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BO'Neill: History of Tarot

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.tarot,alt.occult,alt.pagan.magick,alt.divination
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva)
Subject: BO'Neill: History of Tarot
Date: 12 Jan 1998 22:24:43 -0800

49980112 aa2 Hail Satan!

To: TAROT-L@techunix.technion.ac.il
~From: "Bob O'Neill" 

[some omitted]
[re the lack of the Devil/Tower in some decks and development of Tarot]

Of course, by itself the lack of the Devil and Tower is insufficient.  We
have to add a few more pieces to the puzzle.  And, of course, we are stuck
with the dilemma of trying to assign exact dates to things that happened
500 years ago.  To maintain internal consistency, I'll use the guesstimates
of Dummett (the most careful and sceptical of the scholars) from Game of
Tarot (GoT 1980) and Wicked Pack of Cards (WPC 1996).

Hand-painted decks - the 3 most complete ones are attributed "...in the
unanimous opinion of present-day art historians..." (GoT) to Bembo whose
earliest dated work is 1442.  So we can date the hand-painted decks around
1440 (GoT p 79), and probably a bit later. The "Charles VI" decks are more
likely from about 1480 (WPC p28)

Robert Steele, 1900. "A notice of the Ludus Triumphorum and some early
Italian card games"  Archaeologia 57:185-200.  Steele was the first to
point out a sermon that listed ALL 22 of the triumphs, including the Devil
and Tower (called the Arrow).  GoT says that Steele in a later article
(1901) estimated the date of this sermon as 1450-1480 and Dummett accepts
this dating and notes:

"We may, therefore, safely assume that in the last quarter of the fifteenth
century, the Tarot pack attained great popularity among the lower ranks of
society..." (GoT p 79).

In WPC (p 25) he tends toward 1450 as the earliest date for the standard
pack of 22 trumps.

He doesn't say so, but he probably assigns this earlier date because of 
the record we have of the duke asking his treasurer to buy him a couple of
trionfi decks - dated 1450.  So the printed decks were available by that 
time.

He also notes (WPC p 28) that we also have wood-block printed sheets from
the end of the 15th century "...fortunately because these have a much
closer connection in design with later cards than do the de luxe items."
And these decks contain devil and tower.

So far we have hand-painted decks dated around 1440 without Devil and Tower
and a sermon sometime after 1450 that lists them in the decks "...among the
lower ranks of society..."  But the plot thickens:

See WPC p 27: probably the earliest date for the cards is 1425, and the
"...earliest date with any claim to be plausible would be 1410."
So there are some older (and questionable - but not dismissable) references
that may go back 15-20 years before the earliest hand-painted decks.

So we are left with the following pieces of direct evidence:
(1) The deck may have existed for 15-20 years before the oldest
	hand-painted decks
(2) The hand-painted decks are from sometime later than 1440.
(3) All 22 cards are in the sermon from 1450 (or later)
(4) The fact that all later decks are derived from the 4 printed sheets
(see the fly-leafs in GoT) - suggesting that the de luxe hand-painted cards
may never have left the courts and never influenced later decks.

Because of the wishy-washy nature of the exact dates, one cannot settle the
question with any finality.  To me, at the moment, the case rests on
whether the earlier date of origin (1410-1425) is valid.  If not, then it
is a question whether 1440 to 1450 is sufficient period for the cards to
move from the courts to a popular game.  And of course the 1450 date
indicates that the cards were in the hands of people AT LEAST by that date,
we don't know how much earlier. Whether that is sufficient time, in turn,
depends on your view of how popular the nobles were with the common people.

Bob

EOF
-- 
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