46
Fleur, you raise an interesting point, that many of the Tarot images were actually widespread in the fine arts and popular culture, pre-dating or coexisting alongside the Tarot cards. Of course, Tarot card designers borrowed heavily from a rich and complex pre-existing lore.

We've mentioned The Hanged Man, above, based on popular depictions of traitors and thieves in Renaissance Italy.

A major one that comes to mind is the Wheel of Fortune, which was a popular metaphor in the Middle Ages, and with precursors in Hellenistic society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rota_Fortunae

Spenser in The Faerie Queen (1590s) gives verbal images of the major virtues (including temperance and justice,) and the figures of Una and the Lion (symbolizing to him the True Church) seem a lot like the Strength card.

The prospect of a fall from a high station to a position of shame preoccupied Hellenistic astrologer Vettius Valens as it did his successors-- it just needed a graphic portrayal centuries later (The Tower) to bring it into the Tarot fold.

Actual religious hermits would have been known figures in Catholic Europe, whether historical/legendary (like Saint Jerome) or real people. (The Hermit)

As with astrological character delineation and prediction today, divination with tarot cards was probably originally more practical than esoteric.

To me, it seems as though a lot of the esoteric symbolism of the Tarot grew out of a deck of cards with real, almost practical meanings for Renaissance folk, that later acquired most of its occult linkages during the Romantic/early modernistic era.

Astrological Associations of the Tarot by Golden Dawn?

47
Waybread wrote:To me, it seems as though a lot of the esoteric symbolism of the Tarot grew out of a deck of cards with real, almost practical meanings for Renaissance folk, that later acquired most of its occult linkages during the Romantic/early modernistic era.
That is certainly the indication of the surviving manuscript instructions for reading the tarot found in Bologna. Also, at least one Bologna deck still in existence has the meanings (very close to those in the manuscript) written on the cards.

The records of this tradition are later than the Renaissance, dating to round about the time of Etteilla in France, but their contents point to the existence of a different way of approaching tarot divination prior to the interest taken in the medium by occultists, just as waybread suggests.

Melissa

48
Waybread wrote:
To me, it seems as though a lot of the esoteric symbolism of the Tarot grew out of a deck of cards with real, almost practical meanings for Renaissance folk, that later acquired most of its occult linkages during the Romantic/early modernistic era.
This issue is picked up by Paul Huson in his book Mystiical Origins of the Tarot,
Michael Dummett, who is opposed to what he regards as the misappropriation of the tarot by occultists, doubts that the images depicted on the trumps taken as a set contained any special meaning to their earliest users, inasmuch as they were standard subjects of medieval and Renaissance iconography.

I, on the other hand, for the very same reason, believe the trumps to have been pregnant with meaning from the start, their symbolism drawn from the world of medieval drama, of miracle, mystery, and morality plays, with a hint of Neoplatonism evident here and there, which lent itself very readily to esoteric uses such as divination.

Furthermore, we shall see that the court cards in the so-called Minor Arcana spring from a heady brew of pagan and medieval myth, also handy for the would-be diviner.

Moreover, as Dummett himself has so ably demonstrated, the symbolism of the four suit signs seems to have evolved from a source even older than that of the trumps, a source that I believe can be traced to the Persian Empire before the time of the Islamic conquest in 642 C.E. Consequently, they also carry definite meanings exploitable by the diviner.
The oldest completely preserved Tarot deck from 15th century Italy is known as the Sola-Busca (circa 1490). Building on the work of Italian researchers Peter Mark Adams suggests these cards have imagery inspired by alchemy.

http://www.petermarkadams.com/sola-busca-tarot/

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/sola-busca/

This renaissance deck is also the only one known to illustrate the 4 suits pip cards before the Waite-Smith deck appeared in 1909.

Several of the minor arcana cards illustrated by Pamela Coleman-Smith seem to have been directly inspired by the Sola-Busca.

https://solabuscatarot1998mayer.wordpre ... ith-tarot/

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

49
Thank you, Delaforge.

Mark quoted Paul Huson:
I, on the other hand, for the very same reason, believe the trumps to have been pregnant with meaning from the start, their symbolism drawn from the world of medieval drama, of miracle, mystery, and morality plays, with a hint of Neoplatonism evident here and there, which lent itself very readily to esoteric uses such as divination.

Furthermore, we shall see that the court cards in the so-called Minor Arcana spring from a heady brew of pagan and medieval myth, also handy for the would-be diviner.
Six of one, half-dozen of the other? I wonder whether the discussion hinges on defining the word "esoteric."

At what point do cards drawing on symbolism well-known in the Medieval and Renaissance worlds, used for card-games and fortune-telling, become tools for self-transformation?

52
Pankajdubey wrote:
All of it seems to have started around the time of Romani gypsy people arriving in Europe in late 14th century.It must have taken some time for the characters to Europeanize.



From what I have read the first person to suggest that Tarot originated with the migration of Roma/Gypsy people into Europe was Antoine Court de G?belin (1725?1784).

However, most scholars of Tarot seem to have concluded long ago the idea was a fable. Not least as there seems to be historical evidence of Tarot in Italy in the century before the arrival of the Roma/Gypsy there.

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

53
I found this link on the Golden Dawn astrological associations for the Tarot interesting. Especially, on the Minor Arcana as I hadn't seen them all listed together before.

http://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-astrology-golden-dawn/

Here is another useful article covering a variety of traditions of assigning elements, modes and signs to the individual court cards.

http://www.tarotmoon.com/articles/Astro ... Court.html


Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

54
Mark wrote:I found this link on the Golden Dawn astrological associations for the Tarot interesting. Especially, on the Minor Arcana as I hadn't seen them all listed together before.

I had always assumed the Golden Dawn assigned a sign within each triplicity to the Knights, Queens and Kings. However, that doesn't appear to be the case.

http://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-astrology-golden-dawn/

Mark
Palmer's list is incomplete in this regard. The GD indeed attributed a sign of each triplicity to a Court Card of the corresponding suit. (To be more precise, the first two decans of a sign, along with the last decan of the prior sign.)

There is an additional system of 4 x 4 elements in use, covering all the Court Cards (including the Knaves), thus the Queen of Discs represents Water of Earth, etc.

55
Hi Michael,

I changed that post before you posted. So my quoted comments are no longer there!

As I stated above I found a more extensive piece on the varying astrological attributions for the Court cards:

Here is another useful article covering a variety of traditions of assigning elements, modes and signs to the individual court cards.

http://www.tarotmoon.com/articles/Astro ... Court.html

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

57
Michael Sternbach wrote:
Hi Mark,

All that is clear is that there is as little agreement among "Tarologers" as there is among Astrologers.
Indeed!

Michael Sternbach wrote:
Here is a nice article by the German Astrology and Tarot expert Hajo Banzhaf regarding the relationship between Astrology and Tarot, most importantly their particular strengths in practice: www.tarot.de/artikel/AstrologyTarot.pdf

Yes that is an excellent piece. I think I have a book by this author tucked away somewhere.

Personally, I find some of his his 'convincing associations' less than convincing at times! But I guess this just underlines the point you
made above.

I have worked out my own astrological association system for the Major arcana. I am thinking of responding in some depth to your earlier piece on the GD attributions to cards and the zodiac signs. for the Major Arcana. I think quite a few of these are really unconvincing. Especially the GD associations for the Hierophant , the Charioteer, and Temperance.

It seems the Dutch astrologer Thierens was an important pioneer in this area. He seems to be the first to assign Neptune and Uranus to Major Arcana cards. However, unlike many English speaking astrologers today he assigned Uranus to the Tower (not the Fool) and Neptune to The World (Not the Hanged Man) in his 1930 book I cited earlier in the thread.

By the way Anthony Louis in his book Tarot: Plain And Simple
has a table of astrological associations for the Tarot Major Arcana from the Spanish speaking world. Its completely different from anything else I have seen. I cant locate my copy of Louis book at present. If I do I will stick up his list of associations from the Spanish speaking tradition.

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly