catboxer
Diana:
Thanks for posting. I've been hoping some other people would jump into this thread.
The Tower is possibly the most interesting and complex trump, and is the exception that proves the rule, "trump subject matter was standardized early on." In the earliest days it had numerous names and a wide variety of depictions. It was sometimes called "Lightning," sometimes "The Arrow," sometimes "The Thunderbolt," and sometimes "The Fire." "The House of the Devil," "The House of the Damned," and simply "The House" were also used in the early days. There are a couple of versions (I haven't seen them) which show sinners being dragged into hell's mouth by devils.
The Marseille card finally enshrined the standard iconography, and appropriately enough it adapted the pictorial elements of the earliest known version of the card, that in the Carey-Yale deck. Decker et. al. believe that the name "Maison Dieu" was used "through a misunderstanding" of the card's meaning, but considering how much pictorial and titling variation there was, I'm not sure that's a legitimate conclusion, since this was the last card to be "finalized," as it were. Those same authors also say the card might have originally been a reference to purgatory (p. 46).
You're absolutely right about The Magician (I guess this is where we kick off the card-by-card discussion). I've always thought of him as the sort of low-level trickster you'd run into at a county fair, rather than a magus.
Modern tarotists insist that the object on the juggler's table are symbols of the four suits; thus, when Luigi Scapini was commissioned to do the "replacement" Bagatto card for the Carey-Yale deck, he dutifully included the suit signs. Personally, I have never seen anything in the early versions of the card, up to and including the various Marseilles versions, that supports this occultic assumption. The various items on the tables of the assorted "magicians" in the early tarots look like nothing more than the tools of the trade to me.
Dave B
(Catboxer)
Thanks for posting. I've been hoping some other people would jump into this thread.
The Tower is possibly the most interesting and complex trump, and is the exception that proves the rule, "trump subject matter was standardized early on." In the earliest days it had numerous names and a wide variety of depictions. It was sometimes called "Lightning," sometimes "The Arrow," sometimes "The Thunderbolt," and sometimes "The Fire." "The House of the Devil," "The House of the Damned," and simply "The House" were also used in the early days. There are a couple of versions (I haven't seen them) which show sinners being dragged into hell's mouth by devils.
The Marseille card finally enshrined the standard iconography, and appropriately enough it adapted the pictorial elements of the earliest known version of the card, that in the Carey-Yale deck. Decker et. al. believe that the name "Maison Dieu" was used "through a misunderstanding" of the card's meaning, but considering how much pictorial and titling variation there was, I'm not sure that's a legitimate conclusion, since this was the last card to be "finalized," as it were. Those same authors also say the card might have originally been a reference to purgatory (p. 46).
You're absolutely right about The Magician (I guess this is where we kick off the card-by-card discussion). I've always thought of him as the sort of low-level trickster you'd run into at a county fair, rather than a magus.
Modern tarotists insist that the object on the juggler's table are symbols of the four suits; thus, when Luigi Scapini was commissioned to do the "replacement" Bagatto card for the Carey-Yale deck, he dutifully included the suit signs. Personally, I have never seen anything in the early versions of the card, up to and including the various Marseilles versions, that supports this occultic assumption. The various items on the tables of the assorted "magicians" in the early tarots look like nothing more than the tools of the trade to me.
Dave B
(Catboxer)