Tarot de Marseille-ish card that is numbered and named. It is almost as if they represent two entirely different streams of thought and image that goes to make a card game, but using the same math to construct the game. I often think it is like the old song “You’re a pink Toothbrush, I’m a blue toothbrush, but we both use the same toothpaste”
For me the confusion of the origins of Tarot comes from thinking, because of the similarities between the hand painted cards and the printed ones in subject matter, they are the same species because they are in the same pond. Looking at one species and applying a hypothesis to cover both will bring the wrong result in understanding.
One way to make my point clear and to illustrate the idea, is the aboriginal artwork on the cave walls at Kakadu National Park in Northern Territories, Australia. It is thousands of years old and thought to illustrate the ‘Dreamtime’ of the origins of the people- the astrological birth of their world- their God beliefs and all the sacred things and secret events and rituals, and the animals and hunts etc. These images do that, but also there is a second layer using these same images, only lately realised. The images show a practical function of getting the best out of life, best food when and where, how to make your day fortunate, what is the best cut of game, how to share it equally, what are the morals for happiness and the order in which you do things to survive. It is a Bible on a wall using exactly the same images to depict all of the above.
This site explains the multi function of Kakadu Rock paintings.
http://www.environment.gov.au/parks/kak ... index.html
So what do I want explore? The Visconti-Sforza of course!
Giordano Berti writes in the book of the Visconti Tarots about The Fool…
I am convinced that the seven pens are a sign of his unemployment and the ‘lightness’ of his pocket.The Fool is represented as a poor person, dressed in dirty, torn clothes, barefoot, with no trousers and a large club resting on his right shoulder. He is unshaven and seven pens are entwined in his hair, a symbol of the ‘Lightness’ of his thoughts.
In other words his reduced state of well being. He is now the underclass of Florentine society and in need of Charity.
Timothy Verdon, Christianity and the Renaissance.In Late medieval Europe, however, new contexts of religious experience were taking shape: the pious confraternities and compagnie that flourished under the impetus of Franciscan and Dominican spirituality from the trecento to the Council of Trent. These privileged devotional environments allowed their members to touch sacred realities through liturgical, penitential, and Charitable activities formerly reserved for the clergy.
Although there is castato and Notorial evidence that about the Bounomini di San Martino in 1427, the confraternity appears to have been formally established in 1442 with the function to intercede for the ‘shamed poor’ with the privileged. The Bounomini solicited money and collected alms and sought out the recipients of this Charity. From the records it would seem, that before 1470 all recipients were artisans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Martino_del_Vescovo
Now these 12 worthy men or patrons of this particular fraternity followed the Charitable acts as given by Saint Antonius in his ‘Summa Theological’ - distributing food and wine, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, Hospitality to pilgrims, freeing prisoners (especially debtors) burying the dead, dowries for marriageable girls -all written in two ledgers one for the Patron and one for charity given. This form is still used today- with the appearance of anonymity. (Dale Kent)
From William Parkinson we get..
Is the magician one of the Twelve good men? ~LorredanIn those days of uncertain Fortune, amid the swift political changes of the time, there were many whom, doubtless, he saved (saint Antonious) from degradation or suicide. I Proveri Vergognosi- the poor that are ashamed, it was these he first took under his protection. We read of him sending for twelve men of all classes and various crafts, and laying the case before them, re-founding a charity which soon became the mouth of Florence.