The Sun

[SteveM]

...The particular details I am concerned with--the Fool's testicles, the Pope's assistant's sickle or dagger, and the left twin's tail--are most likely late 17th to 18th century additions to the cards.

I have looked but cannot make out what you are describing as the Pope's assistants's sickle / dagger.

edited to add: saw you post on the Pope, I see it now: could be a fold of the Pope's clothing, but may be my poetic identification of them with the Gemini of the Sun card above them (taking both the Pope and Sun, lights of the world, in a 3x7 grid pattern of the trumps). So the one on the left is Pollux (bearer of the Sickle), that triangular thing next to Castor with several lines down the top line, is that the Lyre of Castor maybe

As far as the tail or sickle, as applied to the "Marseille," we are talking late 17th and early 18th century France ("Chosson" and Conver). If people looking at the old zodiacs then saw Castor or Pollux with the "peaceful sickle" of agriculture, that identifies it with Saturn's sickle, Roman god of agriculture.

I think the appelation 'peaceful sickle' is Allen's own description, based upon his own misunderstanding, I don't think we can assume that people of the 17th and 18th century made the same error as he, I have seen no reference or source that anyone of the 17th or 18th centuries identified the sickle of Pollux with Saturn.

[mikeh]

I have been trying to find out what was known about Castor, Pollux, beavers, etc. in the 15th-17th centuries.

The anecdote about beavers being sought after for their testicles and self-castrating themselves to avoid death, is in Claudius Aelianus's De Nature Animalium, a Roman-era work in Greek well-known in manuscript, according to http://www.summagallicana.it/lessico/e/ ... 20Aelianus. It was published in Latin translation in 1562, according to the title page reproduced on that site.

Alciati's book of emblems, published 1556 Lyon, has a woodcut of the beast in the act of self-castration, with a verse and the relevant excerpt from Aelianus. I take this from http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alcia ... id=A56a085.



The tree in the background, a cut-off trunk, with humanoid roots and new shoots springing from it, is a standard symbol of rebirth, thus confirming my interpretation of Isadore's beaver, the "Castor," in Italian.

(People may not be familiar with this meaning of stumps. Perhaps I should digress a bit, inserting something form an old post of mine on Aeclectic (http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.ph ... ost2032651). In stump imagery, a branch usually grows upwards out of the top, signifying death and resurrection. Here are two examples, both from the Renaissance:



These images are from Gerhard Ladner, "Vegetation Symbolism and the Concept of Renaissance," in Images and Ideas in the Middle Ages, p. 746 p. 746, figs. 4 and 5, at Google Books). The designation "falcon" is Leonardo's. But it looks to me more like Noah’s dove, bringing back a twig of new life. As Ladner observes (p. 733), the theme is clearly that of renewal. The branch on the stump is an image that goes back at least to Roman times: a Roman fresco found at the Villa Farnesina shows the killing of the infant Dionysus accompanied by the same motif (Ladner p. 733). And the historian Livy used the image to describe the renewal of Rome after its destruction by the Gauls (Ladner p. 731).)

Since there are many shoots in the Alciati image, it is probably a symbol for the death of Christ and the rebirth of Christians.

Here are some more historical connections betwen the Dioscori and Christianity. In The Spaniards, an Introduction to their History, in Google books, the authors quote Mark 3:17:

"And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James, and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, the sons of thunder." Now "sons of thunder" corresponds in meaning to the Greek Dios-kuroi or "sons of Jupiter the Thunderer"...(p. 390.)

At one point James and John even ask Jesus if they should bring down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans (Luke 9:54). Jesus declines the offer. The Dioscuri were also identified with Peter and Paul, and in Naples the church of San Paolo Maggiore was built on the site of a former temple of the Dioscuri, the columns of which still stood in the seventeenth century, with the statues of Castor and Pollux lying down behind those of Peter and Paul. In the popular imagination they were identified with the Saints Michael and George, and the medical saints Cosmas and Damian (p. 391, citing Le Culte de Castor et Pollux en Italie[i] by Maurice Albert, 1883, pp. 47f, and the [i]Reallexicon fuer Antike und Christendom 1957, entry for "Dioscuri").

The Albert book is in Google Books, but only the first 40 pages. Another book for me to get on Interlibrary Loan. From what I have read so far, the caps can take various shapes, including Phrygian, but they are usually portrayed as ovel: they are to suggest the eggshell from which they hatched, as sons of Leda.

Here is a coin showing the Dioscuri with their caps (from http://lab.dartmouth.edu/art2artifact/c ... sym02.html)



If the hats were Phyrgian, they would curve loosely to the side at the top.

[mikeh]

I have been trying to find out what was known about Castor, Pollux, beavers, etc. in the 15th-17th centuries.

Three additions to my preceding post.

(1) In Cartari, digitalized 1647 text (section on Giove; see first quote in point 2 below), I see that he does not use the term "Dioscuri" to refer to Castor and Pollux. His term is "Castori," a word that also means, in Italian, "Beavers." The Vulgate follows this same practice, in Acts 28:11:

post menses autem tres navigavimus in nave alexandrina quae in insula hiemaverat cui erat insigne Castorum. (And after three months, we sailed in a ship of Alexandria, that had wintered in the island, whose sign was the Castors.)

Most translations, including the King James, substitute for Douay-Rheims' "the Castors" something else, either "the Dioscuri" or "Castor and Pollux." However in 16th-18th century France and Italy the Vulgate was still the norm.

(2) Cartari includes in his discussion of the "Castori" a section on the meaning of the twins' cap. He says it was a symbol of freedom, ceremonially bestowed upon slaves granted their freedom. He quotes a line from Plautus; in my machine-assisted translation of Cartari that follows the Italian, I have inserted a translation of the line from Plautus rather than Cartari's version, which I could not make sense of.

E perciò Catullo in certo suo epigramma gli chiama fratelli Pileati, perche Pileo, che è voce Latina, significa capello in volgare. Pausania perimente scrive, che in certo luogo della Laconia erano alcune figurette Pileate, le quali ei non sa troppo bene se fossero fatte per gli Castori, (che sotto il nome dell'uno intesero gli antichi ambi i fratelli,) ma ben lo pensa. Ne lascierò hora di dire, che'l Pileo appresso de Romani fu la insegna della libertà, perciò che fu loro usanza, che quando volevano dare la libertà ad un servo gli facevano radere il capo, e gli davano à portare un capello. La quale cerimonia era fatta nel tempio di Feronia, perche questa fu la Dea di quelli, alli quali era donata la libertà, detti Libertini. Onde Plauto fa cosi dire un servo desideroso della libertà. Deh voglia Dio ch'io possa hoggi co'l capo raso pigliare il capello.

(And therefore Catullus in a certain epigram calls the brothers Pileati, because Pileo, that is Latin speech, means cap in the vulgar. Pausanias likewise writes, there were some figurettes Pileate in a certain place in Laconia, which he doesn't know for certain if they were done of the Castori, (for under that name was meant by the ancients the name of the twin brothers) but he believes it. Of it lascierò now to say, che'l Pileo I approach Roman de it was the insignia of liberty, therefore that it was their custom, that when they wanted to give liberty to a servant, they shaved his head, and they gave him a cap to wear. The ceremony was done in the temple of Feronia, because this was the Goddess of those to whom liberty was given, called Libertines. Whence Plautus says similarly of a servant desirous of his liberty: "May Jupiter [God, Catari says] grant, that this day, bald, with shaven crown, I may assume the cap of freedom." (AMPHITRYON ; Act 1, http://www.archive.org/stream/comedieso ... t_djvu.txt)

The cap, or Pileo, was also used as a symbol of liberty after the death of Julius Caesar by the conspirators and by the populace after the death of Nero:

E leggesi, che in Roma, ammazzato che fu Giulio Cesare, furono piantate su le piazze haste con il Pileo in cima, volendo in quel modo chiamare il popolo, e tutta la Città alla libertà di prima. Quando i Romani havevano bisogno di soldati, ò che voleva tra loro qualche uno levare tumulto, e seditione, chiamavano gli servi al Pileo, intendendosi perciò, che à tutti davano la libertà, accioche per quella havessero da combattere. Da che viene anchora, che su certe medaglie antiche di Bruto si vede un capello posto sopra due pugnali, mostrando perciò, ch'egli uccise il Tiranno, e rese la libertà alla patria. E morto che fu Nerone, la plebe in Roma, come scrive Svetonio, e per le Provincie anchora, andava festeggiando con capelli in capo, volendo in quel modo mostrare, che era liberata da grave, e crudele servitù.

(And leggesi, that in Rome, they who killed Julius Caesar planted on the plazas haste [spears?] with the Pileo on top, wanting in that way to call the people and the whole City to the liberty of before. When the Roman had need of soldiers, because there were those among them who wanted to raise tumult and sedition, they called the servants to the Pileo, intending therefore, to gave liberty, accioche for those that fought. From which it also comes, that one sees a cap set above two daggers on certain ancient medals of Brutus, showing therefore, that he killed the Tyrant and freed the country. When Nero was dead, as Seutonius writes, the populace in Rome and in the Provinces as well, went celebrating with caps on their heads, wanting in that way to show that they were freed from serious and cruel servitude.)

So putting the Dioscuri in the Sun card might be a way of symbolizing the final freedom of the human spirit, the liberation from the body that comes at the Last Judgment. The part about shaving the head as part of the freedom ceremony for slaves is of interest for the Pope card, so I will discuss it further on that thread.

(3) For more on the Dioscuri-Christ parallels, and some differences, there is an article on the Web, "Pindar’s Celebration of Peace: An Interpretation of the 10th Nemean Ode," by Joachim Ringleben, University of Göttingen, trans. Douglas Hedley and Russell Manning, at http://www.arsdisputandi.org/index.html ... index.html. Here is a quote:

i. For Pindar, a son of God takes on his human brother, saves him from death and lets him share in his heavenly destiny, in so far he also shares his subterranean being. According to the New Testament, the son of God becomes man and suffers – in a person at once God and Man – the fate of death for the sins of others, who in ‘gay exchange’ can share in his eternal life.

I have not found any writer in the 16th-18th centuries saying something similar, but the parallel seems straightforward enough.

[mikeh]

I have found one more text, this one from 1883, describing the use of Castor and Pollux to depict the "Death and Rebirth" theme, first in Roman paganism and then Christianity. It gives some suggestion that the use of the Diocuri in this way was something that would have been known in the Renaissance, in that one example appears in a church in Rome, from the time of Innocent III (12th-13th centuries). Here are two of the concluding paragraphs and my machine-assisted translation.

Ainsi, Castor et Pollux apparaîtraient toujours et partout, même sur les tombeaux, comme des divinités bienveillantes et secourables. Ils indiqueraient que tout ne sera pas fini après le coucher du soleil, qu'il y aura un lendemain, et que la journée qui s'achève sur terre sera suivie dans le ciel, où demeurent les grands dieux, d'une autre journée qui n'aura pas de terme.

C'est sans doute parce qu'une idée consolante de résurrection et d'immortalité se cachait sous ces représentations allégoriques des Dioscures, que les chrétiens n'ont pas hésité à les adopter pour leurs morts. --Encore aujourd'hui on peut voir à Rome dans l'église de San-Lorenzo, un sarcophage qui renferme les restes d'un cardinal puissant, neveu d'Innocent III, et sur les parois extérieures duquel sont représentés Castor et Pollux, à côté du char du Soleil et de celui de la Nuit (2). Au quatrième siècle de notre ère, on était moins scrupuleux encore. Ce n'est pas seulement comme personnages secondaires de scènes allégoriques, que les Dioscures apparaissent sur plusieurs monuments funèbres adoptés par les chrétiens. On les retrouve aussi, bien visibles et en plein relief, sur des tombeaux dont ils sont une des principales décorations. Tel est, par example, le sarcophage d'Arles (3). Deux scènes purement chrétiens, la Multiplication des pains et la Pêche miraculeuse, ont été ajoutées sur les parois latérales; mais sur la face antérieure, les statues de Castor et de Pollux ont été sculptées par un païen et pour un païen. C'est que la religion nouvelle considérait ces deux personnages bien moins comme des héros grecs ou des dieux romains, que comme de clairs et poétiques symboles de la mort et de la résurrection.

Notes: (2) Catalogue no. 190. (A gauche, Phoebus monté sur un quadrige au-dessus duquel vole une femme ailée (l'Aurore). Devant le char, une montagne abrupte: à côté, Castor conduisant son cheval par la bride. A droite, Pollux, semblable à son frère, marche à côté d'une bige que monte une femme, dont les chevaux s'abattent sur les jambes de devant....)

(3) Catalogue No. 204. (Quatre représentations dans quatre compartiments: Au milieu, deux époux; l'homme est imberbe. a côté, scène pareille, mais l'homme est barbu. Aux deux angles, Castor et Pollux toujours les mêmes, à cette exception près que le Dioscure figuré du côté de l'homme barbu porte lui aussi de la barbe, tandis que l'autre est imberbe comme le jeune époux du milieu.)

Maurice Albert, Le Culte de Castor et Pollux en Italie, Paris 1883, pp. 114, 157, 161.

Translation:

So, Castor and Pollux would appear always and everywhere, even on graves, as friendly and helping divinities. They would indicate that everything will not be finished after the setting of the sun, that there will be the next day, and that the day which ends on earth will be followed in the sky, where live the big gods, by another day which will have no term.

It is doubtless because a comforting idea of resurrection and immortality hid under these allegorical representations of the Dioscuri, that the Christians did not hesitate to adopt them for their deaths. - Even today we can see in Rome in the church of San-Lorenzo, a sarcophagus which contains the remains of a powerful cardinal, a nephew of Innocent III, on the outside walls of which is represented Castor and Pollux, next to the car of the Sun and that of the Night (2). In the fourth century AD, they were less scrupulous still. It is not only as minor characters of allegorical scenes that the Dioscuri appear on several funeral monuments adopted by the Christians. We also find them, very visible and in high relief, on graves of which they are one of main decorations. Such is, for example, the sarcophagus of Arles (3). Two purely Christian scenes, the Multiplication of the Bread and the miraculous Fishing, were added on the side walls; but on the previous face, the statues of Castor and Pollux were sculpted by a heathen for a heathen. It is because the new religion considered these two characters much less as Greek heroes or Roman gods, than as clear and poetic symbols of death and resurrection.

Footnotes: (2) Catalogue no. 190. (To the left, Phoebus mounted on a quadriga above from which a winged woman (Aurora) flies. In front of the car, a steep mountain: close, Beaver leading his horse by the rein. To the right, Pollux, fellow man to his brother, walks next to a bige which takes up a woman, whose horses beat down on their front legs....)

(3) Catalogue no. 204. (Four representations in four compartments: in the middle, two spouses; the man is beardless. On the side, a similar scene, but the man is bearded. In both corners, Castor and Pollux always the same except that the Dioscure depicted beside the bearded man also wears a beard, whereas the other one is beardless like the young husband in the middle. )

Maurice Albert, The Cult of Castor and Pollux in Italy, Paris 1883, p. 114. Catalogue descriptions p. 157 and 161.

Albert discusses the significance of the bearded vs unbearded men at length earlier in the chapter. Originally it might have mant either youth and old age or death and rebirth. Albert is suggesting that the Christian adaptation saw it as death and rebirth.

Another interesting aspect of these sarcophagi is the appearance of Phoebus, the sun god, on many of them (catalogue nos. 187, 188, 189, 190, 191). Albert suggests, for example in the first paragraph quoted above, that the sun represents that which sets but also rises again--i.e. rebirth. The Dioscuri on these sarcophagi are not themselves Apollo and Hercules, from this perspective. When Hercules is depicted on them, he always has his lion-skin (nos. 193, 194, 195).