Teheuti
Starshower, I'm enjoying your rambles. Please, don't stop.
Yes indeed, but the motifs of the Christian mythos are by no means unique to Christianity, which may account for the appeal of Tarot imagery to many who would otherwise be repelled by the blatant iconography.Debra said:.....Do these images grab us because they are elements of a Christian moral allegory and we all, like it or not, live in cultures deeply imbued with Christian concepts and imagery?
That would be another fascinating topic: the role of Freemasonry in the development of the Tarot. There is a wealth of Egyptian mythology in Masonry. The third act of Mozart's Masonic opera The Magic Flute takes place in an Egyptian temple dedicated to Isis and Osiris. I believe de Gebelin was a Christian clergyman as well as a Mason, but he obviously was more enlightened than many of today's fundamentalist Bible-thumpers. (On another forum, not Aeclectic Tarot, someone responded to one of my posts by remarking that God condemns soothsayers and decrees that they be stoned to death. Ouch! Not a pleasant way to go.)Titadrupah said:I find it coherent that being a freemason, the idea of a cosmology in disguise would show in de Gébelin's thought. Masons were disliked and repressed by the same christian establishment that persecuted what they had referred to as heretics and pagans for centuries.
Teheuti said:There's been a recent controversy about a video by James Wanless in which he claims that Tarot came out in the 16th & 17th century and was first used as "divination games" - horrors! See minute 1:05 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqpDAkFx_lw
Yeah, I hate to hear this kind of thing, too, and James really should know better. But then we get Oudler's typical video response that is nothing more than publicity for his favorite game.
http://youtu.be/6UgyGC6ADak
He insists he knows the original purpose that the deck was created - for games - (could be true), and overlooks the fact that most people use a deck for the game of tarot that has little in common with the original tarot except for its structure and number of cards. The original pictorial motifs have nothing to do with his concept of what tarot is.
It is historical *fact* that even people who once knew better, are willing to ignore history in the face of tarot's myths. After the TarotL History Information Sheet first came out, I noticed that most books and many websites were paying attention, but there seems to be a lot of back-sliding.
So, my question for everyone is: What is the power of myth that people keep returning to it? It's not just to 'sell' more - I'm asking about what's behind all that. The tarot myths fulfill a certain need in the human psyche. What specifically do you think the tarot myths in particular are addressing at the deepest level?
I see this as a historical question, because if historians don't have some understanding of the urge that keeps these myths historically reappearing, then we won't ever understand how to address the issue clearly, and we'll never learn from history - the history of tarot myths and their continual re-emergence!