Re: The Chariot
Posted: 08 Mar 2020, 10:56
It's a stick, as far we can see it. If there was something on top of the stick, what is destroyed now, we cannot say.
Over 500 years of history in 78 cards
https://www.forum.tarothistory.com/
According to the translator's introduction to another translation (the hymn itself isn't online, but the introduction to the hymns is), the Orphic Hymns first arrived in Italy in 1423, with several more following, and by 1550 there were 36 codices now extant. So pretty well known. https://books.google.com/books?id=TTo3r ... es&f=false. Eros is a fitting god for a marriage deck, as this one is, between Este and Aragon.I call great Cupid [Eros], source of sweet delight, holy and pure, and lovely to the sight;
Darting, and wing'd, impetuous fierce desire, with Gods and mortals playing, wand'ring fire:
Cautious, and two-fold, keeper of the keys of heav'n and earth, the air, and spreading seas;
Of all that Ceres' [Deo's] fertile realms contains, by which th' all-parent Goddess life sustains,
Or dismal Tartarus is doom'd to keep, widely extended, or the sounding, deep;
For thee, all Nature's various realms obey, who rul'st alone, with universal sway.
Come, blessed pow'r, regard these mystic fires, and far avert, unlawful mad desires.
.Two problems: first, to explain "mundus parvus" you need to find a little world on the Chariot cards, not an angel or putto or Mercury. "Mundus" is the operative word. It's there on some Chariot cards: the globe in the guy's hand, divided into three parts, for Asia, Africa, and Europe
.a card that perhaps had no world in it (at least I don't see one on the Metropolitan card, nor anybody who could be holding a little globe)
On the World cards, the orb, usually accompanied by a scepter, acted as a symbol of rulership and dominion over the world. The world is always below the figure, usually with the figure standing on it, emphasizing the figure's dominion over it. The symbolism of the orb in this respect is particularly vivid on the Tarot de Paris World card, where the orb and the world are literally made one: The allegorical figure is shown standing on a stylized globe designed to look like a royal orb, a globus cruciger.The globus cruciger (Latin for "cross-bearing orb"), also known as "the orb and cross", is an orb (Latin: globus) surmounted (Latin: gerere, to wear) by a cross (Latin: crux). It has been a Christian symbol of authority since the Middle Ages, used on coins, in iconography, and with a sceptre as royal regalia.
The cross represents Christ's dominion over the orb of the world, literally held in the hand of an earthly ruler.
[..] Holding the world in one's hand, or, more ominously, under one's foot, has been a symbol since antiquity. [..] With the growth of Christianity in the 5th century, the orb (in Latin works orbis terrarum, the 'world of the lands', whence "orb" derives) was surmounted with a cross, hence globus cruciger, symbolising the Christian God's dominion of the world. [...] Although the globe symbolized the whole Earth, many Christian rulers, some of them not even sovereign, who reigned over small territories of the Earth, used it symbolically.
I post it to a domain, which I have, "a-tarot.eu". I own that. This is likely the same way, as you do it with your blog. Pictures need a webadress.mikeh wrote: 08 Mar 2020, 13:49 How do you upload images on this Forum? I don't like doing it the way I have been, by posting them to a blog first.
The motto of the Chariot is Victoriae Premium (right), the reward of victory. This is about as straightforward as imaginable, given that the celebration of a Roman triumph was a reward for a great military victory.
This, as well as the Wikipedia account, seems to me a little oversimplified. A cross means Christ, "savior of the world", as Wikipedia puts it, not to mention it again. There is also, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son." So when an Emperor carries the orb, it is not only dominion but care and love; he is even their earthly salvation. God's love for man (agape) and man's love for God (eros) was a continual theme in 15th century Florence, e.g. Ficino. If the figure on the World expresses that love, then the message is that He cares for us in this world, and moreover has secured a good place for us beyond it, as well as messengers (angeli) to help us get there. It seems to me that the "Charles VI" image was inspired by the guide in Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione, who appears to the narrator in a dream and wants to lead him through a narrow gate up a difficult path to the heights. Boccaccio describes her.On the World cards, the orb, usually accompanied by a scepter, acted as a symbol of rulership and dominion over the world. The world is always below the figure, usually with the figure standing on it, emphasizing the figure's dominion over it. The symbolism of the orb in this respect is particularly vivid on the Tarot de Paris World card, where the orb and the world are literally made one: The allegorical figure is shown standing on a stylized globe designed to look like a royal orb, a globus cruciger.
The dominion over the world symbolized by this image was most likely understood to be God's divine dominion, as the figure was also given a halo and/or wings on several of the early cards, and its position in all trump orders after or immediately before the Last Judgment/Angel reinforces this divine aspect. (This is incidentally one of the few aspects of the Petrarchan symbolism of the Cary Yale deck which seems to have survived into the later decks more or less intact, even though the crowns from the CY World's Triumph of Eternity image were not preserved; however, I very much doubt that people at that stage consciously associated the card with Petrarch's Triumph of Eternity, any more than they appear to have associated the Triumph poems with any of the other cards.)
Her description rather closely matches the lady on the "Charles VI" card, except for not standing on a circle with hills and castles on it. And it is not quite an apple.....I raised my eyes to her blonde head
adorned with a crown and more splendid
and fair then the sun, and her comely
clothing seemed to be of a violet hue.
Smiling, she had in her right hand
a royal scepter, enclosed in her left
she held up a beautiful golden apple.
This lady in the fresco is inside the circle, which goes "from beneath her feet to above her head," as in Pesellino's "Triumph of Fame" (second left above) The card's designer seems to have taken the circle from one section of the poem and placed it below the lady of another section. It seems to me a matter of where the two ladies consider home: one in the world and the other above it, since she wants to lead the narrator on a steep path going above the plain into the heights.I do not believe there can be anything
in the whole world, town or country, domestic or foreign,
which would not appear within this circle.
This type of "lowest common denominator" reasoning is illegitimate. If an old man with wings is on a card, given the expression "Time flies" and "triumph of Time" illustrations in nearby places, and times, we have Time, regardless of what happens later. That it changes to an hourglass only confirms our guess. Even an old man by himself, in the context of the sequence, where it occurs near the Death card, suggests at least that life is short, and death is in our future. That is not true, however, when there is an hourglass or wings. When there is a lantern, that, too, is allegorical: illumination in a different sense, and darkness ahead of him in an allegorical sense, too.On the Chariot cards, on the other hand, the orb does not appear as often, and is not as consistently accompanied by a scepter. Sometimes the charioteer holds only a baton or scepter and no orb, or only an orb and no scepter, and sometimes neither. The most obvious explanation of this variation in attributes is that the charioteer was in most cases simply being portrayed as a triumphator, with no particular allegorical meaning: a male figure holding weaponry or symbols of dominion over the conquered (scepter and/or orb).
So the basic significance of the orb was somewhat different on the two different cards. However, it resulted coincidentally in a certain resemblance between the two figures, and that resemblance, coupled with the broader symbolic association of the orb with the world, is, I believe, what gave rise to the mundus parvus name.