The Visconti - and the Marseilles

[Fulgour]

those were the days

I once allowed my imagination to play with why there are
no Devil or Tower cards left from these old decks, and my
adaptive wit concluded that there was once a BIG party...
it was "the" party (be there or be square) but to get in you
had to present either a Devil or Tower card! Very exclusive.
Picture the youthful enthusiam, everybody digging around
to find daddy's funny old card set a night to remember!

Maybe the year was... 1516

 

[le pendu]

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Wonderful image Fulgour!

Thanks for lightening the mood.

robert

 

[jmd]

Again, to my perspective, that there was indeed a clear tradition that includes 22 Atouts and Tarot prior to the Visconti is without any doubt - and if my previous posts were in any manner read to suggest the opposite, then it is simply out of a possible ambiguity in the reading... many of my other posts have, I would have thought, made this clear.

When I earlier mention the Visconti as a non-Tarot deck, this is based principally, as mentioned, on the likelihood of there never have been 22 Atouts.

Already in (if I recall my reading) the late 19th century it was recognised that six out of the twenty atouts of the Visconti were by the hand of a different artist, and a number of people have thought and mentioned the possibility that perhaps the 'missing' cards (for the complement of 22) never existed. Huck and autorbis have certainly argued this point explicitly, and given it more probable shape.

Going against historical trends, I personally consider that the Visconti was if fact derived from an existing tradition and deck (and have mentioned this in other places - and on Aeclectic as a possibility).

So in what sense do I call the Visconti not a Tarot? in the sense that, and on the assumption, that the two 'missing' Atouts are not in fact missing.

This in no way diminishes, at least to my way of thinking, both its importance, its likely embedded esoteric allegories and geometry, or its relatedness to Tarot. So perhaps I in turn may ask the reverse question: if the Visconti, with its missing cards from the 'minor' arcana, has in fact none missing from its Atouts (and further if the six cards to its Atouts by another hand are additions), should it be considered a tarot?

 

[ihcoyc]

it was "the" party (be there or be square) but to get it you
had to present either a Devil or Tower card! Very exclusive.
Picture the youthful enthusiam, everybody digging around
to find daddy's funny old card set a night to remember?!

Maybe the year was... 1516

This gets my imagination going. A standard 52-card deck of playing cards is not used to play a single game, called "Cards." There are hundreds of games that have been played with them, operating on entirely different principles.

Perhaps there were multiple games that were played with the tarot deck as well at some time. The fact that their use in card playing is confined to a single game now may not reflect on how they were used in the past. I know that in college we had a number of what I would call "deliberately complex games." We called it "Bong 98" but other names have been used, like "Bartok", "Wartoke", and "Mao."

These were games broadly modelled after "Crazy Eights" (This may be an explicitly US reference, but in Crazy Eights the object is to discard all your cards by following the previous card played in either suit or rank. Eights are wild cards that allow you to change the suit or rank.) These games were variants on this basic model, but with additional complications that made certain cards or card combinations to change the rules: some cards, when played, made the next player lose a turn, or required them to draw extra cards, or reverse the direction of play. The game "Uno" is a "simplified complex game," without all the baroque rules these games had. Sometimes the games had secret rules, or multiple sets that could be switched in and out when certain cards (a black jack, especially) were played.

These games were essentially drinking games. The idea was to make the game so confusing that some rule or another would be overlooked. Violators, when caught, suffered a penalty of having to down a shot of liquor. This did nothing to discourage rulebreaking or to help the player remember next time.

This is wandering far afield, I know. But I can imagine a tarot deck being used in a similarly complex game. What sort of elaborate rule would you attach to playing the Devil or the Fool? The tarot deck and its allusive images may well have suggested a similarly allusive game. Perhaps the Devil and the Tower cards were associated with particularly nasty penalties, leaving them to be optional in such a game.

 

[Huck]

The statistical miss of 2 cards by such a small number of cards is statistically not significant. A little strange it is, that it are just the Devil and the Tower, so one feels tempted to explain, that "they perhaps were intentionally" discarded.
If there were with security always 22 trumps, this would be a good explanation. But the probability, that there were not always 22 trumps, is very high, according to our calculations very, very high. So there is a general suspicion about the whole development and the question, which cards were inside and which not is simplx necessary.
Now we've an additional card, the Visconti snake, and it appears twice. More to this a similar card appears in the Goldschmidt-Guildhall-group, so there are 3 of this card.
Now it may be, that this were just additional cards, without function in the game. But ... all the history tells us, that these cards at a certain early time were used as event decks for festivities or triumphal processions, and that all these cards were filled with heraldic elements. Why now should just the "GREAT" heraldic device card have had no function? This would be not necessarily logical, actually one should assume, that just this card would have a very special positive or strong function.

Additionally to that .... the Visconti-snake or -dragon has a man in the mouth and mostly all devils of the early time have this man in the mouth!

What to do with this? Actually it is a research question: How often were devils outside of Tarot painted with man in mouth and how often were this pictures before 1500, before the assumed Visconti-Snake - Devil exchange? My personal impression is, that there are in art not too much devils with this
characteristica.

http://trionfi.com/0/g/61/

Additionally to that, the Tarot as we know it, has one basic puzzle: Where is Prudentia?

again: http://trionfi.com/0/g/61/

The Snake is a symbol of Prudentia.

And the whole composition makes somehow sense.

 

[Fulgour]

ancient even-ings

Dear Prudence is up in the Tower with the Devil...

 

[le pendu]

Hi Huck,

I did look at the site earlier, and you raise an interesting question with the snake = the devil. But we do know there are other cards that are strange from this period as well.. like the Ursino card.

So that's an interesting jump.. to suggest that the snake equals the devil.. there is certainly a lot of historical references to the devil as a snake. But I do think it goes from a jump to a leap to suggest that the snake originally represented Prudence. It's true that Prudence was sometimes shown holding a snake. She was also portrayed sometimes with two faces, often with a mirror, and often with a stag or deer. But for the snake to become the representation of Prudence, rather than a prop, is too big a gulf for me personally to navigate.

I'm sorry if I'm sounding negative during this thread. I don't mean to.

Many people here have a pet theory of how tarot evolved. JMD believes a 78 card tarot, in a similar form to the TdM, existed before the Visconti decks, which I would assume you disagree with. He votes against the Visconti decks as true Tarot because in his view the decks do not reflect what he believes to be a true tarot, (although he can not prove that this tarot existed at all), and because the decks we have are incomplete.

You and Lothar (and to some degree Ross) are convinced that tarot DID evolve out of the courts in 15th Century Italy, but you discount the Visconti decks because you have a theory of "how" they evolved, and to admit that the Sforza is just as likely to have been complete as incomplete defeats your hypothisis. I've read over a thousand posts on your newsgroup, and *greatly* admire the work everyone involved contributes, I remain open-minded, but unconvinced.

I'm waiting for someone to show me these images, as a group, existing ANYWHERE before 15th Century Italy. I'm waiting for a plausable structure or story. I'm waiting for a more plausable reason for the images that do exist to have been chosen. I've read Lothar's theory and the logic for the 14 cards and their relationship to each other, but, again, something seems wrong and missing. Just as when I read Lothar's reasoning against an Ur Tarot in your link.. his card relationships and reasoning seems as forced and overlaid as a Fools Journey, or a snake representing Prudence.

I'm agnostic. I'm not convinced of anything. There are so many layers to tarot it's hard to know what to believe. But I still believe there was a logic behind the cards originally. A story or purpose that would have explained why this very strange collection of images would have been combined. I'm very willing to believe it happened before the Visconti decks. I'm very willing to believe it happened in France, or Germany, or Arabia. But no one has yet put the pieces together in a significant enough way to persuade me to believe anything except that Tarot evolved as a game to entertain the royal families of Italy. I DO believe the Sforza is a later development. I Do believe there was a lot of experimentation. But at some point these images became "tarot", and I want to know why.

To all who I've mentioned above, if I've misrepresented your views or oversimplified your beliefs, I apologize right now. This is just a very brief summary of how I've come to understand them in the past year. Everyone I have mentioned has *deeply* expanded my understanding and appreciation of Tarot, I am in your debt.

best,
robert

 

[Sophie]

And, to take a modern view, why should there be just one Ur-Tarot. Its so.... elitist. Everyone should have one. And I'm sure, that once the Tarot authors get through with it, everyone will have one.

What is wrong with "elitist", if it means the pursuit of excellence?

So we are not searching for the Ur-Tarot, but the Ur-Essence of Tarot?

Reductio ad absurdum, Vincent. Sneering is not going to win you an argument.

And, if this message is present in the Visconti, then apparently the message has nothing to do with the essence?

I am perfectly prepared to hear that the Visconti, or the Mantegna, or the Sola Busca, or the Cary Sheets, are invested, for some reason or other, with the essence of tarot. Those who love the TdM and have worked with it for a long time (fewer people read or meditate with the Italian cards, as opposed to collect them) say it is invested with an essence all of its own that comes from the conjuntion of age, tradition, popular appeal throughout the centuries and daily use in meditation or reading.

Why does it make it more likely than, say, the printers of the cards put familiar images on the cards to make them attractive to their prospective clients?

[...]
doesn't mean there has to be any particular message inherent in the cards design, no matter how much fun it is to speculate. I can see the attraction of hidden messages, especially when competing with a symbol set, and occult paradigm, as rich as the Thoth deck for example. I believe it is this competition that drives modern Tarot 'to see a world in a grain of sand'

We come here to the whole world of medieval iconography. Anyone familiar with it knows that ALL images were invested with meaning (Silvia wrote a good piece about it a week or so ago). Go to your local library and find out - you don't even have to touch a tarot book, any will do: cathedral carvings, bas-relief, retables, panels, signposts at taverns and tradesmen, etc (read also the essay "the language of birds" if you want one instance of meaning through images). There was no difference between choosing what was familiar to make one's cards and choosing for meaning, to pass on a or several messages. Nor was the message secret, though part of the enjoyment of making and playing with cards might have been in hiding the symbols (again I'll refer yu to "the language of the birds"). It only appears secret to us today, because much of the immediacy of the meanings of those images was lost. By choosing those images for that pack of cards, the makers of tarot knew exactly what they were doing.

And, with the absence of any evidence as to what this 'message' might be, all theories become equally valid. Including Court de Gebelin, so we might as well start looking for the Ur-essence of Tarot in the Valley of the Kings.

"The message" (by which is meant not one unitary grand plan, that I have already questioned elsewhere, but a synchretism, as jmd put it) is not difficult if you take the pains to study medieval iconography and religious/philosophical world-view and trace some of it to local beliefs, some to late Antiquity. Not impossible, given the different influences that operated in Europe between the 7th and the 15th centuries, that some symbols go back earlier, though personally the Egyptian connection I find far-fetched, but that might just be personal prejudice. Much of the medieval intellectual life (including its icongraphy) has its deep roots in late Antiquity, but not exclusively: the most important influence on medieval thought was Aristotle.

Or we could take Occam's razor to it and come to the conclusion that it was used simply for playing a Tarocchi-like game, and had no connection to the Hebrew alphabet, or ancient Egypt, or Atlantis, or large dog-headed arachnids from Sirius.

Spoken like a true pragmatist. Medieval man would see nothing contradictory in playing games with images that were both familiar and carried messages. History does not relate what Occam, if he knew of them, might have thought of card games. As a Franciscan, I rather think he would disapprove.

I was rather fond of that dog-headed arachnid myself

Are you comparing this to an instance when such a thing happened in another society?

No, medieval European society. It simply did not think as you and I think, Vincent. If you are to understand Tarot you have to make that effort to reach across time and try and understand the mindset of these men and women.

One other thing, for clarity, when you say ancient Tarot, do you mean the TdM, or something else?

For my part, all ancient tarots.

 

[Diana]

Much of the medieval intellectual life (including its icongraphy) has its deep roots in late Antiquity, but not exclusively: the most important influence on medieval thought was Aristotle.

And this did not please those who held the power. In the 11th Century, after the fourth Crusade, and once the Albegesians (or however you call them in English) were massacred and their culture destroyed and scattered to the four winds, in Paris the reading of Aristotle's works was strictly forbidden and the punishment for this was excommunication. (I don't know the exact dates of the interdiction.)

(It was also during this time that for nearly 20 years, Fibonacci stopped writing.... I suspect he was being silenced or realised himself that silence was probably better for him.) (I mention Fibonacci because mathematics and Tarot are intertwined, but to what extent I obviously do not know.)

 

[Parzival]

The Visconti and the Marseilles

When I earlier mention the Visconti as a non-Tarot deck, this is based principally, as mentioned, on the likelihood of there never have been 22 Atouts.

Already in (if I recall my reading) the late 19th century it was recognised that six out of the twenty atouts of the Visconti were by the hand of a different artist, and a number of people have thought and mentioned the possibility that perhaps the 'missing' cards (for the complement of 22) never existed. Huck and autorbis have certainly argued this point explicitly, and given it more probable shape.

Going against historical trends, I personally consider that the Visconti was if fact derived from an existing tradition and deck (and have mentioned this in other places - and on Aeclectic as a possibility).


So in what sense do I call the Visconti not a Tarot? in the sense that, and on the assumption, that the two 'missing' Atouts are not in fact missing.

I have excerpted some key passages from your clear and informative post. If two artists created the Visconti, possibly more, there still could be the original intent to have 22 Trumps. There still could be a deletion of Tower and Devil, for aesthetic and theological reasons -- too bold, too intense for the time. Nevertheless, your thesis makes perfect sense if the two "missing " Trumps were never there . But if there were a preceding complete series of 22 Trumps, this could be viewed differently-- as an abridgment of the original, however detrimental . Tarot abridged , but still Tarot.
All of which brings me to this question : "Why take away Tower and Devil, and no other Trumps?"-- a more specific look at the possibility.
I notice that if you leave the gap of the possible omission, suddenly Temperance is beside Star. The two look like sister soul-mates, same dark blue dress, same green background hills, same faces.( Temperance has lavender sleeves, Star wears a cape.) The Tower and Devil would have torn away their unity, as they do now if re-inserted. (Moon makes a tercet of the three ladies, but her dress is rose over blue.) I wonder if Tower and Devil were taken out as too tragic in the midst of the tranquility of Temperance and Star.