Interesting Quotation about Le Batteleur

[BradGad]

I got my copy of J-M David's Reading the Marseille Tarot yesterday.

 

Haven't read much of it yet, but just came across this in the chapter on Le Batteleur:

 

"... possibly the first description of an actual performance of the cups and balls that has survived is from Alciphron of Athens, who, in the second century C.E., described a performance of the cups and balls by a man using 'a three-legged table, upon which he placed three small dishes, under which he concealed some small white pebbles.'" (p. 32, emphasis in the original)

 

There’s that three-legged table!

 

I have long been skeptical about how much influence “ancient sources” had on development of the tarot (esp. pre-Waite and pre-Crowley), but this seems to point pretty clearly to the TdM tapping in to classical Greek texts.

 

(Of course the three-legged table Alciphron is talking about could have been more like what we would call a tall three-legged stool: stable and easy to carry around. But still.). 

 

Edited January 20, 2023 by BradGad

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, BradGad said:

I have long been skeptical about how much influence “ancient sources” had on development of the tarot (esp. pre-Waite and pre-Crowley), but this seems to point pretty clearly to the TdM tapping in to classical Greek texts.

 

In the Sola Busca Tarocchi, which was estimated to have been created in the late 15th century, most of the majors and courts are luminaries from ancient Greece and Rome like Alexander the Great, Philip II of Macedon, the Emperor Nero, Cato, etc. 

[BradGad]

I’m in love with the idea of the symbols in tarot emerging from a collective unconscious and the folk wisdom of what/who Camilia Elias calls the “cunning folk”… and the idea that all the ancient and esoteric stuff was later layered on by the likes of Waite and Crowely.

 

Clearly I got some learnin’ to do. Probably need to read that book by Robert M. Place about exactly this. Right after all the other reading.

 

Edited January 20, 2023 by BradGad

[Raggydoll]

11 hours ago, BradGad said:

I got my copy of J-M David's Reading the Marseille Tarot yesterday.

 

 

It’s such a great book! It took me a while to work my way through it all, but it was so worth it!