Noblet 3 and 5 of deniers

Shaymus

Noblet 3 and 7 of deniers

Hello all,

I've been reading and studying the Marseille decks, and really enjoying what I'm learning. I'm coming from a long RWS background which I love using.

I've purchased two Noblet decks (Flornoy) and I noticed that in both the 3 of deniers and the seven are inverted to what I've seen other similar style decks, that is, the 3 forming an inverted triangle instead, and similar for the seven.

It kind of makes sense that for the three, out of one comes increase.

Are there locations for checking the orientations of the cards, whether upright or inverse? Or am I over analyzing this?

Thanks and terrific posts in the whole forum, have spent many hours reading everything.
 

JylliM

Sorry I can't answer your question, but I don't think you're over analysing. The cards are meant to be read visually, so the orientation is important.
 

Lee

Hi Shaymus,

Very glad you're finding the forum useful!

Forgive me, I'm a little confused by your question. When you say, "I noticed that in both the 3 of deniers and the seven are inverted to what I've seen other similar style decks," what do you mean when you say they're inverted? There's nothing on the card like a title to indicate which way is supposed to be "up." So it would be the user's choice as to which way to keep the card. There are scans of the card on the Internet which show the 3 Deniers as an inverted triangle, but that's just because the person scanning the card just happened to have it in that orientation.

Apologies in advance if I'm completely misunderstanding your question! :)
 

Shaymus

Thanks for the replies. I'm still processing the images. I guess what I'm asking is, is there standard agreement on when the cards are inverted or reversed by the images. For example, the 3 of deniers. Most of the Marseille decks show this card with 2 coins on the bottom and with one above. Noblet does the reverse, and if we go on the vines and flowers, their direction of growth etc., for meaning, I can see why there are no set meanings for the pips, and the meanings become entirely personal, that is, personally derived by what we see on the card, no matter the orientation.

Shay
 

Lee

I'm sorry, Shaymus, I still don't understand, when you say "Noblet does the reverse." I'm holding the card in my hand right now. I see nothing on the card which indicates that Noblet (or Flornoy for that matter) meant it to be one way (triangle upright) or the other (triangle inverted). So I'm not seeing what's causing you to say that Noblet meant for the card to be oriented so that the triangle of coins is inverted.

If you're basing it on how the card was oriented when the deck came to you, or based on someone's scan of the card on the Internet, then my opinion is that that's probably just happenstance and doesn't have any relation to what Noblet himself considered upright or reversed.

Anyway, to answer your general question, I've seen some disagreement about specific cards, for example I remember a discussion on the forum a while ago about whether sword cards should be oriented with the sword pointing up or down. Some decks (like the Grimaud and the Jodo-Camoin) have copyright notices that do provide an indication of orientation, and the Fournier Marseilles actually has Roman numerals on the bottom of each card which provides a strong indication of orientation, but here again, I think that would simply reflect each respective publisher's opinion of what the orientation should be, and would not necessarily be reflective of the artist's opinion, or of some Platonic standard (which I don't believe exists).

As with card meanings, I think orientation is really up to the individual user. One approach that I think would be reasonable would be to take a look at the Visconti-Sforza Tarot, the earliest-known deck in what we think of as the standard tarot form, and compare those images to TdM, as some of those cards do have artist-supplied clues to a specific orientation (for example, the Swords have a text banner which serves to tell us how the artist felt the card should be oriented).
 

Shaymus

Thanks for that, Lee. You've given me lots to think about.

But for the Noblet, both new decks came with the inversions mentioned above, and at a site mentioned on a post about sites showing deck images for the Noblet, these specific cards were also inverted. I was just wondering if that was Flornoy who did that for some reason.

The more I study the various decks, the more amazed I become. Very deep.

ETA.... I see the confusion, when I said Noblet, I meant the Flornoy version.
 

Lee

Thanks Shaymus, I understand now. My guess would be that Flornoy preferred it that way for some unknown reason, or perhaps he had it that way inadvertently in his file that he printed from. Either way, it doesn't have to dictate how you see the card. So if you prefer it with the triangle upright, then by all means keep it that way! That's probably how I'd prefer it myself.