From Education to Tarot

Rosanne

I have an Italian book by Alessandro Bellenghi 1985 published in Milan. I bought it in Milan for it's illustrations. One particular set of images set me about translating the words into English. The images come from Centro Documentazione Mondadori and are called Naibi cards. They were obviously used to teach geography to children as they show an Empress like figure with numbers all over her and corresponding cards explaining each area of Europe. The death figure explains the British Isles and the Sun figure France for example. The inscriptions are all in Latin showing directions and provinces.

The authors intention is to relate these educational cards as the historic base for the 22.

His theory goes like this......

A chinese historical document of the year 1120 refers to a game involving ivory tablets with allegorical pictures of Heaven and Earth, Man and the Stars-some virtues like Justice and Benevolence and the cardinal points. The Naibi of the 14th century Europe is inspired by these Chinese cards, as so depicts aspects and areas of life (somewhat like the Mategna, I am guessing)- the educational naibies diverge at this point- the images for the game of Tarot and the educational naibi becoming more Christianized with a further inclusion of 7 sacraments/sins/ the five senses and other symbols. The author speaks of the mention of Naibi in a 1299 manuscript by Pipozzo di Sandro called an Essay on the Government of the Family. This to my mind shows that Naibi was an educational game.

He then says that in Florence in 1376 the playing of Naibbe was prohibited, and to be prohibited under the name Naibbe meant that the educational game had developed into a game of chance even before Tarocchi/Tarot made an appearance.
Makes sense to me - especially after seeing the Naibi cards of geography of Europe.

Is this how you might think the 22 came about?
~Rosanne
 

Bernice

Ooh! Very interesting Rosanne.

Especially this bit; "A chinese historical document of the year 1120 refers to a game involving ivory tablets with allegorical pictures of Heaven and Earth, Man and the Stars-some virtues like Justice and Benevolence and the cardinal points". I wonder if there are any other documented references to this game (online translations.). The idea certainly sounds as if it may be a good contender for originating the '22'.

Had a thought, is Alessandro Bellenghi known as 'history-type' author?


Bee :)
 

conversus

Is this the Book Rosanne?
Il libro della cartomanzia : come leggere il futuro nelle carta

If so there an English translation is reported to be available in Wellington City Library called :

Cartomancy the isbn : 9780852237205

The book seems to have been published in Italian, English, French, Spanish editions . . .

CED
 

Huck

Rosanne said:
The death figure explains the British Isles and the Sun figure France for example. The inscriptions are all in Latin showing directions and provinces.

hi Rosanne

... :) ... This sounds, as if the painter of the pictures had a favoring opinion about France and a less favoring opinion about England.

The worth of this education might be doubted.

You forgot to tell the date of these pictures, which surely weren't Chinese. And I don't know, what this has to do with "22" ...

A Chinese favor for the 22 is easy to detect with the 10 Heavenly Stems and 12 Earthly Branches, which combined result in a still running 60 years calendar.
 

Rosanne

Hi Conversus! Oh Poo now I have to see if I can get hold of the English version to check my crappy translation skills. Yes that is the one.
The plates and illustrations are what I bought it for- but I believe the Italian one is the original. Maybe it was so popular that a translation for other tongues was a good idea.

Hi Bernice, apparently the author was of the elite of astrologers in Italy and had some sort of letters in Occult Science???
That is all I know.

~Rosanne
 

Bernice

Rosanne: ....apparently the author was of the elite of astrologers in Italy and had some sort of letters in Occult Science???
Hmmm.......Occult Science (?). Would this perhaps infer that he does research? i.e He didn't just come up with this possibility out of the blue.

Huck says:
"A Chinese favor for the 22 is easy to detect with the 10 Heavenly Stems and 12 Earthly Branches, which combined result in a still running 60 years calendar."

I'm inclined to heed chinese & muslim links to the 'tarot' cards, so this is of interest to me. Even if the author of the book is not highly regarded in learned circles, the 22 could perhaps be investigated as a source, after all tons of people cite the Hebrew 22 (and tons believe the 'coincidence' to be true!).

I wonder if there is a scan of the 'map' online anywhere?


Bee :)

ETA: An astrologer would know that the Sun has a cycle of 22 years (It occurs in two halves, 11.11). Both the Chinese & Arabs would likely have known this.
 

Rosanne

Huck said:
hi Rosanne

... :) ... This sounds, as if the painter of the pictures had a favoring opinion about France and a less favoring opinion about England.

The worth of this education might be doubted.

Lol no doubt- but you will pleased to hear that Germania is also on the card with the Sun :D


You forgot to tell the date of these pictures, which surely weren't Chinese. And I don't know, what this has to do with "22" ...

There is no date, but the originals are held in Milan with a Civic stamp "Bertarelli" They look like woodblock with handwritten information. The symbols of Death and Sun are across the top- the backs have the Europa type female with Divifione dell'Europa title at the bottom. The 22 is in relation to this comment....In the past it was used as a general term for playing cards (Naibi), an educational game for children, from whose fusion (12-22) and the cards with Arabic numerals the game of Tarocco appears to have been developed.

A Chinese favor for the 22 is easy to detect with the 10 Heavenly Stems and 12 Earthly Branches, which combined result in a still running 60 years calendar.
I did not know that.

~Rosanne
 

Huck

Probably the author speaks of the cards of Thomas Murner.

"Chartiludium Institute summary", conceived to facilitate the study of the Justinian code. Realised as a true game/deck of cards before taking, in 1518, the form of a book, the Chartiludium Institute is the oldest example of a pedagogical game of cards that has come down to us; it remains in three exemplars: the first at the Library of the University of Basle (119 cards), the second at the Austrian National Library of Vienna (110 cards), and the third, the only one coloured by hand, at the Bertarelli Civic Collection of Prints of Milan
http://trionfi.com/0/j/d/murner/

Actually the first version was from ca. 1502.

Zu Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts erregte der Franziskaner Thomas Murner[1], der in Basel die Rechte studiert hatte[2], mit einem neuen didaktischen Konzept einiges Aufsehen: Solvite problema ludentes. Um seinen Studenten den Lernstoff einprägsam zu vermitteln, entwarf er eine Reihe von Karten-, Brett- und Würfelspielen, darunter als erstes 1502 ein Kartenspiel, das mit Hilfe von geläufigen Symbolen den Studenten das Erlernen der „Institutionen“ Justinians erleichtern sollte.[3] Das juristische „Chartiludium“ bestand aus zwölf Spielfarben oder Serien zu je zehn Karten und einer Heroldskarte. Die zwölf As-Karten zeigten den Kaiser und elf Reichsfürsten. Doch standen die Symbole und Bilder in keiner Beziehung zur Sache. Die Farbzeichen der Karten verwiesen vielmehr auf eine entsprechend ausgezeichnete Zusammenfassung der 606 Paragrafen von Justinians Institutionen. Die Bilder dienten nicht selbst als Gedächtnisstütze; vielmehr sollte das Spiel die Studenten lediglich dazu bringen, beim Ziehen einer Karte den passenden Paragrafen zu repetieren.

http://recht-anschaulich.lookingintomedia.com/?p=357

murner-440.gif


That's educative ... :) ... but probably not Tarot

http://bilddatenbank.khm.at/viewArtefact?id=91146
 

Huck

Bernice said:
ETA: An astrologer would know that the Sun has a cycle of 22 years (It occurs in two halves, 11.11). Both the Chinese & Arabs would likely have known this.

Do you mean this?

"The solar cycle was discovered in 1843 by Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, who after 17 years of observations noticed a periodic variation in the average number of sunspots seen from year to year on the solar disk."

"Until recently it was thought that there were 28 cycles in the 309 years between 1699 and 2008, giving an average length of 11.04 years, but recent research has showed that the longest of these (1784-99) seems actually to have been two cycles[2][3], so that the average length is only around 10.66 years. Cycles as short as 9 years and as long as 14 years have been observed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle

... :) ... do you think, that "Chinese & Arabs would likely have known this"?
 

Bernice

Huck: ... do you think, that "Chinese & Arabs would likely have known this"?
Well Huck, I do think that the Chinese were known to have *recorded* eclipses & such-like phenomena long before the 'west', and certainly before Samuel Heinrich Schwabe in 1843. Also, many astronomers look first to the Arabs, then to the Greeks when researching early observations of the sky.

Wicki states that, "until recently it was thought.... etc". But we're talking about folk who lived long, long before 'recently'.


Can these images really be the cards of Thomas Murner (1502) ?
If they were used as a flash-card system to teach the Justinian code, is it not possible that certain sections of society would have been aware of them (and the code), and incorporated something of the system into their 'playing' cards of the 16th century?


Bee :)