CHESS and Tarot?

pan said:

thanks huck, that was fascinating.
i like the way that the chess/tarot correspondence
is worked out.

Click to expand...

It isn't ready ... other evidence will turn out. First they played chess, then cards ... Chess could influence cards, not vice versa. Chess was more or less established.
Filippo played Chess and had a Chess club at his court in 1427. Niccolo III d'Este prefered Chess.

some days its best to shake hands, eat chocolate cake, and agree to disagree.

tarot started as humans externalized their ideas
through images. This became quickly more complex
and evolved far faster than phonetic language
for a variety of reasons. Hieroglyphic symbols
are by virtue of existing outside of us and being somewhat temporally permanent capable of holding
quite simply more "bits" of information than lingua code. Chess started as each individual on
two sides of a table trying to express themselves
manipulating physical external symbols. Chess and Tarot can thus be seen as existing as two primary and early branches of externalized physical symbolic discourse. A few generations go by, and
the chess objects become codified into a game as
the tarot image method becomes the communication
tool.

If you believe that tarot started in the 14th century, then of course chess predates that.
Since i know better, things are different from my perspective.

the following is from a site i found on yahoo...
http://www.chessvariants.com/historic.dir/chaturanga.html




Chaturanga

Scientists generally assume that Chaturanga, played in India, in or before the 7th
century after Christ, is the oldest known form of chess. Resemblances, both with
the current chess, and with Chinese chess are remarkable. The rules below are after
Murray and Gollon.
Moves of pieces

The king moves as usual king, but additionally has the right to make one
knight-move during the game, provided that he hasn't been checked before he
makes his knight-move. Castling doesn't exist.

The counsellor moves one square diagonally.

The elephant moves two squares diagonally, but may jump the intervening square.

The knight moves as a usual knight.

The rook or chariot moves as usual rook.

The pawn or soldier moves and takes as a usual pawn, but may not make a double step on its first move.

Promotion

Pawns can promote when they arrive at the last rank of the board, but only to the type of piece that was on the
promotion-square in the opening setup, e.g., a white pawn that moves to b8 can only promote to a knight. Additionally,
promotion is only possible when the player already lost a piece of the type, so the pawn moving to b8 will only promote
to a knight, when the white player already lost a knight during the game. A consequence is that pawns never promote
on e1 or d8.

Mate and stalemate

Object of the game is to mate the opponents king. The player that stalemates its opponent loses the game.

Play It!

Use Zillions of Games to play this game! If you have Zillions of Games installed, you can download this game and play it.

another take on this

Mark Filipas, in his eBook Alphabetic Masquerade(available at tarot.com), suggests that chess is symbolized in the Major Arcana as follows...

I - the game of chess(board usually shown with the magician)
III - the Queen
IV - the King
V - 2 Bishops
VII - 2 War Horses
XII - Checkmate or capture
XVIII - 2 Rooks or Castles(either side of the moon)
XX - a pawn that has reached the other side
XXI - the chess player

The following cards usually have two figures which are the pawns:
XVI - 2 Pawns
VI - 2 Pawns
XV - 2 Pawns
XIX - 2 Pawns

You generally have to use a Marseilles deck in order to find these symbols but it's strange how it makes sense.

of the explanations for correspondence we have perused so far, the one offered by ummm...
whoever it was...with the site...
seemed to me to be the best.

thanks for throwing more wood on the fire tho...

it was huck.

http://geocities.com/autorbis/VMnew.html

pan said:

it was huck.

http://geocities.com/autorbis/VMnew.html

Click to expand...

The article at the URL is from Lothar using as publishing name autorbis.
He discusses his various theories about the origin of Tarot only at LTarot.

http://geocities.com/autorbis/LTarot.html

But it might be recommended to read a little bit at

http://trionfi.com

first. In the case that I interpreted him too personally, so this was on the base of various private exchanges we had in the past.

trionfi.com is done by various researchers, I've chosen the function to do a little bit "public relation" that the project becomes known at the outside, also I do a little bit about German playing cards.

http://geocities.com/tarocchi7/info.html

Other researchers, which are interested to join their energies with ours, are invited.
There are lots of open projects. The idea of the group is to build up a solide base for all theories about the origin of Tarot. Documentary evidence, if necessary and possible, pictures of decks and persons, biographies of related persons, other mterial to Italy in 15th century, when necessary.
Theories and projectures, when it becomes necessary to interprete existent contradictions in the documents or to existing theories, which had their value in the past but lost their value according new insights.
The main engagement is for the 5x14-theory

http://geocities.com/autorbis/pbm14new.html

which states, that there is NO reason to assume, that the Tarot started with 22 trumps, but various reasons to assume, that there once was a 5x14-state, which knew only 14 "special cards". Compare also:

http://trionfi.com/01/e/r71/

especially document 16.

Open discussion is desired at LTarot, conflicts in opinion or theory are not regarded as problem - but just as energies, which naturally accompany the process of development in "real research".

the axoim that these decks are more original
forms of tarot decks seems unfounded to me.
I understand that these decks existed, and i
appreciate that a timeline can be created in
which changes in the decks can be observed over
time, until we arrive at the decks we are more familiar with.

I understand and appreciate that scholarship,
and i think it is very valuable to have somebody around who can point to that stuff.

It is still my position that what is being
viewed as the evolution of Tarot is a very small
chapter in the total history, and that the driving
force most primary behind that evolutionary sequence was in fact the obvious holes created
by omissions.

I have noticed that this conversation seems to have bled over into chess.

I hope that we can return this thread back to its rightful topic.

on that note, it seems that we have a couple of
versions of chess to tarot correspondences, and,
i would like to point out that the one i favor
right now is the one you provided.

I think chess is post feudal and tarot prefeudal,
at least at the level of development that we end
up with. Of course, some people would argue and i might be one of them that the feudal influence on tarot is precisely the most markedly cancerous
influence, but i think the agrarian pre feudal spirituality still shines through.

Originally posted by pan
the axoim that these decks are more original
forms of tarot decks seems unfounded to me.
I understand that these decks existed, and i
appreciate that a timeline can be created in
which changes in the decks can be observed over
time, until we arrive at the decks we are more familiar with.


**** Well, any deck is "original" that, what it is and had been in time. Some were earlier, some were later. Some, which are later, has similarities with that, which are earlier, then we can speak of a special relation, which we might express with "more original than ..." but that's just language, actually there is only history or the "story of the decks" and no axiom. Just our trial to understand, what had happened.


I understand and appreciate that scholarship,
and i think it is very valuable to have somebody around who can point to that stuff.

It is still my position that what is being
viewed as the evolution of Tarot is a very small
chapter in the total history,

**** I agree

and that the driving
force most primary behind that evolutionary sequence was in fact the obvious holes created
by omissions.

**** ..."holes created by omissions". ...in the case I understand you correctly, then you take a position like "the kids were already there, before the parents went to bed." Alright, somehow it's true. All what we know about DNS ... it seems, when the potential is there, then it somehow exists. The seed of a tree has the idea to become a tree and somehow the tree is already there, before it started to grow, anybody with someexperience knows that feeling and view .. when I've the idea to build a house, it's only an idea, but if I'm enduring in my plan, then it realizes.

Well, that are processes inside actual history, which is a play between past-now-future. But history, when it had happened, is understood as "already done choice out of many possibilities" - which not all became true and "history". That's "our" common time-modell - there are others, of course. But in the wish to understand our partners in communication and to be understood, we should tell them, what modell we're using in the moment.


I have noticed that this conversation seems to have bled over into chess.

I hope that we can return this thread back to its rightful topic.


*** What - in your opinion - is the "rightful topic"?


on that note, it seems that we have a couple of
versions of chess to tarot correspondences, and,
i would like to point out that the one i favor
right now is the one you provided.

I think chess is post feudal and tarot prefeudal,
at least at the level of development that we end
up with.

*** The easiest way to change to that object what is "prefeudal" and legitimately called "Tarot" would be to call it by name, point to the relevant time-space-context and say, there it is. Then we all can enjoy its existence. What is it?


Of course, some people would argue and i might be one of them that the feudal influence on tarot is precisely the most markedly cancerous
influence, but i think the agrarian pre feudal spirituality still shines through.

*** The Pawn's Tarot?

***Joke aside, most people were farmers in earlier times, also at the time, when Tarot was generated. Why not some agrarian spirituality ... most motifs of Tarot are much older than the Tarot, nobody has doubts about that. But the complete composition ... or anything, what is similar, that's the thing, which is searched for.

of the decks" and no axiom. Just our trial to understand, what had happened.
---------
right. and in the end, we can only ever know
some small part of what actually happened, and in
the end, even the best "proofs" and so forth are
just points in time where somebody did or said or wrote something and thus are themselves conjectural.
---------
**** I agree
---------
okay, i'd like some elaboration on that.
if you agree as i understand that you are that
the party mainline story is only one fraction of the total history of tarot, then what do you see
as the potential other parts of that story?
----------

created
by omissions.

--------
thats all very zen and holistic of you, and thats one way to understand part of what happened, but
my position is a bit more outlandish than that.
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.
To me, when i think of tarot, i see three wheels
spinning in my mind, and those wheels could not be
complete without the rest of the deck. If somebody were to ommit a card, i would in some alternate universe come to tarot in ignorance of it and experience that gap in the pattern.

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.
------------


choice out of many possibilities" - which not all became true and "history". That's
"our" common time-modell - there are others, of course. But in the wish to
understand our partners in communication and to be understood, we should tell
them, what modell we're using in the moment.
----------
I'm not sure how i have failed to be explicit in
terms of what model i am using. When we say the word "history" most people seem to think thats
a solid tangible thing. They forget that politics
is constantly rewriting revisionist histories.
That can make determining the truth value of a
given version of history very difficult to determine. 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...if we choose
to read the proofs in a certain way. But then again, just because we know a deck of cards x and a deck of cards y and another deck of cards z existed in time frames x,y,and z, that does not
logically prohibit time frames a and b from having
decks that we don't have record of. The thing is,
lack of a record is not proof. Mere absence of proof is not itself proof to the inverse. The question then becomes, why make the assumption?
Why exclude, irrationally, the possibility that
there are tarot time frames a and b? Unless there is some other motivation...which there seems to
be quite clearly.
---------

*** What - in your opinion - is the "rightful topic"?
-----
CHESS??
---------



*** The easiest way to change to that object what is "prefeudal" and legitimately
called "Tarot" would be to call it by name, point to the relevant time-space-context
and say, there it is. Then we all can enjoy its existence. What is it?
--------
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.
---------


*** The Pawn's Tarot?
----------
ha ha
--------
***Joke aside, most people were farmers in earlier times, also at the time, when
Tarot was generated. Why not some agrarian spirituality ... most motifs of Tarot are
much older than the Tarot, nobody has doubts about that. But the complete
composition ... or anything, what is similar, that's the thing, which is searched for.
------
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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