Hi, Ross,

The Devil is an 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?)

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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:

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:... 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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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?

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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,
Michael

Hi Michael,

mjhurst wrote:

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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're misunderstanding me. The rest of the post explains that it was part of a process, not just a simpleminded rejection of something obvious.

In the first place, "it" is not explicit, it is just tempting to read it that way. It could easily be a wrong reading, a misguided or even anachronistic one, and I think it is. This is why I put an example of what I thought the narrative nugget was (I thought you'd like that expression):

"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."

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).

As an aside, today, attempting to trace the history of the idea that the sequence Devil to World is a depiction of the biblical "Last Things" (I can't find it earlier than Timothy Betts, 1998, but it should be earlier than that; I haven't read every page of O'Neill), I found support for my separation of the Devil and Lightning by an unexpected method in an unlikely source - Michael Dummett, Il Mondo e l'Angelo (Napoli, 1993):

Per parecchie ragioni sarebbe allettante supporre che la prima classe di disegni e il nome 'la Casa del Diavolo' rappresentino il significato originario della carta. Essa lascia infatti trasparire un'idea più precisa di quella espressa dai disegni di un edificio in fiamme e da nomi come 'il Fuoco'. Inoltre, questo spiegherebbe perché la carta è invariabilmente collocata in posizione immediatamente superiore al Diavolo; presumibilmente lo strano nome 'la Maison Dieu' deriva da un fraintendimento del nome 'la Casa del Diavolo'. Tuttavia, le prove contraddicono questa teoria. Il nome fornito nella fonte più antica, il sermone 'De Ludo', è "la Sagitta"; i disegni che mostrano un diavolo sono più rari e posteriori a quelli che mostrano un edificio in rovina. Inoltre, i disegni della prima classe sembrano chiaramente derivati da quelli della seconda. Sulla carta delle Minchiate il diavolo emerge da un edificio merlato e le fiamme lo colpiscono dall'angolo superiore della carta. E solo nelle due due versioni francesi - la carta di Geoffroy e quella del mazzo parigino anonimo - che le fiamme provengono dalla bocca dell'inferno e solo nella più tarda, nel mazzo anonimo, che è scomparsa ogni traccia di edificio. Conviene piuttosto notare che in tutti i disegni della seconda classe, compresa la carta siciliana e con la sola eccezione del Tarocco di Marsiglia, la porta è un tratto di particolare rilievo nell'edificio (la carta sul foglio Cary è troppo frammentaria per poter decidere). Potremmo pertanto ricostruire una linea di sviluppo nel modo seguente: un edificio in fiamme; un edificio in fiamme con figure precipitano; un edificio in fiamme con un diavolo che esce ad afferrare una vittima; la bocca dell'inferno da cui esce un diavolo.

Se l'ipotesi è corretta, l'associazione di questa carta con il diavolo non faceva parte dell'intenzione originale, ma fu il risultato di un'interpretazione imposta alla carta nel XVI secolo, o forse ancora prima. (pp. 424-425)

"For several reasons, it would be tempting to assume that the first class of designs, and the name 'The House of the Devil' represent the original meaning of the card. It does in fact describe a more precise idea than the one expressed by the depictions of a burning building and names like 'Fire'. Also, this would explain why the card is invariably placed in position immediately above the Devil; presumably the strange name 'Maison Dieu' derives from a misunderstanding of the name 'The House of the Devil'. However, the evidence contradicts this theory. The name provided in the oldest source , the sermon 'De Ludo', is the "Sagitta;" depictions that show a devil are rarer and later than those which show a ruined building. In addition , the designs of the first class seem clearly derived from those of the second. In the Minchiate card the devil emerges from a crenellated building and the flames strike him from the top of the card. It is only in the two French versions - the Geoffroy card and that of the anonymous Parisian - that the flames come from the mouth of hell, and only later, in the anonymous pack, where every trace of the building disappears. Moreover, it is to be noted that in all the depictions of the second class, including the Sicilian cards and with the exception of the Tarot of Marseille, the door is a feature of particular importance in the building (the card on the Cary sheet is too fragmentary to decide). We can therefore reconstruct a line of development in the following way: a burning building, a burning building with figures plummeting, a burning building with a devil coming out to grab a victim, and the mouth of hell out of which comes a devil.

If the hypothesis is correct, the association of this card with the devil was not part of the original intention, but was the result of an interpretation imposed on the card in the sixteenth century, or perhaps even earlier."

Here he uses a method I hadn't thought of, proposing an organic evolution of the iconography of the Lightning card, as well as its name, to show that it has no necessary symbolic connection to the preceding card. It doesn't obviate the arguments of those who interpret the last seven cards as the Last Things, since this doesn't depend on actual depictions of a devil in or near the tower, but rather on reading meaning into the sequence itself, interpreting the lightning trumping the devil (which it continues to do whatever the particular iconography) as a narrative triumph. But, I can take it as additional ammunition for the argument that there is no necessary connection between these two cards, despite the temptation to see one and even have it creep into the iconography.

The idea of it being a Hellmouth or Hell is much older than the apocalyptic reading, and does not necessarily imply divine judgment in the eschatological sense. Hell is a burning place, that's all.

You seem to be arguing that this bit of the cycle is TOO clearly represented, so we must reject it.

I don't think it is clearly represented at all; it is just a tempting reading to give it for some of us in the last 15 years or so. Earlier interpreters, both documentary and iconography, didn't give it that reading. The closest they come is Hell, the Devil's house, but nothing close to eschatological judgment. This should give us pause.

I think we should reject any reading which is not necessary to explain the choice of subjects and sequence, and that includes full-fleshed narrative readings. Except for the thin implicit "narrative" that the threefold hierarchy imparts by its very structure (a going up and getting bigger "story"), and ad hoc logical placements like Death at the end of the bad things, and the Devil after him, I don't see any story at all in the trump sequence. Just four groups, themselves ordered by the threefold structure, of easily remembered related subjects, whether contemporary or proverbial conventions, like a cupid with lovers and a chariot with virtues for the former, and Fortune and Time, Shame, Death and Hell for the latter, or purely logical, like the lights. No narrative, just an ordered sequence of logical groupings of like subjects with few enough cards in each to learn very quickly.

The groups are sufficiently explanatory of their subject matter, the arrangement within the groups was the author's choice, no doubt with a certain logic which we can speculate on, but I will assume it was not for erudite or profound philosophical or theological or moral reasons that he made the choice in which order the Virtues should be ranked, for instance.

Hi, Ross,

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:

mjhurst wrote:My first response is, huh?

You're misunderstanding me. The rest of the post explains that it was part of a process, not just a simpleminded rejection of something obvious.

I'm not surprised that I've misunderstood much of what you've been writing. However, you never get around to offering something better, something more explanatory. Instead you offer something less coherent, less mnemonic, essentially confirming my apparently mistaken reading. You seem to be abandoning more-explanatory connections in favor of less-explanatory ones, or none at all.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:In the first place, "it" is not explicit, it is just tempting to read it that way. It could easily be a wrong reading, a misguided or even anachronistic one, and I think it is. This is why I put an example of what I thought the narrative nugget was (I thought you'd like that expression): "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."

If that is accepted, then 1) the two cards are connected rather than in "distinct segments", and 2) this judgment of God in no way contradicts my reading. You've got the same reading, Devil followed by Fire from Heaven representing God's triumph over the Devil, but without the documentation (Rev 20) I've provided. So your nugget is the same as mine, your divisions into groups would be the same, the only difference is that I pointed out the source of this group.

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.

Yeah, there really is. That's how people think, and how they remember things. Telling stories is what people do, have always done, and these elements of Tarot are story elements in a meaningful sequence. Again, you seem intent on rejecting the obvious.

(P.S. Okay, you emphasized the word "must", and that makes it a strawman argument, which I didn't notice at first. You are obviously correct in arguing against that strawman. However, there is excellent reason to think that there was probably a narrative in this particular hierarchy. In fact, there are two narrative cycles in this hierarchy, one in the middle trumps and one in the highest trumps. The first is the pervasive Wheel of Fortune or De Casibus narrative arc, while the second is the pervasive triumph of God over the Devil and Death, leading to the New World.)

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: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).

I have no problem with Dummett's agnosticism as a default position. However, your argument here fails because Fire from Heaven destroying things is precisely as "dark" as Death. Both are precisely God's Judgment. One is how he punishes Man for Sin, the other is how he overthrows Satan at Armageddon, after Gog and Magog have been rallied. So the Fire card, like Death and the Devil, can be placed in the middle section.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:As an aside, today, attempting to trace the history of the idea that the sequence Devil to World is a depiction of the biblical "Last Things" (I can't find it earlier than Timothy Betts, 1998, but it should be earlier than that....

If by Last Things you mean Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, then I don't see that as part of Betts' interpretation.

If you simply mean an eschatological or End Times interpretation of the whole cycle, he certainly did that. He associated the Fire/Tower card with the Sixth Seal, which does have the best cognate images in both manuscripts and prints. ("And I saw, when he had opened the sixth seal, and behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair: and the whole moon became as blood: And the stars from heaven fell upon the earth, as the fig tree casteth its green figs when it is shaken by a great wind." Rev 6:12.) If we are just picking apocalyptic images to mindlessly match with Tarot, that would be mine, too. (Some of the Sixth Seal pics are really cool, and you can find more than a dozen online.) But it fails to make any sense of the sequence. The Sixth Seal is part of the Tribulation, not the overthrow of Satan. He sort of blurs over this sort of thing, assuming that the designer was blathering about the Apocalypse rather than designing a cycle, selecting and ordering the subjects thoughtfully.

Personally, despite his numerous cool findings, I see nothing of value in his ultimate interpretation. He found some obscure but highly pertinent material, like the 1392(?) edict about the Traitor, but he twisted it all to fit a preconceived subject matter. As such, it is little different than someone putting a Dantean gloss on the trumps, or an alchemical gloss for that matter. Too much focus on things other than the subject matter of the cards and their sequence.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Here he uses a method I hadn't thought of, proposing an organic evolution of the iconography of the Lightning card, as well as its name, to show that it has no necessary symbolic connection to the preceding card. It doesn't obviate the arguments of those who interpret the last seven cards as the Last Things, since this doesn't depend on actual depictions of a devil in or near the tower, but rather on reading meaning into the sequence itself, interpreting the lightning trumping the devil (which it continues to do whatever the particular iconography) as a narrative triumph. But, I can take it as additional ammunition for the argument that there is no necessary connection between these two cards, despite the temptation to see one and even have it creep into the iconography. The idea of it being a Hellmouth or Hell is much older than the apocalyptic reading, and does not necessarily imply divine judgment in the eschatological sense. Hell is a burning place, that's all.

That's mildly interesting but wholly beside the point. I've made no argument about, nor even mention of the Fire/Tower card being a Hellmouth or being named Casa del Diavolo. I take the Devil as the Devil and Lightning as Fire from Heaven. It's not that hard, and it requires no 17th-century decks or documents.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:I don't think it is clearly represented at all; it is just a tempting reading to give it for some of us in the last 15 years or so. Earlier interpreters, both documentary and iconography, didn't give it that reading. The closest they come is Hell, the Devil's house, but nothing close to eschatological judgment. This should give us pause.

Absolutely. And as you know, I've paused. And as you know, each writer tended to offer something different, and each writer ultimately failed to make coherent sense of the sequence. That's why we keep trying, because so many have failed and yet the possibility of success seems tantalizingly close.

Treating the Fire/Tower card as a Hellmouth and pairing with the Devil for that reason is apparently what the Anonymous Discourso does, while Piscina opts for an odd cosmological series, partly based on the cosmos (Fire) but mostly based on brightness. If you can point out a sensible reading that adds up to a coherent cycle, whether narrative or other hierarchy, just tell us. Otherwise, I'll keep trying to figure it out myself.

For your part, you have yet to explain why the highest cards should not be read as eschatological; why the Devil should not be read as the Devil; and why Fire from Heaven should not be read as Fire from Heaven. This narrative detail is not some random, cherry-picked detail from an obscure text. It is one of the most important moments from Revelation, one of two ultimate triumphs of God at the End of Days, and the two-card group depicting it is also consistent with the rest of the structrual design of the cycle as I have proposed.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:I think we should reject any reading which is not necessary to explain the choice of subjects and sequence, and that includes full-fleshed narrative readings.

The trade-off between explanatory power and conceptual parsimony is always present. That is precisely why, for 15 years, I have said, and sometimes argued in detail, that Dummett's position is the most defensible, the strongest argument which has yet been made, the default position for serious consideration, the null hypothesis against which others must be tested. To overcome that parsimonious assessment of the trump cycle requires something with greater explanatory power and yet without a bunch of ad hoc elements; something sufficiently coherent that it explains each subject and its place while not relying on special pleading. So yes, I too think that we should reject any unnecessary elements.

(P.S. That is one reason why I wonder about your placement of the Devil in the middle section. It seems to be a big deal for you, yet it seems wholly gratuitous, adding nothing by way of explanation.)

However, you have yet to explain why we should do away with an eschatological reading of the highest trumps. No, not a vague, hand-waving gloss about a fairly obscure legend as written by a Spanish monk, but a coherent reading, based on crucial biblical texts; a reading which is structrually consistent with the rest of the cycle; one in which the Devil and Fire/Tower are taken at face value, the Star/Moon/Sun group are given their commonplace eschatologcial significance; and Resurrection to a New World is taken as a reference to resurrection and the New World, as is appropriate for the highest trumps. IMO, that reading has explanatory power -- it explains why these subjects were chosen and arranged as they are. As such, it makes the sequence extremely coherent and memorable. It does so without doing violence to the subject matter of the trumps, without relying on incidental elements of the underlying material (cherry-picking), and without introducing any far-fetched or gratuitous readings.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Except for the thin implicit "narrative" that the threefold hierarchy imparts by its very structure (a going up and getting bigger "story"), and ad hoc logical placements like Death at the end of the bad things, and the Devil after him, I don't see any story at all in the trump sequence. Just four groups, themselves ordered by the threefold structure, of easily remembered related subjects, whether contemporary or proverbial conventions, like a cupid with lovers and a chariot with virtues for the former, and Fortune and Time, Shame, Death and Hell for the latter, or purely logical, like the lights. No narrative, just an ordered sequence of logical groupings of like subjects with few enough cards in each to learn very quickly.

But without a narrative (or other clearly hierarchical design, like a cosmograph), it is NOT memorable and NOT easy to learn. You can't have both "arbitrary" and "mnemonic", even though you've used both terms to describe your views.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:The groups are sufficiently explanatory of their subject matter,...

Sufficient for what? Not sufficient to be memorable. That requires a card-by-card design which can be easily seen when pointed out. An ad hoc gloss is okay, but that is not what a designer would do. Whoever picked the subjects originally almost certainly had some reason for the selections. He was not an imbecile, pulling subjects out of a hat. Or as you seem to suggest, pulling subjects out of three hats. Whether we can find an ordering, and an explanation, for those original choices is an empirical question -- we have to try it, and we may fail. But it seems pointlessly rude to the nameless creator of Tarot to think he was either hopelessly ignorant or otherwise incompetent or perhaps simply didn't give a shit.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:the arrangement within the groups was the author's choice, no doubt with a certain logic which we can speculate on, but I will assume it was not for erudite or profound philosophical or theological or moral reasons that he made the choice in which order the Virtues should be ranked, for instance.

Not for moral reasons? That is patently absurd, as shown by a booklet for which you are listed as co-author. If there had been no moral intent, then a simple fifth suit could have been used for permanent trumps. Apparently these had been around for some time, and would serve perfectly well. The trump cycle, by virtue of things like Emperor and Pope, Love, Fortune, Death, Virtues, Devil, Angel of Resurrection, is obviously a moral cycle of some sort, whether systematically designed or not. As such, it was clearly intended -- as you have repeatedly argued for years, in terms of anti-gaming sermons -- to elevate the game, making it a worthy subject for good Christians. If this was done in a coherent fashion, then it would also be easy to learn as well as pleasurable to play.

Best regards,
Michael

Hi Michael,

mjhurst wrote: 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.

I think the main difference between us is that you believe the designer made the trump sequence to be a stand alone work of art. It can therefore be abstracted from the game and interpreted as a 22-picture sequence, with everything necessary to understand it in the order and on the cards.

In other words, the author first "wrote" a symbolic 22 story in pictures, and secondarily stuck it onto a pack of cards, and made a game with it. The meaning of the story and its use in the game have no necessary relationship. The trump sequence stands alone.

I don't think that. I think the general idea came first, then the math of the game; then the choice of symbolic groups according to a commonplace formula (the "Three Worlds"), then the specific subjects within the groups, with their total number constrained by the needs of the game he had worked out.

I don't think the sequence can stand alone or be explained as an independent story. It is part of the deck, and can only be fully explained in the context of the game it was invented for. It can't be completely understood outside of this context any more than Alfonso's arch can be fully understood without its function as a gate, or Giovanni XXIII's monument can be understood outside of its context as a tomb, or the E-Series sequence in its context as a model-book. Their functions determine and inform some aspects of their symbolic programme, and constrain their form in various ways.

One such aspect for the Tarot is the number of trumps, which in the case of the iconography may explain, for instance, the curious "omissions" that Dummett and most other commentators have wondered about, such as Prudence, the "disappearance" of the Theological Virtues, a fuller ranks of man, more planets. The Minchiate designer "fixed" a couple of these things and added some complications of his own. The Tarot designer was conservative in his choices, it is clear. He added only enough human types to have two lowest counting cards and Popes and Emperors to top off the court card hierarchy. With the sixteen remaining cards he had given himself two were highest cards, celestial subjects and counting cards. Fourteen left. He seems to have a sense of symmetry, so he gave only four others to the celestial section, and divided the moral section into two equal parts. For the triumphal motif he chose a triumphal chariot and another common representation in the processions, a love garden with its cupid. Only three spots remained, so he chose a subgroup of the Cardinal Virtues that also appeared in the parades accompanying the chariot, excluding Prudence. For the other side of the moral coin, Fortune and Time are a proverbial pair of the forces that control life; a shame painting had particular relevance to Florentines, where they were frequently met with and everybody understood what they meant - they were intended to ruin a person's life by destroying their reputation, they were mandated by law, and they created a death-in-life for their normal targets: shame was the next worst thing to death (or worse than death, some would say); Death and Hell are also a proverbial pair, with the Devil personifying Hell. It's not a theological treatise, so it doesn't imply anything about who goes there, it's just a picture of an expression, and a bad thing. Five and five, easy-to-remember conventions, no weighty reflection.

Hi Michael,

mjhurst wrote: But without a narrative (or other clearly hierarchical design, like a cosmograph), it is NOT memorable and NOT easy to learn. You can't have both "arbitrary" and "mnemonic", even though you've used both terms to describe your views.

There are plenty of arbitrary rules to learn when learning a new card game. You just remember them and play. The specific order of the trumps (and special rules for certain cards in them) is one of those things. The threefold structure, moral part divided into two clear groups, is logical enough to get the gist, and the specific order of the cards in the group is then just a matter of rote memory, or learned by habit in play. The designer picked one, and I think it was the Bolognese order, but I don't think he would have been surprised at variations of the order of the Virtues or the placement of the Chariot or Love in that group. The game is not about the pictures and what they do to each other, it is simply about trumping. As long as the subjects remained in those logical groups, I think he would have recognized his game. It is when people start making subtle changes, and breaking the groups, like putting Justice between Angel and World (or even that inversion itself) that would puzzle him. I think he would say they are reading too much into it.

You don't need to have a story about why this trumps that in the trump sequence, you just have to have the order clear in your mind. The four groups are sufficient to explain the designer's overall conception and how the players learned it at first. The specific order was indeed the designer's choice, and it might be interesting to know particularly why he put the Love-Chariot-Temperance-Justice-Fortitude section in that precise order, but I am going to presume it was trivial or even arbitrary. The cards in the other sections do in fact have a fairly straightforward logic, that also doesn't depend on any deep considerations.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:The groups are sufficiently explanatory of their subject matter,...

Sufficient for what? Not sufficient to be memorable.

Yes they are. Who can't remember four things?

That requires a card-by-card design which can be easily seen when pointed out. An ad hoc gloss is okay, but that is not what a designer would do. Whoever picked the subjects originally almost certainly had some reason for the selections. He was not an imbecile, pulling subjects out of a hat. Or as you seem to suggest, pulling subjects out of three hats. Whether we can find an ordering, and an explanation, for those original choices is an empirical question -- we have to try it, and we may fail. But it seems pointlessly rude to the nameless creator of Tarot to think he was either hopelessly ignorant or otherwise incompetent or perhaps simply didn't give a shit.

You seem to not really be reading me. I am explaining the designer's choices. The chariot section is self-evident - he called the game "Triumphs", so it is clear that he was going to make this subject, a triumphal chariot, with connected subjects constrained by number, central to his design. It is a de facto moral subject, since it symbolized the exercise of virtù - virtues which accompany it. Then, like in the parades, fateful tableaux follow. This is what he chose for the moral section because he knew his audience would grasp it immediately, and put it in the order taught with no difficulty. All the subjects are familiar, and their order is just a matter of convenience.

By "arbitrary" I don't mean random, I mean without a highly detailed and extremely specific, necessary, rationale. It is not necessary that the Chariot be above Love; it is not necessary that both of these subjects come before rather than after the virtues. The only thing that comes close to necessity is that these subjects are all grouped together, because they are a conceptual group and the designer picked it as such, so it could be pointed out and memorized as a group. But their specific order is arbitrary because it doesn't matter who does what to who in that group -the game isn't played here.

When you take the Chariot out and put him above Fortune, you're making a dogmatic statement about the meaning of the Chariot - now he is master of Fortune. But I don't think the designer wanted to say anything like that.

This is fun, by the way. Thanks for responding so much. It is just hard to keep up... holiday things still going on here. I hope you're enjoying it.

Hi, Ross,

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:This is fun, by the way. Thanks for responding so much. It is just hard to keep up... holiday things still going on here. I hope you're enjoying it.

For me it's more than fun. My project for 2014 is to write a new version of The Riddle of Tarot, and get it online in some form or other. (It went up in 2004, so it seems like time to try again.) This thread is helping me rough out my current thinking on some of my old ideas. So thanks again for the assist!

I'm also constrained by time at the moment, but maybe in a few hours... I really want to elaborate (more) on the "Tarot was a game... that has implications" aspect.

Best regards,
Michael

I should address one aspect of our disagreements, the intentio auctoris -

I don't think the players had to think of the order of the signs of the Last Things, the battle of Armageddon or anything so explicit in order to recognize the subjects and remember their order, and I don't think the designer had to have that in mind when he designed this sequence of subjects. It's a natural way to arrange those lights in the sky, as I've shown, and it is grasped immediately. You just get it right away when it is shown. It's not like that book is the only way he could have come up with those subjects and put them in that order. It's not exactly hard to remember the subjects of the two highest cards, and you'll have extra incentive because they are the most valuable cards.

Nobody but a smartass would ask "Hey - why isn't the Star higher than the Sun?" The absence, as if deliberate avoidance, of such systematic erudition in the sequence virtually screams that it isn't serious, it's ludic. They are made to be quickly understood and played with. The same observation could be made about the absence of Prudence from the sequence of Virtues - this isn't an encyclopedia or a moral treatise, it's a game and these are game pieces. Just learn them and try to win.

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 -, and that he had to be thinking of the Book of Revelation to come up with the sequence Lightning-Star-Moon-Sun-Angel-World (or of course my prerference World-Angel). I find it hard to believe that the first thing that the players would think of when shown that sequence would be "Yep, Revelation 20 and 21, clever fellow! Now I've got it, couldn't understand it any other way." I find it hard to believe that in all this time, if that were the intention and the easiest explanation, and so self-evidently clear to you, that you would be the first person to mention it. I find it hard to believe that if NEW World were meant, and the self-evident clear-as-a-bell meaning of that card, that nobody, in all the lists of trumps and earlier interpretations of them, ever called it that or implied that it meant that.

Hi Michael,

Are these two paragraphs fragments from some other post, or addressed to someone else, or something? I have no idea what you're talking about in the second one.

mjhurst wrote: Treating the Fire/Tower card as a Hellmouth and pairing with the Devil for that reason is apparently what the Anonymous Discourso does, while Piscina opts for an odd cosmological series, partly based on the cosmos (Fire) but mostly based on brightness. If you can point out a sensible reading that adds up to a coherent cycle, whether narrative or other hierarchy, just tell us. Otherwise, I'll keep trying to figure it out myself.

Just a clarification - the Anonymous Discorso doesn't pair the Devil with any "Fire" or "Hellmouth" card; he calls it "the Heavens", and he treats the Devil as part of the section with Death:

"After these, the Hunchback, the Traitor, Death and the Devil follow. 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, speaking of those who are completely immersed in the vain and lascivious delights that the World promises and can give: they follow foolishness as their guide, without regard to their end and to God, upon whom the greatest good and all perfect and permanent happiness depend" (p. 61)

He mentions the Heavens and other "lights" only in passing as he looks up to God: "Therefore rising with our eyes and intellects to the Heavens, the Star, the Moon and the Sun..." (pp. 61,63)

My own "sensible" reading of this sequence is identical to the Anonymous author's. If you want, you can look up with your eyes and intellects, starting with the Lightning in the Heavens, and contemplate the works of God.

However, you have yet to explain why we should do away with an eschatological reading of the highest trumps. No, not a vague, hand-waving gloss about a fairly obscure legend as written by a Spanish monk, but a coherent reading, based on crucial biblical texts; a reading which is structrually consistent with the rest of the cycle; one in which the Devil and Fire/Tower are taken at face value, the Star/Moon/Sun group are given their commonplace eschatologcial significance; and Resurrection to a New World is taken as a reference to resurrection and the New World, as is appropriate for the highest trumps. IMO, that reading has explanatory power -- it explains why these subjects were chosen and arranged as they are. As such, it makes the sequence extremely coherent and memorable. It does so without doing violence to the subject matter of the trumps, without relying on incidental elements of the underlying material (cherry-picking), and without introducing any far-fetched or gratuitous readings.

I really have not a clue what you are referring to in the bolded passage. Have I done this? Please remind me.

But generally, why should I do this? Why do I have to make reference to biblical texts, when I can just point to lightning and a hierarchy of lights and then size as the explanation? Mondo is not terra, just to be clear. Look up the phrase "terra centrum mundi" (or "terra centro del mondo") to see the difference. The Earth is the center of the World, it is not whole world. Everything - all the elements, planets, stars, intelligences, angels, the throne of God - doesn't have to be depicted in such a picture in order to understand that this World-system, the Universe, is meant, and not the Earth per se. So it implicitly includes all that has come before (again I agree with Anonymous, although for him it is the last card).

The only thing possible to conceive that is bigger than this is the end of this, which for the designer and his contemporaries is signalled by the trumpet of the Angel.

Hi, Ross,

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Are these two paragraphs fragments from some other post, or addressed to someone else, or something? I have no idea what you're talking about in the second one.

You wrote: "Earlier interpreters, both documentary and iconography, didn't give it that reading. The closest they come is Hell, the Devil's house, but nothing close to eschatological judgment. This should give us pause." I was addressing this question.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:

mjhurst wrote:Treating the Fire/Tower card as a Hellmouth and pairing with the Devil for that reason is apparently what the Anonymous Discourso does, while Piscina opts for an odd cosmological series, partly based on the cosmos (Fire) but mostly based on brightness. If you can point out a sensible reading that adds up to a coherent cycle, whether narrative or other hierarchy, just tell us. Otherwise, I'll keep trying to figure it out myself.

Just a clarification - the Anonymous Discorso doesn't pair the Devil with any "Fire" or "Hellmouth" card; he calls it "the Heavens", and he treats the Devil as part of the section with Death:

"Suddenly Death comes, in the horror of which the Devil, who is the cause of all this, takes them away in fright and despair." (p. 61)

This was the line I referred to. The Devil taking them away sounds very much like the Hellmouth version of the Fire/Tower card.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:

However, you have yet to explain why we should do away with an eschatological reading of the highest trumps. No, not a vague, hand-waving gloss about a fairly obscure legend as written by a Spanish monk, but a coherent reading, based on crucial biblical texts; a reading which is structrually consistent with the rest of the cycle; one in which the Devil and Fire/Tower are taken at face value, the Star/Moon/Sun group are given their commonplace eschatologcial significance; and Resurrection to a New World is taken as a reference to resurrection and the New World, as is appropriate for the highest trumps. IMO, that reading has explanatory power -- it explains why these subjects were chosen and arranged as they are. As such, it makes the sequence extremely coherent and memorable. It does so without doing violence to the subject matter of the trumps, without relying on incidental elements of the underlying material (cherry-picking), and without introducing any far-fetched or gratuitous readings.

I really have not a clue what you are referring to in the bolded passage. Have I done this? Please remind me.

Betts did that. You seemed to be saying that I derived my eschatological reading of the highest trumps from Betts, and I want to be very clear that I have NO stake in his interpretation, and I am not defending any part of his interpretation.

Sorry for the confusion, but when you wrote "As an aside, today, attempting to trace the history of the idea that the sequence Devil to World is a depiction of the biblical "Last Things" (I can't find it earlier than Timothy Betts, 1998", it seemed as if you were conflating at least three very different readings, Betts, myself, and Huson. You named Betts, you cited the "Last Things", which is Huson, and you seemed to be replying to me.

Best regards,
Michael

Hi, Ross,

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:I don't think the players had to think of the order of the signs of the Last Things, the battle of Armageddon or anything so explicit in order to recognize the subjects and remember their order, and I don't think the designer had to have that in mind when he designed this sequence of subjects. It's a natural way to arrange those lights in the sky, as I've shown, and it is grasped immediately.

No, they didn't have to "think" about it. Fire from Heaven triumphing over the Devil IS Armageddon. (Also, the three celestial lights are sufficiently obvious that no one has failed to point them out.) It's not a question of finding the right words or checking the thesaurus for a synonym. That just IS the Bible's description of Satan gathering his armies, Gog and Magog, and what happens immediately after that. It is one of the key events in one of the most widely discussed and important stories anyone knew. In other words:

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:You just get it right away when it is shown.

That's it. Someone made those selections and ordered them that way with an intent. We don't have his written statement, but we do have the selections and ordering. What could he have been thinking? He could have been thinking that Fire from Heaven triumphs over the Devil, so let's put Fire from Heaven right after the Devil.

That does not mean that this coherent reading was obvious. We know with certainty that it is not obvious, because we have centuries of wildly divergent readings. The question is whether a coherent reading is possible, one which makes sense of the sequence without any far-fetched readings. If a reasonably plausible reading is possible, then it makes sense to give the designer the benefit of the doubt and attribute to him that best possible reading. Like Marziano, he wanted to create a game of "sufficient maturity" that it would not be deemed childish. And that is the reading which explains the choices he made.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Nobody but a smartass would ask "Hey - why isn't the Star higher than the Sun?" The absence, as if deliberate avoidance, of such systematic erudition in the sequence virtually screams that it isn't serious, it's ludic.

I'm not sure what you are addressing here. I've never argued that it was a cosmological sequence, but just the opposite: I've always argued that it is not, and it is not. The three celestial cards might be this and they might be that and they might just be related subjects in an obvious hierarchical relationship, but the one thing they certainly are not is a cosmological hierarchy. They were in the wrong sequence for that, so they were not that.

They might have had no meaning in the overall design, as you argue, but merely been a hierarchy of celestial lights. If so, they were still not a cosmological hierarchy.

Perhaps, sandwiched between God's triumph over the Devil and God's triumph over Death, they might well have been intended to refer to the signs of the Second Coming. Nonetheless, they were still ordered as a hierarchy of light. However, in that case they also make sense of the larger sequence. And they were still not a cosmological hierarchy.

And again, this has nothing to do with the intentio lectoris, but the author's design, reflected in his work. That is the iconographic question -- why these subjects in this order? Yes, it's ludic in the sense that it was used in a card game. In my view, the eschatological sequence was used in a card game because the trump cycle was a moral allegory used in a card game. Such allegories, like morality plays, generally culminate with something like a Christian triumph over death.

And of course, knowing countless things about the Book of Revelation does not reveal "systematic erudition" in any elitist or esoteric sense. It is deep knowledge to us, but it was just the pop culture of the day for 15th-century Roman Catholic Italians. Their pop culture was put into a game, as something both recognizable and uplifting... as you have repeatedly argued yourself.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:They are made to be quickly understood and played with. The same observation could be made about the absence of Prudence from the sequence of Virtues - this isn't an encyclopedia or a moral treatise, it's a game and these are game pieces. Just learn them and try to win.

The player's POV has little if anything to do with understanding the work. They were just playing cards. You and I and a thousand others can make up stories about that and there is nothing to decide between them. No criteria or canon of criticism applies to such interpretive glosses. Again, we know with certainty that there is no simple, obvious reading of the trumps which makes good sense of the sequence. We know that because if there were such a reading it would have been widely known and accepted, centuries ago.

But there is a criterion for evaluating the trump cycle's meaning iconographically -- can you make sense of the selection and arrangement of the subjects? Prudence, for example, wasn't needed in this particular moral allegory. It isn't part of the design. There are only three turns of Fortune's Wheel depicted -- success, reversal, and downfall -- and three virtues are shown triumphing over them. That explains the selections and their arrangement. Explaining such things seems far more satisfactory than merely explaining them away. Explaining them away however, (i.e., it was just a game, so it shouldn't make much sense), is far easier.

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

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. For those who don't know anything about the history of playing cards, here are some examples from three different 16th-century German decks.
Remember that text you translated, about Marziano's game? These games were designed to be elevating.

Marziano wrote:Seeing that it is inevitable for virtuous toil to be weakened by fatigue, if the time be excessive, it might be asked whether it be fitting for a man to find recreation from the weariness of virtue in some kind of game. For while playing, nothing tiresome or difficult is encountered which obliges him to dwell in any way upon human concerns. But whenever any game is seen by many to be childish and not to have sufficient maturity, nor to be conducive to happiness (to which our wishes in everything should be directed), it is by this firm reasoning to be supposed that a serious man should abstain from playing. Certainly, the virtuous man, who happens to be ruled by right reason, should be able to remain firm in ethical conduct and in honourable reasoning during these activities. Thus I settled upon that sort of game, which would be accommodated to the place and person, of such character that it somehow shows its powers, and would also be enjoyable, and that it be fitted to the serious man wearied of virtue, and that without much difficulty the use of it will be free of circumstances of debts, and that it will be conducive to happiness; as I am truly persuaded that the noble working of the intellect of he who was fatigued would thereby be restored to excellence.

Consider therefore this game, most illustrious Duke, following a fourfold order, by which you may give attention to serious and important things, if you play at it. Sometimes it is pleasing to be thus diverted, and you will be delighted therein. And it is more pleasing, since through the keeness of your own acumen you dedicated several to be noted and celebrated Heroes, renowned models of virtue, whom mighty greatness made gods, as well as to ensure their remembrance by posterity. Thus by observation of them, be ready to be aroused to virtue.

How much more inspiring and rousing to virtue would be a contemptu mundi allegory which echoes themes from Boccaccio's De Casibus, Petrarch's De Remediis, and the Book of Revelation? Not something childish, but something conducive to happiness, for a serious man, a virtuous man ruled by right reason and firm in ethical conduct, etc. This is the type of game which Tarot also represents. Given Marziano's novel game, it seems likely that Tarot was created in the same court, perhaps only a decade later. It is certain that it has the same seriousness of content in addition to the playfulness of a card game. These things go together, despite your insistence that they are incompatible.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: -, and that he had to be thinking of the Book of Revelation to come up with the sequence Lightning-Star-Moon-Sun-Angel-World (or of course my prerference World-Angel).

Taking things out of context is a fun methodology, but inherently divergent. Yes, we can do many more creative things if we don't look at the overall design, but it won't ever make sense of the overall design. Keeping things in context tends to be more convergent, as the context itself conveys meaning and constrains interpretations. Looking for meaningful structure.

If we look at the overall cycle, focusing on the most obvious subjects and their arrangement, we may be able to recognize a moral allegory with three sections. That itself constrains subsequent interpretation. 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. But we only have those constraints if we try to make sense of the overall design. That is why I've said, repeatedly, that the assumption of such an overall design as a working hypothesis is an absolute prerequisite for finding such an overall design. Even with that working hypothesis, we may never find more than a hodge-podge. However, if we assume a hodge-podge initially, then that is all we can possibly find.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:I find it hard to believe that the first thing that the players would think of when shown that sequence would be "Yep, Revelation 20 and 21, clever fellow! Now I've got it, couldn't understand it any other way." I find it hard to believe that in all this time, if that were the intention and the easiest explanation, and so self-evidently clear to you, that you would be the first person to mention it.

LOL! So, because no one has ever offered a coherent reading of the trump cycle, therefore no one ever will. Well, okay... it's hard to argue with logic like that. I apologize for trying.

No, wait... I've tried something rather different than anyone who tried before. First off, I'm not attempting to impose the Hebrew alphabet or alchemical mysteries or Egyptian symbolism or Albigensian heresies or any of that onto the trumps. In that sense, I'm attempting something which only a handful of others have attempted. Second, I'm building on what has gone before. I'm not the first person to see the Three Worlds design. Even some occultists saw it, although blinded to the details by their septenary preconceptions. I'm not the first to see the trumps as a moral allegory, and recognize much of the general subject matter contained in it. Both Moakley and Huson came close to it, and people like Lacroix saw a related moral allegory in the trumps. This is why I keep bringing up and defending the Old Guys. In fact, my signature line spells out exactly what I'm attempting: to stand on the shoulders of giants, that I might see a bit further than they did.

1) The moral allegory part is crucial, but not detailed. 2) The Three Worlds part is crucial, but not sufficiently detailed. 3) The refinements, seeing the smaller groups of subjects, the narrative nuggets or elements is also crucial. I'm also not the first to point to those. Some of these are dead obvious, and others have been noted by different writers. This is the structure, confirmed by the universal preservation of the Three Worlds design and the common preservation of the smaller groups as well. This is where the schematic or diagrammatic aspect of the design, the context of the individual subjects, constrains our reading and allows us to make sense of the whole.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:I find it hard to believe that if NEW World were meant, and the self-evident clear-as-a-bell meaning of that card, that nobody, in all the lists of trumps and earlier interpretations of them, ever called it that or implied that it meant that.

As you put it, "nobody but a smartass" would ask a question like that: "Hey, which 'World' comes after the Angel of Resurrection?"

I've already said this numerous times in this thread, but the iconographic quest cannot be about what a cardplayer might have thought, or anything remotely like that. The meaning was clearly not simple or obvious, and therefore everyone comes up with a different reading. To be tractable, the question must be about explaining the choices which were made, the subject matter and their arrangement. As Dummett stated very clearly, this may be a unicorn hunt, but if there is such a meaning which could explain the design, then it lies in the sequential arrangement of the trumps. My position is that the structure of the deck, the groupings of related subject matter, is what reveals the design. It is in this sense that the trumps are an architectonic masterpiece -- every piece fits perfectly. Of course, no one who played the game was ever concerned with that.

Best regards,
Michael