delaforge wrote:waybread,

If you access the cards in color (there is a color version of the Hanged Man on this page:
http://becuo.com/golden-dawn-tarot-hanged-man )
you will see that it is indeed water outside, and coming into, the cave where the Hanged Man is hanging.

As you say, no other pack represents Trump 12 in this way. However, several Golden Dawn designs for Trumps have not been widely adopted. Waite redesigned the GD Fool and Lovers cards - and his versions of those Trumps have found favor with a wider audience.

Waite put his Hanged Man on a tau cross, it being believed by many occultists that Jesus was crucified on such a cross and not on what is called a Calvary cross, the now universally accepted symbol of Christianity.

Melissa

Using the tau cross could be the Jesuit influence.
(Conversely, putting the Tau- a known emblem of the Jesuits in a Hanged man symbolism- could be trying to negate their effects).
The Occultists are a different breed :-)
http://www.thefranciscanfriars.org/taucross

Delaforge wrote:

The best books on the history of the tarot are, IMO, 'A Wicked Pack of Cards' by Dummett, Decker and Dupaulis and the companion volume, 'A History of the Occult Tarot, 1870-1970', by Dummett and Decker.

Thanks Melissa,

I have hope to eventually purchase these books to improve my historical knowledge of the Tarot.

In the meantime I have purchased Mystical Origins of the Tarot: From Ancient Roots to Modern by Paul Huson (2004). Also The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards by Michael Dummett (1986).

Other books on the history of Tarot that get excellent reviews are the following:

The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination". By Robert Place (2005)

The Esoteric Tarot: Ancient Sources Rediscovered in Hermeticism and Cabalah. by Ronald Decker (2013)

Cultural History of Tarot: From Entertainment to Esotericism
By Helen Farley (2009)

Encyclopaedia of Tarot, Volume 1-4, By Stuart R. Kaplan (1986-2005)

These all look very interesting.

Mark

Waybread wrote:

It also has to be noted that historically, Tarot decks had different numbers of cards, and they didn't all have the same trumps. Also, some of their meanings changed significantly over time. The Hanged Man picture, for example, originally meant a traitor or thief, hung upside down as a mark of shame in Renaissance Italy. He morphed into the Rider-Waite Christ figure, possibly extending the idea of Roman crucifixion as a type of execution designed to bring shame on the condemned.

So it is unlikely to find one fixed, "correct" astrological meaning for the cards. Rather, the cards seem to change depending upon the objectives of their creators.

I agree. At present I am very interested in looking at the cultural context of how Tarot began in Renaissance Italy and what associations the cards may have had at that time. I think this can be very revealing and gives us new perspectives on the Tarot liberated from the later speculative theories of the Occultists.

The Hanged Man, as you point out, may well reflect an Italian renaissance outlook based the figure of the traitor or thief.

Helen Farley points out that in Renaissance society, there was an art form called ''pittura infamante'' ? ?shame painting?

?in which a person was depicted as a traitor, particularly when beyond the reach of legitimate legal recourse.?

But Farley also suggests this imagery could be a reflection of the medieval religious world view towards those who stood outside religious orthodoxy.

By depicting someone hanging upside-down, this could alternately mean the person had turned away from God. It also was used for the execution of Jews, Witches, and Christians who had committed crimes. Religious heretics were also hung upside down (and burned at the stake). So could this figure be a religious heretic such as a Cathar or Waldensian rather than a simple thief or traitor? Considering the Visconti family history (see below) perhaps this is an image of a heretic from the persecuted Guglielmite sect being put to death by the Church?

Another theory mentioned by Helen Farley is that this image could be St Peter who denied he knew Jesus three times before he was crucified. Peter famously, requested to be hung upside by his Roman persecutors so as not to seek to emulate Jesus. Hence despite his shame in denying the identity of Christ , Peter's choice to be hung upside down is usually interpreted as an act of humility. It is interesting the Hanged Man figure in the earliest Tarot (Visconti-Sforza ) from the 15th century has a calm, serene expression. This interpretation or the one based on the image representing a religious heretic would fit much better with the later Occultist interpretation that this card symbolizes voluntary self sacrifice.

This article explores this theory in more depth:

https://www.academia.edu/8851376/Tarot_ ... _Magdalene

When you start to look at the Tarot with medieval Christian iconography many of the cards make perfect sense in the context of 15th century Italy. For example temporal power in the Emperor/Empress and Spiritual authority in the Pope and Popess. A card like Judgement in which an angel blows a trumpet and the souls of dead bodies rise from coffins has clear Christian inspiration. Similarly, The Tower card seems an obvious depiction of the fall of the Tower of Babel from the Old Testament.

We have well known medieval virtues Fortitude and Temperance and the reflection of contemporary astrological ideas with the Sun, Moon and Star. This period also saw a revival of interest in Graeco-Roman ideas with scholars migrating both before and after the fall of Byzantium. The Wheel of Fortune clearly seems to be the Goddess of fate Fortuna.

Research also indicates that some cards design may be very specific to the family history of the Visconti dynasty. One example could well the card known as the Popess (High Priestess of the Golden Dawn).

The entire Popess motif recalls the medieval legend of Pope Joan, a learned female pope who successfully passed as male until she gave birth in public and thus revealed her subterfuge.

The Visconti-Sforza Popess resembles fourteenth and fifteenth-century woodcuts of the Pope Joan narrative, yet her dress is much simpler. In the 1960s, Gertrude Moakley offered a new interpretation that accounts for the ways in which the Visconti-Sforza Popess departs from Pope Joan imagery.

According to Moakley, the Visconti-Sforza Popess?s simple dress combined with a papal tiara instead recalls Guglielma of Bohemia, a thirteenth-century holy woman who declared herself an incarnation of Christ and prophesied a future female papacy. Though the Church executed Guglielma for heresy, her followers elected a Visconti relative named Manfreda as her successor. Moakley posited that the Popess hearkened back to the Visconti family?s connection to the Guglielmite sect, based on Bianca Maria Visconti?s pride in her relation to Manfreda.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _Bembo.jpg

Here is anl article by the renowned Tarot writer Mary K.Greer exploring the historical context of this card and rival theories for its origin.

https://marygreer.wordpress.com/2009/11 ... -evidence/


Mark

The Halo and the Cross are important in XII(Hanged Man).
Both, Marseille and Visconti-Sforza have the Hanged man not on a cross and no Halo around this figure.In Minchiate,again there is no cross or halo,instead, the hairs are falling down and the person has Green and Gold colour purses in each hand.
These earlier cards have no element of Divinity in them.

Mark wrote: Thanks Melissa,

I have hope to eventually purchase these books to improve my historical knowledge of the Tarot.

In the meantime I have purchased Mystical Origins of the Tarot: From Ancient Roots to Modern by Paul Huson (2004). Also The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards by Michael Dummett (1986).

I recommended the Dummett, Decker and Dupaulis books because these authors have no bias in any particular esoteric direction. They offer the facts. The downside is they don't believe in the esoteric (which in their eyes covers astrology). But facts are good starting point.

To understand more about what names and meanings the cards had prior to de Gebelin, I suggest looking into the Bolognese Tarot from this angle. I have had trouble tracking down details on the net this morning. I'll give a quote from my own notes.

The earliest evidence of Tarot cartomancy in something like a modern form: -
?A single loose manuscript sheet giving cartomantic interpretations of the thirty-five cards of the Tarocco Bolognese . . .?. This was discovered in the Library of the University of Bologna. The terminology used in the document suggests a date prior to 1750.

De Gebelin didn't start publishing on the tarot until the 1780s.

The Bolognese manuscript gives the name of Trump 12 as the Traitor and its divinatory meaning as Betrayal. Its name for Trump 9 is the Old Man (the figure was not originally a hermit but an old man often a hunchback) and the meaning is, prosaically, An Old Man. Other meanings are not what we moderns would expect at all.

Melissa

Mark wrote: At present I am very interested in looking at the cultural context of how Tarot began in Renaissance Italy and what associations the cards may have had at that time. I think this can be very revealing and gives us new perspectives on the Tarot liberated from the later speculative theories of the Occultists.

This approach does indeed give a totally different perspective to the tarot, as my previous post indicates.

One clue you may find helpful is that, with the publication of the article on the tarot in Le monde primitif, the Tarot de Marseilles became in effect the Occult Tarot. Until the Waite-Smith tarot appears all published occult tarots are modifications or "rectifications" of the Tarot de Marseilles. The exceptions are Etteilla and the so-called Egyptian tarots.

Waybread is right to say:

Waybread wrote:It also has to be noted that historically, Tarot decks had different numbers of cards, and they didn't all have the same trumps. Also, some of their meanings changed significantly over time.

However, occultists espoused the Tarot de Marseilles precisely because it had 22 Trumps, no more and no less, and they could stand these Trumps alongside their beloved 22 Hebrew letters. There have been disputes about how the letters should be attributed to the Trumps ever since. And disputes over which Elements should be assigned to which suits. The modern day almost blanket adherence to the version embodied in the Waite-Smith deck obscures how much speculation and argument went on in the past over these matters.

Waybread is again right to say this:

Waybread wrote:So it is unlikely to find one fixed, "correct" astrological meaning for the cards. Rather, the cards seem to change depending upon the objectives of their creators.

I would put this more strongly and up the ante on Waybread's "unlikely" to make it "extremely unlikely".

Melissa

Pankajudubey wrote:

The Halo and the Cross are important in XII(Hanged Man).
Both, Marseille and Visconti-Sforza have the Hanged man not on a cross and no Halo around this figure.In Minchiate,again there is no cross or halo,instead, the hairs are falling down and the person has Green and Gold colour purses in each hand.

At present that is why I dont find the theory this figure represents St Peter very compelling. Its hard to imagine the original card design not placing a Halo on the figure if it was intended to be St Peter.

But the notion of the figure being a religious heretic is equally consistent with the oldest imagery.

One might argue the card had a double meaning symbolising both the common thief or traitor but also the religious non-conformists in the Visconti family history.

Perhaps leaving the card ambiguous avoided further Church inquiry? The weakness of that argument though is that if that was the case why have the image of a Popess in the deck which was surely far more contentious and unacceptable to the Roman Catholic Church?

Mark

Delaforge wrote:

To understand more about what names and meanings the cards had prior to de Gebelin, I suggest looking into the Bolognese Tarot from this angle. I have had trouble tracking down details on the net this morning. I'll give a quote from my own notes.

The earliest evidence of Tarot cartomancy in something like a modern form: -
?A single loose manuscript sheet giving cartomantic interpretations of the thirty-five cards of the Tarocco Bolognese . . .?. This was discovered in the Library of the University of Bologna. The terminology used in the document suggests a date prior to 1750.

De Gebelin didn't start publishing on the tarot until the 1780s.

The Bolognese manuscript gives the name of Trump 12 as the Traitor and its divinatory meaning as Betrayal. Its name for Trump 9 is the Old Man (the figure was not originally a hermit but an old man often a hunchback) and the meaning is, prosaically, An Old Man. Other meanings are not what we moderns would expect at all.

Thanks. I found this interesting article on the Bolognese origin of the Tarot.

http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=179&lng=ENG

It also discusses another early XV century deck known as the so called Tarot of Charles VI (now in the National Library in Paris) from the second half of the XV century, which has strong similarities to the the traditional one of Bologna.

In the Tarot of Charles VI the Hanged man holds in his hands two pouches of coins, as we find again in a tarot of Bologna of the XVI century.

Here is an image:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/70439181645148715/

This certainly fits the imagery of a thief or traitor.

Mark

Thanks, Delaforge.

As you are no doubt aware, another thing about the Hanged Man is that the Tau Cross of the Rider-Waite deck (and others) has the same name as the Hebrew letter Tau, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In some decks, like the 'Charles VI' or 'Gringonneur' deck (15th century) the Hanged Man is suspended from a gibbet that looks suspiciously like the Hebrew letter Tau, which coming at the end of the alphabet, signifies endings or even death. Throwing in the Hebrew letter Mem, with its correlation between water and spirituality, and Waite's resurrection symbolism, something in here looks an awful lot like the esoteric "12th chord" to me.

But again, this is suggestive, not conclusive.

Delaforge wrote:

According to Huson, Etteilla was not the first to assign Elements to the suits. But he iniitially assigned them to the suits of a playing card deck, only later transferring them to the tarot.

". . . Etteilla followed Court de G?belin in equating all Tr?fle (Trefoil) cards (and their meanings) with his Coin suit (contrary to many present-day cartomancers who identify Coins with Diamonds); he identified all Coeur (Heart) cards with his Cup suit; all Pique (Pike) Spade cards with his Sword suit; and all Carreau (Paving Tile) Diamond cards with is Baton suit."
Mystical Origins of the Tarot by Paul Huson (Destiny Books, USA, 2004), p. 56.

Hello Melissa,

Excuse me if I am being a tad obtuse here. However, despite your reply I am still not entirely clear how these attributions deal with my question regarding the four elements? Do you know which element Court de G?belin attributed to each suit of the playing cards and Etteilla later applied to the the minor arcana suits?

Incidentally, since noone here responded on exactly what astrological associations Etteilla applied to the cards I have been looking into this myself. According to Stuart K Kaplan Jean Batist Aliette (Etteilla) was the first person to propose an attribution of the Tarot Trumps to the planets and the signs of the zodiac. Three Trumps remained without attributions

Many of Etteilla's astrological attributions to the cards are hard to comprehend from a purely astrological perspective.

Moreover, Eteilla made significant revisions to the traditional imagery and titles of the Tarot found in decks like the then prevalent Tarot of Marseilles style. Because of this its not always entirely clear how the cards in Etteilla's deck relate to the traditional Tarot cards. From a Tarot forum I came across the following proposed astrological atttributions for Etteilla's cards:

The Trumps and all astrological correspondences are as follows (with the links to the conventional Tarot suggested by Papus:

1 - Etteilla - Le Consultant (Male). Aries. (Papus says this is "special to the Tarot of Etteilla" -Its been proposed to make this card the Bateleur

2 - Eclaircissement (Enlightenment/Fire). Taurus. (Papus: Sun)

3 - Propos (Discussion/Water). Gemini. (Papus: Moon)

4 - D?pouillement (Loss/Air). Cancer. (Papus: Star)

5 - Voyage (Travel/Earth). Leo. (Papus: World)

6 - Nuit (Night/Day). Virgo. (Papus: Empress) or Popess?

7 - Appui (Support/Protection). Libra. (Papus: Emperor)

8 - Etteilla - Le Consultante (Female). Scorpio. (Papus: Popess) or Empress

9 - La Justice (Justice/Jurist). Sagittarius. (Papus: Justice)

10 - La Temp?rance (Temperance/Priest). Capricorn. (Papus: Temperance)

11 - La Force (Strength/Monarch). Aquarius. (Papus: Force, i.e., Strength)

12 - La Prudence (Prudence/The Masses). Pisces. (Papus: Hanged Man)

13 - Mariage (Marriage/Union). (Papus: Lovers)

14 - Force Majeure (Absolute Necessity/Absolute Necessity). (Papus: Devil)

15 - Maladie (Illness/Illness). (Papus: Bateleur) Alternative attribution is to make it the Pope - it shows the same person as performed the Marriage (in bishop's fish-hat) holding a wand over an altar table with ram's heads on the corners; one of the reversed meanings is "Mage".

16 - Jugement (Judgment/Judgment). (Papus: Judgment)

17 - Mortalit? (Death/Nothingness). (Papus: Death)

18 - Tra?tre (Traitor/Traitor). (Papus: Hermit)

19 - D?tresse or Misere (Poverty/Prison). (Papus: Tower)

20 - Fortune (Fortune/Raise). (Papus: Wheel of Fortune)

21 - Dissension (Disagreement/Disagreement). (Papus: Chariot)

68 - Ten of Coins = Part of Fortune

69 - Nine of Coins = South Node

70 - Eight of Coins = North Node

71 - Seven of Coins = Saturn

72 - Six of Coins = Jupiter

73 - Five of Coins = Mars

74 - Four of Coins = Moon

75 - Three of Coins = Venus

76 - Two of Coins = Mercury

77 - Ace of Coins = Sun

According to Stuart Kaplan the astrological attributions of the Etteila Tarot trumps can be equated to the traditional tarot as follows:

?. The Magician None
?? The High Priestess (Popess) Moon
??? The Empress Venus
IV The Emperor Jupiter
V The Hierophant (Pope) Aries
VI The Lovers Taurus
VII The Chariot Gemini
VIII Justice Cancer
IX The Hermit Leo
X The Wheel of Fortune Virgo
XI Strength Mars
XII The Hanged Man Libra
XIII Death None
XIV Temperance Scorpio
XV The Devil Sagittarius
XVI The Tower Capricorn
XVII The Star Mercury
XVIII The Moon Aquarius
XIX The Sun Pisces
XX Judgement Saturn
XXI The World None
0 The Fool Sun

(Source: Kaplan Stuart R., The Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. 1, 4 U.S. Games Systems, 2003.).

Mark

Mark,

You are not being obtuse. I had cut off the Huson quote too early. My apologies.

Waite followed Etteilla in equating Cups to Hearts, Swords to Spades, Wands to Diamonds, and ?Pentacles? to Clubs in his earlier, pseudonymous, Manual of Cartomancy first published in in 1889.
Mystical Origins of the Tarot by Paul Huson (Destiny Books, USA, 2004), p. 57.

For Waite, as for the GD, Cups correspond to Water, Swords to Air, Wands or Batons to Fire and Pentacles (Pence/Coins) to Earth. Thus, in Etteilla's system, the court cards of Pence/Coins are dark in coloring, because they belong to Earth, the darkest Element.

I am no expert when it comes to Etteilla's approach to the tarot and I have never been able to make head or tail of his astrological correspondences.

Melissa

waybread,

With reference to Trump 12: Paul Foster Case (who like Waite had been a member of the Golden Dawn) actually has the Hanged Man represented in his Builders of the Adytum tarot deck suspended from a gibbet shaped like the Hebrew letter Tau.

To the tarot/Qabalists of the Golden Dawn, the letter Tau, because for them it corresponded with The World, thought of it not simply as indicating an ending but as signifying a highly successful ending. Paul Christian called Trump 21 The Crown of the Magi, seeing, I assume, the wreath around the central figure on that card as equating with the laurel wreath of victory. Other commentators (Mouni Sadhu for one) see the card as Attainment of the Great Work, as the GD did also.

Melissa