... interesting figure in terms of the Dummett's 3 Segments, Shephard's Three Worlds, or my own 6/9/7 model. In that regard, the first noteworthy aspect of your posts is that you reject Dummett, Shephard, and my own analysis, and put the Devil with the allegorical section rather than the biblical/eschatological section. If the sequence is taken to be meaningful, then this makes him an allegory of Sin, (common in period works), or the Prince of This World, or... something else appropriate to the middle section. I'll elaborate on that some. On the other hand, you also seem to reject that the sequence is meaningful, getting closer and closer to the agnostic dismissal of iconography which Dummett maintained. I'll defend the idea of the Tarot trump cycle, at least in some decks, as a meaningful iconographic programme, that this was important for learning the hierarchy as well as enjoying the game, and that we can approach an understanding of that programme by focusing on what I've called affine groups. THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS (NUGGETS? AFFINE GROUPS?) The first step came with my growing discomfort with the force of that particular "narrative nugget" in an otherwise less than catechetically clear section. Why such an explicit appeal to high and serious religiosity in a set of pieces only designed to be easily remembered in sections? Where does it go now? To a Star - is this a symbolic reference to Jesus? But then who are the Moon and the Sun, etc? It just didn't make sense that the designer would be so explicit here but so allusive in the rest. My first response is, huh? You reject the connection between Devil and Fire/Tower because it is too forcefully explicit? And you reject the idea that something so forcefully explicit would be easily remembered? It seems to me that a dramatically clear pairing, especially one depicting a central incident from Revelation, would be as memorable as anything imaginable and therefore a perfect subject to be easily remembered, in context. You seem to be arguing that this bit of the cycle is TOO clearly represented, so we must reject it. Is this really an approach that you want to defend? I would argue that it is a traditional occultist methodology when faced with anything obvious -- reject it and impose something less plausible but more congenial to our interests. The Wheel of Fortune is too obvious, so it must be a secret allusion to the wheels of Ezekiel's vision, etc. Robert O'Neill explicitly defended this sort of rejection of the obvious. If we accept that approach, then Judgment and the New World are also too clear to be accepted. Likewise the three signs in the heavens, between these other eschatological elements, are just too readily appropriate and easily understood. Therefore, they can't be taken at face value, in the context of Rev. 20 and 21. There are actually three narrative "nuggets" in the highest section. They are closely related and extremely prominent subjects: they emphasize the two great triumphs of God, over the Devil and Death, at the time of the Second Coming. The designer was forcefully explicit in each part, if you can remember the whole while analyzing the parts . The term Hermeneutic Circle comes to mind. "It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle." The circle metaphor is weak, as it suggests circular reasoning or going around in circles, meaning that no progress is being made. In fact, is an iterative process which tends to yield better approximations, progressively converging toward a best reading. (The weasel words, "tends to", admit the possibility of more than one good reading, or none at all. Even the best path can't take you to a place that doesn't exist.) As noted at the top of the previous post, we agree on the fact that Tarot was a game, designed as a game and popularized as a game, and that this has some important implications. You seem to be using this, however, as an argument that the trump cycle was therefore not well designed as an iconographic programme. IMO, these narrative nuggets are not only what explains the original choice of subject matter and sequence, they are also what the designer had in mind as a mnemonic device to teach the game and make the hierarchy readily understandable. Meaning is memorable. A detailed iconographic program is what makes the design good for a game. The more structure is apparent, the more mnemonic the design was intended to be and the more easily the order can be explained/taught. The highest trumps represent the End Times, with the triumph over the Devil, the signa coeli , and resurrection to the New World. That's just 22 words, and short enough for a tweet. That single sentence would constitute a completely sufficient explanation of the highest trumps and their order to anyone of that milieu . Voila! Twenty-two words and you've just learned the order of the highest trumps. Look at the subjects, and you know their relative placement, because you already know the constituent elements. It's that quick and easy, precisely because of those three affine groups, aka nuggets, within that eschatological section. You seem to argue that one part of it is too clear to accept, and the other two parts are too obscure to accept -- is that right? Narrative: Deliver us from evil. (Cf. the Lord's Prayer.) Cards: Devil and Fire from Heaven. Order: Fire from Heaven trumps the Devil. Prooftext: Revelation 20:7-9 Narrative: Signs of the Second Advent. Cards: Star and Moon and Sun. Order: Increasing light; an obvious mnemonic. Prooftext: Luke 21:7,25 And they asked him, saying: Master, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when they shall begin to come to pass? [...] And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations.... Narrative: Thy kingdom come. (Cf. the Lord's Prayer.) Cards: Angel of Resurrection and New World. Order: Revelation 20 comes before Revelation 21 Prooftext: Rev 20:12-13 and Rev 21:1 To me, all three parts are equally clear, and it is a very neatly designed section of the trump cycle. Forcefully explicit nuggets are also apparent in the design of the middle trumps, in either the Bolognese or Milanese (Tarot de Marseille) orderings. (This bleeping site expands Tarot de Marseille into Tarot de Marseilles. Otherwise, it could also represent the precursor, Trionfi da Milano.) The subjects follow a universally known narrative, and are neatly grouped within that larger narrative. Just to make the point that it's trivially simple, another 22 word summary: The middle trumps narrate Fortune's Wheel: success (Love/Chariot), reversal (Asceticism or Time/Fortune), and downfall (Traitor/Death), responded to with Virtue. This one's a bit long for a tweet, but it's still pretty simple. The design itself, groups of 2 or 3 related subjects in a narrative arc which form a complete schematic arrangement, a complete "thought", is the same sort of thing that we see in the highest trumps. This makes it look VERY much as if we have found the structural pattern of the designer. How/why would this happen? Imagine that we are creating a game of triumphs in 1430s Italy. For the highest triumphs we want to show the two great eschatological triumphs of Christ, over Satan and over the last enemy (Cor 15), Death. What could be more exalted or appropriate for a game of triumphs? So we choose Rev 20:7-9 and select a Devil and Fire from Heaven as two cards to represent the first triumph. Rev 20:12-13 resurrects the dead, and Rev 21 is the reward, glory, triumph over Death. We want a few more cards for this section, with recognizable subjects in an obvious hierarchy. The Star, Moon, and Sun are striking, they appear in many works of eschatological art, and they are the canonical signa coeli marking Christ's return. Moreover, they admit the possibility of a secondary layer of meaning, a hierarchy of light from the Prince of Darkness (and the Fire from Heaven which triumphs over him) through the Glory of God, resurrection to the New World. This makes a great hierarchy, mnemonic in several ways. As an aside, the female allegory of the Tarot de Marseille World card could easily be interpreted in this context as either Shekinah (sometimes the Presence of God in the form of light) or Lux Mundi (an allegorical figure rather than Christ himself, whom decorum would probably exclude from direct depiction). Structural patterns, the design of the inventor -- that is the key point here. Everyone sees some of these smaller groupings, like Popess and Pope. It makes sense that the same approach was used throughout, even if they are not all that obvious. Again, the analysis is an iterative process, working from the parts to the whole and working back again from the big picture to the details. Luckily for us, the dozen+ variations in orderings can be analyzed to see which pairings were generally preserved. Just as the Three Worlds structure was preserved in every ordering, the structure of these smaller groupings were preserved in most orderings. Much of the original ordering is preserved in all of the derivative orderings, vestigial remnants of the Ur Tarot. These fossils confirm what should be obvious, and reveal the structure of the work. It should be obvious that Love and Chariot are paired, but the fact that they are usually below Time/Hermit and Fortune confirms it. Likewise, it should be obvious that Time/Hermit and Fortune are paired, but the fact that they are usually between the other two pair in the middle trumps confirms it. DUMMETT'S RIDDLE OF TAROT The quest is for the intentio operis , a reflection (perhaps distorted) of the unattainable intentio auctoris , rather than one of the countless unconstrained versions of intentio lectoris . There is no end to the invention of more-or-less plausible audience responses, results of the infamous "what would a 15th-century cardplayer think?" approach. The author's message as he conceived it is not knowable without detailed documentation. However, we have his product, or at least derivative works based on his product. Therefore we can hope to attain some understanding of the underlying design of the work itself, if there is one, and perhaps recreate some of the thinking which went into its creation. The iconographic puzzle does not have anything to do with how any particular individual might read the series. When it comes to interpreting Tarot cards, as everyone knows, anything goes. Even in the 16th-century commentaries we see incongruities and contradictions, as well as the kind of spit-balling that is typical today. Instead, this analysis is an attempt to explain why specific choices of subject matter and ordering were made , by one person -- the person who selected them and arranged them in that sequence. That is the riddle of Tarot as Dummett framed it and as I have worked on it: "asking why that particular selection was made, and whether there is any symbolic meaning to the order in which they were placed." There may not have been any detailed programme to the composition, but for anyone attempting to find such a program, to go beyond Dummett's vague triumphal sampler of images, that specific, card-by-card outline or schema is a necessary working hypothesis as well as the goal. It is worth adding a bit to Dummett's statement of the problem, given that you seem to be having trouble making this most basic connection. The iconographic quest asks why that particular selection of subjects was made, and whether there is any symbolic meaning to the order in which they were placed, partly because such a meaningful sequence would be a memory aid for new players as well as a pleasure for everyone . Meaningful content and design are inherently more memorable than, "let's throw in some celestial objects", with no particular reason. Just as groupings into different types of subject matter are too fundamental and obvious to merit much comment from iconographers, I have tended to think that the mnemonic function of a meaningful iconographic programme was too obvious a point to be labored. These are two sides of the same coin, coherent design, and apparently that needs to be spelled out. A priori , there is no way to know if any surviving deck, or even the unknown Ur deck, actually had a detailed explanation, an iconographic programme with perfect analytical structure. Also, focusing on a derivative deck like those with Justice promoted to serve as Judgment, is by definition addressing Tarot's early reception and revisioning. In terms of methodology, the general order of business might be 1) learn what you can about the generic/synoptic design of the trump cycle, based on all early decks/orderings; 2) learn what you can about the deck which appears display the best, most intelligible programme; 3) explain it as best one can; and 4) explain the other decks as derivatives. At each step, the iterative method of the Hermeneutic Circle applies: parts defining the whole and the whole constraining the parts. When we are debating something as basic as the existence of three sections, or their boundaries, we are at the beginning of step one. Still, most Tarot enthusiasts never get even that far. THE DEVIL: PLACEMENT AND MEANING Returning to the Devil, there are several ways in which a devil could be located in the lowest part of a Three Worlds hierarchy. For example, Satan could appear with Adam in the Garden, or as Sin tempting Everyman. Either of these scenes could then be followed by the main allegorical section, then by a transcendent section. As noted, Holbein's Dance of Death is an example. The lowest section is about the Fall. The main allegory is built around individual scenes with an elaborate Ranks of Man, each paired with Death. The final scene shows Christ in the Last Judgment over the World. A devil could also appear in the middle section, most obviously as an allegory of Sin or Temptation. Satan could also, quite appropriately, appear as the highest card of this section -- as princeps huius mundi . He is the prince of this world, so why not show him triumphing over it? For example, when John is closing his comments (John, 14:30), he says: "I will not now speak many things with you. For the prince of this world cometh, and in me he hath not any thing." The Devil is even the God of this age, deus huius saeculi . "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (2 Cor 4:4.) Paul references the light/darkness trope in his giving thanks: "Giving thanks to God the Father, who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness ( de potestate tenebrarum ), and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins." (Col-1 12-14.) If we are less concerned with the Three Worlds division, then the Devil can be ambiguous, as can Death, and different arguments can be made using the same quotations. Of course, he can also appear in the highest realm, as I have argued. Huck stated this clearly: "what about a light state like 'no light'". Darkness is one end of the hierarchy of light. As Lucifer , (shining one, bringer of light), the Morning Star who is also the Prince of Darkness, this subject may be properly grouped with the other light cards. (Wikipedia factoid: Prince of Darkness "is an English translation of the Latin phrase princeps tenebrarum , which occurs in the Acts of Pilate , written in the fourth century, in the 11th-century hymn Rhythmus de die mortis by Pietro Damiani, and in a sermon by Bernard of Clairvaux from the 12th century.") The defining characteristic of the hierarchy of light is that it triumphs over darkness. "Now is the judgment of the world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out." (John 12:31.) That darkness can either be the highest trump of the middle section, or it can be the lowest trump of the highest section. However, getting back to the idea of explaining rather than merely interpreting, it is difficult to understand any coherent design or systematic programme that does not make the Devil the lowest subject of the highest section. This is where we part ways. You lean more toward Dummett's view, that there is no detailed programme which explains each subject's selection and placement, whereas I believe that there is, and it is not difficult to understand. (I am obviously mistaken in that latter point.) To move beyond the Three Worlds, to "refine" it, is to recognize the smaller units of composition, the nifty nuggets of meaning. We need to make sense of the overall design, the design of each of the three sections, and of the groups within each section. The middle section has a discernible design, a Wheel of Fortune narrative arc which ends with the Traitor and Death. The highest section also has a discernible design, triumphs of the Second Coming, which begins with the triumph over the Devil and ends with the triumph over Death. You disagree: It doesn't matter whether we place him in the moral section or the third section (however you want to qualify or define it) - he is still in the same place in the sequence in relation to the Thunderbolt in every deck ever made. It may redefine his meaning if he is one or the other section, in the same way that Justice's meaning is changed when she is moved from the moral to the heavenly part (such movements prove that they did indeed read meaning into the sequence, or parts of it). "It doesn't matter", although it may "redefine his meaning"? This seems to be a declaration that you no longer consider the meaning to be worth bothering about. That's certainly a legitimate position -- it is closely similar to Dummett's position. But it is abdication of the iconographic project, and that needs to be made clear. Rather than explaining the sequence, it is brushing it aside: this is a sloppy arrangement of subjects, but good enough for a card game. ... all the question of the Devil's sectional assignment in A or C really accomplishes is to bring us back to the position Dummett stated - that to know the original meaning, we have to know the original arrangement. It'd be too much to say that we can know what the original arrangement was, but I believe that the strongest argument by far can be made for A, and particularly the Bolognese A. Dummett's position is that we have to know the original design before we begin. That's just wrong. It would be nice to know in advance, just as it would be nice to know the designer's thoughts on the subject, his name, how he came to create the first deck, etc. However, when it comes to iconography we can work on all the designs we know of and see what each has to tell us. (Dummett, almost inadvertently, advanced this project himself with his 3-segments analysis.) If none of the orderings display a coherent design, a systematic meaning or detailed iconographic program, then iconography brings nothing to the question of which was first. Without such a design, all decks appear to be sloppy derivatives. This leaves only the same old arguments, none of which are very persuasive. Some folks like Bologna, some like Florence, some like Milan, and perhaps some still like Ferrara. Not too long ago, apparently, some of the folks on this List didn't consider Florence to be a contender. At least they acted very surprised when findings began to be published. Now, after those new findings, some of the more simple-minded consider Florence to have been established as the original home of Tarot. Meh. Simpletons will never understand the nature of fragmentary evidence, as demonstrated by those who think every deck with missing trumps is a unique design. Unless some good documentation turns up, such conclusions seem like naive guesswork rather than historical analysis. Conversely, if there does appear to be some general compositional structures which are more commonly preserved than altered, and if these point to some overall design features of the deck, then we may be able to narrow the field a bit, or even a lot, by taking these into consideration. The fact that the affine pairs and trios are usually grouped together or equally spaced is revealing. They were recognized as meaningful more often than not, and their typical ordering provides context for their proper interpretation. Again, it is an iterative project requiring analysis of individual subjects, 2/3-card groups, the 3 sections, and the overall composition of the hierarchy. And it yields results: Based on this analysis, only two orderings are plausible candidates for the Ur Tarot ordering. It doesn't matter if you agree with me or like my explanations or the words I use to describe them, or the insights I think they generate. What I mean to say is that it doesn't matter if I convince you with my arguments about the meaning for why this or that "section" or "subsection" exists. What is important, and what I will insist on, is that the following methodological question is sound and crucial - how did the players learn the sequence, which is, by extension, how the designer intended it to be learned? The way the players learned the unnumbered sequence reflects the intent of the designer. Well, that's... interesting, but not quite clear. If you mean simply that the design was a mnemonic aid, then yes. That is obviously true, and AFAIK uncontested. An essential point of an allegorical hierarchy as trump cards is that the allegory defines the hierarchy, the ranking of the trumps. Of course, the other essential point of the subject matter is to elevate the game, make it worthy of being played by decent folk, even nobles. It needs to be an inspiring choice, like Marziano's deck, (rather than the tawdry subjects one might find in German card games, as a counter example). Yes, the iconography was an aid to learning as well as a pleasure in playing the game. This is not much of a claim to be presented so melodramatically. On the other hand, if you mean that the mnemonic requirements tell us something about the iconographic programme, then you are making an amazingly extreme claim. That claim is certainly false. We have some documented examples of what people thought of some of the sequences, and their ideas were quite divergent. Someone-1, attempting to teach the game (including the order of the trumps) to a new player, will do exactly what you claim. He will make the sequence (whichever one they use in his town) as clearly memorable as possible, based on his ideas of the cycle. Someone-2, right down the street from Someone-1, will do the same thing, but their ideas about the trump cycle will be different. How do I know this? Same way you do -- because everyone's interpretation is different. No one else on earth will teach it quite the same way as Someone-1 does, even if Someone-1 is the designer. Even the designer might not have taught it with the same ideas he used when he designed it. If the design had something complex, subtle, obscure, or otherwise difficult to perceive or explain, then he might offer a simplified or even falsified interpretation to make the order more memorable. He might teach via the visible intention of the work rather than the possibly obscure intention of the author. When a new player sat down at the table, never having seen the game before, they learned the trump sequence first by groups, then by habit or memorization. Sort of... but each teacher would tell a different tale, and probably none of them would "reflect the intent of the designer" in any detail. And nothing in this process obviates the existence of a coherent design -- just the opposite, it seems to call out for a detailed programme. The groups will reveal the intent of the designer. The specific order of the cards within the groups will be the designer's choice, but may not mean anything beyond his own convenience or whims. These may be unknowable. Just as they were unknowable to cardplayers in 15th-century Italy. You say, "the way the players learned the unnumbered sequence reflects the intent of the designer." But the way players learned the order reflected the intentio lectoris of the teacher, not the intentio auctoris of the inventor. People make up their own connections. This is reflected in pretty much every new topic reflected in posts to the List, as we each see different sub-groups as being more or less meaningful. Each person teaching the game would have their own way of seeing those connections, just as we do today. In Bologna, the players learned at the table, for the first time, for over 300 years. There must have been a method of groupings to learn the trumps. One single method used by everyone over the centuries? No. There must have been countless different groupings used by countless players, introducing children and newcomers to the game. Everyone explained it differently back then, as surviving documentation shows and as is the case today. It is the only way to learn it quickly enough to join in common play, when no written rules existed and there were no numbers on the cards. There might have been a quasi-standard introduction to the game, but it seems unlikely. When I was a kid, learning both card games and board games, it was never that structured. People (adults) who knew the game would give you some rules. Some would be clear, others would be obscure, and many would be omitted, (some might even be "wrong"), to be picked up in the first few sessions of game play. They would tell you the things that they thought were important, at that moment. Written rules were secondary at best. The order of the trumps would probably be learned in one session/card game, and then fully mastered in the second. It doesn't seem like a difficult problem. As illustrated above, it looks like three tweets and a few hands of play is all it would take. The primary argument against a systematic method of teaching is the lack of a consistent ordering from one locale to the next. I have argued that there was intentional alteration of the order, but I don't know of anyone who buys that. The alternative is that each locale learned the order badly from some earlier adopter. In any case, the order of the cards was standardized, but only vaguely, and the explanations would have been even less perfectly standardized. However, since the groupings or mnemonic did not make it into the earliest written or printed accounts of the rules, they must have been easy enough, and banal enough, that they were as quickly learned as forgotten. The best examples of what this might have looked like is the table Marco posted, summarizing the two 16th-century accounts. The categories there, like "Inn of the Fool", are much more in the nature of ad hoc mnemonic aids than they are explanations of the design. This is exactly what we should expect, and what we do in fact find. First prediction - somebody of all those players over 300 years must have jotted down an account of their first game of Tarocchi, including an account of the mnemonic. This will reflect the designer's intent. Second prediction - such a jotting will probably survive in a diary, letter, or a single page inserted into a book somewhere. It will probably, but not necessarily, be in Bologna. Third prediction: When we find such an account, it will look rather like a summary of the two 16th-century commentaries, but somewhat different. It will not reflect the designer's intent in more than a vague sense. Yes, it will have a mnemonic function, and yes, some of the subject matter and themes will be directly related, but how is that random individual who took down some notes going to have figured out what no one else in six centuries could get at? It is therefore worthwhile to think of ways to search for unpublished diaries and letters that may contain such an account, in Bologna. Of course, it will more probably be an accident that brings it to light, but I believe - predict - that it will be there, somewhere. This is a fine idea, of course, as would be such a pursuit in any area where the game was played and such private accounts survive. I've had time to prepare for utter rejection from everybody, even people whose opinion matters, and it still doesn't matter if my wordy explanations convince or not. It seems unlikely that anyone whose opinion might matter would reject the idea that the trumps were intended to be a memorable hierarchy. Even Dummett, the great iconographic agnostic, would no doubt buy into that. That is one of the primary implications of the whole "Tarot was a game" insight. I've made that argument more than a few times, although I tend to consider it dead obvious. I've even argued that many works of art and literature have compositions which derive from the Scholastic and Encyclopedic traditions, relying on what Ong termed schematic relationships. They were hierarchical outlines, and they were both inherently and sometimes explicitly memory aids. Regarding your placement of the Devil, I think that I offered a good justification, with an assortment of substantiating references, for the Devil's placement at the top of the middle section. That doesn't seem to qualify as utter rejection, at least from me. The argument that Dummett's three segments analysis can be shifted to include higher trumps is also reasonable, because those did not vary in their ordering and Dummett seems to have cared little about the iconographic implications. Death can be moved up or the Devil moved down without violating his concept. Moreover, it seems better to say that you are the one doing the rejecting, as you are the late-comer here. You reject the analysis of Dummett, Shephard, and myself, although I don't quite know why. Yes, there are justifications for putting him where you want him, but I don't see what explanatory value is added by this change. The difficulty comes when an attempt is made to improve on the Three Worlds analysis, to get into the details. The Three Worlds model is just a starting point, albeit an essential one, and it offers little real understanding of either the iconographic programme or the mnemonic value of the sequence. What is the design within each of these realms? We need to chisel out the details of the middle trumps and the highest trumps from the lumps we call "allegorical" and "eschatological". Again, this is an iterative process of working on one level to understand the others. As we do this, we run into the conceptual nuggets, affine groups, dyads and triads of related subjects and their arrangement. At this point we may either cling to your devilish placement and abandon the quest, or we can accept that the Traitor/Death pair concludes the middle section and the Devil/Fire pair begins the highest. Your placement demands your conclusion: there is no detailed programme. My placement permits a different conclusion: there is a detailed programme. It doesn't even matter if they are fully right or not. My position, my methodology, is inassailable, mainly because it is defending so little. It boils down to the fact that the cards were made to play with, the sequence to be memorized quickly, and the system had to be easy. It had to be fast, and banal enough that it was done so quickly that it was just as quickly forgotten as it was unnecessary, which is why no mention of it has been found yet. It had to be banal. It had to be groups. All we have to do is figure out what the groups were, assign some snappy names to them, and start to play. Yes, the trumps were intended to be noteworthy subjects in a memorable sequence. That's what the iconographic program accomplished. I'm just not getting your point. The order of the particular cards in them is easy once the groups are down. Why the designer chose those groups is explained by the three classes of subject matter, which I have called for convenience - snappy - earthly, moral, and heavenly. They learned the highest and lowest group first, not an iconographic group, but the only group that mattered in practical terms because it was the only group that counted , literally. The iconography of this ludic group - highest and lowest - then matches where they go in relation to the rest of the cards in their part of the threefold iconographic divisions. This means low people and big ideas. Yeah, I guess... I'm not sure what you mean exactly. However, my 22-word summaries would seem to exemplify how this could be done. (It is easy to construct one for the lowest trumps as well, depending on the ordering. See Marco's chart for examples.) You suggest that you've come to some recent realizations, regarding the Three Worlds trope and regarding the mnemonic aspect of the trumps. However, I don't see what is new here except the placement of the Devil within those three groups, and I don't see what that adds. Why the inventor chose the rest of the particular subjects, or rather why those subjects were obviously groups for the original audience, is the more difficult business, which has to be argued carefully (and usually clumsily by me), from art history and documentary history. I think I've got a good explanation for all the sections, and why each subject would have made clear sense in the group and fallen immediately into its (sometimes arbitrary) place in the group for the original audience, but I know my rhetorical skills are frequently not up to the task of convincing my own audience. Now that I'm standing on firm ground, however, I'm not afraid to keep trying. If the places are arbitrary, in what sense are they explained? Or memorable? The goal should be to find a reading of the trumps and their arrangement which is not arbitrary. Again, this is the great insight of Dummett's riddle -- it's about the sequence. Also, rather than arguing from art history and documentary history, which are necessary background but largely uninformative regarding a particular novel work of art, the primary fact is the Tarot trump cards and their known sequences. Tarot enthusiasts are always taking meaning from somewhere else, and giving short shrift to the trumps of an actual deck and how they work together to create meaning. Finally, regarding the Bolognese deck, I can't really see a pattern in the one or two lights at the top of some cards. Paired cards, like Love and Chariot, might have either one or two lights to indicate the order of the pairs. Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude might have two, one, or no lights, again to indicate their ordering. This could have been used as a mnemonic tool, if it had been done differently. As it actually appears, however, it does not seem to be helpful. Again, that was fun, and hopefully a productive exercise. Thanks again. Best regards, Michaan ...

... New Year Michael! Thanks for your response. Naturally I'll have to respond ... bit by bit. Some bits bigger than others. Now you have concluded that the Devil is not part of the highest section. As noted at the top, you are attempting something similar to what I have tried to do but as a less detailed interpretation rather than a card-by-card programme. Like Dummett, you don't seem to think such a specific explanation is appropriate -- the trump cycle wasn't that precisely structured. That's right. I think the designer wanted to make a trick-taking game with a permanent set of trumps. He had some ideas, and worked out the math. Among those "ideas" were the symbolic subjects of the trump sequence. It seems there were already some games with extra cards, either wild cards or "power cards" like Emperors, if Fernando de la Torre's can be taken as indirect evidence of their existence in Florence in the early 1430s, or if the "Emperors" of the name Imperatori actually means that some Emperors were added to the deck. You can do whatever you want when you make decks by hand; but to be popular, you have to take a risk and make the effort to carve a plate to print. But one or a few extra cards in a deck are just gimmicks; people take them or leave them, they don't stamp a game and make it popular. The trumps in Tarot aren't gimmicks or just a few extra cards that you can take or leave; they make the game. Whatever "gimmick" cards might have been around in decks, at the very least the word "Emperors" shows the conceptual world from which such gimmicks would have emerged - the "higher" cards in a rational sequence had to start with whatever was higher than Kings. Naturally this is Emperors and Popes. So I think this was the beginning of the designer's iconographic programme - to finish or complete the worldly sequence. This is the "terrestrial" part of the 3-part analysis, and it does the rest - with the math of the game providing some constraints and necessities. As I noted, the earliest written rules - about 1600 in Bologna (manuscript), and those printed in France in 1637 - don't contain any mnemonic or any other system for learning the trumps. Bologna just lists them in descending order, and the French rules don't even name them, just giving the counting trumps (Monde, Bagat and Math). I said I can't believe that anyone, even them with their presumably better memories, could learn such a list precisely in the few minutes given them before the first game. The written rules presume the leisure to memorize it at leisure. For the Bolognese writer, the audience could do it any way they wanted (for the French cards, they must have already had numbers and probably titles printed on by 1637). But I read the rules for clues. The first is the descending order. Most early lists give the cards in this way - the Strambotto, Alciato, Lollio, Garzoni. To me this indicates that the power of the cards - the ludic power - is what counted. Whatever system underlay the quick and dirty at-the-table method of learning therefore probably gave the cards in their ludic values first. This seems confirmed in the French rules' mention of only the counting trumps, and in the Bolognese rules' discussion of the sequence after the mere listing of the trumps (including the special rule for the papi in the discussion of general ranking), which mentions first only the group which counts, namely the Angelo, Mondo, Bagattino and Matto (see http://www.tretre.it/?id=90 , chapter VI). If either of these is any indication, this second "clue" from the written rules shows that players were first taught what counted in the trumps, the counting trumps, the highest and lowest cards. They are my "ludic group", which I think must be the designer's first concern in his overall conception of the subjects of the sequence. This is why the symbolic subjects that he chose to illustrate them with don't have to have any necessary symbolic relationship, group or logical sequential relationship, with the iconography of the rest of the group they are necessarily appended to. They depict the same general type of subject matter , because that is what their place in the threefold structure demands - earthly things, and Bagatto and Matto show low human types; and heavenly things, of which the World and the Angel (Resurrection, Last Judgment, End of Time) are the biggest conceivable things. But the Matto and Bagattino don't have to be interpreted as if related to the papi in a unified symbolic or moral whole, and the World and Angel don't have to be interpreted as "lights" somehow. The two funnymen are suitably low human types, and the World and Angel are two suitably grander subjects than the Sun. So, putting to the side the mathematical question of how many the game was designed for (and which determined the number of trumps) for the moment, the symbolic constraint was first the counting cards, which were to be the highest and lowest in the sequence. Popes and Emperors follow, as the highest human types. What is higher than Popes and Emperors? Moral things, which are personifications or allegories. He chooses conventional allegories that the audience would recognize from what they saw during the Saint John the Baptist processions and the Magi one, namely a triumphal chariot with love and virtues (and which seems to have suggested the name of the game to him), probably to be thought of as the "good things in life" (that's how people tend to memorize it, at least, when they are explained to be a group and told to distinguish them from before and after, especially in relation to what comes after), followed by necessity, the fateful or "bad things". Then, of course, looking up, you know the rest. The symbolic groups are determined by the general threefold structure of complex works, the "Three Worlds", in their proper order, while the total number was worked out in the math of a game for four players where all the cards are dealt out. The moral subjects are conventional, and their specific order would be easy to memorize once their groupings were seen. So, for practical purposes, there are four groups: people, good things, bad things, and the heavens. So to me it seems that the designer had a symbolic sequence in mind that would use symbolic subjects like the rest of the deck, particularly the court cards, but higher subjects. He worked out the math, and then chose subjects grouped together by theme, few enough to be memorized quickly (fourappy ...

... New Year! Thanks for the posts -- a nice present for the holidays. Like Marco, I really wanted to comment earlier but, you know... holidays. Plus, once I got started rambling... well, you know about that too. So apologies for the delay, the length, and the rambling. CELEBRATING 2014 WITH REAL TAROT HISTORY As with Howard's post , your posts are a great opportunity to reiterate, ruminate, and perhaps clarify some of my favorite topics . In particular, this seems like a good time to emphasize the distinction between Dummett's findings and my own conclusions. Because attacking Dummett with strawman arguments is a long-standing Tarot tradition, I have tried to avoid giving people more opportunity for that. Because virtually no one agrees with my conclusions whereas his findings are factual, he should be defended against such conflation. A second big section is more to the point of your post. Yes, the Three Worlds schema (using John Shephard's term) is common, and recognizing that division in Tarot is the essential first step to understanding the cycle as a whole. However, you seem to be going a bit overboard with it, as if announcing the arrival of a new Universal Monomyth. It's a common structure, but not universal nor always well defined. So... basically, I'm just quibbling about emphasis and elaborating a bit. The main elaboration concerns Shephard's version of this and his terminology, as I have used them for a decade now. I'll talk about the Devil as one of the middle trumps in a separate post. Most of the points to be commented upon are naturally disagreements, so it is helpful to keep in mind that we are, in most ways, substantially in agreement. Regarding Dummett's "three distinct segments" and Shephard's Three World model, (and my own 6/9/7 model), the discussion here is vastly more salient than most of what passes for Tarot history, here or elsewhere. I've spent many years attempting to get this topic front and center, with essentially zero success. I'll pick up on that below, but the point here is that significant questions are being debated. Dummett's findings (which were admittedly very limited, as discussed below) on the three sections and my own much broader conclusions about a 6/9/7 design to the trump cycle, are being considered (albeit mostly rejected) rather than universally ignored. Huzzah! Regarding disagreements between you and I, these tend toward the trivial when taken in the context of 21st-century Tarot discussions generally. We're talking about historical Tarot rather than talking about Egyptian symbolism, Lombard pawnbrokers, alchemy, dowries, numerology, Albigensian heresies, Chess, or the Battle of Anghiari. For many years, both of us have taken the position that Tarot was, first and foremost, a card game. The content of the trumps had a two-fold purpose, as reasonably memorable and immediately recognizable tokens for cardplay, and as an inspirational subject matter to elevate the game. This is in keeping with other moralized games. Today, most people here would give grudging assent to that, before moving on to yet another revision of traditional occultist/New Age folklore or their most recent confection of historical fiction, weaving real Tarot history into a tapestry with famous people and events. We have both attempted to construct a less fanciful, more historically sound reading of the trump cycle. Again, most folks here would claim to be doing sober analyses, both historically and iconographically, even though most of the discussions are laughably unrelated to Tarot or based on recycled esoteric folklore. Both of us are strongly inclined to respect the findings and consensus opinions that make up what you have called the Standard Model of Tarot history, dissenting only when there is a particularly strong and clear argument against some detail of it. When we do indulge in leaps of speculation, we are usually pretty clear about it and try to avoid building towers in the air, speculation based upon earlier speculation which is mistaken for factual foundation. Speculation one step beyond the facts, for the purpose of explaining those facts or answering another legitimate question, is very different than speculation which is two or three steps removed, piled up into a whole world of fantasy. So, compared with the 99.9% of Tarot enthusiasts who do not share our common view of this material, we are substantially in agreement. For the half dozen or so (maybe a dozen?) who share that Standard Model view and commitment to less-speculative readings of the trumps, we are using the same approach but reaching different conclusions. DUMMETT'S 3 SEGMENTS versus THE 6/9/7 MODEL A depiction of heaven and earth will place heaven above earth; everyone intuitively understands this. The things of heaven are higher than the things of earth. So, in a vertical hierarchy, where would you then put depictions of concepts and ideas , or personifications of moral concepts like allegories ? Since they are not people you can meet or things you can bump into, nor are they real but untouchable like the heavenly bodies and supreme realities like God on his throne, such symbols will be placed higher than earth and Man but lower than heaven and God, in the middle space between the two. This is what the tarot trump sequence does, and so do countless other works showing formally similar hierarchical orders. Only the specific iconographic content will differ, depending on the context and function of the work. This is the threefold scheme of the trump sequence. ...we can say that the sequence of the remaining trumps falls into three distinct segments, an initial one, a middle one, and a final one, all variation occurring only within these different segments. Game of Tarot , p. 398. The threefold architecture of the trump sequence that Dummett discovered... We need to clarify this, lest we libel the dead by attributing to him ideas he most certainly did not share and explicitly argued against. In a sense he found that design, stumbled across it, but failed to see it. Dummett drew attention to the two dividing points, but he did not suggest, much less argue for, three groups of trumps in a meaningful hierarchy. He was analyzing the various sequences for taxonomic purposes, to help understand the diaspora of early Tarot decks. That is, Dummett was doing exactly what Howard claimed he did not do, using the different designs to understand the history of Tarot's spread. The variations in ordering are a bizarre fact of Tarot history, obviously at odds with the usual practice of conservative game play and requiring some explanation. If play is to be possible, the ranking of the trumps must be apparent to all players and subject to no dispute. How, then, are we to explain the variations that we find in the order of the trumps in Italy from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century? (Page 396.) Dummett then considers various arguments, not relevant here, and concludes that the variations reflect an extreme localization of Tarot game play. This is the passage which leads up to the quote above, and explains his interest in the analysis. The observable variations in the order must therefore be due, not to the absence of a fixed order, but to that phenomenon evident throughout the entire history of the game of Tarot: the extreme localisation of specific modes of play. Again and again we find that the players in one city or town play only amongst themselves and do not know those of a neighbouring town; the detailed rules, and sometimes the whole type of game played, diverge from locality to locality, the players in one circle being quite unaware of the manner of play of those in another, and, often, of their very existence. The different orders for the trumps that we find in Italy must represent different practices adopted in different cities, presumably at a stage earlier than that at which numerals came regularly to be inscribed on the trump cards. Evidently, quite a short time after the game of Tarot had first been invented, players in various cities or regions developed local peculiarities in their modes of play, which, in Italy, extended to the conventional order of the trumps; this must have happened before it became usual anywhere to inscribe numerals on the trump cards, and hence before the end of the fifteenth century. Modern players might feel that it would be impossible to memorise the order of twenty-one trump subjects so accurately as to be at once aware, without the need for reflection, which card was superior to which; but, as we know from the Bolognese game, this doubt is quite misplaced. The different orders of the trumps testify, not to a reliance on the numerals alone, but to the existence, at an early date, of wide local variation in the manner of play. Note that this is an observation of fact rather than an explanation . Dummett does not offer an explanation for the deck and game being altered in almost every locale, other than a passing comment about the absence of indices. They developed "local peculiarities", in every locale, for no apparent reason. Outside of Italy, this level of variation in decks did not happen. When we look closely at the various orders, we find that there was far from being total chaos. A first impression is of a good deal of regularity which, however, is hard to specify. Now the cards which wander most unrestrainedly within the sequence, from one ordering to another, are the three Virtues. If we remove these three cards, and consider the sequence formed by the remaining eighteen trump cards, it becomes very easy to state those features of their arrangement which remain constant in all the orderings. Ignoring the Virtues, we can say that the sequence of the remaining trumps falls into three distinct segments, an initial one, a middle one and a final one, all variation in order occurring only within these different segments. Immediately after this analysis of the variations, he uses it as the basis for his further analysis of three regional traditions. This is the context of his division of the trump cycle into three segments. He was not doing iconography, at least not intentionally. We also need to keep in mind that Dummett did not include the Fool, nor the three Moral Virtues, but only "the remaining eighteen trump cards". This is not a problem for him, as he was not attempting to explain the trump selection or arrangement. More importantly, he did not explain his findings, not even in the FMR article. Why are there these "three distinct segments"? This is a place where speculation, specifically about the design and intended meaning of the trump cycle, can be used to explain the facts. As usual, however, Dummett declines to speculate. That is Dummett's version of a "threefold architecture". He did not deal with the lowest trumps as a group, at all, and his vague characterizations of the middle and highest trumps were essentially correct but largely unhelpful. No one -- not one person -- ever followed up on his findings and characterizations. (Excepting me, of course. BTW, if you know of anyone who pursued this analysis between 1980 and 2000, I would very much like to know about it, to be able to cite them on it.) Dummett's "three segments" analysis was not an iconographic explanation of the trump cycle, but a finding of facts which remained in need of an iconographic explanation. It was a couple decades after Dummett, when I learned about his analysis (indirectly, via a summary by Depaulis which Christian Joachim Hartmann posted (June 11, 2000) to TarotL), that I pointed out that it was consistent with my own iconographic explanation of the meaningful design of Tarot. His analysis and my own both identified the dividing points of the Pope (and lower cards) and the Devil (and higher cards). My iconographic analysis explained his historical findings, while his historical findings were consistent with, and thus tended to support, my iconographic analysis. These groupings are another example of Ong's schematic relationships. It has been pointed out that Dummett's second division, at Death, seems arbitrary in terms of the variations in ordering. That is, in terms of his stated methodology, Dummett's findings are even more limited than they initially seem. Because the highest trumps were in the same order, from the Devil through the Sun, in all decks, he could have chosen a different boundary. Dummett saw no design to the lowest trumps as a group and even excluded the Fool, while his methodology did not actually provide a dividing point for the highest trumps. Dummett had to take meaning into account, at least implicitly: Death is kind of a big deal, the end of this life and the beginning of the next. So he recognized that Death can reasonably go in either segment, as the end of one or the beginning of the next. Because he was just trying to do taxonomy, as prelude to understanding the early dispersion of Tarot, he could profitably ignore these "problems" -- they weren't his problems. His analysis has essentially no explanatory power, and I cite him because his analysis does tend to support something which occultists and their contemporary apologists cannot conceive: divisions other than 7/7/7. Conversely, because I was explaining the entire 22-card cycle of images, my analysis was into groups of 6/9/7. Although Dummett did seem to glimpse some of the iconographic significance in his FMR article, he offered no such interpretation. For better or worse, this explanation of the design of Tarot is entirely my own. Here's the point: although IMO his analysis is consistent with my own and tends to provide historical evidence and support for it, there is no reason to believe that he would have agreed, and therefore he should not be blamed for my views. Given the fact that virtually no one accepts my analysis (Marco and Hendley being the only two I can think of), exonerating Dummett seems important. I was so concerned about misrepresenting him that, before I first posted The Riddle of Tarot online, I asked his friend and co-author John McLeod whether he thought that citing Dummett in this manner was misleading, or whether my presentation misrepresented Dummett's position. I also included this disclaimer in the first footnote: It should go without saying that although this presentation makes many references to Dummett’s analyses in The Game of Tarot , it seems unlikely that he would endorse such a (mis)use of his work. In quoting him at length, I do not intend to imply that he would agree with any of my own conclusions, any more than I agree with his suggestion that the images are a kind of sampler of triumphal images. He refers to Gertrude Moakley’s “brilliant suggestion” that the name trionfi derives from the subject matter of the trump cycle, but admits that it is difficult to discern what the underlying concept of the triumphal sequence might be. (GT 87.) Elsewhere, he writes that the designer selected “a number of subjects, most of them entirely familiar, that would naturally come to the mind of someone at a fifteenth-century Italian court”, and that “it is rather a random selection”. (GT 387.) Moreover, most of my interpretation was developed before I even learned of his analysis of the early decks. I arrived at my interpretation based solely on the iconography and sequence of the cards as described and illustrated in Kaplan’s Encyclopedia. I have chosen to present my interpretation in the context of Dummett’s analyses because he has written the most comprehensive and reliable book on Tarot, which establishes many historical constraints for any study of early Tarot; he has framed the null hypothesis of a triumphal sampler and demonstrated its sufficiency for most historical purposes; he has pointed the way toward a study of sequential meaning, and done all the hard work of discovering and analyzing the early trump orders; and in my opinion, his findings support my conclusions... but that certainly doesn’t mean that he would agree. At the same time, I wanted to credit him and use his finding to support my own analysis. One entire section of The Riddle of Tarot is devoted to "Grouping within the Sequence", and it was written around his analysis. And there was this additional caveat: Although the present interpretation is quite different from any earlier attempt, both in its approach and its results, some aspects of it have precursors. Most notably, Michael Dummett analyzed the trumps into three groups, which are precisely the same as the groupings used here. The iconographic interpretation into three types of subject matter (the “Three Worlds motif”) is confirmed by the actions of fifteenth Italians who re-ordered the trumps, as shown by Dummett’s analysis: in each case, they maintained the division into three groups, reflecting three types of subject matter which they considered distinct and kept separate. I have been promoting this as a sine qua non first step in understanding the trump cycle for many years. The observation that there are three different types of subject matter answers a host of common questions such as, "if Tarot isn't heretical, then why does _______ trump the Pope?" (Merely displaying a Triumph of Death image or Dance of Death cycle also answers that question, but some people are just too fucking stupid to understand any kind of answer.) That is why I love to see others considering the Three Worlds model, in one way or another, rather than endlessly recycling traditional occult and New Age folklore or imposing topical irrelevancies (like Lombard pawnbrokers or the Battle of Anghiari) on the trumps. To this day there are very few who agree with me on the 6/9/7 analysis of the trump cycle into major sections. Marco and R.A. Hendley seem to be the only two who have repeatedly gone on record as saying this is a fundamental part of the design of the trump cycle, and presenting their own versions of it. Hendley, in a variety of brightly illustrated posts, has (largely) followed my own analysis and, on at least one occasion, cited my earlier posts. Marco seems to have a number of ideas very close to my own, as well as some differences. In particular, both have presented the same 6/9/7 division of the trumps into three sections, the macro analysis into three types of subject matter which I've been promoting since 2000. In my first detailed presentation of the idea I described the three sections as 1) Religion Triumphs Over Society, 2) Virtue Triumphs Over Circumstance, and 3) God Triumphs Over Death and the Devil. Looking back at some 2009 threads, you, Robert, and Kwaw (at least) preferred a 4-group system, 1/5/9/7. This is more in keeping with Dummett, who also left out the Fool, (and the three Virtues), and failed to categorize the trumps as any sort of unified whole. Now you have concluded that the Devil is not part of the highest section. As noted at the top, you are attempting something similar to what I have tried to do but as a less detailed interpretation rather than a card-by-card programme. Like Dummett, you don't seem to think such a specific explanation is appropriate -- the trump cycle wasn't that precisely structured. Just to be very clear: IMO the two viable candidates for an Ur Tarot ordering are the Bolognese ordering (first column, GT 399) and the Tarot de Marseille ordering (fourth column, GT 401). You prefer the former, while I prefer the latter, but both are vastly more defensible than any of the dozen other orderings. Likewise, the two best interpretations of the trumps are yours, a somewhat more structured version of Dummett's triumphal sampler or vague hierarchy of common subjects, and mine, a well-defined and perfectly structured moral allegory. Moakley comes in third, perhaps tied with Paul Huson's 2004 discussion of medieval drama and the Four Last Things. So again, although I disagree with your conclusions, this is not in any way comparable to my "disagreements" with the occult apologists or New Age neo-Jungian simps. SHEPHARD'S THREE WORLD'S MODEL The threefold architecture of the trump sequence that Dummett discovered is not just a quirk of Tarot - it is a basic principle of spatial organization in iconographic vertical hierarchies - the basic moral valuation of hierarchical space, the low, middle, and high places; the center, and the sides.... Yes, but it seems as if you may have gotten a bit carried away in the presentation. This is reminiscent of Joseph Campbell's reification of his monomyth. It became something universal, which it could not be, and therefore the complexities and uniqueness of particular narratives had to be ignored or distorted so as to fit his Procrustean over-simplification. One size does not fit all, and there are crucial differences which tend to be ignored or falsified in the quest for universals. Such generalities are good to note, useful conventions like many others. The real world and its art tend to be messy. Some works clearly display such organization, others don't. John Shephard's Three Worlds model ( The Tarot Trumps: Cosmos in Miniature , 1985) is very closely related to your construct. He uses it to describe the same aspect of the trump cycle, and like you he also emphasizes the parallels with the E-Series prints. He introduced it, appropriately enough considering his theories, via the cosmological spheres of that cycle. The four sub-lunar spheres, lowest in the Aristotelian cosmology, he termed the Realm of Man . One of those, the sphere of Fire, he also called "a middle term, a middle world in the chain of being between the aethereal world of Heaven and the mundane world of Earth". (Clearly, the cosmological parallel is being abused here -- it just didn't fit as he wanted it to.) In art, specifically the E-Series, this middle section "consists of figures all of which are allegorical. It deals with the spirit in man, the soul from its entrance into the human body", and he calls it the Realm of the Soul . The highest level "consists of figures of a theological or celestial nature. It shows the life beyond Death, with the Devil and Tower representing the fate of the imprudent soul consigned to Hell, while Judgement and The World show the Resurrection and the proper reward in Heaven for the virtuous. It corresponds broadly to set A of the Mantegna series, the Heavens. I call this set the Realm of Eternity ." Despite a lot of confusion and occultist preconceptions, Shephard came close to getting this part of his structural analysis correct. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-r0HFgapTC44/Ur8IdYCc_AI/AAAAAAAAGjo/wshuaXmTBNo/w458-h687-no/shephard-three-worlds.jpg Shephard, blinded by traditional numerological preconceptions, excludes the allegory of Love from the rest of the allegorical figures, and wants to rename Time/Hermit as Prudence, an allegorical figure, but also to rearrange the sequence to exclude him from his proper place with the other allegorical figures. He wants very much to force the trumps into septenary groupings, as had generations of occultists before him. Still, he came closer to sorting out the macro structure of Tarot than anyone else, and his Three Worlds terminology and descriptions are excellent. Like Dummett, he advanced the discussion a bit -- we should look for and acknowledge such progress. Also like Dummett, no one attempted to advance Shephard's analysis further, although endless variations on the occultist septenary analysis continue to this day. We are not the first to look at this stuff, and both these guys from the 1980s should be remembered by those who are now discussing this topic, three decades later. Here is a 2001 TarotL post which makes the same point about three realms or worlds, each with a different type of subject matter, connecting it with Dummett/Depaulis and once again using the E-Series prints as the primary cognate example. The Virtues of Tarot de Marseille (March 29, 2001) http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TarotL/conversations/messages/9532 Court cards not numbered; rank is implied. Similarly the court cards don't tell a story, although they are a meaningful hierarchy. Similarly for Chess figures or any game with symbolic figures representing the hierarchy. Good point -- another schematic grouping with hierarchy. Pips were not exactly numbered either. That is, they did not have numerical indices, (contrary to some things one might read on this list, from those who have not read Dummett). Their rank was illustrated by picturing a number of items. Other things were significantly grouped, as well. The card player knew that in the round/female suits the greater the number of items depicted, the lower the rank, while in the linear/male suits the larger the number of items the greater the rank. Just as pawns are of a different kind than the second row of chess men, so pip cards are different than court cards. These are more examples of Ong's schematic groupings which are generally recognized without comment. "It would be absurd to suggest that the order of the court cards was invented to teach how a court was organized. It would be absurd to suggest that the Chess pieces teach how a kingdom is organized. Both can do that, in a vague way, but that it not their intention. The understanding of the hierarchy is implicit, expected of the audience. Similarly, all Italians of the 15th century would recognize the vague hierarchy in the trumps: celestial and eternal things are higher than moral allegories, and moral allegories are higher than human stations/types. These are the three divisions recognized by Dummett, and already recognized in the 19th century (and arguably the 16th). "The nature of the differences among the various trump orders shows that there was a broad understanding of these three divisions, and the overall hierarchy." We should tread gently on the "recognized by Dummett" part, even though I've put it in similar terms in the past. As noted above, he did not appear to recognize the overall design toward which he had pointed. "The question is whether the sequence as a sequence has any special symbolic meaning. I am inclined to think that it did not." When I am just a lone voice in the wilderness, I tend to take polemical and even hyperbolic positions, but if there are others with a similar view, it becomes more important to state things a little more precisely. In general, however, that's always been my position with regard to Dummett's findings. The iconographic interpretation into three types of subject matter (the “Three Worlds motif”) is confirmed by the actions of fifteenth Italians who re-ordered the trumps, as shown by Dummett’s analysis: in each case, they maintained the division into three groups, reflecting three types of subject matter which they considered distinct and kept separate. "Threefold scheme of art; planets (children), Schifanoia, pictures of people having visions, etc. Pseudo-Mantegna perhaps most relevant scheme: 1. Ranks ______ __Muses (poetry, art) 2. Ideas --- Liberal Arts (science, intellect) _________Virtues (morality) 3. Celestial Yes, the 3-part analysis is one of the most basic. More basic still is the 2-part division into this world and the next. Representatives of Mankind and conventional personifications need not be distinguished; Everyman is himself an allegorical personification. Likewise Emperor and Pope, when they represent all secular and clerical people. All the changeable sub-lunar parts of the cosmos, or the circumstances of this life, including representatives of Mankind constitute the lower, mundane world, while the rest of the cosmos and judgment by God are of the higher, divine world. In a cosmograph, the Moon is the obvious dividing point, given that it is changeable like the sub-lunar world even though it is part of the eternal/celestial realm. In a vita humana with personifications, Death is the obvious dividing point, leaving one world and entering the next. The distinction between the Realm of Man and the Realm of the Soul, while appropriate to some works, is routinely ignored. The most prominent example is the Dance of Death where the Ranks of Man is completely joined with the personification(s) of Death. If present, the lowest level may be illustrated in various ways. Not only are most Ranks of Man motifs unique, but there are other forms this level may take. Essentially, Shephard's Realm of Man depicts some representation of Mankind or Everyman. For example, the lowest section may show Adam in some form. Etymologically and in many contexts, Adam=Mankind, and his sin condemned all. Showing the Creation or, more commonly, the Fall of Man via Adam and Eve, indicates that the overall story is about Mankind and specifically post-lapsarian Man. Rather than a ranks or stations/estates motif, Mankind as a whole may also be indicated by showing representative ages. This shows Mankind and also his life cycle, just as a Ranks shows Mankind and his various places in society. Both are sketchy, schematic abstractions which employ something like synecdoche, representing the whole via characteristic parts. The two most extreme versions of that are showing just one figure, Everyman, and showing just two figures, lowest and highest, in the figure of speech called merism. Most often, women are implied rather than being explicitly depicted but, again, things vary and are sometimes quite messy. The middle group may also take various forms. Commonly, a grouping of Deadly Sins could be used to symbolize the things of this life. We suck, hence the need for Grace. The opposite, Virtues, could be used just as well, as could a combined Vice/Virtue schema. The four Passions of the Soul is another schematic motif to illustrate vita humanae , as is their subjugation via a Stoic apathea or Christian transcendence, mystical triumph in this life. These and many others are allegorical versions of the circumstances of life. In every case, a selection is made from the countless possible choices. The subject matter of the E-Series obviously is quite different than the subject matter in Tarot. In addition to being commonplace subjects needed by artists in their compositions, (the actual historical function of the project), the Muses, Arts, and Virtues are an aspirational catalog of strengths. To have inspiration, skill, and virtue is to be great in this world and prepared for the next. The prominence given to the Pope, Apollo (a "type" of Christ), Theology, and the three Pauline Virtues, emphasize this humanistic duality. This can be the middle register of a three-level work just as can the Seven Deadly Sins. One design is hopeful and encouraging while the other is a dire warning. Neither is like an Ages of Man design, an actual vita humana, or like the contemptu mundi cycle of the middle trumps, which schematically illustrates the vicissitudes of Fortune and the role of Virtue in the life of Man. Even within Tarot the design varies. In the Bolognese sequence, Virtue is shown with the Triumphs, as something desired but which cannot prevent reversal and downfall. In the Tarot de Marseille sequence, each of the three Moral Virtues is shown triumphing over one of the three turns of the Wheel. Likewise, a third section is transcendent, something beyond this life, but it may still take various forms. This may reflect an individual judgment (as in Costa's allegory in Bentivoglio Chapel), the Last Judgment as in countless works, or something as vaguely allusive as the cosmograph of the E-Series. It could be a mystical transcendence in this life rather than post mortem, again failing to conform to a neat, distinct Three Worlds design. In various ways, the elements may be combined rather than separated into groups. For example, in Petrarch's Trionfi there is often no clear-cut, simplistic analysis. Fame is of this world, yet triumphs over Death. Time is usually what leads to Death, yet Petrarch used it to wash away Fame, an ubi sunt trope. Time and Fame are conventional allegories, very popular circumstances of life, and yet in the Trionfi they appear after Death. Messy. As another example, in illustrations for Petrarch's cycle there is sometimes mixing and repetition. The Triumph of Death, in particular, is the third of six in the cycle but often contains an explicit Ranks of Man, (with the characteristic emperor and pope), the allegory of Death itself, (always the most significant point in Man's life), and representations of both Heaven and Hell, or souls being carried by angels and demons. One might expect the Ranks of Man to appear in the first Triumph, and often it does. Again, art is messy and often less schematic than things like the E-Series. So yes, different categories of subject matter are being illustrated, and that the simplest, most clear-cut diagrammatic version of this may be loosely characterized as mankind, allegories of life, and things which transcend this life. But we should keep in mind that this is a gross simplification which is not always directly applicable. It is the context which makes a detailed explanation of the trump cycle possible, but it has little explanatory power in its own right. I would argue that the most generic description of this 3-part design, at least in the Western European tradition, is "Triumph of Death". Death is the one thing that unites all Mankind and which occupies the same position in all human life -- its end. Death is the great transition between the two realms, and while it ends this life it begins the next. Death is the greatest theme of Christian allegorical art, with endless works of vanitas, memento mori, ubi sunt , and related genre. From Vado Mori and the Three Living and Three Dead through the pervasive Dance of Death and Triumph of Death per se, with many unique allegorical works like Petrarch's Triumphs or Michault's Dance of the Blind . This is partly because death is that natural end of Everyman, but also because death is at the heart of Christian mythology. In Genesis, Adam/Man sins and his punishment is death. In the Gospels, Christ's death is the sacrifice to atone for Adam's sin, and his own resurrection, triumph over death, is the first fruits of the general resurrection. In Revelation 20, we have the final triumph over the Devil/Sin and death. Tarot is another in this vast tradition of Christian allegories of death. The trump cycle is itself an elaborated Triumph of Death , elaborated in terms of the middle trumps which show the life cycle leading up to death. Looking for any authority who described "threefoldness" in vertical hierarchies proved difficult; it became apparent that it was such a fundamental, underlying and completely natural basis for the spatial organization of iconographic information, that people describing such art assumed it rather than explained it as a principle. First, thanks for the pointer to Ong's 1959 article, "From Allegory to Diagram". He may not have given you the quote you were hoping for, but Ong's discussion of the "schematic relationships" among the figures, the diagrammatic composition, is directly on point for Tarot. This is the structural aspect, what I've called the sequential context, which constrains and clarifies the intended meaning of the trumps. This is what the three sections mean for Tarot: they are the macro structure of the trump cycle. The micro structure consists of the smaller groups, the eight duos and two trios that I've called affine groups. The arrangement of these three major groups and ten lesser groups tells us what the trump cycle was intended to convey, the intentio operis . Ong was making the generic point, and Tarot -- properly understood in terms of those groupings -- is just one more example illustrating his point. These structures are what enable us to dismiss most orderings and interpretations and get closer to the intended meaning. Your attempt to find the best analysis of this schematic tendency in a general sense is interesting. Finding a good quote, or creating an pithy and insightful description yourself, seems worthwhile. As noted above, this is an over-simplification like Campbell's 3-part cycle. His Separation, Initiation, and Return can even be stretched to cover the Three World analysis I've offered for Tarot, the three realms you are discussing here, if one is so inclined. Our individual identities as suggested by a Ranks of Man can be taken as our embodiment in this life, this world, separated from the Divine by Adam's Fall. This life is naturally our initiation into the next, and the De Casibus or Wheel of Fortune cycle both initiates us and leads to death. Death returns us to God for our Last Judgment. The question is to what extent this sort of simplification is helpful. If you say, "Campbell's Monomyth" to a Tarot enthusiast, you fall immediately into a swamp of vacuous impositions and empty analogies, taking you away from an historical analysis of the specifics of a particular Tarot deck or decks. You used the term prolegomena, preliminary remarks for the study of the groups, subjects, and sequence of the Tarot trumps. That is precisely how I used such a discussion in various presentations, most notably in The Riddle of Tarot . Although the emphasis was on analysis of the various trump cycles themselves, rather than other works, numerous examples were cited of composite works uniting different types of subject matter. Over the years many more have been presented, and I have even used this tripartite analysis to define Triumph of Death in a general sense. As such a basic conceptual aspect, it needs to be presented (i.e., it is absolutely necessary, which is why I continue to return to the subject) but it explains very little about the trump cycle details. Triumphal Arch of Alfonso V in Castel Nuovo, Naples 1. Triumph of Alfonso (terrestrial) 2. Virtues (moral) 3. Archangel Michael flanked by saints Anthony and Sebastian (celestial) Nice example. Lorenzo Costa, Cappella Bentivoglio Triumph of Death ( starts with allegory, introduces concept of "literal" as a subset of "terrestrial" or "real" (actually vice-versa)) 1. Triumphs of Fame (and Fortune) and Death (and Chastity) 2. Exempla (Fame), souls ascending (Death) 3. Souls ascending, angels, God the Father, Jesus, Mary (in Death triumph only; the two compositions are a diptych) Here we see some problems that often arise when attempting to force-fit a particular work into a "universal" schema. The truth of the work is that it's just messy. Contemporaneous figures are used in the allegory along with historical/legendary ones, which is to say that it does not fit the oversimplified model. I won't go into your elaborate speculation (in which you suggest that there may be a specific topical reading to virtually every detail) except to say that, in the absence of documentary support, you may be reading too much into it. Regarding the messiness, it is worth noting that the composition's diagrammatic flow begins with scenes of the Fall of Man from Genesis. These are in the center of the upper-left quadrant. Surrounding them, Mankind's fallen state is exemplified by eight legendary incidents, exemplars arranged in a Wheel of Fortune. Historical stories turned into a Wheel of Fortune, with the Fall of Man at the center -- where Time or Fortuna would ordinarily be placed, turning the Wheel. It is unique, and conceptually messy. As a grouping, these historical images are far removed in time from the topical elements in the lower parts of the paintings. They are also different in kind from the allegorical elements in the lower part of the panels, and from the soul rising to judgment in the upper-right quadrant. So on the one hand it is both unique and seemingly messy, at least if one wishes to oversimplify. On the other hand, the pieces are neatly illustrative in their own right and they are united in the overall composition to tell a coherent story: starting with the Fall of Man, then ancient examples of Fortune, contemporaneous examples of Fame and Death, and finally the triumph over death. It fails miserably to conform to either neat groupings of like character or to the simplistic bottom-to-top reading. Spatially, the narrative thread begins at the top, goes down, sideways, then up. As such, it serves as a great warning about the one-size-fits-all, monomyth approach to iconography. Tarot trump sequence 1. Human types (highest and lowest; highest complete ranking of court cards) 2. Virtù and Fato 3. Heavenly order [...] The tarot trumps are neither monument, nor painting, nor quasi-encyclopedic model-book; they are the pieces of a game. Their context is ludic, and play-function is therefore one of the constraints upon their design. It's good to recognize, and never forget, that Tarot was a game and the trump cycle was intended as both a moral allegory, to make the game inspirational, and as an easily learned and readily usable hierarchy of trumps. Beyond that, however, looking at the moral allegory itself, there seems to be little about the game which would constrain either the selection or arrangement of the subjects -- they just need to make some sense, which is generally true in other contexts as well. It is a cycle which could be easily adapted for a chapel or other architectural space, like other unique cycles we've seen, or to a series of prints. This explains why the various sequences share the threefold sensibility, and why Dummett was able to reduce it to three families. It also explains why the designer chose these three types of subject matter, vertically arranged in three divisions, to illustrate the pieces of his game. I'm not sure what you mean here. It seems as if you are saying that the commonplace division into three types of subject matter in various works of art explains the specific division into three types of subject matter in Tarot. If so, then it seems simpler to just note that complex works of art, grouping and/or mixing different types of subject matter into a unified composition, were commonplace. If it is stated that way, then perhaps the absence of a more detailed analysis in the iconography literature is not surprising. It finally explains why it was easy for the players to understand the logic of the subjects, why they were where they were. The threefold structure is a necessary, but not sufficient, explanation for the choice of subjects and their number - different subjects could occupy the lower, middle and highest levels... Yes, the three types of subject matter are necessary to understand the logic of the design of Tarot, the arrangement of the subjects into groups in archetypal decks. But a different design could easily have been chosen. If you want to keep roughly the same number of trumps, one can take the middle three decades of the E-Series, keep the Muses (9), the Liberal Arts (7), and the Virtues (7) -- voila! Twenty-three trumps in three clearly defined groups but lacking the Three Worlds structure. If the orderings of each group were taken from literary sources, it might seem to be very didactic and mnemonic set of trumps. Even in terms of Tarot, however, the Three Worlds aspect does not seem to help at all in understanding the choice of subjects or their number . These seem to have been based on other considerations, specifically, a detailed iconographic program. Well, that was more fun -- thanks again. I started on a reply to the Devil posts... maybe tomorrow. Best regards, Michaappy ...

... producers didn't use numbers on the cards, cause they were aware of different rows used by the players. Everybody, who needed numbers to remember a hierarchical row, could add the numbers himself. For the producer it was less work. For the players it meant more freedom. They could buy Bolognese cards, but play a Ferrarese game, if they were used to the Ferrarese row. "Doppelkopf" - a German game with possibly 200 years history, developed from Schafkopf - has a lot of variants, which might be easily more than 100 or even 200. When players sit down to play, and they played never together before, they have to set up the rules, according which they want to play. That might be a matter of a few minutes. Recently - maybe 20 years ago - a Doppelkopf-Verband has built which also plays tournaments, championships etc.. Naturally they needed fixed rules, which were accepted by all players, who participated in this organization. This didn't change the usual habits of old friends, who gather occasionally or once in a week. I myself frequented a pub, where it was played nearly all days, 1-3 tables. Once in a year a greater tournament. They played with rules, which I've never seen elsewhere. Doppelkopf has features, which are similar to the rules in the Austrian Königrufen, which is a Tarock variant. John McLeod expressed the opinion, that Königrufen would be perhaps the most interesting Tarot game. Some of the possible variations are so strong, that they indeed change the whole game and its strategies. It's difficult to make conclusions on ideas "how players will behave". One has to gather a lot of personal experience and there's a big group of different games and one will never know alat ...

... Ross. When you say: They learned the highest and lowest group first, not an iconographic group, but the only group that mattered in practical terms because it was the only group that counted, literally. Do you mean the bottom five and the top five? That's what counted in the scoring, in all the accounts of rules that I've seen (considerably after the 15th century, unfortunately; and even then, there was also the Fool, and the Kings, and combinations). If so, memorizing them would indeed be easy, especially if the papas weren't in any predefined order. Other than that, you'd have the bagat, who has his place in the order right in his name. On the other end, you have the hierarchy of lights, plus judgment and world. All you have to keep straight is which comes first of the last two, which indeed looks rather arbitrary in the Bolognese deck. If not, say again why a guy with wings on his hat and shoes should come before a trumpeter. Then, yes, you have a good design for play by the masses, either an improvement over the original or a good original from the first. You still don't have an ur-tarot, because you don't know if the original designer thought of your point, or gave it your prominence. He or she might have been thinking of other things besides ease of memorization. It seems to me that if ease of play had been the only objective, the designer would have thought to put numbers on the cards. On the other hand, if the game was already out there, and someone got the idea, let's still not have numbers, but let's make it a little easier, with the cards that count the most in the scoring, then he could make some money out of such a deck as the Bolognese, at least in places where a different deck and order wasn't already in people's heads (or they had no other choice, due to political pressures). But perhaps you weren't after an ur-tarot. Maybe you were just after one reason why the "four papi" rule and the "three lights" before the last two might have been introduced in particular markets, setting aside the question of whether it was the ur-tarot or not. If so, there's no problem, a very minimal claim. And a good methodological point. Please clarifarification, ...

... questions of methodology and the three groups) It doesn't matter whether we place him in the moral section or the third section (however you want to qualify or define it) - he is still in the same place in the sequence in relation to the Thunderbolt in every deck ever made. It may redefine his meaning if he is one or the other section, in the same way that Justice's meaning is changed when she is moved from the moral to the heavenly part (such movements prove that they did indeed read meaning into the sequence, or parts of it). I say "may" because those who made the C order, with Temperance intervening between Death and the Devil, effectively seem to have ejected the Devil from the moral section; but did they thereby intend to indicate that there is, or to create, an explicit relationship between the Devil and the Thunderbolt? Or was Temperance put there to lessen the severity of the Devil following immediately upon Death, just as Temperance appears to have been put between the Pope and Love in the B orders in order to break any implied relationship between those two cards? In this case, then, the Devil's being apparently in the last section in C (I suppose someone could argue for his place in the middle section, although it would disrupt the symmetry of this section in the Tarot de Marseille order specifically), makes him merely a casualty of someone's interpretation of the middle section, and does not necessarily imply that there was thereby to be inferred a direct relationship between the Devil and Thunderbolt in the final section. But all the question of the Devil's sectional assignment in A or C really accomplishes is to bring us back to the position Dummett stated - that to know the original meaning, we have to know the original arrangement. It'd be too much to say that we can know what the original arrangement was, but I believe that the strongest argument by far can be made for A, and particularly the Bolognese A. It doesn't matter if you agree with me or like my explanations or the words I use to describe them, or the insights I think they generate. What I mean to say is that it doesn't matter if I convince you with my arguments about the meaning for why this or that "section" or "subsection" exists. What is important, and what I will insist on, is that the following methodological question is sound and crucial - how did the players learn the sequence, which is, by extension, how the designer intended it to be learned? The way the players learned the unnumbered sequence reflects the intent of the designer. When a new player sat down at the table, never having seen the game before, they learned the trump sequence first by groups, then by habit or memorization. The groups will reveal the intent of the designer. The specific order of the cards within the groups will be the designer's choice, but may not mean anything beyond his own convenience or whims. These may be unknowable. It seems to me highly unlikely that the new player sat down and was shown the cards and told " Angelo Mondo Sole Luna Stella Saetta Diavolo Morte Traditore Vecchio Ruota Forza Justizia Tempra Carro Amore Quattro Papi Bagattino Matto - okay, your deal" . Nor was he sent to a corner and told "come back when you have it memorized, and then we'll tell you the rules". In Bologna, the players learned at the table, for the first time, for over 300 years. There must have been a method of groupings to learn the trumps. It is the only way to learn it quickly enough to join in common play, when no written rules existed and there were no numbers on the cards. However, since the groupings or mnemonic did not make it into the earliest written or printed accounts of the rules, they must have been easy enough, and banal enough, that they were as quickly learned as forgotten. First prediction - somebody of all those players over 300 years must have jotted down an account of their first game of Tarocchi, including an account of the mnemonic. This will reflect the designer's intent. Second prediction - such a jotting will probably survive in a diary, letter, or a single page inserted into a book somewhere. It will probably, but not necessarily, be in Bologna. The second prediction is based on conservative calculations that of 10 people per year learning the game, 1000 in a century, at least 1 per cent will have written something about the experience, that is 10. Therefore 30 in 300 years, of which it seems probable that at least a handful will survive somewhere. These numbers are surely too conservative, but the term "handful", suggesting less than 10, is surely probable. It is therefore worthwhile to think of ways to search for unpublished diaries and letters that may contain such an account, in Bologna. Of course, it will more probably be an accident that brings it to light, but I believe - predict - that it will be there, somewhere. If the Bolognese game is the original game, even if invented in Florence, and if the account is early enough (or is otherwise convincingly reflective of the earliest game), then we will be as close as predictively possible to the designer's notes for the game. If the game were invented in Florence and such a record for the period before Germini became standard is found, then the same may be predicted. I've had time to prepare for utter rejection from everybody, even people whose opinion matters, and it still doesn't matter if my wordy explanations convince or not. It doesn't even matter if they are fully right or not. My position, my methodology, is inassailable, mainly because it is defending so little. It boils down to the fact that the cards were made to play with, the sequence to be memorized quickly, and the system had to be easy. It had to be fast, and banal enough that it was done so quickly that it was just as quickly forgotten as it was unnecessary, which is why no mention of it has been found yet. It had to be banal. It had to be groups. All we have to do is figure out what the groups were, assign some snappy names to them, and start to play. The order of the particular cards in them is easy once the groups are down. Why the designer chose those groups is explained by the three classes of subject matter, which I have called for convenience - snappy - earthly, moral, and heavenly. They learned the highest and lowest group first, not an iconographic group, but the only group that mattered in practical terms because it was the only group that counted , literally. The iconography of this ludic group - highest and lowest - then matches where they go in relation to the rest of the cards in their part of the threefold iconographic divisions. This means low people and big ideas. Why the inventor chose the rest of the particular subjects, or rather why those subjects were obviously groups for the original audience, is the more difficult business, which has to be argued carefully (and usually clumsily by me), from art history and documentary history. I think I've got a good explanation for all the sections, and why each subject would have made clear sense in the group and fallen immediately into its (sometimes arbitrary) place in the group for the original audience, but I know my rhetorical skills are frequently not up to the task of convincing my own audience. Now that I'm standing on firm ground, however, I'm not afraid to keep tryinal ...

... I wouldn't have thought twice about them if I hadn't seen them persist through time, and had a parallel "indice" system with color-codes for the Kings (which disappears earlier - both things are gone completely in 20th century decks). It's a strong presence for such incidental details, across all known designers, for 400 years (note that in the Alla Torre 17th century deck, the bursts in the Sun are painted there, but not engraved in the wood). I've tried to deal a few hands and see if they make any difference when you fan the cards with only a little bit of the corners showing, but since I don't have the whole deck it is hard to make a good experiment. I had a theory that a double burst generally introduces a new "section" - but this doesn't work, unless Love belongs to the Papi and the "lights" are ignored. Remember that we aren't free to re-order the cards by theory or some arrangement of these "indices" - the Bolognese order, even more than the designs, is inviolable. Force and Sun are devoid of bursts, and they are the highest of their groups (taking the two counting cards World and Angel as the high ludic group and not as "lights", although all together these subjects constitute the third, "heavenly things" group), but the Sun doesn't really need bursts to be seen in a hand (it's bigger than the rest), even though it might help knowing Virtue from Virtue when you only have a hint to look at (Force's pillar would tell you, as Justice's sword; so the burst only serves to distinguish the upper left corner of Temperance from the other two). The bursts of the papi would make one pope the lowest (like a "popess"), if the "double burst" phenomenon introduces a new section, but we know that wasn't the case in Bologna (and that leaves the problem of Love, which has to come below the Chariot). The two emperors have left bursts, the two popes right bursts, and even though one pope's left burst seems fainter than the other, I still see clear traces of woodcut black ink underneath, so, unlike the Sun card, that burst was meant. Unfortunately we have no other set of Bolognese papi to compare (and Mitelli doesn't care). If the "new section" idea is used, then the best order for the papi would be double-burst pope, pope, (blank matching) emperor, emperor. If they mean anything, really and consistently, I haven't found the logic without violating the traditional sequence, which would be ridiculous for such a long-lasting tradition with a well-known order. Thus I gave up on a "semantic" meaning for them - as I tried to say, it was valuable, but fortuitous, for me to separate the Devil from the Lightning, but perhaps nothing more. So, for the moment, I assume a miscellaneous use, and only for play: If you see nothing in the corner , you have a counting trump or the Sun (the "dark" cards have enough of their subjects in the corners to make them out quickly, as does Force; and the Sun is pretty easy too). See a burst - left or right, I guess you could fan either way, I don't know of any explicit instruction on a standard practice -, and you have to look a little more closely to see what you have. Not much use, it seems, but maybe enough for rapid habitual play, especially for knowing counting cards from empty cards. This engraving, from the opening of Pisarri's Istruzioni necessarie per che volesse imparare il giuoco dilettevole delli Tarocchini di Bologna (1754) shows the players fanning the cards to see them from the upper left corner - http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/bologna/bolognaplayersmed.jpg http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/bologna/bolognaplayersmed.jpg http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/bologna/bolognaplayersdetail.jpg http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/bologna/bolognaplayersdetail.jarco, ...

... or so of that, the "lights" interpretation of the cards Lightning, Star, Moon and Sun (I was still trying to include the World) occurred to me, and I figured that the Devil cannot be considered a "light" card. .... :-) ... what about a light state like "no light" or "black hole in the mid of the galaxy, eating light" (each galaxy is assumed to have a black hole in its middle, as far I understand it) and "Demiurg" or "Demorgogon", who created the world? If we take 16-19 (Tower-Sun) as a group, then it's embedded between Devil (15) and Angel (20), which looks like a complementary pair, perhaps Devil creating a "nasty negative world" and Angel destroying it. And we have 1-14 (a greater group) and 21 (= somehow "all and everything") embedding the light sequence between Devil and Angel as the rest of it. . ******************* The most interesting 3-groups-order is in my opinion this one (though more a riddle than fact) ... 0-5 6 Love = Petrarca's Love 7 triumphal chariot with female rider = Petrarca's Chastity 8-12 (including Father Time ????) 13 Death = Petrarca's Death 14 Alciato's Fame as Temperance = Petrarcas Fame 15-16 17-18-19 = Petrarca's Time ???? 20 ????? 21 World = Petrarca's Eternity ************ "Similarly, all Italians of the 15th century would recognize the vague hierarchy in the trumps: celestial and eternal things are higher than moral allegories, and moral allegories are higher than human stations/types. These are the three divisions recognized by Dummett, and already recognized in the 19th century (and arguably the 16th)." I don't think, that one can reduce all and everything, what had happened on the different Trionfi decks in a meaningful manner in three parts. Naturally one can: everything in the world has a begin-middle-end structure. A writer for instance mostly has an opening called "Introduction", a finish called "Conclusion" and a middle part ... but a deciding message of the work is also, how many chapters he had chosen to present the middle part, may it be one point or maybe 50 or 500. http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/pseudomantegna4.jpg The Mantegna Tarocchi has a 5x10-structure. That's the basic message. The Ferrarese Tarocchi order seems to fill a 1-5-5-5-5-1-scheme ... another favor for the number 5. 0 Fool 1-5 Persons 6-10 Good things 11-15 Bad things 16-20 Heaven 21 World The Minchiate operates with 5 Papi and 5 Aries. If one follows the game ideas expressed in the verzicole, then there's a general interest to honor partitions of the number 40. Only few verzicole (the choice of 28 and 13) associate the idea to part the 40 cards in 3 groups. http://germini.altervista.org/diagVersicoleC.JPG Sola-Busca and Boiardo Tarocchi show an interest to part the 20 "inside cards" (1-20-1 scheme) in 10 pairs (1-2, 3-4, 5-6 etc). The general Tarot has 5 suits, not 3. 4 normal suits and a trump suia ...

... Sorry for the delay in responding. You know... the holidays. They take their toll. Isn't the Devil “real but untouchable”? Proverbially, he is touchable I think. You can meet him, he takes on various disguises, that sort of thing (but so are angels (and Jesus himself is a touchable man) so couldn't an angel go in the sub-celestial section?). But that's not the point - I'm sorry if those descriptions can be misleading - they are not meant to be strictly diagnostic - I didn't make them up and then put the cards where they fit the definitions. Maybe they could use some refining, but they are meant only as broad descriptions of the rationale after we have the threefold analysis in place. The best way to explain my reasoning for putting the Devil with the other "dark cards" might be to show chronologically how it developed. First, until about October of this year I took the linkage of Devil and "Tower" (and afterwards for awhile even when I had come to the conclusion that the card's subject was only the Thunderbolt) as axiomatic. It is a seductive idea when you are looking for a story in the sequence. It just seems absolutely right that God would be blasting the Devil, and after that we just start going to heaven. The other big appeal is the dichotomy of the Devil at one end of the section, with the Angel at the other. Absolute darkness - absolute light. It seems like that section is wrapped up. But looking back I can see that some doubts in this picture were sown by the early interpreters - neither Imperiali nor the two discorsi make this connection - none of them imply that there is some kind of judgment going on here. In fact Imperiali and the Anonymous put him in the moral section (Imperiali puts him in both, I suppose; he wasn't trying to limit himself to sections, but to make a seamless narrative of the whole sequence). That these 16th century interpreters didn't make the Devil-Lightning connection should have given me pause earlier, but since I went back to them only after I had made the break between these two cards myself, while I can say that I remembered them and appreciate them more now, they were not directly instrumental in changing my views. The first step came with my growing discomfort with the force of that particular "narrative nugget" in an otherwise less than catechetically clear section. Why such an explicit display of high and serious religiosity in a set of pieces only designed to be easily remembered in sections? Where does it go now? To a Star - is this a symbolic reference to Jesus? But then who are the Moon and the Sun, etc? It just didn't make sense that the designer would be so explicit here but so allusive in the rest. This thought occurred in concert with my increasing methodology to divest the sequence of all narrative traces (the first to fall for me was bringing Love into the Chariot with Virtues section - I had to get rid of the part of my interpretation that said Love is the last card of the first section, and refers to the proverbial expression "Omnia vincit amor"; hence it was a "narrative" that it completed; with Love's narrative role gone, the Devil-Lightning pairing stood out even more painfully). The Devil was already a "dark" card, along with the other 3 cards Morte, Traditore and Vecchio, so I thought, why not just count him as one? I imagined then that the players could simply say "the dark cards" and think "Death and Devil" or "Death and Hell", a conventional expression, and a logical set. Since I'm working with the Bolognese tradition, I took it as confirmation that they too, like Imperiali and the Anonymous, saw it this way - in this group - when I noticed that the "bursts" of light in the corners of various cards - across 400 years and many different designers - remained constant, and that the Devil is never shown with these bursts, while the Saetta is always shown with two. Bolognese "light" and "dark" cards from 16th to 19th century: http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/bologna/lightdark.jpg http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/bologna/lightdark.jpg (click for a larger image of course) This last "argument" is not decisive, but it was the "straw that broke the camel's back" for me in divorcing the Devil from the Lightning. Here is another version explaining myself that I wrote when you and Mike brought up my placement of the Devil in the middle section a few weeks ago - The Devil Mike and Marco have noted that I have included the Devil in the middle section, differing therefore from either of Dummett's groupings. Since it is new, I should explain it. It came as a shock to me to do so, and it was the last card to "fall", so to speak, out of the tendency to see a narrative in the sequence. The penultimate for me was the Love card, with the narrative value of "Amor vincit omnia", that I held for quite awhile, as the end of the first section. Now it sits firmly with the Chariot-Virtues section. But the Devil stayed stubbornly attached to the Thunderbolt, with its dramatic prop the tower, the pair indicating a narrative aspect of divine judgment. As late as September, I was still working under this model for both Love (including a Petrarchan aspect) and Devil, as you can see in one of the schematics I made of "The Conceptual World of the Trump Sequence", where I instruct myself, when making the finished version, to make a " sharper spatial distinction between Death and Devil ." http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/diavolo/sequencetableau3.jpg http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/diavolo/sequencetableau3.jpg I was thinking in terms like these (from the notebook at the time): "Designer placed Lightning Bolt after Devil partly for symbolism of the lightning for them, which is God's judgment, the fulmen of Jove. So it symbolizes God keeping the Devil down - Tullius Hostilis (struck by lightning) - Quote Valla - Thomas Cantimpré (Este ms. too; and Botticelli Dante on Nimrod)" Within a week or so of that, the "lights" interpretation of the cards Lightning, Star, Moon and Sun (I was still trying to include the World) occurred to me, and I figured that the Devil cannot be considered a "light" card. In November I wrote: "The final breakthrough came with the Devil, when I realized he was one of the "dark cards", not connected with the Lightning, hence not part of the last group and also removing the last "narrative" component from the interpretation." This idea was reinforced when I looked at the popular Bolognese tradition, for the 500 or so years that we know it, and saw that, until the 20th century, there are consistently "bursts" of light in the corners of the Lightning card, but never on the Devil, or Death, or the Traitor, or the Vecchio, so that I began to think of them as the "dark" cards. These bursts were consistent across time - over four centuries - and different designers in Bologna, so that, like the equally-persistent distinguishing color-scheme of the court cards in Bologna (Black for Spade, Green for Bastoni, Red for Coppe, Yellow for Danari), I felt justified in thinking they were somehow important to the players in Bologna, perhaps as indices of some sort. Whether indices or not, it was enough to break the relationship of Devil with Saetta, and put him with the "dark" cards instead. It is not difficult to remember his ranking in any case, but I suggest that the proverbial association is the phrase "morte ed inferno", with the Devil as the representative of Hell. Please note that "dark" and "light" are my own terms of convenience, to show how I separated the Devil from the Lightning. While I think that the designer did in fact think of the "light" cards as "The Lights", I don't think he contrasted them conceptually with the immediately preceding group, which is part of the middle, moral section; rather, I think he wanted players to think of them as "bad" or "fate" (as in fato , with the same connotations as the original sense of our "fatal") in contrast with the "good" section, for easy remembering. So Ruota , the Wheel of Fortune, is one of the "fatal" cards, despite having bursts of light in the corners in the Bolognese traditioarco, ...

... a study of the groups, subjects and sequence of the Tarot trumps (mostly an art(ist) appreciation exercise) A depiction of heaven and earth will place heaven above earth; everyone intuitively understands this. The things of heaven are higher than the things of earth. So, in a vertical hierarchy, where would you then put depictions of concepts and ideas , or personifications of moral concepts like allegories ? Since they are not people you can meet or things you can bump into, nor are they real but untouchable like the heavenly bodies and supreme realities like God on his throne, such symbols will be placed higher than earth and Man but lower than heaven and God, in the middle space between the two. This is what the tarot trump sequence does, and so do countless other works showing formally similar hierarchical orders. Only the specific iconographic content will differ, depending on the context and function of the work. This is the threefold scheme of the trump sequence. When we look closely at the various orders, we find that there was far from being total chaos. A first impression is of a good deal of regularity which, however, is hard to specify. Now the cards which wander most unrestrainedly within the sequence, from one ordering to another, are the three Virtues. If we remove these three cards, and consider the sequence formed by the remaining eighteen trump cards, it becomes very easy to state those features of their arrangement which remain constant in all the orderings. Ignoring the Virtues, we can say that the sequence of the remaining trumps falls into three distinct segments, an initial one, a middle one, and a final one, all variation occurring only within these different segments. Game of Tarot , p. 398. The threefold architecture of the trump sequence that Dummett discovered is not just a quirk of Tarot - it is a basic principle of spatial organization in iconographic vertical hierarchies - the basic moral valuation of hierarchical space, the low, middle, and high places; the center, and the sides. It forms a part of what Aby Warburg in 1912 described as the "...noch ungeschrieben 'historischen Psychologie des menschlichen Ausdrucks'" (the yet-unwritten 'historical psychology of human expression'). It is so basic, intuitive and natural that it is essentially unconscious and remains unmentioned, assumed, in discussions of how to read art. It is not a complicated insight, but it is profound; it has enough analytic power to generate new ways of viewing some artistic productions, for instance blowing life into a seemingly static monument like Donatello's tomb for Giovanni XXIII (see below in the examples I analyze in their threefoldness). It was in September 2013, after a week or so of seriously wrangling with three "triumphs" (Love, Death, Eternity), a narrative that I saw in the trump sequence, that I appear to have truly begun to realize Dummett's threefold structure for the profound insight it was. From my notebook: "We can look at the Monopoly squares and say "that's Atlantic City". With a little digging / research we can say it is Atlantic City, first third of 20th century. "Likewise with Tarot we can look at the trumps and say they contain a moral allegory and with a little research locate it in the first half of 15th century Italy. "But neither was intended to teach what the symbols represent, although we can draw a lesson from either of them. Court cards not numbered; rank is implied. Similarly the court cards don't tell a story, although they are a meaningful hierarchy. Similarly for Chess figures or any game with symbolic figures representing the hierarchy. "It would be absurd to suggest that the order of the court cards was invented to teach how a court was organized. It would be absurd to suggest that the Chess pieces teach how a kingdom is organized. Both can do that, in a vague way, but that it not their intention. The understanding of the hierarchy is implicit, expected of the audience. Similarly, all Italians of the 15th century would recognize the vague hierarchy in the trumps: celestial and eternal things are higher than moral allegories, and moral allegories are higher than human stations/types. These are the three divisions recognized by Dummett, and already recognized in the 19th century (and arguably the 16th). "The nature of the differences among the various trump orders shows that there was a broad understanding of these three divisions, and the overall hierarchy. " "Threefold scheme of art; planets (children), Schifanoia, pictures of people having visions, etc. Pseudo-Mantegna perhaps most relevant scheme: 1. Ranks ______ __Muses (poetry, art) 2. Ideas --- Liberal Arts (science, intellect) _________Virtues (morality) 3. Celestial "(Three registers) Check descriptions of Schifanoia, Ps.-Mantegna, etc. for an authoritative statement to that effect." Looking for any authority who described "threefoldness" in vertical hierarchies proved difficult; it became apparent that it was such a fundamental, underlying and completely natural basis for the spatial organization of iconographic information, that people describing such art assumed it rather than explained it as a principle. I found a few art historians who pointed in that direction, such as Dale Kinney, "The Apse Mosaic of Santa Maria in Trastevere", in Elizabeth Sears and Thelma K. Thomas, eds., Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object (U Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 19-26: Where should the viewer start 'reading' this mosaic? Literally, with the inscriptions? In the center? From the bottom? From the top? Structure, both physical and pictorial, provides an intrinsic hierarchy and with it, a place to begin. (p. 22) She then proceeds with her analysis of the verticality, horizontality, and in situ qualities of the work, along with the inscriptions. She concludes (p. 25): It takes desire and effort to read them, a physical premonition of the intellectual exertion that will be required to penetrate the allegory once it is perceived. To the art historian, this is a signal that visual analysis has done its work, and it is time to move on to the library. (this is another implication of my motto, "con gli occhi et con l'intelletto") Another one was Alastair Fowler, Triumphal Forms: Structural Patterns in Elizabethan Poetry (Cambridge UP, 1970): A more pervasive but also more elusive element, whose bearing on literary forms we are only beginning to grasp, is the spatial character of Renaissance thought (2). I shall only touch on one aspect of this: the tendency to order ideas in visual schemes (especially linear sequences). The dominance in the Renaissance of the pseudo-Horatian doctrine ut pictura poesis has long been obvious. But the application of the doctrine to literary structure as distinct from texture or imagery, is far from obvious. (p. 17) Fowler's note 2 says: "This topic is brilliantly discussed by Fr. W(alter) J. Ong in The Barbarian Within (New York, 1962), Ch. V, "System, Space and Intellect in Renaissance Symbolism"; see also the same author's "From Allegory to Diagram in the Renaissance Mind", The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , XVII (1959)." I was not able to see Ong's book, but I could get his article, but found it concerned with the influence of printing on the representation of allegorical tableaux, and otherwise too diffuse generally to find the kind of authoritative "quote" on the insight I was looking for. I realized I would have to do it myself, and assembled a few examples from art I was working with at the time, as well as those more generally known to us (such as the E-Series and Costa's Cappella Bentivoglio triumphs). Finally, when reading Aby Warburg in order to understand Schifanoia better, I came across his formulation "historical psychology of human expression", and realized that the threefold structure was an example of this. Shorthly thereafter I realized why it was "psychological" - the terrestrial (bottom, ground) is tangible, real ; the celestial (planets, stars, the divine) is real, visually tangible, but between them is an impassable gulf - we can't go up there, we can't touch those things: we can't fly. So this "middle space", the "air", becomes, naturally, the realm of the conceptual , the quasi-real (when personified), thought-objects, personifications of ideas, values, the means by which the intellect bridges the gulf between the lower and the higher reality. This is why personified and allegorized morality goes in the middle section, why the designer put it there, and why no one would have had a second thought as to why it was where it was, as a coherent section of the sequence. Vertical hierarchy (structure and function of composition impose constraints and variations) Physical : Bottom-Middle-Top Value of placement: Low-Middle-High Descripton: Terrestrial, literal - Conceptual , figurative (of intellectual or moral principles)- Celestial, divine (Psychological origin - terrestrial and celestial are real, but man can't fly - he can't touch the celestial. The middle - the "air" - becomes the home of the conceptual) Six examples - I. Palazzo Schifanoia, Sala dei Mesi http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/este/aprilthreefoldstructure1.jpg 1. Acts of Borso (terrestrial) 2. Moral qualities of the decans (personified; decans are ten-degree segments of the 360 degree circle of the zodiacal band, to which astrologers assign moral qualities) 3. Gods of the months (Manilius), with mythological and planetenkinder scenes Because the terrestrial and heavenly registers are self-evidently so described, I shall only detail why the " faces of the decans" between them are in fact a moral register. April - faces of the three decans http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/este/cossadecansapril.jpg (for Ibn Ezra , Raphael Levy, Francisco Cantera, eds., The Beginning of Wisdom , Johns Hopkins UP, 1939, pp. 159-160; for Picatrix , William Kiesel and Hashem Atallah, eds., Picatrix; The Goal of the Wise (Ouroboros Press, 2002), quoted in Shawn Nacol, Scion's Handy Guide to the Decans (PDF, 2005), pp. 10-14) 1. Ibn Ezra , "A hirsute woman, who has a son and who wears clothing partly burnt." Picatrix , "A woman of curly hair, having a single child who is dressed in clothes like unto fire, and she herself dressed in similar clothes. And this is the face of plowing and working the earth, of sciences, geometry, of sowing seed, and making things. " 2. Ibn Ezra , "A man who resembles a ram in his face and his body, whose wife resembles an ox; his fingers are like goat's hoofs. That man is very hot and gluttonous, and he does not have peace of mind; he cultivates the earth, and he drives the oxen to plow and to sow ." Picatrix , "A man like the figure of a camel and having on his fingers are hooves like those of cows, and he is covered completely with a torn linen sheet. He desires to work the land, to sow, and to make things. And this is the face of nobility, power, and of rewarding people ." 3. Ibn Ezra , "A man whose feet are white and likewise his teeth, which are so long that they stick out beyond his lips; the color of his eyes as well as his hair is reddish, and his body resembles that of the elephant and the lion, but prudence does not reside in him, since all of his thoughts are bent on doing evil; he is seated on a cloth . There go up also a horse and a little dog." Picatrix , "A man of ruddy coloring with large, white teeth appearing outside of his mouth, and a body like an elephant whose legs are long; and there ascends with him one horse, one dog, and one calf. And this is the face of laziness, poverty, misery and fear ." II. Triumphal Arch of Alfonso V in Castel Nuovo, Naples 1. Triumph of Alfonso (terrestrial) 2. Virtues (moral) 3. Archangel Michael flanked by saints Anthony and Sebastian (celestial) The rivers Sebeto and Volturno (under the arc as the "vault of heaven", i.e. the "world", centered, symbolically, in the land of Naples between these rivers) - the virtù of the King causes the land to flourish (the rivers are not personified below, where two decorative griffons bear the horns of plenty, so it is not the land that has brought Alfonso victory, but rather Alfonso that has brought the land victory). Looks like this now - http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/NapoliMaschioAngioinoIngresso.jpg As engraved in 1870 - http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/moniteurdesarchitectes1870pl44.jpg The statue at the top http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/Statua_di_Alfonso_d'Aragona.jpg is the Archangel Michael, who until sometime after the 18th century had wings, as in this engraving from 1756 - http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/caesar/alfonsoarch1756.jpg This Michael was probably the model for the image on a coin of Ferdinando of Aragon, son of Alfonso and king of Naples 1458-1494. http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/ferrandusmichaelcoin.jpg An actual example - http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/coronatidellangelo1.jpg In the engraving from the 1870 Moniteur des architectes above, you can vaguely see the dragon Michael is slaying (I have not been able to find a good photograph with a top view of the pedestal). http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/archmichaelcomp.jpg Alfonso's arch is not merely a triumphal arch, commemorating a victory, but also serves an architectural function as a gate. One of constraints of the design was that it match the height of the two towers it stands between. This accounts for the second, decorative arch above the main entrance arch. What precise symbolism it had remains obscure, but the presence of a statue with an antique toga suggests that the people on it represented philosophers or other great figures of the past, i.e. exempla , belonging to the moral aspect of the threefold division, rather than the terrestrial and real Triumph of Alfonso, or, because it is under the Cardinal Virtues, to the celestial realm. Threefold symbolic structure of entire monument - http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/alfonsoarchmoniteur6.jpg http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/alfonsoarchmoniteur6.jpg Boiled down to symbolic essentials of the hierarchy - http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/archbasic.png http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/archbasic.png Note that the four Cardinal Virtues stand for "all virtue". The iconography of the triumphal arch is a contextualized and idealized representation of Alfonso's triumph, not merely an attempt to depict what really happened. We know from written descriptions that the Theological Virtues were also present at the event, and of the Cardinal Virtues only Justice played a major role, along with four other Virtues, Magnanimity, Constancy, Clemency and Liberality; Temperance, Fortitude and Prudence played no particular role at all; Fortune-Occasio, who played a central role in the actual triumph, is not represented on the arch, and neither is Julius Caesar, another central figure of the real event (although he might have been in the middle section, with the second arch). III. Lorenzo Costa, Cappella Bentivoglio Triumph of Death ( starts with allegory, introduces concept of "literal" as a subset of "terrestrial" or "real" (actually vice-versa)) http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/bologna/costarelative1.jpg 1. Triumphs of Fame (and Fortune) and Death (and Chastity) 2. Exempla (Fame), souls ascending (Death) 3. Souls ascending, angels, God the Father, Jesus, Mary (in Death triumph only; the two compositions are a diptych) http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/bologna/costadiptych.jpg In the Death triumph, the physical space of the viewer is important - he is already looking up, above his head - this composition starts in the conceptual realm, with an allegory. Yet the picture can still be analyzed in the usual threefold way. In this case, the triumph, although strictly speaking allegorical , is presented as real , as it might actually be seen on the ground. The weight of the geographic features all around emphasize the point - this allegory is the "terrestrial", bottom part of the structure. We can now understand that our terms need some refinement; the lowest level is not always a depiction of the literally real, but is also a literal depiction of some kind of reality. As in the "quadriga" reading of scripture (and Dante), the first, most basic and lowest level is the "literal"; since all art is representational (even Borso's acts, while real, are idealized representations of those acts), we can see that the lowest level, the terrestrial, worldly, or mundane, can actually be seen as a subset of the literal . In the case of Costa's painting, the "literal" reality is the Petrarchan text, and this forms the lowest register of the underlying threefold structure. http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/bologna/costadeath.jpg But there seems to be a real story woven into the allegory: the death of a child, standing for all deaths. We are not part of Death's long train, we enter the scene from a different angle. Our eye might first meet an exotic musician, perhaps Orpheus, his back turned to us: this is a private mourning we are coming upon. Or, we may first fall upon a young woman presenting a nude child, partly covered by the somber robe of the musician, who looks straight at us. This must be the dead. As our eye is drawn inward, Costa's placement of the two other nudes suggests an ages of man motif, first a young, beardless man, next a bearded mature man. Nudity symbolizes the purity of the soul, so these men are deaths at various ages. Like the child, these perhaps represent real people who would be known to the intended original audience of the composition. Our eye is drawn to where Death meets Chastity (virtuousness), an explicit representation of Petrarch. Then following further, finally we get to the visual center of the composition, Death itself, pointing upward. Going up from Death's scythe, we immediately enter a celestial panorama, conceptually moving from sadness to joy; schematically it is a series of concentric rings occupied by souls, saints, apostles and angels respectively, until the inmost space, the realm of divinity proper. We note that the first souls above the scythe's blade have become angelic infants; one is nude, and looks like the child gazing at us at the beginning, and two are wearing red and green, which with white are the same colors as the virgins meeting death below. In Dantean symbolism these colors stand for the Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity (perhaps it is Dante and Virgil in the distance). In these three children, then, the allegory and the real reference, our entry point, of the composition are blended. http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/bologna/costadeathchild.jpg The moral overlay suggests that the mountain is part of the moral landscape: the grim procession is descending from the mountain, or, we are mentally ascending it, to contemplate death. The presence of hermits in the procession recalls another famous triumph of death, in Pisa. Despite the implication of a vast, murmuring throng, accompanied by mournful music, the mountain and hermits remind us that the mystery of death is encountered in solitude and silence. Costa's work conflates with vertical values of space and placement perspective uses of those spaces; the three-dimensional aspect allows God to be both the highest and most distant, as well as at the center of the encircling choir of angels, as the summit of the ascent. The change from linear and two-dimensional representations, which used size and placement alone to indicate importance, to three-dimensional perspective realism forces late-quattrocento artists like Costa to adapt space and placement accordingly; we are now invited to go in and up, whereas before the perspective of the viewer was implicitly static - the picture did all the work for itself. The dynamic nature of the interaction between the real and the conceptual in this painting makes it more challenging to map than a monument like Alfonso's Arch or a strict hierarchy like the E-Series, but applying the threefold analysis to it looks something like this - http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/bologna/costadeath.png The light blue is the entry point, the ground of the viewer's perspective and expectations, where real and recognizable people meet the gaze; almost simultaneously the allegory or moral stream in purple begins, with the musician's turned back; the blue fades and the purple stream grows larger as the gaze is drawn inward, and can go either straight upward or take in the side-streams of the Petrarchan allegory. In both cases these meet in the exact visual center of the painting, where the celestial realm begins. This discussion of Costa's Triumph of Death is something of a digression, since it does not illuminate the structure of the Tarot trump sequence per se . But it illustrates how the threefold structure can be used to look at a composition in a new way; it has helped us broaden the definition of the lower level, and helps us appreciate works that similarly begin, on the lowest visual level, with allegories or moralities. However, as we can see in Costa, there is always a real terrestrial context in which to view the work, its ground in real events, or literal representations of them. IV. Donatello tomb of Giovanni XXIII (structurally/conceptually equivalent to Costa Triumph of Death; Death implicit in function/meaning of monument; so in tomb context, the terrestrial level is the context itself, death is the "ground" of the monument) 1. Theological Virtues (same role as Virtue-Pudicità in Costa Triumph of Death) 2. Effigy of dead man ascending (middle - corpse is actually in the sarcophagus) 3. Mary and Jesus (welcome into the celestial realm) The relationship of the viewer to the imagery is important again. Since I haven't found any photographs of the monument which show a person standing close by, I have added one in the proper dimensions. http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/donatello/tombdescription2.jpg One can immediately see that the viewer is looking up at the Theological Virtues; already the mind is being taken on a climb, ascending . Since the context of death does not need to be spelled out on a tomb (although it often is), the moral level, like in Costa, forms the first explicit or visual level. With the idea of the "middle" space, and the analogy of Costa's and countless other depictions of souls ascending to heaven, we see now that the effigy of the dead man is figuratively ascending, on the wings of his faith and piety (the three Theological Virtues) into the bosom of heaven. By virtue of the threefold analysis, movement has been granted to a monument that seems static, which we would otherwise pass by without a second look. In retrospect, I can see that this analysis works for other tombs too, like the Rosellini one we recently looked at. In this, however, there are no Theological Virtues; beneath the sarcophagus, at the base, there is a kind of Arcadian tableau of memento mori. As we know, on the side there is a chariot of the soul (the other side is invisible, apparently, to viewers). All in all, the pagan elements are kept low, as is appropriate in a Christian monument. V. Pseudo-Mantegna (PsM) model book http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triumphs/pseudomantegna4.jpg 1. Human conditions 2. Muses, Arts and Sciences, Virtues 3. The celestial order The middle, conceptual level has three parts, themselves hierarchically placed according to moral value. The lowest, the pagan muses; the middle, the intellectual arts and sciences; the highest, the moral virtues. VI. Tarot trump sequence 1. Human types (highest and lowest; highest complete ranking of court cards) 2. Virtù and Fato 3. Heavenly order Underlying, threefold conceptual structure of the trump sequence (like many other vertical hierarchies, why it made sense intuitively)- http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/tarotart/bologna/structure1.jpg http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/tarotart/bologna/structure1.jpg The ludic structure, how it was learned at the table (conventional groupings, one ludic (highest and lowest, a group because counting cards), no narrative necessary) - http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/tarotart/bologna/ludicstructure1.jpg http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/tarotart/bologna/ludicstructure1.jpg The tarot trumps are neither monument, nor painting, nor quasi-encyclopedic model-book; they are the pieces of a game. Their context is ludic, and play-function is therefore one of the constraints upon their design. Note that for none of the above examples is it necessary to understand the implicit, sometimes explicit threefold structure. As an analytical tool, it merely explains why morality goes in the middle space, and by looking at different works that way, we can understand what that middle space is. It is sometimes physically in the middle of the composition, as in Schifanoia, Alfonso's triumphal arch, the E-Series, and the Tarot trump sequence; other times it is the physical placement, above the viewer's gaze, that places the entire composition in conceptual space, with the lowest, terrestrial realm implied or only hinted at in the composition itself, as in Costa's painting of the Triumph of Death; at other times, such as in Donatello's tomb monument for Baldassare Cossa, the composition begins in the middle, moral and allegorical, space, with the context remaining implied (death), but nevertheless clear. This explains why the various sequences share the threefold sensibility, and why Dummett was able to reduce it to three families. It also explains why the designer chose these three types of subject matter, vertically arranged in three divisions, to illustrate the pieces of his game. It finally explains why it was easy for the players to understand the logic of the subjects, why they were where they were. The threefold structure is a necessary, but not sufficient, explanation for the choice of subjects and their number - different subjects could occupy the lower, middle and highest levels (exactly as in the PsM, which is partly why so many people cannot believe it is not a card game related to Tarot); or, a story whose plot is so well known that the iconographic sequence clearly illustrates it and therefore doesn't need these symbolic ranking spaces; or, with the addition of numbers, the trumps need have no iconographic program at all, indeed no content at all but the numbers themselves - but with this threefold hierarchy of groups in the back of their minds, the specific placement of pieces in the hierarchy was easy to memorize. It can be done in a matter of minutes (with this basic "grouping method" I have taught several people completely unfamiliar with any Tarot at all the Bolognese order, including the counting trumps and the equal-papi rule, to test how well it worksa ...