Le Mat

punchinella

Terri, thank you for enriching my appreciation of this card with that wonderful story about Walker.

And Smleite, thank you for the Bosch link, interesting indeed.
 

Rafaël

about LE MAT

Waow! I’m amazed by this forum, so much of us studying these old cards, so much to tell about it...
I just signed in today and didn’t read everything yet, but I’d like to tell what I learned mainly from Ingrid Lisenborghs who works with Philippe Camoin.
I hope I don’t repeat too many things already mentioned.
Excuse me also for my poor English.

Somebody mentioned already the reference to checkmate: “échec et mat”. That is when the king has been defeated. This gives us a link between Le Mat and Le Fou: “Le fou du roi”, in middle ages, was the only one allowed to laugh with the king. Therefore he had some kind of power bigger than the king’s power. There is a adage that says: “he who is mad in the eyes of people is wise in the eyes of God. He who is wise in the eyes of people is mad in the eyes of God”.

When the word is turned around we see: T AME L : in French “âme” = soul, “T” could stand for “temps” = time and “L” stands for “lieu” = place. The soul incarnated in a specific time and space…

As written above LE MAT is the only card in the Major Arcana with no number and also the only figure who moves (except the left figure in LE SOLEIL, who moves in the same direction (look at his feet, they are in the exact same position). The skeleton in card XIII doesn’t move for he would cut off his foot…)). These clues say: this is a card apart.

Le Mat shows the direction to follow on the spiritual path (blue color). He looks at the sky (heaven, the stars) to find its way. There are 22 leafs of grass in the landscape…
According to Camoin the essential things to know about the Major Arcana are coded in LE MAT.

The only link with LE BATELEUR I can see is that they are both young man and that the bag on the table could be the bag of LE MAT. But the position is different: Le Mat knows where he wants to go; Le Bateleur hesitates (feet in opposite directions, looking at the past).
 

Fulgour

Gunnysack

Le Mat is carrying something in le mat ~ his sack. My guess is that it is what L'Hermite has sent his dog to find.
 

tmgrl2

Glad this thread is alive and well..

This morning, my sister-in-law called and I told her I was home from work and gave her my tale of woes...and she said something I have often heard in my husband's family (Sicilian)..

The dog always bites the man with the torn pants

I asked my husband what he remembers about this expression.

He said they use it whenever they want to refer to being down on your luck and then something else bad happens...or "when it rains it pours." He also said they used to use it to infer that if people's attire gave off a message of the person being a "vagrant" (LOL) or wanderer...or just not well-dressed (implying higher station in life) . So the dog would bite the person who wore tattered clothes..

For the first time, I pictured the Fool with the torn pants leg and the dog reaching up to grab the torn cloth. The RW card does not have this image, but the Tarot de Marseille and other decks do...

terri
 

punchinella

That's very interesting Terri, thanks for sharing it. I do feel that this act of biting is incredibly significant. I suppose I should re-read the whole thread before speaking (well--I did read it several months ago . . . ) But no, I just want to say that if Le Mat = death, then the fact that the dog tears at his flesh makes sense. This could be seen as the beginning of a stripping-bare process (which would result, obviously, in emergence of a figure such as that represented in XIII).
Fulgour said:
Le Mat is carrying something in le mat ~ his sack. My guess is that it is what L'Hermite has sent his dog to find.
Diana suggested to me once that what he carries in his sack is his soul.

:)
 

smleite

What I am about to say has nothing to do with a “serious” exegesis – it is only a personal experience of mine, but one that meant a lot to me. Sometime ago, I was trying to meditate over the idea of pursuing a “spiritual path” in our lives, and how to make it compatible with daily demands, raising kids, going to work, etc… and suddenly Le Mat appeared before my eyes. At first I didn’t get it, but then “he” showed me his bag… and it made sense: we all carry our stuff with us, and whatever it is, it belongs to us and stays with us, and still we walk. Some walk under a heavier burden, others carry less weight, but everyone walks, everyone has the same possibility to “get there”. That was the answer I needed then – it is not a universal answer, I know, but one of the many possible ones Tarot gives us. In this sense, it wouldn’t be exactly my soul, but all experiences my soul ever had, or my “soul’s luggage”…

I also liked Rafaël’s mention of “Le fou du roi”, or the king’s fool; I’ve sometimes wandered about the phonetic resemblances between “le fou” and “le feu”, or fire, but I think this is subject for a different thread – and has possibly been analysed already, in an alchemical perspective?

Silvia
 

tmgrl2

smleite...I really like your post....and I like Diana's comment about his carrying his/her soul in it.

I sort of think of it as ...suppose my house burned down, what would I absolutely have to take with me in a little knapsack...the less we MUST have to me is a sign of some level of how we value personal/material things, as well. I really need very little...at this point in my life...and have way more "stuff" than I need. Shakespeare said , "We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

So..I hope one day, to be more like The Fool, to be able to travel "lightly" with less stuff and maybe just my soul tucked into my knapsack....(and my meds, too, LOL)...the rest I can live without...

terri
 

tmgrl2

Le Mat…

Just got my copy of Jodoworsky’s {i] La Voie du Tarot[/i]…and, knowing it won’t be a cover-to-cover read for me, but a look-up-a –particular topic book…since it is in French, I thought I’d give his section on Le Mat a quick translate for myself. So…here is a summary/paraphrase of some of what he says> I have also added a link that shows a piece on Le Mat that Rusty Neon has also translated.

Jodo says the key phrase of Le Mat could be:

All the paths/roads are my road.

He summarizes Le Mat as being a card of energy and freedom. Who is before? Who comes after?…Where is he going? Or, is it possible that he is turning endlessly in circles around his own stick? Is he perhaps a religious pilgrim who returns to a holy place or, as many have seen him, a fool walking toward his own destruction?

If we wish to see him on the higher plane, is he a being detached from all care, complexity, judgment…living outside the boundaries, having renounced all demands:

a light, a god, a powerful force in the flow of energy, a force of immeasurable freedom.

Jodo has several more pages on Le Mat…he mentions the tiny bells on his tunic

One can image, perhaps that he plays the music of the planets, of cosmic harmony.

Rusty has translated the passage I just started about the bells, in a thread on the various little balls in the Camoin-Jodo deck. I’ll add the link here, rather than translate more…

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27244&highlight=Le+Mat

At the end of his passage on Le Mat, from a lecture, Jodo summarizes Le Mat as evoking an enormous force of energy.

Depending on the placement of the card, if he faces toward a card, it changes the creative energy of that card.

If Le Mat is separated from the card which precedes it, he is leaving a situation to bring his forces to a new project, a new work, a new relationship.

He represents, then, a liberation, a flight/escape
(material, emotional, intellectual, or sexual). This card poses the question of learning how the energy of the querent should be carried…to what or to whom the querent’s
energies should be directed.

If Le Mat is identified as a person, he sometimes represents
madness or inconsistency. Well-placed, a pilgrimage, a trip, a force which directs/moves.

The question is to know where Le Mat goes….As for himself, he has no preference.

There is a great deal more on the colors and clothing and details in the Camoin deck, as well….

Just felt like translating a piece and sharing it along with Rusty’s translation from anther thread that has the piece on Le Mat.

I think I am going to like more of what I learn from Jodo's book as I go along..but this is a piece...not entirely new idea, certainly, but very much more descriptive than I might have initially expected.

terri
 

Yatima

Happy Augustin, a real fool at times of the Black Death in Vienna

terri, since my allusion to a real wandering fool in the time of the pestilence in Vienna was lost by the hack-attack, I want to give the story again: The "Happy Augustin" (Lieber Augustin) was a drunk who fell in sleep during the time of pestilence, was considered dead of the Black Death and taken away to a be disposed on a mass-grave. When he awoke, he was happy at least to be still alive and walked away. The connected Lied, which I quote below, shows him as a Fool having lost all, being a drunk, and even having lost his walking-stick.

1.Oh, du lieber Augustin, Augustin, Augustin,
oh, du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.
Geld ist weg, Mäd´l ist weg,
alles weg, alles weg,
oh, du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.

2.Oh, du lieber Augustin, Augustin, Augustin,
oh, du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.
Rock ist weg, Stock ist weg,
Augustin liegt im Dreck,
oh, du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.

3.Oh, du lieber Augustin, Augustin, Augustin,
oh, du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.
Geld ist weg, o du Schreck,
das ist schlecht und nicht recht,
oh, du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.

Text und Melodie: Marx Augustin ( 1679 )

Yatima
 

jmd

How about, for a mildly different perspective, at a different look at what the Fou must have at some stage also be doing: dancing with his dog, his instrument - the flute - becoming the means by which the music to which his heart beats and keeps rhythm leading the steps of joyful movement...
 

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