tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88182071053878376582012-01-31T16:10:22.719-08:00Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comBlogger911100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-87198960337090143032012-01-25T07:35:00.000-08:002012-01-25T07:58:14.721-08:00

A couple years ago I presented some of the earliest illustrations of cartomancy, dating from the 1770s, though not directly related to Tarot. Here we have two of the earliest printed instructions for cartomancy, 18th-century “Little White Books” from a decade or two later. They are neither pre-Gébelin nor directly related to Tarot and, as such, they are of little of interest to me. However,

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-28106377991144919812011-12-31T16:15:00.000-08:002012-01-18T09:20:36.191-08:00

The passing of Michael Dummett, especially at the turn of a new year, is a reminder to those interested in Tarot history of what has been accomplished and what remains to be done. I want to emphasize one of his less well known areas of contribution, post some passages and comments, and recommend his findings as a starting point for further study. But first.... We are entering the 3rd year

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-41555736506977879242011-12-29T07:05:00.000-08:002012-01-04T19:53:14.594-08:00

Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett was born on June 27 1925, and has died at age 86. "He was among the most significant British philosophers of the last century and a leading campaigner for racial tolerance and equality." And in his spare time, "he argued that in the Middle Ages the Tarot was used as a set of playing cards and that it only acquired its association with the occult in the 18th

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-37723605042196813292011-12-17T10:51:00.001-08:002011-12-17T11:15:35.112-08:00

“Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”? “Seasons Greetings”? “Cool Yule”? Maybe “Marked Down—5 Shopping Days Left!” would capture the meaning of Xmas. But if you're a traditionalist, here is the best way to say you've got that old-time spirit of the season. As an added bonus, “Merry Saturnalia” might make a wingnut’s head explode.

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-88692766000890812012011-11-19T15:53:00.000-08:002011-12-17T09:26:54.917-08:00

INSIDE GHISI’S LABYRINTH PART II: Still More Fragments of History Recovered When last we visited Ghisi's Labyrinth, Mariano Tomatis had introduced two more variations on the book: Pastime, pre-dating the 1607 edition, and Devotion of the Lord, subsequent to the 1616 edition. A video by Bill Kalush illustrated how the latter trick worked in practice. Two months ago, Mariano posted The Map of

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-24913786115088454412011-11-03T15:03:00.000-07:002012-01-05T18:24:05.060-08:00

Erwin Panofsky offered a cheeky summary of the difference between two approaches to art scholarship: "The connoisseur might be defined as a laconic art historian, and the art historian as a loquacious connoisseur." Below are a few comments by Sir Kenneth Clark on the predominance of connoisseurship in 19th-century art historical studies and the rise of iconographical studies in 20th-century art

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-55485560061629229662011-11-03T09:26:00.000-07:002012-01-05T17:53:09.403-08:00

Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich (1909-2001) died ten years ago today, November 3, 2001. Along with Erwin Panofsky, Gombrich was one of the greatest exponents of iconography, the study of the meaning of didactic art. This post will mainly consist of quotes from the introductory chapter to his 1972 Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance. Excerpts will be included from each section

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-44242026163759905052011-10-30T12:57:00.000-07:002011-12-31T19:01:17.388-08:00

Gertrude Moakley wrote the earliest scholarly account of the iconography of Tarot, and her book remains the most substantial analysis yet published. She argued that the Tarot trump cards, originally known as trionfi, were one of many examples of pop culture derived from Petrarch's I Trionfi. Tarot's trumps show both individual parallels with the subjects of the poem and a similarity to the

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-23945812560218680682011-06-29T11:46:00.000-07:002011-12-27T13:26:54.778-08:00

INSIDE GHISI’S LABYRINTH PART I: Another More Fragments of History Recovered A couple years ago (May of 2009) I stopped most of my posting. The few entries since then have usually been to praise something exceptionally good (like Explaining the Tarot) or to condemn something really bad (like the hilarious hoo-hah about Cathars). Recent online essays about Ghisi’s Labyrinth—two of them in

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-17531419183446686832011-03-20T14:55:00.000-07:002011-12-31T19:02:17.706-08:00

Simple... brilliant... beautiful. Thank you, Mariano. Interactive version of Il laberinto del Signor Andrea Ghisi (1607) Created by Mariano Tomatis Antoniono March 21, 2011 postscript: In 2007 I posted an analysis of Ghisi's Labyrinth book to the now defunct mailing list LTarot. In 2009 I posted my analysis to the Tarot History Forum. I included a link to an explanation of a well-known

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-91853464099586994582011-02-03T11:10:00.001-08:002011-12-27T13:32:37.737-08:00

Argument from Ignorance Flying Spaghetti Monster Russell's Teapot Fool's Errand, n., a foolish undertaking, especially one that is pointless, ill-considered, nonsensical, or certain to fail; a waste of time, the devotion of time to a useless activity.Syn. wild goose chase, lost cause, wasted effort, blind leading the blind, red herring, snipe hunt, spinning your wheels, going in circles,

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-10082245946391294532010-11-02T16:13:00.000-07:002011-12-17T10:21:26.643-08:00

The 1665 London PlagueJames Hulett, mid-18th Century Bring out yer dead. Bring out yer dead. Here's one. That'll be ninepence. I'm not dead. What? Nothing. There's your ninepence. I'm not dead. 'Ere, he says he's not dead. Yes he is. I'm not. He isn't. Well, he will be soon, he's very ill. I'm getting better. No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment. Well, I can't take

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-66772760048280633742010-10-31T14:07:00.000-07:002011-12-31T19:03:05.379-08:00

Because Tarot was a Triumph of Death, it seems appropriate to post a few Día de los Muertos pictures to celebrate the holidays, along with an introduction to an interesting artist who has created some extraordinary works in this genre. The L.A. County Fair this year eliminated their traditional outdoor shopping area. I missed one of those sellers in particular: every year they had a big

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-44108429892972799342010-10-19T18:32:00.000-07:002011-12-31T19:03:17.318-08:00

A recent page on Marinni's Journal has a collection of Petrarchian triumphs. As always, it is worthwhile to take some time to browse through the many pages of period art on this blog. The Triumph of Fame Domenico di Michelino cassone, 15th century

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-63890024774276374392010-09-26T10:37:00.000-07:002011-12-31T19:03:27.151-08:00

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-81962057679672778162010-09-20T11:40:00.000-07:002011-12-27T13:37:27.314-08:00

The Tarot trump cycle is a moral allegory. The hierarchy of trumps is divided into three sections: a ranks of mankind up to the Pope; a Fall of Princes allegorical narrative, culminating in Death, in the middle trumps; an eschatological epilogue including the final triumph over the Devil and death, via the Resurrection to Final Judgment. There are three categories of subject matter:

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-25037440947602446552010-09-07T19:42:00.000-07:002011-12-27T13:39:24.620-08:00

“Close-up magic” is what the Bagatto does. However, the title of this post also refers to these images being a bit larger than the ones I posted in The Bagatto in Context. The larger images provide a better look at what he's doing—we see his magic up close. Up close, it is not entirely clear whether the fool in the Baldini images is himself the magician or part of a team of confederates. In

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-87969574808275072102010-08-26T09:02:00.000-07:002011-12-31T19:05:06.165-08:00

Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it! — Matthew 7:13-14. From at least the late 14th or early 15th century, illuminated cycles of St. John's Apocalypse conventionally included images of Death

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-12935055743307213442010-08-23T15:00:00.000-07:002011-12-31T19:05:46.270-08:00

This print by Lucas van Leyden is circa 1509. It shows two relatively well-off beggars accepting charity from a vagabond apparently more needy than they. According to The Prints of Lucas van Leyden and His Contemporaries (1983, Ellen S. Jacobowitz and Stephanie Loeb Stepanek), the two false beggars may be allegories of Sloth. The seated man with the outstretched hand appears to be a cobbler (

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-53620069733943822362010-08-21T17:29:00.001-07:002011-12-31T19:06:09.272-08:00

Earlier generations of occultists elevated the Fool and Magician, those lowly entertainers, to an exalted, even god-like status. (It is not that surprising a blunder, as they had the order of the trump hierarchy backwards.) Today, very few Tarot enthusiasts can bring themselves to break with those traditional beliefs. Even Tarotists who don’t know where these stupid ideas originated continue to

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-25180020318144754932010-07-28T15:36:00.000-07:002011-12-31T19:06:29.151-08:00

Taking things out of context is the norm for Tarot cultists. That is part of their routine failure/refusal to recognize/admit the obvious, and that is what opens the gates for endless fantasy. If you ignore/dismiss the obvious meaning of something, then the field is wide open for competition between whatever crappy ideas may arise via free association. It's a fortune-teller's crippled

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-86975763205066629582010-07-18T10:14:00.000-07:002011-12-31T19:06:55.599-08:00

Grosvenor Prints has three striking and early prints of fortune-telling with cards, from the 18th century. (I'll number the links for your shopping convenience—don't delay!) The first to catch my attention was The Curious Couple, (Les Epoux Curieux). “A young couple have their fortune told through the cards of an old woman”. The engraving is by Ponce, based on a painting by Sigmund

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-14747616919790339852010-06-26T11:31:00.001-07:002011-08-09T21:56:54.276-07:00

In my review of Explaining the Tarot there is a lot of seemingly extraneous material. It is there for context of one kind or another, and that includes the three mini-reviews in the footnotes. This morining I received an email complaining about two of those mini-reviews. I will reply to some of the concerns here, as they may have occurred to others as well. First, this is my blog. The views

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-68710817465285335102010-06-25T13:49:00.000-07:002010-09-30T11:39:17.248-07:00

BOOK REVIEW Ten years ago, about the time I ceased being a newbie(1), there were countless lively debates in the online Tarot community, debates over the iconographic analysis of Tarot’s trump cycle, the historical meaning of Tarot. These exercises included hotly contested disagreements over big issues and small. Some questions were quite specific, such as the proper placement of the Fool within

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-26467212647682607152009-06-13T21:05:00.000-07:002009-06-13T21:15:35.425-07:00

Do nothing you wouldn't     want to be caught dead doing. Memento mori. John Carradine's advice: "Never do anything you wouldn't be caught dead doing."

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-84010334844393786352009-05-13T13:40:00.000-07:002011-12-27T13:57:21.400-08:00

Ten years, five forums, fuckwits and fortune-tellers beyond count. Too many dicks, not enough brains. Woody Allen famously remarked that he would never want to belong to a club that would have someone like him as a member. Not being quite that neurotic, I can't stay indefinitely in a club that doesn't want people like me as members. British Museum: Reverse of a medal for Pietro

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-29139753465524339242009-05-03T07:31:00.000-07:002009-09-07T10:46:39.345-07:00

Bellini's so-called Pagan Allegory, subject of the previous post, is a relatively simple, clear, and direct expression of the pervasive Christian contemptu mundi sensibility, illustrating the idea of renunciation and reward. Renunciation and Reward "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" If a respected art historian and Bellini scholar like Rona Goffen can fail to grasp this

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-51051808742019897292009-04-29T08:50:00.000-07:002009-09-07T15:19:25.899-07:00

In the previous post I mentioned Giovanni Bellini's so-called Pagan Allegory. It seems useful to spend some time with this early work (c.1460) as background before further discussion of the later (c.1490) series of allegories. There don't appear to be many images of it online, although it can be found via Google Books in Rona Goffen's 1989 Giovanni Bellini. In describing this painting she also

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-62997985117329130682009-04-25T11:39:00.000-07:002009-08-11T13:46:10.935-07:00

A few days ago, Jean-Michel David posted a picture of one of the "Bellini Allegories" to the Tarot History Forum. The image was so bizarre that I immediately asked if it came from a series of some sort, or had some other context to explain it. It turns out that it is from a series, and that they constitute a famous iconographic puzzle. This post is just a brief introduction to the Allegories of

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-40943572305891921242009-04-14T14:30:00.000-07:002010-04-05T14:53:57.540-07:00

Here is a 15th-century Wheel of Fortune with a very complex design. The following description is from Mitchell B. Merback's 1999 The Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel. Reynard the Fox as Pope and Antichrist Colored woodcut, German (c.1470-80) Visually anchored by an allegorical wheel held by a Lady Fortune who doubles as a personfication of Patience (Gedultikeyt), the woodcut also

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-91019673662372645662009-04-13T10:53:00.000-07:002009-05-18T08:49:45.769-07:00

Yesterday I pointed out a number of ways in which cowardly knights who can scarcely face down an unarmed snail are the antithesis of the heroic Hercules who defeated the Nemean lion. Even more mythically heroic is the magnificent Knight of Christ in Albrecht Dürer's copper engraving, The Knight, Death, and the Devil. Rather than being plagued by inconsequential gnats like the Leber-Rouen Fool,

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-15270141707052962882009-04-12T10:51:00.000-07:002009-04-15T15:26:33.169-07:00

The previous post on the Leber-Rouen Tarot deck looked at the trumps and court cards. Most of the elements of most of the cards in the Leber-Rouen Tarot are easily understood. The Fool card also exists, and the image is a unique one. It is clearly communicating a kind of Folly and clearly classicized, but some details are elusive. The Fool is portrayed as a Roman warrior with armor and shield

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-37536673141145141382009-04-11T21:07:00.000-07:002009-05-18T08:53:12.996-07:00

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-64667934935114421112009-04-04T20:57:00.000-07:002009-04-05T13:32:20.016-07:00

Thirty cards survive from a classicized sixteenth-century Tarot deck, in the Leber Collection in the Bibliothèque Municipale di Rouen. The cards are hand colored with gold and silver highlights. The images are classical figures but, in striking contrast to other classicized decks like Sola Busca and Boiardo, the trump subjects are neatly consistent with the standard Tarot subjects. Michael

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-72500865707132917162009-03-28T16:18:00.000-07:002010-11-14T10:26:00.246-08:00

“Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you. For every one that asketh, receiveth: and he that seeketh, findeth: and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8.) In the previous post I mentioned three striking examples of Roman Catholic allegory which included a female figure with papal attributes. Below is a fourth spectacular

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-51067728947624879482009-03-26T16:06:00.000-07:002010-02-10T11:35:46.019-08:00

Tarot's Popess has been cited as proof positive of the Pagan (or mystical, heretical, alchemical, non-Christian, etc.) nature of the cards. Such claims are a sure indication of an ill-informed writer, negligent and biased. There are many period images of female figures with papal attributes. These may be usefully grouped into three categories: 1) Roman Catholic allegories, 2) the legendary Pope

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-70031863095828015892009-03-24T08:29:00.000-07:002009-03-24T13:01:49.356-07:00

Among the more interesting early emblem books are two by Guillaume de la Perrière: the 1544 Theatre des Bons Engins and the 1553 Morosophie. A few of the more notable emblems from the latter book, those with revealing comparisons and contrasts to the moral allegory of the trump cycle, will be mentioned here. The first seven emblems relate the seven Ages of Man with the seven planets. The

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-43749141171064054162009-03-11T10:43:00.000-07:002009-03-18T08:15:29.287-07:00

Today’s Tarot topic is Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen. No, seriously... this will connect back to the central subject of pre-Gébelin. Sort of. Eventually. But first we need some background, which is an opportunity to talk about a cool book and a cool film. Overview of Watchmen The main story takes place in 1985, and a classic Dreaded Outcome (in this case, World War III) is imminent.

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-74453951120823902382009-03-01T08:48:00.000-08:002009-03-03T07:47:40.486-08:00

Here we are, five days into Lent 2009, (February 25 - April 11), which seems like a good time for more meditatio mortis posts. A musical post, Media Vita, from the New Liturgical Movement blog is a good starting point. (It doesn't matter that you're not a Christian. Neither am I, but the people who created and played Tarot were.) This will lead to some of the precursors of Helinand's Verses on

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-28063240248259495702009-02-28T12:55:00.000-08:002009-02-28T13:21:59.613-08:00

One of the most famous early examples of the macabre in art and literature comes from the middle 1190s, the Verses on Death by the Cistercian monk Helinand of Froidmont. These have been translated into English by Jenny Lind Porter in The Verses on Death of Helinand of Froidmont, 1999. William D. Paden, who also translated the verses into English ("The Verses on Death by Helinant de Froidmont",

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-77538072429755880452009-02-26T16:19:00.000-08:002009-02-28T07:57:10.049-08:00

The French poet François Villon (François de Montcorbier, François Des Loges, c.1431–1463) was a thief, a murderer, and a moralist. A famous poem, known as Villon's Epitaph or The Ballad of the Hanged Men, was written while awaiting execution. It captures a bit of the macabre sensibility of late-medieval meditations on death, speaking in the voice of the dead. Here are two translations, the

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-27603885327579667982009-02-21T19:46:00.000-08:002011-04-25T09:32:23.464-07:00

The excellent Death in Art site by Patrick Pollefeys includes this comment about Vado Mori poems. Before the first Dance of Death was created, there was a literary genre called Vado Mori (I prepare myself to die): poem written in Latin, of French origin, which went back to the 13th century. In these writings, representatives of various social classes complain, mostly in two verses, about the

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-49225472352711789692009-02-15T06:24:00.000-08:002009-02-15T15:02:50.302-08:00

There are a few points to add to Michael’s discussion of the 19th century precursors to his interpretation of the trump sequence as a Dance of Death, in "Tarot and the Dance of Death (January 10). Paul Lacroix (pseudonym “P.L. Jacob” or “Bibliophile Jacob”) published a slightly more detailed analysis of his 1835 insight (the one in Michael’s post) in 1858. The following is from “Recherches sur

Ross G.R. Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12300238799618943456noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-61507175597702316882009-02-14T09:16:00.000-08:002009-03-21T13:17:32.934-07:00

In a comment to yesterday's post, Ross mentioned the polling data and the frightening backwardness of the U.S. population on matters of science and religion. A comment relating that to Tarot seems in order. The numbers and charts below are from a Gallup poll taken in mid 2008. The upshot is that less than 1/20th of Republicans actually believe in evolution, while less than 1/5th of Democrats

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-29660727393634016122009-02-13T20:45:00.000-08:002009-02-13T21:56:16.878-08:00

This should have been posted yesterday... but that whole Friday the 13th thing had me soooo freaked out. Know Thyself   Alexander Pope Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;   The proper study of mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,   A being darkly wise and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,   With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-91543005775819031052009-02-07T10:24:00.000-08:002009-02-07T16:13:36.397-08:00

An interesting Greek Orthodox hermit legend, related to the macabre genres, arose in the late-15th or perhaps even the 16th century. Sisoes the Great was one of the Desert Fathers, a follower of St. Anthony. (The frescoes below come from Greek monasteries: Agia Triada, Varlaam, and Hosios Loukas.) Athanasios N. Papathanasiou described the newly-created "ancient" legend and its significance this

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-83852601822875446772009-02-01T11:41:00.000-08:002009-02-02T09:10:13.091-08:00

Some of the art in the Siena Cathedral ties into both the Stoic-Christian theme of this series of posts and also the connotations of Tarot's Old Man card. One of these works, Hermes Trismegistus, also provides another example of the importance of context in assessing a figure's meaning. Patron of the city, the Virgin was the de-facto "Queen of Siena" and "a special kind of civic monarch". This

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-53384085898008437142009-01-31T08:43:00.000-08:002009-01-31T18:57:17.500-08:00

The previous post looked at a single attribute of a 20th-century Tarot card. Three generations of historical models were traced, from the most proximate to the most distant. Despite the fact that this led us back to 1531, it told us absolutely nothing about pre-Gébelin Tarot, and only established that the modern element itself, as invented and employed by Waite, had zero historical sanction. The

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-39423353742801359412009-01-28T12:03:00.000-08:002009-02-01T07:51:29.180-08:00

On the Waite-Smith Hermit card there is a six-pointed star lighting the lantern. Richard Roberts attributed this idea to a book which Waite translated, Musaeum Hermeticum (1678). The Hermit, too, is a transformation of the Magician/Alchemist of Key 1. Waite translated a number of books on alchemy, one of which is The Hermetic Museum (1892), the original of which was published in Frankfurt in

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-74304441951954222432009-01-25T18:11:00.000-08:002009-02-01T07:54:07.114-08:00

In the first post of this series I talked about the two main meanings of "triumph" and the many forms by which these meanings were represented. During the Dark Ages and the High Middle Ages some of the ancient motifs, originally intended to represent military victories and political dominion, were assimilated by the Roman Church and converted into Christian triumphs. These ideas were closely

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-65728495031166228672009-01-15T07:25:00.000-08:002010-05-07T16:04:00.917-07:00

The "Dutch Tarot" or Floskaartjes deck includes an allegory of Life, card #2 depicting a small boy blowing bubbles (sometimes with a ship at sea in the background). Homo bulla, the metaphor of man as a beautiful but exquisitely fragile and transient bubble, dates back to the ancients. Varro (116 BC – 27 BC) wrote the following in the first line of the first book of De Re Rustica. quod, ut

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-55661113229944210042009-01-14T10:05:00.001-08:002011-12-27T08:12:03.540-08:00

Floskaartjes is a children's card game played with a deck of 36 cards. They were produced on sheets of cheap paper ("catchpenny prints") and then cut apart and turned into playing cards by the children themselves. Judging from surviving examples, they were popular in the Netherlands and Belgium from (at least) the 17th century into the 19th century. The cards have numbers and names, and the

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-65349436600965480062009-01-10T13:37:00.000-08:002010-02-06T19:14:36.154-08:00

Years ago I had noted a passage in Theodore Low De Vinne's The Invention of Printing which described Tarot's trump cycle as being related to the Dance of Death. Recently Ross Caldwell has pointed out a number of earlier 19th-century books which talk about playing cards in the context of the Dance of Death genres. Gabriel Peignot's 1826 Recherches sur la Danse des morts et sur l'origine des cartes

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-72839577967434594372009-01-10T11:28:00.000-08:002009-02-03T08:13:23.424-08:00

It was my decision to take Tarot history and iconography as a hobby, and it was my decision to attempt to find others with a similar hobby online. What a dolt. Tarot forums, even those proclaiming themselves devoted to Tarot history or historical research, are inescapably dominated by fuckwits and fortune-tellers. Perhaps it is impossible to have any open forum regarding Tarot which is not

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-67033786612410006002008-05-09T10:00:00.000-07:002009-01-15T20:30:37.046-08:00

The Pompeii mosaic, 1,400 years before Tarot, asserts death's universal sovereignty, as does any memento mori. However, it was designed to emphasize a fundamental equality between the most disparate members of society. Ultimate equality was a precept of the Stoics. Arguments can be made that virtue is the summum bonum and achievable by all, that only the wise are truly free, or that slaves and

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-18223558298392753912008-05-08T11:55:00.000-07:002012-01-06T15:01:31.017-08:00

A week ago I noted that the Pompeii mosaic would have been at home in a 16th- or 17th-century book of emblems. Here are two very different images that convey the same basic message, taken from two of my favorite emblem books. The first comes from Otto van Veen’s Emblemata Horatiana, and the motto of the emblem is Mortis Certitudo. It makes no difference whether you're wealthy, born a

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-41906732338050592672008-05-03T08:29:00.000-07:002009-01-15T20:31:03.366-08:00

Fools and charlatans are as natural and complementary a pair as victims and criminals. If we think of occult Tarot as a morality play, the central characters would be Blunder (the fool, symbol of Folly) and Bullshit (the con artist, symbol of Deception). Tarotists often identify the Fool as the neophyte seeker while the Magician gulling him is the initiated guide, sensible and revealing

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-26512638804240919632008-05-01T12:22:00.000-07:002009-01-15T20:31:35.963-08:00

Two days ago Ross Caldwell pointed out to me a magnificent mosaic from the late 1st century BC or the early 1st century AD. This little masterpiece of Roman art would be at home in the most sophisticated collection of 16th- or 17th-century emblems. The motto would be Claudian's famous exclamation, "Death levels all!" (Omnia mors aequat, from The Rape of Prosperine, book II, line 302.) That is

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-27393533114124778832008-04-26T15:53:00.000-07:002010-04-15T07:15:25.427-07:00

The Choice of Hercules, also known as Hercules at the Crossroads or The Two Paths, is the oldest well known allegory in Western literature. Although the parable dates from the fifth century B.C., it was a common motif more than two millennia later, in Renaissance and Baroque art. Hercules was always one of the most popular heroes, and the choice between virtue and vice is the fundamental moral

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-83212709008978071212008-04-22T09:56:00.000-07:002009-03-31T21:55:01.366-07:00

Another of the blunders which continue to baffle Tarot enthusiasts today is the imagined "missing virtue". In most standard Tarot decks there are three named virtues, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. Tarot authors to this day have not bothered to do any sober research on the subject of the virtues. What little research that has been attempted is far-fetched, yielding obscure and tenuous

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-64070528725902060532008-04-10T08:49:00.000-07:002010-06-05T16:07:34.238-07:00

My Tarot odyssey began nearly ten years ago. It started with a simple curiosity about the pictures on the cards: Why those subjects? What did they originally mean? Did their sequence tell some kind of story? I assumed that the answer was readily available in a book, perhaps repeated in many, probably available in an encyclopedia entry. I was a newbie, and that naive. There were no encyclopedia

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-39376588007950349942008-04-06T10:21:00.000-07:002010-09-20T16:33:52.223-07:00

William F. Prizer's article "Reading Carnival: The Creation Of A Florentine Carnival Song", appears in Early Music History (2004, v.23, pages 185-252). It is an excellent Tarot reference in a number of ways. Here is the article abstract: One of the most famous—and unusual—carnival songs from Renaissance Florence is ‘Dolor, pianto e penitentia’, variously entitled Carro della morte, Trionfo

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-37404798789671616072008-03-30T10:51:00.000-07:002009-01-15T15:34:37.550-08:00

The search for a hidden meaning may be a unicorn hunt; but if thereis a meaning to be found, only a correct basis of fact will lead us to it.Michael Dummett, The Game of Tarot Very few people have taken a serious look at the Tarot trump cycle and opined on its meaning. A great many people have indulged their preconceptions about the cards, biases usually deriving from two centuries of occult

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-90180184580765526432008-03-26T08:30:00.000-07:002009-01-15T15:34:10.176-08:00

Gertrude Moakley passed away ten years ago this friday.This seems like a good time to remember her. Gertrude Charlotte Moakley was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on February 18, 1905, to Arthur Irving Moakley and Josephine Henry (Barrett). She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1926 and a B.S. from Columbia University School of Library Science in 1928. She then began working as a

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-43931608769053418712008-03-23T15:31:00.000-07:002009-01-24T20:23:01.869-08:00

The Tarot trump cards—carte da trionfi—have the concept of triumphs at their heart. As first pointed out by Gertrude Moakley, the brilliant conceit was to make the hierarchy of trump cards a hierarchy of triumphs, an allegorical concatenation in the tradition of Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione and Petrarch's I Trionfi. Those 14th-century works, and even Tarot itself, (created around 1440), predate

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-32301292837398318682008-03-20T14:30:00.000-07:002009-01-15T15:33:23.024-08:00

Last week Robert Mealing posted some JPEGs from the Bibliothèque nationale de France to the Aeclectic Tarot Forum. As usual, his side-by-side comparisons with appropriate related decks were attractive and informative. However, I was most taken with the queen of coins. Quite the cutie with pushed-up boobs and a baby face -- high rounded forehead, big eyes, plump cheeks, tiny nose, small mouth and

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-82568626266566397982007-12-13T18:42:00.000-08:002009-05-18T09:19:31.368-07:00

The Tarot trumps constitute a hierarchy, both in terms of the game and iconographically. In the game of Tarot their rank is their only real meaning. Illustrative of that, modern Tarot decks -- usually double-ended and with French-suited pips -- have large numbers on the trumps and perfectly arbitrary subject matter illustrated. Iconographically, the composition of the cycle of trumps is triumphal

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-32799311716952327402007-12-10T08:59:00.000-08:002007-12-10T10:27:22.506-08:00

The Moral Allegory Who then is free? The wise man, who is lord over himself, whom neither poverty nor death nor bonds affright, who bravely defies his passions, and scorns ambition, who in himself is a whole, smoothed and rounded, so that nothing from outside can rest on the polished surface, and against whom Fortune in her onset is ever maimed.(Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Satires, 2.7) Ripping

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-69578589376348585452007-12-09T12:36:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:32:50.275-08:00

Over the last 6-8 years it has become common in online Tarot discussions to acknowledge, albeit sometimes under duress, two things that used to be vehemently denied throughout the Tarot community. First, there is Christian content in the Tarot trump cycle, and second, the hierarchy constitutes a moral allegory. Even some recent books by occult apologists give lip-service to these ideas, as long

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-65286005008604835862007-12-08T12:13:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:31:39.468-08:00

A week ago, Huck Meyer pointed out on the Aeclectic forum a "curious deck" described in an 1849 issue of The Gentleman's Magazine. That issue included a review of Chatto's The History of Playing-Cards and another article, Tarocchi Cards. Both articles were anonymous, and identifying the author of the article appears to be impossible. (James M. Kuist published The Nichols File of The Gentleman's

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-33168860324074557892007-12-08T10:44:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:31:17.009-08:00

The precise dating of Boiardo's Tarot poems, Viti's commentary, and the woodcut deck that was eventually produced, are open questions. Some discussion of the first question, dating the poems themselves, took place on the Boiardo mailing list in 2003. Ross was kind enough to invite me to read the archived posts: the evidence and arguments presented seem to agree with each other, suggesting that

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-48548533769050112362007-12-05T08:52:00.000-08:002010-02-01T19:42:02.653-08:00

As suggested in the previous post, Internet Tarot enthusiasts are usually predictable, uninformative, and more often than not, misleading. However, they are often entertaining in the same fashion as small children who are just learning about the world. Quick to assume that they are the first to consider whatever evidence they have just stumbled across, they routinely conclude that what they've

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-5456904136726884252007-12-02T20:42:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:30:32.588-08:00

December in Southern California: the brush-fire season gently overlaps the flash-flood season. The front-yard Birch and the back-yard Liquidamber are mostly bare, frustrating a hundred goldfinches seeking a sheltered perch between feeding frenzies. And a time of Agonizing Reappraisal as a new year approaches. Today's question: is there a place for Tarot history discussions in the online Tarot "

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-30792325392700387612007-11-27T18:43:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:29:53.175-08:00

Ross Caldwell noted that, “Real tarot history... starts from the facts, and works outward towards other facts. What's in between -- trying to connect the facts in a dark puzzle -- is argumentation. That's how history this old is done.” There are a great many Tarot sites online, (Google returned 56,500 results for the phrase, "Tarot history"), but, in terms of factual history, most of them are

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-28529415550624496002007-11-25T18:01:00.000-08:002012-01-01T10:54:03.534-08:00

Michael Dummett wrote the history of Tarot, in terms of the early development of playing cards and Tarot, in terms of the subsequent diaspora of various decks and games, and in terms of the invention and development of occult Tarot. His contributions to the iconography of Tarot are not so generally recognized. Many specific identifications were discovered and presented, but more important were

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-91548576414237037162007-11-23T20:46:00.000-08:002010-08-14T16:58:47.749-07:00

Iconography is the study of the subject matter of antique, didactic art. A few posts ago we looked at an analysis of a personification of Saturn by a long-time Tarot enthusiast. He was unable to recognize or unwilling to admit the typical attributes of Saturn. Today we'll examine another analysis, again by someone who has been doing this sort of thing for many years and considers herself a

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-21484571539749193152007-11-22T19:56:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:27:46.885-08:00

Occultists, New-Age authors, and neo-Pagans have sometimes claimed that the existence of obviously Christian emblems in the Tarot trumps is not part of the original design, but rather the result of a later redaction in which the Cabalistic, Pagan, heretical, or other supposed original content was suppressed and supplanted. In fact, just the opposite evolution took place. Almost from the beginning

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-52341260858837197812007-11-18T11:34:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:27:23.163-08:00

In an earlier post it was noted that the 22 allegorical cards of Tarot were created as trumps, and that the creation of trumps was a new idea in the 15th century. That new invention took various forms, including five-suited decks, the deck described by Marcello in which each suit had two types of court cards, the higher ones serving as trumps, the partial trumps of Karnöffel, the "fifth suit" of

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-77530203608256385552007-11-17T08:00:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:26:31.903-08:00

Last Sunday's post discussed the three regional traditions of trump ordering. An interesting exception exists in the modern Piedmontese Tarot. No early decks from this region have survived, and the numbering of later decks is inconsistent with the ranking observed in play. These later decks have trumps which are double-headed in the most simplistic manner, using the top half of the trump pictures

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-32286433713940672262007-11-15T09:22:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:25:59.251-08:00

The previous post attempted to explicate a tiny bit of Tarot iconography, the Ship and Tower in Sicilian decks. The Ship and Tower presented an anomaly, and an explanation was offered, along with some historical support. Today we'll take a critical look at a more typical example of what passes for iconography in the online Tarot community.A couple days ago, in an 11/12/07 posting to a online

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-24045750553910346602007-11-13T19:04:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:25:31.876-08:00

The so-called Tower card had more substantial variations than any of the other Tarot trump cards. Towers may be used to symbolize many things, and the card was revised repeatedly. The Tower card was called many different names and the iconography varied significantly in some later decks. Thus, like several other of the trump cards, it is inherently ambiguous and impossible to interpret fully

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-38810745319977151662007-11-11T09:11:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:25:08.419-08:00

Tarot was a card game. That is to say, it was a trivial element of popular culture. If it had been a typical card game we would probably know almost nothing about it, because such things do not leave many traces. We might expect a few mentions of the game on lists of prohibitions, or in a literary context, but overall very little. Tarot is different for several reasons. First, it was from the

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-90194418290924967592007-11-08T06:28:00.000-08:002010-05-09T10:10:57.553-07:00

"Italy is the source. Italy gave the world the game of Tarot; from Italy also derive the standard patterns used elsewhere for Italian-suited Tarots." (Michael Dummett)Thierry Depaulis reports that the Calvinist theologian and ardent defender of witch-hunts, Lambert Daneau, (Professor of Theology at Geneva and the chair of Theology at Leyden), writing in a 1566 anti-gambling pamphlet titled

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-89432446999572181002007-11-07T15:47:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:23:18.901-08:00

The fact that the twenty-two allegorical cards were invented primarily to serve as trumps in a trick-taking game is admitted even by many contemporary occultists. (The alternative view, that the trump cycle was primarily a coded compendium of heretical or occult knowledge, and that their “concealment” in a game was necessitated by the dreaded Inquisition, is still very popular.) But why would a

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-39647164797593393442007-11-06T08:08:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:22:28.576-08:00

The misleadingly so-called "Mantegna Tarocchi" was a 15th-century model book, containing 50 subjects in a pleasing contemporary style. The subjects included an encyclopedic, cosmological hierarchy from the estates of man through muses, the Liberal Arts, and Virtues, to the celestial Spheres. They were not by Mantegna, they were not Tarot cards, and in fact they were not cards of any kind. They

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-90936157612384431442007-11-04T12:05:00.000-08:002009-07-03T15:29:14.654-07:00

The highest cards in the Tarot trump hierarchy show the Last Resurrection (Rev 20) and New World (Rev 21) from the Bible. In some later, most notably Florentine decks, the meaning of these cards was changed (the Angle of Resurrection became an allegory of Fama, trumpeting over the Florentine skyline) and their order reversed, creating a triumph of Fame over an explicitly Euro-centric World. This

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-71173285491173958392007-11-04T11:44:00.000-08:002009-01-15T15:20:31.297-08:00

The meaning of Tarot symbolism and the history of the Tarot trump cards has intrigued people for over 225 years. Many bizarre and appealing stories have been invented, and some of these fictions are still defended with the fervor of a religious cult. The entries in this journal are primarily about the intended allegorical meaning of those cards and their factual history. The false histories of

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-53718558819653222532007-11-03T11:43:00.001-07:002009-01-15T15:19:41.630-08:00

Today's more sophisticated Tarot authors have embroidered their tales and interpretations with assorted facts developed by playing-card historians, and moved the esoteric origins of Tarot from ancient Egypt to Renaissance Italy. (The actual origin of occult Tarot was in eighteenth-century France, so they are getting closer.) However, their reconstructions of Tarot's meaning and history are

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-85312119853869933612007-11-03T10:48:00.000-07:002009-01-15T15:19:01.288-08:00

Tarot cards... are now almost commonplace. [This fact] does not reflect any significant move towards the playing of Tarot games in countries which lack that tradition. Which is rather ironic, when you consider that Tarots were originally invented for playing games with, (their occultic and fortune-telling functions date from the late eighteenth century), and that, having now been played for

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-42211185231084897162007-11-02T18:24:00.002-07:002009-01-15T15:17:32.355-08:00

To fools and cheats life's just a harmless game;   No penalty for lies that lead astray. But noble souls who follow Him lay claim   To higher truth and Reason's light -- The Way. The prize in love and battle is a fiction;   Such lordship cannot quench desire and fear. The Passions, joy and sorrow, are affliction,   Endemic here on Time and Fortune's sphere. Though Virtue will not stop

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8818207105387837658.post-55343993337352127302007-11-02T18:24:00.001-07:002009-01-15T15:16:37.093-08:00

Frank Frazetta's image of a mythic warrior on a devastated field of combat, smoke and fire, bloody battle ax in hand, vultures circling in the background, makes a perfect Tarot Death card. Despite being painted over five centuries after the creation of Tarot, Frazetta's iconic figure is a direct descendant of the mounted Reaper in 15th-century decks. Menacing, implacable, inescapable, Death

Michael J. Hursthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140523448996508475noreply@blogger.com0