Tarot History Forum

Well, the preaching (or better that, what has come down to us) is so, that it doesn't explain the game, at least not totally. Maybe the explanation took place before the preaching, and the preaching took the explanation as a background, which would be natural. Explanations need usually a dialog and place for questions, especially, if the addressed persons had different level of capabilities with games.

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In my research to Reversis and the Strassburger game 1637 I detected "Losing Lodam", a game, which falls in the trick-avoiding category. It's English and from 16th century.
http://www.davpar.eu/histocs/losinglo.html

The tricks in this game are not fixed in their ending as usual in rounds, but proceed till a specific state is reached: Till somebody neither can increase the cards of the played suit and trump this suit higher than the preceding player.
In this game the cards are laid on one spot, so they are not thrown in the middle as usual in trick games.

In the first Latimer text: "Now turn up your trump, your heart (hearts is trump, as I said before), and cast your trump, your heart, on this card; and upon this card you shall learn what Christ requireth of a christian man, ­ not to be angry, ne moved to ire against his neighbour, in mind, countenance, nor other ways, by word or deed. Then take up this card with your heart, and lay them together: that done, you have won the game of the Turk, whereby you have defaced and overcome him by true and lawful play."

In the second Latimer text: "What Christ requireth of a christian man? By and by cast down your trump, your heart, and look first of one card, then of another. The first card telleth thee, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not be angry, thou shalt not be out of patience. This done, thou shalt look if there be any more cards to take up; and if thou look well, thou shalt see another card of the same suit, wherein thou shalt know that thou art bound to reconcile thy neighbour. Then cast thy trump upon them both, and gather them all three together, and do according to the virtue of thy cards; and surely thou shalt not lose. Thou shalt first kill the great Turks, and discomfort and thrust them down. Thou shalt again fetch home Christ's sheep that thou hast lost; whereby thou mayest go both patiently and with a quiet mind unto the church, and make thy oblation unto God; and then, without doubt, he will hear thee.

Both passages possibly indicate a game mechanism, which isn't the standard for trick taking games. The second passage seems to say, that one should help the neighbor with the own cards.

If we would assume, that the game is a puzzle ... and the aim is to complete the puzzle in a right way. This would be a game, in which everybody could win. As a possible theme of the puzzle (the Turk is twice mentioned in both passages) one might suspect, that the aim is to find the inner balance in the Christian communities to resist the danger of the outside. The cards form a great picture with some ideological content.

... perhaps something like the oracle of Seni ...



These cards have 4 views on one card, and all together are a great picture (6x6 cards).

Lamiter said about his deck, that the cards had 4 parts: "Now behold and see, this card is divided into four parts".

Well, I don't claim, that the Lamiter's was like this, but perhaps one should change the general expectation to get this point right. My idea is, that it wasn't the usual trick-taking game.

The Losing-Lodam game finally ends its tricks finally always with a strong card (trump). Something like this is also possible. According Latimer's description finally everything is governed by hearts, if one plays the game in the manner, that Latimer intended.

Two comments, Huck.

First, when Latimer says

The first card telleth thee, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not be angry, thou shalt not be out of patience. This done, thou shalt look if there be any more cards to take up; and if thou look well, thou shalt see another card of the same suit, wherein thou shalt know that thou art bound to reconcile thy neighbour.

By "same suit" he means the suit of Christ's commandments. It is a card that tells us to reconcile with our neighbor. There is nothing here about helping one's fellow player. It is a card that says "help your neighbor". Yet if one is to sincerely follow the commandment, one must also help one's neighbor in the game. You say:

The second passage seems to say, that one should help the neighbor with the own cards.

I interpret this as equivalent to the sentence, in clearer English:

The second passage seems to say, that one should help the neighbor with one's own cards.

Yes, that's why I concluded that there had to be another suit, say of Diamonds, with which one could actually reconcile with one's neighbor. It is not "help" in general, but help in the specific way of restoring to the other player that which one has taken from him. And that suggests a fourth suit, say Swords, that enables one to take something from him. It is also what gives "Do not kill" meaning, i.e. something not do do, not use one's Sword.

However you are right that this is not the normal trick-taking game. It is as though all the cards were lying on the table, and one "wins" by picking up the right combinations and doing other things that are required. That's why I said in an earlier post that the player picks up cards from whatever suits he chooses, from four piles, face up on the table. He can look through the piles to see what cards he wants to take, to get the combination he wants. However he can only take a certain number of Diamonds, I suggest just one (the number of harvests in a year), each turn. He might also have cards in his hand, acquired at the beginning of the game ("wealth inherited at birth") or later. But "winning" a trick consists of laying down the right combinations in a pile of one's own. You can only win by picking up and retiring temporarily from play both a Heart and a Commandment, plus doing other things sometimes, like giving a Diamond to your neighbor.

You (Huck) said,

As a possible theme of the puzzle (the Turk is twice mentioned in both passages) one might suspect, that the aim is to find the inner balance in the Christian communities to resist the danger of the outside. The cards form a great picture with some ideological content.

Yes, there is an ideological content. But it is not "to find the inner balance in the Christian communities to resist the danger of the outside". The "Turk" is our "evil inclinations" (http://www.anglicanhistory.org/reformat ... card1.html):

These evil-disposed affections and sensualities in us are always contrary to the rule of our salvation. What shall we do now or imagine, to thrust down these Turks and to subdue them? It is a great ignominy and shame for a christian man to be bond and subject unto a Turk: nay, it shall not be so; we will first cast a trump in their way, and play with them at cards, who shall have the better.

The Turk, at least in so far as one "wins" against him, is something within each player that they are to conquer, not outside. So perhaps one "wins" by retiring to one's pile, in one turn, the Commandment card, a Heart, and a Sword, that is, a card, by which, through playing more of them than one's neighbor, one could take a Diamond or Sword from another player. But instead of using it against another player, one retires it from play, as in "disarmament".
But then how is one to protect oneself? Latimer addresses this issue:

But, alas for pity! the Rhodes are won [Alluding to the capture of the Island of Rhodes by the Turks, A.D. 1523.] and overcome by these false Turks; the strong castle Faith is decayed, so that I fear it is almost impossible to win it again.

The great occasion of the loss of this Rhodes is by reason that christian men do so daily kill their own nation, that the very true number of Christianity is decayed; which murder and killing one of another is increased specially two ways, to the utter undoing of Christendom, that is to say, by example and silence.

In other words, if we lose Rhodes, it is our own fault, not by not using enough Swords, but by using too many, on a daily basis. To protect oneself against one's neighbor and win, a different tactic is needed, for example agreeing with other players each to disarm similarly, with first a "mutual disclosure" of one's Swords, followed by a "mutual disarmament treaty", and then following through, retiring Sword cards. And if your neighbor has fewer Swords than you, you win by "unilateral disarmament." Then everybody wins, and the one who gives up the most wins the most.

Then one has, not "inner balance", but "inner peace". "Inner balance", in this game, would be if all the evil inclinations were equally capable of destroying each other, so that none of them can act, i.e. "mutual assured destruction". That is something else, a balance, yes, but a rather precarious one, indeed, perhaps madness.

Latimer did not go as far as I with his metaphor; in fact he confuses things by his humorous suggestion that we play against our Turks, our "evil inclinations", as though they were separate from us; but he could have gone the way I have suggested, and perhaps would have had a more persuasive sermon, while still in keeping with Matthew 5, if he had.