VI L'AMOVREVX

Marseilles Decks - VI L'AMOVREVX

The card attached is from the 1760 Conver deck... possibly my favourite rendition for this card.

All figures and hand positions and 'ownership' is clear, and the difference of age between the two female characters is also clear.

Above, 'Cupid' is aiming his arrow at the joining of the central male figure and the younger female, who has flowers in her hair. It is as if the older female figure is also encouraging this decision of the two young ones to be together.

An interesting aspect of the title of the card is that L'Amoureux is both singular (L'...) and plural (...eux).

Keeping it Simple

Bon Matin Everybody.

Usually I have no problem with the evolution of the cards, and their tendency to change form and format over the centuries. However, the changes that have occurred in trump no. VI, even in early times, have served only to obscure the very simple and straightforward meaning originally attached to this card.

The original Visconti-Sforza depiction showed only the couple, standing in front of a pedestal upon which a blindfolded cupid stood ready to launch his arrow. The figues of the couple were adapted from an illustration in "Launcelot of the Lake," executed some years earlier by the same artist and pictured in Kaplan Vol. II. Another early card showed several couples -- I think three -- with the cupid above them, but the meaning was still the same.

I'm not sure at what point the couple became a trio, but I believe this to have been an unfortunate alteration, as it has muddied the trump's content and led to complicated and sometimes (to my mind) bizzarre interpretations of what was intended to be a straightforward representation of love, the most pervasive, fundamental, and in some ways most important of human emotions. In fact, the card was originally called "Love," never "The Lovers."

While the Marseilles decks show a man and two women, others, such as the various Gummpemberg Milanese cards, show a woman forced to make a choice between two men, which for interpretative purposes necessitates a radical departure from the intended original meaning.

Almost needless to say, when I drew my own deck I reduced the figures on this card to three -- the man, the woman, and the cupid -- and I always refer to it as "Love." And if I can anticipate a little bit, I love the contrast between this trump and the next one, as I think of the two of them together as "love and war."

Just a note here about trump sequence: as with the first five, the sequence of trumps (excepting the virtues) between VI and XII has been consistent over the years: Love, Chariot, Old Man (or Hermit), Wheel of Fortune, Hanged Man. The one exception is that sometimes the Hermit comes before Wheel of Fortune and sometimes after. The frequently-mentioned confusion and inconsistency in the trump sequence is generally due to the instability of the places allotted to Fortitude, Justice, and Temperance.

(catboxer)

edited

i will post my thoughts on the lovers later, but for now here is the one from the soprafino deck.

kaz

I was hoping to find an early painting I have sometimes used to show an early depiction very closely similar to the (Marseilles) card... but I just cannot locate it (hopefully, the next few days will allow me to remember who painted it).

I'll describe it, partly to give me a little 'space' from which to disagree with aspects of catboxer's post on this one. Though the Visconti-Sforza deck only depicts the couple, the painting I am referring to, and which, from my recollection, was executed around the time of Giotto and clearly depicts a wedding scene, somewhat similar to the Soprafino rendition, but with ealier iconographic style (from memory, it is simply called 'The Wedding', which is of course a later appelation, as early paintings had no titles).

Personally, I too think very much of this card as the need to make a choice, as mentioned by Diana. This choice, however, is iconographically clearly connected to the impulse of Love, but the decision to leave one's maternal home in order to begin one's path in establishing one's own home results in far more than only 'love'. Hence, any decision of serious consequence can be implied... which usually, in any case, begins with a love towards that which suggests a change of direction in one's life.

As with possibly many other readers to this thread, I'm aware that it has at times been taken to symbolically represent the choice one needs to make between Vice and Virtue... but which is which? especially in the context of the clear image!

To my mind, the modifications which the Waite-Smith deck presents takes away from the fullness of the three human figures and 'Cupid'.

... and I will have to really look for that painting if catboxer is to consider re-drawing a rendition for this card !

edited

exoteric and esoteric

While I hope not to offend or insult anyone, as that is not my purpose, I suppose offense is inevitable whenever we take a firm stand on any subject, especially one as volatile as tarot. The subject of trump VI, I think, begs us once again to ask what exactly we are looking at when we examine this singular pack of cards. Is there a system of esoteric knowledge embedded in the tarot pack? If so, was it deliberately implanted by the originators of the early Italian and French decks? Or is it simply a card game, one of whose components circumstantially contains some symbolic pictures, the subject matter of which follows no particular pattern or scheme?

Looking through the "decks" board on this forum earlier today, I ran across a thread in which people were ooing and ahing over a new tarot called "I Am One." Keying up the deck's web page, I found some modern-looking paintings by a modestly talented artist, along with a description of the deck reading in part:

"The 'I Am ONE' Tarot deck is a game of cards based on ancient school of "Tarot" that was last used in Egypt during the late 18th dynasty. The school of Tarot was designed for royal family members only, in order to prepare kings and queens for their destiny where they will have to demonstrate the model of a perfect human being.

"The Egyptian school of tarot was adopted at a later time by the Hebrews and their leader Moses, a royal master of Tarot. His intention to bring this method of schooling unto the many people instead of keeping it in the Egyptian palace, was the first establishment of Hebrew esoteric knowledge based on the 22 Hebrew alphabetic letters"

I have to confess that I'm at a total loss as to why people keep spreading this kind of nonsense. In his curmudgeonly and somewhat abusive introduction to the "Pictorial Key..." in 1909, A.E. Waite noted that occult histories of tarot "have few gifts of refreshment to heal the lacerations which they inflict on the logical understanding," adding that "the wrong history has been given in every published work which so far has dealt with (tarot)."
He concluded that the perpetuation of pseudo-histories based on fantasies "has continued and, within the charmed circle of the occult sciences, still passes from mouth to mouth -- there is no excuse for this." If there was no excuse for it in 1909, what can be said of it today? I can only judge, somewhat reluctantly, that the perpetuation of this sort of faux-scholarship invalidates any worth that a deck attached to it might have otherwise had.

Moving on to a more serious and coherent discussion of the meaning of the cards, we first encounter those who believe that the entire 78-card deck was conceived as a discrete vehicle for the transmission of one or another esoteric systems. Such an attitude is thoroughly ahistorical, as evidence too abundant to mention shows that the 52-card pack antedated tarot. In other words, such theories have absolutely no credibility.

That leaves the trumps, which are obviously symbolic pictures, and the question: is there a method here? a system? a plan? After many years of considering this matter, I've come to the conclusion that there isn't. The contrasting interpretations of trump VI given above clearly show the contrast between the esoteric and exoteric approaches to the cards, and I have already given my own exoteric interpretation, that this picture shows, or was originally meant to show, a representation of the emotion of romantic love, and to a lesser extent marriage, and nothing more.

The earliest version of trump VI we know of, the one in the Visconti di Modrone (Cary-Yale) pack, shows the man and woman holding hands in front of a pavilion, Cupid floating above them, and a little dog at their feet. Heraldic emblems of both the Visconti and Sforza families appear on this card (and throughout the deck), and it might memorialize the 1441 wedding of Francesco Sforza to Bianca Maria Visconti. Stuart Kaplan has proposed that the deck was a wedding present (Dummett, "The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards," p. 14). This would make the Lovers card in this pack very similar to the famous wedding portrait painted by Jan Van Eyck in 1434, in which he portrays himself, his pregnant bride, and a toy dog, a universal symbol of fidelity, standing at their feet.

I believe this card more than any other perfectly illustrates the straightforward and unmysterious nature (just my opinion) of the tarot trumps.

(catboxer)

catboxer, if you have offended anyone, it is not me... and I personally concur with much that you write.

You mention that wonderful painting by Jan Van Eyck, which, I agree with you, has a wonderful straightforwardness and simplicity about it. It is this very simplicity, however, which can at times veil deeper truths which the painter him or herself may be unaware of. After all, it could be asked why the painter has allowed himself (in the case above) to be 'guided' to represent the wedding couple in precisely this particular form. Part of the simplicity and exquisiteness of the painting is that it speaks truly of a deeper meaning than a mere description could do justice.

I guess with what follows I'm sticking my neck out, and certainly do not expect anyone to agree... and I also guess it will echo some of the statements I may have made in other threads. We each have to, after all, come to our own decision and understanding.

In a similar fashion that Masonic ritual has become codified over time, more properly reflecting its central essence, so has Tarot taken a relatively short time to become codified and reflect its essential qualities. Each image, then, either deviates or maintains an integrity with this now meaningful whole.

As a whole deck, it has characteristics which in turn affects what can and cannot be modified in each card for the deck to remain Tarot. Here is where, I sense, the Marseilles has those qualities which very much make it the, or close to, an Ur-Tarot deck.

jmd:

Thanks for that very thoughtful and well-worded reply. As often happens, you've caused me to step back and take another look.

The simplicity you mention with regard to the Van Eyck painting is highly appropriate to this subject. My feeling is that simplicity is not the same thing as shallowness, and indeed that simplicity lends itself to depth much more readily than complexity. It's like William Blake's observation that one can "see eternity in a grain of sand, or heaven in a wildflower." This is why I personally try to avoid the application of complex esoteric schemes to the cards. I believe that depth of field and clarity of vision can get lost in what Waite called "the fritterings and debris of the...occult arts."

I also agree that tarot, as it possesses the ability to replicate the patterns of our lives, constitutes a "meaningful whole," and that it has evolved into what it is in a "relatively short time." But is there a system there that we can discern? My own feeling is that to God, it's a system, but to us it's not (just like life).

The mystery for me lies in contemplating what it is exactly that enables tarot to work as an oracle, for I have no doubt that it is one. But that characteristic is not unique to tarot; the I Ching is just one of numerous other equally valid oracles that have shown themselves over the centuries to be highly effective personal guides to the present and future.

However, the meanings of the individual cards, for me, are the essence of simplicity (and depth). The trumps are deliberately created and usually very direct symbolic pictures. The pips have no intrinsic meanings, but a meaning can be arbitrarily assigned to each of them based on each card's numerical designation and the symbolic associations applied to each suit, and these meanings can mesh nicely with those of the trumps (although there usually is some overlap). The court cards derive meaning from their genders as well as the suits' symbolic characteristics, although the courts always remain somewhat vague, as it's hard to tell whether they represent generalized personality traits or specific people.

I would also have to agree that the Marseilles pattern is the classic of classics, as it represents a culmination of all that came before it -- the heritage of the various Italian patterns and content -- and is also the parent of all that came after in the form of the codified and occult systems we have today.

Regards,
(catboxer)

"lovers" ?

the lovers card is the card i don't like in any deck. it's not about lovers, it's about choice, but a choice between things that are very deer (loved?). also, is it a choice? it might be a blend of two things that look like a choice but need each other to exists, so they can't be a seperate thing on their own, though it might look like it.
it's a trio, and those three are needed, in a way it's about choice, and in a way it isn't coz you don't really have a choice as they need each other.
dunno if i still make sense here, i can't explain better, maybe one of you understands what i mean and can put it in better english.

edited to add that cards where you just have two people eye-googling each other, don't depict my idea about trump 6 very well. it needs those three "ingredients".

kaz

attachted is from visconti sforza