foolish
That's the million dollar question: what WERE the meanings intended by the creators. One thing is for sure - The answers that are more closely related to the specific historical and cultural events and psychology of the times are probably the most accurate. For example, your associations of Oxygen to the Justice card seems odd, since the periodic table was not conceived of until the 19th century.Certainly trump symbols have more than one level of interpretation, but the meanings that matter most are those instilled in them by their creators.
It would seem to me that this card would have meanings found within the understanding of what "justice" meant back then. And in Medieval culture, there was a distinct separation between man's justice (as represented in card #8) vs. God's justice (as represented in The World card) - both using the female form holding the symbols or "tools of the trade," so to speak.
This logic can go either way - that the Italian cards were off-shoots of the more standardized form of the TDM, OR that the TDM was a standardized version of the mose varried Italian cards. Either way, your biggest problem is that block printing didn't become popular until long after the painted Italian cards were in existence.It is more than obvious to me that they could NOT have started in Italy, for it is north of the Alps that tarot had one, single, standard form
Although it's usually not a fair assessment to make generalizations of groups of people, I can understand your feelings towards some of the people in the AT history section. My personal experience with that group was generally informative and constructive. Unfortunately, it was also tainted by the comments of one or two individuals who, because of their insistence on defending their own ideas, chose to sabotage the discussion with slanderous remarks and abusive language. Based on the over-the-top reactions I was getting, I'm sure some of them are on some serious prescription medication. Obviously, these people have little tolerance for any theories that do not reflect their own, and lack the basic immagination which lends itself to exploring alternate views.Yes, this is the great handicap of the ‘history section’, that it is dominated by those with so little imagination
If history has shown us anything, it's that accpeted theories and information are always being replaced by newer ones, and that some individuals are adamant about defending the status quo and putting up strong resistence to anything that challenges their need to be right. However, to be fair, there are others in the history section who are seriously interested in discovery, and are more open to listening to others. I am hopeful that the history section will clean itself up, and maybe the rest of the AT forum will be able to use their knowledge constructively, instead of shying away from their abusiveness.