On Marseille Colors
It may be appropriate here, though a bit long (not too long, I hope), to cite an extract from the booklet accompanying Flornoy's reconstitution of the Noblet atouts. The Dodal also employs these seven colours. It is of course impossible to know what the hues actually looked like at the time they were applied. It is relatively safe to suggest that tastes ran to BRIGHT in the 17th and early 18th centuries. That was certainly the case in the Middle Ages. Colours were reduced in number by later editors largely to cut production costs. They were by then unaware that the choice and position of the colours was not there to look pretty, that the motive was operativity, beyond mind and analysis. So here goes:
"Jean Noblet’s tarot employs the seven symbolic colours, colours partially defined by the ancient traditional phrase still sung by today's Compagnons du Devoir :
White, the tears of Maître Jacques
Black, the earth which bore him
Red, the blood he shed
Blue, the blows he suffered
Yellow, perseverance
Green, hope
Two other colours join this list: light blue, which appears as grey in other old tarots, and flesh colour.
It was these oracular phrases that were in the minds of the image-makers as they coloured their drawings. They worked for the sacred, and they knew it. Only being effective interested them, only the subliminal message mattered. Drawings speak to the intellect, while the colours of these images, through their mass and their places in relation to each other, speak to our unconscious.
White, the tears of Maître Jacques
Jean Noblet’s original tarot no longer contains white. In printing, white is the colour of the paper, and the paper of 1650, which was originally ecru, has by now turned completely yellow. White are Maître Jacques’ tears. It is the colour of emotional saturation, of catharsis, of the « thanks, I’ve understood » which one says to life. It is the impulse that makes you conscious of being connected with the surrounding world; it is accession to heightened perception, the rediscovery of our original consciousness.
We can observe very little white in the drawings of the Tarot. It can be used to emphasize the inner nature of the figures, especially in terms of their eyes, but details in this colour are generally rare, apart from the faces and hands, which are always white. This feature appears on the two 17th-century tarots that have come down to us: that of Noblet, of course, and Jacques Viéville. It is understood that the card itself is white.
Black, the earth which bore him
Black as the virgins holding a child that our image-makers so loved to portray. Black and a virgin, bearer of the universal consciousness: the Earth. Always new, always virginal, ever in motion, alive. Al kemit, the black earth of the Egyptian silt. The memory of the world, the humus of our consciousness, as much plant, animal and mineral as human. We are all linked within this memory.
Red, the blood he shed
Blood flows from a wound, leaves stains, and is cleaned. Who hasn’t endured bodily injuries? Our image-makers apply red to evoke our consciousness of having seen our own blood flow, having suffered. Painful memories which are written into our "official" history and, at the same time, deformed as they are inscribed in the unconscious. Our behaviour is marked by these wounds. Many of our reflexes, our spontaneous reactions, are born of them.
Blue, the blows he suffered
Blows to body and soul, those which leave no visible trace but function insidiously. Who hasn’t received bruises to the soul? Blue is applied to indicate the active mass of all we have stowed away in the pressure-cooker of our unconscious. It is the colour of all we have forgotten.
Yellow, perseverance
That which we must always call forth in order to advance in life. Without it, nothing can be constructed. Endurance and courage.
Green, hope
The certainty that we can change, that life is ours, that « tomorrow will be another day ». The acceptance of cyclical time, that of the mother and the eternal return.
Light Blue
The blue of sea-being, the blue perceived in the womb, that of
« understanding », of being part of the world which surrounds us.
It is the blue of the Virgin Mary, that of the ocean of possible worlds in which the Spirit, when it incarnates, draws its ability to adapt to the times.
Flesh colour
It is our way of living; the human entrenched in all his humanity. Our presence in the world, our way of holding ourselves upright in the social sphere, our emotional reactions, positive and negative, our joys and tears."
