Andrea del Sarto's "Hanged Man" sketches

Teheuti

mjhurst said:
I see you end your days in the air.
Michael - thank you for all the great material and your comments on it.

I'm just curious about the translation for "hore" (is that how it is spelled?). It's not in my Italian dictionary but I was wondering if it meant "days" or "hours"? Not a big deal as both mean the end of one's earthly existence. But, if it's "hours," then it's pointing very definitively to the astrological chart: specifically Saturn conjunct the Dragon's Tail in opposition to Mars and the Dragon's Head (despite the Fire Grand Trine of Jupiter, Mars, and Sun/Moon - which, though one would think good, could indicate overbearing pride and ambition).

Mary
 

mjhurst

Hi, Mary,

Teheuti said:
I'm just curious about the translation for "hore" (is that how it is spelled?). It's not in my Italian dictionary but I was wondering if it meant "days" or "hours"?
LOL -- I'm quite the illiterate, but were I translating it, based on Babelfish, I would opt for "finishing your hours in the air". Below is the quote from Vitali's essay on trionfi.com, which I mangled a bit in my post. (I was attempting to make it more clear, but I should have simply quoted the page.)

"Se inhumano serai, o traditore / A Signori, o parenti in fatto o in detto /Senza cagion privo d'ogni rispetto / Te veggio in aer terminar tue ore" ("If you be inhuman, or traitor / to Lords, or relatives who are such in fact or in word / if you be without any respect, for no reason / I see you finish your days in the air)
Essays of Andrea Vitali: Card 12: The Hanging Man
http://trionfi.com/0/i/v/v12.html

Best regards,
Michael
 

Teheuti

mjhurst said:
Tarot enthusiasts crave tenuous and far-fetched analogies for the Traitor like Odin, St. Peter, the Armenian patron saint Gregory or other tortured martyrs who were hung upside down, mandrake root, alchemical imaginings, numerological suppositions, and so on. These are fun excursions, and when someone finds similar images it is always a bit exciting.
I think this shows up the typical confusion between two different modes of inquiry about images. In the historical realm your examples are, indeed, far-fetched but, in the realm of archetypal psychology and criticism (in art, myth and literature), they can be valid analogies, worth examining. It's true that not everyone makes it clear which realm they are speaking about, but it's also important for the historian not to assume that anything mentioned in another realm of inquiry is "wrong" simply because it is not historical. It seems to me that other realms of inquiry can be more than simply fun excursions.

I agree that it is important to educate authors of popular books that clearer distinctions regarding the realms being discussed is extremely helpful, as is defining one's terms, etc.

Mary
 

Teheuti

mjhurst said:
I would opt for "finishing your hours in the air".
Just as I thought. (I had looked up 'ore' in my dictionary and also didn't find it - but it seemed obvious.)

Anyway, my point is that to the astrologically acute reader of Fanti's fortunes, much more of a commentary is going on than just the verse, all of which could be significant in an historical interpretation of the hanged man image.

Mary
 

mjhurst

Hi, Mary,

Teheuti said:
I think this shows up the typical confusion between two different modes of inquiry about images.
Yes, some people appear to be perennially and incurably confused about this, for all the years we've been discussing such things. James Revak's "Different Hats" post to TarotL never seems to have gotten through, despite its clarity and simplicity, and despite echoing so many other explanations before and since.

Teheuti said:
In the historical realm your examples are, indeed, far-fetched but, in the realm of archetypal psychology and criticism (in art, myth and literature), they can be valid analogies, worth examining. It's true that not everyone makes it clear which realm they are speaking about, but it's also important for the historian not to assume that anything mentioned in another realm of inquiry is "wrong" simply because it is not historical.
If you are suggesting that I've done that, please give us a quote, in context. If I misspoke, I'll happily correct myself. Otherwise, you appear to be slurring me, again, despite the fact that I took pains to repeatedly limit the scope of my comments -- as I've routinely done for about a decade now -- and despite the fact that I'm posting to a forum titled "Historical Research" rather than "Archetypal Psychology". Or is there no place for such pointedly historical discussions? (They finally "cleansed" TarotL of all historical discussions, and it doesn't seem to have improved it in the least, either in quantity nor quality.)

I've attempted to be clear with phrases like "again assuming that our interest is the historical meaning of the Tarot trump cycle", etc., but that obviously isn't enough. As Revak and I asked years ago, is there any conceivable caveat we can append, a bit of boilerplate to be attached to every single post we ever make, that you might understand? Something clear enough that you might for once not misinterpret an historical analysis as infringing on fortune-telling or psychological or occult or other ahistorical interpretations?

Best regards,
Michael
 

Teheuti

mjhurst said:
If you are suggesting that I've done that, please give us a quote, in context.
Sorry, I misunderstood.

You wrote: "Tarot enthusiasts crave tenuous and far-fetched analogies for the Traitor like Odin, St. Peter, the Armenian patron saint Gregory or other tortured martyrs who were hung upside down, mandrake root, alchemical imaginings, numerological suppositions, and so on. These are fun excursions, and when someone finds similar images it is always a bit exciting."

"Tarot enthusiasts" seemed broader than historians - my mistake. Analogies seemed, to me, to speak of metaphoric language rather than history. I mistakenly thought you were referring to texts that were not just historical.

I find that references to Odin and mandrake root and alchemy are not meant to be historical, but suggestive (based on archetypes and the 'doctrine of correspondences') to help in assigning contemporary meanings to the card for readings and meditation.

I would be delighted to see a specifically historical discussion by someone who tried to make a clear historical case for the Hanged Man having emerged directly from the Odin myth or that it originally was meant as a picture of mandrake roots. Now that would be interesting to see and worth refuting. I just don't have any examples of this to present. Do you?

If there isn't an example, then doesn't the argument instead become a straw-horse (edited: or is the expression "straw-man"?)

Now, there might be an example of someone trying to make a case for Saint Gregory being deemed an historical source. I don't know of one. I probably wouldn't have reacted to your comment had it not included so many examples that are usually ONLY seen as metaphoric, archetypal/spiritual analogies.

Michael, I deeply admire your historical work. I simply find that such statements, calling something 'far-fetched' historically when it was never meant to be an historical source, IMHO, gets in the way of your otherwise rich, brilliant and insightful offerings.

Mary
 

Teheuti

Michael -

I just wanted to add that you're among the top of the field, IMHO, for the depth and quality of your contributions to Tarot history. I didn't express myself very well before, but I just want to encourage you not to fall into the trap of going after straw men that don't really matter. Of course, any serious historical errors should be addressed specifically. Despite there being a few really ignorant authors, it's amazing just how many writers have become aware of the basic historical facts. I hope you actually publish your own historical interpretations for the cards—they really should be published! But please don't waste your time putting down perspectives that are of value from a different pov.

The way I think of it is: where/when (and with what decks) is it most helpful to see the Hanged Man in terms of the story of Odin, and when is it most helpful to look at the Hanged Man in terms of a debtor, or traitor or betrayer?

Mary
 

Rosanne

Teheuti said:
The way I think of it is: where/when (and with what decks) is it most helpful to see the Hanged Man in terms of the story of Odin, and when is it most helpful to look at the Hanged Man in terms of a debtor, or traitor or betrayer?

Mary
Hi Mary- I look at my cards that way- but someone who is Historically looking at the cards- that has no bearing. Might have a bearing if Tarot had been created in a Scandinavian country. It seems that other views of History in snippets are seen as Historical gossip and of no consequence. I call it 'The Viking Helmet in New Zealand Debate' The only thing we know for sure is that the Helmet was found deep in the sand. One day the the lime will be washed of a wall and lo and Behold- it will have 22 images- that some wit had seen once and fulfilled the need for 22 cards. Might be have been painted by some Italian with a Danish Mother hehehe.
~Rosanne
 

Teheuti

Rosanne said:
Hi Mary- I look at my cards that way- but someone who is Historically looking at the cards- that has no bearing. Might have a bearing if Tarot had been created in a Scandinavian country.
My point is that if an historian has presented Odin or a mandrake root as the historical source of the Hanged Man (and not just as a meaningful analogy) then it certainly deserves to be looked at and refuted. But, to set up such analogies as if they were erroneous history, sidetracks important historical concerns.

Now we can say that Court de Gébelin was wrong in his supposedly historical theory that the Tarot came from Egypt - or that Isis was the Empress and the Chariot was Osiris Triumphant. This has been demonstrated to lie outside all historical evidence. Those who advocate it (edited to: in recent books) are not historians and most modern tarot books of any substance do not fall into that error.

I don't know of anyone who has felt the need to make a case about whether or not the Tarot comes from Scandinavia, not even considering that people have discerned a resemblance to a myth about Odin. Does anyone know of such a case?

Mary
P.S. I'll be out of town for several days.
 

jmd

I'll echo here some of Mary's (Teheuti's) comments, viz:
I just wanted to add that you're among the top of the field, IMHO, for the depth and quality of your contributions to Tarot history. [...] I hope you actually publish your own historical interpretations for the cards—they really should be published! [...]​
Also, with regards to the reversed position, there are possibly three inter-related enquiries that are often made alongside the search for historically pertinent and causally connected representations.

On the one hand the question that can be asked as to why and how such a representation may find itself across cultures: Odin as an example - after all, what is it that possibly made it significant that he too was made to be hanging in such reversed state? Here, I would suggest, perhaps the more common brutality that was so wide-spread has something to add to our understanding, and so a deeper understanding of on Italian-type 'shame' representations, as well as the brutal hangings that left the victim to exposure (often leading to death), as well as its uses in simply torture, all play into what we also know of various early initiation ceremonies (which often include various forms of deprivation, torturous elements, and exposures).

The two, then, are perhaps not as distant as they may at first appear - even though it is not Odin represented in tarot, but rather that Odin's representation may shed light on some complementary aspect of such hanging... if understood in its full sense.