Tarot History Forum

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All the hip montebanks and usurers are being seen with this seasons most fashionable coin purse.



"30% INTEREST!? YOU DON'T KNOW WHO YOU'RE MESSIN' WITH, DO YA!!"

c.1768, Emanuel Büchel reproduction of the Klein-Basel Dance of Death (c.1440)

SteveM wrote:

SteveM wrote: An everyman, as descendant of Adam, who toils for his living after the fall.

Or 'old adam' (unregenerate Man) himself: and as for orbs and crowns and mitres, they are but the vanities of Old Adam in new apparel in the town of deceit, the tools of a cup and ball game for our Ephesian juggler playing the crowd of vanities fair:

As he passes through this town of deceit on his way to the celestial city, he must beware of being seduced by these vanities: choosing the love of the eternal over the love of the mutable, the little Man, this bagatelle, old Adam, becomes the new Man, the purvus mundum, microcosmic Man, worthy prince, groom and citizen of the bride and celestial city, the macrocosm, the world; whose sacred marriage is symbolised the winged angel that intermediates between them, in reference to Christs first miracle at the marriage of Cana.

As lover of Worldy Vanities, old Adam (unregenerate Man) remains a citizen of the city of Rome; as a lover in the communion of Christ, he becomes a new Man and citizen of the New Jerusalem that will ultimately triumph.

Ephesian, Ephesus
Boon companion and roisterer but used less generously by Shakespeare, whom the apostle Paul warned to beware the ‘sleight [1596, jugglery] of men’, not to fall back into ‘lasciviousness’ and ‘lusts’ but to ‘put on the new man’ (Eph 4).
Ephesus, setting for this bawdy play (comedy of errors), much resembles Epidamnus, scene fo Plautus’s The Twin Menaechmi, one of the sources of the sources of CE: there live the worst devotees of sensual pleasure and drunkards; flatterers, tricksters; harlots. All who come get damned or damaged (damno devortitur). In Ephesus too there ‘jugglers...Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind, / soul killing witches that deform the body ... prating mountebanks / And many such like libertines of sin...
Jugglers are fornicators; (dar) whorehouse working sorcerers...witches are bawds and hermaphrodites that deform, usually castrate, the body...
... Unaware he is being mistaken for his dissolute twin, Antipholus describes Ephesus as a place of wanton sexualty... to conclude’Lapland sorcerers inhabit here’...Dropio then asks, ‘What, have you got the picture of Old Adam new apparelled?’ Has he become the Old Adam (unregenerate human nature – OED) new apparelled? Has he, as the apostle Paul said ‘put on the new Man’?
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y3ae ... t&resnum=3

Ephesian, Ephesus
Boon companion and roisterer but used less generously by Shakespeare, whom the apostle Paul warned to beware the ‘sleight [1596, jugglery] of men’, not to fall back into ‘lasciviousness’ and ‘lusts’ but to ‘put on the new man’ (Eph 4).

Ephesians 4:14 That we be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

In Greek:
Ephesians 4:14 ινα μηκετι ωμεν νηπιοι κλυδωνιζομενοι και περιφερομενοι παντι ανεμω της διδασκαλιας εν τη κυβεια των ανθρωπων εν πανουργια προς την μεθοδειαν της πλανης

The Greek word translated as ‘sleight’ in KJ is κυβεια ~ kubeia from kubos, a cube, ie a die for playing; gambling, used figuratively for artifice, fraud, to sleight (juggle). The 21 points of a die, steps of a ladder, to heaven or to hell.

Thus 'Old Adam' ~ 'Ephesian Juggler'; thus our juggler represents not the lowest estate of man in a ranks of man, but an everyman, all man as damned man, fallen man; our juggler however can find salvation becoming the new man (charioteer) a worthy citizen of the city of God, one becomes a new in New Adam, Christ.

Ephesians 4:15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, Christ:
Ephesians 4:16 From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

Understanding the nature of the two loves (VI), the wise man becomes the New Man, the triumphal prince,(VII) worthy citizen and groom of the celestial city, the bride (XXI) - thus through the tarot is woven the theme of the hierogamos, the sacred marriage, a tale of two loves, cupiditas and caritas; of two venuses, or two cities.

It is a tale of fall (XV) and restoration (XXI), of the beginning of judgment - exile and death (XVI) and final judgement - resurrection into eternal life through God's caritas (xx). It is salvation through love, a procession from Old Adam to New Adam - from a worthless man (bagatelle) to a worthy citizen (parvus mundum) over 77 generations 56/21.

* Just for me friends,the "whole" point is that the other side of the table,that I can t see...

-The left leg of LE BATELEUR depicts the fourth leg of the table.
That is the whole story around this topic my dearest Stevie...

Of course just for me !

-Steve: Don t jeter your awesome bibliothèque against me please !!!

I'm becoming increasingly uncertain as to what Steve is presenting above.

Are you, Steve, simply finding various (wonderful) quotes, allegories and similes that are themselves based on the Bateleur - in other words, starting from a common base, these writings utilise something of the Bateleur to expand into their own worthy narrative, with us, however, remaining mindful that these are not reflections on the Bateleur, but rather its inverse: how the Bateleur was able to be used and allegorised in myriad ways.

Or instead, is the suggestion (and again I'm unclear) that these derivations are presented as somehow supporting evidence that the Bateleur must be understood as far more than the already rich context he presents as character in a world now very much vanished from our midst?

jmd wrote:I'm becoming increasingly uncertain as to what Steve is presenting above.

Are you, Steve, simply finding various (wonderful) quotes, allegories and similes that are themselves based on the Bateleur - in other words, starting from a common base, these writings utilise something of the Bateleur to expand into their own worthy narrative, with us, however, remaining mindful that these are not reflections on the Bateleur, but rather its inverse: how the Bateleur was able to be used and allegorised in myriad ways.

Or instead, is the suggestion (and again I'm unclear) that these derivations are presented as somehow supporting evidence that the Bateleur must be understood as far more than the already rich context he presents as character in a world now very much vanished from our midst?

I think the suggestion is pretty clear that I am presenting the bateleur as 'old adam'... sorry you find it so unclear, from emails I have recieved others have understood it perfectly well....

SteveM wrote:I think the suggestion is pretty clear that I am presenting the bateleur as 'old adam'... sorry you find it so unclear, from emails I have recieved others have understood it perfectly well....

Thanks Steve - I'm probably just trying to do too much of late and must be reading less clearly than I ought.

The 'old adam' is the original Adam (contrasted to the 'new Adam' as Christ) - I presume this we share.

So you think it would have been evident for people of the period to see the individual depicted on the card, ie as street prestidigitator, deceiver and rogue, to have also been understood as representative of this 'old Adam'?

I frankly find that unlikely - save of course that any man can be seen as representative of Adam given his (symbolic) geneological connection.

At most, it seems to me that some would have 'played' with the ambiguousness of the wand as more-than-wand (without this being seen as necessarily pictorially depicted).

jmd wrote:So you think it would have been evident for people of the period to see the individual depicted on the card, ie as street prestidigitator, deceiver and rogue, to have also been understood as representative of this 'old Adam'?

Which 'people'? Who was our creator's 'audience'? Highly educated personages of the courts or illiterate peasants? Did our creator intend to create a game for a European wide market or for a small circle of his association? I am not particularly interested in what some abstract personification of the 'people' may or may not have found evident. We do not say that Pauls's letters to the Ephesians or Plautus's 'Menaechmi' or that Gower or the Gesta Romanorum could not have been the sources of Shakespeare's 'Comedy of Errors' because such was not evident to 'people'. We know pretty well that throughout its history the 'meaning' of the trumps and fool has been obscure to 'people' and many suggestions have been made.

Would a poet-pedagogue creator the like of a torre or boiardo have been capable of making such allusion? Possibly even a greek speaking one such as we have an exemplar again in boiardo and the like of which was common in North Italian courts from the late 14th century or just anyone familiar with commentaries on St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians ? Shakespeare did (even without knowledge of Greek as far as I am aware). Is it outrageous to imagine that a tutor of Greek at a North Italian court may not have relied soley on the classics for his texts but may have deigned (horror of horrors) to have made reference to the New Testament?

Well, to the devil with the wicked New Testament, and it’s translators! *

I personnaly don't find juggler (kubeios - diceman) as a representive of fallen, unregenerate (and thus every) man that obscure - been reading to many medieval and renaissance poets I suppose (something which our imagined audience of an illiterate 'people' could not have done of course and so reference to such is rendered irrelevant).

Who is this pray tell?

Go on guess, you know him well!

Whether or not your everyday 'tavern' player was able to recognise in the juggler any reference to old Adam new apparelled that may have influenced the deck creators choice, they would have still been able to see in him as a figure of trickery, deceit and gamester a rogue and a man of vice, and that is what is relevant in the context of a narrative that leads or opposes vice to virtue, fall to redemption.

SteveM

* Ane satyre of the thrie estaits: in commendation of vertew and vitvperation of vyce by Sir David Lindsay 1602:

PARDONER:
Wait je weill how I am namit ?
Ane nobill man, and vndefamit,
Gif all the suith war schawin.
I am sir Robert Rome-raker,
Ane perfite publike pardoner,
Admittit be the Paip.
Sirs, I sall schaw show, for my wage,
My pardons and my pilgramage,
Quhilk je sall se and graip.
I giue to the deuill, with gude intent,
This vnsell wickit New-testament,
With them that it translaitit.

Quite so that

[...] they would have still been able to see in him as a figure of trickery, deceit and gamester a rogue and a man of vice

I do not think that this was ever at issue – quite the contrary, I would have thought, and something with which we are in general agreement.

What the above shows is not that the wand is likely to have been intended as penile, but rather that the major figure is one of 'trickery, deceit' and a rogue.

jmd wrote:... rather that the major figure is one of 'trickery, deceit' and a rogue.

Exactly, unregenerate man ("old Adam" OED) - and as such a type of 'everyman' (as all men are 'fallen'). A tale leading from fall to redemption, from old Adam to new Adam (= verge - as in the 'verge' in the hand of the juggler = kubeios (diceman)).