Hi, Ruth,
moderndayruth said:
Ross, with due respect to your in my opinion vast knowledge, as i understood the initial question was about each individual believes.
...
From academic viewpoint, the historicity of the Bible itself is disputable too, due to existance of counter evidence/ lack of evidence, which of course doesn't seem to be an obstacle for many to base their believes on it.
With all due respect, you haven't said anything that contradicts what Ross posted.
Mary asked about people's belief. Some people believe in historical lore based on religious faith, and others, those you refer to as having an "academic viewpoint", believe in history as reconstructed by sober analysis of factual evidence. Ross repeatedly phrased his post in terms of the latter approach -- he was answering for himself, and explaining his approach.
As with the Egyptian poll, I think that Mary is primarily interested in the explanations provided by those using another approach to historical "knowledge", but Ross -- as usual -- explained the fact-based approach concisely and clearly.
Regarding your comparison to belief in the Bible's historicity, the Comte de Mellet, Antoine Court de Gebelin, and the fortune-teller Alliette just made stuff up according to the pop-culture enthusiasms of the day. Egyptian origins and etymologies, Tarot temples of initiation, transmission by the Templars or Gypsies, Cabalistic meaning, and the rest is pure bunk. Unlike occult Tarot's fictions, more than a few historical stories of the Bible turns out to have historical support from modern archeology, evidence which at least suggests a factual basis for the biblical lore.
On the other hand, Christian Fundamentalists have adopted a pseudo-scientific guise and attempted to present 3,000 year-old Bronze Age creation myths as 21st-Century "Creation Science" about "Intelligent Design", and so on. This is exactly like the true believers who post to every Tarot history forum I've seen. These people are fascinated by isolated factoids of Tarot history in the same way that Jehovah's Witnesses are fascinated by paleontology, physical anthropology, and the like. They seek items they can cherry pick, take out of context and distort to make a case for their beliefs even though those beliefs were never based on evidence to begin with.
The more sophisticated ones even pretend to be skeptical about historical facts, and conservative in their analyses. As we saw in the Egyptian-origins thread, they say one thing -- their true beliefs -- in vague and rambling terms, but when someone questions them they say "oh no -- I didn't mean that I believe the things I said!" These are pseudo-skeptics as well as pseudo-historians, employing language from skeptical historians but not the actual methodology. (Unfortunately, the term "pseudo-skeptic" was invented by just such a pseudo-skeptic, as a way to slur people who
don't believe in UFOs and the paranormal.) On the Egyptian-origins thread the poll results suggest that serious-minded people replied in the majority, by about 2:1 or 3:1. However, the postings reveal that it is largely a silent majority.
Based on that, it seems that lurkers are better Tarot historians than posters and most of the people who write books and websites on Tarot.
Best regards,
Michael