catboxer
Plato revealed!
As much as (some) people are convinced that Plato's philosophy is the most important component of the content of the tarot trumps, that philosophy remains somewhat hard to either pin down or understand. Explanations of it, even those provided by Plato himself, can often leave a reader feeling puzzled.
Can anyone, in just a few words, express concisely the fundamental message of what Plato is saying, in a manner that could be applied to the tarot trumps? That is, can anyone isolate what Plato says that the trumps also say?
If anyone can, it would be Dr. Eugen Weber of the U.C.L.A. History Department. Besides being extraordinarily learned, this guy has an awe-inspiring command of language, and possesses the ability to make clear that which others turn into indecipherable mud. Here's what Weber has to say about Greek philosophers in general and Plato in particular, on his video lecture entitled "Greek Thought," from the Annenberg/CPB series, "The Western Tradition:"
"The Greek philosophers thought that the universal truths of mathematics could reveal an immutable, eternal reality behind the passing drama of everyday life. They believed that geometry could provide a model of timeless nature, just as a pyramid was supposed to do. Plato suggested that the truths of geometry were not reasoned deductions from experiment – from figures that people drew or constructed, but that they were ideal memories – memories of the properties of ideal geometric shapes that existed in some timeless realm that reason could barely apprehend.
And Plato argued further that there was an eternal world of ideas – prototypes of the debased reflections of the things that we glimpse here on earth. This theory, that we do not experience reality in the so-called real world, but only its dim shadow, this theory has haunted philosophy ever since."
The expression of this philosophy can be seen most clearly in that famous non-tarot, the Mantegna series, which begins with a vignette drawn from the "debased reflections" existing in our "so-called real world," a picture of a homeless beggar. It then proceeds upward, and with increasing degrees of abstraction and idealization, through the progressively higher conditions of humans on earth, then the muses, the academic disciplines, the "Cosmic Principles," and the "Firmaments of the Universe," that series of "crystal spheres" which ends with the "Prime Mover," and finally, the "First Cause."
It's a little tougher to see the philosophy in the trump sequence, but I believe it's there.
This is a difficult, sophisticated, and very beautiful philosophical statement. It's a secret doctrine only in the same way that Einstein's theory of relativity is a secret: even though it's widely published, it's not easy to understand or communicate, and thus will always remain an enigma to the uneducated, the literal-minded, and those who possess only a limited capacity for insight.
And the $64 question: do I believe it? The $64 answer is, I don't know.
As much as (some) people are convinced that Plato's philosophy is the most important component of the content of the tarot trumps, that philosophy remains somewhat hard to either pin down or understand. Explanations of it, even those provided by Plato himself, can often leave a reader feeling puzzled.
Can anyone, in just a few words, express concisely the fundamental message of what Plato is saying, in a manner that could be applied to the tarot trumps? That is, can anyone isolate what Plato says that the trumps also say?
If anyone can, it would be Dr. Eugen Weber of the U.C.L.A. History Department. Besides being extraordinarily learned, this guy has an awe-inspiring command of language, and possesses the ability to make clear that which others turn into indecipherable mud. Here's what Weber has to say about Greek philosophers in general and Plato in particular, on his video lecture entitled "Greek Thought," from the Annenberg/CPB series, "The Western Tradition:"
"The Greek philosophers thought that the universal truths of mathematics could reveal an immutable, eternal reality behind the passing drama of everyday life. They believed that geometry could provide a model of timeless nature, just as a pyramid was supposed to do. Plato suggested that the truths of geometry were not reasoned deductions from experiment – from figures that people drew or constructed, but that they were ideal memories – memories of the properties of ideal geometric shapes that existed in some timeless realm that reason could barely apprehend.
And Plato argued further that there was an eternal world of ideas – prototypes of the debased reflections of the things that we glimpse here on earth. This theory, that we do not experience reality in the so-called real world, but only its dim shadow, this theory has haunted philosophy ever since."
The expression of this philosophy can be seen most clearly in that famous non-tarot, the Mantegna series, which begins with a vignette drawn from the "debased reflections" existing in our "so-called real world," a picture of a homeless beggar. It then proceeds upward, and with increasing degrees of abstraction and idealization, through the progressively higher conditions of humans on earth, then the muses, the academic disciplines, the "Cosmic Principles," and the "Firmaments of the Universe," that series of "crystal spheres" which ends with the "Prime Mover," and finally, the "First Cause."
It's a little tougher to see the philosophy in the trump sequence, but I believe it's there.
This is a difficult, sophisticated, and very beautiful philosophical statement. It's a secret doctrine only in the same way that Einstein's theory of relativity is a secret: even though it's widely published, it's not easy to understand or communicate, and thus will always remain an enigma to the uneducated, the literal-minded, and those who possess only a limited capacity for insight.
And the $64 question: do I believe it? The $64 answer is, I don't know.
!