Decker's new book
Posted: 03 Sep 2013, 00:25
PART 1: ON HERMETISM, ORIGIN AND SYMBOLISM OF THE SUITS, AND ORIGIN OF THE TAROT
I have commented on Decker's new book The Esoteric Tarot already in a few other threads. However I think there should be a thread devoted to the book as such, because it is rich in ideas--richer, in fact, in ideas than in arguments or documentation. So there is fertile ground for the rest of us to look at them (the ideas in relation to arguments and documentation). I open this thread in the Unicorn Terrace because one of the main themes of the book is a particular theory about the original tarot sequence.
The Introduction introduces the idea that the trump sequence is composed of "hieroglyphs" in the Renaissance sense of pictures with meanings known only to qualified interpreters. In a way they are like statements in the Bible, which were interpretable on four levels. He illustrates the general point with two cards, the first, which he calls the Juggler, and the last, the World, with reference to an illustration by Hans Holbein, so that the Juggler comes out to be the Good Demon of late classical thought, and the World comes out to be Good Fortune in some of its later manifestations, but originally, he maintains with the help of a text by Apuleius, Isis. I have discussed these ideas already (at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&start=40#p14102, viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&start=40#p14112 and viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&start=40#p14127), so I will skip them here. (Please don't think I agree with them, at least as regards the "original tarot". I have no opinion on that, until I have thoroughly assessed Decker's argument, meaning the first seven chapters of his book.)
The cards are thus for Decker allegories "culminating in the triumph of Isis" (p. 17). His thesis is that the cards originally were designed by someone knowledgeable about Greco-Roman writers enchanted by Egypt (p. 17):
Both the Introduction and Chapter One talk about Thoth, mentioned in Plato's Phaedrus, 274B, a text he says (p. 9) was available in Italy from 1423 (he cites Michael J. B. Allen, Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer, p. 5). Plato was supposed to have studied in Egypt (p. 27):
From Plato the Corpus Hermeticum combined Egyptian religion with Greek mythology and philosophy. The Corpus arrived in Italy in the 1460s, he says, p. 29 (actually, 1460 precisely, per Wikipedia), too late to have influenced the tarot. However Latin intermediaries were enough to have influenced the imagery and order of the original trumps. He gives a brief survey of these: Cicero, Manilius, Apuleius, Tertullian, Cyprian, the Latin Aesclepius, Lactantius, Julius Firmicus Maternus, Ammianus, Augustine. He also mentions the Greeks Clement of Alexandria, Plotinus, and finally "Horapollo", author of the Hieroglyphica. He does not document that all of these authors were known in early 15th century Italy, but I have checked and all were except possibly Clement, for whom there is no evidence until Ficino's time (http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=2457172),
Chapter Two discusses the evolution of the suit cards. He says that they evolved from dice via domino cards, 21 of them for each combination of two dice, which the Chinese duplicated and reduplicated to make decks of cards, but without suits. The next deck known is that of the Moguls, which the Muslims introduced from Persia into India; it had 8 suits of 10 number cards plus 2 courts. Decks also went west to the Mamelukes in Egypt, probably after the lifting of a papal embargo on Muslim goods in 1344; at that time the Mamelukes were favored by Italian shippers (p. 50). Their deck had 4 suits with 3 courts (p. 46f). My only query is about decks in Europe elsewhere, e.g. Marseille, Barcelona, and especially Spain, where Muslims still controlled the South, and many Muslims lived in Christian territory.
Now Decker advances a theory about hidden astrological significances in ordinary cards, starting with the Mogul suits, which he hypothesize happened when the 8 suits reached the city of Harran, which retained its worship of the Greco-Roman gods and something of Hermetism (p. 52). Decker assumes they had the Corpus Hermeticum; but his source only refers to "Hermetic magical practices". Decker says that in Hermetism Thoth was associated with the Moon, as opposed to Selene, Diana, or some other female goddess. In Copenhaver, I see that association only in the notes, as a fact about the historical Thoth in Egypt and not something in the Hermetica. I find no reference to Thoth in the tractates themselves; there is the easily confused pupil "Tat", but he is hardly the god himself. I have looked in the ancient secondary sources as well , but of course not everything.
The 8 suits were each given one of the planets, plus the "Part of Fortune", which in astrology had to do with material fortune, Decker theorizes. His argument is to compare the colors of the Mogul suits with those associated with these entities in writings about the temples of the gods in Harran (p. 58); he finds a close match and thus identifies each of the eight with the corresponding astrological entity (p. 56). Somehow the suits were reduced to four, those planetary entities associated with fire and water, which are the first elements created in the Hermetic creation myth. He gives no reference, but it is easy to find on p. 2 of Copenhaver's Hermetica.
Thoth, the ibis-headed inventor of writing according to Plato and shown in images as a scribe or architect with a writing or measuring stick, became in Europe the deity associated with Batons, Decker says. He poses the Picatrix as an intermediary here: one of its talismans bears the image of ibis-headed Thoth with his measuring stick, although the depiction has been reduced to "a man with the head of a bird leaning on a cane" (p. 55). As I discussed at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&start=40#p14102, I found an additional reference, more accessible than the Picatrix: in the The Marriage of Mercury and Philology, a divination-related ibis is shown with a staff.
The other astrological associations, he theorizes, were the Sun for Coins, Venus for Cups, and Mars for Swords (p. 62). So there are two fire signs and two water signs.
How would the Europeans have managed to learn the astrological symbolism? Decker says that the Mamelukes retained the symbolism in their suit cards. The polo sticks, corresponding to Batons, appear between two crescent moons (p. 58); also the sticks sometimes end in dragons. In astrology the head of the dragon and the tail of the dragon are two "nodes" of the moon (p. 59). In the case of Cups, Venus is a water sign, and in the Mamlukedeck in the Topkapi museum, ducks are associated with Cups. Also the suit of Harps in the Mogul deck are green, which is the tint of copper when it tarnishes, the metal of Venus; musical instruments and cups are associated with Venus in Mameluke art (no references). Finally,
More elaboration would have been nice.
Here is my assessment so far. Looking on the Web for discussions of Mogul/Moghul cards, especially at the pages in "Andy's Playing Cards", I see a variety of suits and colors, including an astrological deck of 9 suits, including the seven planets and both the head and the tail of the Dragon (http://a_pollett.tripod.com/cards56.htm). The colors for the various planet-cards pictured do not match Decker's assignments; but the mere existence of such a deck is enough to establish what Decker needs for an assignment of some Mogul decks' suits to planets. On Wikipedia, I see a description of a Moghul deck of 8 suits with 12 cards each at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganjifa; but nothing else is said about it. Wikipeida gives a link to Ambraser Hofjagdspiel and Hofamterspiel, but I find nothing about either in the "Ganjifa" article, or anything about Ganjifa or Moghuls in the other articles. Perhaps Huck or someone else knows a connection, other than that these games, too, have 12 cards per suit (in 4 suits).
I want to say something else in support of Decker's thesis that Europeans learned the planetary associations from the Muslims, orally and by what was on the cards. In its favor are some things de Mellet says about the suit cards, as though he is reporting from his own observations or what he has heard from others. On two of the Aces, reporting on Spanish names for the cards (I am using J. Karlin's translation in Rhapsodies of the Bizarre, pp. 55-57; the original is at http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherch ... les_Tarots):
And in the section IV:
And for the suits (sections IV-V):
The Moon is particularly good for Batons and the countryside, because (a) cudgels are the weapon allowed to peasants; (b) the Serpent was indeed sacred to the Egyptians, in that authorities such as Horapollo had it as a symbol of the "Almighty" and "Spirit" (Hieroglyphica I, 64); (c) the Moon both waxes and wanes, and so could be seen as bringing both good and evil; (d) the Moon is important to farmers for the planting cycle. This account has the virtue of not depending on Thoth as the deity of the Moon, as the serpent is associated with the supernatural in many traditions, while Thoth is not connected with serpents in any ancient text available in the Renaissance that I have found, except in a general way by Augustine as the god from which Hermes Trismegistus is descended. So one explanation for de Mellet's characterizations would be as a survival from the Moguls through the Muslims.
According to Decker, the Europeans, when they introduced Queens so as to make four courts, also associated the courts with these same four deities: the Sun for Kings, Venus for Queens, Mars for Knights, and the Moon/Thoth for Pages (p. 66). With astrological input from both the suit and the rank, the combination of planets can induce conflict or not, according to standard medieval astrological associations (p. 68).
For the four that have the same planet each way (suit and court), Decker sees astrological symbolism visually in the cards. The Tarot de Marseille King of Coins "sits with legs crossed in a meditative pose, which bespeaks an Apollonian person" (p. 68). He adds that the pose can be traced back through medieval portrayals of saints to ancient portrayals of poets and philosophers. Actually the King of Cups also has legs crossed in the Tarot de Marseille (in the PBM, Batons), all except Cups in the Budapest cards (p. 277 Kaplan vol. 2), as well as the Emperor (Tarot de Marseille and CY) and the Hanged Man in the trumps. On the other hand, Panofsky says that in the Renaissance crossed legs symbolized the detachment necessary for judges (Life and Art of Albrecht Durer, p. 78):
And the image that he is commenting on, a Durer Christ, has solar symbolism top and bottom:
Decker continues
See http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-ima ... en-of-Cups. This detail is absent from any extant 15th century cards, and it is a forced interpretation of a small detail in any case.
He adds, "The armored Knight of Swords would Qualify as Mars. But all the Swords males have armor, in the early cards. And in Batons, the Page "wears a distinctive cap (a Phrygian cap) which may indicate a traveler (therefore a ward of the moon)". I don't think it's really Phrygian, which twists forward at the end (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_cap; compare with http://www.planetlight.com/td/content/page-wands), and in any case none of the early cards have him with such a cap.
So I reject the idea that there is planetary symbolism in the courts.
Decker uses his theory about the courts to explain why in some card games the Coins and Cups are ranked Ace, Two, etc. in trick-taking ability, while in the other suits it goes Ten, Nine, etc (p. 70). He says that the Sun and Venus were considered "good" astrological signs and Mars and the Moon "bad" ones. If the power of the suits starts with the Ace, then in Coins and Cups the Ace is the "best", but in the others, it is "worst."
But it seems to me that this same result would come about if war and violence (swords and sticks) are "bad", while wealth and piety/pleasure are "good", independently of astrology,
Chapter Three begins with an account of Marziano's "game of the gods", fairly straightforwardly derivative from Ross's analysis on trionfi.com, which Decker cites. Then comes his defense of a 14 card original sequence, expanded to 22 later pp. 76-77). It is the familiar one advanced here (with much criticism) by Huck (although without crediting Huck and unlike Huck not involving the PMB or the Charles VI). He bases himself on the 14 "figures" in Ferrara of Jan. 1, 1441, followed by the 1442 order there for "triumphs" and the 70 card deck order of 1457 (4x14 + 14). He seems to have written this before the Giusti document of Florence was brought to general attention. He opts for Milan as where the tarot was invented, apparently on the basis of his preference for the "C" order of the triumphs, reflected in the Tarot of Marseille (Tarot de Marseille), of which he holds that a "prototype" was the first tarot, at first with just the first 14 cards of the Tarot de Marseille (numbers 1-14), to which the other 8 were added later, by 1465.
Decker adds that the 14 card deck was first proposed by him in 1974 (Journal of the International Playing Card Society 3:1, Aug. 1974, pp. 24ff). However a look at his article shows that the number 14 there is mostly coincidence. He is speaking of the Cary-Yale, on the grounds that if there were 16 cards per suits, it takes 14 more to add up to 78. He also considers--but does not endorse--the idea that the PMB has 14 (as Huck maintains); the problem is that since the Cary-Yale had a Strength and a World card, it would seem likely they would have been in the PMB, too. (One solution that occurs to me is that if the Popess represents Prudence, as Decker maintains later, then the CY World, with its wise-looking trumpet-holding lady, could have been re-imagined as the Popess,and the Fool, present in the extant PMB but not the CY, is not part of the 14. But Decker does not go that route.)
In the current book, Decker does not maintain that the PMB had 14 cards; he hardly mentions that deck. He does not mention the Cary-Yale of c. 1441-1445. Instead, we are given his Tarot de Marseille ur-Tarot, probably coming out of Milan but maybe Ferrara, perhaps the "14 figures" of Jan. 1, 1440, perhaps invented by Bianca Maria Sforza; it is the "prototype" of the Tarot de Marseille's first 14 cards (p. 79) and apparently looks more like the Tarot de Marseille than any extant 15th century decks, as we shall see .
One argument he gives for the priority of the Tarot de Marseille is correspondences between the Tarot de Marseille and Milanese fashion and heraldry:
Also, the Ace of Swords' blade is "encircled with a crown that is draped with two fronds, palm and laurel...The Viscontis adopted the motif of crown and fronds as a heraldic device" (p. 78f). But the most these would show is that the Tarot de Marseille is descended from the decks sponsored by the Visconti-Sforza rulers; there may have been many changes along the way, as well as costumes deliberately intended to look old and venerable. It may well be that the Tarot de Marseille is not so old as we think, i.e. early 16th century Milanese. But that is not the beginning. Perhaps Part 2 of the book, Chapters 4-7, are meant as additional support for his thesis. I will assume this to be the case.
The rest of chapter 3 looks to me fairly uncontroversial, except for his interpretation of another frontispiece, this one from Venice 1526, Fanti's Triompho di Fortuna, a fortune-telling manual for the use of dice; it seems to show several tarot subjects and suggests to him that tarot cards were probably used for the same thing (p. 90). The frontispiece is interesting on other grounds as well; I have discussed it at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&start=40#p14127. He also has quotes from Francesco Berni and Flavio Alberto Lollio about how the tarot sequence is a mishmash, which supports his idea that the meanings are hidden. I would note that while some experts still think it is a mishmash, many researchers today think that the sequence makes perfect sense in a Christian context. Also, he cites Folengo's tarot sonnets (see http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Caos_Del_Triperuno) as examples of use of cards to give advice to individuals, and he quotes Giralomo Barghagli on the practice of associating particular cards with particular individuals during pageants (p. 92). He does not mention Andrea Vitali's account of Barghagli in this connection; see http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=199&lng=eng.
I want to stress again that in Chapter Three Decker is likely only introducing his thesis that the original 22 card tarot was similar to the Tarot de Marseille in look and order, and that the original tarot itself was similar to the first 14 of these trumps. His main argument will come later, over the next four chapters, which constitute Section Two of his book, entitled "The Texts Applied to the Trumps". I hope to discuss all four of these chapters in this thread.
I have commented on Decker's new book The Esoteric Tarot already in a few other threads. However I think there should be a thread devoted to the book as such, because it is rich in ideas--richer, in fact, in ideas than in arguments or documentation. So there is fertile ground for the rest of us to look at them (the ideas in relation to arguments and documentation). I open this thread in the Unicorn Terrace because one of the main themes of the book is a particular theory about the original tarot sequence.
The Introduction introduces the idea that the trump sequence is composed of "hieroglyphs" in the Renaissance sense of pictures with meanings known only to qualified interpreters. In a way they are like statements in the Bible, which were interpretable on four levels. He illustrates the general point with two cards, the first, which he calls the Juggler, and the last, the World, with reference to an illustration by Hans Holbein, so that the Juggler comes out to be the Good Demon of late classical thought, and the World comes out to be Good Fortune in some of its later manifestations, but originally, he maintains with the help of a text by Apuleius, Isis. I have discussed these ideas already (at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&start=40#p14102, viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&start=40#p14112 and viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&start=40#p14127), so I will skip them here. (Please don't think I agree with them, at least as regards the "original tarot". I have no opinion on that, until I have thoroughly assessed Decker's argument, meaning the first seven chapters of his book.)
The cards are thus for Decker allegories "culminating in the triumph of Isis" (p. 17). His thesis is that the cards originally were designed by someone knowledgeable about Greco-Roman writers enchanted by Egypt (p. 17):
And, after discussing Christian elements in the Devil card:I will again cite Apuleius, as well as other Roman authors, notably Manilius, Nicomachus of Gerasa, Lactantius, Macrobius, and Martianus Capella. They were not from Egypt, but some were enchanted by Egyptian lore. Most were Platonists. All were highly regarded by Renaissance intellectuals. The trump cards unexpectedly illustrate rare ideas from rare manuscripts and therefore are difficult to identify at a glance. This partially explains why the trumps have avoided easy analysis.
He also speaks of the original tarot (p. 19):Other Christian concepts and cliches re prominent in the trumps. I conclude that their cretors were Christian Platonists (possibly Hermetists) with an interest in Egyptian Platonism (essentially Hermetism).
The Introduction is provocative, probably intentionally so; for the answers to one's questions, one must keep reading. In this post I will discuss Part One, "Theory: Hermetism and the Standard Tarot".Records suggest that the first Tarot (ca. 1440) had only 14 trumps. By about 1465, the deck had expanded to the 22 standard allegories. Possibly the total was contrived to accommodate the number held sacred by the Jews. No deeper cabalism necessarily informed individual trumps.
Both the Introduction and Chapter One talk about Thoth, mentioned in Plato's Phaedrus, 274B, a text he says (p. 9) was available in Italy from 1423 (he cites Michael J. B. Allen, Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer, p. 5). Plato was supposed to have studied in Egypt (p. 27):
According to Clement of Alexandria, Plato was the pupil of Sechnphis of On [footnote 1: Stomata, I, 15, 69], Plutarch names Sechuphis of On as one of Plato's Egyptian tutors [footnote 2: On the Daimon of Socrates, 578].
From Plato the Corpus Hermeticum combined Egyptian religion with Greek mythology and philosophy. The Corpus arrived in Italy in the 1460s, he says, p. 29 (actually, 1460 precisely, per Wikipedia), too late to have influenced the tarot. However Latin intermediaries were enough to have influenced the imagery and order of the original trumps. He gives a brief survey of these: Cicero, Manilius, Apuleius, Tertullian, Cyprian, the Latin Aesclepius, Lactantius, Julius Firmicus Maternus, Ammianus, Augustine. He also mentions the Greeks Clement of Alexandria, Plotinus, and finally "Horapollo", author of the Hieroglyphica. He does not document that all of these authors were known in early 15th century Italy, but I have checked and all were except possibly Clement, for whom there is no evidence until Ficino's time (http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=2457172),
Chapter Two discusses the evolution of the suit cards. He says that they evolved from dice via domino cards, 21 of them for each combination of two dice, which the Chinese duplicated and reduplicated to make decks of cards, but without suits. The next deck known is that of the Moguls, which the Muslims introduced from Persia into India; it had 8 suits of 10 number cards plus 2 courts. Decks also went west to the Mamelukes in Egypt, probably after the lifting of a papal embargo on Muslim goods in 1344; at that time the Mamelukes were favored by Italian shippers (p. 50). Their deck had 4 suits with 3 courts (p. 46f). My only query is about decks in Europe elsewhere, e.g. Marseille, Barcelona, and especially Spain, where Muslims still controlled the South, and many Muslims lived in Christian territory.
Now Decker advances a theory about hidden astrological significances in ordinary cards, starting with the Mogul suits, which he hypothesize happened when the 8 suits reached the city of Harran, which retained its worship of the Greco-Roman gods and something of Hermetism (p. 52). Decker assumes they had the Corpus Hermeticum; but his source only refers to "Hermetic magical practices". Decker says that in Hermetism Thoth was associated with the Moon, as opposed to Selene, Diana, or some other female goddess. In Copenhaver, I see that association only in the notes, as a fact about the historical Thoth in Egypt and not something in the Hermetica. I find no reference to Thoth in the tractates themselves; there is the easily confused pupil "Tat", but he is hardly the god himself. I have looked in the ancient secondary sources as well , but of course not everything.
The 8 suits were each given one of the planets, plus the "Part of Fortune", which in astrology had to do with material fortune, Decker theorizes. His argument is to compare the colors of the Mogul suits with those associated with these entities in writings about the temples of the gods in Harran (p. 58); he finds a close match and thus identifies each of the eight with the corresponding astrological entity (p. 56). Somehow the suits were reduced to four, those planetary entities associated with fire and water, which are the first elements created in the Hermetic creation myth. He gives no reference, but it is easy to find on p. 2 of Copenhaver's Hermetica.
Thoth, the ibis-headed inventor of writing according to Plato and shown in images as a scribe or architect with a writing or measuring stick, became in Europe the deity associated with Batons, Decker says. He poses the Picatrix as an intermediary here: one of its talismans bears the image of ibis-headed Thoth with his measuring stick, although the depiction has been reduced to "a man with the head of a bird leaning on a cane" (p. 55). As I discussed at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&start=40#p14102, I found an additional reference, more accessible than the Picatrix: in the The Marriage of Mercury and Philology, a divination-related ibis is shown with a staff.
The other astrological associations, he theorizes, were the Sun for Coins, Venus for Cups, and Mars for Swords (p. 62). So there are two fire signs and two water signs.
How would the Europeans have managed to learn the astrological symbolism? Decker says that the Mamelukes retained the symbolism in their suit cards. The polo sticks, corresponding to Batons, appear between two crescent moons (p. 58); also the sticks sometimes end in dragons. In astrology the head of the dragon and the tail of the dragon are two "nodes" of the moon (p. 59). In the case of Cups, Venus is a water sign, and in the Mamlukedeck in the Topkapi museum, ducks are associated with Cups. Also the suit of Harps in the Mogul deck are green, which is the tint of copper when it tarnishes, the metal of Venus; musical instruments and cups are associated with Venus in Mameluke art (no references). Finally,
The Mamelukes certainly depicted Mars with a sword.
They knew that gold (as in the Coins) was associated with the Sun.
More elaboration would have been nice.
Here is my assessment so far. Looking on the Web for discussions of Mogul/Moghul cards, especially at the pages in "Andy's Playing Cards", I see a variety of suits and colors, including an astrological deck of 9 suits, including the seven planets and both the head and the tail of the Dragon (http://a_pollett.tripod.com/cards56.htm). The colors for the various planet-cards pictured do not match Decker's assignments; but the mere existence of such a deck is enough to establish what Decker needs for an assignment of some Mogul decks' suits to planets. On Wikipedia, I see a description of a Moghul deck of 8 suits with 12 cards each at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganjifa; but nothing else is said about it. Wikipeida gives a link to Ambraser Hofjagdspiel and Hofamterspiel, but I find nothing about either in the "Ganjifa" article, or anything about Ganjifa or Moghuls in the other articles. Perhaps Huck or someone else knows a connection, other than that these games, too, have 12 cards per suit (in 4 suits).
I want to say something else in support of Decker's thesis that Europeans learned the planetary associations from the Muslims, orally and by what was on the cards. In its favor are some things de Mellet says about the suit cards, as though he is reporting from his own observations or what he has heard from others. On two of the Aces, reporting on Spanish names for the cards (I am using J. Karlin's translation in Rhapsodies of the Bizarre, pp. 55-57; the original is at http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherch ... les_Tarots):
III. Names of various Cards, preserved by the Spanish
One-eyed or the Ace of coins, Phoebea lampadis instar., consecrated to Apollo....
The Serpent or the Ace of batons (Ophion) famous symbol & sacred to the Egyptians.
And in the section IV:
The Ace of Swords, consecrated to Mars....
The ace of cups indicates a unique joy, that one by oneself possesses.
And for the suits (sections IV-V):
The Cups in general announced happiness, & the coins wealth.
The Batons meant for Agriculture prognosticated its more or less abundant harvests, the things which should have occured in or that regarded the countryside.
They [the Batons] appear mixed of good & of evil...
All the Swords presage only evil, mainly those which imprinted by an odd number, still bear a bloody sword. The only sign of victory, the crowned sword, is in this suit the sign of a happy event.
...
The hearts, (the Cups), portend happiness.
The Clubs, (the Coins), wealth.
The Spades, (the Swords), misfortune.
The Diamonds, (the Batons), indifference & the countryside.
The Moon is particularly good for Batons and the countryside, because (a) cudgels are the weapon allowed to peasants; (b) the Serpent was indeed sacred to the Egyptians, in that authorities such as Horapollo had it as a symbol of the "Almighty" and "Spirit" (Hieroglyphica I, 64); (c) the Moon both waxes and wanes, and so could be seen as bringing both good and evil; (d) the Moon is important to farmers for the planting cycle. This account has the virtue of not depending on Thoth as the deity of the Moon, as the serpent is associated with the supernatural in many traditions, while Thoth is not connected with serpents in any ancient text available in the Renaissance that I have found, except in a general way by Augustine as the god from which Hermes Trismegistus is descended. So one explanation for de Mellet's characterizations would be as a survival from the Moguls through the Muslims.
According to Decker, the Europeans, when they introduced Queens so as to make four courts, also associated the courts with these same four deities: the Sun for Kings, Venus for Queens, Mars for Knights, and the Moon/Thoth for Pages (p. 66). With astrological input from both the suit and the rank, the combination of planets can induce conflict or not, according to standard medieval astrological associations (p. 68).
For the four that have the same planet each way (suit and court), Decker sees astrological symbolism visually in the cards. The Tarot de Marseille King of Coins "sits with legs crossed in a meditative pose, which bespeaks an Apollonian person" (p. 68). He adds that the pose can be traced back through medieval portrayals of saints to ancient portrayals of poets and philosophers. Actually the King of Cups also has legs crossed in the Tarot de Marseille (in the PBM, Batons), all except Cups in the Budapest cards (p. 277 Kaplan vol. 2), as well as the Emperor (Tarot de Marseille and CY) and the Hanged Man in the trumps. On the other hand, Panofsky says that in the Renaissance crossed legs symbolized the detachment necessary for judges (Life and Art of Albrecht Durer, p. 78):
This attitude, denoting a calm and superior state of mind, was actually prescribed to judges in ancient German law-books.
And the image that he is commenting on, a Durer Christ, has solar symbolism top and bottom:
Decker continues
The Queen of Cups holds a vessel with a stem marked by a kind of socket, round and red, like an apple. This recalls Venus, the most amorous goddess, who received an apple as the prize in a legendary beauty contest.
See http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-ima ... en-of-Cups. This detail is absent from any extant 15th century cards, and it is a forced interpretation of a small detail in any case.
He adds, "The armored Knight of Swords would Qualify as Mars. But all the Swords males have armor, in the early cards. And in Batons, the Page "wears a distinctive cap (a Phrygian cap) which may indicate a traveler (therefore a ward of the moon)". I don't think it's really Phrygian, which twists forward at the end (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_cap; compare with http://www.planetlight.com/td/content/page-wands), and in any case none of the early cards have him with such a cap.
So I reject the idea that there is planetary symbolism in the courts.
Decker uses his theory about the courts to explain why in some card games the Coins and Cups are ranked Ace, Two, etc. in trick-taking ability, while in the other suits it goes Ten, Nine, etc (p. 70). He says that the Sun and Venus were considered "good" astrological signs and Mars and the Moon "bad" ones. If the power of the suits starts with the Ace, then in Coins and Cups the Ace is the "best", but in the others, it is "worst."
But it seems to me that this same result would come about if war and violence (swords and sticks) are "bad", while wealth and piety/pleasure are "good", independently of astrology,
Chapter Three begins with an account of Marziano's "game of the gods", fairly straightforwardly derivative from Ross's analysis on trionfi.com, which Decker cites. Then comes his defense of a 14 card original sequence, expanded to 22 later pp. 76-77). It is the familiar one advanced here (with much criticism) by Huck (although without crediting Huck and unlike Huck not involving the PMB or the Charles VI). He bases himself on the 14 "figures" in Ferrara of Jan. 1, 1441, followed by the 1442 order there for "triumphs" and the 70 card deck order of 1457 (4x14 + 14). He seems to have written this before the Giusti document of Florence was brought to general attention. He opts for Milan as where the tarot was invented, apparently on the basis of his preference for the "C" order of the triumphs, reflected in the Tarot of Marseille (Tarot de Marseille), of which he holds that a "prototype" was the first tarot, at first with just the first 14 cards of the Tarot de Marseille (numbers 1-14), to which the other 8 were added later, by 1465.
Decker adds that the 14 card deck was first proposed by him in 1974 (Journal of the International Playing Card Society 3:1, Aug. 1974, pp. 24ff). However a look at his article shows that the number 14 there is mostly coincidence. He is speaking of the Cary-Yale, on the grounds that if there were 16 cards per suits, it takes 14 more to add up to 78. He also considers--but does not endorse--the idea that the PMB has 14 (as Huck maintains); the problem is that since the Cary-Yale had a Strength and a World card, it would seem likely they would have been in the PMB, too. (One solution that occurs to me is that if the Popess represents Prudence, as Decker maintains later, then the CY World, with its wise-looking trumpet-holding lady, could have been re-imagined as the Popess,and the Fool, present in the extant PMB but not the CY, is not part of the 14. But Decker does not go that route.)
In the current book, Decker does not maintain that the PMB had 14 cards; he hardly mentions that deck. He does not mention the Cary-Yale of c. 1441-1445. Instead, we are given his Tarot de Marseille ur-Tarot, probably coming out of Milan but maybe Ferrara, perhaps the "14 figures" of Jan. 1, 1440, perhaps invented by Bianca Maria Sforza; it is the "prototype" of the Tarot de Marseille's first 14 cards (p. 79) and apparently looks more like the Tarot de Marseille than any extant 15th century decks, as we shall see .
One argument he gives for the priority of the Tarot de Marseille is correspondences between the Tarot de Marseille and Milanese fashion and heraldry:
In the Tarot de Marseille, the trump figures wear costumes that are mostly in early Renaissance style (belted jerkins, tights, robes, high-waisted gowns).
Also, the Ace of Swords' blade is "encircled with a crown that is draped with two fronds, palm and laurel...The Viscontis adopted the motif of crown and fronds as a heraldic device" (p. 78f). But the most these would show is that the Tarot de Marseille is descended from the decks sponsored by the Visconti-Sforza rulers; there may have been many changes along the way, as well as costumes deliberately intended to look old and venerable. It may well be that the Tarot de Marseille is not so old as we think, i.e. early 16th century Milanese. But that is not the beginning. Perhaps Part 2 of the book, Chapters 4-7, are meant as additional support for his thesis. I will assume this to be the case.
The rest of chapter 3 looks to me fairly uncontroversial, except for his interpretation of another frontispiece, this one from Venice 1526, Fanti's Triompho di Fortuna, a fortune-telling manual for the use of dice; it seems to show several tarot subjects and suggests to him that tarot cards were probably used for the same thing (p. 90). The frontispiece is interesting on other grounds as well; I have discussed it at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=937&start=40#p14127. He also has quotes from Francesco Berni and Flavio Alberto Lollio about how the tarot sequence is a mishmash, which supports his idea that the meanings are hidden. I would note that while some experts still think it is a mishmash, many researchers today think that the sequence makes perfect sense in a Christian context. Also, he cites Folengo's tarot sonnets (see http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Caos_Del_Triperuno) as examples of use of cards to give advice to individuals, and he quotes Giralomo Barghagli on the practice of associating particular cards with particular individuals during pageants (p. 92). He does not mention Andrea Vitali's account of Barghagli in this connection; see http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=199&lng=eng.
I want to stress again that in Chapter Three Decker is likely only introducing his thesis that the original 22 card tarot was similar to the Tarot de Marseille in look and order, and that the original tarot itself was similar to the first 14 of these trumps. His main argument will come later, over the next four chapters, which constitute Section Two of his book, entitled "The Texts Applied to the Trumps". I hope to discuss all four of these chapters in this thread.