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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` .

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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

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