Let me start by stating up front that I am completely unequipped, whether by education or by life circumstances, to conduct or present historical research. So you can challenge me all you want, Mary, but I will not be providing you with "facts," i.e. quotes from Waite's works, etc. I haven't read any of Waite's works other than PKT, and it's been years since I've read PKT cover to cover. The relevant question here is: Does my lack of qualifications as an historian mean that I'm not entitled to come to my own conclusions about your positions and to state those conclusions publicly? Perhaps I'm not. But it seems to me that it's perfectly reasonable for me or anyone else to look at the evidence that you bring forth and to state whether it seems convincing, and why, without needing to be historians ourselves.
You seem to be demanding that I come up with stories that equal the ones you think Waite intended to illustrate with the pips. You seem to imply (or maybe I'm just inferring) that you won't take my observations seriously unless I do. But I'm not sure that it's appropriate for you, as the person presenting a thesis, to demand that those who don't agree must prove you wrong. I think the burden is on you, as the person presenting the new ideas, to prove them, and not up to others to disprove them. As you know, it's difficult to prove a negative, so it would be very difficult for me to
prove that Waite did
not design the pip cards with stories in mind. And I don't feel that it's my burden to prove that.
To my mind, you have proved admirably, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Waite had specific ideas and associations in mind for the tarot suits. It seems clear that he used Arthurian and Masonic imagery in both court and pip cards. (To my untutored eyes, the Three of Pentacles certainly seems very Masonic.) What you have
not proved to my satisfaction (and I'm grateful to LRichard for posting, so I know I'm not the only one!) is that Waite intentionally designed the pip cards to relate certain stories. I understand that for you, the match between stories and suits is a powerful one. But that, as I say, relies on a subjective interpretation by you of Smith's beguilingly ambiguous artwork. I was not overly struck by the exactness of the matches when I read your article. To me it seems reasonable for Waite to scatter references to his favored attributions among the Minors yet still not see the pip cards as strung together to tell a story.
I guess we're kind of at an impasse on that point. I certainly don't expect you to post all your work product on a public forum, but by the same token, hopefully you will understand that I'm not eager to shell out 43 bucks for your DVD lecture for the privilege of continuing this conversation. If you ever publish that material in a more reasonably-priced medium, I'll be happy to buy it and let you know what I think.
Back to your challenge -- I'm saying there's not enough evidence to state with certainty that Waite intended the pips to show stories. You're saying there is, and then you're saying that I need to come up with alternate stories to show that "any one will do." But since I don't believe that there are stories built-in, why would I want to spend my time doing that? If I believe, as I do, that your proposed stories aren't convincing, then why would I want to spend time finding my own unconvincing stories?
You LOL'd at my disbelief that Waite would put so much time and effort into his pip cards yet not mention nor hint at it in his writing. But much of what Waite hid was the GD attributions, which he had taken an oath not to reveal. He was under no such restriction with his own Arthurian/Masonic attributions. I do understand that there was much in his writing that he declined to elaborate on, but again, it strains belief that, despite his reticence to spell things out for his readers, he would completely hide, without even a hint, a reference to stories in the pips after supposedly having gone to so much trouble to include them.
What you are asking us to believe is that Waite created specific scenes for each pip card that not only included references to cartomantic meanings, GD attributions, and his own mystical ideas, but that he also expressly planned each suit sequence to tell a specific story with specific characters, dictated the composition of each card to Smith, then instructed Smith to deliberately hide the fact that the cards represented illustrations of stories (for otherwise, surely she would have done as I suggested earlier, clearly showing the same characters in each suit's cards), then deliberately declined to write about or even hint at the existence of such stories in the cards for the rest of his life.
Is it possible? Yes, it's possible. Is it probable? To me, it does not meet that threshold. I would think it more appropriate to label it as "an intriguing possibility but we can't know for sure."
Several of the factors that you cite to support your thesis could be explained more simply without that thesis. The fish necklace on the King of Cups is more simply explained by what is clearly a pattern in the court cards, presumably dictated by Waite, of using elemental symbols to show an attribution of suits to elements. The "stagey" aspects of many of the pip cards is more simply explained by Smith's long experience in the theater.
You seem to feel that since you're relying on a "weight of the evidence" argument, that means I'm not entitled to point out what I might see as weaknesses in a particular piece of evidence. I disagree. If you're going to bring up a point to support your argument, then you've "opened the door," as they say in the legal world, for me to make my own observations about that point if I feel it's relevant to my argument.
(As an aside, I was taken aback by your choice of the word "disingenuous" on that point. Hopefully you did not mean to suggest that I have some kind of ulterior motive in my posts here. I stated that I did not in my prior post, and I meant it. I'm sure I've exhibited many personality flaws over the years on this forum, but dishonesty isn't one of them. I in turn challenge you, Mary, to find one member of this forum who would say that I've ever been anything other than straightforward and sincere in my posts. Perhaps you would consider retracting that word, as it carries connotations which I'm sure you did not mean.)
Waite's reticence and obscureness causes problems for anyone hoping to prove or disprove something from his writing. If I say, "but Waite didn't say that," and you say, "LOL, but Waite didn't say a lot about a lot of things," to me that comes dangerously close to the kind of argument made by people who have all sorts of outlandish theories about tarot, and when asked for evidence they say, "well of course there isn't any evidence, the Church destroyed it." For them, the absence of evidence for something is itself evidence in support of that something, which is of course not a historian's way of looking at things.
He didn't need people to know that the suits illustrated a particular story because it was expressing a principle far deeper than itself. Similarly, it wasn't vital that everyone get all the quotes to mystical literature that he sprinkled throughout PKT (owing to his photographic memory) - although if you follow them back to their sources you'll get a much deeper understanding of his own mystical vision.
I think it's not an exact analogy, because while the quotes to mystical literature won't be recognized by most people, at least they are there in print for anyone to see. The pips-as-stories idea, though, would have to have been buried so deep that it strains credulity that he would even bother.
One of my main frustrations in all this is that you are demanding "facts" and "actual materials" before you will reconsider your conclusions, while it seems like your conclusions do not meet the high standard of "facts" and "actual materials" that you demand from others.
Your original post in this thread is full of statements such as:
"Then I think he told her the stories he wanted illustrated."
"The suit of Swords illustrates exactly the Hiram Abiff story [...]"
"Waite's description of the Masonic initiate in The Encyclopedia of Freemasonry matches the suit of Pentacles."
"Waite seems to have envisioned the Minor Arcana as a quaternity of ritual pageants."
"The Minor Arcana are clearly four stories of what Waite called the Loss [...]"
Do you see what I'm getting at? All of these statements depend on your own subjective interpretations, without direct corroboration from Waite's writings. In my mind it is not correct to assign to such factors the same evidentiary weight as something that's directly corroborated from Waite's writings (or contemporary accounts, of which we have none).
In his appendix on the Minors in the Grail book he says he can devise pageants out of the Minors. He was working on both the Tarot and the Grail book at the same time.
This is the one thing that I can find among your posts in which you mention a direct reference by Waite to pips and stories (or "pageants"). Could you provide a little more detail on this? Is this the same quote you referenced earlier from the 1933 edition? If he actually does draw this connection himself, then it may or may not -- depending on the exact quote -- convince me of your argument, but it would be nice to see the quote itself so I can judge.
I welcome disagreement, although I hope you don't mind that I'll argue against it if warranted
I don't mind at all. I am still a Mary Greer fan. And I say that with complete ingenuousness.
