Tarot of Marseilles: the cultural & decorative aspects of its pip cards

I've been thinking a lot about the original question that started this thread, long before I joined the forum. Why do some people find such meaning, depth and beauty in the Tarot de Marseille (whether or not they also love other tarot decks), while others find it ugly and impossible to interpret? I've been thinking about it because although I have been reading the tarot for 7 years, I have only started discovering the Tarot de Marseille now.

But when I did take a closer look, it appealed to me immediately. Not that I can interpret it hey presto like that, but the images, the illustrations, those lovely swirling floral pips, the straight batons and the curved swords, those vivid expressions on the characters' faces, all spoke to me. To others, often, though not exclusively, outside Europe, they do not. Why? For me the question is not - why do people like the Marseille, but rather, how can they not?

Much of the reason, I think, lies in how our eye is trained. I am familiar with woodcuts, so the style of the courts and majors does not grate with me. I find a reassuring familiarity in these figures, variations of thousands of illustrations, engravings, eaux-fortes, carvings and bas-reliefs that have been around in my culture for over a thousand years. Several fairy tale book when I was a child were illustrated with woodcuts. Also, French and Belgian comic strips are not so far removed, in style, from the figures of the Tarot de Marseille, so if you grew up on Asterix and Lucky Luke, the figures (despite being very different from Asterix!!) feel comfortable. In the same way, when I first looked through the Tarot of Prague, I was immediately comfortable with it, although I have never been to Prague, because my eye is familiar with European art and architecture, as my mind is familiar with its history and its esoteric traditions.

I think that people who are drawn to other types of tarot when they start have had their eye trained in different ways - American-type comic strips, Walt Disney, more flowery-style illustrations of fairy tale books, etc. To me, many of the Tarot decks produced that are pronounced beautiful by some, look cartoony and kitsch, because my eye was not trained to such styles of drawing. Probably our children will be drawn to Pokemon and Manga-style tarot!

As for non-figurative pips, our ancient churches are decorated with a wealth of non-figurative carving, much of it deeply symbolic (including pagan, shock horror!). And also, as a child, I used to spend hours looking at the intricate floral wallpaper in the room I shared with my sister, imagining characters and stories, and following thoughts that developed from petals and stalks.

Muslim art is very familiar with those ideas: though very attractive, it is not easy to "read" without some kind of initiation. Patterns aren't just thrown together, they mean something. What? Oh no, not fixed meanings, not the Hadiths of the Prophet - it is a whole dynamic and supple way of looking at the world. Like the pips, on the Tarot de Marseille...

I believe that many people simply don't have the eye training to enjoy a Marseille. They can acquire such training if they want to (just as we can all acquire a training for looking at Rembrandt or Giotto), though, of course, there is nothing wrong in not wanting to. And, equally true, even with training, some things simply won't appeal. Nothing wrong with that - it's then a matter of taste. But I think that many people, once their eye becomes accustomed to its style, do enjoy - many even fall in love with - the Tarot de Marseille, and that wherever they come from, and whether their comics were Spiderman, Asterix or Japanese Manga.

Helvetica, I was trying to pick some lines of your post so as to quote them, but I soon discovered I wanted to quote ALL of it.

I think you are entirely right. Being European, raised among all the kind of old imagery you refer to, already makes me more prone to appreciate the Marseilles style; on top of that, I am Portuguese, and our late medieval and renaissance art, a lot like the Spanish, is full of Muslim influences and patterns. Our understanding of the Italian decorative patterns in Renaissance art was a bit superficial, and even that resulted in the use and repetition of merely ornamental heraldic motifs, carved in our cloisters and temple facades a bit everywhere; they are composed of swords, shields, cups, clubs, medallions, flowers, schematic fauna and flora, laces and chandeliers, etc. Not only we are used to see it, but it also touches us as historical memorabilia, with the value than antiquity gives to even the most common things, and we feel must preserve them as our past and our heritage. The beauty of a medieval engraving, even if far from a Renaissance painting (or, in another register, an artistic illustration for a fairytale), is not only aesthetic, but also emotional. And who can convince a mother that her son is not the prettiest? Love is not rational, and most times it can’t even be justified or explained.

Now, this is for Kissa: oh please, please, open a thread so we can work on this sentence of yours: “The tradition is so old, the images and titles don't refer to anything we meet in our daily life any longer. These readers like to deny their hearts the right to dive into the wonderful global monicultural societey we are living in.” I would love to participate in actually finding “new” archetypes and modern-day references for each card… at least for the Majors.

Silvia

smleite said:

I am Portuguese, and our late medieval and renaissance art, a lot like the Spanish, is full of Muslim influences and patterns... The beauty of a medieval engraving, even if far from a Renaissance painting (or, in another register, an artistic illustration for a fairytale), is not only aesthetic, but also emotional. And who can convince a mother that her son is not the prettiest? Love is not rational, and most times it can’t even be justified or explained.

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Like you, I wanted to quote the full post, Silvia!

It's been a while since I visited your beautiful city, but I remember those decorations you speak of, and the Moorish influence. Indeed, they are very striking in some motifs, almost like calligraphy.

Yes, it's true, all these things surrounding us, all these things we discover as we grow up, enter our hearts, not just our eyes, and work their way into our unconscious, into our world view. But I passionately believe that others, who have not grown up so surrounded, can learn to love and appreciate such art -and the Tarot de Marseille. Indeed some might be naturally drawn to it, for some mysterious but absolutely right (in the sense of "timely") reason, just as we often fall in love for mysterious reasons.

After all, what do I know of the muslim world? Yet when I first saw the mosque decorations, I felt so *expanded*, as though the world had broken wide open to reaveal something new to me, some fantastic multiplication of energy and passion I never knew about - as indeed it had. I didn't have a clue what these motifs meant, but their effect on me- aesthetically, emotionally, spiritually - has remained to this day (since then, I have read up a bit on them, though for lack of Arabic, I miss out on a lot, since many of the motifs are mixed organically with calligraphy). For other forms of art, as I said in my last post, it took time to get used to them (e.g. a zen garden; when I first saw one, I thought - how ugly and bare! Now, I think - how peaceful and blessedly empty).

smleite said:

Now, this is for Kissa: oh please, please, open a thread so we can work on this sentence of yours: “The tradition is so old, the images and titles don't refer to anything we meet in our daily life any longer. These readers like to deny their hearts the right to dive into the wonderful global monicultural societey we are living in.” I would love to participate in actually finding “new” archetypes and modern-day references for each card… at least for the Majors.

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I'll second that. Why don't we just ask Kissa if we can use her sentence and start the thread ourselves?

All these discussions are making me go through my Marseille over and over - I guess it's a good way to learn!

Helvetica, we still have another thing to ponder on: the idea that “decoration” is of minor importance when compared to the “major” artistic motifs is exclusively a Western prejudice. Ornamentation is NOT minor in Eastern and Muslim art; and in Muslim art, ornamentation is not even subordinated to major motifs. Who would a Muslim understand the pips, in this sense? Well, they don’t even accept the representation of the Human body, or of animals (though their art has many times ignored this doctrinal obstacle, eh eh). So, in their viewpoint, the minors are probably “majors”…

Silvia

smleite said:

Helvetica, we still have another thing to ponder on: the idea that “decoration” is of minor importance when compared to the “major” artistic motifs is exclusively a Western prejudice. Ornamentation is NOT minor in Eastern and Muslim art; and in Muslim art, ornamentation is not even subordinated to major motifs. Who would a Muslim understand the pips, in this sense? Well, they don’t even accept the representation of the Human body, or of animals (though their art has many times ignored this doctrinal obstacle, eh eh). So, in their viewpoint, the minors are probably “majors”…

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That is so spot on! Like the Western prejudice against "crafts" - decorative arts, as opposed to fine arts. In English Cathedrals, you often get floral and tree motifs, sometimes with a face in the middle, sometimes not - but all are related to the Green Man, a very ancient motif/figure/legend that predates Christianity by some millenia. Once, our ancestors could read them like a book.

In fact, a mosque is a book. It's quite extraordinary to behold.

And if we loop left after the mosque, following the meandering trail of Le Mat (the Fool), we take a small trip across the Mediterranean to Marseille, which was founded as a port town by the Greeks and continues as a major port to this day. At the time when the first so-called "Tarot de Marseille" was cut, Southern and Northern French, Italian, but also Moorish influence, as well as all the heritage of the ancient world, would have been swimming around Marseille for centuries. It's very fitting that this form of Tarot, whose exact origin is lost, but which grew organically in France out of centuries of card playing and religious and esoteric iconography that was common in Europe at this time (in part not European in origin) should have been given the name of that most cosmopolitan of cities.

There's something else that is distinctive about the Tarot de Marseille, it seems to me: it is very much a deck for USE, for the back pocket, for a game between friends, as well as for divination or study, or just because the cards are friendly. Everyman's deck - democratic, as Diana wrote. And Everyman would have been able to understand much of the symbols and motifs. The suits themselves were easily recognisable for medieval and early modern Everyman: e.g. cups were both the Cup of Christ's blood, the Holy Grail of the Romances, and the cup of friendship, passed round at corporation banquet. They represent both the sacred and the mundane side of the emotions (and btw, to come back to your idea that for Muslims, minors would be majors, I really don't think our forefathers would have considered an image of the Grail as Minor!).

Today, though we are used to seeing the motifs because we find similar ones in all our churches, bas-reliefs, indeed all our arts from the most elaborate to the most simple folk art, we have lost much of the direct line to their more esoteric meanings, and have to relearn them - though I don't think one has to be a historian to undersand the basic meaning of a sword or a gold coin! And so this is where the fantastic gift of imagination comes in, which probably was always used with these pip cards, depending on the creativity, or not, of the reader. More than any other cards I've worked with I have to stretch my imaginative faculties when looking at those pip cards (and I've only just started, so I'm keeping those flights of fancy to myself ) .

Helvetica and smleite (and others, of course):

You may be interested in going over to Alain Bocher's web-site:

http://alain.bocher.chez.tiscali.fr/

Click on: "Calligraphe".

Moongold said:

the thread which is just becoming very interesting in the discussion between Helvetica and smleite regarding the decoration in the Marseilles and its connections to the influences of Islamic art.

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Have to jump in to say that I was finding that discussion very interesting too. A real contribution to this whole debate. I honestly got a shock when I first came here to Prague and began to see imagery that I hadn't seen in the UK - much of that imagery is of course very closely connected to that on the Marseille. It may sound dumb, but I really hadn't quite grasped the sheer importance of visual imagery in the medieval and renaissance until I came here (bear in mind that much church imagery in the UK was destroyed in the time of Cromwell, so although it's still there, it isn't so all-pervasive as it is here.) Of course I'd been in other countries, but not actively looking for symbols and images, as I was here.

I would LOVE to hear more about Islamic imagery in this context. I know a little, but very little (I've never lived in a country that has much Islamic imagery, and I've never actively studied it). The remark that "a mosque is a book" in really very striking, and I hope this conversation can carry on - i, for one, am learning from it.

Edited to say - sorry, I'm in the middle of something else too, so that post is a bit incoherent. What I mean essentially, is that while I feel my knowledge of early visual/pictorial images has increased hugely over the last few years, this whole discussion of DECORATION, rather than pictorial imagery, is rather different, and is really making me think.

baba-prague said:

this whole discussion of DECORATION, rather than pictorial imagery, is rather different, and is really making me think.

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Ah, but you see, in cultures where there is no dominance of pictorial art (the islamic world, China with its extraordinary vases), non-figurative art is no more decoration than figurative art is decoration here. It is what art is. A Song Dynasty jade cup or the calligraphic miracle of a Najaf mosque can be appreciated by the eye as an object of beauty, read like a book, and revered as an object of intrinsic meaning. That's my only parallel with the Tarot of Marseille: I don't know enough about either to be able to point out the exact influence of classic islamic art on the Tarot of Marseille - but given the influence of muslim culture in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, and in Marseille to this day, I would bet that there are at least recognisable traces of it.

This damning of the "decorative" is relatively recent. Until self-appointed learned men fixed the Western canon and created fine arts faculties in the 19th century, non-figurative art, as practised by great master carvers or chalice-makers, was as "high brow" (a term invented by the Victorians) as figurative art. Even painters and sculptors made still lives and memento mori (not all figurative, although you evoke a wonderful figurative example in the Prague Tarot, baba), alongside portraits, battle scenes and dramatic reconstructions of Judith cutting Holophernes' head. Throughout the Middle Ages there was no difference in status between a master carver and a master painter, and the gap widened very slowly between the Renaissance and Ruskin.

The impressionists, who broke with the Academy of their day, chose some non-figurative subjects - think of Monet's waterlilies and bales of hay - and since the 1930s, few would-be serious fine artists opt for a figurative art. But the artists and critics of the mid-late 20th century told us that "art is not decoration" and rejected anything that reminded them of decoration (I suppose that in the age of Auschwitz it was difficult to justify an art that could be mistaken as light). Matisse is still suspect because a few critics deemed him too frivolous.

At the same time many people started to look for reassurance in the familiar human figures; and the great 20th century pop arts of comic strips and animation were created, giving birth to an entirely new visual sensibility.

Between these two - the high art and the pop art - non-figurative traditional art in the shape of stylised objects and nature, was pushed into the outer darkness of decoration, children's bedrooms and old ladies' front rooms. Meaning was to be sought elsewhere than in elegants swirls, flowering batons and overflowing cups, and the art was debased, lost its great masters - and the king critics hate it. It didn't have to be like that: great calligraphers and painters like Hassan Massoudy have successfully ejuvenated islamic calligraphy.

---Diana: I saw Bocher's site, fantastic - I see he his trying to do the same thing for our art as Massoudy, and inspired both by Islamic and European non-figurative art and calligraphy.

Baba, you mentioned the wealth of medieval and early modern symbols, motifs and "signposts" (for want of a better word) you found in Prague. Do you think they are merely decoration? - no, of course you don't (I have your deck, so I know! -oh, I can't wait to visit Prague!). I think there was a time in Europe when it made NO SENSE to divide the art, symbols and signs made with figures, and those made without. When the culture itself was saturated with both, when both were at the same time high art, decorative, bearers of a message, and - at their most spiritual - an intensely personal journey for the viewer. I know I have that experience when I see a Song dynasty jade cup or visit a mosque -and I don't even understand the language! - but also when I enter an English cathedral and notice, tucked between the ceiling and a pillar, a discreet may wreath, a stone tree, or the stylised figure of a green man peaking out of his elaborate foliage. Cromwell's men did their worst with the stained glass windows, so England lost many a Grail and St George killing the Dragon, but the green men they left alone, for some reason. Too modest? I don't know. The first time I saw a Tarot de Marseille I was reminded of the green man, and his abundance of leaves, trees and fruit (very often you don't even see the green man, you just have to guess him among the leaves).

This ramble has something to do with the Tarot de Marseille, I hope And with why people are drawn to it...(or at least me)

Helvetica said:

Baba, you mentioned the wealth of medieval and early modern symbols, motifs and "signposts" (for want of a better word) you found in Prague. Do you think they are merely decoration? - no, of course you don't (I have your deck, so I know! -oh, I can't wait to visit Prague!). I think there was a time in Europe when it made NO SENSE to divide the art, symbols and signs made with figures, and those made without.

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I'd agree with that, and also that dismissal of "mere" decoration is a rather modern trait. However, I don't see everything visual as being symbolic or significant (except in a very strict semiotic sense, which would say that everything is a sign). Some elements are obviously there to create a certain visual pattern or effect (and this can of course include pictorial elements) and others are there in order to signify something particular. There is a danger of confusing these of course ;-) (no, no, I am NOT saying anything about the Marseille specifically).

I find it amusing and a little sad sometimes to walk past tourists who are looking at a statue and remarking on it with absolutely NO knowledge of what it was actually intended to signify. I once sat in a strange talk given by someone who was studying gender in painting and she was describing the elements that women in varioius medieval paintings were holding - seemingly with no awareness that what she was seeing were conventionalised attributes with a very specific meaning - not some sort of arbitrary pictorial bits and pieces. We've spent quite a lot of time here trying to decipher the various depictions of, for instance, the virtues. The way in which they are shown, and the attributes they are shown with, change quite a lot over time.

So, no, of course I don't dismiss decoration, and what I do find interesting is the way in which it began to be seriously discussed here - that discussion would be interesting to pursue.

Imagine a world in which there were so few images, they could only be found in some very specific places in churches and cloisters, or in facades and interiors of noble and rich houses. Imagine almost no image in the streets, with the exception of maybe a couple of tavern ads. Image that almost no household included a book, or even a piece of paper (a piece of parchment, in fact) and almost no one could read or write. An illuminated manuscript was a rare and oh-so-expensive issue… and who could commit a real painting, even to a lesser, local master? No TV, no magazines, no commercials. NOTHING! Even the use of colour in clothing was scarce, and usually reserved to special occasions. Imagine the power and impact an image held, in this world. Images composed a vocabulary, and it was always a meaningful one; no, they were no mere visual signs. In a society where gold is rare and precious, would you use your piece in a reckless and wasteful manner? Images were significant, and the content of their messages was important and powerful. They were mainly used to propagate all kinds of doctrinal instructions and teachings.

On the other hand, today we are bombed with tons and tons of visual information. There is imagery all over, colours and shapes and letters that are meaningful to you, and you absorb all this all day, every day of your life. And most of it means nothing at all, is just visual rubbish, saturating your eyes and your mind. Your brain must discard and ignore most of it, selecting only a part, or you wouldn’t be able to function. This means that you are not sensitive to most of it any more, the same way a doctor can’t be sensitive to all the pain around him. And an object must be really, really appellative to catch your eye – that is what merchandising is all about. A Tarot deck also. It must be more colourful, more beautiful, more detailed, more interesting visually, them the rest. I think we need to beard this in mind (our mind’s and our environment’s evolution) in order to understand ancient and modern decks.