frelkins said:
Please offer a link for this, I'd like to see it. The historical appropriati that I have seen in the main do not at all "approach divination." They say nothing about the future or tell fortunes or anything like that at all.
Perhaps you and I don't have the same definition of divination. Divination is not purely fortune-telling - it is far wider than that. Poetry can and frequently is a form of channelled divination, for instance (see William Blake). Divination means - communication with the divine. It can be done in light verse or with wit and jokes (fortunately!). To use fortune-telling and divination interchangeably would be a little like saying that moccasins and shoes were interchangeable: all moccasins are shoes, but not all shoes are moccasins.
We take a very narrow, literalist approach to divination in 21st century Western world, very removed from how it is/was viewed either in traditional societies or indeed, in the European past. Any look at the Middle Ages would have to take it on its own terms - not ours. The poets who wrote tarrochi appropriati made a deliberate effort to fit what was a well-known allegorical figure ("Strength", "Love") to a lady: in the same way that you might look at a Queen of Cups and say to your querent: "that's your mother", during a tarot reading (but in rather more elaborate terms
). That is what I meant by "approaching divination". (Approaching is not the same as being, of course. It is "akin to", you know?). And undoubtedly tarrochi appropriati was a parlour game: I used the expression myself.
Altho' I have been on AT for some time, I will never understand why the fairly clear history on this always has to be hedged. Tarot began as a game of cards. It's really that simple. I can't prove a negative, but as others in this thread note, there's no evidence worthy of scholarship that fortunetelling with Tarot happened in the Middle Ages or Renaissance Italy.
Although I've been on AT for some time, I will never understand why the literalist plodding approach must dominate the history of what is a complex artefact - far more complex than playing cards, for instance.
Tarot history is sadly overwhelmed by people who are not professional historians and who seem to compensate that fact by being singularly devoid of either imagination or understanding of the periods they are allegedly studying (there are some notable and refreshing exceptions to that). It is also overwhelmed by people who look down on divination and the occult, and are sometimes openly hostile to it (such as Dummett), therefore have a clear agenda.
Simply this: allegory and symbolism were important parts of Medieval and Renaissance thought and experience, as evidenced in images and literature, including the abundant magical literature of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Allegory and symbolism turned up everywhere and were rarely, if ever, seen in a secular way. Diviners and magicians relied heavily on them, and magic and divination were daily activities during that entire period, - not least in Italy. They were integral parts of the culture - as integral to them as computers and TVs are to us. To remove from Tarot history allegory and symbolism and all their uses - including light-hearted poetical games that rely heavily on allegory and can be described as "akin to divination" - to ignore that the same allegories and symbols that turned up on tarot cards were used by mages and diviners: all this is not only narrow-minded, it is, simply, bad history.
