the quote nor any idea of who *the* source was. That's when I got interested, which led to two main results.
First, I discovered where she got the original idea, and pointed out that she copied a 27-word description (in an essay from a few years earlier) verbatim from Johan Huizinga. (Like a high school teacher reviewing term papers for plagiarism, I just Googled unusual-sounding phrases, looking for a match, and *Bingo!*) Looking up that source led me to a number of other sources, (Huizinga actually *did* cite sources), one of which included the original passage in Latin, which Ross translated for the group. (Google Books is pretty cool. For example, an English translation of the Durand work Diane mentioned is available, both in photocopy and an OCR transcription.)
Second, I read through all her LTarot old posts on the subject and collected all of her pseudo citations. To this day she denies that she got the 27-word Huizinga quote from Huizinga, although today she is for the first time (AFAIK) admitting that the passage does come from the 1924 translation of his book. But getting back to her point, "such problems occur in research", the short answer is no, they don't. They occur when people refuse to do research and just make things up. This phantom Gerson passage was a major point of interest for Diane over a period of many years, as illustrated by the fact that it turned up in various essays, in her first post to LTarot, and in many subsequent posts over a two year period, and she had NEVER SEEN IT! This would be a bizarre aberration in real research, where things are routinely tracked down to *at least* a secondary source. She had nothing, yet continued to present her speculations about it if it were something.
Because such a claim of fortune-telling cards being a fad in 1395 Paris is a HUGE finding, if true, Lothar and Ross immediately tried to get her to tell them her source. She ignored such requests for a couple weeks, then the fun began. Over the two year period she has offered eleven different alternatives. I took the time to check them out, as best I could, although some defy definitive refutation.
This is the part that I found most interesting, given her pretensions to scholarship. The online Tarot community has a great number of crackpots and more than a few trolls and other unsavory types, (including mean SOBs like me), and they are usually best ignored. If Diane were just another one of the many, there would be no point in systematically documenting her crimes against scholarship. However, her reappearance on LTarot coincided with her appearance on Aeclectic, scattering random ideas and references in great profusion, and becoming an overnight sensation, the most prolific poster on the biggest forum. So... I thought it worthwhile to take a look at her methods and results. Given the immense diversity of her many posts, and the substantive shallowness of most of them -- that is, they tend to be pointless -- I selected the Gerson quote for detailed examination. It was clearly important to her and had been for many years; it actually related to the history of playing cards; it seemed plausible and, if true, would be extremely important to playing-card history; and, because it was so important to her, she had written a lot about it. So I checked out her sources.
1. The first source she suggested on LTarot was her phantom original author, to this day still unnamed by her. Needless to say, this is useless -- there is nothing to check out. Her initial claims included no quote and no indication of *any* source.
Two weeks later, (12/19/05) when she finally bothered to reply to the repeated requests for documentation, she made a point of *not* citing her supposed source, but instead offering alternatives. She replied to Lothar as if she were not even a member of the list, talking about *his readers* and suggesting sources that such lesser folk might find useful. This is in keeping with her claims to use only primary sources, etc. Her phantom source was thus established in 2005 as a secret. Mysterious claims of secret information are, of course, typical of Tarot cultists, holding out the promise of something kept in reserve, "for initiates only". As discussed below, in addition to her own source being kept secret, both of the other sources she alluded to in that first post turned out to be bogus.
2. Christian Dictionary of Biography
In a post of 6/19/06 (LTarot 3919, if LTarot still exists and if she has not destroyed her factual history) she cited "the Christian dictionary of biography." This reference turned out to be false. There does not appear to be any book with this title. WorldCat, Amazon, and Google find no book titled "Christian Dictionary of Biography".
3. Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
On multiple occasions, including 2/7/07, (LTarot 5199, 3231), she cited "recent edition "Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church". This reference turned out to be false. The only remark that could be taken as an allusion to the treatise in question is, "Gerson... was deeply concerned over the religious education of children." (The Gerson passage in question actually refers to the corruption of youth by dirty pictures, as does his 1402 treatise as a whole.)
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
ed. F.L. Cross; Oxford University Press, 2005.
4. Oxford Dictionary of Christian Biography
In a post of 10/14/07 (LTarot 5477) she cited "the Oxford Dictionary of Christian Biography." This reference turned out to be false. There does not appear to be any book with this title. WorldCat returns numerous entries for "Dictionary of Christian Biography", but none of them are published by Oxford.
5. Dictionary of Christian Biography
In a post of 10/26/07 (LTarot 5546) she cited "Dictionary of Christian Biography". This reference turned out to be false. The Gerson entry in this book is a single paragraph, which says nothing conceivably relevant to the passage in question.
Dictionary of Christian biography
ed. Michael Walsh; Liturgical Press, 2001.
Note the similarity of those four titles. Two of them are real books, two of them are not, and none of them are real sources of the Gerson passage in question. She was not actually referring to *any* specific book, but just evading the question, hoping no one would check. That's why the specifics of the book title matter no more than a page citation or a quoted passage. When it's all posturing and bluffing, there are no points deducted for outrageous sloppiness.
6. Gerson's memoires.
In a post of 2/7/07 (LTarot 5200) she cited "From memory - in this case 90% certain - I found the reference in Gerson's memoirs." This reference turned out to be false. In fact, the passage comes from a 1402 treatise on the corruption of youth. (Ask yourself, if a high school kid made up sources for a research paper, what grade would they deserve? If a grad student persistently made up sources for his research, what action might the department take?)
7. Michael Dummett
On multiple occasions, including 12/20/06, (LTarot 4769, 5132), she cited "Dummett's Game of Tarot which first alluded to Jean Gerson's comment." This pseudo-reference was repeated in other posts as well, usually as an excuse to deplore Dummett's shabby and biased work. Upon investigation, this reference appears to be false, although no page number, nor even chapter reference was provided. It is not surprising that he failed to mention it, given that the Gerson passage in question is not about playing cards.
8. Gertrude Moakley
In a post of 2/3/07 (LTarot 5182) she cited "Moakley". As with the other "citations", I am quoting the entire substance -- no more and no less --of her citation. Like Dummett, this reference appears to be false, although again there is not page number or even chapter reference. Again, that is not surprising, given that the Gerson passage in question is not about playing cards.
The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza family: an iconographic and historical study
New York Public Library, 1966.
9. David Parlett: Pt.1
In a post of 2/3/07 (LTarot 5182) she cited "the Oxford History of card-games". According to David Parlett's website, The Oxford Guide to Card Games was republished in paperback as A History of Card Games. On that page, Parlett himself refers to both books as The Oxford History of Card Games, despite the fact that neither of them is so named, and search engines such as WorldCat and Amazon return no entry for that specific title. Like the others, this citation lacks any useful specificity, but upon inspection, this reference appears to be as false as the others. Again, that is not surprising, given that the Gerson passage in question is not about playing cards.
The Oxford Guide to Card Games
Oxford University Press, 1990.
10. Gerson: Complete Works.
After 22 months and nine wholly bogus references, Diane finally got it right. This was the post that got me involved. It claimed to have found the passage, BUT STILL DIDN'T QUOTE IT!!! Pretty suspicious, especially when the work cited is the Complete Works, (DUH!), and when that is such a difficult book to access. (For example, WorldCat suggests that the nearest copy to me is 416 miles away at the University of Arizona.) Given the fact that O'Donovan had still not produced the passage, nor even seen it, it remained a phantom passage. Given the fact that this is clearly not the source used by her, (Huizinga is), this is yet another bogus source for her essays and posts.
11. David Parlett: Pt. 2
But wait -- there's more! On 11/2/07, after the fireworks started on LTarot, she offered one more bogus reference: "the Oxford Dictionary of Card Games", (which was republished in paperback as A Dictionary of Card Games). Being so sloppy, unable or just not caring to get anything correct, she probably assumes that this is the same book as The Oxford Guide to Card Games, mentioned above. They are, however, two different books, adding another layer of manure to the steaming heap.
That's a revealing illustration of O'Donovan's "methodology" at work, over a 2-year period of posts, (not counting the prior years when the phantom quote was being presented by her), and a VERY revealing illustration of her results: bupkis, nothing. This is how she proceeds, this is what she achieves -- at the end of all that, she still had no idea what Gerson actually wrote!
The bottom line on Diane's eleven (11) references is that not one of them was her actual source, not one of them provided any insight into what was actually in the passage she alluded to, and ten (10) of them appear to be... well, I guess you can't use the proper descriptive term on Aeclectic, so I'll use the archaic "humbug". She just made this stuff up off the top of her head to avoid answering a question the answer to which would be embarrassing for her. The final proof of her "scholarship" is that she has never even *attempted* to substantiate any of these claims by cracking a single book and *looking* for this supposedly amazing reference. If she bothered to look, she would have found what I found when I did look: nothing.
Not exactly, Diane. I began doing some actual research, something that you apparently don't understand. I began posting the results of that research in your own words, including the names of essays, dates and ID numbers of LTarot posts, and the results of actually looking stuff up -- something you failed to do despite many years of musings on this phantom passage, and many requests for your source. The FACTS, in your own posts, called into question your character and integrity, and destroyed any title you might claim to competence.
OnePotato
Thank you Rosanne for posting this thread.
Perhaps it will help to clear up some of my own recent impressions here, one way or the other.
I like to judge people's offerings for myself.
If they fail to provide a proper volume of backing or documentation, I like to keep their ideas in my personal "undecided" box. I find it much more useful than straight out acceptance/rejection. I can lean toward one or the other, but I'm hardly ever required to choose.
I suppose I should have done a lot more digging into various people's formal credentials, but they're usually not posted around here.
Perhaps it will help to clear up some of my own recent impressions here, one way or the other.
I like to judge people's offerings for myself.
If they fail to provide a proper volume of backing or documentation, I like to keep their ideas in my personal "undecided" box. I find it much more useful than straight out acceptance/rejection. I can lean toward one or the other, but I'm hardly ever required to choose.
I suppose I should have done a lot more digging into various people's formal credentials, but they're usually not posted around here.
gregory
Caramba. 
Hi Rosanne, hi, OnePotato.
I like to read these threads and decide for myself. If I want to look something up - I'm a big girl and I can do that. If I can't find it then I can ask whoever posted it. If I really want to know and they can't tell me - THEN and only then do I get suspicious....
If I see a thread with people getting nasty to each other, I just don't bother any more. Life is too short and nobody - NOBODY - actually KNOWS the truth about tarot. If I am desperate - I will ask someone I trust to give me an answer I trust. Rosanne is one of those. (So is kwaw, for the record, since he too has scored a mention here.)
Debate is one thing. Arguing is BORING.
Hi Rosanne, hi, OnePotato.I like to read these threads and decide for myself. If I want to look something up - I'm a big girl and I can do that. If I can't find it then I can ask whoever posted it. If I really want to know and they can't tell me - THEN and only then do I get suspicious....
If I see a thread with people getting nasty to each other, I just don't bother any more. Life is too short and nobody - NOBODY - actually KNOWS the truth about tarot. If I am desperate - I will ask someone I trust to give me an answer I trust. Rosanne is one of those. (So is kwaw, for the record, since he too has scored a mention here.)
Debate is one thing. Arguing is BORING.
Ross G Caldwell
I don't think anyone here has the right to demand academic qualifications for learning or discussing any aspect of tarot history. Tarot history is not a recognized academic discipline, there are no departments, chairs or professors of tarot history. So everybody who aims to do tarot history at the level it *would* be were it a recognized, independent discipline, applies the skills they bring from what they *did* study in the recognized fields.
So, it is not a matter technically of academic qualifications, but rather of "credentials", which is a status earned by becoming authoritative among the body of people seriously interested in the topic. This means publishing and otherwise becoming known and above all respected in what is, finally, an amateur field of research for everybody involved.
Actual academic credentials work in this way too, except that they actually get paid for teaching and researching their speciality. Tarot historians don't get paid for being Tarot Historians. They are all, including Michael Dummett and Thierry Depaulis, amateurs. It's the way they do their Tarot History that gives them credentials and earns them respect, so that you'd almost think it was a real discipline. That seems quite an accomplishment, until you realize how small the field is.
For myself, I spent a lot time in school. My degrees are BA in History and Religious Studies, York University, Toronto, 1992 (cum laude), and MTS (Master of Theological Studies), Harvard University, the Divinity School, 1995 (sorry no cum laude there).
The History major was capped off with an independent year long mentored study - historiography (first term), followed by a case study (second term). In my case the mentor was Prof. Steve Mason, and the study was on Josephus (Josephus is suitable study as a case in historiography because he claims to be a historian (in the introduction to the "Jewish War"), and because his methods and many of his claims can be compared to other writers). He was also suitable because Jospehus is Steve Mason's specialty, and he is currently the editor in chief of the Brill Josephus, the first critical edition of all of Josephus' works in over a hundred years)).
I took a few other courses with Steve, and he is easily the most influential teacher I had at York. If you don't find that you have graduated after having such a mentoring relationship, I think you've missed out on the most important part of education.
My Religious Studies program was shaped around the philosophical and anthropological angles. My interest was in the medieval (western) Church, but the closest I could get to that at York (we had no exchange with the University of Toronto then) was medieval philosophy and mysticism. My most important professor was (the late) Sol Tanenzapf, who taught a course on Maimonides and Aquinas. He once told me that if he weren't a Process Theologian, he would call himself a Thomist. I found both statements significant coming from a Rabbi.
My interest was also in the Bible, so I studied both classical and modern Hebrew (three and two years respectively as an undergraduate), Greek (2 years) and Latin (2 years, for the one day hope of medieval studies).
At Harvard, my overriding plan was to study under Helmut Koester, since his studies "Trajectories Through Early Christianity" and more importantly "Introduction to the New Testament" (2 volumes), were so influential in my undergraduate work. The first volume of Koester's "Introduction" is devoted to a very detailed history of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the place and times of the origins of Christianity.
My medieval studies yearnings could also be satisfied at Harvard, although by this time I was more drawn to the ancient - and even more ancient by the end (Assyriology). In any case, I studied Church architecture and medieval iconography with Margaret Miles (two parts over the course of a year), as well as courses in the Crusades and the Inquisition (can't remember who taught these at the moment... it might have been Miles as well, but in many cases you don't see the Professor, just the teaching assistant. This was the case with Koester - although I got to talk to him enough on his smoke breaks outside Andover Hall, and there were obligatory meetings with him to discuss papers once during the term).
For my continuing studies of Judaism, the most influential (and entertaining) was Jon Levinson, who taught a course on Talmud (for the uninitiated... he also taught one for people who could read it in the original). I studied the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls with Ofer bar Joseph (we worked on the "Community Scroll"), and began Assyriology (where I assumed I wanted to go) with Lawrence (Larry) Stager.
All this and more in addition to continuing language study, of course (you needed two classical languages in your field, and one modern, to graduate).
The MTS is an archaic title and misleading these days. What it is is HDS' "purely academic" degree, for those not planning to become ordained. The ordination degree, which many Churches (mainly Protestant) accept as sufficient preparation, is the MDiv. (Master of Divinty). For this degree, in addition to academic work, you have to intern in real-life situations like hospitals and churches.
So, more-or-less, that's my "history" qualifications, or at least academic background.
The important thing is not the subjects studied, but the methodology. I learned history, and how to do history. Every step of my degrees had to deal with historical methodology. Although I barely touched the medieval period during my training, this methodological training helped me to "work up" in a different field once I moved to France, and finally could investigate it "first hand" so to speak.
Why Tarot had to be the entrance point or speciality in the medieval period is for another post, I imagine.
But I want to reiterate what I said at the beginning - academic qualifications are moot. What is needed is basic intelligence and common sense, the basis of all scientific investigation.
Ross
So, it is not a matter technically of academic qualifications, but rather of "credentials", which is a status earned by becoming authoritative among the body of people seriously interested in the topic. This means publishing and otherwise becoming known and above all respected in what is, finally, an amateur field of research for everybody involved.
Actual academic credentials work in this way too, except that they actually get paid for teaching and researching their speciality. Tarot historians don't get paid for being Tarot Historians. They are all, including Michael Dummett and Thierry Depaulis, amateurs. It's the way they do their Tarot History that gives them credentials and earns them respect, so that you'd almost think it was a real discipline. That seems quite an accomplishment, until you realize how small the field is.
For myself, I spent a lot time in school. My degrees are BA in History and Religious Studies, York University, Toronto, 1992 (cum laude), and MTS (Master of Theological Studies), Harvard University, the Divinity School, 1995 (sorry no cum laude there).
The History major was capped off with an independent year long mentored study - historiography (first term), followed by a case study (second term). In my case the mentor was Prof. Steve Mason, and the study was on Josephus (Josephus is suitable study as a case in historiography because he claims to be a historian (in the introduction to the "Jewish War"), and because his methods and many of his claims can be compared to other writers). He was also suitable because Jospehus is Steve Mason's specialty, and he is currently the editor in chief of the Brill Josephus, the first critical edition of all of Josephus' works in over a hundred years)).
I took a few other courses with Steve, and he is easily the most influential teacher I had at York. If you don't find that you have graduated after having such a mentoring relationship, I think you've missed out on the most important part of education.
My Religious Studies program was shaped around the philosophical and anthropological angles. My interest was in the medieval (western) Church, but the closest I could get to that at York (we had no exchange with the University of Toronto then) was medieval philosophy and mysticism. My most important professor was (the late) Sol Tanenzapf, who taught a course on Maimonides and Aquinas. He once told me that if he weren't a Process Theologian, he would call himself a Thomist. I found both statements significant coming from a Rabbi.
My interest was also in the Bible, so I studied both classical and modern Hebrew (three and two years respectively as an undergraduate), Greek (2 years) and Latin (2 years, for the one day hope of medieval studies).
At Harvard, my overriding plan was to study under Helmut Koester, since his studies "Trajectories Through Early Christianity" and more importantly "Introduction to the New Testament" (2 volumes), were so influential in my undergraduate work. The first volume of Koester's "Introduction" is devoted to a very detailed history of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the place and times of the origins of Christianity.
My medieval studies yearnings could also be satisfied at Harvard, although by this time I was more drawn to the ancient - and even more ancient by the end (Assyriology). In any case, I studied Church architecture and medieval iconography with Margaret Miles (two parts over the course of a year), as well as courses in the Crusades and the Inquisition (can't remember who taught these at the moment... it might have been Miles as well, but in many cases you don't see the Professor, just the teaching assistant. This was the case with Koester - although I got to talk to him enough on his smoke breaks outside Andover Hall, and there were obligatory meetings with him to discuss papers once during the term).
For my continuing studies of Judaism, the most influential (and entertaining) was Jon Levinson, who taught a course on Talmud (for the uninitiated... he also taught one for people who could read it in the original). I studied the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls with Ofer bar Joseph (we worked on the "Community Scroll"), and began Assyriology (where I assumed I wanted to go) with Lawrence (Larry) Stager.
All this and more in addition to continuing language study, of course (you needed two classical languages in your field, and one modern, to graduate).
The MTS is an archaic title and misleading these days. What it is is HDS' "purely academic" degree, for those not planning to become ordained. The ordination degree, which many Churches (mainly Protestant) accept as sufficient preparation, is the MDiv. (Master of Divinty). For this degree, in addition to academic work, you have to intern in real-life situations like hospitals and churches.
So, more-or-less, that's my "history" qualifications, or at least academic background.
The important thing is not the subjects studied, but the methodology. I learned history, and how to do history. Every step of my degrees had to deal with historical methodology. Although I barely touched the medieval period during my training, this methodological training helped me to "work up" in a different field once I moved to France, and finally could investigate it "first hand" so to speak.
Why Tarot had to be the entrance point or speciality in the medieval period is for another post, I imagine.
But I want to reiterate what I said at the beginning - academic qualifications are moot. What is needed is basic intelligence and common sense, the basis of all scientific investigation.
Ross
gregory
I have a master's degree in music, a slew of music diplomas and a teaching degree.
I have collected and read about tarot since 1975, and read the cards for about 2 years now.
Oh - and I am 63 years old. That has to count for something !
I know nothing. Feel free to ask questions.... I think I will go and rot my brain in front of the TV instead.
I have collected and read about tarot since 1975, and read the cards for about 2 years now.
Oh - and I am 63 years old. That has to count for something !
I know nothing. Feel free to ask questions....
I think I will go and rot my brain in front of the TV instead.baba-prague
Deleted for reasons of profound embarrassment. I really do NOT do this kind of thing, maybe because in my present incarnation I just want the work to speak for itself.
le pendu
I'm embarrassingly undereducated!
baba-prague
le pendu said:I'm embarrassingly undereducated!
Oh come on!
