With this, I am suggesting that, even though many of us come to this with different experiences and expectations, we agree on some basics? How many points can we, as a group, go in general agreement? and when we do break off from the group, can we support our reason why? I'm placing this in the research area, because I would hope that we can approach this from a historical rather than exploratory point of view.
The "game" really is to try to get the list as long as possible, rather than to post things that we can't agree on.
So I will keep the list in this first post of the items that we seem to be okay with, and let's see how many of them we can add in. Shall we try just adding one "building block" per post, and see how far we can get?
Tarot History Building Blocks that are generally agreed upon my forum members:
- Tarot was invented in the 15th century for game-playing.
- Tarot's invention arose by adding a new set of cards (the Trumps) to a previously existing type of playing cards deck derived from the 13th century Mamluk deck, consisting of pips and figures divided in four different suits
- The set of trumps originally reflected imagery that was common and meaningful that was:
- informed by orthodox religious motifs of the Roman Catholic church; and
- influenced by Trionfi traditions
- Three families of orders arose by the 16th [? 17th?] century for the trump series, referred to as the A ('southern' - Bologna & Florence), B ('eastern' - Ferrara & Venice), and C ('northern' - Milan, also commonly named 'Marseille') patterns
- The original set of trumps did not reflect a sequence of esoteric, alchemical, kabbalistic, numerological, geomantic, astrological, heretical nor magical narrative
- A "standard tarot deck" has come to include 22 trumps (sometimes delineated as 1 Fool and 21 other trumps), with four other suits which include a total of 16 court cards and 40 pips, for a total equalling 78 cards.
- ...next?