OnePotato wrote:
Yes, I have been quiet.
I sincerely do regret that, I have always appreciated your contributions. I hope you will continue to participate more regularly.
OnePotato wrote:You have listed a series of imagery interpretations and evaluations for 22 trumps.
That interests me.
No, you did not use the phrase "only a game" here. I apologize for the misleading quotation marks.
Earlier, in response to Lorredan, you said:
"...They are what they are. They were used for playing a game, and they had Christian images on them. I don't see any way around that.... ....(several lines snipped).... ...I think the obvious allegories are the more appealing, without the need to have a secondary layer to them."
So, with your latest clarification to "primarily", I can rephrase my question as:
Can you suggest a reason why all of this information you have listed would have been "used primarily as a game"?
Or
Can you suggest a reason why this particular information would be employed in an invention with the primary purpose of playing a game?
Not really. I tend to focus on the things that are there rather than trying to imagine why they are there. I think I'm rather a "show me" person, which is why I like visual examples, and tend to focus on the actual cards rather than the details that many others in this research enjoy.
We know these were cards used in a game. My point with the list, and my earlier response to Lorredan, was really to show that on one hand, I find most of the cards to be fairly typical of the type we might expect from the period, and on the other, there were exceptions to that I acknowledged didn't seem to fit so easily into it that paradigm. i don't find anything unusual about cards like the Pope, Love, Death, Time, Judgement, and the World (especially if seen as representing God or Christ). The Virtues too seem right in place. We can see the Hanged Man as being very much a characteristic of that time and place. But I tried to point out that other cards like the Popess, Empress, Magician, Tower, and maybe a few others, seem a bit out of place when compared to the rest of the cards in the trumps, but not necessarily strange in their depictions of the subjects.
OnePotato wrote:
I ask you because as I read it, the thread appears to be about straightforward Christian imagery being interpreted (by Lorredan) as not actually being straight Christian imagery, but game-related Christian imagery, that only looks like straight Christian imagery. While you, and I presume others here, often appear to practically insist, (or at the very least strongly imply,) that an allegory is just an allegory, and that's it. Period. And, as you say above, you don't see the "need to have a secondary layer."
Well the thread is certainly changing and evolving while it goes along. The original question was what card was it and can the tarot be shown to show Christian imagery of Christ or God before the 16th century, and it was stated rather as a challenge. I tried to answer that challenge, because I believe it can.
I've not yet been shown what "game-related Christian imagery" is, or if I have, I've misunderstood. It seemed rather a statement than any particular examples. I'm still somewhat puzzled by why the tarot is supposedly not Christian, but game-related Christian, but I suppose I'm repeating myself as I covered that in the list.
I'm not sure I insist on too much in tarot. If anything, I'm skeptical of nearly everything. I've not accepted Michael Hurst's theory, Ross' theory, Huck's theory, or anyone else's for that matter, and I don't have one of my own. I think my method of trying to understand the history of the tarot is ridiculously pragmatic and unimaginative: I just look at what's on the cards and compare them to each other and the art that was there at the time. My years of looking at these things has resulted in some ideas that I do embrace, but almost all of them are very much up for change to reflect new information. I think of myself as still a Tarot Agnostic, looking for the answer, but not really buying into what I see out there most of the time and not really having an answer of my own. With the Tarot de Marseille, I see the image of Judgement, and I see the iconography on the World, and yeah, I think it looks very much like the other art of the period. Is there a non-Christian or "game-related Christian" interpretation of Judgement that I should consider?
OnePotato wrote:So, the way I see it, perhaps the question here is not a matter of "need" for a secondary layer, but rather, how literal does one think these people were, as opposed to our current culture, that one should presume there are no secondary layers of intention in these designs that they produced?
Sorry if you thought I had a more complex secret agenda.
If the secondary layer can be presented in a convincing manner, I'd applaud it. I'm skeptical because so many of these secondary layers seem like forced attachments rather than actual integral pieces. I have no "Christian" axe to grind, I really don't. Surely, it was a game, and it was a Christian environment that it developed in, So I'll look forward to seeing how well a game-related Christianity fits into this.
As for secret agendas, I only hoped for a plain expression of what you were hoping to discuss, as I wasn't sure. I apologise if it seemed I was accusing you of underhandedness.