"tarot History" versus historiography

Great stuff.

The world of Tarot is filled with Sloppy Scholars - has been since "It came from Egypt" by A. Court de Géblin...all the way to today. We take our modern premise, and work backwards to 'prove' it.

Any other field of study would laugh tarot historians out of the hall.

All of them…

Thank you DianeOD, because I understand what you’re attempting to say.

It is interesting this Almanac; also what you said about the European way of describing winds versus the Eastern way of winds by stars. In the film 'The English Patient' The Patient is describing winds to his love during a sandstorm. He gives the Arabic names of the winds and at the time, I tried hard to remeber them because some sounded like the star names. The patient gave them directions- just like you have spoken that a European would. One wind carried red sand from the South to the shores of England? and made the streets run like blood. That wind, if I recall correctly, was called
something like Addirayam- which at the time I figured was Adh-Dhira' al-Yamin or the star we call Alderamin.Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient) used these winds as allegorical way of seeing -just like the Atlas catala.

I do find it odd that that it is thought that Tarot- like imagery is just an influence from the pool that cannot be an actual basis or concrete 'this is the image' It is like it is thought that Tarot landed from outer space and was here in a vacumn. I know that many images abound in Europe in Churches- that does not make them specific to Tarot apparently- so what does? The card is it's own History? Very weird way to look at History in my opinion. ~Rosanne

Queen of Sheba as Queen of Gold.

I'm less interested in the way Cresques applied the astronomical 'archetypes' to other regions of the world. Our earlier sources don't speak of a 'joc 'joc Arabien' or a 'joc Serendip' but of a "joc Moresche".

There actually is a very detailed set of correspondences within the world-map part of the compendium Catala; the way Cresques places the figures , and the emblem they are given, indicates actual connections between peoples of these different regions and/or indicates their 'native' character as similar. Remember that at this time everyone within the Mediterranean and Muslim near east believed everyone on earth descended from Noah and his sons. It was taken as fact!

The "queen of Sheba" here is identified as a 'queen of gold' sort of character. Doesn't mean she married Mansa musa. It means that the people of this region are linked by blood/ethnicity with people of north Africa - something that we know is true from other sources altogether.

Here her character is also shown as moulded by the astronomical *type* I call the Southern Woman/Queen of the South. This astronomical archetype (tho I hate using 'archetype') is the one for the star marking the hidden South point of the heavens. It was imagined dwelling in everlasting heat and darkness down there in the far south of the sky. That's the figure we normally have titled 'Strength' in our Atouts.

In the Guildhall cards that Atout *archetype* star is identified as Persephone (with her mother).

In Murner's cards, the Southern Woman or Queen of the South is shown labouring in "hell's kitchen.'

In Norwich Cathedral she is Sheba again, drawn (correctly) as the Southern Woman/Queen of the South.

I'm sorry to say that ecclesiastical manuscripts (and Norwich) are often less kind. They depict her as the great Whore, mother of all, and whore of Babylon. (i.e. Cairo, the first 'babylon' .. this would take to long to explain. But trust me, its true.)

So showing her here, on the compendium's world-map as "Queen of gold/south" and "Sheba" is really very nice of Cresques - as well as being accurate.

If you look at the arcana minor of the 1JJ cards, you can see that they have retained - somewhat miraculously - exactly the original posture and character for the pair of the King of Gold and Queen of gold. I am sure I have read somewhere - maybe in COurt de Gebelin - that the Queen of Gold meant Sheba. So here we have her.

I'm sorry it takes so long to explain, even in this scant detail.

I'll put these two 1JJ figures up if I can find some non-copyright version. And maybe the Norwich "Southern Woman" in one or two manifestations... the are astronomical figures are *types* of character so they appear several times to tell us the common nature of different people.


Back as soon as possible. Then that will probably be all from me for some time. Term begins here.

Umbrae said:

Great stuff.

The world of Tarot is filled with Sloppy Scholars - has been since "It came from Egypt" by A. Court de Géblin...all the way to today. We take our modern premise, and work backwards to 'prove' it.

Any other field of study would laugh tarot historians out of the hall.

All of them…

Thank you DianeOD, because I understand what you’re attempting to say.

Click to expand...

I heard "sloppy scholars" .... likely following this from Diane:

The point is that the 'history of tarot' has hardly ever been investigated.

What has been investigated is the history of modern card-games, and the genealogy of modern/current tarot packs, and so forth.

When you compare the methods being used, they fly in the face of the most basic technical rules for investigating an historical artefact.

But people who are interested in card-games, or attached to a particular notion that packs have always related to their own favourite interest - such as alchemy or magic or whatever - really don't want to do historical research per se. What they want is to prove that their own preference is the right, true and original way to use cards. May be it is; maybe not. That's what historical research is supposed to be about.

If what we were researching was, say, a particular design of embroidery on a medieval gown (i.e. images on cloth, rather than on card), we'd ... I say we because by training I am an archaeologist of technologies, with specialist training in near eastern languages, religion, art and artefacts... and with emphasis on the connection between east and west...

Anyway: what we would do first, is analyse the material. If it turns out to be silk, inwoven with gold thread, then we count the number of threads per inch.

OK - suppose the fabric shows that the material was made in China, or in Syria, or in Byzantium, or by the Syrian weavers that Charlemagne imported into France...

Then we look at the colours used... where did *they* come from. If local, then the material was probably brought back without embroidery, and dyed locally. So the embroidery is probably local.

Then you look at the cut of the thing... and then the imagery stitched onto it.

If the figure embroidered on it is plainly similar to ones from Syria, or Byzantium or Egypt (and one routinely looks around the whole range of possible sources for imagery, because people have always liked getting 'foreign' imagery on things; it shows they are avant-garde, or rich, I suppose).

So then you find that the closest type of this imagery comes, in fact, from India. Really interesting.

Click to expand...

written in a post of Diane 17.10.07, which sounds, that "true scholars should follow a neutral way, not blended and preoccupied by ideas, which they had already had before they enter ... which was followed by this statement, 4 hours later, also 17.10.07, also Diane, but another thread

Since I knew from the beginning that the figures were based in astronomy, and with reference to the "new" scientific Arabic names as well as older classical ones, I was able to consult those, too.

Click to expand...

... which - just my impression - tells somehow, that she had once actually the position, that she had attacked 4 hours ago.

I've just to repeat Umbrae's words

Any other field of study would laugh tarot historians out of the hall.

All of them…

Click to expand...

He precisely says "all of them" and that's a sort of global attack, one should be careful about.

Well, Tarot History is ... beside few exceptions ... not paid history. Here and there are some persons, which possibly get some money for the theme as a promotional work, getting a degree finally for it. Others come from the field of art history. Some matters are arranged by Museums for playing cards, perhaps.

A lot of people just work by their own engagement, just cause they once found a personal reason to follow the theme, which mostly means, that they didn't follow Diane's earlier suggestion, to enter the field of research "without private engagement". How could they ... the field of human past is gigantical, there are so many topics, which might be followed, anybody needs to reduce the ocean to the small pool, where he can walk around and have a look and describe the details, that he/she can observe. And, during this reducement, anybody follows his/her own favour, otherwise he/she would do nothing, because then there would be the feature of missing motivation.

Well, Umbrae, we, self-declared historians in a free chosen topic with the certain desire to develop a sort of self-defined quality, don't like as other humans, when dogs piss at our trousers, when they've no other place, where they could spend their water.

If you've specific points to address in specific matters, where you think, that an argument is wrong or an opinion accusable, please do, but global attacks as the given statement, just means, "anyway, I hadn't really anything to say, just wanted to have a look, if the water still is cooking at 100 degree Celsius."

... really funny, Umbrae ... as you predicted in wise fashion we'll laugh till you're outside the mentioned hall

Back to the topic. Diane in the starting article of the thread asked me to
contribute with something, that I wote in another thread:

######
I assume, you speak of the Atout as the "Atout of Tarot" and you think of them as the 22 special cards or of a variation of the special cards like for instance the 17 figures, that you see as a complete Tarot-theme.
For these we've the condition, that we've some hundred real Tarot playing cards in Italy for 15th century and from nowhere else (if we leave Guildhall and Goldschmidt fragments out), also we've about 50 accompanying documents, from which nearly all are refering to Italian conditions and only 2-3 involve French contexts.
From the documents we've the condition, that they to a high degree involve high nobility in Italy, very seldom the ordinairy public
From all this the conclusion is near, that Tarot or this way to create special cards with the function of trumping beside the standard Matrix decks was born in Italy by high nobility. This is normal conclusion, that "a tree comes from the forest" is the usual rule and that "a forest comes from one tree" is a rare case.
A "rare case" would demand generally really good arguments to become the true story.

If you speak of "Atout" as the trumping rule inside card games, so already Dummett has the opinion, that trumping existed with the invention of playing cards in Europe, though he's missing final evidence in the way "that one cannot be sure about it."
###
... if you wish to read it in context, see the Bohemian thread 1340 ...
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=86010&page=1&pp=10



It's somehow fundamental, that any history researcher makes his choice for his theme and defines his topic, as it makes sense to him and to his project. Now the project in our case is given and it's titled "Tarot", or better, as we're interested to keep the topic reduced a little bit, "History and Origin of Tarot".

Well, in our (Trionfi.com's) case it's more less defined as "History and Origin of Tarot in 14th and 15th century", just as we think, that this field is already big enough. And already this looks occasionally as "too much".

Dummett/Decker/Depaulis defined their research field different, and focussed much more on later times, and if 15th century, and then they concentrated on objects, from which it was more or less clear, that it was a playing card topic. So "their" 15th century studies stay relative small.

Kaplan made a rather good contribution by developing some biographical dimension for the connected people in 15th century.

Bob O'Neill used his energy for routes deep back in history, neoplatonism, Kabbalism, Gnosticism etc.

Diane has a favour for the Arabian connection to European playing cards ...

-----

Anybody defines his choice and topic him/herself. That's fine. If everybody would write with the same approach, the theme would naturally become boring.

Some trouble is created by the use of the word "Tarot" .... everybody turns the word into something, which fits with his/her own approach and "chosen theme". According to Dummett it's the expressing for specific playing cards. Others see forms of Tarot even in the alphabet. Mostly nobody cares to define his use of the word against the use of the word by others.

Trionfi.com has defined its object "Tarot in 14th/15th century". Now ... the word Tarot likely wasn't known in 14th/15th century, actually our object are socalled Trionfi cards. But ... we would be stupid, when we didn't use the word "Tarot". There's the public, and when 95% of the language users at least once have heard of the existence of the word Tarot and only less than 1% of the word "Trionfi", it's natural, that an author relates himself to the stronger word in 20th/21st century, although Tarot in 14th/15th century had a language-user worth of probably 0%.

So the problem with the word Tarot comes from the "audience", from the "public opinion and knowledge". Part of this "public opinion of knowledge" are the search engines. When we wouldn't use Tarot as a keyword, the search engines wouldn't take us in the right category and Tarot interested people wouldn't find us.

So we use the word, cause we're not stupid. We wish, that our texts are read, we're authors. And Diane's problem is even harder, as her topic from "public understanding" is even in more distance than our topic Trionfi. So she also uses the word Tarot.

I see Huck's point.

The field of history is full of amateur historians, but that's always been true, and professional historians should be grateful for them. People who do history as a "hobby" do a lot of the legwork that academic historians don't have time or energy for.

I think Umbrae spoke without precision in using the term sloppy SCHOLARS.

The problem is frauds and charlatans who PRETEND to know the "true history of tarot" or who just LIKE a particular version of tarot history best, regardless of the evidence. Let's face it, there are plenty of strange little obsessions and plenty of folks willing to follow them....

Some of my best friends are frauds and charlatans, by the way. It's part of any discipline, and probably much more part of tarot and spirituality studies in general.

Huck's letter

Huck -

Please don't be offended. We all love you too much to want you offended.. and I mean that.
What I believe determines the history and development of the Atout imagery, and probably the whole form of pack, is not at all "an Arabian connection".

I believe that an older custom, prevalent throughout the whole region from Persia through to .. maybe.. west North Africa, named or associated directions and qualities with particular stars. (well, I know it did.)

... It entered the west in successive waves, from about the 7thC ad, and due to periods and lines of contact that are demonstrable from the historical record. The Nestorians were just one such link - one coming at a useful time, and recorded in a form whose relevance is surely immediately obvious to all.

(Huck, if you saw a traditional looking "Pope" figure you'd recognise it, even if it ws embroidered on an apron in the middle of Asia). Well, I knew the type immediately and could quite literally read the passages of written text being represented by the details - "devices" as they were called - within the picture.

Regardless of the vehicle (the card), or the environment (middle of Asia), you'd recognise a figure for the Pope today. Well, that's how it was.

Yes: I think Atouts is the nearest we have to a neutral term, and its as old as the one the Italians coined in the fifteenth century - which is HOW long after card-use begins in Europe..?

and after reading all the arguments proposed for adopting the Italians' "trionfi" for the pack, I absolutely PREFER to use tarot - I feel that of the two, the latter demands I beg fewer vital question... since you ask.


Anyway: here are the 1JJ cards for King and Queen of Gold, and I add the other kings for good measure. I'll leave the Norwich figures for another time, and will put them up in the pre-1377 thread.

Love em or leave em.

IJJ Gold King
IJJ Gold Queen
IJJ Rod King
IJJ Sword King
IJJ Cups King

Huck said:

Well, Umbrae, we, self-declared historians in a free chosen topic with the certain desire to develop a sort of self-defined quality, don't like as other humans, when dogs piss at our trousers, when they've no other place, where they could spend their water.

If you've specific points to address in specific matters, where you think, that an argument is wrong or an opinion accusable, please do, but global attacks as the given statement, just means, "anyway, I hadn't really anything to say, just wanted to have a look, if the water still is cooking at 100 degree Celsius."

... really funny, Umbrae ... as you predicted in wise fashion we'll laugh till you're outside the mentioned hall

Click to expand...

A large amount of facts, without a thesis to wrap them around, serve to swell the lapels of the sophomoric amateur. Further, an unproven thesis propped up by unrelated facts supported by swelled lapels and obfuscation is not history.

My post applauded DianeOD for drilling down, here in the history forums.

If some dog looses his water upon my trousers, and the owner insists it’s raining, should I not question the swelled lapels?

Tarot history is rife with sloppy scholarship.

Further, the field is filled with ‘scholars’ who would rather obfuscate than clarify – to become dogmatic rather than learn from their own research.

Here, in these forums – it is accepted to push down the detractors, rather than clarify and prove. It is accepted to work without a thesis, and display a hypothesis as a theory.

Please don’t tell me it’s raining. Unless you’re telling me that all are not welcome here? Only scholars are welcome? Is one not allowed to question and learn?

You took my comments personally, that’s your choice (“If the shoe fits…”), and followed up by inviting me to leave, (“as you predicted in wise fashion we'll laugh till you're outside the mentioned hall…”). This speaks volumes, and reflects upon your voice.

As for the rest of your thesisless post, you’ve told us the water is 212 and 100 and bubbles are rising from the bottom of the pan.

If I understand right - a history is a story about the past based on fact. Historiography is about the methods and history of history. Historiography would include all sloppy methods of historical research even if labeled ineffective. It would also contain all the myths of Tarot as being historical artifacts within the larger history.

The way I see it, Tarot, if it was designed as one expression of the encyclopedist, symbol-based tendencies of the medieval/Renaissance world, represents universals within the human psyche and culture. If 'universal,' we should find parallels in every culture. As an artifact that sums up human understanding, it should have roots in the whole lineage of human understanding up to that time.

More specifically, Mediterranean culture is an amalgum of European and African (with a healthy dose of Asian) cultures. If oil is the the major power source in our time, then wind would have been the major power source in the Mediterranean cultures and the four winds were a major metaphor. The association to stars and maps is made obvious by Diane's incredible research and the parallels seem really worth exploring—for anyone who has the time, desire and skills to do so. Bringing it before a forum for discussion allows ideas to be refined, although it's frustrating when there is no one else to do the primary research. Things like pointing out where such maps have more than four Kings or that the Kings carry implements that don't appear in Tarot iconography can be helpful in that these points need to be addressed.

One issue that came up a lot when Christine Payne-Towler was writing her book _The Underground Stream_ (which I commented on in draft and before) was the difference between Tarot and what we came to call proto-Tarot - or symbolic systems and themes that were not actually Tarot but could be seen as a 'hypothetical ancestor' (see definitions of 'proto').

The question then becomes how directly or indirectly was the influence - was any link specifically discernable - and how much was it such a ubiquitous part of the culture that it could be expected to turn up in almost any artifact. A major area of concern for Christine was what we came to call the astro-alpha-numeric set of correspondences - in that they again and again had been historically and symbolically related to each other, and at exactly what points were these links made to Tarot.

It seems that what we have here, with Diane's outstanding research, is another facet or cultural lineage of what might be considered a 'proto-Tarot' that focuses not on an astro-alpha-numeric system but on symbols involved in orienting ourselves in the physical world of maps, climate & astronomy. Of course, there probably will be significant overlaps in that there was no difference between the fields of astrology and astronomy until relatively modern times.

I think if we focus on the hypothesis of this ancestorship and the relevancy of maps, the climate of weather and politics and astronomy, that we'll find a very rich layer of proto-Tarotlogical study.

I think there is an all-too-human tendency to create symbolic artifacts that help us map and move around the mundane and celestial/spiritual worlds in which we exist. That one such artifact might use the same or similar symbolic constructs as another is hardly surprising. It is part of what it means to be human with our associative brains, suggestive natural environment, and social, communicative conditioning - much of which is not conscious.

Mary

Summary by Tehuti

Thank you for that clear and balanced summary, Tehuti.

I wish it were possible for me to draw a diagram to show how the tarot makes a virtual 3-dimensional model of the 3-tiered 'mundus' of the medieval man. In fact, we have a text of 1377 which tells us specifically that the new form of activity called the "ludus cartarum" enables one to represent all the states of the world. Trouble is that the translations usually imply its a geographic game, where the Latin actually implies that it enables one to describe every conceivable "point or stage in the universe" with spritual steps or stages, as well as steps of the social ladder, or stages of a physical journey.

That was the text which made the most immediate sense to me, so having identified the underlying "character-types" of several of the Charles VI cards, I began looking at contemporary methods for describing the "status mundi", and lo and behold, there was a great visual Almanac, with world-map included, using the suits to mark the 4 of North Africa. And again, we hear of types of "journey-game" which can begin from a series of alphabetic letters, but always from the preliminary reading of a 'carta' as letter. These are verbal contest-games which sometimes use pieces of paper, or other tokens. And the 'Alphabet' game is about a group each composing in turn a 'patch' of a conceptual map. It forms altogether a poetic and imaginary 'journey-map', on which all the intricate details and allusions to medicine, literature, etc. found physically on a map of those times, are added as verbal ornament and allusion.

In this connection, we find in the sole reference to card-use, within the Thousand and One Nights, that the story is really about the subjects of the medieval curriculum, and the wise and witty slave woman who confounds experts in every discipline.

Halfway though the very long tale, she turns and speaks to the Caliph, explaining that she has her knowledge of astronomy, astology, medicine and --- all the subjects of the medieval curriculum --- because "the Almanac makers have certain signs and tokens, by means of which ordinary people learn through practicise (implies by 'practical manipulation' of the tokens)... and there's more .. which takes one in the same direction. That's why I rfer to the Ctalan compendium called the 'Atlas" cause it is an Almanac - rendered in pictures. And the 'signs and tokens' are within the world-map, while the content of the universe of (medieval scholarly and practical) learning, is represented in the charts. but I'm off to a meeting... andlate!

As to the cards embodying "universal" themes... I think the medieval world took the term 'universe' differently. Don't think they would have accepted ideas about a shared unconscious, because it is an idea essentially non-theist and secular not medieval... . By "universal" was normally meant something embracing the whole of the god-made universe and/or its assigned inhabitants or qualities... MUST go..

Must go...

Diane -

You refer to quite a few intriguing bits of evidence - however, for myself, unless I can read the texts I won't be able to determine if I agree with your conclusions. At this point the rest of us will need to see the primary materials - and probably translations of them. This is one reason why the work of Michael J. Hurst, Ross Caldwell, Huck, Huson, Dummett, Kaplan and others have been so valuable - they've provided and/or organized the source material so that others can work with them, too.

I admire your knowledge of the medieval world. I admit I was talking on two levels when discussing the universality of the Tarot. You are absolutely right that it is important to keep the medieval/Renaissance concept separate from a contemporary psychological one. Otherwise the material works at cross-purposes with itself.

On the other hand, my point was not to describe 15th century Tarot as it then was, but to speak to the human propensity in any age to create artifacts that "help us map and move around the mundane and celestial/spiritual worlds" and that utilize prior cultural motifs - consciously or unconsciously. And, that it's not unusual that there would be parallels among such attempts whether or not there is a direct linkage.

My reference to proto-Tarot and astro-alpha-numeric systems is an attempt to group and put a name to certain characteristics and qualities that we can examine without needing, prematurely, to define them as being part of something that is already well-established without them.

Tarot is usually differentiated from other divination or oracle cards through its specific, defining characteristics. The examples you give above seem to extend well beyond our usual definitions of Tarot - but perhaps not. Without seeing the primary resources it is impossible to say.

Perhaps it would help if you would define Tarot as you see it. Personally, I adhere to a rather rigid definition of 78 cards with 22 pictorial Trumps (or 21, plus an unnumbered card) and 56 other cards divided into four suits, each with 10 number/pip cards and 4 court (or face) cards. Most variations of this may be Tarot-related, but are not, IMHO, actually Tarot.

BTW, I've read several of your articles and I think the work you are doing is fabulous. I look forward to seeing much more of it.

Mary K. Greer