Very interesting article, firemaiden...I read it as best I could...never heard of this one nor of the connection....I'm sure many will await your translation which would be far more accurate than mine....but I get the basic idea...I like the part where it says (if I'm right that he has nothing left to learn in this world...?)...
Thank you for starting this thread...As I learn more about he history of various interpretations of The Fool (and the Bateleur)
I feel as though we need to keep open the dialogue of looking at Le Mat in many different ways....when we even call the sequence of cards "The Fool's Journey" it doesn't sit well with me, because just that title implies one accepts that as a premise..it is ONE premise that some accept and I respect that...Even Robert O'Neill, whose history of iconology I review from time to time, leaves that as a possibility when the decks were created, but "paints" the Fool as having an "ambiguous" role.
Thanks to Rusty for re-directing me to Klea..I'm dying to get into her books more. There is so much there. In fact, she spends pp 473-494 on Le Mat. Her opening sentence is(my translation summary) "The number is absent from the Aracana, which therefore positions it nowhere, and serves as a bridge between the others"...Bridges don't sound like inititators...I personally like the idea of the Fool being nowhere and everywhere and anywhere and playing various roles....I will read her chapter for sure this summer, if not before.
As I skimmed ahead in Klea's book to Le Bateleur...she refers to Le I (Batteleur) as being,(again my translation summary)" in effect, the point of departure of all of the other numbers...their 'cause intiale' which I would translate as the driving force or beginning purpose/cause...the Mother-Father androgynous being, rational and irrational....principal of causality in the of infinite worlds....with his four Elements of Creation ...that he is the main coordinator of these elements....He, therefore, incorporates all the Numbers and finds himself in all...He is THE FIRST CAUSE from which follow all the others..."
Anyhow, I was translating as I read....Le Bateleur gets pp 495-515....too bad, so much good material about the Tarot is written in French.
One of the most disturbing elements in Mary Greer's book, Tarot for YourSelf, is that in an otherwise wonderful chapter on the history of Tarot, she says nothing of the Tarot de Marseille...this bothered my greatly since she was so in-depth and historically sequential about the rest. It's like talking about Christianity and Christ and mentioning all the Christian churches, but "forgetting" about the Catholic Church...It's not about one's beliefs, it's about presenting a complete picture...not one with a glaring omission. I keep going back to her chapter on history searching for a crumb or two about the Tarot de M...she had a crumb about a deck in Paris in 1392...
Enough...I got started...if I keep going, I'll translate the whole chapters!
terri