(In)Significance of Marseille colours?

Hello all.

I've recently obtained the Noblet tarot and have been reading the LWB description of the colours used in the deck (and their significance). It mentions that the Marteau Grimaud deck was incorrectly coloured and that this altered the 'original meanings' of the cards.

As a total novice to Marseille decks, I'm not quite sure what to make of the apparent importance of colour in these decks.
I know that modern decks often place an emphasis on colour meanings, but how true is this in the Marseille? My initial impressions were that there was no significance to the colours (and how they were painted) - rather it was just a random method employed in the printing process (and the availability of the colours). Also the painting seems very haphazard and often doesn't conform to the linework.

If there was a specific intention in the colour scheme (and actually painting), could anyone point me to a resource/thread on this?

thanks.

Just my opinion:

I think that whatever anyone tells you about the coloration of early decks will include a fair bit of speculation.

Certainly colors mean something- they elicit emotional responses, and changing the coloration of a card can have a big impact on how one will view the card. Any artist would have known this 350 years ago. That said, I don't think that anyone can say with any degree of certainty what the intention of any particular card maker may have been.

One could even speculate that the sorts of meanings and emotional responses that we assign to colors could be different than the meanings and emotional responses that a person in 17th century Europe may have assigned to colors.

Even if color meaning hasn't changed with culture, the colors we see on the decks have changed. The colors have faded and changed hue over the years to the point where we really don't know with certainty what the colors of a deck really looked like when the deck was new... And even if we trust that it is possible to reproduce the colors accurately, since there is only one original Noblet (for example) we don't even know that all Noblet decks would have used the same coloration.

All this goes to say that don't think you will ever get a solid answer to your question. Flornoy's description of the color meanings is based in his experience studying a craft that has a long tradition of handing knowledge down- so he is in a far better position than I am in to present meanings for color, but I do have my doubts as to how certain he could possibly be about the meanings that he assigns.

-tb

I don't believe the colors originally had any significance really. Bright colors were probably used to make them attractive and interesting. It wasn't until the occult interpretations came along with all of their systems of correspondences that the colors began to have symbolic meaning. I doubt there is any one "right" system. You can make almost any color mean practically anything if you want to. But I'm no expert on this and someone will probably come along and prove me wrong. I don't know of any resources either that answers your question definitively, so I guess I am basically worthless.

We know a fair bit about what some colours meant symbolically in France in the 17th Century - you can find that kind of information in art history books. They didn't necessarily have the same associations as they do today. For instance, a certain type of blue was always associated with the Virgin Mary, and anyone looking at that colour in France in 1650 would probably think of her. Nowadays, unless you are heavily Catholic, it wouldn't be the case. So if you want to know what the colours meant at the time they were used, in the actual deck you are using (assuming the decks that came down to us preserved the original colouring, albeit faded), then your best bet is to do a bit of research about French art history in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

The 17th Century (and therefore Noblet) was closer to the Medieval/Renaissance obsession of assigning meaning to everything, including colour. By the 18th Century, much more of art - including artefacts like cards - would have become decorative, so any variation in colour between 17th and 18th Century decks are not necessarily significant of a change in symbolism. This was the case up to the Revolution, which rediscovered the symbolic use of colours (but used them differently from their former symbolical meaning).

Much of the colour symbolism we know of comes from religious art - if you look at this page, it will give you an example of the associations that were made for stained glass windows - it predates the Noblet by some centuries, but would have entered the collective knowledge by the time he made his deck. This is not to say that everytime those colours were used in a pack of cards, we have to ascribe those meanings to them. After all - Noblet made the cards as a game, not an object of religious veneration. But still - the associations existed.

I think there must have been several factors in choosing color.

Tradition: Certain colors should be used in certain circumstances. The red robes on the Pope for instance in consistent through all of the TdM decks that I know.

Common Sense: We'll find the "ground" for instance in light blue (rock-like?), yellow (dirt-like?), and green (plant-like?)... generally speaking.. but not red (thank god!), or deep blue (although these colors do show up sometimes too. Crowns are usually gold, swords are usually steel-blue... kind of like in the "real" world.

Aesthetic: I believe that some amount of "balancing" the colors in a card probably occurred. Usually, all of the colors appear somewhere on most of the cards, and there seems to be some joy in using the colors in a "distributed" sort of way; I think it was probably common to try to keep a balance of colors on and across cards.

Technology: Some color choices were probably made because of limits of the technology used. Using a stencil to color the cards meant breaking up the colors in a way that worked with the stenciling process.

Contrast: Contrast seems to be a major factor in choosing colors, even over "Realism". Rather than choosing color combinations that would have likely been found on actual clothing for instance, highly contrasting "rainbow" clothing tends to predominate. Often, legs and arms switch colors as you follow them along.

Beyond these things, perhaps there is also "Meaning" to the use of colors. I think Fudugazi makes a good point about color symbolism.

With the TdM, it's common to ascribe some sort of "secret knowledge" to the cardmakers, as if they are passing on some encoded messages in their work. Even if that's possible, (by mere fact of reproducing the iconography), I personally tend to consider them more as craftsmen/businessmen, out to produce a good looking, competitive product.

I found the discussion of color in the Noblet booklet unconvincing.

Flornoy, the maître-cartier who restored the Noblet, makes a pretty good case for a traditional line of artisans who made the TdM, masters in their art, that grew out of the master traditions of the image-makers in the Middle Ages. He most definitely believes in a secret message, along the lines of an encoded memory of image-makers' guild religious beliefs, folklore and esoteric knowledge. He is far from the only one to have made that claim, and studies made by historians in Medieval to 17th-early 18thCentury guilds, and in the tradition of compagnonage and its specific mystique seem to support it. Image-makers of the Middles Ages and later did ascribe spiritual or moral meaning to colours - both exoteric and esoteric - but, as Le Pendu writes, much of the choice of colours was due to tradition, which was passed on from master to apprentice. How much each master, journeyman or apprentice actually thought of the esoteric side of their tradition is debatable: we have no known records of their state of mind as they worked!

Flornoy believes the line was broken some time between the early and the mid-18th Century - and therefore Conver was more of a "restorer/rediscover" himself, than one of a line of masters. Noblet, on the other hand, would have been in the line (or one of the lines: I believe there were several).

This by no means negates the fact that cards were produced for wide distribution, for money. Guild members, for all their esoteric traditions, were not ritual magicians or woo-woo merchants, but tradesmen who believed in earning an honest living. Simply, they saw no contradiction between earning a profit and working within a spiritual and esoteric tradition. That distinction was only made by the Industrial Revolution, which removed spirit from the factory, and confined it strictly to Church, on Sundays.

These are the colour associations from the Jean Noblet LWB:-

White Emotional saturation, catharsis, original consciousness, heightened perception
Black Origins, universal memory, universal consciousness
Red Wounds and the flow of blood
Blue Blows to body & soul, the unconscious and its buried contents
Yellow Perseverance, endurance, courage
Green Hope, acceptance of cyclical time & eternal return
Light blue Understanding awareness of world around one
Flesh colour Human condition & our reactions,

and these are Jodorowsky's associations. Can't remember where I found them - quite possibly on another thread in this forum:-

Colour Positive Sense(PS) Negative Sense(NS)
Violet PS The impersonal, wisdom, knowledge NS Sacrifice, death
White PS Purity, ecstasy, immortality NS Cold mortal, ego
Lt. Blue PS Receptive to celestial forces NS Attachment to father, immobilization
Dk. Blue PS Receptive to terrestrial forces NS Despotism, tyrannical
Lt. Yellow PS Clairvoyance, consciousness, active intelligence
NS Drought, cruelty, withered spirit without emotion
Dk. Yellow PS Consciousness, receptive intelligence
NS Insanity, destruction
Flesh PS Humanity, life NS Materialism, repression, carnal pleasure, scorn of the body
Red PS Animal kingdom NS Active, criminal violence
Lt. Green PS Natural unification of celestial forces, vegetable kingdom NS Attachment to mother, envy
Dk. Green PS natura naturans, unification of terrestrial forces NS Collapse, ruin
Black PS Creative magma, work of profound depth NS Chaos, regression, death

I can remember one of the first books I ever read on the Tarot was rather nice and lavishly illustrated, by an occult and art historian called Fred Gettings. He favoured the Marseille type decks as more authentic than the more recent decks, and interpreted the colours symbolically. But from what I can remember, he only used the four colours of the printed decks available at that time. I no longer have a copy, but I though that all his books were very good on occult symbolism in art.

If the designers of these decks were part of an initiatory tradition, which most of the designers of the recent versions of these decks believe, then a deliberate colour system seems likely to me, but I certainly would not feel competent to suggest what it was. Both the schemes above are interesting. I agree with Fudugazi that a good starting point would be the religious art history of the 17th Century.

Patrick

I'm accustomed to the medieval use of colors in sacred art, to the degree that it makes me crazy when for instance some other apostle is wearing a yellow mantle and St. Peter isn't. But I find a difference in the TdM that the interpreters of colors don't much address.

In the religious art where we see the color symbolism used, a person will be depicted wearing one main color, or often two: an inner garment of one color and an outer garment of another. In the TdM figures, the outfits tend to include pretty much every color the deck uses, sewn together in crazy ways. There have been times I've been tempted to ask Tarotbear (who, I believe, used to do costuming) "Is it physically possible to construct this garment?"

If everybody is wearing almost every color at once, then I don't find that an indicator that individual colors actually convey a message.

I think that a second problem working with TdM colors is that inks not only fade, they actually change colors. Does anybody know for sure whether that mysterious dark color on the Heron was originally green, blue, black or dark gray?

shaveling said:

I think that a second problem working with TdM colors is that inks not only fade, they actually change colors. Does anybody know for sure whether that mysterious dark color on the Heron was originally green, blue, black or dark gray?

Click to expand...

I've often wondered the same thing.

As for several colours on one same figure - to be fair, the balance changes (whether the garment is physically possible or not! I have quite a few questions about the physics of the Marseille, actually - think of La Roue de Fortune!!!). You would therefore be thrown back not so much on "colour as representative of a character", as "colour as representative of moral or spiritual quality" - or - it's possible - esoteric associations linked to some guild tradition lost in time.

Either way, I've found that working with colour with historical Marseille decks isn't very practical. I reserve that exercise for those modern recreations I know have consciously used colour-as-meaning.