Ooops, Huck, you are right. The universe, i.e. the deck, is 78,not 76. Sorry for the stupid typo.
Anyway, the general sense I guess I caught doesn't change. By subtracting 1 you get 77.
I ame very ignorant about the meaning of the numbers. This is another reasons why I refused to put down a kind of translation of Doncieu's final part of section 4.

Huck writes :
"I am translating:

septenari cum uno individuo proportionem huiusmodi,
in this manner one individual (unit) is proportional with seven ? (thus we have the later calculation the 27 * uno individuo (one individual = 7) = 189)?

ut decem septenariis & uno = while ten (containing) seven and one (i.e, 10x7 + 1(x7), or 10+1x7 =77)?

Thus uno individuo = a set of 7 ?

The only other reference to 27 I find in the text is to some mystical signifcance to its being the cube of 3 (the cube of 2 and 3 of course gives us the pythagorean tetractys of 36 - called kosmos - but I can't see that he is referring to that. . . excepting in as much as for kosmos we might read universe?) "

Well, this is it, Huck. 27 is the only number i conjecture related to 7 and 189. Have no idea what is the meaning of 189, nor 7, 78, 77, 27, 1, 11 and so on. Decem septenariis & uno is 7x11, that is one digit close to 78. I surmise a coffee in Bologna that those are the keys to understand the rest of the text.

GirolamoZorli wrote:Ooops, Huck, you are right. The universe, i.e. the deck, is 78,not 76. Sorry for the stupid typo.

Ah, I understand. What a pity ... actually this idea with 76 looks as an interesting reflection, especially if one assumes 4x19 cards as dealt and 2 given for the scartino.

Especially the Ferrarese Tarot looks like having a 5-5-5-5-scheme at the position 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20. And perhaps these groups with 5 elements were added to the 4 suits, just forming 4 groups with 19 elements.

Again. May be the "individual" is 1 (one). D'Oncieu says that 27 is 4x7=28, less an individual = 27.
The 77 is the universe less 1 = 78-1.
Somehow I perceive that he says something like : after our death, we all get an equal number. This equal number is obtained by :

1. subtracting one from the universe (78). 77 is also a 7x11.(Somehow 7 is taken as the "basic" or "divine" number or so).
2. Another factor is obtained by 4 and divine 7 = 28 less the individual one = 27. (May be he discussed 27 somewhere else. It definitively is 3x3x3.)
3. Finally, by putting together 27 and 7 you get the equal number = 189.

I am not sure of this interpretation, but I guess it is not far from the good one. To double check, I would search for the meaning of 189. 189 is a 7x3x3x3. Does it ring any bell ? is it the Final Judgement when we will get the aequalem numerum, when we will get justice ?

Cordibus nostris in peccatorum remissione amor semper vivat, qui sicut mulierium crures septuagenario compositur. Hieronymus.

I think Marco is heading along the right track with the idiomatic expression about your number being up (or being called - the idiom in English is 'your number is up'); all our days are numbered and when your numbers up, your numbers up, as the bible has it. When the number/lot called by death = yours - your turn has come (time to die) = also perhaps a reference to us all being equal before death?

I wonder too if the last lines might be reflecting that (you can't cheat death? the penny relating to the penny for the ferryman?).

re: one 'individua' = 1 , doesn't

septenari cum uno individuo proportionem huiusmodi,

as much as say, to put it in computor terms:

let a (one set) =7 ?

ergo, 10 sets and one set = 77?

ut decem septenariis & uno = 11x7

SteveM

ps: A number deducted that would make us all equal would be a number that brings it to nought -

n-n=0

As our number called by death brings us to nought?

All our days are numbered, as the bible states, and:

"Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you." psalm 39:5

GirolamoZorli wrote:
1. subtracting one from the universe (78). 77 is also a 7x11.(Somehow 7 is taken as the "basic" or "divine" number or so).
2. Another factor is obtained by 4 and divine 7 = 28 less the individual one = 27. (May be he discussed 27 somewhere else. It definitively is 3x3x3.)
3. Finally, by putting together 27 and 7 you get the equal number = 189.

I am not sure of this interpretation, but I guess it is not far from the good one. To double check, I would search for the meaning of 189. 189 is a 7x3x3x3. Does it ring any bell ?

Let's see:

(1+2+3+4+5+6+7) - 1 = 27
... 7 planets
(1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12) - 1 = 77
... 12 zodiac signs
-------------------------
(1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17+18+19) - 1 = 189
... 19 astrological symbols
------------------

0, 2, 5, 9, 14, 20, 27, 35, 44, 54, 65, 77, 90, 104, 119, 135, 152, 170, 189, 209 ... etc.

...
(1-7) ... 28-1 = 1x27 = 27
...
(1-10) ... 55-1 = 2x27 = 54
...
(1-16) ... 136-1 = 5x27 = 135
...
(1-19) ... 190-1 = 7x27 = 189
...
[(1-27) ... 378 = 14x27]
...
(1-28) ... 406-1 = 15x27 = 405

The combination between 12 and 7 appears also in the already mentioned Meton-cycle. 12 of 19 years have alternating months of 29 or 30 days (totally a 354/355 days year with small differences in the systems), 7 of the 19 years have 13 months (totally 384/385 days years).

The moon needs 29.53 ... days between full state A and full state B. 235 "full moons" need approximately 6940 days or 19 solar years.

Meton of Athens approximated the cycle to a whole number (6940) of days, obtained by 125 long months of 30 days and 110 short months of 29 days. In the following century Callippus developed the Callippic cycle of four 19-year periods for a 76-year cycle with a mean year of exactly 365.25 days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonic_cycle

I have posted on Tarotpedia an English translation of D'Oncieu's passage:
http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/D%27Onci ... orum_Decas

It is heavily based on Girolamo's translation and comments: Girolamo, thank you once again for giving us a chance of making sense of this complex text!

mjhurst wrote:Hi, Marco,

You mentioned Horace and Petrarch along with the lottery, so I have to bring up an illustration from my favorite emblem book, Q. Horatii Flacci Emblemata (1612) by Otto Vaenius. I reproduced the picture a few years ago, and the post includes a link to one of the many copies of Emblems of Horace that are available online.

A Pair of Emblems
http://pre-gebelin.blogspot.com/2008/05 ... blems.html

In 1632 the lottery image was borrowed and combined with a Wheel of Fortune in an illustration for one of the many German versions of Petrarch's De Remediis. It is a great double image.

Trostspiegel in Glück und Unglück
http://www.virtuelles-kupferstichkabine ... natur=8379

Best regards,
Michael

Hello Michael,
thank you for the great images: they almost persuade me that we got one more sentence right

From your blog post, I see that Otto Vaenius, Q. Horatii Flacci Emblemata also quotes Hovide III 1:

“It’s true that one man will lay out his vineyards
over wider acres than will his neighbour,
that one candidate who descends to
the Campus, will maintain that he’s nobler,
 
another’s more famous, or has a larger
crowd of followers: but Necessity sorts
the fates of high and low with equal
justice: the roomy urn holds every name.”

Unfortunately, it is still unclear what exactly suggests to D'Oncieu the connection of Tarot to the Lottery metaphor. I am quite unsure about the meaning of the “estimation” and the “relation of one to the other” he speaks of in the previous sentence with reference to number 78, and which seem to be the basis for this connection.
As suggested by Steve, D'Oncieu seems to point out that the numerical structure of Tarot alludes to the fact that we are all equal before Death. The only explanation I can think of is that both entities (Death and the game or Tarot) are fair and do not make preferences for anybody, but D'Oncieu seems to have something in mind specifically related with number 78.

marco wrote:I have posted on Tarotpedia an English translation of D'Oncieu's passage:
http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/D%27Onci ... orum_Decas

It is heavily based on Girolamo's translation and comments: Girolamo, thank you once again for giving us a chance of making sense of this complex text!

Fantastic Marco, thank you. (And Giralomo too of course, without whose interpretation of technical terms in a card playing sense the whole thing would I think be undecipherable). I have been going slowly through it myself but finding it a hard (and confusing) slog.

re: trituration - I was reading it as 'common aspects' or 'combinations', such as in card combinations like the well-known named primero (being the name of a card game and and a combination of cards after which the game is named). [Combinations such as those formed of] the same suit, of different suits, or of a sequence in a suit.

Wickipedia says: Trituration is the name of several different methods of processing materials. . . Trituration additionally refers to the production of a homogeneous material through mixing. For example, dental amalgam is formed by combining particles of an alloy with mercury.

The 'homogeneous' material through mixing in a card playing sense being an 'alloy of cards' forming a combination (e.g. a flush or a run)?

I wonder if one should stick to a literal translation or for ease of understanding replace the literal with terms such as 'suit(s)' and 'deck' where appropriate? e.g.:

sed Quaternum illud uniforme in suo quaterno duabus admixtis diversis partibus, scilicet altera, quae sit triumphorum 21. postrema unius tantum figurae fatui sub effigie, videtur eo quaternum ternum:

Quaternum = deck of cards; suo quaterno = seed quarters, pip cards, four suits;

The suits of this deck [the tarot] are the same [as an ordinary deck of playing cards], to which are added two other parts, one of which is composed of 21 trumps and the other a single figure portrayed as a fool, thus it is a deck with three parts.

(But then the play he makes on the number four is lost, but may be noted?)

Re: 27 being a quaternary number, I read it in the sense of being a cube number - 1,3, 9, 27 (rather than 4x7-1) as per the pythagorean tetractys you illustated (with the cubes of 2+3). As I mentioned in a previous post I thought it might be connected with this but I hadn't found that page with the illustration so wasn't sure.

In connection with pythagorous we may note that as well as the emphasis on 3 & 4 he also brings in the quintessense, number 5 - as in the 3,4,5 pythagorean triangle? (also 3,4,5 = 12, and the sum of 1-12 = 78).

SteveM wrote: I wonder if one should stick to a literal translation or for ease of understanding replace the literal with terms such as 'suit(s)' and 'deck' where appropriate? e.g.:

sed Quaternum illud uniforme in suo quaterno duabus admixtis diversis partibus, scilicet altera, quae sit triumphorum 21. postrema unius tantum figurae fatui sub effigie, videtur eo quaternum ternum:

Quaternum = deck of cards; suo quaterno = seed quarters, pip cards, four suits;

The suits of this deck [the tarot] are the same [as an ordinary deck of playing cards], to which are added two other parts, one of which is composed of 21 trumps and the other a single figure portrayed as a fool, thus it is a deck with three parts.

(But then the play he makes on the number four is lost, but may be noted?)

Hello Steve, I have updated the translation of that sentence according to your suggestion. Likely, there are other places were a less literal translation would make the text easier to understand. Of course, I think that when the meaning is unclear, it is better to be literal and try to render the ambiguity. In this case, it is clear that D'Oncieu is speaking of the suits, so I agree that the repetitions of Quaternary can be avoided.

SteveM wrote: Re: 27 being a quaternary number, I read it in the sense of being a cube number - 1,3, 9, 27 (rather than 4x7-1) as per the pythagorean tetractys you illustated (with the cubes of 2+3). As I mentioned in a previous post I thought it might be connected with this but I hadn't found that page with the illustration so wasn't sure.

In connection with pythagorous we may note that as well as the emphasis on 3 & 4 he also brings in the quintessense, number 5 - as in the 3,4,5 pythagorean triangle? (also 3,4,5 = 12, and the sum of 1-12 = 78).

I agree that according to D'Oncieu 27 is "quaternary" because it is a cube, but I don't understand the last sentence about the 3,4,5 pythagorean triangle.


I have once again changed my mind about the translation of that mysterious sentence: "sed enim & illud obiter occurrit observandum, aequalitatis singulari iudicio eum numerum ut est 78, individuorum, itidem esse in universum aestimatione".

I read in Dummett's "Il Mondo e l'Angelo":
"nella forma originale del gioco dei Tarocchi un giocatore o partito segnava un punto per ogni presa fatta. Nei semi, le carte conv valore di punteggio erano solo le figure - un Re valeva 4 punti, una Regina 3, un Cavallo 2 e un Fante 1. Nella tradizione milanese ... il Mondo ... il Bagatto e il Matto ... valevano 4 punti ciascuno" (p.237)

"i punti ammontano di solito a 78" (p.482)

So in the ancient game of tarot the total number of points in the game was 78 (26 for the tricks, 40 for the court cards, 12 for the World, Bagat and Fool). I think that D'Oncieu is referring to this as the "aequalitatis singulari iudicio": that the total number of cards is the same as the total number of points certainly is not coincidental. So, currently I think the translation could be:

"But indeed also this occurs that must be observed: that number of seventy eight cards, with a singular choice of equality, corresponds to the total number of points".

"aestimatio" means "valuation, estimation of money value; value, price; assessment of damages;"
interpreting it as the number of points seems reasonable to me.