Where's Waldo?
Hi, Mary,
Happy Halloween! It's that time of year, so we shouldn't be surprised that lame old Tarot theories amble around like uncomprehending zombies. They may seem slow and stupid and pretty disgusting, but they do have the ability to come back from the dead and eat your brain.
Teheuti said:
Some theories have a body of evidence that makes them highly probable, while others seem to be pretty far-fetched.
Evidence... ah, yes, evidence. Let me elaborate a bit on things related to evidence.
From what Swiryn has presented, it doesn't seem that he is concerned with evidence. He clearly knows nothing about playing-card history in general or Tarot history in particular. (His claims include playing-cards in 1313 France, Tarot in 1392 France, TdM having 72 cards in a deck, and so on.) He clearly knows nothing about iconography, insisting that we ignore the actual meaning of symbols and works of art. Instead, he prefers to fantasize about secret codes, for which there is no evidence nor even a plausible hunch to research.
He apparently has not even bothered to read some of the more prominent books in the long history of Cathars-and-Tarot pseudo history. He views his late entry into this crowded arena as "ground-breaking", when in fact it started with Waite's invention (and denigration) of the idea exactly a century ago. It was then picked up in the 1970s by New Age writers and has been a perennial favorite ever since. Before writing a book on the subject, a would-be author might want to
read some books on the subject. As you might expect, my shelf is not particularly well stocked with New Age blather, but even I have within arm's reach such titles as
The Second Messiah and
The Chalice of Magdalene, authors such as Christine Payne-Towler and Margaret Starbird. Several of these books treat the subject in some detail, and many others discuss it to one degree or another. Even O'Neill's detailed (albeit inconclusive) treatment of the subject, which Swiryn mentions, seems to have been simply mined for quotes that justify taking things out of context and interpreting them in a counter-intuitive sense.
Because each of these authors largely ignores that whole "evidence" thing, they come up with very different stories about the Cathars-and-Tarot theme. Lack of evidence is telling in that regard.
Swiryn refuses to even consider alternatives. Perhaps the most influential text of pre-modern times,
Revelation, is in his view not worth his time to read and compare with the trumps. This is despite the fact that the highest trumps include the Devil, a falling Tower ("Babylon has fallen" in both Old and New Testament prophecies, usually depicted with broken towers), celestial subjects that figured prominently in Apocalyptic art, including the Star, Moon, and Sun, resurrection of the dead (a BIG clue if there ever was one) as in
Revelation Chapter 20 and then, as the highest trump in most decks, a World as we find in Chapter 21. But for Swiryn,
Revelation is not worth even reading. He probably would never consider reading a work like Betts'
Tarot and the Millennium which interprets the entire trump cycle in terms of Apocalyptic legends. (Betts did some excellent research on the historical subject matter depicted in the trumps, and some of his findings are still being further researched -- by people with an actual interest in Tarot history.)
Historical context, the pervasive sensibilities and their expression in art and literature, constitutes evidence. These legends were widely popular for centuries before and after Tarot's invention, making them a vastly more plausible subject matter for the trumps than this New Age business about Gnostics and unintelligible coded messages. When and where Tarot was invented, the world was filled with art based on Apocalyptic themes, and the highest trumps clearly include such subject matter. Conversely, the heretics were a very limited phenomenon, essentially gone before Tarot was invented, and they did NOT accept things like the primacy of the Pope or the resurrection of the dead. Yet Swiryn claims that the "Riddle of Tarot" is now solved, without even having considered the much more plausible alternatives that have been presented, from writers of the
16th century, the
19th century, through
Moakley (1956, 1966) and up to
Ross' presentation last year.
His dismissal of alternative interpretations of the trump cycle as a moral allegory, interpretations as presented in detail by me over the last decade and by Ross, (to focus on what I consider the two most interesting and well thought out examples), was typical of his dismissal of the entire subject of Tarot history and iconography. He refused to trouble himself with actually reading anything, and instead just made things up. Not surprisingly, his fantasy (Jungian generalities lacking historical context) had no relationship to reality. Anyone who has read either my arguments or Ross' would never accuse us of those sins. Even writers like Chas S. Clifton (1991, 2004) and Paul Huson (2004) who only vaguely describe the trumps as a moral allegory related to the
Dance of Death and
Four Last Things traditions are making arguments solidly grounded in historical context. Moral allegories, in both art and literature, were a daily commonplace, and the Tarot trump subjects are the subjects of such art. It is Swiryn's fictional history of the Cathars that lacks substance, seemingly based on modern Romantic imaginings -- New Age pseudo-history -- rather than factual reconstruction.
Ross and I cite lots of examples from art, literature, and history to support our interpretations. We also talk about Tarot history a lot, and we actually know something about it. That's evidence. Swiryn appears to have no such examples to cite, which is to be expected. The actual history of the Cathars is extremely sketchy. Instead of evidence regarding the Cathars, Swiryn distorts the evidence of Tarot's trump subjects. His complete failure, for example, to understand anything about the Popess, (a recurrent allegorical figure in Roman Catholic art), the therianthropic figures on the TdM Wheel (which can be traced directly to Boethius), or the well-documented Traitor is appalling. [Removed by moderator]
So this is what Swiryn offers: Someone who knows nothing about the history of playing-cards in general or Tarot in particular; who knows nothing about art history and iconography; who refuses to do even the most basic background reading on what others have written about his specific topic; who refuses to consider alternative historical sources even including the most obviously relevant and influential texts of the time; who refuses to even look at, much less review and critique, the most historically grounded alternative interpretations. He promotes his late entry in the already overcrowded Cathars-and-Tarot sweepstakes as "ground-breaking", "thoroughly researched and brilliantly written" despite being riddled with basic mistakes which
he expects his intended audience to help him correct! Evidence is clearly not important to him.
For the most part, he ignores evidence and just guesses, very badly. The only apparent evidence he had -- the claim that two Perfects had a playing-card business in 1313 France -- was an enormous blunder rather than a smoking-gun breakthrough. Ross'
illustrated takedown was hysterically funny: Swiryn didn't bother to read the footnote that explained exactly, in detail, what Weis was actually saying. This again demonstrates that we may be dealing with the laziest author since Starbird: simply reading a footnote is too much work for him. He can't be bothered, even when that footnote is directly connected to his single piece of evidence, his missing-link connection between Cathars and playing cards. Swiryn has repeatedly demonstrated that whenever his guesswork can be fact-checked, (which is embarrassingly often, because he guesses when he could have done basic research), he proves to be wildly wrong.
I look forward to reviewing the book. It seems likely that it will provide a great many illustrations of how fact-free fantasy can lead to amazing insights, such as how the Fool, rather than being an allegory of Folly, represents a wandering Waldensian or Cathar Perfect, recognizable perhaps as Peter Waldo.
Best regards,
Michael