Visconti Sforza Force/Strength Yet Again!

Rosanne

Pretty puny Nemean Lion. Heracles iconographic attributes are the lion skin and the club. OK got the Club- where are all his slain children? Nice to know Bianca was going to drive him mad. No apples apparent either.

Talk about convolution. How about- it is a Milanese Lion? Unskinned of course.
mutter mutter mutter.........(which is actually swearing and cussing in a low tone)
 

Huck

Bernice said:
:) ......and not an arab in sight.

I do think it odd that he's wielding a club. I would have thought that a sword would be used in defence. So the myth suggestion probably lies with the club.


Bee :)
But Heracles has an origin ...

... :) ...

and Alexander the great, fan of Heracles with some own stronger effects and consequences for the whole Western culture had finally an Empire, which ...

alexmap.gif

http://library.thinkquest.org/10805/alexmap.html

... hadn't so much distance to that, what is now called Arabia.

Heracles became the 13th of the 12 Olympic gods, so he ascended to the Olympus.
As the 12 associated the 12 months of the year, naturally Heracles "was the true center" ... a sort of early Messias, a function, which in cultural comparison is expressed with Mikro-Anthropos in contrast to the Makro-Anthropos (that's a form of super-hero, whose body actually is so large, that it usually forms the whole world ... like the apocryphal Adam or the Chinese Pangu or the Zoroastrian Gayomart)

Pangu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangu

Gayomart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyumars

The 10th and the 12th work of the Greek Herakles-Story especially refer to this part of his background.

Herakles meets Atlas (in Marokko in the distant WEST, viewed from Greece) in the 10th work and also a person called "Menoitios" and in the 12th he went into the Hades and meets there "Menoitios" again and in the same work he freed Prometheus (in the Caucasus, the distant EAST, viewed from Greece) from a rock, were he had been bound on the order of Zeus.

Atlas, Menoitios and Prometheus were brothers and sons of Iapetos, a Titan (that's a god generation before Zeus and the others) and (mostly) Asia, which mean nothing else than "Asia" (the continent). Iapetos has been identified with Japhed, a son of Noah, which means, that the Greek mythologists integrated some foreign mythology with this figure.

In the second part of the battle of the Titans (the first is the fight of the three Olympian brothers against the Titans under guidance of Kronos), Atlas and Menoitios are the leaders of the opponents of the Olympian brothers ... and they win.
Atlas, defeated, gets the punishment, that he has to carry the heaven ...

d0523619.jpg


... with his feet on the earth and the heaven above that's rather precisely a makro-anthropus description.

Menoitios was thrown in the Tartaros.

Prometheus, standing for cleverness and prudence, who kept himself outside the fight, was punished for other reasons. And there was a 4th brother and 4th son of Iapetos, Epimetheus, standing for stupidity, who simply was tricked with an artificial woman, the Pandora, who had a very dangerous box, and when she opened it, mankind got all the trouble, from which mankind suffers till nowadays.

When Heracles was born, and went on to search the riddles of life, he hadn't to search fruits of Pandora's box, cause these were everywhere. So for this reason ... Epimetheus isn't mentioned in the 10th and 12th work.

But naturally the micro-anthropus had to meet Prometheus, Menoitios and Atlas, to cause some improvement for mankind, cause this was the job of a super-hero.
Also he had to kill some monsters, so that nobody asked, where they had gone to in modern reality.

And then he created a new astronomy, the catalog of the star pictures.

... and then mankind became too realistic and lost their sense for mythology.
Other heroes ... Jesus and Mohamed and Buddha and Confucius ... created new interpretations of reality.

In renaissance some people started to reflect, what actually had happened and they reflected history and the genesis of Christian believe out of its "pagan background". And they found curious stories and had difficulties to understand them ... but they attempted it. And they made pictures to illustrate these gods, and one these experiments became rather worthwhile for Tarot history, as it evolved the Michelino deck, the beginning of Tarot ...

"Brave Hercules, to whom a hundred extraordinary labours granted the title of an everlasting name, of whom no posterity at any time will leave the glorious praises unsaid. Of all the world your Theban homeland owes glory to you, so often having been defended, the unbeaten hero; and not only them, but everyone, for having brought help. You boldly approached each land which felt disturbed in your time, always conquering, and returning more powerful; neither did facing any wild beasts frighten you, so that where the violent pestilence threatened, from that place you again carried away much glory. Who would be able at some time after to adorn Hercules amid their Aex. Seated in the chariot, let the god Augustus three times gird forehead with laurel, and the Caesar Julius triumph as victor five times: occasion greened Hercules twelve times with the laurel wreath. While still an infant, he had expelled the twin serpents, that the Milky Way might be. They indicate he was begotten by Jove, and instilled with glorious excellence; and it was this whereby the youth received strength and reliance in the spirit. The strongest hero, by a clever trick and physical strength, he killed the seven-headed Lernean Hydra, who, on the amputation of one, many heads came up, and he won back his native land, which had earlier been desolated with the ravaging of this horrible beast. The Boar, then Melaneus. He overcame the threeborn of Spain: Gerionus, and Achelus, because of the two-horned forehead, the other Avulsus. Diomedes the King of Thrace. Busiris of Libya. Antheus of Mauritania. He struck down and killed Cacus, his house always warm with fresh human blood, on Mount Aventius. And the lands, having been liberated from these horrors, dedicated temples to sacred Hercules. He subjugated completely the savage band of Centaurs. And I have gone over easily and briefly these of his most well-known in the songs of poets. He is distinguished by his wild demeanour, yet much delicate laurel girded to his forehead, and being neglectful of his clothing. He wears on his shoulder the huge skin of the Nemean Lion, as a monumental mark of strength, which he routed, fearless by might more than human. The Stimphalis struck down by arrows lies at his feet, with a belly wide by gluttony, with the curved talons in the manner of a bird, since the most rapacious pirates perish on the Strophades islands. The threefold Tartarean hound, the master of this region, loud-resounding with a threefold bark, he dragged bound by chains from hell into the light, as he thereby showed to be false a threefold opinion concerning the constitution of happiness, and that he followed the way to honour neither by pleasure nor riches nor empty honours, but only by the working of virtue and by many hard labours, by glory being searched for and attained. To whom, after monsters of wild beasts having been killed, he opened the peaceful world easily, the way to heaven, and he filled the place of the thirteenth of the gods."
... so wrote Martiano da Tortona, the first Tarot book author, about the 13th god ...
http://trionfi.com/0/b/11/
 

Bernice

Thanks for the explanation Huck. I especially like the map of Alexanders territories :)

But.... the guy on the Strength card isn't strangling the lion, nor is he wearing a lion-skin. Does anyone know what costume/armour he's wearing? It might give some further clue as to whether or not it could be a 'modified' Hercules, or not.


Bee :)
 

Yygdrasilian

Hera's Glory

The Regulus of Leo resides within the heart of the Lion (cor leonis), and the Gold it contains is refined by OXidization - a process GOADed by another letter of the alphabet, Lamed.

Alchemy is as much a parent of Trionfi as Alcmene was to Herakles. Their allegories refer to a specific geometric diagram superimposed over the Earth. Greek & Hebrew alphabets have preserved this symbolic use of Letters - a method reflected in the design and composition of Tarot. Yet there are different means by which this may be accomplished through allegorical illustration.

Herakles’ stance in the Viscounti-Sforza STRENGTH suggests he is about to bat the Lion out of frame. The ribbons fluttering behind him are in the shape of the letter Lamed, attributed the card for Justice (Libra) and the trump with whom Strength is notoriously out of sequence in the ‘standard pattern’ Tarot. With respect to Herakles’ position among the stars, it may be worthy to note the similarity between the Serpent of the ‘Strong Flow’ and the King of the beasts.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3eKuFFHGH30/TB_XhrwVx6I/AAAAAAAAAKc/Q2s-6eI3osY/s1600/2:3+ciphertext.jpg

Members of the chivalric Order of the Golden Fleece, the Ship (formerly the Knot), and the Dragon, were all entwined in a ‘rebirth’, of sorts, that coincided with the introduction of that which became Tarot, and a marriage of two families with an eponymous connection to that event.http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/De_Sphaera_-_Allegory_Sforza.JPG
 

Abrac

In the story, Hercules wears the lion's skin to make himself invulnerable. I wonder if images where an actual lion is apparently fighting with, rather than against, Hercules (like the Christine de Pizan and possibly Visconti-Sforza) are just another way of allegorically representing this same idea?
 

Bernice

Abrac said:
In the story, Hercules wears the lion's skin to make himself invulnerable. I wonder if images where an actual lion is apparently fighting with, rather than against, Hercules (like the Christine de Pizan and possibly Visconti-Sforza) are just another way of allegorically representing this same idea?
Which, if I've read this aright :), would support Rosannes' take on this card. Viconti & Sfroza are invulnerable standing together.


Bee :)