Major Arcana titles: La Maison-Diev

[ArcanoMáximo]

And if Waite chose to switch the colour to grey...well that's his English Victorian hang-up, not the TdM's problem!!

LOL! Yes, poor bored ppl!!! ...
Please, just joking, not trying to offense any english buddy!
But i guess i continue seeing Strength and Lovers for a better "ectasy" option.
I agree with you Kwaw, The Devil has an ego problem and The Tower is the over come of that behaviour.
AM*

 

[venicebard]

The symbol's ambivalence

We are not the first to struggle over this symbol's ambivalence (whether it is the good penis or bad, and so on), and if I am correct in taking it to be Sophia-the-thinker (Holy Spirit), she was thought of in two aspects, a higher and a lower, the latter, called Prunikos the 'whore', being her building out into physical reality ANY thought the doer creates, whether we like the results or NOT!

Look, despite anything the promiscuous Aleister Crowley has said, Light is lost into nature through the procreative act, which is why Judaism prescribes harnessing it to the carriage of procreation, since that way we get something back, at least. In sex-magic traditions worldwide there is the attempt to harness it to various other 'results', but ultimately the greatest possible 'result', self-knowledge, can only be gained by abstention, since sex itself is fascination with OTHER.

The key to this trump, I believe, is: do we identify with the duality that is being (forcibly) evicted or with the being doing the evicting (whose eyes appear between flame and crown)? It is similar perhaps with III: are we the monarch, or the eagle embracing her? With V, are we the pontiff, or the mother seeking his blessing for her sons? As with this last, the real meaning is where the two meet: blessing is what Pope and mother are BOTH about (the one thing they have in common).

 

[Rosanne]

Ahaha, I finally get it- thank you VeniceBard, I keep see the Pope instead of the Blessing-The Tower destructing instead of the reason etc etc. To add I am plowing on with the Ogham as well and starting to see some of your arguments in a clearer light ~Rosanne

 

[Fulgour]

Lucidity

Obviously.... to cum, ectasy. Personally I think it a common experience to all. If there is decadence or perversion then it is in a failure to experience such. Or a perversion of ego perhaps, in believing it is the right of oneself and not of others, or of slave consiousness, in which one denies the self to the right. A very personal opinion, obviously...

This explains a lot although why would there need to be this view?

 

[ArcanoMáximo]

Perhaps cause i was missunderstood? I guess maybe now everybody is thinking I'm against free sex, LOL!!!!

 

[Obscure]

Bastille

I wonder if French writers have tended to see the card in relation to the fall of the Bastille. I found this reference in an essay on Maurice Blanchot's "Thomas the Obscure":

http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/blanchot/kf/abyss/the_abyss.htm

Also, at the end of Blanchot's "The Last Word" he has figures being thrown from the falling, burning tower.

Then there's Fernando Arrabal's "Tower Struck by Lightning," which I don't think directly alludes to the Bastille, but may well be in the back of his (collective) imagination.

Don't worry, I know the date of the card precedes the fall of the Bastille, I'm just wondering if it became a particularly poignant image for French users of TdM after 1789.

 

[venicebard]

I was born on Bastille day and know the "Marseillaise" by heart, but as I understand the fact (as opposed to what it signifies) it was a low thing, guard massacred in spite of guarantees, few liberated... but wha' doo I know.

But this trump DOES represent destruction of a prison, namely the jettisoning of division (as opposed to unity) as one's motive. The method is to clear away division in order to SEE unity, which is always there.

 

[kwaw]

Perhaps what we should look for is a lexicon with abundant examples of 15th and 16th century examples of the term "Maison Dieu", to get at what the designer was thinking.

Ross

Haven't got abundant examples, but here is one:

La Maison Dieu as Hospital

Douceur, humilité, pitié,
Et charité et amitié,
Et jeûne faire et pénitence,
Me mettent grand deuil en la panse.
Aumône faire et Dieu prier
Cela ne peut que m'ennuyer;
Dieu aimer et chastement vivre,
Lors me semble serpent et guivre*. .
Quand en la Maison Dieu* l'on entre
Pour visiter quelque malade,
Lors ai le coeur si mort et fade
Qu'il m'est avis que point ne le sente.

From Le Miracle de Théophile (1262) by the jongleur Rutebeuf {died 1285}

* guivre archaic word for vipère [viper]
* Maison Diue = hôpital (Hôtel-Dieu)

Paul Huson has related this card to medieval theatrical representations of purgatory. In relation to the concept of a hospital in those times such may have been considered not so much as a place of protection, as a place of purgation in which the body is to be purged of sickness, just as in purgatory the soul is to be purged of its moral sickness.

Note here to the use of the archaic work panses meaning 'paunch' or 'guts'. Our Lady the Virgin Mary uses this word later on in the play:

SATAN
Moi, vous la rendre?
J'aimerais mieux que l'on me pende!
Je lui ai rendu sa prébende[43]
Et il me fit aussitôt offrande
De son corps, de son âme et de son bien.
NOTRE DAME
Et moi je te foulerai la panse.
(Ici Notre-Dame apporte la charte à Théophile)

"And me, I will trample your guts", exclaims Mary to the Devil!

The play of Le Miracle de Theophile by the jongleur Rutebeuf was based upon a popular medieval folk tale of a man Theophilus who sold his soul to the devil. Regretting his actions he prayed to Mary for help, she wrests his blood signed deed from the devil and gives it him back, pardoning him. The scene where Mary pins down the devil and seizes the contract from his claw and cries out: "Et je te foulerai la panse" (And I'll trample on your gut) can be seen in petroglyphs in the architecture of church's and cathedrals, such as at Notre Dame.

The title of the Popesse card La Pance in one card is perhaps an allusion to this, in which case there is an identification of the figure with the Virgin Mary.

Kwaw

 

[Ross G Caldwell]

Thanks for the references Kwaw. Delightful.

I too have thought as the Maison Dieu as Purgatory - and the Hospital aspect is not far behind.

The story of Theophile is fascinating. This may make it into a talk I am giving, which involves a real case in the early 17th century of a young man selling his soul to the Devil. They recovered his pact, written on a Two of Hearts, and destroyed it. Except, in this case, they burned him. It is a sad story.

Apparently he told the story that the first few times he saw the Devil, he exclaimed "Jesus Marie!" So it makes it all the more poignant that he couldn't save his life.

 

[kwaw]

The play of Le Miracle de Theophile by the jongleur Rutebeuf was based upon a popular medieval folk tale of a man Theophilus who sold his soul to the devil. Regretting his actions he prayed to Mary for help, she wrests his blood signed deed from the devil and gives it him back, pardoning him. The scene where Mary pins down the devil and seizes the contract from his claw and cries out: "Et je te foulerai la panse" (And I'll trample on your gut) can be seen in petroglyphs in the architecture of church's and cathedrals, such as at Notre Dame.

The title of the Popesse card La Pance in one card is perhaps an allusion to this, in which case there is an identification of the figure with the Virgin Mary.

Kwaw

This is particularly related to the aspect of the Virgin Mary as Madonna della Misericordia, the Mother of Mercy, which became very popular, especially after the black death of the late 1340's, when "she became the most popular votive figure on her own". [Warner]

It is possible I think that the popesse is a version of Mary: as Mother of the Church she represents the church itself, and wears the triple crown as not only the throne of the trinity, but as a crown over three dominions she has rule being Queen of Heaven, Vicar and mistress of all the World, and Empress of Hell [by which titles she was called in medieval poems and plays]. Mary represented in particular the church as congregation of the simple and lowly, and of faith, and her particular regard for the simple and lowly of the faith is amply portrayed in medieval plays of the jongleurs that deal with the miracles of the virgin. As Empress of Hell and Lady of Mercy, who would rescue from hell any who called upon her in good faith, could also explain the lowly position of the Popesse card; the number 2 was symbolic not only of the Bride of God, but also of the Devil [devil's deuce] over whom she has dominion; and of her being symbolic of the church of the common man [bateleur-jongleur?].

Kwaw