Traditional French & Italian Divinatory Meanings for the Numbered Minor Arcana Cards

If I could find one suggested correlation...

it's for a tarot as a whole of 22 majors, 16 courts and 40 minors-- each assigned a satirical verse by MM Boiardo .

I was going to say Judith for the Queen of Swords might have evoved from Matteo Maria Boiardo's satirical Tarocchi poem and courts sometime in the 1490s:

Gertrude Moakley writes that the suit sign for Boiardo’s tarot set were to be as “darts” for the suit of “love”; “vases” for “Hope”; “eyes” for “Jealousy”; and “whips” for “Fear” [p 48 of Gertrude Moakley--I'm quoting from someone else, waiting for the book].

Court cards of Boiardo’s proposed tarot
set as follows:

Suit of “Love”: Knight - Paris (“because of his love for Helen of Troy; Queen - Venus; King - Jupiter ' Page - Polyphemus (“because he loved Galatea”?)

Suit of “Hope”: Knight - Jason; Queen - Judith of Bethulia ; King - Aeneas (“because of the hope which sustained him; in his journey from Troy to Italy. Page - Horatius Cocles (“noted for his bravery”)

Suit of “Jealousy”: Knight - Turnus (“rival of Aeneas for the hand of Lavinia” ; Queen - Juno (to be shown by peacocks, ‘whose many-eyed tails are a symbol of watchful jealousy; King - Vulcan (“jealous of Mars's success with his wife, Venus”) ; Page- Hundred-eyed Argus (“for the hand of Lavinia”?)

Suit of “Fear”: Knight - Ptolemy; Queen - Andromeda ; King - Dionysius ; Page - Phineus (?) (“all unhappy victims” of the emotion fear)

P. 49, "The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo..."]

This website gives DMs from some printed European decks starting from the 1940s for a 36 card reduced deck. These DMs are supposed to be related to the tradition of Mlle Le Normand; they have apparently been in print since around 1850.

These DMs seem to be unrelated to, and sharply contrary to, either the Gibson cartomancy DMs, to the Etteilla tradition, or to the Mathers-Waite DM tradition . 9 of Spades is The Anchor and is read as "stability, success, security." 10 Spades is The Ship and yields "travelling, good opportunities arising."

Rusty, you may be interested in the following, from "It's All in the Cards" by Chita St. Lawrence. The book describes a playing-card system created by a Russian Gypsy in around 1820, which was handed down through four subsequent generations. This system was only used by this one family, but I suspect that most fortune-tellers who used playing cards arrived at their DMs in similarly arbitrary ways. This excerpt (presumably reconstructed) describes the system's creator, Masha, telling how she arrived at her meanings.

"'Masha, would you tell me how you knew what to say?'
'Simple. I gave each card a meaning, according to what it reminded me of.' She pointed to the individual cards as she started to explain them.
'The King of Hearts was that young man, the eight of spades looked like a lot of angry words, the knight of clubs has a friendly face. The ten of clubs reminded me of spilled coins, the five of spades is such an empty card, it reminded me of a loss. The five of diamonds looked so friendly while the seven of spades definitely made me think of tears.
'As I looked at those cards, the words just came out of my mouth. I don't understand why.'"

-- Lee

That's interesting, Lee. Thanks. The St. Lawrence source may indicate that some systems of DMs may, to a certain extent, be based, albeit sometimes arbitrarily or eccentrically, upon playing card design.

Well, another deck I am not particularly keen on, aesthtically. But, Lee, t'was a good piece of "detective work" tracking down the origin of the divinatory meanings: http://www.tarotpassages.com/Giotto-LB.htm - Intriguing too! Now I just wonder why these manufacturers can't state the source of their ideas more often. <hint>

macavity