Who historically put magic in The Magician?

f. silvestris

Venicebard, I appreciate the time and trouble you've taken in starting your thread - I'll stop badgering you about individual points and leave you to set your ideas out fairly. Best, Felis
 

Tabris

There is some interesting information concerning the Magician here:

http://www.tarothermit.com/magician.htm

Here it says that the old decks (before the occult revolution) were named things like Le Bateleur (the juggler) and depicted a stage magician or even a craftsman. Magician - in the terms of a mage - were not introduced before Levi and other occultists started to make tarotcards.

This site also explains about the orignial game (tarocchi) that tarot were used for (and still is), showing that the Juggler is an appropriate name for that card.

Whether or not the old decks had any mage-symbolism in mind when they made their decks is hard to say. There aren't any documentation concerning this (as far as I know), so for now, it's only speculation.
 

le pendu

Hi Tabris,

Welcome to Aeclectic, it's nice to have you here, thank you for adding to our discussions.

Here is a link to the Association for Tarot Studies - History Links webpage that you might find interesting:
http://association.tarotstudies.org/history.html

Tom Tadfor Little's "The Hermitage" that you mention is one of the links you will find there, it is one of my favorite Tarot History pages.

And yes, the general impression is that "Le Bateleur", or the Italian "Il Bagatto", has from the start been portrayed as some sort of street magician, trickster, or craftsman rather than a mage.

I hope you enjoy catching up on all of the threads, there is a wonderful amount of information here.

best,
robert
 

stella01904

f. silvestris said:
Stella, I think you might have the Magician card in the Cary-Yale deck printed by US Games in mind – I’m afraid that’s not an original card, Stuart Kaplan commissioned newly painted cards to ‘complete’ the deck (you’re in good company – Rachel Pollack included one of the new cards in Vol 1 of 78 Degrees of Wisdom as an example of a Renaissance trump).
MM ~ Raven Grimassi also included it in Wiccan Magick as the earliest example of the Magician with the four tools of Western Occultism. When I wrote him about it, however, he replied that while it is true that the original card was lost long ago, in the early 19th century, images were discovered of several of the cards, including the Magician. He says, "I'd have to check my notes as I do not recall if they were engravings or actual cards, but I do recall that color was absent. The reconstruction of the Magician card by Scapini was actually coloring the card, not designing it. People apparently misunderstood the report that Scapini reconstructed the missing Magician card to mean that he created its current imagery. All he did was add color to the old image." All of this may sound farfetched to a lot of you, but it is at least worth looking into. I have a lot of faith in Mr. Grimassi, he's very ethical and has no need to fabricate this since there are many other things proving the antiquity of magic and Witchcraft. In the 1970's, everyone thought Tarot was Egyptian and you couldn't tell them otherwise. Let's stay open. BB, Stella
 

f. silvestris

That's interesting. I certainly assumed the suit signs had been put on that card as the result of wishful thinking. The Devil & Tower cards are surely newly painted, as I don't believe they occur in any of the Visconti decks. Felis
 

wandking

Does anyone know exactly what Court De Geblin wrote about The Magician?
 

le pendu

None of the early images that I know of show the four suits on the table in front of the Magician.

I'm not sure if the following illustrations were part of the original publication, but the online version of The Tarot of the Bohemians (Papus, 1892) shows two black and white illustrations. One looks like it is based on Oswald Wirth, 1889, the other a TdM.
TOB: http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/tob/tob14.htm

The Wirth certainly looks similar to the replacement Magician in the Cary-Yale:
http://www.tarot.com/images/decks/cary_yale_visconti/full_size/1.jpg

If the question has become who put the put the four suits on the table, perhaps it is Wirth.

As for what Court De Geblin wrote about The Magician, I'd also like to know. "Wicked Pack of Cards" discusses "Le Monde Primitive", but I don't think they go into detail about what each card means. They focus on the fact that he used his intuition to determain that the Tarot was actually Egyptian in origin. I wonder if Le Monde Primitive is available anywhere online?
 

wandking

According to a very good online source, here is where much of the symbolism on the RWS Magician first appeared;
DETAIL OCCULT TRADITIONAL 15th CENTURY
Lemniscus Wirth T de Marseille
Age - Youth Wirth T de Marseille Cary Sheet
Black Hair Felkin Piedmontese T de Mantegna
Right hand up Felkin Vieville
Left hand down Felkin Vieville
Wand Falconnier Vieville Cary Sheet
Points down Falconnier Bolognese
Headband Falconnier
White Tunic Falconnier T de Mantegna
Red Cloak Etteilla III
Snake Belt Falconnier
Stone Table Falconnier T de Mantegna
Knife on Table Falconnier T de Marseille Visconti-Sforza
Cup on Table Falconnier T de Marseille Visconti-Sforza
Rod on Table Felkin Minchiate
Coin on Table Falconnier T de Marseille Visconti-Sforza
Carvings Falconnier Vachetta
 

f. silvestris

This is the card I mentioned in my post to Stella:
www.tarot.com/images/decks/cary_yale_visconti/full_size/1.jpg
To the best of my understanding, it's an entirely modern painting, but perhaps someone else here has information about Visconti cards copied in the 19th century.

Who is Raven Grimassi, by the way? I'm afraid I don't know anything about wicca.