all right, for the record..
From the time I was a child, I was immersed in the language and imagery of Biblical literature.
Formal studies began in the early 1970s, when I read Syriac, middle eastern myth, lore, and literature - as well as early Christian literature in Syriac - under Professor Bowman in Melbourne.
I taught for a while, then went to Japan for personal reasons - but being unable to survive without some kind of academic stimulation, I there studied comparative miniature painting: the Persian, western and Asian 'palette' and systems of allusionsin each. That was for eighteen months. My personal position was such that I did not need to graduate if I didn't wish to. I wasn't after a job; I was interested for other reasons.
Returning to Australia, we started a family. I resumed study again at the University of Sydney in the mid 1980s, this time adding to my (continuing) Syriac Studies, study of classical Hebrew, the archaeology of artefacts' production - sometimes called Industrial archaeology. And fine arts and so forth.
I was - as a matter of record - offered honours in every subject I took.
I was invited, then, to do what was termed an 'MA-PhD' conversion in the department of Semitic studies. This means, in effect, that my undergraduate work was of a standard sufficent for the department's professor to feel that the 'M-A' stage could be conferred retrospectively and my thesis submitted directly at PhD level.
The topic, as I have said elsewhere, was Worship of the host of heaven in pre-exilic Israel'. This was in the 80's.
It was necessary, first of all, to investigate all those regions known to have influenced Israel's social and political culture, since the Biblical text as we have it is a tenth century ad edition, in which one finds clear signs of retrospective editing. - since this has nothing to do with tarot, in my view, I refer those wanting proof of this fact to others whose credentials they will not be so rude as to demand.
To that end, anyway, I spent eighteen months researching. Fortunately, I already had a fairly solid background in the 'fertile crescent' material and was able to concentrate more on the caravan cities and Egypt.
One major difficulty with the project is that to correlate terms, feast dates and practices with the heavens, one has to not only account for precession, but also for 'proper motion' - a non-trivial mathematical problem. At that time, there was no computer programme other than that at places like NASA or the Smithsonian which could model or predict to the necessary degree of accuracy. Apple claimed to be developing a program 'soon' but the promised 12 months turned into 3 and a half years - beyond the university's limit for submission.
I therefore completed in one of my other areas - nothing to do with tarot - and took work in that discipline instead.
My interest in medieval history was partly due to talking about the matter of transmission of Christian moralised astronomy of that period with others in the university department where I worked, who specialised in European history - again, their names and the university concerned is no business of Mr. Hurst's.
Medieval history became a particular hobby, and one guided by those people.
It was not until 1990 that I saw the Charles VI card called 'Le Fou'. It was not for another 8 years -during which i had treated this study as a possible way to complete the PhD through some department of Fine Arts - that I wrote up the results of that research. In the meantime, life had taken an unexpected turn - nothing to do with tarot - and I moved away from that life altogether.
it is now nearly ten years since the research was done. It is of no concern to me whether it is shared or not, except that so much work, and what I felt were such interesting findings, are ones that one wishes to share with others who may be interested in them too.
At the risk of offending, I would like to add that my bibliography contained only three books written by people whose chief interest was the use of tarot cards.
It was a study of medieval art and the culture which produced it, and the influence therein - chiefly through contact with the eastern Christian communities on the one hand and the navigators' lore on the other - of using astronomical 'characters' to inform moralia and patterns of time and direction.
Mr. Hurst and friends are now free to treat this post, too, as they have others. That is, as a basis for a wholly imaginary idea of my character and sources, while at the same time adopting information I have provided into their own theses.
If I understand the situation correctly, it was their equally unbridled attack on another person - who I think may have been introduced by Yahoo itself - which led to the site's being shut down.
Manners are a method by which society prevents all out war.