A 15th-century Alchemical image which includes 4 TdM atouts - all in one

Cartomancer

The TOAD in the alchemical image corresponds to the third person showing his back in TdM.
And the cross on the banner attached to the trumpet in TdM might represent the sun in the alchemical image.


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The two DRAGONS in the alchemical image may have something to do with the two ANGELS in old hand-painted cards such as those of Visconti-Sforza and 'Charles VI'.

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I think the coffins in the Judgement cards are actually pictures of Christian constellations that were well-known at the time of the Tarot's creation, which give meaning to the alchemical symbols. The cross actually represents the Church. The angel may be the Archangel St. Michael over the stars of Ursa Minor and Draco.

Several Tarot cards may have come from Christian astronomical concepts that were drawn centuries later in 1627 by Julius Schiller but well-known to Christians at the time who knew some constellations by Christian names, such as the "Northern Cross." Later decks appear to copy these images.

Book: Coelum Stellatum Christianum
Creator: Schiller, Julius, d. 1627.
Contributors: Bayer, Johann, 1572-1625.; Schecks, Kaspar, d. 1665.; Kager, Johann Matthias, 1575?-1634. ; Kilian, Lucas, 1579-1637.

Go to the page numbers on right. All pictures are at this site:
http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/ref/collection/astro_atlas/id/1142

The Judgement card:
Page 29. Constellation I. Star Map. St. Michael the archangel over the stars of Ursa Minor and Draco.
Page 63. Constellation XX. Star Map. Holy Sepulchre formerly Andromeda.
Also see the ark outline:
Page 77. Constellation XXVII. Star Map. St. James the Less, Apostle formerly Virgo.
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The Hermit card:
Page 55. Constellation XIII & XIV. Star Map. St. Benedict & the Thorn Bush over the stars of Serpentarius & Serpens.
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The Pope card:
Page 37. Constellation Va. Star Map. St. Sylvester, Pope, over the stars of the constellation Bootes.
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The Hanged Man card:
Page 47. Constellation IX. Star Map. St. Helen in the stars of Cygnus (The Northern Cross, the Swan). Could the Hanged Man actually been Jesus on Northern Cross or St. Helena, but changed to get those holy figures out of the picture?

- Cartomancer (Lance Carter)
 

kenji

I have made some addition (about PELICAN) and accordingly slight modification to my last post.

Abrac,
here is a much better pic of Conver LE MONDE from BnF collection.

Cartomancer,
thank you for your post. In fact, I remember reading your previous comments on this matter in another thread, which was quite interesting. Indeed, tarot is just like a big river which many kinds of streams from various sources have flown into...
 

DoctorArcanus

Hello all:)

The image below is from an alchemical manuscript in the British Library (Harley 2407),
which BL dates to the second half of the 15th century.
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=3670

Quite astonishingly, we can find the features of four TdM atouts - 17, 18, 19 and 20 - all in this single image.

I have made some pics for comparison between this and the 4 TdM atouts.
I hope you will find them interesting.


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Hello Kenji, thank you for sharing this great image! As you noted, the coffin at the bottom is labeled "Spiritus Anima Corpus". The Angel could represent the Spirit, the Man the Body and the Woman the Soul. The illustration seems to be related both to “conjuctio” (the mystic marriage of the opposites represented by the man and the woman) and to “putrefactio” (represented by the coffin and the toad). The note at the top left says that the diagram is explained in folios 26 and 18 of the manuscript.

In my opinion (following Michael J. Hurst) the last trumps represent Christian eschatology. This is unambiguously clear for Judgment, but much less obvious for the other cards. Western Alchemy often included Christian symbolism:
Without blasphemy I say: In the Book or Mirror of Nature, the Stone of the Philosophers, the Preserver of the Macrocosm, is the symbol of Christ Jesus Crucified, Saviour of the whole race of men, that is, of the Microcosm. From the stone you shall know in natural wise Christ, and from Christ the stone. (Khunrath 1595)
In my view this diagram and the last trumps are parallel derivatives of the same ancestors: Christian imagery of the End of Times.
 

Moonbow

Very interesting discovery Kenji!

For me L'estoille, although very feint in the Alchemical image, is so similar in pose, although less obvious than Judgement. I can see why you want to dig deeper into this. Good luck.
 

kenji

Hi DoctorArcanus & Moonbow,
so nice to hear from you two:) Thanks a lot for your comments!

I agree that the last trumps should also have to do with Apocalyptic symbolism.
Tarot images are great 'amalgams' of so many different elements, and I have come to think that it may be the key to think of 'SOLVE ET COAGULA' of imageries.

Next time I am going to write about the bird on a tree in THE STAR.
(I think it is convincing to take it as a pelican on the Tree of Life, which is said to have been used later for the crucifixion of Christ.)
But prior to that, I have got something else to discuss in another place; it may take some time.



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Huck

I agree that the last trumps should also have to do with Apocalyptic symbolism.
Tarot images are great 'amalgams' of so many different elements, and I have come to think that it may be the key to think of 'SOLVE ET COAGULA' of imageries.

hi Kenji,

there's a series of 15 pictures in a text usually called "15 signs of last judgment".

This series had been rather popular during 14th century and also later, so it preceded the Tarot picture series:

from: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pmed/journal/v1/n1/full/pmed201024a.html
The medieval eschatological tradition of the ‘15 Signs of the Last Judgment’ was enormously popular; more than 180 Latin examples survive, as do versions in English, French, German, Armenian, Spanish, Hebrew and Old Frisian, among other vernaculars (Nölle, 1879; Heist, 1952; Giliberto, 2007). William Heist's landmark study sorted the examples of the tradition into groups – the Damian, pseudo-Bede, Comestor, Anglo-Norman and Voragine – according to the sequence of the events they narrate, among other criteria, and traced them to several wellsprings: Ezekiel 38:20, 2 Esdras and the Irish Saltair na Rann, which expands on the eschatological list of the Apocalypse of Thomas. Whatever the differences between the groups, all describe the woes occurring on each of the last 15 days prior to God's destruction of the world and his final sorting of humans into the saved and the damned. In these days, all of creation dreads the end: ‘Tote rien serra en tristesce’ (‘everything will be in sadness’; l. 1102), as the French Le Mystère d’Adam has it (Aebischer, 1964). Stars fall from the sky and ‘run about the earth like lightning,’ stones do battle, humans panic, everyone dies, and then, on the last day, the humans resurrect.

I noted earlier at another place:

The following work seems to be one of the versions, in which the "15 signs of Last Judgment play a role.
http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:818...=q:="MS.+Douce+134";lc:ODLodl~1~1&mi=0&trs=78

In the text the antichrist appears and gets 4 pictures. Then the 15 signs are presented also with pictures, one for each. Then follows the Judgment scene ... with interest I note, that this is the picture No. 20, as the card Judgment in the Tarot has also Nr. 20. The following picture (21) shows a series of "Blessed and Damned" ... well, they look like Fools between 20 and 21, as the Tarot had it occasionally. At picture 22 (or 21, as Tarot has it) Jesus appears.

You find the discussion with "15 signs of last judgment" "huck"
https://www.google.de/search?q="15+...57.1784j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

There are some similarities to the row of the Tarot cards, especially the final sequence.

12-s.jpg

16. sign 12: the stars fall
Star symbol

13-s.jpg

17. sign 13: the living die, so that they can rise again with the dead

14-s.jpg

18. sign 14: earth and sky consumed by fire
Fire symbol

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19. sign 15: sun and moon await the coming of Christ
Sun and Moon at one picture

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20. 005 The Last Judgment
= 20 LAST JUGDMENT

006.jpg

21. 006 The Blessed and the Damned
= 20/21 FOOLS ...
I had to smile, when I saw the most black person in the middle - likely considered the most sinful. There's one nude woman at the picture, and he can't take his eyes from here, although he pretends to protect his eyes against her nudity with his hand.


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22. 007 Christ's appearance at the Judgment, attended by Saints and Angels
= 21 WORLD or ETERNITY
... again this game with the most black man, now with a nude woman at the right
 

Bernice

Oh my goodness - thank you for posting these pics Huck and Kenji.

I'm assuming that Bianca knew of these '15 day' images, or perhaps whoever she commisioned was influenced by them...? ?


Bee :)
 

Huck

Oh my goodness - thank you for posting these pics Huck and Kenji.

I'm assuming that Bianca knew of these '15 day' images, or perhaps whoever she commisioned was influenced by them...? ?


Bee :)

hi, Bee

The Visconti library had a lot of editions of the Apocalypse in c. 1425 in its library list, I remember, more than 20 (it was the most popular topic between the c. 1000 books).

This specific version with "15 signs of final judgment" were mostly found in French and German regions, less in Italy; at least this was my impression, when I studied the context.

There's a parallel Islamic feature:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_eschatology
 

DoctorArcanus

The medieval eschatological tradition of the ‘15 Signs of the Last Judgment’ was enormously popular; more than 180 Latin examples survive, as do versions in English, French, German, Armenian, Spanish, Hebrew and Old Frisian, among other vernaculars (Nölle, 1879; Heist, 1952; Giliberto, 2007). William Heist's landmark study sorted the examples of the tradition into groups – the Damian, pseudo-Bede, Comestor, Anglo-Norman and Voragine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Legend
According to Wikipedia, more than a thousand manuscripts of the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine (Varagine / Varazze) have survived (I don't know how this fits with the 180 manuscripts mentioned above).
Elisabeth Pellegrin mentions at least a Latin version in “La bibliothèque des Visconti et des Sforza” (p.237 n.741):
http://books.google.com/books?id=tT9pAAAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=voragine
The 15 Signs of the Last Judgement are described at the beginning of the work ("Adventus Domini").

At p.458 Pellegrin mentions a French translation. Unluckily, Google does not provide access to the whole book.

Jacobus de Voragine is thought to have lived in Milan for a few years. The Golden Legend ("Legenda Aurea") includes a History of Lombardy (Historia Lombardica).