My updating of chapter 4 divide into three sections: preliminaries, the main issue, and other points of interest.
Preliminaries:
Moakley gives three new precedents to the imagined procession: that of knights and foot soldiers under banners, the Magi processions in Milan, and perhaps wedding processions. She mentions one of 1475 in Pesaro, but I cannot imagine that there were none before 1440, the earliest date we have for the game called "trionfi". There would have at least been ones for the ruling family, e.g. Filippo's in 1428 with Marie of Savoy, and Bianca Maria Visconti in 1441. In Florence, cassoni, wedding chests, are documented for the processions of families who could afford them, chests with painted scenes on them, often on the theme of Love or Chastity, that were carried through the streets on the way from the bride's house to the groom's. And of course in Florence there was also, besides the Magi processions at Epiphany, the even bigger St. John the Baptist processions in June. These are in addition to the procession the last night of Carnival. However I have not found documentation of their existence in the cities of the tarot before 1440. It seems inconceivable that they did not, but one never knows.
Here it is of interest that she sees the sequence as an account of human experience generally; even history itself can be seen in terms of the triumphs. In that regard there was a 22 element parade in 1452 Florence encompassing all of human history as seen through the Bible (see translation of Pratesi note at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1092&start=30#p17993). Also, if it describes human experience generally, then many works of literature and philosophy can be seen as exemplifying the sequence, more or less, as I have said at viewtopic.php?f=12&t=995&p=15034&hilit=structure+Jesus#p15034.
Preliminaries:
Moakley gives three new precedents to the imagined procession: that of knights and foot soldiers under banners, the Magi processions in Milan, and perhaps wedding processions. She mentions one of 1475 in Pesaro, but I cannot imagine that there were none before 1440, the earliest date we have for the game called "trionfi". There would have at least been ones for the ruling family, e.g. Filippo's in 1428 with Marie of Savoy, and Bianca Maria Visconti in 1441. In Florence, cassoni, wedding chests, are documented for the processions of families who could afford them, chests with painted scenes on them, often on the theme of Love or Chastity, that were carried through the streets on the way from the bride's house to the groom's. And of course in Florence there was also, besides the Magi processions at Epiphany, the even bigger St. John the Baptist processions in June. These are in addition to the procession the last night of Carnival. However I have not found documentation of their existence in the cities of the tarot before 1440. It seems inconceivable that they did not, but one never knows.
Here it is of interest that she sees the sequence as an account of human experience generally; even history itself can be seen in terms of the triumphs. In that regard there was a 22 element parade in 1452 Florence encompassing all of human history as seen through the Bible (see translation of Pratesi note at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1092&start=30#p17993). Also, if it describes human experience generally, then many works of literature and philosophy can be seen as exemplifying the sequence, more or less, as I have said at viewtopic.php?f=12&t=995&p=15034&hilit=structure+Jesus#p15034.
It is of great interest that Moakley says that the
tarocchi deck "had several variations before it became fixed as the game
played with twenty-one triumphs and a Fool". Her only example is is
the Marziano/Michelino, with 16 triumphal cards; it is discussed a lot
on THF. The documents are at http://trionfi.com/earliest-tarot-pack.
This deck was not well known in 1966, with only one article, some 75 years
earlier, and in French; she has done some homework.
In that game she presents Jupiter as the lowest triumphal figure and Cupid the highest; probably it is the other way around, although the text is not totally clear. Ross writes, in his analysis of the text (at http://trionfi.com/earliest-tarot-pack)
What I found most interesting in her summary of that game is that she is unaware that all the triumphs in that game were linked to its four suits; that would have supported her thesis about the relationship of triumphs to suits in the tarocchi. That detail was not mentioned in the French article, which is currently online (search "Paul Durrieu Michelino da Besozzo").. The cataloguer of the CY was surely also unaware of this fact.I will develop this point later, in relation to the Cary-Yale.
Main issue:
How she applies I Trionfi to the tarot sequence is the main topic of the chapter. In the Visconti-Sforza, she finds that the ideas of at least five of the six Petrarchan triumphs are in the poem, namely Love, Chastity, Death, Time, and Eternity. So a main inspiration for the tarot sequence is the poem..
Hurst raises some problems about her argument (http://wikivisually.com/wiki/User:Michael_Hurst/Moakley):
First, on the absence of Fame: It seems to me that the tarot sequence does not have to follow all of Petrarch's schema, 5 out of 6 is enough to prove the point. For her all 5 are there, even if two are out of order: Chariot( before Love) and Time. Chariot in most tarot orders was not before Love; Moakley was misled by the order she presumed applied to the PMB, that of the Bertoni poem of c. 1550 Ferrara. Time's change of place this can be accounted for byrememering that artists do not slavishly copy each other, even in the 15th century. The sequence is a work of art, and as such does not have to slavishly follow precedents. It merely builds on them. It is not "simplistic" to hold that, for example, a play of Shakespeare is based on a particular chronicle if, for example, he changes the order of events somewhat for dramatic effect.
"Fame" in Petrarch's sense, worldly fame, is a quality achieved only by a few, and it may be questioned whether it is even desirable to strive after it, for it leads many to ruin. Petrarch's poem was a personal reflection on the part of a poet who was already famous by the time he wrote the "Triumph of Fame". A deck of cards is for many people, especially women who don't get much chance for fame.
Also, Moakley does say that in one version of the tarot Fame in fact appears, namely minchiate, where it corresponds to "Hope, Prudence, Faith, and Charity, each wearing Fame's curious aureole." In that sense, Fame is glory in the eyes of heaven rather than of the world. Since Moakley's time, it has been noticed that the terms "germini" and "minchiate" occur in documents at regular intervals starting from 1466: 1477, then 1507. It can be hypothesized (although Moakley doesn't, that I can tell) that the minchiate might represent a version of tarocchi that goes back very early, when more correspondence with the poem might have been expected. See Franco's essays on this speculation translated at: (1) viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1086#p16686; (2) viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1086&start=20#p16716 and viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1086&start=20#p16721; (3) viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1120&start=50#p18092.In any case, these virtues do appear in the Cary-Yale, a fact of which Moakley seems not to have been aware.
Also, there is the Cary-Yale, apparently unknown to Moakley but which has a card of unknown title with castles and a knight on horseback. Above is a lady holding a trumpet. The trumpet is an attribute of fame. So the scene below might be a knight in the act of achieving fame. It might even be specific to Francesco Sforza, his fame, as Phaeded has suggested. Similar scenes might have been on other early Milanese decks of that type, perhaps expressing a chivalric ideal, such as that of Sir Galahad and Sir Perceval, main characters in the "Lancelot" book illustrated by the Bembo workshop in the 1440s.
Another candidate for Fame might be the Star card--not in the PMB, but originally. We simply don't know what it looked like originally. If it was like the minchiate or Bolognese version, it might have been the Star of Bethlehem (a suggestion made by Shephard, as we shall see later).
A fourth solution might be that the PMB designer thought that striving for worldly fame was inappropriate, and therefore identified that Petrarchan triumph with the Devil, as a temptation to be avoided, and the Tower, referring to the Tower of Babel and other monuments done "to make a name for ourselves", as Genesis describes the motives of its builders. The Tower and the Devil, however, Moakley associates with Death.
The other problem Hurst raised is that Time, represented by an old man with an hourglass, is out of order. For Moakley Time appears in two places in the sequence, once as an old man, Father Time, and once as the celestials. As the celestials it is in the place Petrarch put it. His primary image of Time was in But Petrarch's poem, a personal expression, is being adapted for a larger audience. There are two types of Time, human time and cosmic time. Petrarch only drew attention to cosmic time, that over which fame fades; the tarocchi designer, at least by the time of the PMB, wants to pay attention to both, including those who aren't concerned with earthly fame, but do need to remember that the time allotted to them on earth is short. It is an adaptation of the Petrarchan structure to a new setting.
There is also the issue of what to do with the other cards besides those identified with the triumph itself. She says that besides the triumph itself, there are its "companions" and "captives". Love has the imperial and papal couples as its captives, and fortitude and temperance as its companions, seen not only as the virtues but as sexual symbols, in an "anything goes" atmosphere. This interpretation is appropriate in a carnival atmosphere, if Milan then had a history of such a thing. But she is also led to it by the odd Bertoni sequence she uses (Temperance, Chariot, Love, Fortitude), which besides being atypical and changing Petrarch's order of Love and Chastity (if it equals Chariot) is from another region and is also rather late. If she had used the "Steele Sermon", which is probably the earliest known list, she would not have found herself in this very awkward position.. In the "Steele Sermon" the order is: Temperance, Love, Chariot, Fortitude (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Sermones ... _Cum_Aliis). In that case, Temperance is the companion of Love, and Fortitude is the companion of the Chariot and, I think, the Wheel.
She gives another way of assigning Petrarchan to tarot triumphs in the discussion of minchiate. I have already mentioned Fame. In minchiate the chariot card, representing Chastity, is above Fortune (Love, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, Fortune, Chariot). Here she says Chastity has Love and Fortune as its captives, and the three virtues Temperance, Fortitude, and Justice as its companions.
A solution might be to give each Petrarchan triumph its own car, or "float" as we would say, one after another, with virtues as triumphators in their own right, best imagined as generals in smaller cars leading their troops. Only those not in one of these two categories would be on a Petrarchan float as its "captive", and those who share a Petrarchan Triumph (i.e. the three celestials as Time). The Triumph of Fortune had been celebrated, or lamented, throughout the Middle Ages. It deserves its own float, even if it is not, strictly speaking, a Petrarchan. Again, there is no question of slavish imitation.
Another line of attack, perhaps even "solution", might be not to focus on the PMB but instead on the earlier deck, the Cary-Yale. I will give my Moakley-like analysis of that deck in my comments to the beginning of her Part II, on the Procession.
O'Neill complains about the lack of symmetry in the structure: But why not, if that is the way it is? The cards are not an abstract design laid out like a crystal or an image in a kaleidoscope. They simply tell an allegorical story; some characters, as in the stories about knights, have lots of captives and others fewer. Also, it may be that there was originally a symmetry, but it got lost as the tarot aged, put together by people who had lost the original intent. If that is the case, one must make do with what one has..
One criticism I do have is that it is not clear to me that the Love actually has captured anyone on the Love, they seem more like parties to a contract than captives of passion. In both the Steele Sermon and Bertoni, Love is separated from the Pope, etc., by Temperance, which now governs them. It works better in the minchiate and the later Lombard order, but even there the connection is not compelling. There can be a ribald interpretation of the dignitaries, certainly, but the sequence is meaningful enough without that particular implication. While being "love's captive" in Petrarch's sense applies to Pope Joan, it hardly applies to Moakley's preferred Sister Manfreda or the majority of popes. The love that goes with marriage perhaps applies to the Empress and Emperor. But given that the Pope and Popess are absent from the earlier CY, they may have been an addition added after the original sequence.
She speaks of a "softening" of Petrarchan Love in the tarot,, making itof "Everyman" rather than specific to Petrarch and Laura. It is not clear exactly what she means. In line with the above, we might say that Love is softened so that it is not the curse of longing and feelings of despair, but the honorable estate of marriage, one of the seven sacraments of the church and established as a contractual agreement binding upon both parties.
I hope this is enough to deal with the issues Hurst raised, which were good ones. I want also to call attention to chapter 5 of John Shephard's The Tarot Trumps: Cosmos in Miniature, 1985, which dealt with these issues long ago. I will post some of it after Moakley is sufficiently presented.
Other points of interest:
In that game she presents Jupiter as the lowest triumphal figure and Cupid the highest; probably it is the other way around, although the text is not totally clear. Ross writes, in his analysis of the text (at http://trionfi.com/earliest-tarot-pack)
I think that it meant that the trump with the lowest number (e.g. Jupiter as #1) beats those with higher numbers (e.g. Cupid at #16).However, each of the gods will be higher than all orders of the birds and than kings of the orders (Deorum vero quisque omnibus ordinibus avium et ordinum regibus praeerit.)
The gods among themselves have to respect this law: who first is noted lower down will be higher than all the following ones. (Sed inter se dii hac lege tenebuntur, quod(?) qui prior inferius annotabitur sequentibus omnibus praesit.) [Here I am not certain of the meaning; probably, the first god to be played has to be considered as the highest card.]
What I found most interesting in her summary of that game is that she is unaware that all the triumphs in that game were linked to its four suits; that would have supported her thesis about the relationship of triumphs to suits in the tarocchi. That detail was not mentioned in the French article, which is currently online (search "Paul Durrieu Michelino da Besozzo").. The cataloguer of the CY was surely also unaware of this fact.I will develop this point later, in relation to the Cary-Yale.
Main issue:
How she applies I Trionfi to the tarot sequence is the main topic of the chapter. In the Visconti-Sforza, she finds that the ideas of at least five of the six Petrarchan triumphs are in the poem, namely Love, Chastity, Death, Time, and Eternity. So a main inspiration for the tarot sequence is the poem..
Hurst raises some problems about her argument (http://wikivisually.com/wiki/User:Michael_Hurst/Moakley):
The quote from O'Neill has been moved to a later section of the essay, leaving its introduction left hanging. Probably it is this one, from p. 79 of O'Neill's book:Moakley suggests that Petrarch’s triumphs were excerpted, simplified, and rearranged “in the merry mood of Carnival.” Some elements seem straightforward, such as Love followed by the Chariot. In the Visconti-Sforza deck, Love may illustrate a betrothal picture of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. The Chariot has a female sovereign being pulled by winged horses, and might easily be intended to conflate the conventional Tarot Chariot with Petrarch’s Triumph of Chastity. (Unfortunately for her presentation, Moakley followed the Bertoni sequence, which inverts the order of these two cards.) Death follows eventually, but Fame appears to be completely absent. The triumph of Eternity (the Angel and World) over Time (the Moon and Sun) would complete Petrarch’s triumphs, in something close to their proper order. Among other problems with this analysis, however, in the Visconti-Sforza deck the Hermit card is clearly intended to represent Time, and therefore ruins another part of the sequence.
Moakley resolves such difficulties with speculations about possible humorous intent. Lack of fit with Petrarch’s design is taken not as a weakness of the theory but as implied satire of that design. The trumps are considered “a ribald take-off” of Petrarch’s story, blended into the context of a playful Carnivalesque procession. “Perhaps because, in the merry mood of Carnival, everything possible was done to make fun of the solemn story.” Unfortunately, there is no apparent rhyme or reason to the various mismatches, and no coherent connection with Petrarch’s design. If it were intended as a satire it fails utterly, since the object of the satire is no longer visible. Yes, there are some of Petrarch’s triumphs present in Tarot, but also some absent, some out of sequence, and many more that are simply out of place, having no reasonable analogy in I Trionfi. As Robert V. O’Neill put it in Tarot Symbolism:
How to answer these points?The explanation is that the Tarot is not only a simplification of Petrarch's schema but also a spoof, a ribald take-off of the solemnity of the original story and in the spirit of the Carnival parade. This explanation is not acceptable simply because it allows too much freedom. Any lack of correspondence can be passed off as part of the joke. Therefore, if the cards match, it is taken as positive evidence for the theory, while any discrepancy is dismissed off-hand. This is too simplistic.
First, on the absence of Fame: It seems to me that the tarot sequence does not have to follow all of Petrarch's schema, 5 out of 6 is enough to prove the point. For her all 5 are there, even if two are out of order: Chariot( before Love) and Time. Chariot in most tarot orders was not before Love; Moakley was misled by the order she presumed applied to the PMB, that of the Bertoni poem of c. 1550 Ferrara. Time's change of place this can be accounted for byrememering that artists do not slavishly copy each other, even in the 15th century. The sequence is a work of art, and as such does not have to slavishly follow precedents. It merely builds on them. It is not "simplistic" to hold that, for example, a play of Shakespeare is based on a particular chronicle if, for example, he changes the order of events somewhat for dramatic effect.
"Fame" in Petrarch's sense, worldly fame, is a quality achieved only by a few, and it may be questioned whether it is even desirable to strive after it, for it leads many to ruin. Petrarch's poem was a personal reflection on the part of a poet who was already famous by the time he wrote the "Triumph of Fame". A deck of cards is for many people, especially women who don't get much chance for fame.
Also, Moakley does say that in one version of the tarot Fame in fact appears, namely minchiate, where it corresponds to "Hope, Prudence, Faith, and Charity, each wearing Fame's curious aureole." In that sense, Fame is glory in the eyes of heaven rather than of the world. Since Moakley's time, it has been noticed that the terms "germini" and "minchiate" occur in documents at regular intervals starting from 1466: 1477, then 1507. It can be hypothesized (although Moakley doesn't, that I can tell) that the minchiate might represent a version of tarocchi that goes back very early, when more correspondence with the poem might have been expected. See Franco's essays on this speculation translated at: (1) viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1086#p16686; (2) viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1086&start=20#p16716 and viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1086&start=20#p16721; (3) viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1120&start=50#p18092.In any case, these virtues do appear in the Cary-Yale, a fact of which Moakley seems not to have been aware.
Also, there is the Cary-Yale, apparently unknown to Moakley but which has a card of unknown title with castles and a knight on horseback. Above is a lady holding a trumpet. The trumpet is an attribute of fame. So the scene below might be a knight in the act of achieving fame. It might even be specific to Francesco Sforza, his fame, as Phaeded has suggested. Similar scenes might have been on other early Milanese decks of that type, perhaps expressing a chivalric ideal, such as that of Sir Galahad and Sir Perceval, main characters in the "Lancelot" book illustrated by the Bembo workshop in the 1440s.
Another candidate for Fame might be the Star card--not in the PMB, but originally. We simply don't know what it looked like originally. If it was like the minchiate or Bolognese version, it might have been the Star of Bethlehem (a suggestion made by Shephard, as we shall see later).
A fourth solution might be that the PMB designer thought that striving for worldly fame was inappropriate, and therefore identified that Petrarchan triumph with the Devil, as a temptation to be avoided, and the Tower, referring to the Tower of Babel and other monuments done "to make a name for ourselves", as Genesis describes the motives of its builders. The Tower and the Devil, however, Moakley associates with Death.
The other problem Hurst raised is that Time, represented by an old man with an hourglass, is out of order. For Moakley Time appears in two places in the sequence, once as an old man, Father Time, and once as the celestials. As the celestials it is in the place Petrarch put it. His primary image of Time was in But Petrarch's poem, a personal expression, is being adapted for a larger audience. There are two types of Time, human time and cosmic time. Petrarch only drew attention to cosmic time, that over which fame fades; the tarocchi designer, at least by the time of the PMB, wants to pay attention to both, including those who aren't concerned with earthly fame, but do need to remember that the time allotted to them on earth is short. It is an adaptation of the Petrarchan structure to a new setting.
There is also the issue of what to do with the other cards besides those identified with the triumph itself. She says that besides the triumph itself, there are its "companions" and "captives". Love has the imperial and papal couples as its captives, and fortitude and temperance as its companions, seen not only as the virtues but as sexual symbols, in an "anything goes" atmosphere. This interpretation is appropriate in a carnival atmosphere, if Milan then had a history of such a thing. But she is also led to it by the odd Bertoni sequence she uses (Temperance, Chariot, Love, Fortitude), which besides being atypical and changing Petrarch's order of Love and Chastity (if it equals Chariot) is from another region and is also rather late. If she had used the "Steele Sermon", which is probably the earliest known list, she would not have found herself in this very awkward position.. In the "Steele Sermon" the order is: Temperance, Love, Chariot, Fortitude (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Sermones ... _Cum_Aliis). In that case, Temperance is the companion of Love, and Fortitude is the companion of the Chariot and, I think, the Wheel.
She gives another way of assigning Petrarchan to tarot triumphs in the discussion of minchiate. I have already mentioned Fame. In minchiate the chariot card, representing Chastity, is above Fortune (Love, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, Fortune, Chariot). Here she says Chastity has Love and Fortune as its captives, and the three virtues Temperance, Fortitude, and Justice as its companions.
A solution might be to give each Petrarchan triumph its own car, or "float" as we would say, one after another, with virtues as triumphators in their own right, best imagined as generals in smaller cars leading their troops. Only those not in one of these two categories would be on a Petrarchan float as its "captive", and those who share a Petrarchan Triumph (i.e. the three celestials as Time). The Triumph of Fortune had been celebrated, or lamented, throughout the Middle Ages. It deserves its own float, even if it is not, strictly speaking, a Petrarchan. Again, there is no question of slavish imitation.
Another line of attack, perhaps even "solution", might be not to focus on the PMB but instead on the earlier deck, the Cary-Yale. I will give my Moakley-like analysis of that deck in my comments to the beginning of her Part II, on the Procession.
O'Neill complains about the lack of symmetry in the structure: But why not, if that is the way it is? The cards are not an abstract design laid out like a crystal or an image in a kaleidoscope. They simply tell an allegorical story; some characters, as in the stories about knights, have lots of captives and others fewer. Also, it may be that there was originally a symmetry, but it got lost as the tarot aged, put together by people who had lost the original intent. If that is the case, one must make do with what one has..
One criticism I do have is that it is not clear to me that the Love actually has captured anyone on the Love, they seem more like parties to a contract than captives of passion. In both the Steele Sermon and Bertoni, Love is separated from the Pope, etc., by Temperance, which now governs them. It works better in the minchiate and the later Lombard order, but even there the connection is not compelling. There can be a ribald interpretation of the dignitaries, certainly, but the sequence is meaningful enough without that particular implication. While being "love's captive" in Petrarch's sense applies to Pope Joan, it hardly applies to Moakley's preferred Sister Manfreda or the majority of popes. The love that goes with marriage perhaps applies to the Empress and Emperor. But given that the Pope and Popess are absent from the earlier CY, they may have been an addition added after the original sequence.
She speaks of a "softening" of Petrarchan Love in the tarot,, making itof "Everyman" rather than specific to Petrarch and Laura. It is not clear exactly what she means. In line with the above, we might say that Love is softened so that it is not the curse of longing and feelings of despair, but the honorable estate of marriage, one of the seven sacraments of the church and established as a contractual agreement binding upon both parties.
I hope this is enough to deal with the issues Hurst raised, which were good ones. I want also to call attention to chapter 5 of John Shephard's The Tarot Trumps: Cosmos in Miniature, 1985, which dealt with these issues long ago. I will post some of it after Moakley is sufficiently presented.
Other points of interest:
At the end she asserts that Triumphs was a separate game before it got attached to the four suits. It is not clear that the cards in Rosselli's shop were actually games, as opposed to six pictures (see Ross Caldwell at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=906&p=13237&hilit=Rosselli#p13237), and in any case that is 1525, almost a century after the invention of the game. The associated game, moreover, was clearly an extension of trick-taking to include a fifth suit. Trick-taking was already a feature of games with the four suits. There is no hint of anything else in the game of tarot.
She maintains that the game must have originated with the aristocracy because it is not forbidden, unlike other games. Recent research has shown that in Florence it was forbidden for at least 10 years. and in fact there were two arrests for it in 1444. But even in 1420, there was possibly an exception, referred to as diritta, to which another was added later. Triumphs was legalized in 1450, probably because it, like the others, was a trick-taking game and involved skill and not simply luck. See Franco Pratesi translations at viewtopic.php?f=11&p=17881#p17880 (the convictions in 1444) and viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1082#p16591 (law of 1450). For the 1420 exception and why, see (in French) http://www.naibi.net/A/49-DIRITTA-Z.pdf. For a 1437 exception of two card games, see (in English) http://trionfi.com/card-playing-laws-florence.
Boiardo is discussed numerous places on THF. The poem itself is at http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Boiardo,_Matteo_Maria. Other informaton is at http://trionfi.com/0/h/00/. Her way of presenting his sequence, and above all its number certainly suggests that he was continuing the themes of the corresponding tarot trumps in many cases. Moakley's discussion of Boiardo's scoring procedure, derived from Viti's commentary, is expanded upon by Dummett in Game of Tarot, p. 420ff, quoted at length by Hurst at http://pre-gebelin.blogspot.com/2007/12/boiardos-poems-and-vitis-commenary.html
She says that fortune-telling was
done with cards in the Renaissance, but only with the suit of Coins. In
the one Italian lot-book preserved of the time using cards (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Marcolini,_Francesco;
I thank SteveM for this reference), the
suit sign might be Coins (see below). But the suit-sign played no role
in the procedure. As such, they might also be the configurations familiar from dominoes. In Germany there were lot books that used all four suits http://trionfi.com/0/p/41/). In the French tarot poem, I do not understand is how a Sword beats the Hanged Man, a Cup beats the Old Man, and a Baton beats what seems to be the Emperor. That seems to be a joke rather than a description of something in a tarot game. No wonder nobody could answer the riddle. Or am I misreading? It is still a riddle to me, but perhaps I am asking too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment