mikeh wrote:Thanks for telling me. I will work on getting an image of the page. Fortunately, I happen to have the hard copy on hand from Interlibrary Loan. Meanwhile, here is the part from Michael I am building on (
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=71&p=1820&hilit=wi ... ance#p1819; also, his next post down in that thread gives examples of single winged virtues--admittedly, not cardinal virtues--with others unwinged):
Michael J. Hurst wrote:
....
As part of that old discussion, the earliest Italian (ancient Roman) example of winged Temperance is Nike. Seriously. One of her conventional depictions was as wine-bearer to victors, in which capacity she carried one or two vessels. The krater was used specifically to mix water with wine -- to temper it -- before drinking. This is not only a Pagan tradition, not only the literal fact underlying the metaphorical symbolism of Temperance, but also the same practice used in the Eucharist where water is mixed with wine for reasons of Christian symbolism. (The water and blood which poured from Christ's side, symbolizing his human and divine nature, etc.)
The significance of this for Tarot is not merely the existence of an ancient Pagan example, but the appropriateness of Nike triumphing over Death. This too was an ancient topos, but an ancient Christian one. Nike was used as a Christian psychopomp in funerary art, based on a passage from St. Paul: In 1 Corinthians he quotes Isaiah: "Death has been swallowed up in victory", and that was a well-known motif. Of course, the winged figure naturally suggests a psychopomp, by analogy with both Mercury and angels, as well as Nike -- Victory.
So the analogy between Tarot de Marseille's Temperance and Nike resonates in terms of the literal meaning, mixing water with wine, and also in terms of the triumph over Death. That latter connection derives from the generic psychopomp motif, the specific Nike "Death has been swallowed up" motif, and the specific fact that the sacraments are the orthodox Christian means by which triumph over Death is achieved.
...
.Notice that Michael is not saying that Temperance is a "guardian angel" as usually understood--a protector--but rather one that offers the antidote to death. My only question about this is that I can't find where the 16th or even the 17th century knew about Nike as cup-bearer. They didn't have access to the Greek pottery that he shows us (
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=71&p=1821&hilit=Nike#p1821), unless some of it was Italian--it mostly didn't enter Europe until the late 18th century at best, I think. In Greek and Latin literature, it was Hebe, along with Ganymede, who was cupbearer, and she didn't have wings. I wrote on this subject at
http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... stcount=28 and
http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... stcount=74, in the latter on her power to forgive sins). I ended up, in the first post, proposing a kind of synthesis of goddesses, Hebe with Iris (whom I would remove from consideration now)) or Nike.
This Karitas from Bologna is my current solution to the problem, another synthesis, but with just one other figure, with which they would have been well familiar in Renaissance Italy.
Well ... nice. The jungle of the Greek mythology, right at the Olympic games with all its gold medals and triumphal moments.
For Nike one likely has to understand Pallas, her father, who got from Styx, river of the underworld, 4 children, 2 sons and two daughters.
Pallas (Πάλλας) is a Titan, associated with war, killed by Athena in the contest to fight for Zeus. Most sources indicate that he was the son of Crius and Eurybia, the brother of Astraeus and Perses, and the husband of Styx. He was the father of Zelus, Nike, Kratos, and Bia.[1] In addition, he has been named as the father of Scylla, Fontes, and Lacus.[2] Alternatively, he was the son of Megamedes, and father of Selene,[3] and is also recorded as the father of Eos.[4]
The city Pellene, in Achaea, was named after Pallas.[5]
"Pallas" was so common as a title for Athena that Edgar Allan Poe's raven (of 'The Raven') sits forever on a pallid bust of "Pallas", which, here, refers to Pallas Athena.
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1. Hesiod. Theogony, 375-383.
2. Hyginus.
3. Homeric Hymn IV To Hermes, Line 100.
4. Ovid. Fasti, 4.373.
5. Pausanias. Description of Greece, 7.26.12.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallas_%28son_of_Crius%29
Uranos (heaven) married Gaia (Earth). They got 18 children:
3 Centaurs with one eye. 3 strange guys with 100-arms (= 50 bodies). 12 Titans, 6 male and 6 female.
6 male Titans might have married 6 female Titans, but Zeus had an own idea ... and made children with Themis (3 daughters) and made children with Mnemosyne (9 daughters, the Muses) and then even children with his mother Rhea (10 children, 5 male, 5 female).
This naturally was part of the "conflict". So only 4 of the 6 male Titans got a female Titan.
Kronos - Rhea: Hestia - Demeter - Hera / Hades - Poseidon - Zeus
Hyperion - Theia: Helios - Selene - Eos
Crios ... Themis was taken by Zeus
Iapetos ... Mnemosyne was taken by Zeus
Coios - Phoibe: Leto - Aristea
Oceanus - Tethys: 3000 rivers
So Crios and Iapetos had to look for a girl "from elsewhere" (this was naturally also part of the "conflict").
Iapetos married "Asia", this must have been somewhere, where the world wasn't called "Greece". They got 4 sons, which were especially interested in the destiny of mankind: Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, Menoitios. Atlas got then a mythology very near to the biblical Adam. Iapetos was compared to Japhed, a son of Noah. Prometheus found a living location at the Caucasus. So one has to conclude: Behind the Caucasus starts "Asia".
Crios married Eurybia ... and to explain the context of Eurybia, one has to explain the conflict: Gaia had enough children from Uranos. So son Kronus was mobilized to change the conditions. It's well known, how he did this.
And Gaia had a second marriage with Pontos (the sea). They got:
Nereus (a god of the water) ... he got 50 daughters, the Nereids
Thaumas (a god of the air) ... he got daughters with
WINGS, Iris (good, served Hera), Arce (bad), was thrown to earth (at Arcadia likely) and the Harpies. Iris was (in the conflict) messenger of the Olympians, Arce became messenger of the Titans, and Zeus took the wings from Arce.
Phorkys and Keto (? Fire and Aither), who married each other and got mainly monsters
Eurybia (? Earth), who married Crios
So there we have Eurybia, the mother of Pallas. Gaia had by her two marriages two different families with some conflict to each other, and likely the marriage between Crios (family 1 = Uranos-kids) and Eurybia (family 2 = Pontus kids) had the idea to create some peace. But naturally such a marriage has its difficulties.
They got 3 sons:
PALLAS - the man, whose mythological content we try to understand. He married Styx, river of the underworld, an Oceanos daughter, and they had 4 children, 2 sons and 2 girls, and one of them is
NIKE with WINGS. The other 3 are said to have had also WINGS.
Astraeus: He married, Eos, daughter of Hyperion, the goddess of dawn, and so he's associated to the dusk. They got the 4 winds and the stars (or morning and evening star) and possibly he got of another partner the Astraea, a virgin of the stars. So he's related to a sort of astrology (which actually didn't really exist in this early time). At least the winds are commonly presented with WINGS.
Perses: He married Asteria, daughter of Coios, from whom he got a daughter, the mighty Hecate, presented with NO WINGS.
On his way to discover nice women Zeus crossed the two daughters of Coios. Leto got Apollo and Artemis. Zeus also wanted her sister Asteria (married to Perses, and already with a daughter Hecate ... see above), but Asteria escaped, jumped in the sea and transmuted to an island named Delos, a swimming island. The island became the birth location for Artemis (if she wasn't born at the small island Ortygia, which nowadays is part of Syrakus at Sicily) and Apollon ... and an important place for the oracle cult of Apollo. A small island with 3.5 qkm and a lot of stones, inhabited only by the assistants of the museum.
In the antique world it had an important state as neutral territory with a lot of temples, free trade and a lot of money through pilgrims, somehow comparable to Vatican city and Jerusalem.
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As we see, some of the Crius-Eurybia descend has wings.
Further I remember from the analysis of the strange German lot book ("pope with donkey") , which was connected to an old astrological Greek model, that "planets" were connected to "birds". If we analyze the Olypic titanic model, we get ...
Kronos ---> Olympians, high in the mountains
Hyperion ---> Sun and Moon and day and night
Crius ---> "flying objects", beside Hecate ----------- related to Themis (taken by Zeus) = Justice
Iapetos ---> mankind ----------- related to Mnemosyne (taken by Zeus) = Muses
Coios ---> Apollo's birth place, swimming island in the water
Oceanos ---> Ocean
Well, we discussed recently ...
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=826&start=20
... questions like "Who is the mother of the virtues?"
I wrote this, I remember ...
From my personal view, I would assume, that Justice is the mother ...
Prudence as virtue of the spirit, Strength as the virtue of the soul, Temperance as the virtue of the body. Justice is the balance within the three.
Minerva-Athena isn't really the mother-type ... and she jumps out of the head.
Themis has usually 3 daughters.
And Justice is the highest cardinal virtue in the Mantegna Tarocchi. And the middle between the theological virtues and the three other cardinal virtues.
But this is just my personal opinion. I doubt, that those people in 15th century had all the same opinion in the virtue question.
My presented concept "Justice is the mother" for the 4 virtues is a
trivial mathematical concept ... not really complicated.
The Greek had the goddess Hecate
Trivia - Hecate of the three ways. She was presented as a three-fold goddess.
In some myths she was connected to a
dog, a
viper and a
horse.
We see Prudentia
(virtue 1) usually shown with a
viper.
We see Temperance
(virtue 2) occasionally signified with a bridle (good to tame
horses).
We see Fortitudo
(virtue 2) usually with a
lion ... possibly a mutated dog
The world of Crius (flying objects) is somehow governed by Themis, somehow
(4th virtue) Justice, and given to her are 3 daughters (by Zeus). The "flying objects" are usually winged, but one figure, Hecate Trivia, is "not winged".
Virtues in the medieval world are usually also "not winged" ... like Hecate.
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Hesiod had a positive picture of Hecate, but other times not.
The wikipedia article ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecate
... presents the view, that early Hecate wasn't three-fold, but three-fold-god or goddesses concepts had been likely not rare and wandered through the different cultures. Christians also got their trinity.