Intégrisme

[ihcoyc]

This leads me to suspect that the True Tarot is somewhere in between the individual decks. Does that make sense? I think that truths can be found in the inconsistencies.

The folklorist in me wants to deny the possibility of a "true" Tarot. This may not be far different from what you mean, but there is a difference.

Take a traditional folk ballad, say, "Barbara Allen." Current scholars will tell you that great mischief was done in the past by people who collected various versions; they presumed to critique them, seeking the "truest" and most "authentic" version of the ballad's words and music. This was usually done by seeking archaic features, and attempting to reconstruct an "original" form of the lyrics. In fact, the current model holds that any version of the song that people actually sing is "authentic."

To treat a folksong as some sort of museum piece or textual problem is to intervene in the original path of song transmission with goals that are extraneous to it, and that threaten to distort it. A canny busker learns to give the audience what they want. If a vocal segment of the audience wants archaism, they'll invent archaism.

I suspect that the card shapes were standardised at least in large measure to make them easily recognised by card players. Even a chess master may be taken aback trying to play with pieces shaped like Civil War generals or Pokemon characters. In this sense, any card design that could meet that purpose is "authentic" enough to serve.

In fact, the printing tradition we know of of the TdM isn't much older than esoteric tarot. Wide variations exist in the pre-1760 decks we have. Probably any of them would have served game players. My understanding is in fact that the designation "Tarot de Marseille" starts with Paul Marteau. The traditional designs were pregnant with the possibility of esoteric speculation, even if this was not their first use, and even if we accept that it was largely Court de Gebelin or Etteilla's work. And once that speculation was introduced into the stream, Tarot producers gave the audience what it wanted, and added "esoteric" detail.

Maybe I'm just stuck in the twentieth century, but it seems to me that a Tarot deck is a fluid concept, a stream transmitted by essentially folk processes --- essentially, a "social construction." (always hated that jargon, but it fits.) It isn't a work of authorship of a sort that would make it possible to establishing a canonical text by critical processes. If there's any question of "authenticity," I'd say that any deck that contains traditional figures and that could be used to play the Tarot game is authentic enough to pass.

 

[jmd]

I suppose that as Ihcoyc already knows, I personally do not agree with the view of Tarot as a 'social construction'. Certainly it has its social dimension in its very embodiment.

Like others here, I too do not really like the term 'true' Tarot - it gives a false impression, a false impression that there is one specific historical deck which explicitly becomes the tarot, to which other decks are mere problematic deviations. The Hadar Marseilles, for example, is as true to the embodiment of the Tarot as is the Dodal.

There certainly is, within the deck, that 'folk' living stream - and in that sense, each of the Camoin-Jodorowsky and the Hadar are likewise reflections. Where I was more critical of the Camoin in an earlier post is not in the outline from which began each of those respective decks, but rather in the specific added detail of the Maison Diev depiction.

Though numerous small differences arise (inevitably) in each Marseille rendition, it very much is, as so eloquently put by CharmingPixie, that

the True Tarot is somewhere in between the individual decks

Each existing deck becomes as an embodiment from an Ür-form - an archetype in its Goetheanian (not jungian) sense... in a similar way that each instance of a rose is a rose, with variation, yet reflecting in either near or more distant form its rosiness.

 

[Kissa]

Isn't any Tarot deck an Oracle in the form of a series of visual metaphors? In other words, isn't the perfect Tarot deck the perfect interactive resonance between the reader or readers and the deck itself? When the observer and the observed are in close or closest communion?
Isn't the Tarot not the object but the process of discovering both the object and the subject in the flow of observing, interpreting, and intuiting?
Why separate ski from skiing when skiing, Tarot from Taroting when Taroting? Of course, one can appreciate the art and symbol of it, but, ultimately, isn't the "Perfect Tarot" taking a deep dive down into it, with no need to lecture about its perfection over other deep dives?
Please consider this perspective.

I am very impressed by this post. I am surprised it went unnoticed till now. Maybe it is the wrong board for it as ppl here argue more about details on historical (or not) decks but Frank's post really makes a point: "isn't the perfect Tarot deck the perfect interactive resonance between the reader or readers and the deck itself? When the observer and the observed are in close or closest communion?"

As you know I am not an integrist of Marseilles decks, don't even like the word It is still very interesting to see how different our interests in the same subject ie. Tarot can be. The historical section of this forum is a pleasure to read even if I don't know half of the references ppl mention. Nevertheless, this seems such another world when I am shuffling my deck (imagine this, guys: a round new age deck created in New Zealand by two women strongly influenced by eastern philosophies...)

Thanks for the thread!

Kissa

PS: the gorgeous Hadar I am totally unable and unwilling to make an effort to use is called "Le Véritable Tarot de Marseille" which, in my understanding of french language, would mean that Hadar intended to go back to the roots, restorating the truth...

edited for spelling

 

[jmd]

For what it's worth, Frank Hall's post did not go unnoticed...

I suspect that, like other posters before, one reads through, reflects on all that has been presented, and adds in a direction of personal interest.

In regards to Hadar's usage of the term 'Véritable' for his deck, I'm not sure if a return to the roots (if meant in its historical sense) is what is mainly at play - though historicity seems to also have been of exceedingly high importance to him. It seems to me that its 'veritability', or its roots, is more in terms of its spiritual impulse: it is (as most also are) a 'Véritable Tarot de Marseille' as opposed to, for example, the major deviations as found in the Etteilla deck.

When doing readings, of course the deck which permits us to best be open to the voice of the oracle is desirable (whether or not Tarot). Tarot, however, is also more than this.

To add to the image so evocatively given by Frank Hall, though in the act of skiing one may not isolate the ski for discussion and analysis (as one does not similarly do when in the act or reading), it is perfectly legitimate to carefully look at those ski before and after such events - and are they actually skis, or other implements which functioned as skis normally do?

 

[smleite]

This may be a little off-topic, but allow me to say what I’ve felt when reading this thread.

For all kinds of reasons, but mostly driven by my very personal interests and aims, I’ve been studying and researching several “traditional” disciplines, ranging form solidly established academic sciences, to what we could call esoteric knowledge. This doesn’t mean I have deep understanding of any of them – but I do begging to understand a few things about “traditional knowledge” in general. One of them is that a given “school”, method, ritual, or whatever way of passing information, can be dead or alive. If dead, it can still pretend to subsist though the abusive or very naive action of some, but will only serve to spread empty, sterile, and often dangerous rules and directions. In those cases, we can usually perceive a strong urge to “return to the roots”, to recover ancient ceremonies, to simply repeat old patterns…

Whereas in the case of a living method or school, we see exactly the opposite: it changes, it evolves. The knowledge in itself can eventually be very distinct of what it was a long time ago, as also the way that knowledge is explained (better yet, our perception of that knowledge and way of exposing it can be very distinct form the perception ancient “students” had).

And still, the vast majority of the public tends to elect as “true” the form that most resembles to the more ancient, more historical, more conventional one. I sincerely believe we are simply afraid of change, and also afraid of taking responsibility for even our learning… better to cling to a “well-proved” formula, and keep learning the same, the same way, forever.

Keeping in mind CharmingPixie’s words, “that the True Tarot is somewhere in between the individual decks”, and taking it a bit further, just to say that the Truth is somewhere “in between” tradition and evolution, I would like to challenge Tarot lovers to look at new additions, intakes and formalizations as a signal that Tarot knowledge is alive, and as pure grace, as all signals of Life are (of course, in order to remain in a middle point, I reserve myself the right to consider that some “new additions, intakes and formalizations” are NOT Tarot).

Silvia

 

[ihcoyc]

This may be a little off-topic, but allow me to say what I’ve felt when reading this thread.

For all kinds of reasons, but mostly driven by my very personal interests and aims, I’ve been studying and researching several “traditional” disciplines, ranging form solidly established academic sciences, to what we could call esoteric knowledge. This doesn’t mean I have deep understanding of any of them – but I do begging to understand a few things about “traditional knowledge” in general. One of them is that a given “school”, method, ritual, or whatever way of passing information, can be dead or alive. If dead, it can still pretend to subsist though the abusive or very naive action of some, but will only serve to spread empty, sterile, and often dangerous rules and directions. In those cases, we can usually perceive a strong urge to “return to the roots”, to recover ancient ceremonies, to simply repeat old patterns…

Whereas in the case of a living method or school, we see exactly the opposite: it changes, it evolves. The knowledge in itself can eventually be very distinct of what it was a long time ago, as also the way that knowledge is explained (better yet, our perception of that knowledge and way of exposing it can be very distinct form the perception ancient “students” had).

Just so. It's the same way with languages or anything else that is handed down from generation to generation. It changes in the going. Thou knowest that we speak not as our forefathers spoke, yet their language is not the better of ours for all its antiquity.

Medieval Latin continued to grow and change; Latin only became a dead language when humanist scholars, with the best of intentions, decided that the only right way to use Latin was the way Cicero and Vergil did it. The Latin they made was according to the best ancient models, and might have been understood in ancient Rome; but the way they taught it, Latin became useless for physicians and lawyers and theologians and other people who used to conduct daily business in Latin. Latin did not die; it was murdered.

Still, people like the authority that comes from antiquity. Religious fundamentalists in the USA plug into respect for "traditional values", and have constructed a situation where people fancy that their values are traditional because they derive from ancient sources and are punitive and inconvenient and irrational, just as people imagine their ancestors were.

And part of the joy of the Tarot de Marseille is the feeling of connectedness that you get when you use it; you look at these images, and you are looking at images that have been used for three hundred years. Still, I wonder, is this a dead end?

 

[Huck]

Just so. It's the same way with languages or anything else that is handed down from generation to generation. It changes in the going. Thou knowest that we speak not as our forefathers spoke, yet their language is not the better of ours for all its antiquity.

Medieval Latin continued to grow and change; Latin only became a dead language when humanist scholars, with the best of intentions, decided that the only right way to use Latin was the way Cicero and Vergil did it. The Latin they made was according to the best ancient models, and might have been understood in ancient Rome; but the way they taught it, Latin became useless for physicians and lawyers and theologians and other people who used to conduct daily business in Latin. Latin did not die; it was murdered.

Still, people like the authority that comes from antiquity. Religious fundamentalists in the USA plug into respect for "traditional values", and have constructed a situation where people fancy that their values are traditional because they derive from ancient sources and are punitive and inconvenient and irrational, just as people imagine their ancestors were.

And part of the joy of the Tarot de Marseille is the feeling of connectedness that you get when you use it; you look at these images, and you are looking at images that have been used for three hundred years. Still, I wonder, is this a dead end?

Hm. Can't see it that way.

Latin was murdered by the birth of literature in the national languages and by the interests of those, who learnt to write and to read in the development of book-printing 15th/16th century.

Luther is the best example. He created "modern German" in the years 1521 - 1531, just by translating it to German or that specific dialect-mix, that he prefered. His version of 1521 is nowadays very hard to read, even for a German, his version from 1531 is more or less understandable. The riddle of this observable phenomen is just, that later generations followed Luther's version of German, naturally not all in the first time.
When you read the texts of the Catholic Kurfuerst in Bonn from ca. 1650, 130 nearer to our time, you still have the same problem as with Luther in 1521. The protestants used Luther's German, the Catholics stayed with half-mixing Latinism with local German dialects.
The result of this development was, that more or less all great German writers of 18th century were protestants, the Catholic writers simply didn't have the laguage. Prussia did win in the political field, Prussia had a more protestant orientation and naturally "the Catholic German language" died.

50 years ago from now German dialects still had a major role, nowadays a lot of that is past, as radio and TV fulfilled their function to create a unique language.

Germany was - for logical political reasons - dominated since WWII by English-language influence - nowadays many words in English are used currently by many persons, even those, which do not know to speak this language.

All these language developments have "real" historical backgrounds with practical consequences, it's not, that a language is murdered by "traditionalists" with fundamentalistic approach.