let everyman go about without fear, and let everyman sow, while this lady rules the land, for she has taken power from all the guilty.....
Now you ask for a discussion between the users of cards as in readings and Tarot Historians to see what the originators saw and what readers see today. For me (not that I am a Historian)it is what the image brings up in my mind to answer a question.
It is not just about Virtue. It is also a defined area of 78 cards. It is somewhat like a rosary that keeps your mind focussed upon an area or steps in Catholic spiritual devotion called the 'Stations of the Cross' This is the same as an illuminated Breviary or prayer book for example or a text book for embroidery for that matter. I used to do this with 'Holy pictures' as a child....as a guide book for what to do and what not to do in any given area that was troubling me. I no longer question why it works as a spiritual exercise or a prediction sequence. Maybe it does because there are only so many human conditions, and it is the human condition to ask of ourselves what is the right thing to do. This 'reading' of cards does not exclude me from Tarot History as an investigation into the facts of the origins of the game. I see a realtionship as debra said earlier.
having said that...I have had some bizarre ideas for the origins over the years and as I have said before- I have no reputation to lose in this area- so on I work and read and sometimes blunder...and the generousity of posters in most cases lift me up and point me in the right direction. It is a fascination and absorbing one at that- this Tarot.
Now you said this..
I do not think this is correct. I have shown cards to many different people over the world and what they see is remarkedly similiar- even though I always say it is a game. I have a set that has no numbers and titles and I ask them to put the cards in some sort of order and within a small variety it comes out as we have it now. So there is a universality about the images and an order that people instinctivly understand.El stupido at the beginning and Wisdom at the end. So I am picking that is what was the intention at the beginning.My sense is that there is a general ignorance about the virtue ethic as a spiritual discipline (this understanding of classical philosophies was certainly news to me). So contemporary people in search of workable spiritual tradition misread the traces of the once common and very workable virtue ethic as emerging from something more exotic and hidden.
~Lorredan