You ask about why the creators of the Italian Tarot put in images of hanged men and so on in their gaming decks. Co-incidentally,yesterday in an occult bookshop, I picked up a second hand copy of `Tarot: History, Art, Magic`, the catalog of a 2006 exhibition by the Cultural Association of Tarot which is by
The Tarot History Forum is dense but has similar discussions,I think.
(sorry if this is a spoiler for your tease!)
It is certainly iconography of the time. Why would they include it in a game?
In a nutshell: Because the whole cultural milieu was infused with Christianity, morality and how to best get into God`s good books.
So they were saying `we are having leisure but we are not forgetting that we are good Christians`.
Also, an idea that occurs to me was that as the tarot was derived in part from the Mamluk decks coming from the Muslim world through North Africa, there was a little religious competitiveness and sense of `if we copy something heathen we will have to put our spiritual stamp on it` .
Thanks so much for prompting me to expand on this topic! I decided to share more thoughts in today's newsletter, and will look forward to further discussion. C
Hi Cynthia,
You ask about why the creators of the Italian Tarot put in images of hanged men and so on in their gaming decks. Co-incidentally,yesterday in an occult bookshop, I picked up a second hand copy of `Tarot: History, Art, Magic`, the catalog of a 2006 exhibition by the Cultural Association of Tarot which is by
Andrea Vitali,an Italian author who addresses this question. Some of his writings have been translated into English http://www.letarot.it/index.aspx?lng=ENG
The Tarot History Forum is dense but has similar discussions,I think.
(sorry if this is a spoiler for your tease!)
It is certainly iconography of the time. Why would they include it in a game?
In a nutshell: Because the whole cultural milieu was infused with Christianity, morality and how to best get into God`s good books.
So they were saying `we are having leisure but we are not forgetting that we are good Christians`.
Also, an idea that occurs to me was that as the tarot was derived in part from the Mamluk decks coming from the Muslim world through North Africa, there was a little religious competitiveness and sense of `if we copy something heathen we will have to put our spiritual stamp on it` .
Thanks so much for prompting me to expand on this topic! I decided to share more thoughts in today's newsletter, and will look forward to further discussion. C