At the top of this card there is a Griffin or Gryphon,so not an Sphinx,here there is an example of the Cathedral of Notre Dame :
* The delicate suggestion of the Gryphon ready to fly is awesome,a perfect art masterly example done...

EUGIM wrote:At the top of this card there is a Griffin or Gryphon,so not an Sphinx,here there is an example of the Cathedral of Notre Dame :

GRIFO-AMIGO.jpg

* The delicate suggestion of the Gryphon ready to fly is awesome,a perfect art masterly example done...

Are you suggesting a Gryphon (griffin) on the top of The Wheel of Fortune?

I think most early decks show some sort of ruler, perhaps a king, and I suspect at some time the animal features sometime attributed to the figures got morphed into what was later interpreted as a sphinx. I don't think anyone intended to show a gryphon.

Jean Noblet Tarot:

Of course clearly Vieville and Noblet both show a human face with a human body.
But after these decks we have wings and a tail.
The face is changed towards an animal one.
As for example in the case of Conver and Choson.
There we can see that the face and body is closest to a Gryphon,so not to an Sphinx which has boobs and usually a woman face.
In all the cases is a King.

Of course, for me personally, this is just another example of degradation. The carvers (not knowing? not caring?) what was being depicted just continued to copy the mistakes and/or tried to make some sense of the drawings and "corrected" them.

Tarot de Marseille Type I tends to more clearly show the king, Tarot de Marseille Type II has the Sphinx. I tend to see a sphinx more than a griffin on the Tarot de Marseille II, I think it is the little goatee on the chin that looks like the one on the pyramid.

Like on this guy:

* Where are the big boobs ?

I personally totally agree with Robert on this: wit the Tarot de Marseille-I and early decks, the figure atop the wheel is 'simply' a crowned person, ie, a representation of a (perhaps caped) crowned King.

But then, the other two (or three, in earliest depictions) beings circling the wheel are also human, whereas in the Tarot de Marseille-I they are already shown as animal - in the Noblet as Ass (ascending) and Monkey (descending).

On a side note , Robert, I'm not sure what you mean in the post 'this is just another example of degradation' with the image of the Sphinx... are you suggesting that the Tarot de Marseille-II is a degradation from Atlantis to Egypt that has further been altered in the Tarot de Marseille-II ?

* Notre Dame again:

EUGIM wrote:* Notre Dame again:

61g.jpg

Notre Dame is not tarot.

I just don't see the point of this. I don't think it's a Griffin or a Sphinx, I think it's a really crappy copy of a king figure that got corrupted over time and someone eventually thought it looked somewhat like a Sphinx. Hell, I'm even willing to think that on the Tarot de Marseille II it is supposed to be a Griffin, but I guess I just don't care because I think either would be a mistake.

As JMD famously does, I suppose I should express that the opinion offered in this post refers to actual development of the iconography itself from a purely historical point of view, and is not intended as a suggestion that someone couldn't choose to see a Griffin, Sphinx, or any other creature sitting atop the Wheel of Fortune, especially in terms of a "reading".

Egypt ?

- Where ?

* Is there not an sphinx as Steve showed to us,at the V card of the TdP ???

And italians decks are not Tarot de Marseille...