Tarot in the Middle Ages History

[MikeTheAltarboy]

Divination means - communication with the divine. It can be done in light verse or with wit and jokes (fortunately!). To use fortune-telling and divination interchangeably would be a little like saying that moccasins and shoes were interchangeable: all moccasins are shoes, but not all shoes are moccasins.

This is certainly one way of looking at things - but it's not the common one. Under this definition of "divination", reading the bible, going to mass, or saying a rosary would all be divination. Most people don't use the word that way, though, and that's fine. Words derive their meaning from their usage, and usage says that divination is either telling the future, or obtaining hidden knowledge, usually through omens or the supernatural.

 

[Sophie]

Words derive their meaning from their usage, and usage says that divination is either telling the future, or obtaining hidden knowledge, usually through omens or the supernatural.

But even that is far wider and deeper than fortune-telling (as much as I enjoy fortune-telling and see value in it).

And whose usage? Divination in Western society is at best a marginal activity nowadays; in many societies it is still at the centre of their spiritual systems - as it once was in the Western world - as recently as the Renaissance. In those societies, you don't pray the gods without divining first, and divination gives you the answer of the gods. It truly is communication with the divine. So - why should a society that regards divination as little as ours does get to decide what divination means? Personally, I think that's arrogance. I prefer leave the definition of divination to those whose usage of it is central and vital to their daily lives and spirituality.

 

[Debra]

But in this context, Fudu, the question is whether Tarot was used for "divination" in its earliest days.

I suppose one might say tarot might have been used for a "kind of" divination insofar as people might have played games with it that had a "sort of" spiritual meaning, but to me, this seems to muddy the waters. It's like saying that tarot readers are "playing a game" when they do a reading--well, sort of, but that's not our intention and not the main feature of reading.

 

[firecatpickles]

In anthropology it is consensus that all religious systems, supernatural beliefs, divination, shamanism, etc. are all classified as "superstition" hands down with no exceptions.

Therefore in the scientific sense, and by extension the liberal arts or historical sense, there should be no distinction made between them. The are inextricably linked and always will be. For instance, prophets from across time and regions told the future. This is a common thread in all religions.

 

[Sophie]

But in this context, Fudu, the question is whether Tarot was used for "divination" in its earliest days.

I suppose one might say tarot might have been used for a "kind of" divination insofar as people might have played games with it that had a "sort of" spiritual meaning, but to me, this seems to muddy the waters. It's like saying that tarot readers are "playing a game" when they do a reading--well, sort of, but that's not our intention and not the main feature of reading.

Can you tell me why symbols and allegories common to alchemists, astrologers and other diviners found their way on tarot cards? Can you tell me what the purpose of tarrocchi appropriati was? (these are real questions - not rhetorical). Because I often see a lot of assumptions about gambling and sneering about courts and flattery in the Anglo-Saxon world around tarrocchi appropriati (some of it on this thread). In contrast, I see in these cards and games something of the Italian spirit of making serious points in jest - to this day, they are past masters at this form of intellect, and I don't see why it can't touch divination. Sure, there were serious diviners in 15th Century Italy, who drew up your horoscope, but there was also a spirit of discovery and game that affected everything, including symbolism and allegory, and more than likely, divination. The separation between play and seriousness was perhaps less marked than our age and culture can understand. As I said, I think it still a feature of Italian intellectual life, something that gives it much vigour and charm.

 

[Rosanne]

The Spanish word for cards, which is naipes, and an earlier Italian word, which is naibi, are probably of Arab origin.
(Cartomancy History)

1371 Catalonia, Spain.

The earliest reference to cards in Europe, "it first appears
as naip in a Catalan document of 1371." This reference from
Parlett seems not to be repeated in any of the other sources
examined, and comes from a 1989 article in the Journal of the
International Playing Card Society, by Luis Monreal, which
post-dates most of the other sources used for this list. (P
36.) This apparently appeared in the Diccionari de rims
commissioned by Peter IV, King of Aragon. (Ortalli, 175.)

1377 Florence, Italy.

Ordinance concerning cards, naibbe, naibbi. This source refers
to cards as "a certain game called naibbe, newly introduced in
these parts". (GT 11, 44; K I:24.) Playing "cards were to be
treated just as strictly as gambling." (Ortalli, 175.)

from sacred texts......
at Viterbo in 1379, and that they had been introduced by the Saracens, who, with the Arabs and Moors, have the credit of planting the seeds of Cartomancy in Spain. It is certain that at first cards were called by the name naibi; and the Hebrew and Arabic words, Nabi, naba, nabaa, signify "to foretell." It is also widely believed that the idea of playing games with cards was an after-thought, and that their original purpose was for the practice of divination.
From the Britannica...
Not long after their introduction, cards began to be used for other purposes than gaming. In 1509 a Franciscan friar, Thomas Murner, published an exposition of logic in the form of a pack of cards, and a pack invented in 1651 by Baptist Pendleton purported to convey a knowledge of grammar. These were soon followed by packs teaching geography and heraldry, the whole class being called "scientiall cards." Politics followed, and in England satirical and historical sets appeared, one of them designed to reveal the plots of the Popish agitators. The first mention of cards in the New World is found in the letters of Herrera, a companion of Cortes, who describes the interest manifested by the Aztecs in the card games of the Spanish soldiers....
and

It is undecided whether the earliest cards were of the kind now common, called numeral cards, or whether they were tarocchi or tarots, which are still used in some parts of France, Germany and Italy, but the probability is that the tarots were the earlier. A pack of tarots consists of seventy-eight cards, four suits of numeral cards and twenty-two emblematic cards, called atutti or atouts (= trumps). Each suit consists of fourteen cards, ten of which are the pip cards, and four court (or more properly coat cards), viz. king, queen, chevalier and valet. The atouts are numbered from r to 21; the unnumbered card, called the fou, has no positive value, but augments that of the other atouts (see Academie des jeux, Corbet, Paris, 1814, for an account of the mode of playing tarocchino or tarots).

It seems to me that Divining mentioned in the Bible in numerous places was alive and well in Medieval Europe. That Tarot was a game is not in dispute- that Tarot was used for divining seems to be. Why? Chess is a game, but it is also based on the philosophical constitution of man and its struggle through the positive and negative parts of man's nature. Maybe a compromise for those dry souls would be to call Tarot 'The Game of Life' or 'Tarocchi Naibi'
=The Game of Tarot Foretells. Maybe one reason why edicts from the pulpit have not mentioned cards is because they were philosophical images firstly and not gambling - that would come later. Mostly I agree with Fudugazi who says we have not the mindset of Medieval/Renaissane man (and women) and says

Any look at the Middle Ages would have to take it on its own terms - not ours.

~Rosanne

 

[le pendu]

While there is little doubt in my mind that tarot was invented for and used as a game, I would be astonished to find that they weren't used for fortune telling right from the start. The cards "beg" for reading. Can you imagine the look on the faces of a party when Death flies out during a shuffle? Or when a discussion of a young man or woman occurs just as The Lovers is played?

I think it's only logical to imagine that tarot was used for fortune-telling. I would draw the line at suggesting that it was created for that purpose, or that the main use was anything other than gameplay.

 

[Starling]

All of the images from the Trumps deck already existed in manuscripts and paintings. I think they were part of what it meant to be educated in the early Renaissance. In fact I think they were part of what it meant to be educated until the middle of the 20th Century.

You were expected to meditate on things like The Wheel of Fortune and be able to discuss it. How far is it from that to thinking of the cards in a divinatory way? I doubt if it was far at all.

When we do history, we need to remember that in times past people thought in ways we don't currently think. It is also possible that the cards are older than we think they are. The only thing that the oldest cards we have tell us about age is to give us a not-younger-than-date. We can't pretend that the cards didn't exist in the 14th Century because we have surviving cards. That doesn't mean they didn't exist in the 12th Century. Or even earlier.

 

[firemaiden]

There was no tarot in the middle ages. It began in the Renaissance. You're going to need a new project.

 

[Alta]

You made me curious as to dates and got this from Wikipedia:

The Middle Ages form the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three "ages": the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modern Times. The idea of such a periodisation is attributed to Flavio Biondo, an Italian Renaissance humanist Historian.

The Middle Ages are commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire (or by some scholars, before that) in the 5th century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the late 14th or early 15th century. Which field of study a scholar specializes in, or what regions of Europe they study cause much of the variation. Commonly seen periodization ranges spans the years ca.400-476 AD (the sack of Rome by the Goths)[1] to 1453 to ca. 1517 (Martin Luther's act of nailing the 95 theses to the church door—the common act to use the common bulletin board of a community in that age). These dates are approximate, and are based upon nuanced arguments

So, a little tricky to say that. Maybe at the very end of the Middle Ages.