I wish my dream were the truth but you're right.mjhurst wrote:My point remains the same: Most people who are interested in Tarot insist on believing it was an occult manifesto of some sort, disguised as a card game.
Fact is that I clearly misunderstood your point - so yes this reply was directed to your post, as I sincerely believed you meant "tarot is just a game and there's nothing more to it", so your reply is very helpful.Who ever said such a thing? Who are you arguing against? You present this as a rejoinder to my post, which makes it seem as if I said that. If that was your intent, then you being dishonest, lying about me.
Not having read Dummett (a terrible sin I know) I wouldn't dare ! Anyway he has enough supporters to defend him, but then again, why would someone (not insane) attack Dummett ?Yes, I resent that. If your intent was that Dummett said such a thing, then again, you are being dishonest about someone not here to defend himself from your insinuations.
Let's make it clear, I'm not attacking neither you nor Dummett : I misunderstood your views and your texts.1. The Tarot trump cards, in my opinion, were originally and in their most common forms a perfectly intelligible and coherent cycle. That is the opposite of no meaning or "empty". Dummett also admitted they had meaning and suggested an outline of an overall cycle, as well as suggesting that someone might someday decode the meaning.
2. The fact that "at some point" there were other meanings attached to the trumps, by occultists, is also disputed by no one. Dummett is the one who did most of the original research on that question.
Regarding the cycle
I'm being quite often criticized for putting this exact detail in evidence in front of "anti tarot history" supporters... and actually I love facts !I don't know why you are attacking me and/or Dummett -- all I said was, Tarot was a card game and this new evidence supports that. It seems that your post exemplifies the fact-free approach to Tarot: just make stuff up to attack the historians and their defenders.
definitely nothing ! In fact I didn't know she wrote about tarot at all.Cool -- what did she say about Tarot in that book?
Thanks a lot again because I didn't know about this review. Could be the same kind of misundersatnding although she doesn't have the excuse of not being a native english speaker !Have you read her 1981 review of The Game of Tarot and Twelve Tarot Games in the New York Review of Books? You should. You would like it, given your views.
In short, she claimed, "it seems to be the basic aim behind Professor Dummett’s fanatical pursuit of the Tarot game, in all its forms, to prove that throughout its history it was only a game, and nothing else." This is an astonishingly stupid or disingenuous conclusion, given that Dummett chronicled various early extrapolations beyond the game (things like appropriati, the Straparola riddle, Teofilo Folengo, the many variations of the game including decks like Boiardo and Sola Busca, etc.) as well as researching and presenting the history of occult Tarot. That is, Dummett traced the origin and development of occult Tarot, in detail and for the first time. She claimed that he sought "to prove that throughout its history it was only a game, and nothing else."
definitely not my point.Yates ignored the second book completely, and dismissed the whole project of Tarot history as worthless. Except, of course, what the occultists had contributed!
certainly not on the meaning on Tarot nor on Court de Gebelin, on the other hand I thnik she made pretty good points about the thinking during the renaissance.This review was probably the worst thing that she ever wrote, and it is also, AFAIK, her only significant comment on Tarot. Her basic conclusion was that Dummett was a biased fool, lacking the good sense to worship Antoine Court de Gébelin as the bright light of Tarot history. [P.S. I'm not kidding. Yates talked about occultists and their views in every paragraph, first through last. She mentioned Antoine Court de Gébelin by name several dozen times, punctuating almost every thought with some reference to the old fraud.] That's your authority on the meaning of Tarot?
Again sorry my point was never to insult anyone at all, and I know just as you do that Tarot was originally just a game plus I have been defending this fact on - this is exactly what my comparison implied.mjhurst wrote:I don't understand why are you so upset that someone would say "Tarot was a game"? Why do you feel compelled to make up such nonsense about me, or whomever you are insulting here with your strawman argument about Tarot having no meaning?
I didn't mean to insinuate anything such as this, it was rather a reaction from my misunderstanding. Also my personal beliefs may interfere in my comprehension, since I believe that the "coherent meaning" was plural, and that to the original coherent sequence were added other coherent organization that differ quite from the original - not only a "degradation" of the original.Perhaps you've never encountered any of my posts before, so let me point out that for the last 12 years I have written over and over and over about the fact that the earliest Tarot DID HAVE A COHERENT MEANING!
again sorry if you felt personaly attacked here, please attribute this to my sometimes limited understanding of english added to my limited skills to express my ideas in the same language : it is clear that I partly misunderstood your previous post and its purpose as much as I failed in expressing my views which sounded like an attack.And btw, if you would quote people, then it would not be necessary to guess whom you are insulting. For example, I didn't just make up that stuff about the Building Blocks thread. You can read it, and see for yourself what kind of anti-historical "enthusiasts" post on this forum. I didn't make up those three arguments I paraphrased, either -- they were from three different posts by one of the more pernicious of the diversionists.
Overall I may fall sometimes in the binary vision you point out, so your reply was very instructive, and I thank you for that again.
Bertrand