Re: Hello! - and kind question for help w.r.t. the etymology of tarot

11
vh0610 wrote ...
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- could you please elaborate on it?
.-) ... I wrote
in work
at the start of the post

This means: this post isn't ready. So, if you want to know something about, you've to think yourself with that what you have

The Sola Busca Tarocchi pictures are here ...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... uselang=de

My graphic was made this way:
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That's just a way to present 22 Tarot cards
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Here it is filled with 22 trumps of the Sola Busca
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Here the Sola-Busca Tarocchi are interpreted with the values of the normal Tarot, wherever this made sense. It didn't make sense at all places (these places I called "hero").
Laura Paola Gnacollini (who wrote about the Sola-Busca) had the idea to interpret the Sola-Busca with the symbols of modern Tarot. I took the idea, but interpreted the symbols in my way. And I could live with the result "just a hero, I can't interpret it".
I found 9 heroes and 13 others with Tarot symbols.
9 heroes appeared as 9 Helden or neuf preux ...

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neun_Helden
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuf_Preux

13 trumps appear in the Lucca Tarocchi
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The Lucca Tarocchi has 9-15 and the 5 not numbered trumps of Minchiate and the Fool.

Ideas, which help ...

highest trump, lowest trump and the Fool have 4 or 5 points in Tarot games
the falconer is a known Tarot motif
Clocks have an Unruh
there's something wrong with card 13
Chariot has the number 10 in Minchiate

******************

Perhaps you're not impressed, when I write "Kartenspil in Brieg in the year 1303". In the cycle of card playing historians is a strong believe, that there was nothing with playing cards or at least not much before 1370. Stuart Kaplan Encyclopedia I has a long list (16 items) of interpolations and translation errors, in which such "mythology" is discarded.
Last edited by Huck on 17 Mar 2021, 09:16, edited 1 time in total.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Hello! - and kind question for help w.r.t. the etymology of tarot

12
Dear Huck,

finally I do understand your argument
Huck wrote: My argument about the Tarocus of Bassano in Vercelli is, that Tarocus was in 1495 a mockery word about French soldiers, who lost a battle and their booty at the the river Taro near Fornovo.
Very interesting as an opinion, stemming from a lot of historical knowledge and scholarship. Most impressing is then the conclusion that
Huck wrote: And Louis took Milan twice in 1499 and in 1500 and Italy hadn't reason to speak of Italian Trionfi anymore. The French spoke with Taro-words (at least hypothetical ... :-)).
which, as far as I understand it, makes the change from "trionfi" to "taro-"words due to the fact that there is simply no italian triumph when loosing the battle two times to the French, and hence the transition is made to "tarocchi".

Am I right that this iis based on the assumption that a first appearance of "tarocchi" as name of the game is around c. 1499/1500?

Re: Hello! - and kind question for help w.r.t. the etymology of tarot

13
Dear Huck,

sorry, I didn't know that
Huck wrote: 15 Mar 2021, 04:33 in work
means that the post is not ready (I feel still as a first time user), I thought that "in work" means a kind of linking several posts together in a semantic chain. About your material I have to think first - or I wait until you finalize the post and I can understand directly..


******************

With respect to
Huck wrote: 15 Mar 2021, 04:33 Perhaps you're not impressed, when I write "Kartenspil in Brieg in the year 1303". In the cycle of card playing historians is a strong believe, that there was nothing with playing cards or at least not much before 1370. Stuart Kaplan Encyclopedia I has a long list (16 items) of interpolations and translation errors, in which such "mythology" is discarded.
I was very much impressed since it is contradictory to all what I read before - it simply says that the cards were in Europe much earlier -either earlier arrived from the Arab countries, or developed/invented from scratch in Europe itself?

I have to admit that I do like ideas which are a not in the mainstream of ideas - sometimes they even turn out to be true - or at least more true than what the mainstream said beforehand - or better founded opinions to quote your initial post.

Re: Hello! - and kind question for help w.r.t. the etymology of tarot

14
All, what I have in this category, is to some degree "insecure". "Insecure" does not mean that it is "wrong". A lot of insecure notes, however, can get a high degree of plausibility.
There is the Hübsch report. Hübsch wrote about Bohemian trade till 1400, playing cards were for him one product between many others. Hübsch wrote in 1849. He state, that he saw documents (plural, he uses "Urkunden"), which state, that Polish nobility played with cards before 1340 and for 1340 he saw evidence for playing cards in Prague and Bohemia.
Mongols had parts of China and China had very early paper and playing cards. Mongols had a battle in Liegnitz 1241, which at that time belonged to Poland. The leader of the Polish army was a great-grand-father of Boleslaw, who lost his life at this opportunity. In the same 13th century the Mongols repeated the attack on Poland twice.
The German knights were in Akkon 1291, when Akkon was lost to the Mamluks. The German knights had then an alliance with the Mongols, who also fought against the Mamluks. There are two statements, that the German knights had playing card prohibitions in their statutes, one about 1309 and the other from between 1324-1330. Common believe is it, that this are forgeries, but the question is from when. Plausibly from the period 1430-1440, because there was an internal fight.
Then we would have a German state claiming, that playing card existed 1309 and 1324-1330 in a situation, that a complex world could know, that playing card didn't exist before 1370 in Europe. The German knight state would have been extremely stupid to use such lies in forgeries, which were made for political reasons.
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Full article ...
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=514&p=16357&hilit= ... gen#p16357
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Hello! - and kind question for help w.r.t. the etymology of tarot

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Dear all who are interested in the new hypothesis on the etymology of "tarocchi":
vh0610 wrote: 09 Mar 2021, 21:42 H1: Etymology is: tarocchi = tar‘occhi = tarh‘ occhi or tara/tari occhi = tara eyes or tare eyes
[I propose this also in light of the earlier spelling version “tarochi”, which is “only” a question of spelling in these times in this region with the respective dialects – if “only” is appropriate here]

The novelty of the hypothesis is therefore mainly the “eyes” not so much the “tara(re)”: “Tarare” stems from the Arabic Tarh’ or Tárah, which is already known in the Tarot context, see for instance the article of Andrea Vitali on the etymology of “tarocchi” on [http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=220&lng=eng]

I do think that I have found strong evidence -at least to my eyes-- on the "occhi"-part

vh0610 wrote: 09 Mar 2021, 21:42 H3: The tar‘occhi stems from the scoring of points ---perhaps implicitly in, but certainly after the game for determining the winner. There eyes have to be tared, as is formulated in

H4: The points were called „eyes“ as the „eyes“ on a dice. The games present in Nothern Italy before the cards arrived were mainly chess, tables (backgammon) and dices. People were used to count points when playing with dices and transferred the counting of „eyes“ of dices to counting of „eyes“ of tarocchi.
[Side remark: there are dices present on the table of the bagatella of later decks as the Budapest deck, see e.g. [https://cards.old.no/t/] ]

The points of dices are still called „eyes“ in German („Augen eines Würfels“) and Italian („occhi di un dado“).

which turns the hypotheses at least into an opinion: on the wonderful website trionfi.com, one can read under the title "Imperatori decks, Karnöffel and others" http://trionfi.com/0/c/03/index.php that -I quote-:

1455
Molitors Würfellosbuch mentions, dass mit "lützel Augen", small cards, im "wildem Carnöffelspyle" a win could be made

Hence, we have a proof in the literature, that for the card game Karnoeffel, the points of the cards where also called "eyes" and hence the "eyes" of the dice was transferred to the "eyes" of cards. May I ask if anyone has the copy of the respective page, in order to determine whether the "lützel Augen" are small cards or already points as in a point-trick-taking game? However, even if the small cards are meant: "eyes" are points on cards. And that there is a very probable relation between Karnoeffel and Tarot (over the imperatori cards) is discussed in http://trionfi.com/0/c/, hence it seems to me very probable that also the points of cards in Northern Italy were called "occhi" (as still today the "occhi" of dices).

Together with
vh0610 wrote: Tarot scoring

The system by which players work out their scores in almost all Tarot games may appear "eccentric and puzzling", but the rationale to it is that, originally, the cards were each valued at one less point than that shown above (e.g. Kings were worth 4 points and low cards had no point value), but every trick taken scored one point. Dummett argues that the tedious work of counting tricks card points separately, led players to fuse the two processes into a single operation. There are several practical methods, but all are designed to achieve the same aim: a quick and relatively simple way of calculating the score.[16]


and
vh0610 wrote: Based on the above opinions, my (perhaps) new hypothesis w.r.t. the Tarh-part of the word is that tarare is close to but not exactly meant as “most likely the opponent's cards or points in the game”, but first in its original meaning:

H2: The Tarh-Part of “tar’occhi” follows the original meaning of tarare of a pair of balances: it means to detract or to deduce the weight of packaging from the weight of the good plus packaging, such that you get the weight of the good -- what really counts at the end, if you are a merchant. [see H5 for further details]

[....]

H5: The name denotes the new element in the gameplay and hence makes sense as a signifier: a balance has to be tared w.r.t. eyes
[w.r.t. this, see the last posts above]

it seems to me to be strong evidence that

H1: Etymology is: tarocchi = tar‘occhi = tarh‘ occhi or tara/tari occhi = tara eyes or tare eyes

can count as an opinion to be discussed further.

What do you think about this line of thought?

Re: Hello! - and kind question for help w.r.t. the etymology of tarot

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vh0610 wrote: 15 Mar 2021, 20:20 ...
which, as far as I understand it, makes the change from "trionfi" to "taro-"words due to the fact that there is simply no italian triumph when loosing the battle two times to the French, and hence the transition is made to "tarocchi".

Am I right that this iis based on the assumption that a first appearance of "tarocchi" as name of the game is around c. 1499/1500?
We have a first Tarocho in Brescia (c 1502) and one Taraux in Avignon (1505) and 2 Tarochi in Ferrara (all likely French friendly cities at that time).

I've made a list recently for the dates between Bassano and 1530.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=345&start=430#p23478
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Hello! - and kind question for help w.r.t. the etymology of tarot

17
Thanks, Huck,

for your information and especially the list for the dates between Bassano and 1530:
Huck wrote: 15 Mar 2021, 21:35
vh0610 wrote: 15 Mar 2021, 20:20 ...
which, as far as I understand it, makes the change from "trionfi" to "taro-"words due to the fact that there is simply no italian triumph when loosing the battle two times to the French, and hence the transition is made to "tarocchi".

Am I right that this iis based on the assumption that a first appearance of "tarocchi" as name of the game is around c. 1499/1500?
We have a first Tarocho in Brescia (c 1502) and one Taraux in Avignon (1505) and 2 Tarochi in Ferrara (all likely French friendly cities at that time).

I've made a list recently for the dates between Bassano and 1530.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=345&start=430#p23478
This tells us that there is no written evidence before c1495 - how do you (and/or the present community of scholars) deal with the fact that there might be an oral tradition before which is written down only later? Is there research about this? Or can we assume that new words are invented and used not much later in written text in these times?

Thanks for a (short) answer...

Re: Hello! - and kind question for help w.r.t. the etymology of tarot

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Dear Huck,

thanks for the information you provided in
Huck wrote: 15 Mar 2021, 21:16 All, what I have in this category, is to some degree "insecure". "Insecure" does not mean that it is "wrong". A lot of insecure notes, however, can get a high degree of plausibility. [..]
It is very interesting to me and your hypothesis or opinion might be true (at least I do see a clear line of thought which seems to me very plausible).

I have a meta-question: how does the present community of scholars does handle such non-mainstream ideas? Are they heavily discussed with all the knowledge at the table and then valued one against the other? How does this community come to see an opinion more likely to be true or less likely to be true?

Re: Hello! - and kind question for help w.r.t. the etymology of tarot

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vh0610 wrote: 16 Mar 2021, 20:52 This tells us that there is no written evidence before c1495 - how do you (and/or the present community of scholars) deal with the fact that there might be an oral tradition before which is written down only later? Is there research about this? Or can we assume that new words are invented and used not much later in written text in these times?
Once there was a time, when the oldest Tarot-similar words were the tarochi notes of Ferrara 1515/16 (?) ... no, Kaplan (1978) had Berni 1526 as oldest. Dummett (1980) had Ferrara 1516 ... "the first use of the word tarocchi known to me dates from 1516 , once again from an account - book of the Ferrara court " (page 80). Then came Francesschini, who had 2 notes from Ferrara 1505 (that was published by Ortalli 2004). Depaulis added his note from Avignon 1505 in 2005 (?). Then in 2008 Depaulis wrote his note about Brescia c1502. We completely overlooked this for a longer time. I realized this error as late as 2020 ... viewtopic.php?f=11&t=345&p=21571&hilit= ... 502#p21571
Ross wrote about Bassano the first time in this forum in November 2009. Judging his contribution he possibly had researched the theme a little earlier. Andrea Vitali's article to Alione appeared here in the Forum in 2011. Farsa Satyre Morale c1510 by Andrea Vitali was noted in the Forum in 2009.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Hello! - and kind question for help w.r.t. the etymology of tarot

20
Dear Huck,

thanks for your answer
Huck wrote: 17 Mar 2021, 19:47 [..]
Once there was a time, when the oldest Tarot-similar words were the tarochi notes of Ferrara 1515/16 (?) ... no, Kaplan (1978) had Berni 1526 as oldest. Dummett (1980) had Ferrara 1516 ... "[...]
It clarifies for me that the community allows for new insights one step after the other - and implicity an oral tradition is accepted in the sense of the "not discovered until now". I also understand that the research lines in this community are very document-centered, since this is the best evidence one can get (or at least some stable point to hold on to).

In this line of spirit and in the same spirit you asked with respect to your nice theory of the cards being much earlier in Europe:
Huck wrote: Perhaps you're not impressed, when I write "Kartenspil in Brieg in the year 1303". In the cycle of card playing historians is a strong believe, that there was nothing with playing cards or at least not much before 1370. Stuart Kaplan Encyclopedia I has a long list (16 items) of interpolations and translation errors, in which such "mythology" is discarded.
I'd like to ask you: perhaps you were not impressed by
vh0610 wrote: 1455
Molitors Würfellosbuch mentions, dass mit "lützel Augen", small cards, im "wildem Carnöffelspyle" a win could be made

Hence, we have a proof in the literature, that for the card game Karnoeffel, the points of the cards where also called "eyes" and hence the "eyes" of the dice was transferred to the "eyes" of cards. May I ask if anyone has the copy of the respective page, in order to determine whether the "lützel Augen" are small cards or already points as in a point-trick-taking game? However, even if the small cards are meant: "eyes" are points on cards. And that there is a very probable relation between Karnoeffel and Tarot (over the imperatori cards) is discussed in http://trionfi.com/0/c/, hence it seems to me very probable that also the points of cards in Northern Italy were called "occhi" (as still today the "occhi" of dices).
What do you think about it?