While doing some research I came across an interview with artist Marina Abramovic. Reading this segment made me think on the peculiar magic wand on Jean Noblet’s Bateleur. (Yes, I know, It may very well just be a broken mold but, who knows. Sometimes a cigar is just a penis ). Perhaps some of you will find it suggestive:

MA: In socialist Yugoslavia everything was about sex, drinking and politics, and I wanted to explore where this came from. I did a lot of research and came across ancient pagan rituals where sexual organs are used for various purposes. For example, in the old days a mother would protect her child from the Evil Eye by rubbing the child’s face with vaginal fluid. Or if a woman was having a difficult birth, her husband would take his penis out and make a cross on her breast; in the field, if a horse became weak, the man would touch it with his penis too; if there was a battle, the Balkan men would take the sexiest woman from the village, undress her and force her to perform obscene gestures to distract the enemy; alternatively, the soldiers would masturbate in the earth. There are hundreds of examples, all described in a very ancient Serbian language. One I thought was fantastic was that, if there was too much rain, the women from the village would run into the fields and lift their skirts and flash their pussies to the gods to scare them. So I went to Yugoslavia and talked to perfectly ordinary women from the village, between the ages of 18 and 75, into doing it. At first they were very shy and wouldn’t do it, and I thought I wouldn’t get anywhere. But after a while they ran into the mud and started showing their pussies like there was no tomorrow.
For another scene I asked men to be dressed in national costumes, and to unzip their trousers and reveal their erections; I asked them to stand very proud and look at the camera and not move. We shot 15 hours of that material. I don’t think its pornographic – anyone who sees this material bursts out laughing, but then looks at it for a long time, in silence. But at the same time there is something I can’t explain: the power of our genitals, and how we can use them for healing or against the forces of nature. But obviously even for this kind of film I can’t rub my vaginal liquid on the face of a three-year-old kid – I’d be put in prison. So I had a good solution – I made a cartoon out of this.


Best,

EE

Hola Amigo ! (Hello Enrique ! )...
Seems you to be lonely here !
1-Comes to my mind the wand of LE BATELEVR and the one of the figure of the Dodal deck for example.
2-So the first as beginning and the second as the ending.
3-Thus we have as a result 20 cards,so XX IVGEMENT prior arrived to a deserved gift at XXI.
4-That s drive me to the V topic so V+ V inverted. // X card .
5-It s thus break the deck in 2 rows. / The one personal so the second at less regard to the environment.,if you re agree.
6-Thus we have the V card where LE PAPE bless us to continue (or not) // The XV where the devil try to prove us if the severals turns are enough at X to go ahead to support the fire of XVI.
7-Well from XVII to XX surely we MUST to prior prove enough to qualify


Chau Amigo !

Eugim

It just doesn't make sense to me that it is a penis in his hand.

I have no problem accepting the penis on the Fool, so obviously Noblet was willing to have a penis where others shied away. I personally would even go so far as to say that I think the penis on the Fool is "authentic," and was probably original to the Tarot de Marseille pattern.

I can't explain with any certainty WHY it looks that way though. On one hand, I'd suggest that it's just a break on the woodblock. However, the line closes across the baton, which wouldn't happen (I don't think.. OnePotato?) in a break, but had to be "corrected" by hand. It also seems to me that something is "wrong" because his other fingers are missing.





On both the Fool and the Devil, Noblet went to the trouble to color the head of the penis red:


But didn't do this on the supposed penis on the Bateleur's wand.

I was excited when I found the Heri because I suspected it would answer the question once and for all.. but instead it makes it even more complicated:



What? Here Heri turns the hand, and I'm not even sure that's a baton at all in his hand... is it a horn? WHY would Heri do this? Is it because he was "correcting" the Noblet (or a deck similar to the Noblet but now lost to us)?

I don't have an answer to "what happened" to the Bateleur's baton, but I just don't think this was intended to be a penis. Then again, why didn't Noblet "correct" it if it is a mistake? Did he simply not care?

.

It makes perfect sense. In the later TdMs, the Fool has no penis. He worked up a large debt with the Juggler and he had to pay the price. Or perhaps it's a 'novelty' toy the Juggler's trying to peddle to La Papessa? :o ~gasp...

Okay, I'll stop...

Actually, I have no good explanation what-so-ever. A damaged printing block seems like the best explanation to me considering how the hand looks.


RAH

Hello Robert and wellcome here !!! ( Your house )


1-Penis ?-So why not ?
2-If we see at Jean Doidal deck the XXI figure with a wand also ?
So any connections ?

eugim

Steve has found plenty of literary reason why it *might* be a play on words; but I've never seen another graphic of the Bateleur from that or any other period with a penis in his hand. Why not? Because it is ridiculous. He's not the Peniseleur for Christ's sake.

Connection to the World? I seriously doubt it. Looking at the Vieville and Noblet for instance, I'm left to think it is probably a ruler's wand in the figure's hand.

Sforza Castle, Vieville, Dodal


Noblet


What I don't think: That it's a penis!

I'm always baffled by why we (meaning "tarot historian types") spend so much time talking about the penis on the Bateleur when really, the amazing thing about the Noblet is the penis on the Fool! Don't get me started on the penis on the Popess theory!

I don’t really think it is a penis. And I suspect that, neither Noblet of his assistants did care too much about the perfection of the printings. There cards aren’t remarkable for its preciocism. I would have to assume that the mistake/break in the wooden plate was important enough to justify to throw it away and do the whole thing again.

But the idea of a magician who goes around healing sick animals with a touch from his penis was too much to not sharing it!

Best,

EE

Penis = Wand .

1-LE MAT / God as the Creator
2-LE BATELEVR / Christ
3-LE MONDE / Christ as the Anima Mundi

eugim

EUGIM wrote:Penis = Wand .

1-LE MAT / God as the Creator
2-LE BATELEVR / Christ
3-LE MONDE / Christ as the Anima Mundi

eugim

Sure, a penis can be called a wand and hundreds of other things as well. I can't imagine God be equated to a Fool, or Christ to a Trickster would have been typical historical understandings of the iconography. Seems like perhaps you have a preferred way of understanding the "meaning of tarot", and it's convenient to see them this way? That said, I'm sure there will be "Fool for God" references that can be found, and maybe even Christ the Trickster, but I don't buy it that that is the intended iconogragphical meanings for these cards.

Christ as Anima Mundi for the World seems very reasonable.

best,
robert

Good metaphors are always true, which doesn’t means they are accurate. That is my problem with assigning ‘meanings’ to the cards that go beyond the literal iconography, the conventional allegory, and the Christian morality. The can all produce beautiful pieces of prose, yet they can only be taken as a provisional.

Best,

EE