edited for brevity
pan said:
I think that the tarot as it existed previous to
the roman influence was at least as complex and enumerated as the deck that we ended up with...plus at least two cards.
....
People reading tarot get books that talk about
meanings of specific cards. Taken at that bit level, its easy to get confused. But a circle is
perfected. If its out of balance, you feel the tilt. When you look at the larger pattern (which most people don't seem to be capable of doing) Theres no way for the circles to work much any other way. You could pull a few things...you could
say pull numeric cards and find a balance point,
but again, it would take an eye for the whole pattern to do that. When people make changes to the tarot without an eye for the whole pattern,
it looks...off kilt...out of whack.
....
In this case, my assertion is that
Tarot is at least 30 thousand years old. Thats
a wild assertion considering the party line that
its only 600. Thats two different versions of history. Which one is correct? Of course as a single lone voice speaking only from the truth
of what more or less amounts to personal insight,
the "proofs" are stacked against me...pre- feudal means the tribal cultures which
existed before the big adventures of wars became
a plague on the planet. There was a time, believe
it or not, when humans were scarce enough that
they just competed with nature and not so much with each other.
....
yes, the question of what is the true identity of tarot, and how far back can anything resembling that identity go? and the answer is...as far as
we can Proove, the roman era of book burnings. But
then again, so what? it was after all the roman era of book burnings.
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Hi Pan,
let me summarize a little bit, what you said.
You say, there is something similar to Tarot, something even more complex as the medieval Tarot and that's the REAL TAROT, what is presented in RENAISSANCE Tarot. This real object is displeased with the version of RENAISSANCE Tarot, but was more satisfied, when the RENAISANCE TAROT not only had 5x14 cards, but 4x14+22. This REAL TAROT might have been even 30 000 years old, at least it have been around 400 AD, when CFhristian burnt books.
I do interprete your words this way, if I was wrong in my summarization, please tell me.
I agree with you. I wouldn't call the object "TAROT", as Tarot seems to be a name developed rather lately, but that's only word definition.
There was something, it was similar to that, what later was called Tarot and cause that similarity one might call it Tarot. It's okay to act so, but in communication it might drive people crazy, when a term - in this case "Tarot" - is not specified to that
use one is interested to talk about. Nobody is interested to become crazy, so let's define "Renn. Tarot" for Renaissance-Tarot and "Real Tarot" for that, what has been before and was similar to it., perhaps even more complex.
Renaissance generally meant "remember that, what was before the book burning", which - of course - was not only book-burning, but the wandering of the nations also, which caused, that the Western Roman Empire broke down in great dimensions, people starting to forget how to write and to read and also, how to build houses with stones and to organize greater cities.
Renaissance was the phase of recovery of this blow to culture and people like Petrarca and Bocacchio essentially "remembered", that there was a culture before and that it might have some value to know about the past. This started "Renaissance", book-gathering, libraries, finally progress in book-printing, new arts, remembering of the earlier gods and systems, a lot of things.
In this struggle of "remembering" the old mystical systems also reappeared and were reinterpreted in a new way. One of the "reinterpretations" was the Tarot.
Of course, naturally, the early Tarot (Renn-Tarot) missed the earlier elegance and complexity of the earlier Real Tarot (as defined above).
So one has to understand the development of Renn-Tarot in itself, its motifs, its system just by that, what it was, a playing card riddle and experiment, innocent and without too big intentions, a very special case of "remembering" just by playing in various steps.
A real phenomen and the dimensions of this phenomen are totally unexplored, cause researchers already have serious troubles to understand the first part of it, and that's how Renn.-Tarot really turned to new life and that was, as we can perceive it now, in stages of Imperatori-decks, Chess-Tarots, 5x14-decks, Boiardo-poems etc.. Research had been fixed at an easy modell of remembering ...like, there was a text or a tradition, which was complete and that gave base to the development of Tarot without great switches.
"The original had 22 trumps" was the exspectation of them and that idea was simply too stupid, the hope, that it happened "easy", they didn't like to expand their mind too much about this question.
Renn. Tarot in all his various forms couldn't and doesn't touch any integrity of earlier and more complex systems - how could it. These systems existed before and history can't be changed really, only the perception of it can be changed (and this is often done).
If your inner eye sees there wheels turning or whatever picture your mind prefers, that's "remembering". Remembering the real system.
The "Real System" had something to do with "Memory culture" and mankind had a long phase, when written culture wasn't implanted, and memory culture had it's high time. "Writing and reading" attacked memory culture, and that attack was already successful in a high degree in Roman time and started to win already in Greek times (Socrates already was a man between memory culture and writing culture), Hesiod was the (Greek) prototype of memory culture. Before Hesiod not much written reports exist (naturally).
We should realize, that we are the real biological descendants of these "memory culture persons", we really "remember" them, at least their DNS, but perhaps even their minds, not only by the technique of the writing culture. From me to Hesiod are estimated only around 80-90 generations. And memory culture was a factor perhaps more than 80-90 generations ...
Of course, remembering is not always "in" ... so most people don't. But some see wheels or other objects, in dreams, visions, etc...
Then they see Tarot and hear some theories ... then they think, they've found. But the theories are full of errors, of course, cause the authors of their books also didn't find the real base and blubber about various things but not reality. So a deep forest started to exist talking of "Tarot" without knowing, what they're really talking of. Phantasies, short-sighted ideals ... and a deep-rooted desire to understand the discrepance and confusion with a lot of half-way solutions.
Well, it's time to start to think a little more precise. Read trionfi.com, it's a fair try to look into the face of desillusion.
This medieval Tarot only hides the real object, which we perhaps better do not call "Real Tarot" just not to confuse anybody, cause the aim is just only "remember correctly", meeting perhaps a little bit of "Pan", old farmer's identity.