Hi VB
I'm afraid I'm already lost. What follows are my thoughts as I read through this; an attempt to provide an insight as to how this presentation "sounds" to me, if not others:
le pendu said:
At it's base I assume that the Bardic origin is based on what is sometimes referred to as "Ogham", the "Celtic Tree Alphabet".
Question 1: Is that correct?
venicebard said:
--great.. let's start at that simply level.
But it is also based on evidence of its deep antiquity: an obvious relationship to Phoenician and other alphabets, and the epigraphic advances of the second half of the 20th century (pioneered by Barry Fell) showing that
ogam consaine (the consonants-only 15-letter form of ogham)
and an early version of an alphabet called Tifinag were used by Low-German speakers in the early 2nd millennium B.C.E.
- HUH? Okay... That is a LOT to take in.
Obvious relationship to Phoenician and other alphabets
- Really? Says who besides you?
Berry Fell
- Who? Why should I trust him?
Ogam Consaine
- Huh?
Tifinag
- Huh?
used by Low-German speakers in the early 2nd millennium B.C.E.
- Really? Is this accepted by scholars? Even if so.. so what does this have to do with the Ogham and the tarot?
I'm already feeling like I am on a wild goose chase. I asked you if the bardic alphabet... aka the "Ogham" or the "Celtic Tree Alphabet" was the foundation and relation to Tarot, and to provide a standard, accepted reference to the alphabet that you use and it's meanings. Instead, I'm looking at Phoenician alphabets. If this is accepted, universally recognized basics, forgive me for being ignorant... but before we even start talking about tarot and the bardic alphabet.. I'm already jumping to what seems like pretty drastic claims of relationship to older alphabets.. and I haven't even started to understand the main point which, I assumed, was a relationship between the "bardic alphabet" and the tarot. I strongly suggest leaving all of those other relationships out of the equation at this point, and focus instead on showing me the clear relationship between the standardly accepted meanings of the Ogham and the Tarot. Unless of course, part of your theory also requires discarding traditional meanings and creating your own.
The latter was brought to North Africa --
-HUH?
by the Nordic ancestors of the Berbers, seemingly, who were part of the confederation called 'Sea Peoples' that attacked Egypt,
-Huh?
were defeated, then settled in Libya to become, later on, the seafarers that took Egyptian vessels around the world and eventually established a dynasty.
-Huh?
In Libya, Tifinag itself was only slightly modified (and survives to this day) but also gave birth to (or at least strongly influenced the shaping of) the Libyan alphabet, some characters of which are identical to Tifinag.
-Huh? What's this got to do with the Ogham and the tarot?
Another chief source for bardic tradition is the original runic Futhark of 24 characters,
-I thought the Runes were Norse? What's THIS got to do with it? Your suggesting a relationship between Runes, Ogham and Tarot?
whose shapes and names are an invaluable addition to what can be surmised about the tree-alphabet, that is, about the significance of its individual letters.
-Says who? As far as everything I've read the two are not related.
Only two retain their tree names (birch and yew, B and I, which stand for the pillars Boaz and Jachin of Hebrew and Masonic tradition), but the rest of the shapes (and names) are obviously related.
-What? Okay, you're talking about runes here. But what makes you so sure they ever had tree names associated with the other letters> As far as I know.. many of the runes are related to gods.. (Ing, Tyr, Thor), and to weather (Isa, Hagalaz), and other features of the Norse world.. why do you assume that they were once all related to trees. That's yet another point that you have a lot of work to do to prove and, as far as I can see, is not in agreement with authorities on this. So I can't accept it and it needs to be left out of the basic presentation.
For example, the first rune, F, shows a stalk with two upturned branches (which Latin F levels out): this is because F is fearn the alder, tree of the Corn Spirit, called Bran (Vran) in Brythonic (British Keltic), Fro or Frey (or Freyr) in Scandinavian, Kronos in Greek (and KRShNA, evidently, in India, though
there his erotic side, prominent in Scandinavia, has eclipsed his Corn-Spirit origin).*
-Hmmmmm. LOTS of stuff to take in here... but what sticks out strongly is using Freyr for this rune.. when traditionally, Freyr has always been associated with the rune Ing (at least as far as I have ever seen in the many rune books I've read). All of the above paragraph would require a lot of research for me to confirm or argue the point, and I'm not inclined to do so just because you say it is so. To group Kronos with Freyr, and to make the other relationships seems to me to be some pretty wild claims. Again, this really can't be used as evidence until you have a LOT of convincing material to back up these relationships. Even once this is done, I'm still wondering what the hell I'm doing looking at Greek, Indian, and Norse mythology when supposedly I'm studying Bardic (Celtic) Mythology and the relationship between it and the Tarot?
Rune F thus pictures a stalk of grain, and its name is
*faihu (
feoh in Old English, the asterisk identifying
*faihu as its reconstructed form in early Germanic [close to Gothic]), which means both 'cattle' and 'wealth' and stands for
abundance (fertility).
-maybe
*F is numbered 8 in bardic tradition,
-is that standard?
while a symbol closely associated with Bran and alder is the flute:
-really?
just so, KRShNA is the 8th avatar of Vishnu
-that's a huge leap, why are we talking about Hinduism?
and seduces by playing the flute (there are many other pointers as well, as discussed in my exchange with Huck over the subject in the following thread, beginning about post #33:
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=39532&page=4&pp=10 )
The extensive discussion -- spattered with flaws (mostly personal prejudices of his) but nonetheless
rich in information -- in Robert Graves's
The White Goddess
-I've not read it, but as far as I understand it, it is famous for being mostly imagination with a bit of folklore, and not considered reliable for scholarly research. No?
is the only source of
gathered information, and it is only readable with great patience and probing skepticism.
- like I said.
But the whole picture can be gleaned only by piecing together information from myriad other sources as well, including the scholarly
Teutonic Mythology of Jacob Grimm,
I'm a fan, and think there is a lot of great information contained in the tales.
countless books on trees devoured over the years,
-fine
the evidence presented in Barry Fell's
America B.C. and
Bronze Age America concerning Libyan, Tifinag, and other alphabets (mostly from inscriptions in the Western Hemisphere), the shapes of the letters of the Meroitic alphabet (found here
http://www.crystalinks.com/meroitic.html )
-right. I don't know him. Do your theories depend on his theories? Unless he is generally accepted as an authority on his subject, then this is a major stumbling block. Do I really need to read and accept his theories to understand and accept yours? Where will your theories stand if his are proved incorrect, or at least not generally accepted?
and indeed careful analysis of the shapes of all the different alphabets whose traditions are demonstrably akin to the Keltic and Judaic.
-There's a connection between the Celtic and the Judaic alphabets? Isn't this another "theory" that has no standardly accepted basis?
The shapes of the letters of square Hebrew (its modern form, which dates back to the time just after the Babylonian exile) are one of the most striking sources of understanding, partly because they help confirm proper placement of the letters on the round (circuit of the year, the zodiac)
-huh?
in the deeper strata (now lost)
-then are you "reconstructing"? Of course, it can't be used as a basis because of this.
of Judaic esotericism, meaning
Ma'aseh Merkabah, or 'Work of the Chariot',
-Huh?
and the Kabbalah that sprang from it
after it had the opportunity to come in contact with its close cousin, British Keltic tradition (in 12th-century Provence-Languedoc).
-WOW! THAT'S an ENORMOUS jump isn't it? Is THIS standardly accepted? My warning bells are ringing very loudly here.
That deeper strata was lost because of disruption of the European Jewish community during the following three centuries.
-but you've found and restored it? (bells!)
(Original placement of letters can be reconstructed using the calendar of tree-letters Graves expounds, coupled with the stipulations of the Merkabah text
Sefer Yetzirah concerning division of letters into 3 'mothers', 7 'doubles', and 12 'elementals'.
)
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venicebard, I really don't WANT answers to the questions above. I only posted this to try to convey to you how it "reads" to my ear.
Right from the start here, there is an enormous amount of information that I have to "trust" you with to go along with your theory.
What I'm looking for is a starting point. Where can we find agreement?
As of now, my impression of your theory is that it takes a lot of assumptions and possibilities to see it as plausible. Already I'm overwhelmed with connections that seem "questionable" to me from my experience studying related or at least similar topics.
So can we leave out the assumptions that require a great amount of trust to go along with and find a basic structure that I can verify and build from there???
In other words.. do I really have to reject everything that I've learned about Ogham, Runes, and Tarot to go along with your theory? If so... you've got a huge challenge ahead that will require you to build up your theory piece, by accepted piece.
Or.. is there some BASIC standard that we can work with here? Is there a list of the celtic tree alphabet meanings that you AGREE with? If so, can we then look at the relationship between that list and the tarot?
Maybe we can start here:
Three column table.
Column One: Tarot Card
Column Two: Traditional Related Celtic Alphabet Letter (source?), with meaning.
Column Three: YOUR Related Celtic Alphabet letter, with meaning (assuming there is a need for a third column)
Really, I'm trying to convey how this "sounds" to me, and to try to help you present this in a manner that is understandable to others.
