Who historically put magic in The Magician?

jmd

Even more precisely, to add to kwaw's remark, the usage of the '8' on its side also antedates Wallis.

What seems to be suggested is that Wallis was simply the person who suggested in writing the usage of that Roman numerical symbol to denote either the infinite, or the indefinite.
 

venicebard

Ockham’s razor removes most of what academia AND religions preach, leaving a vacuum for mavericks like me.

Echos not contention you’ll get from me, f. silvestris (any relation to Merlin Silvestre, the one who went mad after the battle of Arthuret in the early 570s?). My only point, really, was that magic was there from the beginning, which to me means the TdM ‘main line’ of tradition obviously predating the first PROPER surviving example, that of Nicolas Conver (18th-century), probably by centuries: any peasant of that era could see, I think, that what the mountebank is engaged in is sleight-of-hand, which spells magic to the common folk even if not to the ivory-towered. Only the cultured would see something else, like teaching perhaps, but tarot uses common symbols, to hide culture from the fire-breathers (Rome).

My original argument, which I still believe the stronger, was based on what must have been in the minds of the designers themselves, as deduced from a Qabbalah reconstructed utilizing (as 12th-century sages must also have utilized) Brito-Irish letter-tradition’s numeration and symbolic meanings.

PS. echoing Kwaw: Infinity was a much-discussed topic in Medieval philosophy.
 

stella01904

MM ~ I have seen decks depicting the Magician as a mountebank (i.e. scam artist - shell games and the like), I have heard of decks showing him as an innkeeper. Doesn't Visconti show him with the traditional tools of magic, though? Visconti was there first, as far as we know, right? BB, Stella
 

f. silvestris

Stella, I think you might have the Magician card in the Cary-Yale deck printed by US Games in mind – I’m afraid that’s not an original card, Stuart Kaplan commissioned newly painted cards to ‘complete’ the deck (you’re in good company – Rachel Pollack included one of the new cards in Vol 1 of 78 Degrees of Wisdom as an example of a Renaissance trump).

Venicebard, I have no desire to contend with you, but I would appreciate your posts a great deal more if you were less doctrinaire. I’m afraid that I don’t believe for a second that you have some revelation to pass on to us, which is what your manner sometimes implies, but I am genuinely interested in your ideas.

It makes it more difficult for me to pay proper attention to those ideas when you come out with such statements as - ‘the light I bring to bear here is a knowledge of what was in the minds of the originators of the tarot’ or ‘the melding of British bardic lore with Jewish Gnosticism that produced Qabbalah (rabbis are blissfully unaware of this Keltic connexion)’ as if you had some kind of inside information that all the rabbis in history and tradition happened to lack: it’s not enough to describe yourself as a gnostic, or to point to ‘The White Goddess’ as your only named source, when you repeatedly make such broad assertions.

There are quantifiable facts about Tarot – see trionfi.com or tarothermit.com – and then there is a huge pool of speculation, of relatively modern date, relating to associations that occultists and others have found latent in the cards. Of course you can argue, and argue with scholarship and imagination, that this process is one of rediscovery, but it’s not, to the best of my knowledge, demonstrable.

Why don’t you start a thread where you can set your ideas and/or findings down in one place and the rest of us can get a proper sense of them in a unified form? It will be much easier to get an overview of them in that way.

Felis
 

le pendu

f. silvestris said:
Why don’t you start a thread where you can set your ideas and/or findings down in one place and the rest of us can get a proper sense of them in a unified form? It will be much easier to get an overview of them in that way.

Felis

I agree. I'd be very interested to read about this in a thread of it's own.
robert
 

full deck

darn . . .

jmd said:
Even more precisely, to add to kwaw's remark, the usage of the '8' on its side also antedates Wallis.

What seems to be suggested is that Wallis was simply the person who suggested in writing the usage of that Roman numerical symbol to denote either the infinite, or the indefinite.
Now you have me wondering what the difference is between an infinite series and a series that is just too big to count, in terms of human ability, say a series that would take 50 years or more to tally or verify. I guess it would take a fool to try or perhaps the fool is a symbol of that which is not yet qualified.
 

venicebard

Reply to f. silvestris, mostly friendly

It is meet that you not accept that I ‘have some revelation’ to pass on, until or unless you actually see it. Your seeming to stress the obvious here suggests a hostility generated no doubt by my awkward intro, done in the spirit of trying to be honest and up front yet ignoring how common it is for claims to turn out to be hollow boasts: my apologies. It’s just that I get a kick out of TdM and out of explaining some of the amazing things I have discovered about its structure and the relations of that structure to physics, the periodic table, poetic symbolism based on solar year and bardic calendar, the phonetic structure that binds it all together, and so on, the more scientific aspects probably lying beyond the ken of tarot’s originators yet contained in the structure of the system of letter-numbers they were preserving, put there in a VERY distant past when knowledge of nature at least comparable to our own (to be generous to ours) still remained (from whatever height the last civilization reached before its destruction, this being the most controversial aspect of what I contend and therefore requiring the most solid proof). Phonetic coherence is utterly lacking in the schemes of the occultists, and the bardic layout corrects this and goes on to include chemical (valence), particle-physics (spin and charge), and psychological coherence as well.

If details I can demonstrate of a profound science embodied in tarot (coupled with consistent overall structure) are facts not generally known, then they would indeed constitute a revelation would they not, even should you happen to be predisposed not to give it credence?

What one offers is only revelation if it is not known to someone (or not known generally) and if it holds up to scrutiny. Duh. I certainly have no desire to contend with anyone in anything but honest debate, and if I am demonstrated wrong in something, I will be the first to want to know. Attacks on the substance of what I say, though, you will find draw more ‘blood’ in that ultimate struggle, our mutual search for truth, than attacks on my awkward manner of expression, though I can appreciate valid criticisms in this area too. Thank you?

The bottom line, from your point of view, is that you say ‘it’s not, to the best of [your] knowledge, demonstrable’ rather dismissively BEFORE asking me if I can demonstrate ‘it’ (not that I would want to have the burden of trying to demonstrate the palpable falsehoods of the occultists). Starting a thread or threads outlining the bardo-Qabbalistic system built into TdM is daunting, considering the scope of the subject: I wrote an unpublished (as yet) treatise on just the basics and it came to about 750 pages double-spaced. But I will try to compartmentalize it somewhat and make a stab, as it sure beats killing other people’s threads, which is all I seem to have accomplished with most of my posts (I’m really NOT out to cause harm, only to enlighten and be enlightened).

I assure you I am not an occultist and base my correlations on the numeration of letters in Irish and Welsh bardic tradition, not on speculation. And I appreciate correct use of commas: my compliments.
 

Huck

venicebard said:
It’s just that I get a kick out of TdM and out of explaining some of the amazing things I have discovered about its structure and the relations of that structure to physics, the periodic table, poetic symbolism based on solar year and bardic calendar, the phonetic structure that binds it all together, and so on, the more scientific aspects probably lying beyond the ken of tarot’s originators yet contained in the structure of the system of letter-numbers they were preserving, put there in a VERY distant past when knowledge of nature at least comparable to our own (to be generous to ours) still remained (from whatever height the last civilization reached before its destruction, this being the most controversial aspect of what I contend and therefore requiring the most solid proof). Phonetic coherence is utterly lacking in the schemes of the occultists, and the bardic layout corrects this and goes on to include chemical (valence), particle-physics (spin and charge), and psychological coherence as well..

... sounds complicated. Perhaps there is a way to start simple, perhaps like "A in system x = A' in system y"
... just to become understandable.

It's really enough, if you get it done to show a clear correlation between Bardic tradition, as you understand it or Ranke-Graves understood it, and the Tarot cards, as they appear in the Marseille tradition. That already would be an interesting topic, if you would be able to stand serious critique.

I wrote an unpublished (as yet) treatise on just the basics and it came to about 750 pages double-spaced. But I will try to compartmentalize it somewhat and make a stab, as it sure beats killing other people’s threads, which is all I seem to have accomplished with most of my posts (I’m really NOT out to cause harm, only to enlighten and be enlightened).

If you engaged yourself already with 750 written pages, then perhaps it's not too much to write a few more, which make your basic idea understandable without too much complications.

I assure you I am not an occultist and base my correlations on the numeration of letters in Irish and Welsh bardic tradition, not on speculation.

Nice. And which is the correlation between Irish and Welsh bardic tradition and Marseille Tarot?

Perhaps you should agree to make a thread of this theme, titled with the relevant object and present it in a form, that your position gets clear ...
 

f. silvestris

Venicebard, I have absolutely no intention of being hostile toward, or dismissive of, your contributions.

But it does puzzle me that you are so very dismissive of the occultists*: when you adhere to, and very interestingly expand upon, a perceived link between the Qabbalah and the Tarot which is – again, to the best of my knowledge – entirely a product of the modern occult tradition.

Either the occultists were correct, and the Tarot was a truly ancient system incorporating lost knowledge – which is, in all essentials, your own position – or the Tarot was a product of the Renaissance, designed for play or meditation, broad and coherent enough for various systems of knowledge, with some adjustment, to be mapped upon it.

I honestly do not see why your correlation of the Brito-Irish letter tradition with the Qabbalah and the Tarot should be viewed by anyone reading your posts as anything other than speculation.

I should stress, in case there should be any mistake, that I consider your posts valuable and look out for them when I go onto Aeclectic – I would merely like you to let us in beneath the surface of your arguments.

Felis


* Venicebard wrote: ‘I have never read (or owned) Levi. I could tell by his correlations (listed elsewhere) that he based things on speculation, not tradition: ditto Crowley, Waite, Golden Dawn, and numerous others not worth naming.’