The Game of Tarots - Antoine Court de Geblin

Cerulean

"Everything including games was founded on allegory..."

Translated by Donald Tyson...for our reading pleasure!

The following two essays appear in Volume 8, Book 1, pages 365-410 of the work Monde Primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne (The Primitive World, analyzed and compared with the modern world). The nine volumes of this unfinished work were published in Paris over the period 1773-82. The eighth volume appeared in 1781.

The first essay, titled Du Jeu des Tarots, was written by Court de Gébelin himself; the author of the second, titled Recherches sur les Tarots, et sur la Divination par les Cartes des Tarots, par M. Le C. de M. (Study on the Tarots, and on Divination with Tarot cards, by M. the C. of M.), has been identified as Louis Raphaël Lucrèce de Fayolle, the Comte de Mellet (1727-1804).

http://www.donaldtyson.com/gebelin.html

To quote Robert Place in his Symbols of Alchemy Course...

"Because of this myth we are involved in this tarot...it is so powerful and appeals to our imagination..."

I thought of that and wanted to read it myself.

Hope it is helpful to you!

Cerulean
 

mjhurst

edited -- mjh
 

Cerulean

My apologies for presenting it in a positive light.

I'll leave the link up, as I do sometimes like to trace back how far some of the information goes.

Thanks for giving me your perspective, I'll definitely re-think.

Best regards,

Cerulean
 

Cerulean

Here is a perspective by Frank Jensen

http://www.manteia-online.dk/waite-smith/wst-anniversary.pdf

While the Frank Jensen article it is relevant to the topic, maybe the material by Antoine Court de Geblin needs to be moved outside of the history forum...moderators, please feel free to move if this information is deemed 'not relevant' to history.

Regards,

Cerulean
 

Huck

Gebelin's opinion is 200 years old and without doubt old Tarot history.

And his errors were rather influential ... :)
 

Moonbow

Thanks Huck. We have no intention of moving this thread, or any other relating to De Gébelin from the Historical Research forum.

A great link Cerulean, and one which I haven't read for a while, I hope others enjoy it also. There is certainly a place in Tarot's history for its divination appeal, and likewise its non-divination appeal.

I like this line:

"But such is the fate of human things: of such a sublime science, which occupied powerful men, wise philosophers, the greatest saints, it remains among us only the practice of children to draw the beautiful letter".
 

Yygdrasilian

Liber T or Da'ath

Antoine Court de Gebelin said:
If one proceeded to announce that there is still nowadays a work of the former Egyptians, one of their books that escaped the flames that devoured their superb libraries, and which contains their purest doctrines on interesting subjects, everyone who heard, undoubtedly, would hasten to study such an invaluable book, such a marvel. If one also said that this book is very widespread in most of Europe, that for a number of centuries it has been in the hands of everyone, the surprise would be certain to increase. Would it not reach its height, if one gave assurances that no one ever suspected that it was Egyptian; that those who possessed it did not value it, that nobody ever sought to decipher a sheet of it; that the fruit of an exquisite wisdom is regarded as a cluster of extravagant figures which do not mean anything by themselves? Would it not be thought that the speaker wanted to amuse himself, and played on the credulity of his listeners?
An erroneous assumption frequently made by historians of Tarot regards the eponymous claim to Egyptian origin as synonymous with the telling of fortunes or trade in charms, enterprises with a reputation for con-artists and quacks who, preying upon superstitions of the naive, successfully co-opted the card games of Tarot under dubious mystical pretenses.

Yet, even though parallels drawn to Qabalist schemes are generally viewed as incursions of more recent date, applying the Tarot de Marseilles as a cypher (FOOL) to the Hebrew alphabet yields proportions in sync with the vesica piscis & projections of octahedral symmetry evident in the Tree of Life.

The mathematical constants embodied by the numerological structure of the Major Arcana also casts the Great Pyramid as key stone to a sacred geometry writ large across the solar system. By connecting the locus & proportions of this monument to that of a vesica pisces superimposed over the Earth, we access practical Knowledge of the rationale behind ancient builders’ methods for establishing our units of measure.

61
 

Bernice

Ygg: "The mathematical constants embodied by the numerological structure of the Major Arcana......"


It's clear that you can see a math pattern in the order & numbering of the trump cards, but the early tarots wern't numbered neither were the cards called 'tarot'. And as 'Qabalist schemes' with the cards developed at a much later time in the history of the deck, the Qabalah was therefore not an original inherent factor of them.

The numeral Qabalist structure of the tarot is not really a topic for Historical Research......


Bee :)
 

Yygdrasilian

Hesperides

Bernice said:
It's clear that you can see a math pattern in the order & numbering of the trump cards, but the early tarots wern't numbered neither were the cards called 'tarot'. And as 'Qabalist schemes' with the cards developed at a much later time in the history of the deck, the Qabalah was therefore not an original inherent factor of them.

The numeral Qabalist structure of the tarot is not really a topic for Historical Research......

Now recognized as the 'standard pattern', the major arcana of the Tarot de Marseilles exhibit this specific symmetry when applied to the Hebrew alphabet. Utilized by Antoine Court de Gébelin when he calls Tarot the Book of Thoth, this deck first appears circa 1650 - over a hundred years before the publication of The Primitive World. Setting aside the question whether a common system informed prior deck arrangements, we may at least discern the logic by which the claim has been made for an Egyptian origin with this One. As such, historical inquiry need consider how the geometry underpinning Qabalah may, in fact, have been the organizing principle behind ranking the Trumps of the Tarot de Marseilles.

I46
 

Bernice

Posted by Yggdrasilian: ........Utilized by Antoine Court de Gébelin when he calls Tarot the Book of Thoth, this deck first appears circa 1650 - over a hundred years before the publication of The Primitive World. Setting aside the question whether a common system informed prior deck arrangements, we may at least discern the logic by which the claim has been made for an Egyptian origin with this One. As such, historical inquiry need consider how the geometry underpinning Qabalah may, in fact, have been the organizing principle behind ranking the Trumps of the Tarot de Marseilles.

Apparently there is no logic for claiming an Egyptian or Qabalistic origin for the Trump cards.

Excerpt from Wikipedia. Re. Antoine Court de Gébelin:

"It was his immediate perception, the first time he saw the Tarot deck, that it held the secrets of the Egyptians. Writing without the benefit of Champollion's deciphering of the Egyptian language, Court de Gébellin's developed reconstruction of Tarot history, without any historical evidence produced, was that Egyptian priests had distilled the ancient "Book of Thoth" into these images, which they brought to Rome, where they were secretly known to the popes, who brought them to Avignon in the 14th century, whence they were introduced into France."

As I said in my previous post, "The numeral Qabalist structure of the tarot is not really a topic for Historical Research......".

Here is the forum for Kabbalah & Alphabets: Jewish mysticism and its esoteric use, alphabets, and their application to Tarot.

http://www.tarotforum.net/forumdisplay.php?f=85


Bee :)