Texts paralleling the structure of the trump sequence

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Recently, we have been widely discussing Dummett's description of the trumps as a tripartite sequence:
* ranks of men;
* conditions of human life;
* spiritual and celestial powers.

According to the interpretation of Michael J. Hurst, the images in the last section of the sequence are “related to Christian eschatology, and although they are not the most conventional representations, they derive from chapters 20 and 21 of Revelation”.
I have been looking for texts that could somehow parallel this structure, and I have seen that there are some that include a description of human life followed by a discussion of Christian eschatology. The only one I have read is “Della miseria dell’uomo” (On the Misery of Man), by Bono Giamboni (1240-1292 ca). The text is based on “De miseria humanae conditionis” (On the Misery of the Human Condition) by Lotario dei Conti di Segni, Pope Innocent III, (1160 – 1216).

Here are the contents of the book:
Bono Giamboni wrote:BOOK ONE

The first book illustrates the misery of men and women from the time when they are conceived until they exit from the womb of their mothers.

I. On the misery of the creature in its creation, since it is born in the original sin.
II. On the misery of the creature due to the baseness of the matter of which it is made.
III. On the misery of the creature for the baseness of how it is fed when it is in the womb of his mother.
IV. On the misery of the creature for the pain it gives to its mother when it is in her womb and for those it gives when exiting it to enter the world.
V. On the misery of the creature when it is born to the world, for the baseness of this thing and how it is discussed by the Wise.

BOOK TWO

About the pains and troubles suffered by the creature after it is born to the world.

I. Of the pains and worries that the creature suffers as soon it is born to the world.
II. Of the pains and troubles suffered by people as they advance in their days.
III. Of the pains, worries and miseries suffered by men and women at the end of their lives, that is in old age.
IV. On the remedies that man must take for his troubles, and of the benefits received by him who follows such remedies. The first benefit [the man is confirmed in the grace of God].
V. Of the second benefit that the man receives if he peacefully bears his troubles in this world [he makes himself similar to Christ]
VI. Of the third benefit [the glory of eternal life]

BOOK THREE

About the endeavors.

I. Of the endeavors to become learned of things, and how in the end they are just vanity and nothingness.
II. The second endeavor: richness.
III. Of the endeavors suffered by men in order to become rich.
IV. How the endeavors to become rich are ill placed, since riches are false and vain and turn to nothing.
V. How he who wants to be rich becomes greedy in gaining and mean in giving. First we see the vice of greediness.
VI. On the vice of meanness, that is keeping without spending.
VII. Reasons why man must not be greedy nor mean.
VIII. Here it is clearly explained why the greedy and the mean are never satisfied.
IX. Here it is explained of what the man must make treasure in this world.
X. Here it is explained why many people who were rich have been made saints next to God.
XI. A few arguments that seem to suggest that richness is better than poverty.
XII. Qualities that must be present in the poor so that his poverty is good.
XIII. Qualities that must be in the rich so that is richness is good for him. First we see how he must gain them.
XIV. How the rich man must be able to spend and use his richness.
XV. The rich man must know how to preserve and keep his richness.
XVI. A few other qualities that the rich man must have so that his richness is good.
XVII. The rich man must be courteous and how he must use his courtesy.
XVIII. Why a poor life is said to be blessed and more perfect and batter than a rich life.
XIX. From the desired of the flesh, the vices of gluttony and lust are born. First we discuss of gluttony and the evils that it causes.
XX. On the endeavors of the second vice of the flesh, that is lust, and the evil that follows from it.
XXI. Of the remedies that have been found and that men must use against the vice of lust.
XXII. Of the endeavors of lordship and honors, and the evil for man that follows from them.
XXIII. On the vice of pride, that is born from lordship and honors.
XXIV. On the vice of vainglory and the evil that follows from it.

BOOK FOUR

On the fears of people in this world.

I. The four enemies that cause people to be afraid and from which nightly fears are born [the Devil, the Flesh, Man, the World]
II. The remedies that must be taken against these fears.

BOOK FIVE

On natural death by which people die.

BOOK SIX

On the miseries and pains of the soul after death.

I. Men and women who die without faith go to hell. Our faith says that those that do not respect God's commandments go to hell.
II. Of the two main commandments.
III. How man is due to love God, and what he must do because of that love.
IV. How man must love his neighbor, and what he must do because of that love.
V. The three lesser commandments about the love of God.
VI. The five lesser commandments about the love for one's neighbor.
VII. About man after death.
VIII. On the location and disposition of hell.
IX. How the soul that goes to hell is tormented, by which punishments and torments.
X. How the soul that goes to hell is tormented in its souls.
XI. In response to what some say, that God in not eternally angered towards the sinner.
XII. It is proved by many authorities that God is eternally angered towards the sinner.

BOOK SEVEN

Of the beatitude and glory of the soul that goes to heaven.

I. [Introduction]
II. Of the beatitude and glory of the souls that go to heaven.
III. On the powers of the soul.
IV. On the soul's power to work. And why in the world it works without rest. And how it rests in heaven.
V. On the soul's power to desire. How it is always empty in this world, without ever being full, and how it finds satisfaction in heaven.

BOOK EIGHT

About judgment day.

I. [Introduction]
II. How the world must be undone on judgment day.
III. Here the fifteen signs before judgment are briefly described.
IV. How on judgment day souls must resurrect. How they will be examined and how the sentence will be given.
Obviously, Giamboni's discussion of human life is quite different from the apparent meaning of the central segment of the trump sequence. In particular, there is no great emphasis on the role of fortune (which Giamboni mentions as “ventura”). Moreover, life is not described as a parable from pleasant to unpleasant things. Still I find interesting that a discussion of the conditions of human life is coupled with a discussion of Christian eschatology.


BTW, I found it curious that in Book III Giamboni describes the four main goals of human activity using (almost) the same four categories that the Anonymous author of the XVI Century “Discorso” assigns to the four suits of Tarot. A similar discussion appears in the “De miseria” and in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (I,5), but both Lotario and Aristotle discuss three main goals, presenting the fourth one as secondary or additional. For Aristotle the additional goal is richness.

Lotario leaves out learning (that the Anonymous associates to the Batons):
Lotario De Segni wrote:Tria maxime solent homines affectare: opes, voluptates, honores Usually people are interested in three things: richness, pleasure and honors
In “De consoloatione philosophiae”, Boetius also provides a similar listing, but his list includes five goals: affluence, dignity, power, fame, pleasure.
Boetius wrote: For the desire of the true good is naturally implanted in the minds of men; only error leads them aside out of the way in pursuit of the false. Some, deeming it the highest good to want for nothing, spare no pains to attain affluence; others, judging the good to be that to which respect is most worthily paid, strive to win the reverence of their fellow-citizens by the attainment of official dignity. Some there are who fix the chief good in supreme power; these either wish themselves to enjoy sovereignty, or try to attach themselves to those who have it. Those, again, who think renown to be something of supreme excellence are in haste to spread abroad the glory of their name either through the arts of war or of peace. A great many measure the attainment of good by joy and gladness of heart; these think it the height of happiness to give themselves over to pleasure.
Here is the passage from Bono Giamboni:
E sono le fatiche dell’uomo tante, che non si potrebbe ora dire sopra tutte. Ma dirotti sopra quattro principali, per le quali l’uomo in questo mondo maggiormente s’affatica. L’una si è per divenire savio delle cose; la seconda, per ragunare ricchezze; la terza, per li disiderj della carne; la quarta, per le signorie e per gli onori.
Human endeavors are so many that it is not possible to discuss here all of them. But I will tell you about the main four, for which man strives more in this world. The first is to become learned about things; the second, to collect riches; the third, for the desires of the flesh; the fourth for lordship and honors.
The Anonymous:
sicome l’attioni humane tutte sono indrizzate ad uno di questi
quattro fini, cioè all’ acquisto delle ricchezze ò all’ armi, ò alle lettere, overo
alli piaceri ; cosi fù il giuoco dal prudentissimo Authore principalmente in
quattro parti diviso, cioè in Danari, Spade,b Mazze, et Coppe


Because all human actions are directed to one of these four goals – the gaining of riches, the use of arms, literature, or pleasure – so the very prudent author divided the game into four main parts, that is coins, swords, maces and cups.

Re: Texts paralleling the structure of the trump sequence

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Guillaume de Digulleville (1295 - before 1358) wrote two allegorical works that were likely meant to be published together (they are usually found together in the surviving manuscripts): the Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (the Pilgrimage of the Life of Man) and its sequel, the Pèlerinage de l'âme (the Pilgrimage of the Soul).
The two works are an allegory of human life (in this case, in a form similar to a psychomachia) and a description of the after life, including Judgment. As Giamboni's text, these two works are in the form of a dream allegory (the author presents his allegories as the narration of two visions he had).

The French text of the Pelerinage de la vie humaine is available at p.760 of this pdf.

An ancient English translation of the Pilgrimage of the Soul is available on pilgrim.grozny.nl.

The following summaries of the two works are extracted from www.slv.vic.gov.au, which describes an illustrated English manuscript of the two works.

The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man

Deguilleville's narrator, ostensibly the author himself, relates a vision he experienced while asleep in his bed at the abbey. He dreams he is a pilgrim, who sees from afar the city of Jerusalem in a mirror. Greatly moved by the beauty of the sight he resolves to make a journey to the heavenly city.

After the pilgrim resolves to visit the heavenly city of Jerusalem, he meets Grace Dieu, a beautiful lady who explains that he can accomplish his mission only with her aid. She also explains that having spent nine months in the “hows ful of dunge” he must cross the cleansing water in front of her grand house (fol.4). So the pilgrim receives the first sacrament of baptism and it is only after receiving or witnessing the remaining six sacraments that he is deemed ready for his holy pilgrimage.

Grace Dieu then furnishes him with a pilgrim's essential equipment, the staff, called Hope and his satchel, Faith, hung with twelve bells on which are inscribed the Creed. She also provides him with a protective suit of armour, each part of which is named after Christian virtues such as Patience, Fortitude, Temperance and Sobriety.

The pilgrim then encounters two characters at a crossroad divided by the hedge of Penance. On the right hand side sits an industrious man, Labour, involved in weaving, unravelling and reweaving a mat. On the other side is Idleness, a woman described as playing with a glove in one hand and with the other hand tucked under her arm; both traditional attributes of lechery. Faced with choosing the correct path, the pilgrim promptly forgets Reason's warnings and succumbs to Idleness's promises of music, bodily pleasure and delight. In foolishly taking her road he condemns himself to meeting the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Seven Deadly Sins then attack the pilgrim, taking from him his satchel, Hope but not his staff, Faith. He is desolate, but Grace Dieu reappears and teaches him a prayer, the ABC to the Virgin. His satchel is restored and the old crones hurry away in confusion, but as the narrator/pilgrim ominously adds, he has seen them since then and they have done him great harm.
The pilgrim resumes his journey, finally entering the Ship of Religion, or monastic life. At the end he is visited by Old Age and Infirmity. Just before the approach of Death, he arrives at the gate to the heavenly city of Jerusalem, but learns he cannot enter before payment of his debts in Purgatory — the subject of the Pilgrimage of the Soul. At this point the dreamer is awakened by the bell for Matins at his monastery in Chaalis.


The Pilgrimage of the Soul

In the Pilgrimage of the Soul the narrator again falls asleep and this time dreams of the journey of his soul from the moment of death until it reaches Paradise. The narrative and its illustrations fall into several sections. First, the soul is taken by its guardian angel to be judged at St Michael's court, where God's daughters Justice, Truth and Reason preside. Condemned to temporary punishment in Purgatory, the soul meets its own corpse and has a vision of hell and the punishment of sinners. Recalling the Sins of the first Pilgrimage, several illustrations relate to the various torments of hell reserved for those guilty of usury, gluttony, treason, anger and lechery. One drawing of hell's torments shows sinners hanging by the part of the body associated with their particular sin.


The following section is more discursive, including the allegory of the green tree and the dry tree. The dry tree represents the tree of knowledge that withered when robbed of its fruit by Adam. The guardian of the green tree is the Virgin and its fruit is symbolic of Christ. Justice demands that the living fruit be given to the dry tree as payment for that wrongfully taken by Adam.

After the vision of asses in tombs and another lengthy allegory of two statues, the soul is led into Paradise, where he sees Adam and Eve and their descendants under the Tree of Life. Having reached Paradise, the narrator is woken by a flash of divine light.
Great illustrated manuscripts are available online. For instance at gallica.bnf.fr and the Bodleian Library.
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Re: Texts paralleling the structure of the trump sequence

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Well, all right, I will say something, because this topic is of great interest to me. However my idea of "parallel texts" might be different from that of some. So first I want to address the idea of "texts paralleling the structure of the trump sequence".

If I read Hurst right, he proposes that there are three stories in the tarot. So why not three stories that fit together and parallel the structure of the trump sequence? On the other hand, he proposes that the tarot was invented by just one person. So even better, three stories by the same person. Or three stories about the same person?

In my view the division into three groups is a matter of interpretation, ours or theirs. B is later than A or C. Between the latter two, the designer that came later respected what he or she saw as groups in the one that came earlier. If there are then many possibilities, it is then a matter of our interpretation. How many groups there are and the dividing lines between groups is a matter of interpretation--except, in scoring the game, as regards of groups of "counting cards", individually and in sequences).

The structure, and whether something has the "same" structure, are themselves a matter of interpretation. What the cards mean is a matter of interpretation. But there are limits to interpretation, historical ones. We should not have a structure that would be unreasonable, historically speaking, for an inventor to have in a particular place or time. In fact there aren't that many that are reasonable.

But what are reasonable parallels? I will give an example, something cited by Moshe Idel in a book I am reading, Kabbalah in Italy 1280-1520, p. 378 n77, 78, at http://books.google.com/books?id=T_kD_c ... la&f=false). It is proposed by many, and not opposed that Idel mentions, that Dante's Divine Comedy is in part inspired by a Muslim work translated into Spanish as "Libro de la Scala". It would be unreasonable to assume that Dante's audience knew this work and knew that it paralleled Dante's. But would it be unreasonable to assume that Dante himself was aware of the parallels? I think not. In any case, the works do parallel each other, in that both involve a journey to various levels of heaven and hell (although no purgatory, and heaven first, in the Muslim case). In that sense it is appropriate to speak of the two texts having a parallel structure regardless of anyone then knowing they were parallel. For more on "La Scala", see http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/lib ... ntesca%29/.

So also, texts can be parallel even with different ideologies or religions. One is Muslim, the other is Christian. Also, it is argued (Idel, above, note 78) that the Muslim one itself was influenced by similar, i.e. parallel, Jewish works.

Another consideration is that since the cards are not exactly "texts", it might be unreasonable to confine one's search for parallel structures to just "texts". The structure of Manet's painting "Olympia" parallels Titian's "Venus" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia_%28Manet%29) despite the fact that no attributes of Venus, unless you count nudity, are found in Manet's painting. Structure in painting is about visual relationships between visual elements and themes.

There might also be other games, other than trick-taking card games, with structures in some way parallel to the tarot sequence.

There is also the question of how many trumps need to be considered. I think that a fifth suit must have had at least 5 or 6 of the ones we recognize for it to be called a tarot, even better, 12 or 13 (e.g. Petrarchan triumphs plus virtues). Also, I don't think the Fool is necessarily a trump. The order, too, will be only approximate, since adjustments would have been made for the practicalities of playing the trick-taking game.

Finally, what is the cut-off date for texts to be of interest? In part, it depends on whether we are talking about explaining how the trumps, 22 or whatever, came to be, or about relevant interpretations of the trumps. For the former, it should be a text available at the time and place that those trumps are thought to have come to be. If the latter, it should be a text available at the time alleged for the interpretation,.

With these considerations in mind, I begin.

Single texts parallel with the tarot sequence:

(1) "The tale of Cupid and Psyche" imbedded in Apuleius's Metamorphoses. This was a popular work throughout the Middle Ages, as testified by numerous manuscript copies. In the Renaissance, cassoni used scenes from the tale, as did fresco series in Ferrara (1470s), Rome (1510), Mantua (1520s), and Genoa (1520s). See http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=322, section B23 (Appendix). The imagery is different, but the structure is quite similar. Relevant elaborations can be found in book 11 of the same work, as well as some passages in his philosophical works and the Asclepius, of which he was considered the translator. But the structural parallels are in "Cupid and Psyche". I do not claim this work as a source for the tarot, of course.

(2). Given that the works of pseudo-Dionysius, being short, were always translated together, they should probably be considered one work. If so, "Divine Names" has the trumps from 1 to 11 or so (the "positive way"), and "Celestial Hierarchies" for the trumps from 13-21 (the "negative way"). A fresh translation by Treversari in Florence was available around 1437.I have adumbrated the parallels at viewtopic.php?f=12&t=984&p=14776&hilit=Dionysius#p14738. Supplemental to pseudo-Dionysius are the Chaldean Oracles, in Plethon's edition, which was probably done before 1438, probably brought by him on his visit to Florence in that year, although there is no record of it there until the 1460s; these sayings, as well as the works by Proclus in which many are found, offer many parallels to pseudo-Dionysius and would have helped people to pick out the most relevant material in pseudo-Dionysius. For that, see http://tarotandchaldean.blogspot.com/, Ch. 1 and 3. The Chaldean Oracles have no inherent order, since they are imbedded in other works. For them is a question of parallels betweeen what is depicted in one vs. what is depicted in the other. There is perhaps a loose parallel between the order of trumps and the order of Oracles in Plethon's edition.

(3) Joseph Gikatilla, Sha'are Orah (Gates of Light). This existed only in Hebrew until the publication of Paulo Riccio's abridgement in 1516 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Riccio). However that is no reason to assume it was not known to a few Christians, even in the 14th century.. Moshe Idel in Kabbalah in Italy 1280-1510, 2011, gives an impressive list of borrowings by Christians from Hebrew texts starting in the 11th century (pp. 227ff, i.e. beginning of Ch. 19 at http://books.google.com/books/about/Kab ... kD_cr-VeoC). After this list he adds:
Lacking in these examples is the Christian writer's explicit awareness that when dealing with divine names or with combinatory techniques he is operating in a realm of esoteric Jewish lore. However, such awareness apparently already existed in the last third of the thirteenth century, when Alfonso Sabio's nephew Juan Manuel, testified about his famous uncle: "Furthermore, he ordered translated the whole law of the Jews, and even their Talmud, and other knowledge, which is called Qabbalah and which the Jews keep closely secret. And he did this, so that it might be manifest through their own law that it is a 'mere presentation of that law which we Christians have; and that they, like the Moors, are in grave error and in peril of losing their souls." (7)
This is in Toledo, Spain, of the 1270s. Although Idel offers no data on Italy before Pico, he brings up his examples in the context of Christians in Italy before Pico. It seems to me that the situation would have been similar in Italy as elsewhere, for both the desire to take what is useful and for purposes of conversion. The work of Recananti shows close familiarity with Spanish kabbalah. Already in the 1460s there was a department of Hebrew at Padua, I see from Hanegraaf's Lodovico Lazzarelli that Lazzarelli learned Hebrew then, was exposed to Kabbalist literature in Hebrew, and knew enough to debate a rabbi publicly. Gates of Light has 10 chapters, each of which corresponds to one of the cards, going in order from 11 to 20. But since the ascent to God is also the return to the source, these chapters also tell us about the sequence from10 to 1. I find the symbolic parallels impressive; I have adumbrated them, together with summaries of comparable material in Pico and Reuchlin, at http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/http: ... results=13. Another work explaining the same material, this one by an Italian Jew, is Recananti's Commentary on the Torah, which I know only from Idel's description.

Two works by the same author:
Plutarch: "The Life of Julius Caesar" (trumps 1-13, 16, 17, 19) and chapters 27-30 of "On the Apparent Face in the Orb of the Moon" (trumps 13-21). For one account of the parallel between Caesar and tarot, see Ross viewtopic.php?f=12&t=334&start=240#p14852, although he doesn't refer to Plutarch. He takes it all the way through to the World and the Angel. I don't go that far, just to the Death card. For the "papi" Ross has three classes of Roman society. Myself, I think it could be specific persons.Pontiff Maximus was an actual title of Caesar's. The Emperor and Empress could be his nephew the future Augustus and his wife; other possibilities are those of the Sola-Busca: III Lenpo is Lepidus, Augustus's ally against Brutus; IV Marius was Caesar's uncle. I don't know about the Popess; perhaps his wife Calpurnia, who dreamed of his death the night before, or whatever Sybil was used in support of Caesar's ambitions for one-man rule, as reported by Plutarch. For the parallels to trumps 13-21, see my post at viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&p=14188,

Several works by the same author:
Plato: beginning of Timaeus; selections from the Republic; Phaedrus, sections on the Charioteer and Theuth; Symposium, speeches by Aristophanes, Socrates, Alcibiades. In the mid-15th century, these were his best known works. This requires some cutting and pasting. In the Republic there are several rulers, the four virtues are in C order. and the Sun plays an important role. The Symposium features love in various guises, a crafty old man, and Piscina's "demoni", The Phaedrus has more about love, a chariot, a game-inventor named Theuth and a judgment after death. The parallels have been adumbrated in various threads here.

Works about the same person or theme, multiple authors:
(1) The life of Jesus, in the New Testament (as an impetus to the imitatio Christi). Ross objects that Fortune is out of place here. But Fortune is out of place in general in Christianity. Even Boethius believed that Fortune was illusory. Fortune is governed by Providence; Fortune just turns the wheel. What is most relevant is the up and down motion on the wheel, being hailed by the people in his entry into Jerusalem and their abandonment of him later.

(2) The life of the man-god Dionysus/Osiris, in the classical Greco-Roman corpus (they were considered the same god). I have adumbrated the texts at http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=317 and following pages. The mid-15th century was much into "parallel lives", due to the arrival in Italy of Plutarch's book by that title, comparing Greek and Roman political figures.

(3) The life of Julius Caesar: Plutarch, Seutonius, etc. See Ross's post, viewtopic.php?f=12&t=334&start=240.

(4) The numbers from one to ten in Neopythagoreanism: Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio; Martianus Capella, Marriage of Mercury and Philology, probably other works. Here the structure is given by the number, as corresponding to the right-hand digit of the trump number. (Once a full account was known, by the 1460s in the Theologumena Arithmeticae, this system could have been applied to the number cards as well, as evidenced in the Sola-Busca and later in Etteilla, as I have explained in the thread "Deciphering the Sola-Busca Trumps".) This works less well for trumps 11-21, but forced interpretations were not unusual in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. See my discussion at viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&p=14206&hilit=Macrobius#p14206.

Visual plus verbal: Petrarch Trionfi, Boccaccio Amorosa Visione, the Virtue-Vice paintings by Giotto in Padua, plus the Cosmographs in the untitled, anonymous work referred to now as "Journey of the Soul" (in the Visconti Library per Ross, see viewtopic.php?f=12&t=172&p=14568&hilit=journey#p14577). On the visual parallels to Giotto, see my post at viewtopic.php?f=12&t=848. Also, for the first five trumps, there is the frontispiece to a 1400 Lombard edition of Petrarch's De Remediis.

Games:
Chess (to the Cary-Yale). Huck has explained this several times, e.g. to me at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=788&hilit=chess+an ... =20#p11571.
Goose (if it existed in Italy before tarot had 22 trumps; if not, there was an Indian game with parallels). Discussed at viewtopic.php?f=12&t=913&start=10#p14923 and following.

Other possibilities:

Dante, Divine Comedy. The parallels to Dante are presumably adumbrated in William Marston Seabury, The Tarot Cards and Dante's Divine Comedy, New York, 1951 (Game of Tarot p. 387). I haven't read it. I've ordered it from Interlibrary loan, but it's very rare and I don't know if I'll get it.

The life of the Visconti-Sforza family, as adumbrated in Filelfo, the Sforziade and general knowledge at the time. I am thinking of the first 13 of the PMB as prior to Francesco's death, and the others after his death, reflecting his daughter Elisabetta, the Judgment common to everyone, and the future of Milan as paralleling the New Jerusalem.

Some alchemical work. I haven't found one, or even two or three combined, with enough parallels, but then I haven't found any complete texts at all of alchemical works known in Italy before 1460 and translated into a modern language, except a few by George Ripley. In his "Scrowle" I see some parallels: the alchemist, the dragon, and masculine Mercury are all like the Bagat, feminine Mercury like the Popess, the Empress and Emperor like salt and sulphur (the feminine and the masculine), the Pope like an alchemical adept; then there is a marriage, then various operations of weighing (justice), heating (fire, courage) and cooling (temperance), then one or more deaths, then more heating, then sublimation, the Moon and the Sun and something beyond that. I see these in just this sequence in the 17th century, but can't find a text with all of this for the 15th..Like the tarot, the Lullian Rosarium Philosophorum (Rosary of the Philosophers) had a sequence of images leading to the goal of eternal life, 20 of them in fact, but I do not see parallels with the tarot sequence.
cron