From tyagi@bjt.net Fri Mar 14 12:27:15 1997 Return-Path: Received: from kudonet.com by kudo20.kudonet.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id MAA13092; Fri, 14 Mar 1997 12:27:15 -0800 Received: from vera.nni.com by kudonet.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id MAA20855; Fri, 14 Mar 1997 12:37:08 -0800 Received: from kudonet.com ([165.227.52.1]) by vera.nni.com (Netscape Mail Server v2.02) with SMTP id AAA131 for ; Fri, 14 Mar 1997 15:32:27 -0500 Received: from kudo20.kudonet.com by kudonet.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id MAA20808; Fri, 14 Mar 1997 12:33:32 -0800 Received: by kudo20.kudonet.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id MAA13024; Fri, 14 Mar 1997 12:23:35 -0800 Message-Id: <199703142023.MAA13024@kudo20.kudonet.com> Subject: Tarot History/Structure To: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 12:23:35 -0800 (PST) From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Orientation: House of Kaos, St. Joseph, Kali Fornika, US -- Kali Yuga X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 ME8b] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit content-length: 6460 Status: RO Newsgroups: alt.tarot,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.divination,alt.magick,alt.pagan.magick From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Subject: Tarot History/Structure (was Re: The tarot in the restored order) Date: 14 Mar 1997 07:50:04 -0800 49970314 AA1 Hail Satan! apparently, Peter van den Berg wrote: >> > At the moment I'm reading a book called 'The TAROT in the restored >> > order',(almost 500 p., with lots of illustrations and diagrams etc.) that >> > states that originally the Tarot deck must have had 80 cards! Almost >> > everywhere they speak about the Tarot deck consisting of 78 cards, >> > forgetting/omitting the two traditional blank cards. when was this 'originally'? who devised it? on what basis is this history conjectured? my sources indicate that tarocchi, a card game from Italy, was the most realistic origin of modern "Tarot" cards, though I am as yet unsure of how the switch was made between card game and cartomancy. John : >**What about the theory that the original Tarot Deck only contained 22 >cards? if tarocchi is considered to be the earliest or 'original' card deck (as compared to, say, the first ORACULAR deck), then it appears to have originated in the 15th->16th centuries. as Kaplan writes, in his introduction to the Visconti-Sforza (Pierpont Morgan-Bergamo) Tarocchi Deck: The term *tarocchi* was used in Italy in the early sixteenth century, and quite probably in the fifteenth century, to describe the complete 78-card deck consisting of 22 Major Arcana or trump cards and 56 Minor Arcana or suit cards. The words *tarocchi* and *tarocco* are often used interchangeably, although *tarochi* is actually the plural of *tarocco*. *Tarot*, the French derivation of *tarocchi*, has come into widespread use in the English language.... _Visconti Sforza (Instructions)_, by Stuart R. Kaplan, U.S. Games Systems, Inc., 1975; p. 3. _________________________________________________________ >The Minors and Courts came along earlier (or later) as a simple >game?? later appears to be more well-founded by evidence. as Kaplan continues: Many card-makers, from earliest times to the present, have sought to introduce a variety of suit signs including stars, arrows, birds, dogs, falcons, mirrors, columns, moons, anchors, etc., but did not strike the popular fancy.... Some scholars believe the modern 52-card playing card deck derives from the early tarocchi packs -- the knight and page having been combined to form the jack and the 22 trump cards having been dropped, with the exception of the Fool which survives as the Joker. However, no one knows with certainty that the 22 Major Arcana and the 56 Minor Arcana were originally devised as a 78-card deck. It is sometimes theorized that the court and pip cards of the Minor Arcana developed independently of the trumps and at a later date the trumps were added to form the complete tarocchi pack.... The Fool disappears from traditional ... packs until the middle of the nineteenth century when the Joker, occasionally pictured as a fool, begins to appear in 52-card American packs. Therefore, it is difficult to substantiate any direct link between The Fool and the Joker, beyond the obvious humorous connotation.... The earliest pack of tarot cards with numbers on the 22 Major Arcana is a French deck by Catalin Geoffroy (possibly prepared for export to Germany) which dates from about 1556 or 1557. The same sequence is still popular today.... Ibid, pp. 3-6. ______________ >Does it all really matter? it matters if/when people begin enveloping the Tarot in a shroud of mystery and claiming it originated with the Egyptians or was devised by Gypsies as some Hermetic flim-flam. there is value in at times getting into the nitty-gritty of what is really known about the history of the deck. of course there is also value in studying the mythos surrounding the deck's origins, and this can usually be seen to be a tool of a particular esoteric tradition's perspective (whichever one happens to be making the claims). >Are we losing sight of the reasons as to why they are here NOW 'why they are here', or 'how they got here'? the former implies that there is some Overall Purpose for which all Tarot is geared. I haven't noticed that this conception is popular amongst those who are at all skeptical of tarotic origins, though (at first) game and (later) oracle appear to be the most popular uses. the latter ('how...') is what can be rationally-derived from an honest look at the cards and their historical passage. from this we can begin to ARRIVE at arguments about 'why they are here', and so the two are ultimately related, why they are here being implicated by how they arrived. >in order to bat around the questions of when and how many?? batting things around is usually a frivolous and useless pursuit, and if not based on some sort of reliable research merely becomes a quibbling row devoid of significance when engaged in Usenet. >I'm satisfied to know there are 78 'there are' is also ambiguous, since the term 'tarot', usually applied to a formal structure inclusive of the format mentioned by Kaplan above, is incorporated into the wider category of 'cartouche' or 'cartomancy'. this latter contains all manner of card-decks, some with resemblances to the classic Tarot structure, some which vary considerably from this, and some which have no connection whatever to tarot or its kindred (e.g. Rune, Mah Jong or I Ching cards). >(or 79, depending on the use of the blank "Eternity" or >"Unknowable" card). I have never heard of this card referred to in any classical setting, though I have included it within a deck of my own design. along with the blank rune, I suspect it to be of relatively modern derivation, though I'd love to hear more about which decks have one and what meanings it is ascribed. the most popular classic decks (Smith-Waite/Harris-Crowley) do not generally contain a Blank as part of their structure, though the latter sometimes includes a Unicursal Hexagram. tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com nagasiva -- see http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi/nagasiva.html and call: 408/2-666-SLUG!!! ---- (emailed replies may be posted) ---- CC public replies to author ---- * * * Asphalta Cementia Metallica Polymera Coyote La Cucaracha Humana * * * ----- End of forwarded message from nagasiva -----