Huck as recently posted links to a few new pages on Andrea Vitali's site. I was particularly interested by this one:

Huck wrote:Andrea Vitali announced 4 new essays in Italian language ...

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3 - The Aristotelian Telescope by Emanuele Tesauro (XVII century)

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http://letarot.it/I-Sermoni-del-Giusti_ ... 6_ita.aspx

Translated from Vitali's Essay. Emanuele Tesauro was born in Turin in 1592 and died in the same city in 1675. He entered the Jesuit Order in 1611. In 1654 he composed the Cannocchiale Aristotelico (Aristotelian Spyglass), the most important baroque rhetoric essay.

The passage about Tarot and Chess belongs to the discussion of “Inventions in which the fictional character makes use of gestures and actions, without words”.

I find this passage fascinating (p.57-58):

Finally whatever of pleasant and ingenious we find in Mute Games proceeds from the same source; [these games] represent some heroic subjects. Such is the game of Tarot; a deign creation of a barbarous mind, in which you see a mixed tangle of all the people in the world, with their devices. The Rich with Money, the Drunkards with the Cup, the Warriors with the Sword, the Shepherds with Maces. Emperors, Prelates, Angels, Demons: almost as if the Player holding a deck of cards had to keep the whole World in his hand, and the game were nothing but a metaphor of messing up the universe: who brings more ruin is the winner. But the most heroic and cunning game, a school of war, is that of Chess. In a small battle field you see two ordered armies, one of White Assyrians and the other of Black Africans. And here there are Kings, Queens, Warriors, Knights, Towering Elephants, and Infantry facing, assaulting, ambushing, surprising, running, helping, fighting, covering, taking prisoners and taking them out of the world at the command of the two Players, as if they where the masters of the battle. Until when the squads of the enemy are defeated and the King (the only one whose life is spared) is arrested: a tiring but sweet victory ends a conflict without bloodshed but not without anger for the loser. The game was conceived by the warlike mind of Palamedes among the Greek tends, in order to fight against idleness. You must not be surprised if an armed Pallas was born out of the brain of Jove and armies where born out of the brain of a Soldier. What is this game but a heroic symbol, a continuing metaphor? Where those little simulacra, animated by the living hand, allegorically represent an intellectual conflict, and have movement as their Motto. So the Player is transfigured in in the characters represented by those wooden warriors, and the mind of the Player lives in our images.

The more of these commentaries that are contemporary to tarots pre-occult heyday that come to light, the more I come to the opinion that there simply was no standard consensus on the symbolic meaning of the suit emblems. For those looking for "the answer" to the riddle of the tarot this must be pure frustration. For those who like to 'read' the tarot it's a blessing. You can make your own interpretation and still be well within the precedents of history. Folks were making there own interpretations all the way back to the Renaissance.

I've been blissfully misinterpreting the suit of Coins as communion wafers to go with those Cups of wine for weeks now! ;)

R.A. Hendley wrote:The more of these commentaries that are contemporary to tarots pre-occult heyday that come to light, the more I come to the opinion that there simply was no standard consensus on the symbolic meaning of the suit emblems. For those looking for "the answer" to the riddle of the tarot this must be pure frustration. For those who like to 'read' the tarot it's a blessing. You can make your own interpretation and still be well within the precedents of history. Folks were making there own interpretations all the way back to the Renaissance.

I've been blissfully misinterpreting the suit of Coins as communion wafers to go with those Cups of wine for weeks now! ;)

Hello RAH,
I agree that the interpretations of the suits are extremely varied. I think this is an effect of their Islamic origin, and of the adaptation that changed the polo-sticks with batons.
On the other hand, the term "riddle of the tarot" makes me think of what Michael J. Hurst presented since his old cartedatrionfi site. I think Michael has given a good answer to that riddle (and Dummett had partly independently provided a very similar one in 1985). But history never provides the answer: it searches for the best possible one.

The trumps where a product of XV century Italy: we can assume they were meaningful and understandable at that time in that place, and we have some evidence that confirms this. Tesauro takes the trumps as an allegory representing the structure of the World (a cosmograph or imago mundi). This is perfectly compatible with the other early interpretations of the trumps we know of. What is unique to Tesauro (as far as I know) is that he notes that during game the cosmograph is turned into a cosmogony. I think this observation tells us something of why the game was so fascinating.

The Telescope seems to me an exceptional work: this learned Jesuit devotes almost 800 pages to the analysis of metaphor, invention, allegory, emblems. It is very interesting to find an interpretation of tarot (however short) in such a lovely book.

Marco

Thanks for translating Tesauro, Marco.

This reminds me of another 17th century off-hand moralization, but not as a cosmography, only a republic, by François Garasse in 1622. Not a sincere attempt, but a parody moralizing the series vaguely as representing a Republic. Garasse's work is not beautiful - it is a diatribe against Estienne Pasquier, who moralized the game of Chess in his Recherches de la France (1607).

See in particular the last paragraph - the whole selection is intended to show how the mind of a moralizer might work, and how easy a task it was.

"The other question I ask of Master Pasquier, is to know how the game of Chess pertains to the RECHERCHES DE FRANCE, seeing that it is certain that the French are not its Inventors, as he could learn in the verse of the Italian Gerolamo Vida: but in the Recherches de France why rather put the games of the Paume and Chess, than the games of Tarot, Bowling, the short ball, and others that are more in use among the French than the game of Chess, which requires rather a Spanish patience, not a French impatience?

"Moreover, Master Pasquier, in treating of the game of Chess, asks and looks for the reasons why the Rook goes straight, the Bishop (fou) diagonal, the Knight jumping, the Queen (Dame) in all directions, and the Pawns and the King have only one step; and by his cleverness associates all these particulars to the affairs of the State. The Pawns, he says, are the common people, the Knights are the Nobility, the Queen the Courtesans, the Rooks the Counsel, and the Bishops are those who are personally nearest to the Kings, as it happens that in the game of Chess the Bishops are normally beside the King.

"To all this I respond in order. Firstly, if I want to write Books, and expose myself to the derision of everyone, I could allegorize all games, and I could say for example that the nine pins are the nine Muses; the bowling ball, Phoebus or the Sun, who is round like a ball, the lanes, ruled and well defined, resemble their sheet of Music. I could also say that the Courts are the image of this life and this world: that the balls are men, as the Actor would say, that the Gods treat us like balls: the racquets and sets (battoüers) by which one plays, are the desires which motivate us, and all of our different affairs which beat us and break our heads, that the cord placed in the middle of the court is the maturity of age, some going over, others going under, some pass it, some do not reach it, but at last after everything, the ball being well rallied, one must at last put it back in the containers, which are the grave; or in the nets, the image of those who are condemned and exposed in view of the whole world, on a wheel, a gibbet, a scaffold, etc.

"I could say that the game of Tarot represents a Republic better than Chess represents the Court of a King: In Tarot there is every estate like in a Republic, there are coins (deniers) to recompense the good, there are swords for the defense of the country, there are Knights, Sergeants, Acrobats (Basteleurs), Triumphs, Emperors, Popes, and fools. Whoever would like to moralize this, would make a Book bigger than the Recherches of Master Pasquier."

(R.P. François Garasse, Les recherches des recherches et autres oeuvres de Me Estienne Pasquier, Paris, Sebastien Chappelet, 1622 ; pp. 217, 220-222)

Thank you Ross!
The moralization of bowling is also great

Marco

Yes, his bowling moralization is actually very good!

I wish he had tried more with Tarot.

marco wrote:
What is unique to Tesauro's test (as far as I know) is that he notes that during game the cosmograph is turned into a cosmogony. I think this observation tells us something of why the game was so fascinating.

Yes. Also just having and holding printed images must have been exciting in those days (I myself believe printed Tarots were in existence earlier than the evidence we have, perhaps predating the fancy court decks.) People could hold and play with these popular "characters" from the morality plays and pageants. Sort of like movie tie-in action figures today!

Other interesting games described at p.53-55.
The Labyrinth seems to be a sophisticated cognate of the recently discussed game of happiness by Mitelli.


Some inventions are mixtures of words and a represented or fake character. […] From this the joviality of some evening games [“Giochi da vegghia”] is born. In them, each knight, each lady impersonates a character, a King, an Amazon, a Wandering Knight a Servant. They continue their tale as a romance; everybody says words pertaining to the proposed subject; whoever transgresses is sanctioned. In other [games] every narrator becomes a Flower, with a pleasant fiction; who is next to him adapts to him a property [of the flower] with an improvised rhyme; similarly, whoever fails has to pay. But a game recently invented in this court, called Ariosto 's Labyrinth, is a more ingenious and pleasant entertainment. A labyrinth painted on a large round board represents the circle of the Earth. A continuous way, turning like a snake, brings to the centre. From there, with different curves, it ends at the opposite Door. Along this way you can see the main places described by Ariosto in his Furioso, separated in different positions. The wood of fugitive Angelica. The fateful Cave of Merlin. The Castle of Atlante, jail of the heroes. The hermitage of penitent Dalinda. The Bridge that Giantess Erisila defended. The delightful Garden of Alcina. And the others. In each place, the verse of the same poet appears, serving as a motto explaining what the player must do when he gets there. Knights and Ladies seat alternately around the table, representing the main characters of the poem. Someone is Angelica, someone Orlando, someone Bradamante, someone Ruggero. Each throws the die in a succession, and proceeds on his path according to the number, marking the place with a small simulacrum of the character he represents. But in the main places, according to the subject and to the verse of the poet, you are imprisoned, have to go back, go ahead, free the prisoners, add to the stakes, pay or receive a tribute, make a penitence, pray or contemplate. Whoever comes to the centre where there is Hell, cannot exit from it and loses the game, according to the verse:
From Hell there is no redemption.
Whoever reaches the Door wins everything and ends the game, according to the saying of the poet in his last canto:
Coming to the end of such a long way.
So, every player is an heroic symbol, every throwing of the die an accident of fortune, any accident a serious or funny allegory with the verse as its motto, and every motto gives to the lively intelligence of the players some amusing matter for inventions full of spirit. Therefore, the board is a poem and all the game is a study.