The Visconti - and the Marseilles

Scion

What a spectacular thread to wake up to!!

Frank Hall said:
Coleridge said that everyone is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian --- but he's off track, I think. Everyone's got both in his or her soul, and everyone needs "Temperance" to mix and blend them.
Maybe it depends on how Aristotle dominant or Plato dominant I am or you are. There must be a middle ground to this, I hope.

Again, exactly my point:

Scion said:
Plato and Aristotle are always in the room together... It's always a dialectic. ... The one thing that Tarot teaches all of us is to look closer . And anyone who's paying attention eventually notices that life is full of paradox and contradiction.

The reason I referenced the School of Athens is because although it is an attempt to "sum up Western Knowledge" Knowledge isn't depicted in the image, just a bunch of famous middle-aged men. Rather than LITERALLY painting an allegorical figure or symbol for knowledge, Rafael gives us an open space, open to sky and earth. I would argue that the very light and space which characterizes the painting is the attempt to depict knowledge. Notice that Aristotle and Plato look at each other but point away, and that the entire image centers on a point behind them in infinite space that could be sky OR horizon (i.e. earth). I don't know if it's possible that art can ever be literal. Which is why allegory is so tricky.

The School, the Forum, IS the very middle ground you're looking for. The knowledge/wisdom is not the men standing around pontificating, but rather inhabits the space and light and openness between them.

Diana said:
I think there are two reconcilers. Because there are always two sides to the Divine - The Divine created both God and the Devil.

The urge of the Demiurge!!... Spoken like a devoted Albigensian Gnostic, Diana! You're getting at something critical here. People often think in cliches because they're prechewed. We all retreat to well-worn grooves. Perhaps the reason you feel your posts draw ire is because you're tracing the ridge between two world views... and for the most part people like to stick to one mental model or the other. To take the world at face value.

smleite said:
Tarot is, by nature, a white, occidental construction. What is the problem with that? I practice an oriental discipline called Taijiwuxigong. When I do so, I am fully conscious that I am practicing an oriental discipline, am don’t rebel against it, saying that it is not universal enough to me. How can it not be universal enough to me, if I practice it?

Yes! We reconstruct history through the eyes of the present. Perhaps this comes down to personal taste. I gotta admit I'm perplexed by the demand for "equal representation" I've found on ATF. To reject the Marseille because it does not depict non-white faces is a bit like the medieval Catholics damning the saints and scholars of antiquity for not being Christian. (Dante populates the first ring with those who had the misfortune to be born too early.) Tarot was rendered by medieval Europeans. If you use it, you're using something European. 'Nuff said.

The "Ur-Tarot" will mean something different to anyone who answers the original question. The way I see it, A strictly universal deck would have to be blank... because there is NO rendering that could literally depict every possible expression of a card. Does everything have to be so literal? Not to seem glib, but we could also complain that the Tarot only depicts two-dimensional people and therefore doesn't represent three-dimensional life. That sounded more harsh than I intended, but I'm going to let it stand as an opinion.

Ross G Caldwell said:
In fact it has been said that there are only two ways to look at the world, the Platonist, and the Aristotelian, as though the two were mutually exclusive. However, this is a mistake because Aristotle's reverence for his teacher was not merely as an idol but as the fundamental source of his thought.

Which gets back to my earlier point... Humans tend put things into neat boxes: either/or. Nothing is as simple or literal as much of the world would have it. I'm not saying everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian, but rather that they represent two pillars of western thought that everyone has emerged between.What is fascinating about life and Tarot is the variegated difference between us. Friction produces energy. Reading Tarot is itself an attemopt to discern somplicated patterns in a matrix of conflicting possibilities. Tarot requires one thing: paying attention, and paying attention to anything reveals its complexity. Even if we come together around it, we are all going to approach it as individuals.

I didn't bring up the School of Athens as an example of a polarized situation, but rather as a depiction of a whole system that verges on the numinous. Even if the painting is divided into two sides, it is a painting of a single system. I have a sense that knowledge and Tarot (and all of numinous experience) exists in the space between us.

Scion

Sophie

noby said:
I absolutely love where I am right now. I love this world and the dance of its rhythms, its sexuality, its sensuality, its chaos and violence. I am drawn to the peace of the transcendent, but only as a complement to the dance of the world of sensation. To me, enjoyment of the dance of sensation without the awareness of the transcendent is addiction, but equally, the total giving over of oneself to the transcendent by also rejecting life's pain and pleasure is a fundamental misunderstanding and abuse of life...

I couldn't agree more. For me, tarot is one of the ways I have found to make sense of that necessary integration. I am particularly drawn to Deniers - Coins - because they represent matter and spirit joined. I can't think of a single physical activity that might not have, if we seek it and accept it, a spiritual element. Some spiritual traditions, indeed, depend on the physical for their manifestations, not to transcend the body to reach the spirit, but to celebrate it with the spirit (I am thinking Dervishes and Tantric traditions here, but there are many others, including most of the martial arts). I think this is the true meaning behind being both Aristotelian and Platonician. We are amputated if we deny one side of ourselves. I have always been suspicious of those philosophies and religions who saw the way to the Divine as a purely etherial pursuit. If we were meant to be purely etherial, we would not have been given bodies and put in a material world.

The pain of the material world - amply compensated by its joy, in my view - is what makes so many turn away from it. It's understandable, and we all need periods of quiet and introspection (Papesse, Hermite, Pendu). We also need the world. In the Major arcana of the Tarot, far more lames are devoted to the world that to the inner world - and all come together in The World.

noby

Helvetica said:
I couldn't agree more. For me, tarot is one of the ways I have found to make sense of that necessary integration. I am particularly drawn to Deniers - Coins - because they represent matter and spirit joined. I can't think of a single physical activity that might not have, if we seek it and accept it, a spiritual element... We are amputated if we deny one side of ourselves. I have always been suspicious of those philosophies and religions who saw the way to the Divine as a purely etherial pursuit. If we were meant to be purely etherial, we would not have been given bodies and put in a material world.

The pain of the material world - amply compensated by its joy, in my view - is what makes so many turn away from it. It's understandable, and we all need period sof quiet and introspection (Papesse, Hermite, Pendu). We also need the world. In the Major arcana of the Tarot, far more lames are devoted to the world that to the inner world - and all come together in The World.

smleite said:
...as to “rejecting life's pain and pleasure”, couldn’t agree more with you. It’s in life’s pain and pleasure (in Life as a whole) that we can find the ticket for the transcendent. Eremitism, celibacy, renounce, self-flagellation, martyrdom… even our beloved sense of guilt… those are ways that belong to the past.

Amen to both of you!

And I'll stop there too, in fear of de-railing this thread any further...

Sophie

Frank Hall said:
One more thought,though. The Ur-Tarot comes from Goethe's idea of the Ur-plant. He thought all plant forms come from an original leaf-like first pattern. He tried to sketch the Ur-plant for his friend, Schiller --- a simple few pencil strokes . Schiller said : " That is not experience ! It's an idea!" So maybe the Ur-Tarot is the first actual Tarot from which all subsequent Tarots develop, like Goethe's first leaf-form, or maybe it's the Idea out of which all Tarots materialize. Maybe it depends on how Aristotle dominant or Plato dominant I am or you are. There must be a middle ground to this, I hope.

Well, all things that have a physical form, such as plants and tarot cards, have a dual nature - what they are, and what we think of them.

A plant is clearly first of all itself, and can be studied as a physical object with a biological nature and an evolutionary path. Likewise tarot cards can be studied as man-made physical objects, with a factual history (no matter how difficult to determine), factual influences (ditto), an artistic, iconographic and intellectual development. They has been used for gaming, divination, meditation, Jungian analysis, the search for the Divine, et j'en passe. This or that card, symbol, number, order in in a spread, has had this or that meaning attributed to it. All this is empirical, which, while not necessarily easy to ascertain because of the paucity of sources, is in theory an Aristotelian object of study that can give us an objective view of tarot in general, and TdM in particular, if that is the focus of our research.

Then there is that whole second nature of things - what we think of them, what we project into them (assuming things are things and not intrinsically magical), what we feel for them. Symbols of something else, archetypes, a longing for the Divine, a certain path of life, a way of divining the future or understanding the present, all these are ways of spiritualising the object we hold in our hand, the humble tarot de Marseille. They are necessarily subjective, fluid, subject to interpretation and to idealisation. We talk of the nature, essence and origin of Plants, rather than plants. Of Tarot, rather than tarot. We project our longing for the absolute, for our spiritual home, for our reconciliation with nature, mankind, God, etc. on things that become Things. It is a form of idolatry, I suppose, but we have to admit that man is inherently idolatrous, because even in those cultures that ostensibly abhor idolatry (e.g. Judaism, Islam) people still spiritualise certain objects (the scrolls of the Torah, the Western Wall, the Black Stone, the Quran, of which not one word can be changed or interpreted).

What we have here is a split between those who spiritualise the TdM, and those who do not and who call the first idolatrous (not actually - I am using the word by interpreting various posts). For the second, tarot is an empirical object, no more, no less. For the first, Tarot has an essence and an origin outside its historical origin; and an underlying structure that lays out a path for the understanding of inner and outer life, the spirit, the Divine.

This thread - this golden thread! - last night, prompted by Scion, started to discuss Aristotelian vs Platonician views, and came to the conclusion that both views - sensitivities one should say - were needed for a rounded appreciation of life in general, and t/Tarot (as one representation of life) in particular. I can't see any other way of reconciling the two sides: or at least of making mental and spiritual sense of both parts of the threads, that in my mind converged so beautifully under Scion's wise hand.

Sophie

noby said:
I personally find that Navigators of the Mystic Sea does that beautifully, by speaking in a dream language that draws on universal human postures and facial expressions, as well as diverse symbols and elements from many cultures, times, and places that are juxtaposed without making them seem artificially jammed together. I think the International Icon is a recent deck which works towards a universal quality too, though it's my personal take that Navigators does it better. And of course, there are people who would find these same decks limiting and limited in focus.

I am not sure I would say limited in focus - speaking as one who would find it hard to use either of the above decks, though I see their allure and quality. I suppose it depends what you look for in a deck. Many things, of course! One of the things I look for is a reflection of humanity in its variety and reality, not an idealised, faceless version of humanity. I am finding that in the TdM. Has anyone ever noticed how the Reyne de Deniers looks like she's had a bad night? the Emperor is having his portrait painted, and the Hermit, though walking alone at night, probably has had a good dinner at a way-stage. The Reyne de Bâton has a roguish, slightly petulant but good humoured look. And God only knows what the Chevalier de Coupe is thinking (probably of the Reyne de Bâtons). These make them not only tarot archetypes (in either sense) but people - characters. To me, Tarot means nothing without its earthiness, which necessarily suggests, in a strange combination of conventional and quirky, real people.

I was born and grew up in a cosmopolitan city, the child of a dual culture, I have lived in Africa and Asia, and have engaged fully with the vast variety of those continents. I feel at one with all men and women, I am of the family of man. And for that reason, I like to see human beings reflected as people not as idealised forms. Just as I like to imagine the woodblock carvers, and the people in their studios who are - as I write - drawing the Tarot of the Forgotten Cities and trying not to spill their coffee over their drafts; and the many many pouring over cards and trying to make a sense of their lives, or bring hope to a person - white, black, brown - who sits across from them, hands twisted, asking "well?..."

So while you look at the TdM, Noby, and think "white", and look for the universal in the dreamlike abstract, I look at it, and see the Queen of Denier's 's frown, the Emperor's smirk and projection of physical power, the Hermit's half smile, the Chevalier de Coupe's gentle Otherness, the Queen of Bâton's come-hither hip curve - all of which are universal human expressions, which I have seen repeated all over the world in people of different colours who belong to various cultures.

noby said:
I don't think any one culture has a monopoly on truth, and that every culture on Earth, whether human or animal, has its wisdom. Some learn best by focusing on one particular tradition, but others, like myself, learn best by drawing from more than one.

Amen. I quite agree.

noby said:
Wow, this has really derailed from the original topic, but I think this discussion speaks to it in an interesting way by pondering the universal and essential in different forms, so I hope the moderators don't delete it.

Please God! (and the moderators). We are getting somewhere interesting here! I have really enjoyed your posts, Noby, and your drawing on your Zen experience as an analogy. I would rather change the title of the thread (except no-one would find it afterwards - so let's keep it and let those who come afer us puzzle as to why this thread was called "Visconti and Marseille"

)

Diana

Scion said:
The "Ur-Tarot" will mean something different to anyone who answers the original question. The way I see it, A strictly universal deck would have to be blank... because there is NO rendering that could literally depict every possible expression of a card.

I was very excited the other day, when a French tarologist told me that he had in his possession two prototype Tarot cards. (I am pretty naive....) And he solemnly told me that he would show them to me - that he had not shown them to many people. Wow... this got me even more excited.

He put the two cards with great care on the table, face down. And asked me to turn them over carefully....

Both cards were blank.

(I pulled my tongue at him.

).

Sophie

Scion said:
What a spectacular thread to wake up to!!

What a spectacular thread to go to bed to!!

Scion said:
Rather than LITERALLY painting an allegorical figure or symbol for knowledge, Rafael gives us an open space, open to sky and earth. I would argue that the very light and space which characterizes the painting is the attempt to depict knowledge. Notice that Aristotle and Plato look at each other but point away, and that the entire image centers on a point behind them in infinite space that could be sky OR horizon (i.e. earth). don't know if it's possible if art can ever be literal.

The School, the Forum, IS the very middle ground you're looking for. The knowledge/wisdom is not the men standing around pontificating, but rather inhabits the space and light and openness between them.

Scion said:
I didn't bring up the School of Athens as an example of a polarized situation, but rather as depiction of a whole system that verges on the numinous. Even if the painting is divided into two sides, it is a painting of a single system. I have a sense that knowledge and Tarot (and all of numinous experience) exists in the space between us.

It's cold and raining, but I am fanning myself from the heat coursing through my body at this very very exciting thought. A XVI -Maison-Dieu moment! Looking at the painting again, I would say that the middle ground you suggest - the horizon that marries earth and sky - is reflected in the gaze exchanged between Plato and Aristotle. So Temperance not only fuses two attributes - earth, sky, representative of Aristotelian empirical thought and Platonician abstract thought - but brings together two human beings, made them exchange a look - a line of horizon between two human beings - and in that look pollinise each other. Ross has already commented on Aristotle's platonicism. I would say Raphael has imagined earth, sky, Plato, Aristotle, converging in a vast space into a line of horizon: I'll add it is also a fault line ("the space between us"), because, from in between, the Fool will emerge to toss us new discoveries of the mind, divergent views, anarchic and freebooting, to expand that numinous experience by kicking up the system like gold dust.

That horizon, and that fault line, exists in the TdM, and in almost all great human construct - from Stonehenge to Great Zimbabwe, from the Odyssey to Ulysses, from Nô theatre to the Kasaïan Weeping Queen. We walk to towards that faraway horizon, with a TdM deck in our pocket and sipping our pastis; we fall in the crack because we find we have come too close, and suddenly find ourselves on another path entirely, still with our deck in our pockets - so, the horizon is not over there, it's over here, or just a bit to the left. And looking through our cards, at the beribonned lightning that strikes the Maison-Dieu, we see it is right where we are, but moving...

Diana said in this thread she had touched the hem of the Tarot. Could the space that Raphael depicts not be seen as the full dress of all humanity's thinking and imagination and the horizon that unites earth and sky, the gaze exchanged between Plato and Aristotle, the hem we can touch (or probably just gaze at), the fault line out of which shines the Mât's lopsided light?

Scion said:
The urge of the Demiurge!!... Spoken like a devoted Albigensian Gnostic, Diana! You're getting at something critical here. People often think in cliches because they're prechewed. We all retreat to well-worn grooves. Perhaps the reason you feel your posts draw ire is because you're tracing the ridge between two world views... and for the most part people like to stick to one mental model or the other. To take the world at face value.

Perhaps because looking at each other, rather than looking at ourselves, and walking towards the horizon - not the sky, not the earth - demands such attention. It's a crazy journey, you don't know where you are going and nor does the other fellow. That's where all the Tarot archetypes, from the Bateleur to Le Monde, with the Fool popping up - rude, unpredictable - become signposts, marks on a map on which is scrawled "Here Be Dragons". Not alone, not the only signposts, not even the most important for all, a bit overlaid by moss, written in a strange language and worn at the corners from being tucked in so many pockets and laid down on so many tables, but all the same, undeniable signposts, fingers pointing to earth and sky, eyes exchanging a glance.

Even with these dog-eared cards we'll not reach the horizon. It moves too fast. At best we'll trip into the fault-line, and what a great adventure of mind and body that is! But as you quoted yesterday, Scion - the journey is the destination....

Cerulean

Now, I thought the Marseilles was closer to Liberty, Equality and Fraternity

http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/d/191.html...

and more on the French Revolution legacy...

http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/

It seems the School of Athens has transcended the original intents by the creator, which is definitely delightful. I had a more archaic view of the School of Athens, with it's Italian associations.

Here's a description of the School of Athens:

"The most famous philosophers of ancient times move within an imposing Renaissance architecture which is inspired by Bramante's project for the renewal of the early Christian basilica of St Peter. Some of these are easily recognizable. In the centre Plato points upwards with a finger and holds his book Timeus in his hand, flanked by Aristotle with Ethics; Pythagoras is shown in the foreground intent on explaining the diatesseron. Diogenes is lying on the stairs with a dish, while the pessimist philosopher, Heracleitus, a portrait of Michelangelo, is leaning against a block of marble, writing on a sheet of paper. Michelangelo was in those years executing the paintings in the nearby Sistine Chapel. On the right we see Euclid, who is teaching geometry to his pupils, Zoroaster holding the heavenly sphere and Ptolemy holding the earthly sphere. The personage on the extreme right with the black beret is a self-portrait of Raphael"

http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/x-Schede/SDRs/SDRs_03_02_020.html

Of course, the black beret became a popular culture icon that I remembered for French Artists!

My Western Humanties teacher of two years ago had chosen the School of Athens for his Western Humanities series of lectures, which came from his original Fulbright scholarship in Italy under a Dante scholar; he broadened the original Renaissance lecture series on Dante, Petrarcha and Boccaccio and a parallel track of slides from Giotto through Pontarmo (following names in Vasari's art biographies). I had the delight of seeing the lecture series develop, so it's a three year course that flows forward from the appearance of written language some 3,000 years ago to the beginning of the 20th century.

I think my delight in this thread and in the developed lecture series is the use of the same art themes. I do think, though, the Marseilles tarot is further along in time and it's not just the dream of the past scholars gathered together on the same stage. I was thinking beyond Napoleon, beyond Neoclassical, more...well, as some said, "the people's tarot" -- not just the courtly game of those beloved or jostling for Papal favors.

It's only my opinion based on how I was familiarized with this particular artwork and an archaic association--I do apologize that my opinion differs from those who brought the beautiful picture up as a theme of this thread.

My best regards,

Cerulean

Moongold

scion said:
Diana's curiosity about Darla's question intrigued me because what she was requesting/identifying in the ATF was essentially a "School of Athens" situation. She is not asking everyone to point at the sky or at the earth, but to explain why they are pointing where they are pointing. Do you see the World in the Cards or the Cards in the World? That is why the School of Athens has Plato and Aristotle side by side in a Forum open to the Sky and Earth surrounded by their peers and intellectual progeny that fall along a spectrum of possibility... It's a School, which means exchanging ideas in an open Forum.

I see both and sometimes one more than the other – the world in the cards or the cards in the world, I mean.

The idea of the Aristotelian Forum is a liberating way of thinking about the discussions we might have here. The idea reminds me a little of the ubiquitous MBTI tests which describes people’s preferences in thinking and acting.

smleite said:
When Moongold said, to your agreement, that the Marseilles, being “primarily white Caucasion” does not express the universal, this reminds me of something I wanted to clarify. I wrote that what I see in the Tarot of Marseilles is the more adequate presentation of Tarot’s structure, and I wrote it like this for a reason. Let me detail my reasoning a bit further: I meant that Tarot has its own, unique way of presenting a structure that, ultimately, is universal, but is presented to Men in multiple ways.

This has been a beautiful thread. Slmeites comment about the Marseilles having its own integrity, as does any spiritual school, was immensely interesting to me. It makes me wonder about the universalistic approach. I work in human services and am so imbued with the need or sense of obligation to make things accessible to everyone. In reality, I simply don’t believe that everyone is equal and I know that our social, legal and economic structures will never allow equal opportunity. It is an unrealistic concept. Having it codified in law however makes it possible to argue against injustice. I forget I live and work in a kind of ghetto, cut off to some extent from middle and upper class Australia. Would one call universalism a Platonic concept? It is not Aristotelian.

To be honest, the Marseilles Tarot speaks to Silvia, and to Diana too, in a way that it doesn’t speak to me although I remain open and think it is beautiful. I also simply do not know enough about archetypes to know whether they exist in their most primal form in the Marseilles. Maybe that realization will come one day.

With others here, I’ve been reading Meditations on the Tarot and whilst needing to see what the higher climes of mysticism hold, I am always so relieved to see the smart Bateleur and the tattered Le Mat just sitting there on my desk when I put the book down.

Thanks for this great thread everyone:

jmd

Diana opens this thread with a question from Darla, essentially asking why the Marseille as Ür-tarot. I have in other posts mentioned that I do not consider any existing deck as the actual Ür-tarot, but rather that the Marseille seems to most closely reflect it in manifest form.

I also wrote, in post 12 of the thread from which this very one developed (Why do people use the Tarot of Marseilles?):

I see the family tree of Tarot as having each of its branches connected to the Marseilles as the trunk. It too continues to grow (witness the Félicité, the Hadar, the Camoin - each under ten years old, as shoots straight up extending the Tree). At its roots are myriad woodcuts, beautifully illustrated and individually painted cards, Mamluk non-Tarot cards, Cathedral carved stone images, and myriad texts and traditions.

Its major branches include the Rider/Waite/Colman-Smith, the Crowley/Harris Thoth, the Etteilla Thoth, and the Falconnier Egyptian. A number of other limbs also either branch off from these, or again from the main trunk.

So let me in yet another manner take some of these considerations and further express how the Marseille, rather than the Visconti or others, forms more the fundaments of Tarot.

Also, one of the statements that some have made in this and other sections of the Forums (and which I personally seriously consider as reflecting a felt mood) is that it appears or feels as though the Marseille section is somewhat antagonistic to those who bring Waite or GD-type reflections.

I must admit that I probably contribute to this, though it is not antagonism per se, and my own contributions in other sections of the Forums, including the far rarer ones in the WCS study group, should bear this out.

I was especially touched by a post made by baba-prague with regards to how a deck designer and also serious worker in the field feels having their creative and meticulous work somewhat put in question... yet thought (owning a couple of copies of the Prague deck) that comments made in the Marseille area are really taken out of the context in which they are made.

Here is, then, the reflections I made, and a plausible explanation as to the differences between forums, and also maybe why GD/WCS-type comments are possibly 'less welcome' here.

Let me first give an image and then, due to its only partial relevance, later modify it.

Imagine a landscape punctuated by a series of various hills, each hill being the build-up of various 'traditions'. The WCS-GD one is to one side, the Eteilla to another, the C-H 'Thoth' to another, and the Levi-OKRC to another yet.

Not that these are not connected in any manner, for of course they are, and various 'saddles' (to continue the topological metaphor) connects them in appropriate ways. These connections, for the purposes of my current picture, do not here matter in detail.

Near the top, or up some of these hills, many of us stand - or sit, taking a breather on what may at times be a hardy journey.

If I climb the WCS-GD mount and meet there a hardent student, discussions on IIII the Emperor will turn to considerations of Aries, of connections between certain Sefirot on the Tree of Life, its numerological correlations to possibly 13 Death, and myriad other connections which the tradition has made, worked and added to since 1888.

Descending and making another ascent, I may find that the aspirant resting on this other hill instead claims the benefit of another tradition in which Aries and Heh are connected there to V the Pope/Hierophant, and IIII the Emperor is, correspondingly, to be placed within the Sefirah of Hesed, with the letter Dalet attached thereto.

On the C-H 'Thoth' hill, after having dully given the signs, grip and password permitting me an ascent, I may be informed that those two other hills do in fact have it wrong, being built on no more than manure, and that the corrected allocation is for the Aryan element to be given to the Emperor with Tzaddi as its letter.

If one climbs each hill with a deck, such as the Marseille, it will be presented and understood and explained as though it already was from that hill - albeit perhaps only at its base, but still a part of that perspective... according, at least to its that hill's residents.

If I was to post in the WCS study that one can see and use the WCS from a Levi-OKRC letter attribution and perspective (astrological, ordering, etc), the answer may very well be that one indeed can, but then, go and study the Levi-OKRC details... in the WCS area itself one would presumably want to investigate the images as they arise in that deck, with either intended or perceived symbology. Likewise, mutatis mutandis, the C-H 'Thoth' deck is not intended to be seen from a Lasenic/Levi-OKRC viewpoint - though of course one may choose to.

When someone brings to the Marseille area a perspective from the WCS-GD (or C-H 'Thoth', or Levi/Lasenic/OKRC), then the question may be asked as to what this has to do with the Marseille.

For some of us, investigating the Marseille is a little like walking down those hills in the valleys and looking - or trying to look - carefully at the presented images.

There, neither Emperor nor Pope bears any Aries-like qualities, and no so-called 'paths' on the Tree of Life are reflected within the symbolic imagery. Yet, what is striking, is the symbolic imagery itself, and that is indeed worthy of deeper reflections...

If one takes the Marseille away from the valleys and up any of those hills, then certainly analysis and reflection will be made as though they formed the basis and sub-strata of the respective hill. That it in fact does is simply as a consequence of these other decks being designed partly out of the foundation of the Marseille, combined with various other considerations.

To see the Marseille, however, one also needs to descend to the depths... and perhaps there, unencumbered by the light of multiple systems, perceive the inner radiance embedded in that illumined manuscript, or, rather than 'manuscript', hierosemioscript.

As implied in the opening of the post in which I quote from another post I make, the Marseille may be considered a superb manifestation of the Ür-Tarot. The Visconti, by contrast, and no matter how beautiful, cannot form that same foundation of fullness that a Ür-deck needs to have.

The Visconti - and the Marseilles

Scion

Sophie

noby

Sophie

Sophie

Diana

Sophie

Cerulean

Moongold

jmd