Re: Affirmative Action

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Phaeded wrote: 06 Sep 2022, 18:42
Huck wrote: 05 Sep 2022, 01:13 From the early Trionfi cards we have no clear evidence for the appearance of decks with 22 special cards. The oldest clear evidence seems to be the Tarocchi poem of Matteo Maria Boiardo. I personally see reasons to date this to January 1487, so relative near to the Kabbala activities of Giovanni Pico de Mirandola in December 1486, who is presented as the first Christian Kabbalist.
^ excellent example of what I consider "crackpot."
Hm, Phaeded ... perhaps you are able to mark that sentence of mine, which let you think about "crackpot". Perhaps you mean: "From the early Trionfi cards we have no clear evidence for the appearance of decks with 22 special cards." Well, then I get problems and get serious doubts about your ability to understand my English sentences. Perhaps I've made a language error? But, let's see ... can you point to an extant Trionfi deck before 1487, which shows clear evidence for the existence of 22 special cards in its structure? Well, if you can do so, please do. If you can't do, please excuse yourself for a momentary reading error and a false use of the word "crackpot". Or explain, why my English sentences produce misunderstandings. Perhaps we have a different opinion about the terminus "clear evidence".
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Affirmative Action

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Huck wrote: 06 Sep 2022, 19:42
Phaeded wrote: 06 Sep 2022, 18:42
Huck wrote: 05 Sep 2022, 01:13 From the early Trionfi cards we have no clear evidence for the appearance of decks with 22 special cards. The oldest clear evidence seems to be the Tarocchi poem of Matteo Maria Boiardo. I personally see reasons to date this to January 1487, so relative near to the Kabbala activities of Giovanni Pico de Mirandola in December 1486, who is presented as the first Christian Kabbalist.
^ excellent example of what I consider "crackpot."
... can you point to an extant Trionfi deck before 1487, which shows clear evidence for the existence of 22 special cards in its structure?
Anyone not barking up the Tree of Life can clearly see the 22 trump deck: The PMB only has two missing trumps - the Devil and the Tower. Only you believe the PMB's 6 replacement cards didn't have originals. The clear consensus is this was a 22 trump deck - anything else is pure fringe theory. Filling in the blanks for only 2 trumps is no leap of faith. Between the CVI and EE - both of which predate the 1480s - also have many of these trumps. Exemplars for all 22 trumps (the 'CVI' provides the "Tower") except for the Devil existed before the 1480s. Someone simply mapped the Hebrew alphabet onto the 22 trumps - not the other way around. The list of charlatans associated with that endeavor speaks volumes.

We both believe in an ur-tarot of less than 22 trumps - I see 14 (based on the original impetus of seven virtues) and you see 16, which goes back to chess pieces, I believe. Neither allows for the Hebrew alphabet. So in your c. 1487 Kabbala theory a pre-existing set of trumps gets expanded in order to match the Hebrew alphabet, something for which it originally had no connection. But we've already just touched on how these trumps all existed - save the Devil - before your dating.

And nothing about the information I provided about sortes? I'll move that at all events - certainly does not belong under this subject line.

Phaeded

Re: Affirmative Action

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Phaeded wrote: 07 Sep 2022, 01:10 Anyone not barking up the Tree of Life can clearly see the 22 trump deck: The PMB only has two missing trumps - the Devil and the Tower. Only you believe the PMB's 6 replacement cards didn't have originals. The clear consensus is this was a 22 trump deck - anything else is pure fringe theory. Filling in the blanks for only 2 trumps is no leap of faith. Between the CVI and EE - both of which predate the 1480s - also have many of these trumps. Exemplars for all 22 trumps (the 'CVI' provides the "Tower") except for the Devil existed before the 1480s. Someone simply mapped the Hebrew alphabet onto the 22 trumps - not the other way around. The list of charlatans associated with that endeavor speaks volumes.
Phaeded,
Hm ... as far I know, I'm not barking about the tree of life and also I can view the 22 trump deck, as it is in clear existence after the first REAL protagonists, which get the attribute "clear evidence" later than 1486.
Right, the PMB1 (14 trump cards) and PMB2 (6 added trumps cards) would have 22 trumps, if the MISSING trumps Devil and Tower would be there, but MISSING means "missing", so we have in the addition 14 +6 the value 20 as a result and NOT 22. That doesn't fill the category "clear evidence" in my perception, perhaps in yours, as you speak of a "clear consensus", but a clear consensus exist, if there are no contradicting voices, but these exist.
If you mix various deck Trionfi card fragments together and you claim, that you get this imagined golden number 22, but in reality you get much more, if you count in this mix also specific trump motifs of Michelino deck and Cary-Yale and Boiardo Tarocchi and Sola Busca and these Goldschmidt/Guildhall cards and not to forget the Minchiate additions.
You (and much others before you) blow up this frog "22 trumps" up to manifest your (and that of the earlier others) theory as a fact, with it isn't. As a historical theory about the origin of the Tarot cards it earns some respect, but as "clear evidence" and "clear consensus" it makes a bad and overstretched figure.
Dummett, Decker and Depaulis claimed 1996 in a 3-authors-union, that the general Tarot structure was ready in c. 1450. Since 1996 then there were a lot of changes in the history of Tarot, something which is better called a history of the Trionfi cards. There were massive changes in the last 26 years. Dummett in his late years started to rethink the statement.
For your statement about charlatans and mapping Hebrew alphabeth on trumps: I didn't discuss the activities of Tarot researchers in 19th century. I wrote about Boiardo and Pico.
I wrote earlier longer articles about the possible existence of decks with 20 trumps before the Boiardo poem, perhaps you didn't get them.
https://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=161451
Well this was long ago and is possibly not at the momentary state.
And nothing about the information I provided about sortes? I'll move that at all events - certainly does not belong under this subject line.
I'd addressed in my post directed to Glenn the lot books with 22 animals and 22 kings for the reason, that Glenn wasn't informed about them (Glenn had shown an interest in older objects with a 22-scheme). With your attempt to contribute something to lot books you didn't meet the point.

I'm still not informed, what do you wanted to express with the term "crackpot" 2 posts ago ... shall this have been the unlucky experiment to make a joke, which failed completely? Perhaps you can explain this .... ????
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Affirmative Action

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Huck wrote: 08 Sep 2022, 10:10
Phaeded wrote: 07 Sep 2022, 01:10 ...The PMB only has two missing trumps - the Devil and the Tower.

If you mix various deck Trionfi card fragments together and you claim, that you get this imagined golden number 22, but in reality you get much more, if you count in this mix also specific trump motifs of Michelino deck and Cary-Yale and Boiardo Tarocchi and Sola Busca and these Goldschmidt/Guildhall cards and not to forget the Minchiate additions. ...

I'm still not informed, what do you wanted to express with the term "crackpot" 2 posts ago ...
I don't even know what your main thesis is anymore - chess or kabbalah (or 16 chess pieces-cum-trumps expanded to allow kabbalah's 22 letters)? And to throw Michelino, Cary-Yale, Boiardo, Sola Busca and Goldschmidt all into the same vat is mixing apples with oranges with bananas and grapes (there is a genetic relationship between the CY and PMB and that is all I'm interested in, besides the prior - not genetic (in terms of specific trump continuities) - cultural context of Marziano/Michelino and imperatori). I'm just not interested in these extreme speculations (better than 'crackpot'?), so I'll leave you to it.

Re: Affirmative Action

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Phaeded, "Huck" has presented his ideas most clearly on trionfi.com (not about Kabbalah - I will ignore that for now - but about the PMB). You go there and click on "5x14 theory." They are not so much extreme as complex, in that he comes at the the issues from different angles. What he is asking you to consider is that the 14 "original artist" triumphs were perhaps all the triumphs made for that particular commission. Iolon defends the same view. I agree, if the word "perhaps" is there. I have no way of estimating the probability, and I don't know if Huck says "perhaps" or "probably." The commission was apparently for a Venetian family, perhaps the rulers of Bergamo at the time. At least that is the view in the Issy catalog (without my "perhaps"). Both they and the Brera catalog of 2013 date the cards in question (that is, the 14 plus the courts, which is where Venice comes in) to around 1455, plus or minus. I know that Bianca Maria was busy ordering decks in 1452, but part of Huck's point is that a number of hand-painted decks were made in the fifteenth century. If this one was for Venetians, these people would have been familiar with B region games. Region B is where the "14 figures" of New Years 1441 was, a gift to Bianca Maria, presumably from Leonello. It is where the 70 card triumph decks of summer 1457 were made, for the Este princes, at a time when Galeazzo Maria was visiting. Dummett objected that it couldn't be just 14 if the CY before it had Strength, Temperance, and the World. Huck argues back that this (in 1455 or 1457) might be a deck in which those cards have been deliberately excluded, and Justice altered to be Fame, in order to play a 14 triumph game, whatever it was, in this case (perhaps not necessarily) a game without virtue cards and the World. At least that is how I understand him. See viewtopic.php?p=17682#p17682.

There may have been decks with more triumphs then, or at least different ones, even in the same city. Why not? There are countless varieties these days of Trivial Pursuits, for example, all with different cards but the same basic structure (at least when I was younger). If there is a Tower card in Florence, that doesn't mean there is one in Ferrara, at least in every triumph game played there. We have the example of the Strambotto, where the Popess is not part of the game, at the same time she is clearly present in Ferrara, so a 21-card game vs a 22-card game ( by "xx-card game" I mean "special-card-game with trump-like features"). In fact there is no verification of a Popess ever in Florence. Earlier there were a 16-special-card game (Michelino, perhaps the CY) and probably an 8-special-card game (VIII Imperadori, Emperors having power over more than one king). Later there will be a 41-special-card game. In this formative period, from let us say 1440 to 1500, there can be anything in between: 14-card games, 16-card games, games with a Fool card and/or a Bagatella with some of the same role, games where those cards are the lowest trumps, etc. There might also have been 20-special-card-games, as Huck also suggests. And given the various later orders and rules, there never was a time when the game was precisely the same everywhere. Granted all this, we have no way of knowing what the variations might have been in the period in question.

For the PMB, there is no verification of how many triumphs there were, or what they were, beyond the ones we know. The only way to go from the known to the unknown is by way of reliable principles that are sufficiently verified throughout the time in question. I do not know of any for this particular place (northern Italy) and time (15th c.) that will get you to 22 for the PMB (made in Cremona c. 1455 for an uncertain destination, perhaps the Veneto, and uncertain purpose - i.e., perhaps not with enough cards to play a game with, but just triumphs and courts).

In science, an analogy might be the laws of physics during the first second after the big bang or inside a black hole. We know a little, but not much.

Re: Affirmative Action

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mikeh wrote: 14 Sep 2022, 07:41 What he is asking you to consider is that the 14 "original artist" triumphs were perhaps all the triumphs made for that particular commission. Iolon defends the same view... Region B is where the "14 figures" of New Years 1441 was, a gift to Bianca Maria, presumably from Leonello. It is where the 70 card triumph decks of summer 1457 were made, for the Este princes, at a time when Galeazzo Maria was visiting. Dummett objected that it couldn't be just 14 if the CY before it had Strength, Temperance, and the World. Huck argues back that this (in 1455 or 1457) might be a deck in which those cards have been deliberately excluded, and Justice altered to be Fame, in order to play a 14 triumph game, whatever it was, in this case (perhaps not necessarily) a game without virtue cards and the World.
First of all I'm not following Dummett's objection to "couldn't be just 14" - the Brambilla has the Wheel of Fortune (missing in the CY), and assuming Prudence-World, that means the CY merely needed to logically complete the seven canonical virtues sequence, allowing us to fill in the blanks of Justice and Temperance. That is Occam's razor for a 14 trump deck (and no Fool, thus a 70 card deck). Only 3 trumps are missing, one supplied by the Brambilla and the other completed by a well known series. The theologicals eventually get tossed/replaced (in the PMB). I'm guessing here that Dummett's mistake is he is counting the Theological replacements (Popess/Ecclesia-Faith, Hanged Man-as-antitype of Hope, and Pope for Charity, the latter centered on papal tombs). The bottom line is the Milanese CY comes fast on the heels of the Florentine ur-tarot and is only short 3 cards, which are all too easily filled in. This ur-tarot of 14 trumps continued to be made through at least 1457, overlapping the innovation of the c.1450 PMB for some time.

As for this nonsense of randomly excluding Strength, Temperance and the "World" (why?) while modifying Justice into Fame to turn the surviving original PMB trumps into some sort of complete deck - I'm not expending a jot of mental energy on that; a ludicrous idea in search of a rationale.

The Theologicals being excluded, by contrast, have a clear and present rationale: the pope - allied or not. The newish Pope Nicholas V was central to Sforza's means to peace. Filelfo was on intimate terms with Tommaso Parentucelli (the Pope's lay name), from their days of association at the University of Bologna. Sforza could ill-afford another rocky relationship with the new pope (Eugene despised him) and Filelfo not only guaranteed that friendship but got Nicholas V to help broker the Peace of Lodi in 1454. In fact Filelfo traveled to Rome in the early summer of 1453 at the height of the wars and was lavishly entertained by Pope Nicholas V and was awarded a stipend as an honorary papal secretary on his return visit. Filelfo's Ode 5.5 dedicated to Pope Nicholas V even tries to get the pope to divert Venice's ally, Alfonso of Naples, to Constantinople on a papal crusade against the Turks: "…Alfonso would gladly follow his lead. Nor would he refuse to share in his glorious triumph" (Tr. Robins, 2009: 321).

Pope Eugene's earlier presence in Florence is well known here, with obvious ramifications in regard to the CY ur-tarot.

Phaeded

Re: Affirmative Action

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Phaeded wrote: 21 Sep 2022, 00:30 First of all I'm not following Dummett's objection to "couldn't be just 14" - the Brambilla has the Wheel of Fortune (missing in the CY), and assuming Prudence-World, that means the CY merely needed to logically complete the seven canonical virtues sequence, allowing us to fill in the blanks of Justice and Temperance. That is Occam's razor for a 14 trump deck (and no Fool, thus a 70 card deck).
Phaeded,
so you think, that the Cary-Yale Trionfi deck had 78 cards? Or 70?
Could you write a list of the trumps, that it is totally clear, what you say? Perhaps also a list of the suit cards? Just to understand, what you're talking about?

Actually I got the impression, that you just didn't realize, why I prefered to assume, that the CY deck had a chess context.

There are more than one possibilty, but this order is from 2003
http://trionfi.com/0/c/30/
Image
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Affirmative Action

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Dummett's "couldn't be 14" was about the PMB, not the CY, Phaeded. You left out the "if the CY before it . . . " Perhaps that will help you understand what Dummett meant: he was saying, it makes no sense that Strength/Fortitude would be present in the CY, and probably also Temperance, and not in the PMB.

But the idea of a virtueless tarot is not random, Phaeded. If, from the CY to the PMB, the theological virtues are removed (although we don't know that they were), it is simply more of the same to remove the cardinals. These cardinal virtues are already problematic, because of their variability in the orders. That's why Dummett proposed a virtueless ur-tarot of 18 triumphs in 2002 (Huck uploaded it at viewtopic.php?p=16421#p16421) - I am not defending Dummett's version, let me be clear, just the idea that some version of the game might have excluded the virtues from the sequence, in some relation to their variability from place to place. In my opinion the virtues are already represented in the suits (temperance = cups, for its cups; fortitude = staves, for her column; justice = swords, for her sword; prudence = coins, for the round thing she holds). And if indeed, as you suppose, the CY World is really Prudence, that is reason enough to exclude it from a virtueless sequence.

In any case, it's all hypothesis. How your cherry-picking through the tens of thousands of words of Dante's Paradiso to come up with the titles in the sequence, as opposed to a more obvious borrowing of subjects from Petrarch's 6 (plus the Wheel, as Iolon and I hypothesize) plus the virtues and dignitaries (4 for Huck, just the 2 imperials for Iolon and me), making 16 for the CY - not the ur-tarot of 14), is supposed to be superior, I don't think I'll ever understand.

Incidentally, Huck, in Italy the bishops were, and still are, called "banners" - perhaps the people who carried them in battle, so no clear association with religion. (If you know differently, I am ready to listen.) My own view is that these "banners" correspond to the Wheel and Time, both with old men on the cards. That avoids the awkwardness of somehow associating Time with the Chariot and Justice cards, both rather difficult, in my opinion. Perhaps the job of carrying banners was assigned to old men, I don't know. Carrying a banner keeps you out of the action and makes you a target. But as you say, there are probably different ways of reconstructing the CY that accord with chess pieces. The Fool and the Old Man might fit, too, as I think you suggested somewhere.

Re: Affirmative Action

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mikeh wrote: 21 Sep 2022, 08:57 Incidentally, Huck, in Italy the bishops were, and still are, called "banners" - perhaps the people who carried them in battle, so no clear association with religion. (If you know differently, I am ready to listen.) My own view is that these "banners" correspond to the Wheel and Time, both with old men on the cards. That avoids the awkwardness of somehow associating Time with the Chariot and Justice cards, both rather difficult, in my opinion. Perhaps the job of carrying banners was assigned to old men, I don't know. Carrying a banner keeps you out of the action and makes you a target. But as you say, there are probably different ways of reconstructing the CY that accord with chess pieces. The Fool and the Old Man might fit, too, as I think you suggested somewhere.
I don't remember "Banners". "Bishop" seems to have been English orginally. The "Läufer" and "Renner", which appear as "Courier" or "Currer" in Courier game, are German. It seems, that there were also Bow-shooters (Czech ?) . Fou is French. Cessolis had a sort of an "Adviser". The asiatic "elephant" was partly interpreted as Tower or Bishop. There's a lot of confusion. Spain prefered "Alfil" (somehow the elephant).
The game functions of the figures Bishop and Queen were altered in the 1470s in Spain. The Bishop moved like the Courier in the German Courier game. The Queen united the functions of the Courier and the Tower.
Somehow a German/Spanish rule marriage, which indeed followed on the real political stage of the 1490s, forming the new Habsburg dynasties. One should observe, that Fredrick III had married a Portuguese princesse.

Who used "Banners"? Italian wiki uses "Pedone Torre Cavallo Alfiere Donna Re", so Alfiere from the Spanish Alfil.
.... :-) ... but Italian chess figure "alfiere" can mean "banditore, gonfaloniere, portabandiera, vessillifero guida, maestro, precursore, propugnatore" and the German "Fahnenträger", the person who carries the banner or flag

If we look at the Trionfi row ...
.... 2 Papessa as left bishop of White A3
.... 3 Queen White A4
.... 4 King White A5
.... 5 Pope as right bishop of White A6
... it looks, as if PMB had copied the chess row
Last edited by Huck on 21 Sep 2022, 11:52, edited 1 time in total.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Affirmative Action

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Actually, Huck, the chess piece seems to be the person who holds the banner: the standard-bearer.
https://www.wordreference.com/iten/alfiere
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alfiere
But since one of the meanings is "ensign", and "ensign" means "military standard" or "military banner" as well as a junior officer, perhaps it is the banner, too. It seems to come from the Arabic for "knight," but the knight in Italian is the cavallo, which means "horse." That it might relate to an old man is my speculation. I don't see how else to make a connection between two possible cards.

The relationship to chess may only be that it is another instance of two cards with a common feature, without further connection, just as there is no connection between loves and virtues to pawns, other than there is a total of 8.

Anyway, I thought we were talking about the CY, not the PMB.
cron