Camoin Marseilles -- the "true" Tarot, or just squinting at squiggly lines?

At Diana's invitation, I'm posting a separate thread to my post in the Tarot Decks section about the Camoin. Since I'm going to focus here on the historical and esoteric aspects, rather than esthetic considerations, I thought I'd post it in the Historical forum, but hopefully jmd will move it if it doesn't really belong in Historical.

In the previously mentioned post, I suggested that, despite Camoin's and Jodorowsky's claim to have uncovered the "true" Tarot (or, as it says on the box, "restauration du Tarot Originel"), many of the specific details found on this deck are either a) fanciful interpretations of ambiguous lines found on various decks (in the previous post I flippantly referred to this as "squinting at squiggly lines"), or b) clearly visible on some decks, yet not, contrary to the authors' claim, arrived at by a scientific application of the comparative method to uncover the "original" Marseilles. My suspicion is that some of these features were found on some decks, but their inclusion in the Camoin deck was, I suspect, more likely than not due to whether the feature piqued the authors' interest and/or fit into their previously-worked-out esoteric notions.

Some examples of the particular features I have in mind are the stars on the Chariot's canopy, the tail on one of the Sun children, the snakes at the hem of Temperance, the "ramp" on which the Star maiden kneels, the hind legs of the horses on the Chariot, as well as the doorway on the Tower, which jmd has identified in his review as having originated in oral tradition (as opposed to having been seen in a previous deck which actually shows it).

It seems to me that at least some of these "improvements" actually do some violence to some esoteric interpretations one could reach. For example, I always felt it significant that the horses lacked hind legs; I liked the image of the horses (and the charioteer, a concept emphasized in the Rider-Waite version) growing out of the chariot. Likewise, it had seemed to me significant that the Star maiden appears in other Marseilles decks to be kneeling/standing on the surface of the water, a possibility now gone because the authors have supplied her with a ramp.

I'd welcome anyone's thoughts on the above. I should point out, I really don't have an objection to Camoin and Jodorowsky putting any details they want in their deck. I like the deck a lot, in fact it's my favorite. I'm just not sure I like the idea of their claim to have uncovered some previously missing "original" deck, when this might not factually be the case. Jmd did bring up the possibility that the deck was intended to uncover the "essential" Marseilles rather than an historically factual "missing" deck, but when I read the LPB (little purple booklet), the authors do seem to be making a fairly clear claim that they are actually uncovering a once-existant deck, in the same way that literary detectives compare versions of Shakespeare to come up with what they propose as the ur-text or what Shakespeare originally wrote.

By the way, Diane mentions that the first Marseilles deck is the 1760 Conver, but Kaplan's Encyclopedia on page 309 illustrates the Jean Noblet deck, which clearly contains most of the standard Marseilles imagery. Kaplan dates this deck as from the 17th century, although he says it had been previously dated to the 18th century. Kaplan says, "The new dating puts the Noblet deck as one of the first known examples of Tarot of Marseilles decks."

-- Lee

Thank You!!! I was thinking along the same lines, but didn't have the courage to post it.

Great post, Lee!

I think I mentioned in another thread that when I first obtained my copy of the Camoin, I carefully studied it and made four pages of notes just on aspects which I thought weren't 'right' - in my review, I mention only few of these, which are also mentioned by Ihcoyc in the above post. Specifically, the hind legs of the Chariot's horses, though actually there in early decks, are mere ambiguous outlines; the 'tail' on the left-hand figure on the Sun could easily be a flesh-fold; the kneeling platform - though I personally do like the clarity here - is there even on the Grimaud Star; and the 'snake' at the hem of Temperance is upon the Dodal.

But what of all this?

I do not think that the Camoin is truly a Marseille Ür-Tarot. In the execution of the deck, both Camoin and Jodorowski appear to have been heavily influenced by their own discoveries - which they then applied pictorially for our benefit (even the door on the Tower can be seen in this light).

But what of the 'true' Marseille, then?

To my mind, it cannot be produced. It remains a deck which each instance of its production either closely or not so closely depicts it. In the case of the Camoin, and only in my view, it has certainly come close... despite my many notes of 'errors'.

To ask others a question of the Marseilles: had you noted the 'egg' below the phoenix/eagle of the Emperor, or the 'ramp' below the Star's knee, or the hind-legs of the Chariot's horses, or the Pope's glove, or the triple nipples on one of the figures on the Devil, or even the possibility of a door for the lower figure on the Tower?

These have certainly added a direct visual 'description' of what may have taken many words to describe. It doesn't mean that the Marseille should have these depicted in unambiguous ways - but that their true ambiguity can now be seen anew in other decks which will emerge.

As to whether Camoin and Jodorowski actually think that their deck somehow captures an early actual deck which has been lost, is, as far as I'm concerned, to their detriment - even to only imply such. For myself, I'll judge the deck both through the description they give as to its production (ie, how they were moved) and its result. As I have mentioned elsewhere, Jodorowski even claims to have had to abandon his many years of Grimaud influence - even though, in my opinion, the Grimaud influence remains in their deck.

In my view, I still rate this deck with five stars - even with its 'faults'. Its gift to the Tarot world is truly wonder-full.

Thanks, jmd, your comments are always enlightening!

I have checked my Grimaud and find that you're right, the Star maiden does not kneel on the water, although I think it's quite ambiguous as to whether she's on dry land or on a platform. There are three horizontal lines which could be taken for a wooden platform, but on the other hand there are similar parallel lines elsewhere on the landscape, and there is no difference in color between what she kneels on and the rest of the ground, as there is in the Camoin.

I think your approach to the Camoin is the best one... to use the interesting oddities as a jumping-off place for speculation, and not to reject the deck just because of the authors' claims for it. It certainly helps that the deck is so attractive!

I do look forward to working with the Camoin, and I'm pleased to say that jmd's review helped me to make the decision to order it.

-- Lee

jmd said:

But what of the 'true' Marseille, then?

To my mind, it cannot be produced. It remains a deck which each instance of its production either closely or not so closely depicts it. In the case of the Camoin, and only in my view, it has certainly come close... despite my many notes of 'errors'.

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This is perhaps the most interesting question, to me. Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid he reproduces a whole page of A's in many different fonts. Some are close to a "canonical" letter A. Others are much more further out, and might not be recognised without the other exemplars of 'A' surrounding them. I suspect that the Tarot images resemble letters of the alphabet in at least this respect.

Is there Meaning in the horse's hind legs? Should we reject as defaulting away from the true tradition, a drawing of the same subject, but with better proportions and perspective, like you find in some of the Italian traditional decks? Might there be flaws of draughtsmanship and technique preserved in our Marseille decks? To what extent have they been shaped by the limitations of the medium? or by the need of card-players, as opposed to esoteric users, to have easily identified and canonical images?

Of course, whatever a canonical Tarot deck looks like, any edition of the Tarot de Marseilles comes far, far closer to embodying that ideal than the Egyptian Cat Goddess Tarot of the Feminist Celtic Gypsies from Atlantis does. But whatever meaning the cards have strikes me as being as whole images, and what those images call to mind, rather than in details.

"the Egyptian Cat Goddess Tarot of the Feminist Celtic Gypsies from Atlantis"

Oh, boy. I had to pick myself up off the floor after reading that one. It says a great deal in just a few words. Satire is an extremely economical form of criticism.

As for reconstitution(s) of the "real" Marseilles Deck -- recovering the supposedly genuine article is always perilous under even the best conditions. When we listen to "genuine" medieval music played on facsmilies of the "original" instruments, does it really sound now like it did then? There's no way of telling, but I have my doubts.

Therefore, I prefer regarding as genuine any Marseilles deck from the 17th, 18th, or early 19th century. I really have a preference for the Noblet pack. It's very early, nicely executed, quite simple, and with 73 cards nearly complete. It's also a far cry from the Mystical Rosy Sephirothic Tarot of the Order of the Masonic Neoplatonic Neapolitan Trismegistians.

edited

Diana:

It's the colors.

catboxer said:

"the Egyptian Cat Goddess Tarot of the Feminist Celtic Gypsies from Atlantis"

Oh, boy. I had to pick myself up off the floor after reading that one. It says a great deal in just a few words. Satire is an extremely economical form of criticism.

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I just can't help myself. My mind is always spinning stuff like this.

As for reconstitution(s) of the "real" Marseilles Deck -- recovering the supposedly genuine article is always perilous under even the best conditions. When we listen to "genuine" medieval music played on facsmilies of the "original" instruments, does it really sound now like it did then? There's no way of telling, but I have my doubts.

Click to expand...

This meshes with my point. I have no doubt that the person who created the original design for, say, the Chariot card, would have liked to create something more similar to, say the Visconti-Sforza Chariot. He would have wanted the wheels in perspective. He would have given the horses all the legs they're due, and would have made them in proportion to the rider.

For whatever reason, he lacked the space, the tools, the material, or perhaps the skills to make something that fancy. His deck was a mass market item, not handmade for people who could afford the painted cards. He abstracted elements from the image in his head and created a design that was at least recognisable. It got the idea across, and so it got the job done. That design, in turn, became the tradition and the standard, and was reproduced, leaving us to wonder if there was some intent behind the fact that the wheels on the inherited design would not roll forward.

Possibly the person who first carved the block for the first Chariot card may have 'liked' to have it as complete a photographic design as possible - yet other possibilities are possible.

For example, I am pretty certain that the peculiar spelling of the very name ihcoyc has chosen is because of its gnostic Greek numerological value of 888, and hence the 'hidden' Sun - or is it just a coincidence, which, had he the option, would have been spelled in its more familiar form (ibid. for XPICTOC). I am not demeaning your valuable post here, ihcoyc, rather attempting to indicate that perhaps not all that meets the eye is as is for merely aesthetically un-realised reasons.

As to your analogy with Hofstadter's page of As, it is certainly a very pointed aspect I had in mind. Thankyou (by the way, I think AmounrA has also mentioned this most wonderful book in the thread Sanctum Sanctorum).

On a different note:

As for the two decks mentioned above, surely they deserve to be added to that list of decks that didn't quite make it

I also wonder, catboxer, if your deck isn't the unrecognised 'Mystic RoSeTa Order of the Masonic NeNeTs' - which has been re-translated as the 'Stoned Women of Orpheus' - I also believe that 'NeNeTs' has now made it into colloquial French for 'women'.

It may also be mentioned without hesitation that the Egyptian Cat Goddess Tarot of the Feminist Celtic Gypsies from Atlantis has also recently seen the light of day - but that would be revealing secrets which remains only darkness visible.