I am in a tarot book group currently reading Jodorowsky's Way of the Tarot, as translated from the French of 1998. He says that the deck he and Camoin produced is an authentic "restoration" of the original Tarot, which of course for him is the Tarot de Marseille (never mind the absurdity of that claim). He mentions a hand-painted Tarot de Marseille he found in a shop in Mexico City as his guide to the colors (p. 16), but he has never to my knowledge ever showed images of it to see for ourselves. Otherwise, looking at surviving Tarot de Marseille decks, it is readily apparent that his is not any one of them, even disregarding the colors added by stencil to the woodcuts. The closest is the Conver 1760, but he by no means sticks to its designs. So my question is, where do his variations from that deck come from? - I do not mean the colors, which are fairly close to Conver's in any event, but the black lines beneath. He says (p. 15) that they come from various historical decks, which had one aspect or other of the original designs. By overlaying the images using "powerful computers," he and Camoin were able to reconstruct the originals. So I have been trying to track down these variations in detail in the historical sources. They are hardly details that can be laid on top of one another to produce a single image. But it would be nice at least to see what he would have worked from, and whether it is true that all of them come from historical sources.
I will start with the Bateleur, followed by the Aces, then the Popess, followed by the Twos, and so on.
I find two ways in which Jodo's Bateleur differs from the Conver and the other TdMII's: (1) the dice; and (2) the knife that has a loop in it. I can find a precedent for dice - they are in Noblet, although with different numbers exposed and in different places on the table. Are there historical versions with the right numbers or the looped knife?
For the Ace of Swords, Jodorowsky basically used Conver, but on the left side he appropriated the ray pattern of the TdMI, as in Dodal, on the right below.
For the Ace of Batons, Jodorowsky used Conver mostly, but added a leaf or branch feature from a TdMI design that goes back to 1639 (Vachier, then Rolichon). His source was probably Dodal, which I present here for comparison. On the bottom left of the card he again borrowed from the TdMI ray pattern, changing their direction.
Jodorowsky's source for the Popess is Conver again (or a similar TdMII), except for the egg (lower right of the left-hand card). Below, I put the restoration by Marseille Tarot Heritage to the right of Jodorowsky. It seems to me that Jodorowsky once claimed that he discovered the egg in a mold that Camoin had. But I do not see such an egg in any early Popess, nor do I when I looked at the mold he provides of the Conver, https://en.camoin.com/tarot/Tarot-Templ ... onver.html.
In the 2s, the main anomaly is in the 2 of Cups. Jodorowsky finds a phoenix there, flanked by two angels. I cannot find any such version of the card historically. (I can for the 4 of Cups, which I will post later, but even it doesn't have the angels.) Relative to the Conver (middle below), there is the anomaly of the dolphins' (he erroneously calls them fishes) tongues. The only historical example of tongues I can find is Noblet (at right), but otherwise fairly different.
Another oddity is that for the 2 of Coins, he claims that the earliest printed version is 1471, hence the date on the card (along with the date of his own deck). The earliest I have found with a date is the 1499 card found in the Sforza Castle, by the Milanese card maker Paolino da Castelletto documented 1494-1513 (Kaplan vol. 2 p. 289). I don't know of any for 1471. In general, the design follows Conver, at right.
I'll stop for now, in hopes that people can add something. I don't have many decks, and online they don't show many pip cards. What I am doing is trying to see how much is his imagination or invention and how much is actually in one or another of the historical decks.
Note: a couple of hours after posting, I changed what I had said about the tongues. I had not found a historical example, but I had overlooked Noblet.
Note added still later: for some great answers to my questions, see SteveM's posts below.
Jodorowsky's Tarot de Marseille sources
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Last edited by mikeh on 06 Jun 2023, 02:31, edited 1 time in total.