@Nathaniel: Your clarifying post is very interesting for me But there is an important general point I would like to make, regarding what I see as a fundamental error of approach, an error made again and again […] by many […] who are interested in tarot history today. I've made this point before, but...

@Ross: our posts intersected in time. Thanks for clarifying I mean here a function of trumping, not extra cards. That "trump" could be a Jack/Unter, or a number card. JvR's moralization follows Cessolis in ascribing common professions and conditions to the pawns/number cards. I'm just theo...

@Phaeded: Do either of you have references that explains what I underlined? The Mamluks definitely had the original version of Ober and Unter knaves but they also had card rules that allowed the Unter knave to take the king? I'm not following VH's proposal of a transition of these court cards into t...

I start this post by acknowledging that I make unfortunately unconscious errors in view of a very fast time. Especially in this very forum (Lastly I wrote that the 5th element of Aristoteles is love, which is not true – the quintessence is supralunar celestial ether https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qui...

Thanks Ross, for your remarks in your post […] Interesting in this context is an overlooked remark by Arne Jönsson, in his 1998 essay on JvR in Schweizer Spielkarten 1. It suggests that something like the disruptive social symbolism in Karnöffel was already present in a card game in 1377 - […] (Arne...

[Continuing last post]: I owe you the right citation for the Devil being an Emperor in Dante’s Inferno: It is in Inf. XXXIV, 28: https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/inferno-34/ Lo ’mperador del doloroso regno [The emperor of the despondent kingdom] But if the Devil can be a...

Thanks Phaeded for vh0601, I'm glad you resurfaced... My main problem is that my spare time is close to zero or even below. And in that less-than-zero time I read in the background to get more and more in the understanding of that Renaissance time. My belief is that we have to try to understand how ...

I admit that the content of my previous post might all be fantasy. It however builds a logical bridge for the next transition: That one has 8 additional trumps and 14 cards per colour is unsatisfactory for people for whom numerology and symmetry is important. Someone realizes that emperors –and only...

[I don’t know whether I can contribute to this discussion after reading all your impressive posts, all I can offer is my personal perspective:] Thanks Ross for: I think Imperatori was Imperatoris was Kaisersspiel was (essentially) Karnöffel . [...] What does the hapax "VIII" in "VIII ...

Addendum to my last response to mikeh: Your reference to the drummer boy of Tarocchini still prevailed a while in my mind - and I looked at the card again, for instance in this very forum in https://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=383&start=90 . What I consider to be important after I whi...