Questions about the "Bardic origin of Tarot" theory

[Baroli]

Originally Posted by Rosanne

At the time of Tarot one of the most common depictions of Knight/Prince on horseback carrying a cup was various depictions of the Magi bringing gifts to the the baby Jesus. Often it was a depiction of Caspar- who was Asia/East/Spring/Faith. It was a common image that the Artist painted to glorify the image of the Court person as for example the images of a Magi Procession at The Chapel of the Magi at Palazzo Medici (1400's). Earlier there are many, many, mosiacs depicting a Knight, usually Middle Eastern Type carrying a cup. We think Camel not Horse, but Horse was much more common. The Knight and Cup is more in line with Almanacs showing directions- than the Grail quest. ~Rosanne

Also if I may take this further, caval di coppa in the vacchetta depicts a young man stopping to raise his cup in salute, caval di bastone is a court jester, caval di denari and di spada both foppish looking. Hardly anything associated with the grail quest. If you are strictly going by RW then yes,....perhaps, but you said:

Originally Posted by venicebard

I have the narrowest definition of tarot of anyone here: I consider it to mean the Tarot of Marseilles,...

I took out my Tarot De Marseille (Grimaud) and I have to say the knight of cups doesn't look like a man at war, but a man of peace, offering a cup.

Rosanne make a very valid point.

[venicebard]

Originally Posted by Umbrae

Please include a scan depicting Boaz and Jachin (expicit as opposed to inferred), from more than one deck predating 1717. Thank you.

Labeled? All I see is that in the standard Marseilles the sexes do a pas de deux about trumps III and V, which both have twin pillared seats, one crude (III) and one refined (V): male pillar Jachin is represented by the eagle's tailfeathers embracing the Empress, female pillar Boaz by the mother's arm presenting her twins to be blessed.

Originally Posted by firemaiden

You say "Scientifically advanced content might be mere synchronicity" -- this paragraph tells me nothing, except that you view yourself as a non-scientific person, and do not accept the premise of the scientific method of inquiry, and peer review.

You sure can leap. First of all, you will note I myself more or less dismiss the possibility, which I really was only trying to indicate I had at least considered.

But as for viewing myself as non-scientific, please: scientific fundamentally means empirical. Empirical does not mean abandonment of the ability to also deduce, and the two must go hand in hand. And it is true that the peer-review system leads to entrenched ideas oft tending to resist the thrust of empiricism, a problem which a freer market of ideas might circumvent.

However, I was there simply obliquely referring to the correlation between the four elements and the fundamental particles, and between the symbolic meanings of the tree-letters and the meanings to man of the atom-types which bear like numbers. How this content got into the bardic-Qabbalistic corpus is the question I was (briefly) commenting on.

What think you of the alphabet work done by Mark Filipas ?

I was quite impressed with his theory, so much so I entertain the notion it may have been a second layer overlayed upon the first (in the iconography of the cards) as a sort of veil or veneer. But individual words for items found in the pictures is trumped in sheer power by symbolic meanings rooted to letters by bardic numeration as corroborated by clusters of similar meanings amongst roots catalogued by starting letter. Shin as saille the willow, for instance, begins many a root for the overflowing of the fount of abundance, which its boughs mimic . . . and so on. This study, moreovr, has led to some refinement of my understanding of the meanings, while in the main it has reinforced my already-existing argument.

Does that mean you believe that other topoi ubiquitous in medieval europe - like the Wheel of Fortune, the Grim Reaper with his scythe, the Last Judgement, the Scales of Justice, etc, the Virtues, etc, have nothing to do with the creation of the tarot? Do you not require any material evidence of "bardic" involvement of the creation of tarot cards to believe this theory?

The material evidence is the cards themselves, I have been trying to say. And of course symbolic forms current in those times are used: it is an embodiment of a very profound tradition in common garb.

Originally Posted by Rosanne

At the time of Tarot one of the most common depictions of Knight/Prince on horseback carrying a cup was various depictions of the Magi bringing gifts to the the baby Jesus. Often it was a depiction of Caspar- who was Asia/East/Spring/Faith. It was a common image that the Artist painted to glorify the image of the Court person as for example the images of a Magi Procession at The Chapel of the Magi at Palazzo Medici (1400's). Earlier there are many, many, mosiacs depicting a Knight, usually Middle Eastern Type carrying a cup. We think Camel not Horse, but Horse was much more common. The Knight and Cup is more in line with Almanacs showing directions- than the Grail quest. ~Rosanne

Perhaps: interesting. Of course the man on horseback in the Marseilles is quite young. Also, is it not possible that the Grail Knight as an image in literature of the 12th and later centuries might have influenced the question of camel or horse in a similar icon? Just a thought.

But consider also that here we have not just the Grail Knight, but the Grail King, Grail Queen (or Maiden), and the thief who steels only its outer shell, finding when he gets the lid off that it does not yield its contents to any but the worthy -- at least he doesn't look all that pleased at what he's found. This theme of not nourishing the unworthy the Grail seems to share with the Sarmatian cauldron-symbol that may have helped shape its legend (I can give a reference for this, should anyone be interested).

Originally Posted by frelkins

My question is at these early dates, what would be "tarot?" The visconti sforza, the yale cary, the sola-busca, the minchiate, TdM, the charles, the mantegna, what?

TdM. This was the one that became standard north of the Alps, and those who believe it was not the standard for a while prior to any of its surviving examples (considering how few survive period) are themselves making quite an assumption, it seems to me.

Your entire theory -- which makes absolutely 0 sense, I'm afraid to say, it's not very coherent -- doesn't seem to acknowledge the wide diversity of tarot-like cards throughout history.

Only because of my immense respect for what I take to be the original. And "0 sense" to whom?

I mean, if there were secret messages in them, wouldn't they be more likely <b>Islamic</b> secret messages?

Oh, was Europe part of Islam when tarot trumps arose? Or have you found some in the Mamluk deck?

Originally Posted by DianeOD

I do commend it to you VB, if you haven't already read it. Apart from anything else, it maps well the influence of these independent-minded souls throughout France, northern Italy and even further. Great read, as well.

Thanks. I have it, should read it. Yes, people seem to think the Irish remained on their Island and had no influence or truck with the natives in Europe!

[venicebard]

Originally Posted by Baroli

I took out my Tarot De Marseille (Grimaud) and I have to say the knight of cups doesn't look like a man at war, but a man of peace, offering a cup.

It is his identity as Knight of Cups that identifies him as a man of war, and yes, as I said:

Originally Posted by venicebard

He represents the Knight who offers the Grail of peace instead of the challenge of war.

(emphasis added)

Originally Posted by Umbrae

I understand the Celtic alphabet being far more ancient than tarot. Perhaps more ancient than the Runic alphabet. The Celts could very well have had a writing system during their emigration from asia (at roughly the same time Moses was trying to figure out how to get out of Egypt); although I personally doubt it. There is only one place in the world where all of the ‘Trees’ noted in the Celtic alphabet grow in the same geographical location. And that’s in the south of France. Marseilles area to be exact.

Graves seemed to be of the opinion that the only place (since the vine was not native to the British Isles) was the south (I believe) coast of the Black Sea.

Consonants-only ogham was used in the early Bronze Age (circa 1700 B.C.E.) alongside Tifinag to record inscriptions in (Scandinavian) Low German: see Barry Fell's Bronze Age America and discussion of his conclusions in Patrick Huyghe's Columbus Was Last: From 200,000 B.C. to 1492, A Heretical History of Who Was First (N.Y.: MJF Books, 1992), chapter 5. Ogham was likely picked up by the Kelts once they reached the North Sea.

But I want to drill down on “letters being the source for trumps…that is, the meanings and their distribution”. . . .

Whose Tarot meanings are we discussing? Most would agree that modern meanings derive from Etteilla (1783), Husan alone quotes Pratesi’s Cartomancer (1750). It would be nice to have something earlier, and concrete.

Never much drawn to Etteilla, and am unfamiliar with Pratesi, and I would be surprised but pleased if either was privy to the underlying connexions (with tree-letters, or even the basic significances, related thereto). But I am simply referring to the images themselves: I do not think we need an Etteilla or Pratesi to tell us that the Pope has his hand raised in blessing while being presented a pair of children by their mother's (or nurse's) left arm (since all are in the picture) . . . or that one must look for (oak's) horizontal reach in a limb if one is to hang someone . . . or the sense of overflowing and of pollenation that one gets from the image in XVI LaMaisonDieu once its connexion to spring is suspected.

Carvings, etchings, art, stained glass examples without commentary - don't count. We need the commentary attached to the image (meaning + image) which correspond to the Tarot...and of course the order (and then we need to discuss if the order is cardinal or ordinal (zeroth or non) – but we’ll leave that discussion for another date).

The whole point is that Marseilles order remained constant, whereas in Italy every region felt free to try its own order, meaning there was no order there that was considered standard, unlike north of the Alps.

Pre-dating 1750 is important. As I requested earlier, “Please include a scan depicting Boaz and Jachin (expicit as opposed to inferred), from more than one deck predating 1717. Thank you.”

Okay, I am sufficiently chastened for stating the bit about the columns too briefly (from lack of time), instead of elaborating! The evidence for trumps III and V being Jachin and Boaz is not an early deck depicting them labeled as such. It is the fact that I-idho-yew and B-beth-birch were the only two tree-letters to retain their tree-names in runic (I is *ehwaz I believe, or 'yew', and B is *bairkan or something like that, meaning 'birch seed' or 'birch twig' or 'birchling' or something of the sort), they are the initials of the names Jachin (or Iachin) and Boaz, these two columns form a central theme of Masonic ritual (whose origins probably date to the great cathedral-building age and show definite relationship to tarot imagery, by the way), and they are mentioned in the Bible (with which the bards were not unfamiliar).

And the meanings of the two trees clarify the meanings of the two pillars. B is the profile of a pregnant torso, birch being the tree of birth or inception (first month of 13-month year), thus indicating the broken column in Masonry, the front column of the body that is broken-off at the sternum to enable childbirth; and I is the straight (intact) back column of the body, the spinal column, associated (by default) with the male, as in the concept of backbone (it is males, primarily, who form the tribal phalanx for defense) -- yew being a tree of death (Old Moon, winter) to contrast with birch being birth.

Now this is important – by 1750, folks were doing revisionist history across the board (admittedly it’s been done all along – but in this time period there was a fervor) to make it ‘match’ with their invented histories and mythologies, so we need to find our support in the days preceding not only Egyptomania, but the Freemasonic movement.

Well, Egyptomania aside (spurious, being before the Rosetta stone), in Ireland there was a very real connexion with Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, albeit not to include knowledge of how to read hieroglyphics. But the degree to which the two columns pervade both the bardic (where B and I were the first and last letters of ogham and retained their meanings in runic) and Judaic (whence it creeped into Masonry evidently) tributaries that feed the river and the river itself: the basic structure chemically and numerically hinges on the two columns, and how they dynamically affect or accentuate the seven 'pillars of wisdom' constituting the columns of the alchemical vessel . . . but that's another story. In short, my difficulty is in conveying to others just how solidly Boaz and Jachin own trumps V and III, for I see it quite plain.

[le pendu]

Originally Posted by venicebard

I do not think we need an Etteilla or Pratesi to tell us that the Pope has his hand raised in blessing while being presented a pair of children by their mother's (or nurse's) left arm (since all are in the picture)

Well, except for the children and the arm.

[DianeOD]

Originally Posted by le pendu

Isn't this a very biased description from a Christian perspective?

Concerning hebrewhistory.com

I simply found the heaps of technical information useful - I mean about where Jewish traders, glassmakers, printers etc. were settled in the late medieval period. This sort of history of technologies is not often found on the web - at least not in such detail.

But perhaps I landed on a different part of the site. I saw nothing at all of doctrine - neither Jewish or Christian.

... I'll go back and make sure I transcribed the address accurately.

[DianeOD]

Umbrae: I am interested in your saying:

Originally Posted by Umbrae

The Celts could very well have had a writing system during their emigration from asia ...There is only one place in the world where all of the ‘Trees’ noted in the Celtic alphabet grow in the same geographical location. And that’s in the south of France. Marseilles area to be exact.

Could you give an era for this distribution, please. I'd like to know more - if you have bibliog. details to hand.

[Umbrae]

Originally Posted by DianeOD

Could you give an era for this distribution, please. I'd like to know more - if you have bibliog. details to hand.

http://members.tripod.com/Taliere/ogham.htm

Originally Posted by venicebard

And the meanings of the two trees clarify the meanings of the two pillars. B is the profile of a pregnant torso, birch being the tree of birth or inception (first month of 13-month year), thus indicating the broken column in Masonry, the front column of the body that is broken-off at the sternum to enable childbirth; and I is the straight (intact) back column of the body, the spinal column, associated (by default) with the male, as in the concept of backbone (it is males, primarily, who form the tribal phalanx for defense) -- yew being a tree of death (Old Moon, winter) to contrast with birch being birth.

Hold on...back up.

Boaz and Jachin have nothing to do with the broken column in Freemasonry. They are very very differnt things. Further, in Freemasonry, Boaz and Jachin are not birth and death. You're mixing too many things in here, and getting yourself in trouble.

I'm really not trying to cause you trouble here, I'm not arguing to argue…

I agree that the Ogham is ancient, perhaps predating many other known alphabets. No argument there.

I can understand that one group of peoples developed a set of symbols and a corresponding set of meanings that went in a distinct order.

I can see how another group of peoples developed a set of symbols and a corresponding set of meanings that went in a distinct order.

I however am convinced that such can be independently developed ideas, and that one is not causal to the other. Group A’s concepts – even if they predate Group B’s concepts do not imply that Group B HAD to have learned them from Group A.

...And when we start mixing in outside issues we muddy the waters and make the discussion confused, and it opens your theory to further criticism.

[DianeOD]

This is a summary of conclusions reached some time ago. VB's explanation of correspondences - I gather mainly based on a Marseilles pack plus Graves(?) has been interesting and may prove relevant in the long term.

I think it's time, though, to come clean about where I stand on his view of 'bardic origins'.

I'm not proposing a 'thesis' here, but summarising the results of my own investigations, so its an opinion and not a gauntlet being thrown down to start an argument.

I think that the pack must always be considered as a coming together of four different components, viz: its material (paper and possible precdents in, say, small wooden shingles, encaustic tiles etc.), its immediate purposes in different regions and different communities (a question as yet barely investigated in depth); the specific images set on different kinds of pack (e.g. TdM vs V-S); and the relationship of those images to the other three factors *within the historical context of late medieval Europe*

It is my view that the TdM is a somewhat degraded form of the original type of token-set. I believe it to have become current in France through the student colleges of Paris, Marseilles and probably Montpellier.

I think the way it was used in the student-houses was probably similar to that of Murner's deck, created later in Germany.

Point is, if these were 'memory-decks' (as I believe they were), students from each of the different 'races' within these university houses may well have applied - to their cards' associations - systems that were native to their own home regions, and earlier education. That earlier education would, already, have been pinned to the Latin alphabetic series and perhaps to that of their vernacular tongue as well. Especially in Provence, where use of the vernacular even in the learned form of the joc partits was usual.

From late classical times, we have recommendations that students be given alphabet blocks 'on wood or biscuits) for younger (minor) students, while older (major) be given pictures to "aid discussion using several languages."

One often forgets that medieval students knew several languages, and at least the basic two: their own and Latin. But higher students at that time, and in that area, might well study Hebrew and Arabic as well.

Other sources speak of orators and preachers trained to use an alphabetic sequence as their basic memory-pattern (of course), but those preachers wheels *we know* contained a considerable number of alphabets used in parallel - including runic among others.

THe difficulty for me, is finding a reasonable line of evidence for suggesting that the contingent of Celtic students (from whichever region) might still have had a living tradition of the older tree alphabet to apply to the patterns of meaning they attached to their own sets of tokens.

The 12th - 14th centuries appear to me to be the critical period. That's when the 'star-series' of our Atouts-on-paper begins to appear in western monastic architecture. And, as people have noted, it then begins to be seen 'everywhere' - at least for a while. It disappears suddenly at the beginning of the fourteenth century, only to reappear almost immediately in the context of these token-sets we call the pack of tarot cards.

So - while I do not think the pack necessarily originated with the bardic traditions of the west... because we find the relevant matter as far as India, and as early as the Indus valley civilisation... I don't think it at all impossible that it influenced the form of the imagery used in medieval Marseilles.

But my problem is, of course, this question of whether we can find external evidence for the persistance of the older bardic customs - apart from VB's explanation, drawn from internal evidence of the imagery itself.

As far as I was able to discover, evidence for a living and ogham-using tradition of pre-Christian lore seems to vanish before the 12thC. There is one possible exception, at least within France, and that is *possibly* the system of lot-casting used in certain parts of France where a remnant of what i take to be Phoenician religious practices had survived both the Roman, and the Christian periods of rule.

The women of this cult were termed 'Vetulae'. They used twigs as part of their divinatory practice according to accounts from both late classical and medieval sources... which are few. However, it seems that the goddess (or one of the gods) remembered by medieval vetulae in northern France was the "winking" Sirius. In the west, we have her name as Guine-fort, and in this name she was worshipped as a saint in certain regions of Europe.

More importantly, her attributes remain constant: she is both a warrior and a down-trodden epitome of loyalty to her hard taskmaster.

Perhaps most importantly for the history of cards, the legal 'clubs' of medieval Italy.... under the Visconti-Sforza!...were the ones who obtained her canonisation into the calendar of Christian saints, and then made her patron of their own legal society.

WE have more than one suggestion that the legal 'orators' were keen on the use of memory-cards, and the tradition of the 'joc partits' was essentially that of a quasi-legal "Court of Love".

Let us hypothesise for a moment.. what if the legal systems of Ireland had retained some knowledge of the old alphabet, or of the older 'bardic' traditions in oratory?.. That would be worth following up, perhaps.

Additional information or academic refs on this question of the Irish/Celtic contingent within mainland student houses between (say) 12th - 14thC would be most welcome.

[Huck]

Umbrae wrote: "There is only one place in the world where all of the ‘Trees’ noted in the Celtic alphabet grow in the same geographical location. And that’s in the south of France. Marseilles area to be exact."

Veniceboard gave a source:
http://members.tripod.com/Taliere/ogham.htm
which finds to this statement:

"Ireland also lacked the Silver Fir and the Elm until the eighteenth century. It has never been a wine-producing area and the country additionally lacked the Mistletoe. In Italy Holm Oak (Quercus ilex) would have to be substituted for Holly (Ilex aquifolia) and one species of Mistletoe (Loranthus europaeus) for another (Viscum album) but otherwise all the species are present. Further east, Greece lacks the Birch, Ash, Oak and Heather while the eastern Mediterranean lacks even more species. Therefore on botanical grounds alone the Ogham had to have originated with someone who had lived in the region between France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. This area includes the old La Tene heartland. It also included the territory of the Belgae. "

France - Germany - Switzerland - Italy ... true, somewhere inside is also Marseille. Somehow this all is the region of Marseille.

... :-) I understand, that Europe looks rather similar and small from an U.S.-American viewing point, but actually it leads to misunderstandings, when Europeans hear or speak of "the same geographical location as Marseille".

[Umbrae]

Originally Posted by Huck

Umbrae wrote: "There is only one place in the world where all of the ‘Trees’ noted in the Celtic alphabet grow in the same geographical location. And that’s in the south of France. Marseilles area to be exact."

Veniceboard gave a source:
http://members.tripod.com/Taliere/ogham.htm

Uh - acutally I gave that source in post #97. And yeah - I don't know much about European geography. Just going off what I read...(Marseilles area)

And Huck, how nice of you to join in – especially to make a point of ‘slamming’ me personally (even if you got your reference wrong).

So I suppose the water is still 212 and boiling? Please try not to take this too far off topic.