The Game of Tarots - Antoine Court de Geblin

[Debra]

777 = 231 : 343 : 127

Yyg, I used to be able to think this way, but no longer. My circuits are worn from age, perhaps, or rusty from misuse.

On the other hand, I'm delighted to see a post entitled "Euthyphro Dilemma."

[Teheuti]

Originally Posted by Mabuse

The Germans did create the first Animal Tarots (Tiertarock) during the 18th century.

Good to know about them. I've never seen these early Animal Tarots before. They're double-headed with French suits, aren't they?

I don't believe that card readers will enjoy the same virtual monopoly on the Tarot that they've had in the past though.

Card readers don't monopolize the Tarock, Jeu de Tarot or Tarot Nouveau-style decks at all. And it's hard to imagine that serious game players would use a RWS or Marseille-style deck when the others work so much better for game-playing. In fact, I would venture that the first-named decks are monopolized entirely by game-players rather than tarot readers. I don't know of a single book or article on fortune-telling with those decks. Do you?

I can certainly understand why a discussion of de Gébelin would have little or no interest to those who play the trick-taking game using Tarot Nouveau-style decks that don't use Italian suits nor have any of the trumps pictured or named by de Gébelin. Most of his discussion would be irrelevant.

BTW, didn't there used to be a French website where you could play the game of tarot online? I used to play there quite a bit. I can't find it anymore. Where do you go on-line to play tarot?

This is from Wikipedia so it may not be entirely correct:
"With very few exceptional recent cases such as the Tarocchi di Alan, Tarot of Reincarnation and the Tarot de la Nature, French suited tarot cards are nearly exclusively used for card games and rarely for divination."

I'd still like to know if there is a book on reading with the Jeu de Tarot decks.

[Yygdrasilian]

Originally Posted by Debra

777 = 231 : 343 : 127

Yyg, I used to be able to think this way, but no longer. My circuits are worn from age, perhaps, or rusty from misuse.

On the other hand, I'm delighted to see a post entitled "Euthyphro Dilemma."

I’ve been warned about posting Qabalist schemes in Historical Research, so if these posts disappear you’ll know the moderator goddess has spoken (post further inquiries to the Caduceator: http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.p...92&postcount=4); but the connection between these values has to do with the role of figurate numbers in the structure of the Tarot de Marseilles pattern as applied to the Hebrew alphabet (aleph=0).

231 = octahedron of 7 = sum of major arcana
343 = cube of 7
127 = 7th centered hexagon = sum of major arcana (zodiac)

They relate, specifically, to a method of projective geometry involving the proportions & location of the Great Pyramid with this respect to these 3 Rings: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ngs-BW.svg.png

11 / 14
14 / 11
√3 (vesica piscis) = 30˚N

[Rosanne]

Originally Posted by Mabuse

If Tarot is not seen as a game, then it's a sad state of affairs which I think needs rectifying.

Well I was talking about Here..On this Forum...this bubble.
There is no sub forum for the Game of Tarot here- just some avid players.

The problem for me with divinatory Tarot is that it has become too mainstream by American standards. It no longer has the exotic appeal it may have had in the 60's or 70's.

Well I would be one whom likes it that way. Tarot used this way as a tool for exploration of possibilities; I have always wanted it mainstream. I was part of the mystic goose revival and it always made me uncomfortable, the gypsy flower power of the late 60's and 70's was eaten up by protesting, the Veitnam War, Nuclear acticity etc etc - let alone womens rights. In times of uncertainty Divination of the Bones variety becomes popular always. The computer has changed things- information is available at he press of a button.
We are also a consumer society in the West and increasingly so in the East- so our span of attention is becoming smaller and smaller; always hungering for new buzzes. So yes Tarot has becomes somewhat old hat. It is different in this forum bubble though. Even this forum has aged and much enthusiasm has dropped off.
~Rosanne

[Rosanne]

Originally Posted by Yygdrasilian

Soundly based in the mathematics of acoustic geometry,........
...
secrets of the master builders would have found it rather hard to miss.

777 = 231 : 343 : 127

Well even if it is moved this was your clearest post to date in my book. Unfortunately, after delving into past secrets from the pryamids to the lid of Quetzalcoatl I made my self a rod of Asclepius- one look and I am cured. You are a feathered Serpent (teacher) of their type, and all power to you. Your double helix is also the symbol of Gamblers, maybe that is the warning in the sky? Lack of proportion and all that.

Perhaps it is too much to expect art historians to solve such an exercise in cryptography...

ooops.. pull in your whippet tongue my mathmatical friend

~Rosanne
Ooops I mean to explain the Euthyphro Dilemma......
Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?" hehehe very clever!

[Mabuse]

Originally Posted by Teheuti

Good to know about them. I've never seen these early Animal Tarots before. They're double-headed with French suits, aren't they?

The earliest French suited Tarots were not double-headed. The courts and Tarocks were full framed. I have a reproduction of such a deck made in Russia and sold by Piatnik under the name "Russisches Tiertarock"

http://trionfi.com/m/d0yyyy.php?decknr=0447
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_tarot

Originally Posted by Teheuti

readers don't monopolize the Tarock, Jeu de Tarot or Tarot Nouveau-style decks at all. And it's hard to imagine that serious game players would use a RWS or Marseille-style deck when the others work so much better for game-playing. In fact, I would venture that the first-named decks are monopolized entirely by game-players rather than tarot readers. I don't know of a single book or article on fortune-telling with those decks. Do you?

I can certainly understand why a discussion of de Gébelin would have little or no interest to those who play the trick-taking game using Tarot Nouveau-style decks that don't use Italian suits nor have any of the trumps pictured or named by de Gébelin. Most of his discussion would be irrelevant.

What has been monopolized is the concept of Tarot in the popular media.
Americans seldom are informed that there exists a different Tarot culture apart from divinatory Tarot. This becomes a problem for those wanting to expose these games to English speakers as such works are wrongly classified under the "occult/pararnomal" labels. I've also seen gaming decks such as the Kobe Lager Tarock and the Tarocco Piemontese presented in the wrong context by media reporting on them.

Originally Posted by Teheuti

, didn't there used to be a French website where you could play the game of tarot online? I used to play there quite a bit. I can't find it anymore. Where do you go on-line to play tarot?

There are still several such websites
http://www.jeutarot.com/
http://www.ludi.com/
http://www.webtarot.fr/
http://www.ftarot.fr/index.asp
http://www.stargames.com/games_details.asp?id_game=16

Originally Posted by Teheuti

This is from Wikipedia so it may not be entirely correct:
"With very few exceptional recent cases such as the Tarocchi di Alan, Tarot of Reincarnation and the Tarot de la Nature, French suited tarot cards are nearly exclusively used for card games and rarely for divination."

I'd still like to know if there is a book on reading with the Jeu de Tarot decks.

Indeed there is a book "Secrets du tarot à jouer" or "Secrets of the Playing Tarot" by Monique Pavan. I've seen images of the Tarot de la Nature and it's a divinatory Tarot based on the Tarot Nouveau design.
http://www.autremonde.fr/secrets-tar...9-p-48135.html
http://www.lepalaisdutarot.com/PalaisT/Nature.htm

[Teheuti]

Originally Posted by Mabuse

Indeed there is a book "Secrets du tarot à jouer" or "Secrets of the Playing Tarot" by Monique Pavan. I've seen images of the Tarot de la Nature and it's a divinatory Tarot based on the Tarot Nouveau design.
http://www.autremonde.fr/secrets-tar...9-p-48135.html
http://www.lepalaisdutarot.com/PalaisT/Nature.htm

Shouldn't this trend be much more threatening than those who use a RWS or Egyptian style tarot deck for divination? The last bastion of game-playing has been invaded!

[Rosanne]

To get back to the subject, I thought I might tell you who Antione Court de Geblin was.

He was a French theologian and linguist born in 1725. He believed that Tarot originated in ancient Egypt and was a part procedure of worship of the God Thoth. He believed that the symbols of Tarot were taken by the Gypsies and spread throughout Europe as they moved about. His beliefs were written in 9 volume work called Le Monde Primitif written between the years 1775 and 1784. Now it is considered typical of that type of romance that fostered obessions with lost cultures, and was very prevalent in his lifetime.

He writes in his work.....
"This Egyptian book does exist. This Egyptian book is all that remains in our time of their superb libraries. It is even so common that not one scholar has condescended to bother with it since no one before us has ever suspected it's illustrious origin. This book is composed of seventy seven (77), even seventy eight (78) sheets or pictures, divided into five classes, each showing things which are as varied as they are amusing and instructive. In a word, this book is the game of Tarot........"

Now some 15 years after his death, the Rosetta Stone was deciphered and the Hieroglyphics were deciphered.

There are many books of a similar nature and still studied today. Works about the Noble Savage had great import for Colonies like my own in New Zealand- they influenced Painters and Business men/merchants. Their misinformation was not deliberate, but had great consequences and if you wish to be rounded in knowledge of Tarot - take men like Court de Geblin into account. Just because Tarot was once a game(and still is) does not preclude it's current use of Divination. After all bones were the framework of a body before they are rattled and thrown for presages. I can think of many things that started out as one thing, but ended up as something else.

~Rosanne

[Teheuti]

You might want to check out this site on what's now being called the "Super-Enlightenment" as a term for its "dark side" - including de Gébelin.

Also:
Court de Gébelin asserted that the primitive worldwide civilization had been advanced and enlightened. . . . His centers of focus are the familiar ones of universal origins of languages in deep time and the hermeneutics of symbolism. While his views on hermeneutics and religious matters were largely conservative, his original ideas and research on the origin of language earn him a place among pioneers of linguistics. Court de Gébelin presented dictionaries of etymology, what he called a universal grammar, and discourses on the origins of language. his volumes were so popular he republished them separately, as Histoire naturelle de la parole, ou Précis de l'Origine du Langage & de la Grammaire Universelle ("Natural history of the Word, or a sketch of the origins of language and of universal grammar"), in Paris, 1776.

Among the subscribers to his encyclopedia were the French king, Benjamin Franklin (with whom he corresponded about the Delaware language) and John Adams (you can find Adams' margin notes from Le Monde Primitif somewhere on the web).

de Gébelin was at one time the director of the Musee de Paris.

His philological ideas are discussed at some length here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=aGw...page&q&f=false
start at the bottom of page 23

See especially:
http://www.philosophe-inconnu.com/XV...rt_gebelin.htm
"For him, any cultural event is metaphorical and refers to something other than itself."

[Debra]

Rosanne has started a thread on the game of tarot, here: http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=139123