Cards as "hieroglyphs"

John Meador

Plutarch

Ross G Caldwell said:
Thoth in medieval literature
Hermes-Mercury-Woden-Thoth-Moses...

Nothing about Moses-Thoth-Mercury-Hermes-Woden inventing games here though. Relation to Tarot's invention? No. Interesting in its own right? Certainly. But even Bernardino and the following preachers of the Diabolique Liturgy didn't mention such conflations. They could not have been common knowledge, but they might have been uncommon knowledge.
Ross

Perhaps not as inventor per se but surely associated with games as such?:
https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2005-August/019153.html

-John
 

kwaw

John Meador said:
Perhaps not as inventor per se but surely associated with games as such?:
https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2005-August/019153.html

-John

The question is more of when the association with games was known/made in the latin speaking west, Hincmar shows that is was known among some circles at least as early as the 9th century, but it did not become a widespread notion till popularised following Ficino's translation of Plato; it may well have been known amongst erudite circles of the time, including we may speculate those of the North Italian courts in which the tarot appeared, with their population of greek teachers, translators and other immigrants and especially following the controversy of Bruni's translation of Phaedrus, discussed as much at the time for what it did not include as for what it did. A controversy instigated and stoked by Trebizond (who was later to translate Eusebius with its Thoth references). However I know of no evidence of such. Though I think it fair to suspect Bruni at least knew the parts he cared not to translate for whatever reason, and was also known to others such as Trebizond who took delight in pointing out the deficiencies and fragmentary nature of Bruni's translation.
 

Ross G Caldwell

John Meador said:
Perhaps not as inventor per se but surely associated with games as such?:
https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2005-August/019153.html

-John

Not as inventor, yes. So anyone reading this story in Plutarch would think of it as a quaint story, and would have no reason to associate the invention of the game with Mercury.

I found that Senet in Egyptian history kind of followed the trajectory of Tarot in European history - going from a game to an allegory to a complex system of correspondences - while remaining a game the whole time (and never turning into, say, merely an abacus or a calendar). Whoever invented it, invented "better than they knew."

Ross
 

John Meador

Ross G Caldwell said:
Not as inventor, yes. So anyone reading this story in Plutarch would think of it as a quaint story, and would have no reason to associate the invention of the game with Mercury.
Ross

Hi Ross
I was nursing the improbable fancy that Plutarch's story of Thoth gaming the moon out of 5 days had perhaps some synechdoche with the rogue children of Luna/Medieval Housebook's bagatto and his dice. Hermes as thief from Apollo and con of the moon...

-John
 

Ross G Caldwell

John Meador said:
Hi Ross
I was nursing the improbable fancy that Plutarch's story of Thoth gaming the moon out of 5 days had perhaps some synechdoche with the rogue children of Luna/Medieval Housebook's bagatto and his dice. Hermes as thief from Apollo and con of the moon...

-John

Nice. Why not write it up as if a morality on the cards? Our discursive historicizing is not the only way - and not the most traditional way - to make ideas out of these things. :) (your whole morality would be nice, if you have one - there aren't many)

(but of course if we're trying to do history in the modern sense, being careful to contextualize, working like an archaeologist or someone using a microscopic tweezer at the end of electronically fitted gloves, then I'd say it's highly improbable as a theory of the then and there)

Ross
 

John Meador

Ross G Caldwell said:
Nice. Why not write it up as if a morality on the cards? Our discursive historicizing is not the only way - and not the most traditional way - to make ideas out of these things. :) (your whole morality would be nice, if you have one - there aren't many)
Ross

time is fleeting on the heels of the god, & I have but little succor to share with my merely improbable fancies- that's in reserve for the utterly impossible ones!
:)
-John
 

kwaw

mjhurst said:
Here's the Table of Contents for Egyptomania: The Egyptian Revival : A Recurring Theme in the History of Taste by James Stevens Curl. There are a couple chapters (as well as the title) that suggest such waves of, well, "Egyptian Revival".

Ch. I. Egypt and Europe
Ch. II. Some Manifestations of Egyptianisms from the End of the Roman Empire to the Early-Renaissance Period
Ch. III. Further Manifestations with Egyptian Connotations in Europe from the Renaissance to the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century
Ch. IV. Egyptian Elements in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe to the Time of Piranesi
Ch. V. The Egyptian Revival from the Time of Piranesi until the Napoleonic Campaigns in Egypt
Ch. VI. The Egyptian Revival after the Napoleonic Campaigns in Egypt
Ch. VII. Applications of the Egyptian Style
Ch. VIII. The Egyptian Revival in Funerary Architecture
Ch. IX. Aspects of the Egyptian Revival in the Later Part of the Nineteenth Century
Ch. X. The Egyptian Revival in the Twentieth Century


Anyone interested in this subject may also find The Egyptian renaissance: the afterlife of ancient Egypt in early modern Italy By Brian Anthony Curran of interest:

"Fascination with ancient Egypt is a recurring theme in Western culture, and here Brian Curran uncovers its deep roots in the Italian Renaissance, which embraced not only classical art and literature but also a variety of other cultures that modern readers don’t tend to associate with early modern Italy. Patrons, artists, and spectators of the period were particularly drawn, Curran shows, to Egyptian antiquity and its artifacts, many of which found their way to Italy in Roman times and exerted an influence every bit as powerful as that of their more familiar Greek and Roman counterparts.

"Curran vividly recreates this first wave of European Egyptomania with insightful interpretations of the period’s artistic and literary works. In doing so, he paints a colorful picture of a time in which early moderns made the first efforts to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs, and popes and princes erected pyramids and other Egyptianate marvels to commemorate their own authority. Demonstrating that the emergence of ancient Egypt as a distinct category of historical knowledge was one of Renaissance humanism’s great accomplishments, Curran’s peerless study will be required reading for Renaissance scholars and anyone interested in the treasures and legacy of ancient Egypt.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Egyptian-Re...857578-3474145?ie=UTF8&qid=1242562332&sr=11-1
 

beanu

Egyptomania

Ross G Caldwell said:
Because in the 16th century, there was no Egyptomania. Nobody believed the Egyptians had the most ancient civilization and everything sprang from there. Erudites could tell you that Mercury or Theuth taught letters and laws to the Egyptians, but those same erudites would tell you that Mercury was one of the post-diluvians. Egypt didn't have the place that it had in the late 18th century, until well into the 17th.



Ross


Frances Yates in Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
works up a pretty good argument for Egyptomania, or at least for the Hermetic aspect of it, based on the recorded translation of the Asclepius and the Corpus Hermeticum by Ficino in 1470(?). Apparently the ruling de Medici interrupted Ficino's translation of Plato to have him work on the Hermes stuff, as it was considered more ancient, and hence more important.

This in turn leads to dabbling in magic by Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, and the merging of Cabala with Hermetic magic.

In regard to another of your comments on the topic, She also says that the essence of the renaissance philosophy was that the older the better.
 

beanu

Names of Hermes

Hermes/Mercury is also associated with Anubis, as shown by various artworks showing a dog-headed man holding a caduceus. I don't know the dating of this.

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Parzival

"Hieroglyphic Images"

Ross G Caldwell said:
I know of at least three authors now before Court de Gébelin and the Comte de Mellet, who in the years c. 1570, 1603, and 1676, used the term "hieroglyphs" to describe cards in their moralities on tarot, playing cards, and minchiate respectively.

Circa 1570, Italy (north eastern Italy or Ferrara). First is the Anonymous Discourse. After discussing the symbolism of the four suits and court cards, and their purpose, he introduces the trumps -

"... so that, everyone knowing his own passions, and his mistakes, letting go of vanity, and the most temporary and hurtful pleasures of the part outside of the mind and the contemplation of God, there is therefore added to his most beautiful game XXII hieroglyphic images, which show different things, wishing that in the game they might supply what is lacking in the four (suits), and called trionfi, being proper aspects and passions that men triumph from. Fifteen of which, with the other four professions above said, explain from the beginning to the extreme end of active life, and the other seven the contemplative, with its end, which is God."

(... accioche conoscendo ciascuno le proprie passioni, e li suoi errori, lasciandole vanità, e li brevissimi, e dannosi piaceri da parte alzi la mente, e la contemplazione di Dio, è perciò aggiunse al suo bellissimo gioco XXII figure geroglifiche, che rappresentano diversi oggetti, volendo nel gioco, che in difetto delle carte de i quattro supplissero, e chiamolle trionfi, essendo proprii aspetti, e passioni, che dell'huomini trionfano. Quindeci de quali insieme con l'altro quatrro professioni sopra detto dal principio finl all'estremo fine della vita attiva dichiarano, e gl'altre sette la contemplativa con il suo fine, che è Iddio.)



Ross


Thanks for this and other quotations which verify that the Tarots were used for gaming and for contemplating in the 1500s. I find it especially curious that this writer refers to the 22 "hieroglyphic figures" in two sub-sets, the first 15 about the "active life" and the last 7 about the "contemplative life," the latter sequence ending with God. It strikes me as a significant interpretation of the whole picture and binary unity of the 22 "hieroglyphic figures," of historic and symbolic value. Is this the first dividing of the 22 into two sub-groups, each opposites in an Aristotelian/Platonic "active" and "contemplative" vein?