Eggplants?

Shalott

Coo, thanks tmgrl...I like that there's a site called "Produce Pete." Cute!

I can really see the "madness" idea, especially considering that these cards go back to a time when ppl thought like that, and the meaning of 5 Cups, being basically "emotional crisis."
 

tmgrl2

I like that, Shalott!

Also, I like that it could stand for "phallic" symbol or a "self-pollinating" symbol. So we would have active masculine creation and/or androgyny.

terri
 

Shalott

YEHA since 5 has androgynous aspects in Pythagorean numerology: the 2 and 3 blending qualities (I have have that right).

DAY-UM!!! Marseille just gets deeper and deeper!
 

Diana

Forget the eggplant. And it's not a pineapple either.

Kris tells me it is a rosebud. There is a more leafy one in the 2 de Deniers, for example.

More than that, he cannot say right now. (But all will be revealed one day - in a book. I can tell you guys that when this book comes out, it will be more than remarkable. It will be a chef d'oeuvre and a monument to the Tarot of Marseilles.)

He says that the only flower in the Tarot is the ROSE! He also says we must understand that no Tarot card is isolated, but is an element that is part of a whole.
 

Shalott

That's a rosebud? Um...I've no choice but to take his word for it!

Any hints as to whether the book will be in English? Or at least a translation to follow on the heels of a French release?

Thanks for contacting him, this is definitely...news!
 

Rusty Neon

Shalott said:
That's a rosebud? Um...I've no choice but to take his word for it!

Out of the curiousity, I checked the 5 of Cups cards from the 1760 Conver, the 1701 Dodal and the Hadar. In the case of the 'eggplant' (or 'rosebud'?) in the Hadar 5 of Cups, Hadar follows the lines of the 1760 Conver quite closely, although he changes the colour usage. There's no need for you to have to take Hadar's botanical views as the final word; he has no special inside knowledge that other well-known Marseilles authors don't have; Hadar adds elements to his deck but the 'eggplant' ('rosebud') wasn't one of them. In fact, nobody has special knowledge of the features of this deck; they just get it from observing the cards; read the commentaries but in the end, trust your own observations.

For what it's worth, Paul Marteau, writing concerning the 'eggplant': "The flower at the top, in its blue protective shell, shows that there is still gestation to undergo that will permit it to attain the Seven through the Six."
 

Shalott

Well, I was primarily meaning that I assume he knew what he put on his deck!...but I see where you're coming from. I "intuitively" predicted that someone would respond thusly to my comment! ;)
 

Diana

The Rose in the Middle Ages.

It was the most important symbolic flower. No flower was more important.

To understand the Tarot of Marseilles, you have to put yourself in the mindset and the shoes of the people in the Middle Ages. We can't look at it with our 21st Century eyes.

Why would the esoterists of the time put an EGGPLANT!!! in the Tarot of Marseilles?
 

jmd

Personally, I would have been surprised had Kris Hadar answered otherwise (see the second post of this thread)... but one cannot be too cautious.

The hip or berry is such an important element in the transformation of the plant that it becomes, in many ways, the raison d'etre for the whole organism.

In Goethe's botanical studies, he talks of the whole plant being as metamorphises of the leaf. The berry of fruit, however, becomes the whole plant enclosed within itself, in absolute point-form in its seed-form.

It may also be remembered that apart from a few exceptions, it is not the leaf form which provides for our own nourishment, but rather its fruit - its berry.

With the Rose (and other plants may also be depicted upon certain cards, such as on I the Bateleur and on XVII the Star, for example), the plant has so many aspects which are dependent on a fivefoldedness and the relation between alchemical healing essence and thorn that it has deep connections to the whole sweet mysterium of the being of Tarot...

...now what was the name of the Rose?