EnriqueEnriquez wrote:

robert wrote: and are they really a pair? or is the Magician alone and the Fool outside?

Well, they aren’t both at ‘the same side of the counter’, so to speak. Assuming that The Fool starts the sequence in front of Le Bateleur, one seems to be about to fall victim to the other. They certainly don’t team up, but suggest an ‘every man for himself’ kind of reality.

So, the are certainly not a couple, but I don’t know why. (It isn’t just that they are both handsome and single, but that I don’t have an iconographic argument for it. )


Best,


EE

Actually, it's my understanding that there is a way of looking at them as sort of a pair as well, from the Bologna point of view... it would be better to have Ross will comment on this... but the gist is that they are sort of equal and sort of a pair that come before the "Papi".

As lovely as the Mitelli is, I don't think this one pattern alone is enough to prove the 2 Emperors/2 Popes theory, not without more evidence.

As for the Fool and Juggler not 'pairing up', I see them as the perfect pair - a deceiver must have someone to deceive. A glance at history shows us that 'evil' always arises by an interaction between fools and the deceivers they follow. Radical movements and cults understand this dynamic, and exploit the hell out of it. The (IMO) obvious relationship between the Fool and Juggler is one reason I don't buy into theories that the Fool is 'outside' the context of the allegory, or the whole "Fool's Journey" angle. Of course, the Fool, if taken as merely a 'rank' in the social hierarchy, will along with the others, journey through the cycle of life (6 - 13) and the afterlife (15 - 21), which for him will be HELL I reckon.

~ "I'm here! Where's the Buffet table?"

~ "Right this way you clever fellow, just past the sulphur pit to the left."

R.A. Hendley wrote:As for the Fool and Juggler not 'pairing up', I see them as the perfect pair - a deceiver must have someone to deceive.

Indeed. The con artist and his mark are mean for each-other.

A few weeks back I read in a book by a Christian priest the following statement: “True intelligence means knowing that God knows better.”

At a personal level I think my sperm count dropped after reading such thing, but I can see a similar logic at play in these lower trumps. Outside of god there is only deception and folly.

Best,


EE

EnriqueEnriquez wrote:
At a personal level I think my sperm count dropped after reading such thing...

Are you sure it wasn't those tight 'boxer briefs' your wife gave you for Christmas?

R.A. Hendley wrote:

EnriqueEnriquez wrote:
At a personal level I think my sperm count dropped after reading such thing...

Are you sure it wasn't those tight 'boxer briefs' your wife gave you for Christmas?

She actually gave me big boxers with fish printed on them.


EE