kwaw
wandking said:In attempting to post this message I ran across what appears to be a very early posting of yours on de Gebelin and was quite impressed. Do you still hold to those opinions?
You mean the one on 'Egyptian Origins' in which I suggest the tarot may have been 'read' or percieved as being in the genre of 'hermetic hieroglyphics' prior to de Gebelin; if so yes indeed I consider it both plausible and probable.
quote:
"Yet among invented games are `pages', in which, while being played,
certain traces of learning are even found, as in Tarots, and in those
which are printed together with the sentences of the sacred
scriptures and philosophers, by the printer Wechel of Paris. Human
desire squanders all the rest, along with those like them, where
money comes in the middle, and that desire is going to be felt."
Inventi tamen ludi sunt foliorum, in quibus dum luditur, vestigia
quoque quaedam eruditionis apparent, ut in Tarotiis, & iis cum quibus
excusae sunt unà sententiae sacrae paginae & philosophorum, apud
VVechellum Lutetiae typographum. Caeterum, & illis & similibus
abutitur humana cupiditas, dum prodit in medium pecunia, & habendi
desiderium.
[Pierre Gregoire, "Syntagma Juris Universi" (Lyons, 1597), Part III,
Bk. XXXIX, §4 (p. 464)]
end quote from:
Source and translation: Ross G. Caldwell in post to TarotL group September 5, 2004
While ‘those printed together with scriptures and philosophers’ does not exactly describe the embemata; it appears to me to be referring to something similar; and Wechel did publish early versions of Alciato's Emblematum liber, which Alciato himself described as being in the genre of Egyptian Heiroglyphics.
In the card meanings I'm allowed some poetic license; however, history - like news, is no place for factual errors or poetic license. Otherwise, I become no better than Graves who took license to create a triple goddess in the mid 20th century.
I don't think the creation is soley down to him; it does have precedent. Crowley for one prior to Graves [in Moonchild and in the notes to 777] alludes to the three faces of the moon goddess and the relationship to the three stages of pre-menstruation, menstruation and post menstruation. Circa 3rd/4th cent. ad too there are references to Diana or Artemis, Demeter and Proserpine being three aspects of the triple goddess of the Moon Hekate; the three different names being used in relation to her rule over the three different realms celestial [diana/artemis], terrestrial [demeter] and Cthonic [proserpine]. Three realms of dominion which may also be alluded to in the TdM Moon card.
Kwaw