The Visconti - and the Marseilles

Tarotphelia

Diana said:
Very briefly, (and this is what I have understood what the Ur-Phänomen to be), a definition could be: "the essential core of a thing that makes it what it is and what it becomes".

It's as if the Visconti or the Cary Sheets were just snippets of something - like ingredients perhaps that were taken from right and left, inspiration possibly and also probably.... but it was the MIXTURE of these ingredients that gave rise to The Tarot of Marseilles. Before then, The Tarot had no precise form nor definition. So we're not talking cards here, we're talking Tarot.

Perhaps it would be better to rephrase the question and begin the thread over with no mention of either the Visconti in the title , or the timeline issue, since that is apparently not part of the originally desired discussion, which some did not realize. But perhaps it's too late or inconvenient for that.

The statements and beliefs in the quote above are subjective. And so should be presented as opinion . We don't really know what gave rise to what conclusively . If one believes that the Marseilles is the ur-tarot, it is only a personal belief. Can one presume that one knows what the REAL essence of the REAL tarot is? Only for oneself. And being fully cognizant that it may all be self delusion and/or self projection.

So please discuss why you think the Marseilles MIGHT be the ur-tarot. I think it will be very interesting.
 

Cerulean

I am so delighted to read heartfelt thoughts...

if all anyone can post in this thread at the moment is their joyful expression of how they feel about their Marseilles as the ultimate.

I liked how Ross was describing an analogy of how falling in love passionately with someone (in his case, a woman) or becoming deeply involved with perfecting a tool became a passion to him that showed up in dreams. Helvetica's lightning-struck-tower story was quite wonderful and now I'm searching for which Marseilles tarot might have inspired it...

I am of course slightly wistful for more details why, as well (..a word or two beyond "Grimaud Got Me!";" Payen Forever!";"Dodal Rules!" or Jane Lyle's Tarot at 12.99 ascended me into Tarot Nirvana and I laughed myself silly through the book...")

Best wishes,

Cerulean
 

tmgrl2

Didn't the printing press in France lead to widespread distribution of the Marseille style decks....they became "popluar" in part because they were now available to the general public through a larger distribution.

Still,

I think it's what you wind up "loving."

It's like Faith, too.

When you try to rationalize "love" and "faith" you have oxymorons.

I love the Tarot de Marseille and happen to be partial to Hadar's deck...although I don't agree with his interpretations always nor with his decrees on "how to read."

The Camoin, another of the newer "re-creations" offers a range of bright colors that appeal to me as well.

I love the curved swords that I associate with the Marseille deck traditions.

I also love my Morgan-Greer, a RWS clone....

Simply love it.

Do we need an Ur-Tarot?

Do they have to be compared or can each be accepted and appreciated and even loved on its own terms?

terri
 

ihcoyc

tmgrl2 said:
Didn't the printing press in France lead to widespread distribution of the Marseille style decks....they became "popluar" in part because they were now available to the general public through a larger distribution.

Here's a clue to what I like best about the Marseille style decks. It's art that flows through working with and around design parameters.

From time to time, you'd have to re-carve the wooden blocks that printed the cards. Over a period of time, the artisans within the tradition learned to make simple, iconic images that called the images to mind while still being able to be manufactured within the limitations of the wooden blocks and stencils they had to work with. Perhaps if they had finer processes at hand, more time, and wealthier consumers, they would have reproduced painted decks or made Soprafino style decks. The limitations of the tools they had to work with tended to make the images on the cards more iconic, more defined, more easily recognised at an instant.

I don't see the people at the heart of this tradition being magi or mystics. They had other strengths. It is those strengths that make the Marseille and its sister decks attractive to me.
 

Diana

Dark Inquisitor said:
The statements and beliefs in the quote above are subjective. And so should be presented as opinion . We don't really know what gave rise to what conclusively . If one believes that the Marseilles is the ur-tarot, it is only a personal belief. Can one presume that one knows what the REAL essence of the REAL tarot is? Only for oneself. And being fully cognizant that it may all be self delusion and/or self projection.

Many of the statements that I make on Aeclectic are subjective. And I present them as an opinion, as do most people when they post here. (Unless it's the kind of statement: "Such-and-such a deck can be obtained from Amazon.ca".) We cannot really know what gave rise to what conclusively, mainly due to deliberate destructions of documents, moulds, and whole civilisations by the powers in place over the centuries. If I believe that the Marseilles is the Ur-Tarot, it is my personal belief. I have touched the hem of something that I believe is the Essence of the Tarot and this was my individual and very real and not imaginary experience. It was neither self-delusory nor self-projection - it was part of my experience as a human being.... unless of course I do not exist, and that is a possiblity we could discuss on the Spirituality forum.


So please discuss why you think the Marseilles MIGHT be the ur-tarot. I think it will be very interesting.

Tarotphelia: I had begun some rather timid posts - mostly because Darla asked the question, and I did not want it to go unexplored and to waste. I was hoping that by starting my posts, others would respond - each response would give rise to more responses and questioning, and quests.... and that we may end up with even more questions, because I am personally very interested in questions.

But I'm not so keen anymore on Aeclectic to post my deep feelings and thoughts. They are too often trashed by those who have agendas and personal vendettas - who see first the person posting, and only then the words written. I was hoping that Darla's thread would give rise to something of worth for Aeclectic, but I now have my serious doubts....

(Cartman of South Park fame has a most beautiful catch-phrase which makes me laugh aloud each time I hear it.)
 

Fulgour

latest

Ur-Tarot (from German ur-, denoting ’earliest’):

If we in fact are, as we seem to be, devolving,
the Ur-Tarot is the one to be created next.
 

Sophie

Diana said:
Many of the statements that I make on Aeclectic are subjective. And I present them as an opinion, as do most people when they post here.
....
But I'm not so keen anymore on Aeclectic to post my deep feelings and thoughts. They are too often trashed by those who have agendas and personal vendettas - who see first the person posting, and only then the words written. I was hoping that Darla's thread would give rise to something of worth for Aeclectic, but I now have my serious doubts....

Don't be so pessimistic, Diana. We have had the Charming Pixie's paean of love, Ross's adventure with the machinist lathe and the lovely lady, Shallott's gentle declaration, and your own grappling with your overwhelmig awe at the Tarot - followed by a great link to Kris Hadar's story of Tarot-Rota in Occitan. There have been comments to explain, and comments to question -Moongold's questioning of the universality of the Marseille Tarot - surely a very legitimate question; Cerulean's celebration and wistful request for more explanation (but Cerulean, it sounds beyond words, lost in those pips and turns of head) - and more will come.

Of course there are wet blankets. There always are, who like to call themselves debunkers. And the world needs debunkers! In fact, we all need to be debunkers, or we'll be following every passing guru and dictator. The trouble with debunking, is that , like every form of warfare, it risks becoming an end in itself. Then it nitpicks every fact, it pours cold water over every form of conviction - whether a creative, live-affirming one, or a negative, dangerous one. It becomes afraid of conviction because it is conviction.

The defence against that is not to hide. It is to walk through. Conviction and love will always carry more weight than nitpicking and needling.

Besides, remember Le Bateleur. Do you think he gives a child's trumpet what people might think of him and his tossing-coin ways?
 

Sophie

Dark Inquisitor said:
If one believes that the Marseilles is the ur-tarot, it is only a personal belief. Can one presume that one knows what the REAL essence of the REAL tarot is? Only for oneself. And being fully cognizant that it may all be self delusion and/or self projection.

So please discuss why you think the Marseilles MIGHT be the ur-tarot. I think it will be very interesting.

Yes, that's true. It's more interesting to explore ones's fascination than to try and categorically declare that what we love is Eternal Truth for one and all. Because even among those who agree that the Marseille is the Ur-Tarot, we can see different reasons for loving the beloved object. The more specific one gets, the more one can explore the heart of something, to distinguish what is projection, and what is an intrinsic part of the object - of its history, its symbology and iconography.

Something strange happens to me when I take out my Marseille cards. I haven't had them very long. I have a Héron Conver deck, the reproduction. I feel all the centuries of fascination, of careful handling and careless shoving in back-pockets. I hear in whispers the thousands of meanings and interpretations attached to this flower, that mitre, that number. I see the carvers busy at their woodblocks, good artisans carrying out a beautiful trade, absorbed in it, but probably thinking of their young woman and the next saint's holiday. I like to think that certain expressions they captured in the faces and bodies were those they saw about them, as well as conventional signs and symbols which had been in use for centuries. I dream of a long chain of hands passing the deck, one to the other, some respectfully, some indifferent, some horrified, some reverend, some interested. Now they have come into my hands and I look through them, bemused, moved, curious.
 

Sophie

We all are guilty - of being human ;)

And is not the tarot an image of humanity? so sometimes we will be the Chevalier d'Epées, cutting through cant, debunking and arguing, and sometimes the gentler, more receptive Cavalier de Coupe. One day the Empress, and the next, XIII...

Isn't that what makes studying tarot so fascinating? I would say, also (and bear in mind I know other decks better), that the archetypes in the Marseille are at their most direct - unmediated by complex symbology or myth - and therefore, most accessibly human. Maybe that is what makes them appear to some like the essence of Tarot. And I think it is related to the simplicity and pragmatism of how they were made - as ihcoyc posted, simple conventional carvings on wooblock, to allow for the manufacture of thousands of decks; and not the product of a particular club or esoteric society, but of evolution over the ages.
 

smleite

I was experiencing some difficulties with the concept of TdM as the Ur-Tarot, but I think the whole question is now clearer to me, so I’ll finally dare to post here.

The Ur-Tarot is not a material reality, but a concept. And this by no means lessens it! I don’t think any Ur-phenomenon can be material. I think that when it is materialized, it becomes a demonstration of itself – which is not the same. Here is where I place the TdM: as the more adequate presentation of the Ur-Tarot we have. Not necessarily the first ever, but simply the most adequate we have at present.

Darla wants to know why.

Well, all I can say is this: There are several religions, and each of them has a way of presenting the path that might lead a man towards God. There are spiritual schools, not exactly – or not at all – religions, which also present their own path for mystical union and spiritual fulfilment of Men. I believe Tarot also presents a path. I don’t know if it is a Royal Way or a minor trail, I don’t even know if it is complete, in the sense that it eventually leads directly to the Divine, or it is partial, and at a certain point we will have to catch another train if we want to continue our journey. Anyway, each true path (there are lots of false ones) has a “perfect” structure underneath its concepts, which is the hallmark of the divine idea from which it issued. If it didn’t issued from a divine, pristine idea, then it will never take us to the divine realms, but that is another story. If Tarot (and not TdM) is a true spiritual path, than it also includes such perfect structure. A structure to which every station of the path can be related to, as a sort of road map, so that we can understand the nodal moments on our evolution as universal, no matter the tradition we are in, because – another thing in which I believe – all those structures are ultimately one, common to any religion or any spiritual path. What is that I see in the Tarot of Marseilles? I see the more adequate presentation of Tarot’s structure, essentially. Where do I see it? In the fact that its archetypes are tremendously pure and intense, directly referring to the most basic and powerful symbols that form the substrate of man’s psyche.

Now, do they have to come to us in medieval clothing or in crude and archaic traces? No, of course not. I like them this way, but those beautiful major cards Oswald Wirth created are a great idea, and by no means a sacrilege... And Major Tom’s Tarot de Marseilles could be another answer for those who dread the medieval look! All this to say, it’s not because they are ancient that they represent the purest archetypes of mankind, it’s because they are primal, they belong to the deeper layers of our psyche, those layers that, being so powerful, undiluted, and primeval, were able to shape and form the rest of our human structures: our mental processes, our emotional responses, our instinctive attitudes.

I myself believe in this: if I am to choose Tarot as a path for seeking spiritual knowledge, than I am into Marseilles. But this, of course, has nothing to do with the relative value of TdM and other decks are divinatory tools – though the divinatory use of the cards is deeply connected to their spiritual study, of course ( ora et labora ...).

Silvia