Greek Statues & Iconography and the Tarot Images

beanu

Hi Mike,

Welcome aboard this topic!
Yes, we should stick to what was known in the renaissance.
To post it, you need to put it on a website somewhere, then put a link in your post.
I'd be very happy to post any images you have on my website.
This section - Historical Research - is the only one I know of on AT that has the image reference stuff enabled. Very nice - than you moderator.


MikeH said:
Finally, what is your source for her being the original for Aquarius? All I find is Ganymede in that role. It makes sense--she had to go somewhere after she lost her job. I just can't find a source.

I think I was trying to say that the card Temperance is often associated with Aquarius, being the "water Bearer" sign. However, there seems to be the point of confusion in that the star sign is Ganymede, whereas the Tarot card is more likely to be Hebe.

I also not that the Waite deck has Iris flowers on the temperance card, and some research on Iris seems to indicate that there are two opinions -
* That Hebe and Iris are the same
* That Hebe and Iris are different Goddesses.
Regardless, I feel that attributing Temperance to one or other of the water bearers is probably reasonable.

Waite's card also seems to be a possibly a very pretty man, and so he seems to be implying Ganymede, but that might be a consequence of Golden Dawn influence, assigning Temperance to Aquarius.
 

kwaw

beanu said:
....but that might be a consequence of Golden Dawn influence, assigning Temperance to Aquarius.

Aquarius is assigned to to the Star in the GD system; and the image below the Star in the TdM pattern does appear to be related to typical imagery of the Sign Aquarius.

In relation to the Iris, the Roman Goddess Iris is attributed to the 25 path of Sagittarius / Temperance in the GD system (see under Roman Gods section in 777). Waite / Harris also follows the GD description in other respects and is clearly influence by it (as is the Crowley / Harris, the GD describing two different forms of the Temperance card in its rituals).

An early image of the Star card does show the water bearer as an effiiminate youth with a star on his shoulder, possibly in reference to Ganymede / Aquarius.
 

Huck

MikeH said:
And in Durer's time the slaughter had just begun. Late in life, he drew a plan for a monument to the hundreds of thousands of German peasants (whose uprising had been condemned by both Luther and the Catholic Church) massacred by the "virtuous" troops of Emperor Charles V. The monument, featuring a peasant at the top with a sword in his back, was never built, of course. (Correct me if I am wrong, Huck. And I know there is a different one, quite modest, in a modern style at one of the battlefields; I don't know the date it was done.)
I found this in the web, which seems to contain an original quote of Duerer:

"Albrecht Dürer arbeitete in seinen letzten beiden Lebensjahren an kunsttheoretischen Problemen. Dazu verfaßte er sein Buch über die Proportionslehre. Noch während der Drucklegung nahm er darin den Entwurf einer Gedächtnissäule für den Bauernkrieg auf. Zu dem Holzschnitt heißt es : "Welicher ein Victoria aufrichten wollt, darum daß er die aufrührerischen Bauern überwunden hätt, der möcht sich eins solichen Gezeugs darzu gebrauchen, wie ich hernach lehren will". Die Säule besteht aus landwirtschaftlichem Gerät, Hausrat und Vieh eines bäuerlichen Hofes, gewissermaßen jetzt die herrenlose Beute der Sieger. Aber nicht ein strahlender Sieger krönt die Stele, sondern "ein traureter Bauer...,der mit seinem Schwert durchstochen sei". Er ist in Haltung des "Christus in der Rast" dargestellt, einem Motiv, das dem Volk aus vielen Andachtsbildern vertraut war! Das Schicksal des Bauern ist so auf die Passion bezogen, dieser Bauer ist der wahre Nachfolger Christi auf Erden.
Es ist sicher nicht unangemessen, diesen Entwurf als Dürers mutiges Bekenntnis zur Sache der Bauern zu interpretieren, zumal Dürer sich damit auf die Seite der "Verlierer" stellte. Die wirklichen Verlierer, die nachkommenden Generationen der aufrührerischen Bauern, stieß man jedenfalls in zweifelhafte religiös gefärbte aber in Realität völlig unzivilisierte Raubkriege des Adels, die Europa lange Zeiten überziehen sollten. "

Duerer uses "eins solichen Gezeugs" in context of his own work in this matter, which - by all problems to understand the language of this time - should express a derogative meaning. In the case, that it's a real quote of Duerer, Duerer was NOT a friend of the project of a victory column in this case.
 

Bernice

Gentle Moderator Note:

Hello Huck,

I have copied your web-find into a text translator because text on this Forum should be in English:

"Albrecht Dürer worked in its last both Lebensjahren on art-theoretical problems. In addition it wrote its book concerning the proportion teachings. Still during printing it took up to it the draft of a memory column for the farmer war. To the woodcut it means: “Welicher a Victoria to put up want, therefore that it hätt the aufrührerischen farmer overcome, who would like to use itself one solichen Gezeugs darzu, as I after to be taught wants”. The column to a certain extent now consists the abandoned booty of the winners of agricultural equipment, furniture and cattle of a rural yard. But not a radiating winner crowns the Stele, but “a traureter farmer…, who durchstochen with its sword is”. It is explained in attitude of the “Christ in the rest”, to a motive, which was familiar the people from many devotion pictures! The fate of the farmer is related like that to the passion, this farmer is the true successor Christi on ground connection.
It is surely not inadequate to interpret this draft as Dürers courageous confession for the thing of the farmers particularly since Dürer placed itself thereby on the side of the “losers”. One pushed the real losers, the following generations of the aufrührerischen farmers, into doubtful religiously colored anyhow however robbery wars of the aristocracy completely uncivilized in reality, which should cover for Europe long times."


Here is a free online translator:

http://www.worldlingo.com/en/websites/url_translator.html

Just copy the text for translation then paste it there and select the languages.

Bee :)
 

kwaw

kwaw said:
...In relation to the Iris, the Roman Goddess Iris is attributed to the 25 path of Sagittarius / Temperance in the GD system (see under Roman Gods section in 777)...

As is also the Goddess Diana, which would fit in with the representation of Temperance in the Alessandro Sforza deck (of a nude female figure pouring water from a cup while resting on a deer - possibly a portrayal of Diana).

Temperance is portrayed as Iris in the Pythagorous tarot, filling her cup from the river Styx.
 

MikeH

Beanu: I haven't been able to find your website; and if I could, I still wouldn't know how to upload an image to it. I am the opposite of a computer geek. I might be able to manage Kwaw's suggestion. For now I will limit myself to other images.

Huck: I wasn't seeing Durer's drawing as a victory momument. The peasants didn't win, after all. I was seeing it as a memorial momument, in sympathy with the massacred peasants. That is what the text in which the Durer quote is embedded seems to say, too. I still can't understand the quote itself. I will work on translating it; then maybe your remark about the derogatory meaning of his words will make sense to me. If he's being derogatory toward the peasants, then I'm really off-base. (Maybe I shouldn't have brought in this work of Durer's at all; but I do really want to understand what it's about.)
 

kwaw

"In the last two years of his life Albrecht Dürer worked on theoretical problems of art. To this end he wrote his book about the theory of proportion. Still during printing he took to it the draft of a memorial column for the Peasants. The woodcut is of "A ‘Victory Welicher (what victory?)I want to put up, therefore the rebellious peasants overcome is used, who would like to use himself a ‘solich gezeugs Darzu’, as I will afterward teach. The column to a certain extent consists of the victors unclaimed booty of agricultural tools, household goods and cattle of a farm yard. But it is not a beaming winner that crowns the stele, but "a traureter Farmer..., stabbed in the back with his sword. The attitude of the farmer is that of Christ at Rest, familiar to people through many devotional pictures. This farmer is the true follower of Christ on earth, his fate likened to the Passion.
“It is certainly not unreasonable to interpret this draft as Durer's courageous commitment to the cause of the peasants, especially since by it Dürer places himself on the side of the losers. The real losers, the generations of rebellious peasants, offered up in doubtful religiously tinged but in reality totally uncivilized predatory wars of the nobility that dot Europe for a long time."



Huck said:
Duerer uses "eins solichen Gezeugs" in context of his own work in this matter, which - by all problems to understand the language of this time - should express a derogative meaning. In the case, that it's a real quote of Duerer, Duerer was NOT a friend of the project of a victory column in this case.

Hi Huck, can you explain a little on the meaning of solichen Gezeugs? It would seem that as a memorial to the peasants, it is somewhat derogatory of the winners of the unclaimed prize portrayed.
 

MikeH

Thanks for the edited translation, Kwaw. That is how I would read the "what victory," too, but I await Huck's opinion.

I have been researching goddesses related to the Temperance card, in a Renaissance context. I find three mentioned on tarot sites: Hebe, Iris, and Nike. For the discussions of Nike (Roman Victoria), do a Google search of "Nike Temperance tarot." Temperance, perhaps significantly, is winged (the only one of the three virtues to be so, unless you consider what is behind the Noblet Justice as wings). Nike and Iris both are described by classical sources as winged. Here is Aristophanes, Birds 574 (trans. O'Neill):

"Hermes is a god and has wings and flies, and so do many other gods. First of all, Nike (Victory) flies with golden wings, Eros (Love) is undoubtedly winged too, and Iris is compared by Homer to a timorous dove."

I cannot find any source saying that Hebe had wings.

Then there is the question of the pitchers. The tarot website discussion posts numerous pictures of Nike with a pitcher or cup (but not two), and they are all on pottery or bas-relief that look from the appearance to be Greek of the classical period. It was not until the late 18th century at best that such pottery was seen in Western Europe. Looking at her entry at theoi.com, I find no classical written source alluding to Nike with a pitcher or cup.

Iris is another goddess who is depicted on Greek pottery and bas-reliefs seving nectar to the gods. But again, was this pottery known during the Renaissance? I again find no references to her in classical sources (assembled on theoi.com) with pitchers or cups. I will keep looking

Hebe served nectar and ambrosia to the gods. Sometimes nectar was liquid and ambrosia food, and sometimes vice versa (see Wikipedia article on ambrosia). In any case, she had a pitcher and also cups to drink from. The most well known mention of her was in the Iliad, 4. 1 ff:

"Now the gods at the side of Zeus were sitting in council over the golden floor, and among them the goddess Hebe (Youth) poured them nectar as wine, while they in the golden drinking-cups drank to each other, gazing down on the city of the Trojans." (Lattimore trans.)

The question is, did she ever have two pitchers, pouring one into the other? Well, among the quotes at http://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Hebe.html is one from Nonnus, Dionysiaca 27, 241ff:

"All the inhabitants of Olympos were sitting with Zeus in his godwelcoming hall, gathered in full company on golden thrones. As they feasted, fairhair Ganymedes drew delicious nectar from the mixing-bowl and carried it round. For then there was no noise of Akhaian war for the Trojans as once there was, that Hebe with her lovely hair might again mix the cups, and the Trojan cupbearer might be kept apart from the immortals, so as not to hear the fate of his country." [N.B. During the Trojan War, Ganymedes became distressed, and so Zeus had Hebe temporarily resume her former station as cup-bearer of the gods.]

This text was available in the Renaissance and after. Given the prestige of the "Dionysian mysteries" at that time, it was probably consulted often. The phrase "mix the cups" suggests just such an image as is portrayed on the card. Perhaps the gods didn't drink their nectar straight, but mixed it with water, which is how the Greeks drank wine.

But Hebe didn't have wings. Well, artists in search of new subjects were known to synthesize elements from different goddesses. For example, Durer did a Nemesis standing on a globe, which is an attribute of Fortune. He combined Nemesis and Fortune. Why not combine Hebe and Iris? Or even all three, if indeed Nike was somehow known as a cup-bearer.

Unfortunately I have not been able to find any 15th-17th century visual representations of any of these goddesses, or antiquities then in Western European hands.

In any case, the goddess would seem to be the bearer of the wine of the gods, perhaps sufficiently diluted for mortals--the liquid that rejuvenates and defeats death, the previous card.
 

MikeH

If you want to see a Temperance card lady who really looks like Hebe, check out the Catelin Geoffrey tarot, 1557 Lyon. She's in the bottom row at:

http://www.poker168.com/bwg/bwg_tl6.htm

Out of context, she's just a woman pouring water into a basin. But some would know it was the goddess.

You might ask, what do these goddesses have to do with Temperance? Well, I think there is another Greek god in the card, hidden from view. He's in one of the pitchers, and his name is Oiketor, Greek for "Indweller of the Cup" (see http://www.neokoroi.org/dionysos.htm). That's one of the epithets of Dionysus, god of wine. Wine is the nectar of the humans.

If you look at a bunch of historic tarot cards, from the PMB to the Chosson-Conver, you will see that the lady's dress has a red side and a blue side. The red side is invariably with the top pitcher. That should mean that the top pitcher is red wine, the bottom one water. For some reason, the liquid coming out of the top pitcher is not red--perhaps they thought it was just too weird, red liquid flowing between the two pitchers, so they made the top pitcher the one with water, without changing the colors on the dress.

In any case, the way to practice temperance in wine-drinking was to mix it with water. With mixed wine, enemies become friends; unmixed, they turn the party into a brawl. Cartari (multiple editions from 1551 on; I ran the section on Bacchus, in the 1647 Italian edition, through a couple of translation-engines) cites numerous authors to that effect.

Montaigne ("On Drunkenness," 1580), in this spirit, quotes Lucretius on "strong wine":

When the strong wine has entered into man,
There follows straight a heaviness of limbs,
A tangle of the legs, as round he reels
A stuttering tongue, an intellect besoaked,
Eyes all aswim, and hiccups, shouts, and brawls.
(I quote from the edition illustrated by Dali, 1947, p. 96)

On the other hand, there is a positive side, its rejuvenating effect. Montaigne observes:

"Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gayety, and to old men their youth; who mollifies the passions of the soul, as iron is softened by fire; ... drunkenness being, he says, a true and certain trial of every one's nature, and, withal, fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober." (p. 101f)

Montaigne of course is from Bordeaux (or vicinity). The more austere Italians, Pico and Ficino, had their "Bacchic frenzies" (Pico, Oration) of a more intellectual nature, climbing their Platonic ladder until they were beyond this world.

Classicists also knew the parallels between the Dionysian and Christian mysteries. Jesus turned water into wine at Cana; but Dionysus did it every year at Elis, or so Pausanias said (Description of Greece 6.26.1-2 , at http://www.theoi.com/Cult/DionysosCult.html). The priests would fill vats with water, seal them in front of everyone, and the next morning break the seals to release the most delicious wine. Moreover, the mysteries at Eleusis claimed for their initiates the certainty of eternal life. Might the secret rites have included the bread of Triptolemus dipped in the water-diluted wine of Dionysus? Of course the Renaissance knew such rites, whatever they were, to be delusions. But they added an erudite subtext to the Christian mystery of the Eucharist. They also provided a concrete connection between the renewal in Christ and the rejuvenating effect of wine--and the virtue of Temperance. The failure to practice this virtue in fact leads to enslavement by "demon rum," one version of the Devil of Card 15.
 

Bernice

What a very apt representation of Temperance. Stripped of (modern day) esoterica, it portrays that period of time & place beautifully. And I see the Bacchus-Devil also appears in the Tarot Flammond :)

Thank you MikeH for that thoughtful and well researched information, I shall never look at Temperance in the same way again!

Bee :)