Re: Exploring The Wheel of Fortune

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I agree with you, Eugim, that the typical 'French Sphinx' (circa 16th C. and spreading from Fontainebleau to the rest of Europe) is breasted.

I'm not sure what, however, the point of this is... as even if the top of Tarot de Marseille-IIs are taken as sphinxes, they are not of the breasted kind (unlike the Paris deck Pope). Or are you here suggesting that because the Tarot de Marseille-II Wheel of Fortune appears to have atop an un-breasted Sphinx, its origin must lie outside of France?
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Re: Exploring The Wheel of Fortune

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* First JMD...

-Sorry about the boobies.
The point is that here is autumn ,so those...
Are welcomed ( As just divorced I am,my... ).

. X card just for me shows a Gryphon,a Guardian of the Divine.
As Stevie rightly pointed,the Sphinx is an abominable beast
The Universe is like a Mamushka.

Re: Exploring The Wheel of Fortune

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Melbourne and Buenos Aires being nearly the same latitudes, Autumn is something we share...

As to the Wheel, I do not think the intent is other than a crowned king that slowly degenerated to something more bestial in the Tarot de Marseille-II without clarity as to what type of beast was implied, though the common eye would more likely have seen it (in the Tarot de Marseille-II) as more, I would suggest, sphinx-like than as Gryphon-like (if gryphon, why the human-head as opposed to its more usual beaked or bird-like one?).

This discussion, by the way, in part shows why I have a clear preference for the Tarot de Marseille-I type deck, and in particular to relative clarity of the Noblet.
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Re: Exploring The Wheel of Fortune

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There is just as much reason to think the switch from people to beasts is simply an elaboration on a concept, rather than a rendering error.

The donkey ears on a figure traditionally refer to the base instinct. A lack of "thinking". Animal instinct. A buffoon.
And reliance on that base instinct leaves one's fate at the mercy of fortune.
In other words...
Animals lack the ability to control their fate.
They are at the mercy of fortune.
Just as the buffoon is no better than an animal. He is shown with animal traits.

Two equivalent perspectives of the same thing.
Neither is "wrong".

I would go on to say that it is also possible that the rendering "mistake" happened because it made/makes just as much sense for the figures to be animals as it does for them to be people, so in deciphering his reference, that is what the artist "saw". (With a nod to Mr SteveM.)

In Europe the sphinx is a symbol for wisdom.
If you want that at the top of your wheel of fortune, I guess you can ignore what I said above.
I am not a cannibal.

Re: Exploring The Wheel of Fortune

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OnePotato wrote:There is just as much reason to think the switch from people to beasts is simply an elaboration on a concept, rather than a rendering error.
I entirely agree, OnePotato, hence my earlier comment with specific regard to the Ass and Monkey, viz:
jmd wrote:For examples (taken from my own notes for the pdf-course), according to the mediæval Physiologus, the devil was simia Dei (God's monkey), and the monkey was associated with humanity's fall and continued to represent human sin into the Middle Ages (Cf Corbey's Metaphysics of Apes, p.66). As for the Ass, it probably derives from a joke that confounds 'Bisodia' as the name at times used for Christ's Ass but also infers fantasy (or more properly speaking phantasm).
Unlike these, however, I suspect that, looking at the sequence of imagery shown atop the Wheel, the figure is more of a disfiguration over time and decks than an elaboration of a concept... though I am willing to of course seriously entertain that proposition that I use to also hold and have more recently dropped.
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Re: Exploring The Wheel of Fortune

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Some have suggested that as the creature taken for a sphinx in some decks hasn't got 'boobs' it cannot be a sphinx.
The French Sphinx of the Mannerist school popular in the 16th century certainly did like to emphasise the breasts. Not all images of the sphinx however show boobs. The main identifying components as commonly described in literary sources mention the lions body, wings (though there are wingless sphinxes too) and human face. They can be male as well as female, but a male sphinx (some of the Tarot de Marseille lion bodied, human head figures seem to be male, having a mustache) is less common in western art, but we have the examples of Persian Sphinxes which were male. The sphinx with a mustache as a motif is also to be found in the textile decorations of felt applique of the nomadic tribes of the Russian straits that travelled and controlled the trade routes from Greece through Turkey and Persia and up to the Western Regions of China.
Griffins have winged lion bodies too of course, but generally they have eagle heads, not human. Also, if nothing else, the Griffin just seems too noble and monogamous a creature to be attached to the Wheel of Fortune with other creatures associated with ignorance, folly and mutability; the sphinx is simply a more cognate concept.
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Fernand Khnopff's symbolist is unusual in that it is a leapards body, but is an example of another that does not show breasts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx

SteveM
note: above from a previous post on AT.

Re: Exploring The Wheel of Fortune

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Also, if nothing else, the Griffin just seems too noble and monogamous a creature to be attached to the Wheel of Fortune with other creatures associated with ignorance, folly and mutability; the sphinx is simply a more cognate concept.
According to Camoin the figure is a sphinx, which he takes (I am told) as a symbol of cleverness. Taken as a symbol of cleverness, or wisdom as OP suggests, then it does not ‘fit’ with the wheel of fortune, whose creatures are meant to represent man’s bestiality in the absence of virtue and as a plaything of fate and fortune; and which such as the ape or ass are generally associated with ignorance and folly.
However the significance of the sphinx linked with the wheel of fortune lies not in it being a symbol of cleverness or wisdome but of ignorance - corresponding to other emblems of folly associated with the wheel such as fools, asses, ass eared kings, monkeys, etc.
In his lecture on psalm 119:144 (The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting: give me understanding, and I shall live.) 1513/14 Martin Luther interpreted the Sphinx as "murderous ignorance" that kills those who do not understand the testimonies of God, i.e., divine scripture.
The Sphinx is also taken as an emblem of ignorance by Alciato:
quote:
What monster is that?

Image


It is the Sphinx.

Why does it have the bright face of a virgin, the feathers of a bird, and the limbs of a lion?

Ignorance of things has taken on this appearance: which is to say that the root cause of so much evil is threefold. Some men are made ignorant by levity of mind, some by seductive pleasure, and some by arrogance of spirit. But they who know the power of the Delphic message slit the relentless monster's terrible throat. For man himself is also a two-footed, three-footed, four-footed thing, and the first victory of the prudent man is to know what man is.
end quote


"The Sphinx is said to propose difficult questions and riddles, which she received from the Muses. These questions, while they remain with the Muses, may be pleasant, as contemplation and enquiry are when knowledge is their only aim : but after they are delivered to Sphinx, that is, to practice, which impels to action, choice, and determination; then it is that they become severe and torturing; and unless solved, strangely perplex the human mind, and tear it to pieces. It is with the utmost elegance added in the fable, that the carcass of Sphinx was laid upon an ass; for there is nothing so subtle and abstruse, but after being made plain, may be conceived by the slowest capacity."
Sketches of the History of Man by Henry Home Kames, 1774.

"For the Explaining this Mythology is as touchy a Business to the Audience, as the Sphinx's Riddle was formerly: If a Man was an Oedipus at it, he found his Account in the Undertaking, but if the Mystery prov'd too hard for him, he was lost, and murdered by the Monster upon the spot. The Consequence of the present Case is much the same: for folly is a sort of Sphinx to Mankind in general; and gives an obscure Intimation of what's good and bad, or indifferent for us: If a Man can't look through her, and untie her Riddle, tho'she does not chop him up at a mouthful like the Sphinx; yet she will be sure to dispatch him by Degrees, sit as close to him as a Consumption, and ride him as the Spleen does a Malefactor under Sentence. But on the other hand, when folly is understood, then she goes to pot her self; and the Man is made safe, and happy for his Life-time."
The Emperor Marcus Antoninus His Conversation with Himself by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Jeremy Collier, 1708
The Sphinx may also be found compared with Satan:
“Satan is the true Sphinx, who hath the face of a woman to entice and deceive, the claws of a Lion to tear us, and the wings of a bird to show how nimble he is to assault us; he lives upon the spoil of souls, as sphinx did upon the bodies; he did for many ages abuse and delude the Gentiles by his Priests and Wizards, with riddles and ambiguous oracles: there is no way to overcome him, but by hearkening to the counsel of Minerva, as Oedipus did; that is, by following the counsel of Christ, who is the wisdom of the Father; by this he shall be destroyed, and we undeceived.”
Alexander Ross Mystagogus Poeticus or the Muses Interpreter (London, 1648), p.393.

And also as a symbol of reversals in fortune:
quote:
Al-Minufi (d 1524) quotes a story told him by a certain Yosef Ibn 'Abd-Allah that looking at the Sphinx reverses one's fortune so that:
"if seen by a person in command, he loses his command, and if a person lacks ability he becomes (ably) in charge."
Egyptology: The Missing Millennium : Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings By Okasha El Daly p.81 ~
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=f2Vi ... or6qfXU7-Y
Fate, fortune, prophesy was based in the medieval mind with the cycles of rise and fall, in ever recurring epicycles. Like the turning of the wheel, that which is high falls, and that which is low rises.
Thebes and Troy were popular exemplars.
[Sphinx]"I have in herte inly gret disport
That fortune hath broght thee to my sort
To make a preef yif thow mayst endure
The fatal ende of this aventure,
Set at a fyn sothly be daies olde."
John Lydgate The siege of Thebes 1420-22
Lydgates version is one of many in the medieval tradition of the Roman de Thebes:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?pg=RA1- ... utput=html
I like the Hegelian version of the Sphinx story, in which the sphinx itself does not know the answer to its riddle, but is in search of it. The answer is thus as much a revelation to the sphinx, and an end to a quest of sorts; for the sphinx, one that leads to its self-destruction.
The human head of the sphinx on the body of the lion represents the search for (and the raising of) the human from within the bestial. Humanity that identifies itself with the temperal and mundane, attached to the wheel of fortune through love of earthly things, the soul of such is more bestial than divine.
God is love, and love that comes from God can never be satisfied with anything less than that which is infinite and eternal. Love that is attached to earthly things is like an insatiable appetite that can never be satisfied with that which is temperal and mutable. Love, whose origin lies in God, thus becomes a source of evil; as the Buddhists have it, desire is the cause of sorrow. Unlike the Buddhist answer, which is to negate desire, that is, to deny God, the neoplatonic answer is to refocus love to its source God, from creature to Creator, which being eternal and infinite is all that can satisfy love's insatiable appetite.
The tarot is a tale of two loves, the love of God and the love of earthly things, love divine and profane. Cupiditas and caritas; heavenly and earthly venus. Think of them like Augustine as two Cities, Thebes prefigures or prophesises the fate of all earthly Cities (attachment to earthly things, by nature mutable, transient, and in constant state of change).
Eternal happiness can only be found in the celestial city, the City of God, the New Jerusalem. The City, the soul, (the world) is the bride of the bridegroom, the triumphal king, the charioteer.
The answer to the Sphinx's riddle is Man; the human head of the Sphinx represents humanity on the quest to know itself. In the case of the Sphinx, the end of the quest was congruent with the (self) destruction of its temporal, mutable and bestial being in the moment of existential crisis.
When Oedipus answers the riddle, MAN, the sphinx throws itself over the precipice.
At the top of the wheel we see it as a symbol of folly and ignorance, ready to overthrow or be overthrown.
In conclusion, the sphinx is perfectly cognate with the Wheel of Fortune.

SteveM
Euripides: ...Sphinx, the bitch that presided o'er days of ill-fortune,
Aristophanes Frogs
Oedipal Overthrow ~ Socratic Moments:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=oC_s ... #PPA158,M1

note: above from a previous post on AT.
Last edited by SteveM on 17 May 2009, 11:31, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Exploring The Wheel of Fortune

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Taken as a symbol of cleverness, or wisdom as OP suggests, then it does not ‘fit’ with the wheel of fortune, whose creatures are meant to represent man’s bestiality in the absence of virtue and as a plaything of fate and fortune; and which such as the ape or ass are generally associated with ignorance and folly.
The connection between folly, ignorance and the ass go back to classical roman time, we may see it repeated in Boethius, possibly the vehicle of the Christian neo-platonism references we see in the tarot sequence.
"Dost thou understand, or art thou dull as an ass to the sound of my lyre?" wrote Boethius.
On good and evil fortune [a source for the idea of animal figures upon the wheel of fortune?] " Boethius wrote: "In like manner, wickness itself is the reward of the unrighteous. Unrighteousness degrades the wicked below man's level. Thou canst not consider him human whom thou seest transformed by vice. The covetous man surely resembles a wolf. A restless, wrangling spirit is like some yelping cur. The secret fraudulent schemer is own brother to the fox. The passionate man, frenzied with rage, we might believe to be animated with the soul of a lion. The coward may be likened to the timid deer. He who is sunk in ignorance and stupidity lives like a dull ass. He who wallows in foul lusts is sunk in the pleasures of a hog."
Or as the King Alfred anglo-saxon version has it "And the dull man who is too slow thou shall call an ass more than a man." [as by Trans. into modern English by Samuel Fox].

Boethius Latin original:
Segnis ac stupidus torpet: asinum uiuit.
Boethius's wolf and fox can also be found on medieval Wheels of Fortune, which have been related also to the tales of Reynard the fox.
In reference to ass eared kings the aphorism of 'a king without letters is like a crowned ass' was common, ubiquitous even, among texts meant for 'the education of princes', to be found from the 14th century on among poets and writers such as Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, Nicole Erasmus, Jacques Legrand and in many writers over the centuries from that time.
The source of the maxim is the Policratus of John Salisbury translated by order of King Charles V in to French from the latin in the 14th century:
"Je me recorde que es letres que le roy des Romans escript au roy de France je treuve en l'une entre les autres, où il amonnestoit et conseilloit que il feist ses enfanz aprendre es ars liberaulz et en bonnes doctrines, que il disoit que roy qui n'est lettré est comme asne coroné."
(Policratus, bk.4, chap. 6, p.65) trans. Denis Foulechat.

SteveM

All wordly wealth for him too little was;
Now hath he right nought, naked as an ass.
Sometime without measure he trusted in gold,
And now without measure he shall have hunger and cold.
Lo, sirs, thus I handle them all
That follow their fancies in folly to fall.

From English Tudor play 'Magnificence'

note: previously posted on AT.
Last edited by SteveM on 17 May 2009, 15:02, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Exploring The Wheel of Fortune

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Just so as to give due credit where due credit it due... it was not I, but OP who said:
OnePotato wrote:[...]In Europe the sphinx is a symbol for wisdom.
If you want that at the top of your wheel of fortune, I guess you can ignore what I said above.
The sphinx indeed has also been linked to understanding and prudence (hence 'wisdom') when considered in connection with its riddle, but I would not link it to Wisdom even if it was a sphinx intended on the Tarot de Marseille-II.
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