1597 mention of "Tarotiis"

jmd

Thankyou kwaw - wonderful additional resources...

and also many thanks to Ross and to ihcoyc.

Part of kwaw's reference reminds me that a number of books were used in the process of divination, without them being used in bibliomantic means.

Of long tradition and well known is of course the I-Ching - here it is not the book itself which is the mantic art, but rather forms merely its interpretative aid.

In a similar vein, books existed with regards to geomancy, and there is another which was also in use more recently but which I do not recall (only kwaw's post brought its matter to mind), in which a series of 'throws' brought a particular page/figure to be used in the interpretation.

Alciati's Embelemata Liber, or indeed any other structured and organised book of emblems, may likewise then have developed particular methods of cross-references.

Of interest is of course also the alphabetical methods which sought to categorise and organise the 'whole knowledge of the world'. In this, other well known names from late mediaeval and early Renaissance times again come to the fore.
 

jmd

Slowly catching up on a week's worth of threads, and after making the above post, I realise that a better discussion on some of the points I make above is also included by others in the thread Marcolini, Francesco...
 

kwaw

While talking about the emblematic tradition, there may also be a connection with suited cards in that the Mamluk cards has aphorisms or idimatic sayings written on them.

Kwaw
 

John Meador

emblematic tradition: Horapollon & Pythagorean

Kwaw wrote:
"While talking about the emblematic tradition, there may also be a connection with suited cards in that the Mamluk cards has aphorisms or idimatic sayings written on them."

Very intriguing! Are translations available of any of these?

Kwaw, your earlier mention of Claude Mignault of Dijon's "Theoretical Writings on the Emblem came to my attention in seeking intersections between Horapollon and Pythagorean interests in early Tarot.

A Treatise on Symbols Claude Mignault of Dijon (1573)
Theoretical Writings on the Emblem: a Critical Edition, with apparatus and notes.
By Denis Drysdall

"Mignault's original chapter on Pythagorean symbols has nothing to do with Clement of Alexandria's, though Clement is the main source for his chapter on Egyptian writing. It also has nothing to do with the collection of aphorisms known as the Symbola Pythagorae, for he here describes more hieroglyphs taken from Iamblichus and Valeriano. The reason for this appears to be that the Symbola Pythagorae are verbal 'symbols', whereas he is writing of visual symbols. When, in 1602, he does include the text of the Symbola Pythagorae (pp. 5-19) and a section on those other verbal symbols, enigmas and anagrams (pp. 32-33), he seems to do so reluctantly and only to respond to criticism he has received."

On Pythagorean symbols
"Certainly the ancient Pythagorean symbols made no small use of this knowledge; Pythagoras learned them from the Tyrrhenians[9] (among whom he was brought up, according to Plutarch) or from the Egyptians, as the noble philosopher Iamblichus reports, and elaborated them in this way because he wanted most of his teaching to be hidden by means of these mysteries. ...This Egyptian wisdom was brought together in a book by Chaeremon,[11] and by Horapollo; Pythagoras enlarged it, and it was elaborated by those excellent philosophers and noble writers Athenaeus, Clement and Cyril of Alexandria, Pausanias, Porphyrius, Pliny the Elder, Apuleius, and Plutarch. Having almost died out by our time it was, with great labour and industry, with admirable and almost divine genius revived and completed in all its elements by Pierio Valeriano in his great Commentaries on the Hieroglyphs. The usefulness of this early wisdom - lest I seem to ignore the point - was grasped long before Pythagoras by Moses, Solomon, and other wise men among the Hebrews...[12]"
http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/Mignault_syntagma.html

see also:
Piety and Pythagoras in Renaissance Florence: The Symbolum Nesianum
Christopher S. Celenza (Leiden: Brill, 2001) 238 pp.
"...an extensive situating of <Giovanni [1456-post 1522] > Nesi and of Renaissance Florence in relation to Pythagoreanism and the various currents of Platonism and Neoplatonism -- that is to say, in relation to esoteric currents of antiquity and late antiquity. In addition to unveiling an important Renaissance work, Celenza's immense scholarship illuminates the hitherto less examined role that Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism played for the Renaissance Platonists. Piety and Pythagoras in Renaissance Florence represents a major contribution to the series Studies in the History of Christian Thought, and to our understanding of the Renaissance period."
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Reviews/noteworthybooks.html

http://www.brill.nl/m_catalogue_sub6_id9978.htm

Discusses therein the Pythagorean tradition absorbed via Iamblichus by Ficino and Nesi.

"The Neoplatonist Giovanni Nesi wrote “Oracolo de novo saeculo” in which he integrated Neoplatonism with the prophetic tradition of Joachimism (Reeves, 1976)."
http://att.tarot.com/about-tarot/library/boneill/CT_Joachim

"Iamblichus believed that these same eternal measures (DM 65.6) were preserved by Egyptian priests from whom Pythagoras himself gained his knowledge of mathematical mysteries, and to whom lamblichus also looked for guidance and authority in establishing his own synthesis of 'divine philosophy and the worship of the gods'. This demanded that Iamblichus, like Pythagoras, develop a way of life that accounts for differences among souls while allowing them 'equal' access to the gods."

"The fitting of physical numbers to their divine causes and to the needs of the soul was essential to the art of theurgy and was not limited to physical numbers. For, Iamblichus says: 'As there are numbers fitting nature, so there are [numbers] fitting ethical habits. And as there is a physical so there is an ethical arithmetic' (O'Meara 1990, 126). Maintaining that 'each single virtue fits a number', Iambichus explains the numerical correspondences to wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice (126). In theurgic terms, whenever these ethical numbers were employed in incantations, music, or diagrams, the habits of the soul corresponding to them would be aligned with the divine numbers they reveal, provided the soul had the capacity to receive them."

"Iamblichus says that Pythagoras taught the ancient Egyptian and Assyrian mysteries, including their initiations into divine mathematics (VP 11). These 'mathematical mysteries' (VP 228) allowed the soul to participate directly in the number gods. In a cosmos whose body is generated by numbers it should not be surprising that the most revered form of worship would engage numbers directly, and Iamblichus says that Pythagoras taught the Sythian Abaris a form of 'divination through numbers' to replace his use of sacrificial animals (VP 93). Iamblichus maintains that Pythagoras, following Orpheus, 'created a marvelous divination and worship of the Gods according to the numbers most allied to them' (VP 147). That numbers were employed by Pythagoreans and theurgists is clear, yet what is not clear is precisely how they were used. Iamblichus implies that the Pythagoreans honored the gods with images carved into the shapes of Plato's five geometric solids, including the dodecahedron as the spheric image of the All (VP 88; see Clark 1989, 39, 66-67). Proclus and Damascius associate geometric
shapes and angles with specific deities, crediting their knowledge to the Pythagorean Philolaus (Morrow 1970, Proclus. In Euclidem 173.11-21; cf. Ruelle 1889, Damascius: Dubitationes et Solutiones ii 127), and Damascius says that while each god is associated with a specific rectilinear form, 'it is certain that the circular figure is common to all the intellectual Gods as intellectual' (Ruelle 1889, Damascius Dub. et Sol. ii 127). The circularity of the gods seems to be a recurring motif, for in the De Mysteriis Iamblichus explains that whenever a god unites with the soul its possession is effected in a circular way. In dreams, in private acts of divination, or in public oracles, when the god takes possession of a human being it 'entirely fills and dominates him, and embraces him in a circular way from everywhere at once' (DM 113. 10-11 ; cf. 103.14-104.4, 126.11-14). For Iamblichus, to become spherical was to be assimilated to the Nous, so the spherical experience of the theurgist was a symptom of his or her deification. The sphere held a special significance for Pythagoreans as the most complete theophany."

"... Iamblichus says: 'the ascent to the One is not possible unless the soul coordinates itself to the All and with the All, moves itself toward the Universal Principle of all things' (Ruelle 1889, Damascius: Dub. et Sol i 79.12-14). This coordination begins with material theurgies, progresses through intermediate theurgies, and culminates finally with the immaterial theurgies that employ mathematical images, not as conceptual abstractions but as noetic signatures of the gods, Pythagorean hieroglyphs of intelligible reality."
-Gregory Shaw: Eros and Arithmos: Pythagorean Theurgy in Iamblichus and Plato, in: Ancient Philosophy 19, 1999.

"Cosimo de' Medici resolved to establish a Platonic Academy in 1439, and Ficino writes that he was selected to run it when he was still only a boy. Cosimo had been moved to this decision by the arrival in Italy of Gemistos Plethon, who had come with the Greek Emperor and Patriarch to discuss at the Council of Florence a proposed union of the Greek and Roman Churches. Plethon was so steeped in the philosophy of Plato that he seemed to contemporaries like another embodiment of the great philosopher."
http://www.nd.edu/~dharley/HistIdeas/Ficino.html

"Cusanus <in De Docta Ignorantia, 1440>... places himself in a line of thinkers which can be traced through Boethius back to Plato and Pythagoras. These thinkers believed in the special efficacy of the language of mathematics when applied to metaphysical and epistemological problems. There is also a medieval tradition of interest in the problem of proportions. See John Murdoch, "The Medieval Language of Proportions: Elements of Interaction with Greek Foundations and the Development of New Mathematical Techniques" in Scientific Change, ed. A. C. Crombie, London: Heinemann Educational Books, Ltd., 1963. Cusanus can be linked with this tradition through the De reparatio calendarii. He was also interested in the problem of the squaring of the circle, which fascinated medieval mathematicians."

" In the De docta ignorantia (1440) ... formulations which revolve around the conception of unity as a trinity, a discovery which Cusanus attributes to Pythagoras. Cusanus' knowledge of Pythagoras' doctrine is derived essentially from Boethius and from the adaptations and expansions of his doctrine made by various twelfth century Platonists, Thierry of Chartres and John of Salisbury in particular."

" For Cusanus, who believed that the mind must nevertheless proceed from something known in its exploration of the unknown, man could do no better than to use mathematics, our "most firm" and "most certain" means of knowing, at once concrete and transcendent. Turning once again to his favorite Pythagorean and Platonic sources for guidance, he points out that Pythagoras was the first to recognize that truth is most properly and efficaciously pursued through numbers. On account of this insight, Pythagoras is rightly called the first philosopher. The Platonists followed him in this conviction, as did Boethius, "the most learned of the Romans," and the Christian Platonist, Augustine. Even Aristotle, who seemed to want to distinguish himself from his Platonic predecessors, resorted to the use of mathematics in presenting various arguments in the Metaphysics. Moreover, number was used by both Pythagoreans and Peripatetics to refute Epicurean atomism, a particularly dangerous doctrine because it negated the existence of God, thus undermining the foundation of all truth." "
<<DDI, 1.11, p.23-14>>
-Pauline Moffitt Watts: Nicolaus Cusanus, 1982

Reading the early Christian theology of arithmetic: methods of research and the search for a method Joel Kalvesmaki
"In the area of the intersection of the alphabet, numbers, and magic, the very old work by Dornseiff is surprisingly very rich and fresh. It is the best place to start to get a sense of the importance of the linguistic use of numbers—gematria, magic alphabets, and so forth"

"...Christian obsession with the Trinity is a Pythagorean corruption of the pure message of Paul and of the New Testament. Hopper suggests that through Augustine’s stamp of approval, arithmology became official and a dominant force in the Middle Ages."

"Hopper does make the excellent point that Trinitarian debates, particularly in the second and third centuries, were informed by neopythagorean concerns..."
http://students.cua.edu/16kalvesmaki/Arithmetic/ECNumbersIntro.htm

-John
 

Parzival

1597 mention of Tarotists

Bravo! for the excellent citations of Pythagorean tradition in Renaissance Florence, mixed with Platonic philosophy. The Pythagorean Tarot and the Nigel Jackson Tarot, both strongly influenced by number symbolism from Pythagoras, have a stronger validity than some might think. And the Renaissance decks may very well take in more ancient Greek cosmography and philosophy than some deem possible.
 

jmd

These indeed provide a wonderful resource to the rich and diverse syncretic influences on late mediæval Europe and, to be sure, some of the sources of what plays into the iconography of Tarot.

Not only Iamblichus, but also other sought for fragments of revelatory documents were both sought for and keenly contested for translation from not only the Holy Land, but also northern Egypt - especially Alexandria in its glorious period of Late Antiquity.

Yet it needs to also be remembered that even during that prolific period of the 17th century, and at the hands penned by such a polymath as Athanasius Kircher, whose references includes even such works as Lingua Aegyptiaca restitutia (recalling the later and influential Langue Hebraïque Restituée by A. Fabre d'Olivet from 1825), it appears that no work 'discovered' the importance of Tarot prior to De Gebellin.

This does not of course imply that those syncretic impulses did not weave their way into Tarot - quite the contrary is inevitably the case.

It just seems rather surprising that we have yet to find some obscure document that directly adds to our researches...
 

John Meador

a possible exception

Jean-Michel wrote:
"Yet it needs to also be remembered that even during that prolific period of the 17th century, and at the hands penned by such a polymath as Athanasius Kircher, whose references includes even such works as Lingua Aegyptiaca restitutia (recalling the later and influential Langue Hebra�que Restitu�e by A. Fabre d'Olivet from 1825), it appears that no work 'discovered' the importance of Tarot prior to De Gebellin."

A possible exception exists in Abraham von Franckenberg's Clavis Editoris ad Clavem Authoris appended to his 1646 edition of Guillaume Postel's Clavis absconditorum. This is the notorius Taro/Rota emblem, on which I have expended copius meanderings here:
Guillaume Postel, the Clavis and ROTA
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=16389&highlight=clavis+absconditorum

Ojections that "Taro" would not signify "Tarot" may not be substantial; to wit:

"The reimposition of the tax in 1622 evoked a new protest from the maistres et ouvriers de cartes et tarotz of Lyons in 1623, which says that many had left for Switzerland and Besancon in order to escape the new tax, and, in particular, that the Duke of Savoy had lured many cardmakers to Turin and Chambery. The Lyons cardmakers, more fortunate that their colleagues in Rouen, succeeded in getting the tax annulled for Lyons in 1623.<D'Allemagne vol. I, pp. 297-8, vol. II, pp. 244, 246, 492, 502.> Their statutes were revised in 1650; article 9 continued to refer to taros. < Ibid., vol. II, p. 258>."
-Michael Dummett: Game of Tarot, 1980, p. 204.
<Dummett italicises that last word: taros>

I am now fairly sure that Franckenberg held a belief in metempsychosis, as did his teacher Jacob Boehme and his own "disciple" Angelus Silesius. That Franckenberg's Clavis emblem signified (in some degree) metempsychosis, which he gathered from Postel's Clavis absconditorum text, I am increasingly confident. Moreover, indications may exist (which I am exploring) that suggest the formative development of Tarot had occasion to carry such considerations of metempsychosis, particularly in a Pythagorean context.

"...<Rene> Guenon, ... in his _Great Triad_<<La grande Triade, Paris, 1946, p.154 and 157>> in connection with the cosmic wheel and of a series of assimilated symbolic systems: "In certain works attached to the hermetic tradition, one finds mention of the ternary : Deus, Homo, Rota.... which concerns the Absconditorum Clavis, the key of things hidden, and the "Rota mundi" of the Rosicrucians. "A little further the notion of the unchanging center is bourne out by the image of Chinese yin-yang and the expression of "Wheel within the wheel" by which, he tells us, G. Postel describes the center of Eden. Some lines beforehand an allusion has the wheel of fortune brought back for us to the 10th card of the tarot. This new development indicates the transformation of Postel into a witness of the eternal tradition, the texts were circumvented by another way."
-Jean-Pierre LAURANT Ecole Practises High-Studies (V I section), Paris "Postel Vu Par Le XIXe Siecle Occultisant" in:_Guillaume Postel 1581-1981_ ed. Guy Tredaniel, 198

I have been noticing, in researching Pythagorean imput during the Renaissance period under discussion, frequent mention among the authors/editors of maintaining a "Pythagorean silence". It is possible this could partially account for an absence of evidence, and may alleviate the burden of historical silence some when kept in consideration of further and future evidence.

-John
 

kwaw

Ross G Caldwell said:
“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.”

In an article appearing in THE JOURNAL OF THE PLAYING-CARD SOCIETY [Vol. I, No. 1 ISSN 0305-2133 August, 1972] under the title "A CHOICE COLLECTION OF PLAYING-CARDS" Sylvia Mann reported :

"On the 24th November, 1971, under the description given above, there took place at Christie's in London the sale of what must be considered one of the most remarkable collections of playing-cards ever to come on the open market. The property of the late Captain H. E. Rimington Wilson, the collection cannot have exceeded one hundred packs, but almost every one was of the highest quality or interest, and many, so far as the present writer is aware, were previously unrecorded. "

Among the items on sales was:

"285. An extremely interesting and, to me, previously unknown pack with fanciful suitmarks (Cupids, Goats, Harps and Millstones) made in 1544 by Christian Wechel of Paris, whose name is recorded in d'Allemagne as a maître cartier. The main body of the cards was filled with quotations in Latin from the works of Ovid, Seneca, Horace and Plautus. Not surprisingly this exceptional item fetched a high price (320 gns.)"

Other items I found of interest though unrelated to this were:

288. A German-suited, 52-card pack illustrating the skills and mysteries of Chiromancy or Palmistry. Probably c1670. Each card shows the picture of a hand over typeset text describing part of it. This was also new to me.

289. A pack with the same style and theme as the last, but rather more artistically presented and with verses instead of plain text. Probably from the same period. The only other example I have seen is one which belonged to the late Dr. Martin yon Hase of Wiesbaden who dated it 1660.

310. 44 cards of a 15th-century Italian pack with fanciful suit-marks (though based on Italian ones) of Cups, Arrows, Eyes and Whips, Merlin calls this pack the "Jeu des Passions" as each suit represents a passion. Although the exact composition of the pack was not absolutely clear, each suit had four court cards (King, Queen, Cavalier and Jack) and ten numerals, all cards bearing three lines of verse. Merlin mentions the pack being [end of page 12] acquired in 1861 for 400 francs. In 1971 it made 350 gns.

Kwaw
 

Ross G Caldwell

Hi Kwaw,

kwaw said:
In an article appearing in THE JOURNAL OF THE PLAYING-CARD SOCIETY [Vol. I, No. 1 ISSN 0305-2133 August, 1972] under the title "A CHOICE COLLECTION OF PLAYING-CARDS" Sylvia Mann reported :


"285. An extremely interesting and, to me, previously unknown pack with fanciful suitmarks (Cupids, Goats, Harps and Millstones) made in 1544 by Christian Wechel of Paris, whose name is recorded in d'Allemagne as a maître cartier. The main body of the cards was filled with quotations in Latin from the works of Ovid, Seneca, Horace and Plautus. Not surprisingly this exceptional item fetched a high price (320 gns.)"

Ah, you found it! Yes - all of that speculation about emblem books was wrong - Pierre Grégoire's mention of Wechel's publication must have referred to this deck, and not to Wechel's emblem books.

Thierry Depaulis alerted me to this deck's existence when I brought up the Grégoire quote with him last spring. I went to see it in August when I was in London (along with the Dodal deck they have).

I would love to have looked at more decks, but I didn't have much time. Surely it would be worth publishing in facsimile - it is the only one known, as far as I know - but it would take time to translate and comment on it. And who would publish it without at least that?

310. 44 cards of a 15th-century Italian pack with fanciful suit-marks (though based on Italian ones) of Cups, Arrows, Eyes and Whips, Merlin calls this pack the "Jeu des Passions" as each suit represents a passion. Although the exact composition of the pack was not absolutely clear, each suit had four court cards (King, Queen, Cavalier and Jack) and ten numerals, all cards bearing three lines of verse. Merlin mentions the pack being [end of page 12] acquired in 1861 for 400 francs. In 1971 it made 350 gns.

This last must be the version of the Boiardo deck that Dummett published a few examples of in "Game of Tarot", plate 16. I scanned them from my photocopy and they are published at
http://www.geocities.com/autorbis/boiardo.htm

Ross