Why call it Maison Dieu ?
First of all, a bit of French semantics and a detail for Diana. During the Middle Ages in the West, the hospital was called "hôtel Dieu" and not "maison Dieu". The hospital track seems to lead nowhere, though much may depend on what period we're looking at.
The church, at one time at least, was called " maison de Dieu" and not "maison-Dieu".
The Order of the Knights Templars, ziggurats, the tower struck by lightening…
I apologize for not having the time to properly look it up in Kaplan, but I seem to recall that the first "lightening-struck tower" which appears on 15th century Italian tarots is the Charles VI (c. 1480), that is to say a century, or 4 generations of card makers and painters, after the appearance of the naibis. We have no example of the work of popular card makers, apart from the Cary sheet which presents a fantasy TdM model (no card named), before the Noblet, Viéville, anonymous Parisian, Dodal, Payen series. To see the images, consult
http://letarot.com/pages/56-le_grand_debat.htm (text in french only, for the moment).
The principal difference between the popular French tarots and the Visconti family resides in this Maison Dieu Arcanum. The "ancestors" Noblet and Dodal portray flames rising from the tower. From Conver on, the flames descend towards the tower.
I have entered a link to a lineup of the Maison Dieu cards of Viéville, Noblet, Dodal and Conver on the opening page of my site
http://letarot.com
As for Viéville, emerging from the Rouen-Brussels or piémontaise tradition, he depicts a sort of shepherd, a tree, a herd of sheep and goats and a source of light. This light source is correctly represented in the "old" Noblet and Dodal imagery, and only suggested in the later Conver.
What might all this mean?
Viéville :
A herd of goats and sheep is the traditional representation by the Romanesque people and the cathedral image-makers of "past" lives, while the tree designates growth and the expansion of consciousness. The source of light indicates where conscious illumination resides.
With other TdMs:
The tower is the fortress of the ego, the open crown at its top indicates that the mental has relaxed its grip, the ascending flame speaks of the individual's capacity to fuse avec the divine. We are in Platonic immanence, as opposed to Conver who presents Aristotilian transcendence with a descending flame. Conver nevertheless retains the three traditional spheres which form the light-source: abred, keugant and gwennwed. The outer circle where nothing exists, the middle circle of incarnation, and the inner sphere of the white light of illumination.
With arcanum XVI La Maison Dieu, we find ourselves in the traditional representation of the experience of illumination. It is the place of consciousness, of fusion with the divine. These old tarots convey a simple message: each of us can, by his own efforts and with no help from without, have access to the state of consciousness in which he is illuminated by the white light of what believers choose to call the "Divine", but which in fact has nothing to do with religion. We are dealing here with what the French call "la connaissance".
The motto of the Order of Teutonic Knights (1198-1410) simplifies matters, albeit abruptly:
Si tu ne meures pas avant de mourir, tu mourras en mourant.
If you do not die before dying, you will die when you die.
So: the Maison is the house or place where consciousness resides, and Dieu refers to the higher worlds of the spirit of light (nothing to do with deities).
It seems the titles for the TdM images probably appeared in the early 16th century, after the tarot came back from northern Italy in the soldiers' pockets and was taken up by the card-makers issued from Compagnonage. This brings us to Ross Cauldwell's suggestion that an ambitious soul investigate how Hotel Dieu, Maison Dieu etc.were applied at that time (c. 1520). Diana has been able to substantiate her recollections, and I am dazzled by the linguistic erudition expressed through the diverse messages. So finally I am at a loss for words.
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Here is an extract from The Journey of the Soul, the first half of which is accessible
http://english.letarot.com/pages/25journey.html
XVI The House of God
(perhaps we should find a better translation of this title – but The Tower won't do either)
Until the day the being experiences the fundamental unifying experience. After the diligent purification of centre after centre, energy all at once surges up and out the fontanel, at the top of the skull. The entire body suddenly catches fire. Consciousness, entirely enflamed, soars to unimaginable heights, to spheres suggested by the multicoloured balls that fill the sky. The multitude of past experiences and memories suddenly rearrange themselves into an orderly, meaningful constellation. It is a dazzling experience of fusion with the divine, appropriately named the House of God.
Unfortunately, this state does not last and will recur only at the moment of death... It is necessary to return to earth, back from this place in which the being is truly part of the universe. Look at the two figures: they come tumbling slowly back from their unifying experience.
The flame which bursts from the top of the tower indicates that only a total conflagration can allow the being to experience such moments. His is unable to generate them on his own. Only the forces of life will permit the awakening.
This experience confers in general two gifts: the disappearance of the fear of death, and a total confidence in the unconscious. One no longer doubts.
Since arcanum VI, the Lover, in which the cherub lets fly his arrow, the sky of the arcana has been empty. From now on, it will be inhabited.
Jean-Claude Flornoy
Postscript by Rox:
Footnote lovers, unite! Let the race of Pedants grow and multiply! Perhaps we can agree that a pedant is bearable only if he makes no bones about it. He thus transforms an intolerable vice into an entertaining and instructive virtue. The Spirit of Candid Pedantry can be imagined as a charming figure, draped gracefully in a mantle of savant verbiage, fringed (of course) with footnotes, inhabiting the soul of all eternal students and lovers of showing off. The duty of the true (self-proclaimed) Pedant is to amuse and instruct us forever!
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We've noted that many were looking to find the Bibliotheque Nationale 1984 exposition catalogue: Tarot, jeu et Magie. After 10 years, the Library was preparing to discard the 2000 unsold copies remaining. At the last minute this stock was bought by the Card Museum at Issy–les-Moulineaux near Paris. It took them 6 years of administrative red tape before the books were put on sale, and within two years they were all sold off. This remarkable volume remains definitively out of print. The last two copies were bought for 12€ each by our friend Laurent Edouard, founder and moderator of the French list Club Jean Noblet
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Club_Jean_NOBLET/. IF you can run across it today, it is likely to cost between 45 and 60 euros.
