Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:I just find it very hard to believe that the designer had such a different purpose in choosing the subjects of the sequence than what he designed it for - the card game

Michael J. Hurst wrote:It wasn't just a card game, it was an Italian card game. If it had been a German card game there might have been illustrations of people drinking or dancing or fucking or shitting. Remember that text you translated, about Marziano's game? These games were designed to be elevating.

... :-) ...



"Grattaculo", a strange "German" dialect



Elavated "Italian" Fool

It has been fun reading this exchange, guys, except for Michael's caricatures of Germany and Italy. Now I want to say some tedious things that you may consider irrelevant.

I think Ross has a point, if I understand him correctly. For the Bolognese tarot, learning his first and third groups is much easier to learn than Michael's "mantras". To learn the third group, all you need to know is that Angel is last, the card with the tower is about lightning (obvious from the title), and that the cards then go in ascending order of light. To learn the first group all you need to know is the rule for playing the Fool, the rule for playing the "papi", and the title "Bagatella", which means "small one", i.e. the lowest trump.

So we have a good explanation for why the Bolognese game was the way it was, whenever it started being played in the form Ross presents it. Its cards and rules facilitated jumping into the game without knowing much, learning as you go. I don't know if Ross wanted to say any more than that. But that much makes sense.

Actually, I think Ross's point can be taken a little further. In checking what trumps counted in the scoring, I see that I was wrong about the earliest known rules, when I said the bottom five and the top five were what counted. In the Regle of France 1637 (which some thinks goes back earlier), what counted, among the trumps, were the first six and the last six (http://www.tarock.info/depaulis.htm):

Si quelqu'vn a les quatre hautes ou les quatre basses de triomphes, ce qui s'appelle Brizigole gaigne vne marque de chacun.
Si quelqu'vn a les cinq hautes ou les cinq basses, il en gaigne deux.
S'il a les six hautes ou les six basses il en gaigne trois.

(If someone has the four high or the four low triumphs, this is called gaining the Brizigole, one point for each.
If someone has the five high or the five low, he gains two.
If it is the six high or the six low, he gains three.)

Also the Fool, the Bagatto, and the World counted in another set of combinations, the Regle also says.

The low six included Love, since the Fool was not considered part of the hierarchy in these rules. But perhaps it was different earlier. Maybe in some places, like Bologna, the Fool was seen as part of the hierarchy. Then the first six would end with the "four papi". The "perhaps" doesn't matter much. There is a group of 6 at each end, either way, even though at the low end there might have been a card that didn't seem to belong there. If you look at the A (excluding the Sicilian, which is obviously late) and C orders, you will see that invariably Love follows the Pope (I posted the lists at search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keyw ... 1&start=20); so, based just on considerations of the A and C orders, Love could be in either the first or second group. But the first group is easier to remember if it doesn't have Love in it, as it is neither the smallest trump nor an authority.

In de Gebelin's time, again in France, if he is reporting accurately, the trumps that counted were reduced to the top five and the bottom five (http://www.tarock.info/gebelin.htm):

Les Atous n'ont pas tous la même valeur.
Les 21. 20. 19. 18 & 17. sont appellés les cinq grands Atous.
Les 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. sont appellés les cinq petits.
Si on en a trois des grands ou trois des petits, on compte cinq points: dix points, si on en a quatre; & quinze, si on en a cinq.

(The Atouts do not all have the same value.
The 21, 20, 19, 18, and 17 are called the five big Atouts.
The 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, are called the five little ones.
If one has three of the big ones or three of the little ones, one counts five points; ten points, if one has four, and fifteen if one has five of them.

We have to remember that in France then the Arrow/Fire card was called the Maison-Dieu. In Italy even in the 16th century it was called "House of the Devil". So much for light! We have groups of five at each end, not counting the Fool. These groups are very easy to remember.

Since this is in France, a C order place, I think we are justified in hypothesizing that the two groups, 5 or 6 at each end, existed outside of Bologna, an A order place, at least by 1637.

Actually, I think we can say more than that. The Tower card had the odd name "Fire" or "Arrow" by the end of the 15th century, in the B order cards. Probably it got that name to facilitate people's seeing it as the least of four lights. If so, then the higher group of 6 probably was in effect by then. Not only that, since in the B order the arrow/fire card is 7th from the end, the group of 6, and the name "arrow" or "fire", probably predated the B order. The high end would have defined the number in the group as 6, and the lower group would have been 6 (maybe including the Fool) for the sake of symmetry. I think that's an interesting result, very compatible with Ross's scenario.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not agreeing with Ross's scenario as the plan of the designer, heaven forbid. I'm at least as much of an agnostic as Dummett. I can't say where the dividing line was between groups, if any, because I can't use the B order or the A Sicilian to help me, and I don't know if the six plus six "counting trumps" rule was part of the plan at the outset or instituted later. Nor do I know how it was interpreted at the low end (i.e. whether it included the Fool). I don't even know whether there were 22 cards at the outset. And just dealing with the creation of the 22 trump deck, whatever it looked like, there seem to me at present too many plausible scenarios a designer could have followed. There are not a lot--no more than 10 basic ones, plus combinations--but too many for me to pick just one. That's why I like to stick to interpretations rather than explanations. I only do explanations when I want to argue that there are several alternatives (even as "working hypotheses"). I do not think that "anything goes" in interpretation: in Italy of the second and third quarters of the 15th century. there are likely fewer than 10 historically significant scenarios that would cover the whole sequence of 22 in a plausible order, However more than one interpretation can be valid; and a designer could have had more than one scenario in mind (even more likely if it was one designer on top of another).

Added later: I will be very interested in Michael's Milan hypothesis. That is still one of my favorite spots for the tarot to have developed, maybe even originated, although I had thought more likely in a 16 rather than 22 or 25 trump version. So I'll be interested in seeing what Michael's looks like.

mikeh wrote: Actually, I think Ross's point can be taken a little further. In checking what trumps counted in the scoring, I see that I was wrong about the earliest known rules, when I said the bottom five and the top five were what counted. In the Regle of France 1637 (which some thinks goes back earlier), what counted, among the trumps, were the first six and the last six (http://www.tarock.info/depaulis.htm):

Si quelqu'vn a les quatre hautes ou les quatre basses de triomphes, ce qui s'appelle Brizigole gaigne vne marque de chacun.
Si quelqu'vn a les cinq hautes ou les cinq basses, il en gaigne deux.
S'il a les six hautes ou les six basses il en gaigne trois.

(If someone has the four high or the four low triumphs, this is called gaining the Brizigole, one point for each.
If someone has the five high or the five low, he gains two.
If it is the six high or the six low, he gains three.)

Also the Fool, the Bagatto, and the World counted in another set of combinations, the Regle also says.

I think, you're not right here. Brizigole should be the same or something similar as verzicole, and that means, this are points for card combinations, not for single cards
These are part of an external/additional counting for special events, not always appearing during all games.
The basic counting is only for Fool, Bagatto and World and all courts and the number of cards. Not all Tarot/Tarock variants use verzicole.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: The problem is that there is no reason to think there must be a narrative in the sequence; a hierarchy can be clear without narrative to help it along. This is my default position, especially after "Omnia vincit amor" fell. When I saw that the card could be interpreted as lightning alone, the lowest light in the sky, and with it a dramatic beginning to a new section, the separation from the Devil card could be made. He falls easily into the "bad things" or "dark cards", at the end of them appropriately after Death (which is makes Death-Devil a kind of narrative, but an ad hoc and limited one).

Hello Ross,
I would also like to comment on the statement above. I understand that you link “fire from heaven” to the three heavenly bodies and connect the Devil to Death as the Anonymous did. In this way, the last trumps seem to be almost completely free from “narrative” content. Michael wrote that things like "Angel", meaning the Last Resurrection, coming as the highest trump, tell us something about the overall design and tend to shape other interpretations in an iterative process. I agree with his point of view, and the choice of this particular Angel seems to me to leave a residual “narrative” element in your interpretation of the last segment. The Final Judgment is an event, a point in time, something that happens at the End of Time. To me, a sequence which is closed by an event which ends a story (the story of the world) seems to likely be a story.

Possibly, my difficulty with accepting the absence of a narrative is that I interpret the word “narrative” in too broad a sense: I think that any sequence whose ordering is at least in part chronological is a narrative.

If I understand correctly, you also deny any narrative content in the central, “moral”, segment of the trump sequence. The Anonymous sees in this segment an allegory of human life. It begins with the “good things” represented by Love, “the superb and lavish luxury of the world” (the Chariot) and Fortune. “The Hunchback, who is none other than Time, demonstrates that all those things are vain and transitory. Therefore loving and desiring them so intensely, thinking of nothing else, is the greatest foolishness, because in a short time Old Age comes together with all its miseries: then people begin to understand the deceptions of the murderous World, which are put before our eyes by the Traitor. But since they have gotten so used to their bad habits, it is difficult to get free of them: they do not depart from their usual errors. Suddenly Death comes, in the horror of which the Devil, who is the cause of all this, takes them away in fright and despair. This is the miserable end of human actions”. I consider this to be a narrative, i.e. a sequence whose elements are chronologically ordered. Do you think that the chronological element is irrelevant to the ordering of this sequence?

Also, parallels that we have discussed here, such as Michault's three blinds, or the triumph of Love in Trento seem to me to be “narratives”. The fact that Love always comes before Fortune and Fortune always comes before Death seems to me to be well explained by Michault's simple narrative. Do you think that this order is accidental and that in tarot it could have been Love / Death / Fortune?

A last question about the “moral” segment. You interpret it as two groups of five cards:
* good things (Love, Chariot, Temperance, Justice, Strength)
* bad things (Fortune, Old Man, Hanged Man/Shame, Death, Devil)

Why “Fortune” as a bad thing? Isn't fortune a thing which is typically double faced, something that can be good or bad depending on the circumstances? The people on the wheel exemplify that Fortune can be both good and bad. Since (if I understand correctly) the ordering in each group is arbitrary, why not choosing a more clearly “bad” thing (e.g. the allegory of a vice) instead of Fortune?
To me, Fortune is clearer as the middle point between the good (Love) and the bad (Death), as in the Three Blinds and Michael's interpretation of the trump sequence. It seems to me to be a good choice for a “neutral” thing, as the center between two polarities, but a poor choice as a “bad” thing.

Hi Marco,

marco wrote: Why “Fortune” as a bad thing? Isn't fortune a thing which is typically double faced, something that can be good or bad depending on the circumstances? The people on the wheel exemplify that Fortune can be both good and bad. Since (if I understand correctly) the ordering in each group is arbitrary, why not choosing a more clearly “bad” thing (e.g. the allegory of a vice) instead of Fortune?
To me, Fortune is clearer as the middle point between the good (Love) and the bad (Death), as in the Three Blinds and Michael's interpretation of the trump sequence. It seems to me to be a good choice for a “neutral” thing, as the center between two polarities, but a poor choice as a “bad” thing.

Whether Fortune smiles or frowns on you, she is untrustworthy. Anything good given by Fortune can, and probably will, be taken. This is the point of the wheel in the allegory - it is always turning, you just can't know when she will turn it up or down. She is fickle, unpredictable, and untrustworthy. Anything untrustworthy is bad, surely.

But I think the more important consideration for the designer was the proverbial pairing "Time and Fortune" - this provided a handy pair of subjects that everybody would know for the fato section. I prefer the term fato because unlike English "fate" it doesn't primarily indicate predestined things, and at least it puts the Tarot into its Italian context and makes people think - this is a foreign and old object, let me avoid anachronism. For the former group I use virtù for the same reason, and because it makes a pair with fato in the traditional stoic dichotomy of virtù e fato - things you can control, and things you can't (the expression more commonly met with in literature is "virtù e fortuna"). I think this was the designer's idea for the moral section, this formula.

It's no use quibbling that nobody can control where Cupid's arrow strikes, so why isn't he a "bad" thing then? Or, you can make sure you're not shamed or commit treason, and not everybody gets old or goes to hell, etc. The point is that love is a good thing, it is pleasant, and so the idea, as the love garden rappresentazione means, is that it symbolizes ease, comfort, the good life, what you want, what everybody really wants. On the other hand, old age and shame are unfortunate things (that word "fortune" is in there), and to be publically shamed as a bankrupt, or for whatever reason, might happen even to a good person - Fortune's wheel turns. However it happens, it is clear that for the original audience it was one of the worst, most unfortunate things, that could happen to a person, short of death.

I don't think the designer thought that much (i.e. homiletically) about it, good and bad here are clear enough, and that's good enough to put things in their places.

Just a quick word, before I get back to the posts -

I am failing to see how my explanation is not sufficient. In the most generic terms, the designer picked groups, according to the commonplace Three Worlds structure, and picked subjects to fill them, arranging them logically within the groups. The groups can be pointed out and grasped instantaneously, and the subjects and order within them memorized in a short time thereafter. They are all bold subjects that make an immediate impression on the mind.

Our disagreements (Michael) seem to come back to what I said a few posts ago, that you assume the sequence was designed to be read as a stand alone work (and that therefore only a strict, card-by-card allegorical programme can acceptably explain it), while I think its context as a game is essential to understanding it, and to not overreading it.

My favorite analogy is the game of Monopoly, where the designer picked streets, businesses and infrastructure around Atlantic City to fill the spaces of his game. They are not intended to be a guide to the layout of the city, they are salient aspects chosen for convenience. They signify very specific things, they are symmetrically arranged, but their collection doesn't mean anything. The order could be changed, but as long as they obey some kind of symmetry they would be just as good one way as another. The subjects can be - have been many times - changed completely, but the symmetrical layout, permitting a nice distribution to chance in this case, has to remain. It's a consistent "iconographic" programme with a definite signified thing, highly structured, with a certain logic of choices, but nevertheless, in sum, arbitrary.

The main difference is, of course, that the squares of Monopoly, or any illustrated board game, do not need to be, and are not intended, to be memorized. The Tarot trump sequence was. Therefore, the trump sequence has to have enough logical arrangement connecting the subjects for the player to grasp it in a reasonable amount of time, with a combination of both self-evidentness and instruction (being "pointed out").

This is why I never liked Dummett's analogy with the Animal Tarots:

[T]hose who originally designed the Tarot pack were doing the equivalent, for their day, of those who later selected a sequence of animal pictures to adorn the trump cards of the new French-suited pack. They wanted to design a new kind of pack with an additional set of twenty-one picture cards that would play a special, indeed a quite new role in the game: so they selected for those cards a number of subjects, most of them entirely familiar, that would naturally come to the mind of someone at a fifteenth-century Italian court. (Game of Tarot pp. 387-388)

But an Animal Tarot relies on numbers printed on the cards, quite large, and usually double-ended; it cannot be memorized by any normal method in any reasonable time, and the designers must not have expected players to do so. Here is a standard list, without the numbers - can you find a system of groupings or any mnemonic device that can teach it to a neophyte in a couple of minutes?:

Dandy out for a walk
Deer
Leopard
Horse
Fox
Wolf
Rabbit
Unicorn
Boar
Tiger
Lion
Monkey
Crocodile
Weasel
Tortoise
Frog
Lynx
Donkey
Sheep
Goat
Bear

Flutist

The designer of the Tarot trump sequence did not make a random list and rely on large numbers on the cards to do the work - they were grouped in logical groups to facilitate recognition and memorization. The order of the groups goes from world of men, through the conceptual moral world, up to the heavens and the highest things - Shephard's "Three Worlds", and the point of my "Threefold structure of the Tarot trumps in context" post. It was a conventional way of arranging complex works, works which incorporated different types of subject matter, in a hierarchical arrangement. The groups could be grasped immediately, intuitively, while the order of the cards within the groups is logical enough and their number small enough to memorize shortly thereafter; it is probable that only the order of this or that specific Virtue, Love and Chariot, or whether the Old Man or Fortune is higher, that would cause a mistake in play - and quickly corrected for the second round. Notably, it is only these cards of the "moral section" that players in different locales put in different places, establishing their local customs of the broader families A, B, and C, or Southern, Eastern and Western (the papi are a different question, having to do with identity rather than grouping).

That's really all, and I think it is sufficient. I wouldn't qualify it is as a "moral" game, in the sense that it is intended to teach morality, or impart any lesson at all. The best that I think can be said about the choice of subject matter is that is not unworthy of good Christian players.

Hi, Ross,

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:I am failing to see how my explanation is not sufficient.

As an explanation, it is not very explanatory. Yes, it might be correct, but if so then the inventor didn't do a very good job. Rather than explaining the choices and their sequence, your "explanation" says the details don't matter. Tarot was just a game, so the specific selections or arrangement don't matter.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:In the most generic terms, the designer picked groups, according to the commonplace Three Worlds structure, and picked subjects to fill them, arranging them logically within the groups.

You try to have it both ways. They were arranged logically, but not so that you can actually spell out any overall logic. Just a little logic here and a little logic there, sort of. Maybe that's correct, but I think there's more.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:The groups can be pointed out and grasped instantaneously, and the subjects and order within them memorized in a short time thereafter. They are all bold subjects that make an immediate impression on the mind.

As I've argued emphatically for well over a decade, that is a good position. You do remember having read that a few dozen times, right? The whole "null hypothesis" thing? Sometimes it seems as if we've just met. I'm saying the exact same thing about your presentation as I have about Dummett's -- great parsimony, maybe correct, but lousy explanatory power. That's the trade-off.

The only way to overcome that parsimonious position is to offer a more detailed explanation which is sufficiently plausible. No one has done that yet, making the null hypothesis the winner, and still champion.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Our disagreements (Michael) seem to come back to what I said a few posts ago, that you assume the sequence was designed to be read as a stand alone work (and that therefore only a strict, card-by-card allegorical programme can acceptably explain it), while I think its context as a game is essential to understanding it, and to not overreading it.

Your current fascination with this false argument baffles me. First, understanding the iconographic composition has nothing to do with whether it was used in a game or not. There is just no sensible connection, unless the trumps incorporated the suit signs in some fashion, or something like that. If they did, then that aspect would obviously need to be taken into account. Yes, it can be read as a stand-alone work. Why not?

You seem to be arguing that a vague hodge-podge is somehow better for a game, in some as-yet unspecified manner, than a coherent design. That seems backwards. A collection of subjects without a clearly defined, card-by-card hierarchy, loosely grouped into three ranks, is adequate for the game. However, a collection of subjects WITH a clearly defined, card-by-card hierarchy, neatly divided into three macro groups, each of which is neatly sub-divided into micro groups, seems much better. It is because the work was used in a game that there is even more reason for there to be a detailed and coherent narrative (or other systematically meaningful hierarchy) to the design.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:My favorite analogy is the game of Monopoly, where the designer picked streets, businesses and infrastructure around Atlantic City to fill the spaces of his game. They are not intended to be a guide to the layout of the city, they are salient aspects chosen for convenience.

Of course you would like an analogy to something that doesn't have a systematic design. And I have repeatedly offered period examples of board games which have a number of the trumps subjects but no meaningful design, while defending Dummett's position.

Over the years I have emphasized our basic agreement, and in particular my respect for the position which you are now presenting. Isn't that the way I started this recent series of posts? Let me try harder: I get it! (Would all caps help? I TOTALLY FUCKING GET IT!) That's why I have said, again and again, year after year, that Dummett's position is the strongest, most defensible one ever proposed. Seriously. You don't have to sell me on Dummett's position, and yours, which is one step better than his, is... well, slightly better.

But my job is to argue against his position, to try to make sense of the 22 selections and their ordering, to solve his riddle. For you to restate his position, or offer explanations or defenses for his position which I have made many times is not going to make any difference. I've always understood the strength of his position. You need to tell me why the Devil doesn't represent the Devil, why Lightning isn't Fire from Heaven, and why that pair don't clearly express one of the two great triumphs of God in the End Times. Because if these nuggets make sense, with eight pairs and two trios organized into the Three Worlds sections, then I've solved his riddle.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:This is why I never liked Dummett's analogy with the Animal Tarots:

[T]hose who originally designed the Tarot pack were doing the equivalent, for their day, of those who later selected a sequence of animal pictures to adorn the trump cards of the new French-suited pack. They wanted to design a new kind of pack with an additional set of twenty-one picture cards that would play a special, indeed a quite new role in the game: so they selected for those cards a number of subjects, most of them entirely familiar, that would naturally come to the mind of someone at a fifteenth-century Italian court. (Game of Tarot pp. 387-388)

The designer of the Tarot trump sequence did not make a random list and rely on large numbers on the cards to do the work - they were grouped in logical groups to facilitate recognition and memorization....

Yes, you have taken one step beyond his position, explaining a tiny bit more. It is what I have, again for many years, called the first step toward understanding the design of the trumps. But it only really explains three cards: Everyman, Death, Resurrection. All the other details are left out. It fails to explain the way in which Everyman is expanded, the way Death is shown as the culmination of an entire life cycle, the other subjects along with Resurrection to Judgment. Three Worlds explains three things, whereas we have 22 to be explained. That is what I mean by lack of explanatory power.

You are now arguing that there are these three sections, which are meaningfully arranged, which is great. However, within each section, within each type of subject matter, "they selected for those cards a number of subjects, most of them entirely familiar, that would naturally come to the mind of someone at a fifteenth-century Italian court". He had one group while you have three, but the basic idea is the same. That's what I mean by lack of explanatory power: no detail.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:That's really all, and I think it is sufficient.

Sufficient to explain three cards. The rest of the details are the same as in Dummett's version, unexplained.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:I wouldn't qualify it is as a "moral" game, in the sense that it is intended to teach morality, or impart any lesson at all. The best that I think can be said about the choice of subject matter is that is not unworthy of good Christian players.

But who said it was intended to "teach" anything? Moral content does not mean didactic intent, (although it seems fair to call it didactic content). I have repeatedly argued just the opposite: the design assumes that you already know (and value) these themes and subjects. That is one reason why they are useful as tokens in a game. The other reason for such didactic/moral content is to justify the game. Was that important? Marziano thought so.

You don't seem to think that a game can be anything but a game. The tragedy is that you know that a game can be more. Hell, you translated the text about Bishop Wibold, and you've read Chess moralities, and Brother John's Tractatus, and Meister Ingold, and so on.

If Tarot has a Three Worlds design, including various circumstances of life, virtues, death, and an ultimate triumph over death, then it is a moral allegory. It may or may not be a coherently designed one, but if the words have any meaning then it is indisputable that Tarot is a moral allegory.

Best regards,
Michael

Hi Michael,

mjhurst wrote:

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:I am failing to see how my explanation is not sufficient.

As an explanation, it is not very explanatory. Yes, it might be correct, but if so then the inventor didn't do a very good job.

But what if that were the job he assigned himself? Who are you to say it's "not very good"? The evidence is that it was very good - it became a popular game, so popular that even when people fiddled with the order of the trumps, they kept the same subjects. By my standards, it was a very good job. Everywhere it went, the same subjects, the same number, even the same threefold structure observed. The intended audience seems to have "got it". It was a remarkably stable model.

I could turn your statement around - by your standards, if the detailed and very specific narrative were his intention, then the design failed in its purpose. That's not a very good job. If it were even understood, it was not appreciated anywhere in its original environment, and people just destroyed the beautifully intricate architecture. The designer would look around, hold his head in his hands, shaking it and shouting "You've ruined it, you fools!"

Nobody ever noticed the story you see in the sequence, or at least felt the need to comment on it. He failed - both to make the order compelling, or to give people the story.

By my standards, he was astonishingly successful - a stable model and number of specific subjects of three groups, over a long time, with the small variations still conforming to the basic structure.

By your standards, even a single block out of place, and it all falls apart. And it fell apart everywhere, even at home among the intended audience, except where they happened to make the Tarot de Marseille.

You try to have it both ways. They were arranged logically, but not so that you can actually spell out any overall logic. Just a little logic here and a little logic there, sort of. Maybe that's correct, but I think there's more.

Okay, I'll take the "maybe that's correct". And I do have it "both ways". This is what explains the various orders, people changing the logic, but only a little here or a little there.

Why do you think there is more?

As I've argued emphatically for well over a decade, that is a good position. You do remember having read that a few dozen times, right? The whole "null hypothesis" thing? Sometimes it seems as if we've just met. I'm saying the exact same thing about your presentation as I have about Dummett's -- great parsimony, maybe correct, but lousy explanatory power. That's the trade-off.

The only way to overcome that parsimonious position is to offer a more detailed explanation which is sufficiently plausible. No one has done that yet, making the null hypothesis the winner, and still champion.

That's a good summary of the issue, and a good statement of the task you've set yourself.

But there still seems to be something to talk about... what is it that is left unexplained by the parsimonious explanation? The reason for the precise order of each card, which means picking an "original arrangement", and trying to get inside the head of the inventor. This means, at a minimum and as a start, talking about the necessary "background information" - contemporary culture, conventions, trends, etc. - that the designer and his audience took for granted.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Our disagreements (Michael) seem to come back to what I said a few posts ago, that you assume the sequence was designed to be read as a stand alone work (and that therefore only a strict, card-by-card allegorical programme can acceptably explain it), while I think its context as a game is essential to understanding it, and to not overreading it.

Your current fascination with this false argument baffles me. First, understanding the iconographic composition has nothing to do with whether it was used in a game or not. There is just no sensible connection, unless the trumps incorporated the suit signs in some fashion, or something like that. If they did, then that aspect would obviously need to be taken into account. Yes, it can be read as a stand-alone work. Why not?

Because it forces you to try to interpret the lowest group, for instance, as if iconographically intended to be read in a coherent narrative fashion, whereas the best explanation for the lowest two cards may be solely ludic - namely, that their iconography happens to be human because they are in the lowest section, and they are low human types because they are the lowest trumps, but their very existence is due to their ludic function, not some symbolic connection to the subsequent four cards.

Trying to understand the sequence outside of its ludic context therefore imposes false limits and is liable, or rather guaranteed, to mislead the interpreter.

mikeh wrote: I think Ross has a point, if I understand him correctly. For the Bolognese tarot, learning his first and third groups is much easier to learn than Michael's "mantras". To learn the third group, all you need to know is that Angel is last, the card with the tower is about lightning (obvious from the title), and that the cards then go in ascending order of light. To learn the first group all you need to know is the rule for playing the Fool, the rule for playing the "papi", and the title "Bagatella", which means "small one", i.e. the lowest trump.

So we have a good explanation for why the Bolognese game was the way it was, whenever it started being played in the form Ross presents it. Its cards and rules facilitated jumping into the game without knowing much, learning as you go. I don't know if Ross wanted to say any more than that. But that much makes sense.

That's a fairly good presentation of the idea, actually. And the middle section's cards would be easy because they were conventions (according to the "virtù e fortuna" dichotomy, one group of things for virtù, one for fortuna), grouped accordingly.

Actually, I think Ross's point can be taken a little further. In checking what trumps counted in the scoring, I see that I was wrong about the earliest known rules, when I said the bottom five and the top five were what counted. ...I think that's an interesting result, very compatible with Ross's scenario.

I'm glad what you've found is compatible with Bolognese priority... it's not a proof, but it's nice that it's compatible.

Now all I have to do is convince you of Bolognese priority, and I'll have a convert

Don't get me wrong. I'm not agreeing with Ross's scenario as the plan of the designer, heaven forbid.

Oh dear - lots of work ahead, then. By why on Earth "heaven forbid"?

I don't even know whether there were 22 cards at the outset. And just dealing with the creation of the 22 trump deck, whatever it looked like, there seem to me at present too many plausible scenarios a designer could have followed.

There really aren't, and it isn't necessary (i.e. the evidence doesn't demand it) to posit all those varying numbers. The game designer worked it out properly from the beginning. Whatever kinds of what I call "gimmick" cards were added to decks don't add up to various kinds of trionfi decks. The permanent set of trumps demanded a certain number for a game with a certain number of players - and this was 22 trumps for a game with four players. No other number works to guarantee having both the counting trumps and enough to win the counting courts (16), and therefore every trick.

mjhurst wrote: But who said it was intended to "teach" anything?

I distinctly remember somebody writing something like "The message of tarot: know your place, practise the virtues, trust in God."

Moral content does not mean didactic intent, (although it seems fair to call it didactic content). I have repeatedly argued just the opposite: the design assumes that you already know (and value) these themes and subjects. That is one reason why they are useful as tokens in a game. The other reason for such didactic/moral content is to justify the game. Was that important? Marziano thought so.

You don't seem to think that a game can be anything but a game. The tragedy is that you know that a game can be more. Hell, you translated the text about Bishop Wibold, and you've read Chess moralities, and Brother John's Tractatus, and Meister Ingold, and so on.

If Tarot has a Three Worlds design, including various circumstances of life, virtues, death, and an ultimate triumph over death, then it is a moral allegory. It may or may not be a coherently designed one, but if the words have any meaning then it is indisputable that Tarot is a moral allegory.

Of course games can be designed to be a vehicle for teaching morality, religion, history, philosophy, logic, astronomy, geography, or anything else.

Games can also just be decorated with these themes, with only an incidental relationship of the symbolism with the subject (like the death's head on square 58 of the Game of Goose, meaning you have to return to the beginning), or with a fully thematic symbolism of morality (in the broadest sense), like Tarot and Boiardo's game.

The question is whether the designer had the primary intention of causing moral reflection by his choice of subjects, like in Marziano (where the heroes also don't have a narrative story in their ordering), or just an incidental part of the game (or even a justification), like designs on the columns and walls and windows of a church, which provide edifying subject matter for wandering minds (which there is not much time for in actual play). So it's a question of the extent of his intention to cause such reflection.

I think it is clear that the primary intention was to create a sequence of memorable images, in a memorable sequence, in order to play. We are arguing about how it was remembered, as well as why the designer chose them.

If the designer had the secondary purpose in choosing his sequence of allowing moral or philosophical reflection, which I think is likely, then he was surely successful, as the ad hoc commentators as well as the fuller commentators, like the discorsi authors, over the centuries show. We are in that tradition and are a continuing tribute to the genius of the author.

Of course there is no reason why it could not have been a very precise story as well as a game. My conclusion is that it was not a precise story, and that having such a precise story in mind is not necessary to explain the designer's choices of subjects or their arrangement.