Curious... Tarot de Marseille

[EnriqueEnriquez]

Sorry for the dumb question but, how were the Marseille tarots called before Paul Marteau coined the ‘Marseille’ marketing category?

Thanks in advance,


EE

[Yves Le Marseillais]

Hello Enrique

Well befre Paul Marteau decided to use this commercial wording Tarot de Marseille, Tarots was called.... Tarots and that's all as far I know for the moment.

On historical documents I saw, we talks about "cartes de tarot" (tarot cards) and no specific relation with any citie.

I am also curious to see more informations about this.

Btw I am happy to see that this Forum is still alive. Thanks to Eugim too.

Salute from Marseille bro.

Yves

[EUGIM]

Hello Enrique and Yves,
Nice to see you both again.

With regard to Enrique question,I remember if I am not wrong,that Kwaw mentioned in a thread at ATF,that Papus first called it Tarot de Marseille in his book " Le Tarot des bohémiens, le plus ancien livre du monde", Paris, Carré, 1889.
I checked the book and Kwaw was right,because at the beginning of the nine chapter "History of the symbolism of the Tarot" he wrote :
"The Tarot of Marseille which is the ..."
Here is the PDF of the book in Spanish and you can see it at 66 page. : http://upasika.com/docs/papus/Papus%20- ... hemios.pdf

-So we are talking about the year 1889,the first edition of the book

My best regards

[jmd]

I accept that Papus used the term earlier than did Marteau.

The 'problem' lies whether this is the genesis of the term to apply to a generic deck or to specific ones actually from Marseille.

For example, Papus appears to specifically refer to (or imply) the Conver deck, which, in that case, is truly a 'Marseille tarot'.

Marteau, on the other hand, produces a new tarot - though one heavily based and reliant on the Conver.

It wasn't so much, then, that Papus introduced the term, but rather that he appears to be describing which tarot by doing what is common enough in various locations: naming its region of provenance to clearly indicate which model is being referred to.

With Marteau's book, something else comes to the fore: its title is now seen to apply to the style of deck by then virtually unknown except for the Conver Marseille model and its cognates. In that sense, Marteau appears to 'stabilise' the term in a more generic sense, even though earlier 'introduced' by Papus for a specific deck. Marteau's broad appeal not only makes the specific Marteau-Grimaud (Parisian) deck known, but the woodcut style accepted by a broad readership.

[EUGIM]

Absolutely agreed with you JMD.

[EnriqueEnriquez]

Thanks everybody for your replies.

With Marteau's book, something else comes to the fore: its title is now seen to apply to the style of deck by then virtually unknown except for the Conver Marseille model and its cognates. In that sense, Marteau appears to 'stabilise' the term in a more generic sense, even though earlier 'introduced' by Papus for a specific deck. Marteau's broad appeal not only makes the specific Marteau-Grimaud (Parisian) deck known, but the woodcut style accepted by a broad readership.

So, for Papus the term suggests provenance while for Marteau it suggest style?

[EUGIM]

Enrique,of course I can t answer for JMD,but Papus is the last chain of an earlier distortion did with the Tarot de Marseille began with Gebelin egyptian theory of the origin of the Tarot de Marseille and Eteilla deck,with his invention of the reversal cards.
Papus copied the self invention of E. Levi regarding to place LE MAT at number 21 on the sequence.
He never explained why he atribited the hebrew letter Shin to LE MAT,so he placed there.
This letter is the twenty one on the hebrew alphabet and its value is 300
Just for me an absolutely incongruity,a prove of the clumsy manipulation,a nonsense.
That is an example how some people forced the card sequence to fit theirs weird imagination into.
So Papus only used the name Marseilles and then as Levi and Eteilla before,created by distortion his own peripatetic deck...

[jmd]

So, for Papus the term suggests provenance while for Marteau it suggest style?

That seems to me the case... but am willing to be shown to be incorrect, of course!
re:

Papus copied the self invention of E. Levi regarding to place LE MAT at number 21 on the sequence.
He never explained why he atribited the hebrew letter Shin to LE MAT,so he placed there.
This letter is the twenty one on the hebrew alphabet and its value is 300

We need to distinguish between the ordinal and cardinal value of the letters, which as you say, Shin is twenty-first... as to why it is placed between XX and XXI, I suggest that it is because of the common gaming practice of placing the Mat (if one is dealt such) as penultimate amongst the trumps.

[see also my recent contribution to the ATS Newsletter: Tarot Trumps and Hebrew Letters: variety and divergence]

[EUGIM]

Thank you very much for yur interesting article JMD

With all the due respect for you and also for Mr. Filipas let me consider here some points.
Many of course are of your knowledge,surely the whole my dear friend.

1-Shin as you know is also Sin.
So that is what Levi committed,a Sin.
2-Qabbalah as Gershom Scholem strongly remarked is pure Neoplatonism,so he rejected as contrary to the orthodox line of thought of all the Rabbi.
It s born under the Arabs occupation and domination of Spain from de 700 s to the 1492.
Arabs brought there the purest legacy of Alexandrian Neoplatonism available in those days.
In those days a branch of the orthodox hebrew rabbi wanted to find if there was a link between theirs beliefs and Neoplatonism.In the same way that the very first Fathers of the Church did precisely in Alexandria in the centuries I to III.(Origenes for example,and I just think the Apocalypse of John is the purest example of Neoplatonic Alexandrian hermetecism,just read the very first chapter of the Corpus Hermeticum).
Modestly I think that the very intention was to see the way to find a common belief.
Then born the Cabala as a result of the interest of some monks of the Church in Spain as Ramon Llull for example.
3-As Mr. Filipas said he based his suppositions on the deck of Della Rocca so an after Gebelin-Eteilla one.
He also said that may be Della Rocca knew the essay of both.
So I think is post Tarot de Marseille era.
4-May be the most serious work done (even if I am not agree) is the one of Saint Yves d Alveydre with his "Arqueometro" (I don t know how translate it in english).
5-All the hebrew theory connection with tarot is around the 21 + 1
But here is just the whole problem :There are not 22 cards,there are 21 + 1
The LE MAT card is unnumbered as we know and just for this is impossible to fit the rules of Qabbalah pattern regarding tarot sketch.
The common belief heritage of neoplatonism,is that all in the Universe has number,weight and measurement,so that is why this card is out of the tarot sketch,just because is unnumbered.
It is named,so its exits but not in a physical sense,in a material sense I mean.

So let me here remember a paragraph of a novel of Arthur Conan Doyle "Scandal in Bohemia" about the disrespectful "manipulation" that the french writers of the XVIII and XIX did with Qabbalah:


Watson :"This is indeed a mystery," I remarked. "What do you imagine that it means?"

Sherlock Holmes :"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."


My best as ever my dearest friend !

[jmd]

[...]3-As Mr. Filipas said he based his suppositions on the deck of Della Rocca so an after Gebelin-Eteilla one.
[...]5-All the hebrew theory connection with tarot is around the 21 + 1
But here is just the whole problem :There are not 22 cards,there are 21 + 1
The LE MAT card is unnumbered as we know and just for this is impossible to fit the rules of Qabbalah pattern regarding tarot sketch.

Just a couple of rather quick replies...

Mark Filipas's work is twofold: one that focuses on the Tarot de Marseille, the other on the Della Rocca... it is to the first that there may be importance, rather than the second (even though if Della Rocca used de Gebelin or, more likely, C. de M*, then the letters would be in a quite different order - see my 'Tarot Trumps and Hebrew Letters: variety and divergence').

With regards to there not being 22. I realise that this is a way in which some prefer to describe the trumps, but the Fou or Excuse is still a trump... just normally un-numbered. In relation to the Kabalah, it makes sense to also have the final one un-numbered as it then brings the addition of all cards by their ordinal number to 231, being the number of 'gates' mentioned in the ]Sefer Yetzirah (ie, the number of connections made from having each and every letter connected to each and every other letter). Having the Fou ordinally numbered (as 22nd) would render the addition to the 'un-Kabalistic' 253.

With regards to Scholem's views on the development of Kabbalah in Provence and Mediæval Spain, there is certainly important merit in keeping in mind Neo-Platonism (and neo-Aristotelianism) in mind... but that's another story...