Re: redoux

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 2/1/2005 9:54:46 PM Eastern Standard Time,

erato@... writes:

This week I found a wonderful website which amplifies in great detail the

symbolic content in the work of the songwriter Sinfield for the group

called King Crimson. This website has gathered together a mass of details on

the

Emperor Frederick II - and mentions , and the entire work is

illustrated with the Tarot cards and has received amplification from the

Pythagorean website, plus a wealth of interesting hyperlinks. It also deals with

Castel

del Monte, the mystical castle of the Emperor, which leads on to the Templars

via th symbolism of the number 8. The url is:

http://www.songsouponsea.com/Promenade/ChapterOne.html

Will Wonders Never Cease, LOL! I listen to Krimson on a daily basis usually!

The Mutt

[Guest guest]

related and of interest:

Dear Friends,

Sorry for the long silence. There is just such a mass of interesting material to

share that I never know where to start. What I am thinking of a the moment is a

WORKSHOP, which would be called * The Silver Key and the Golden Key*. This would

look at the relationship between Astrology and the Sacred Tarot. Only available

in Cape Town, and possibly Johannesburg for the time being.

Other idea is that I would like to do a series of illustrated talks on ASTOLOGY

IN THE RENAISSANCE - which would cover all the magnificent Art, the fresco

cycles in various palaces and the esoteric origins. Fully illustrated with the

paintings, of course.

Next, I include, for your edification beneath a letter sent to a working group

on the History of the Tarot so you can get a taste of that avenue of activity.

Yours sincerely

Samten de Wet

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 2:57 AM

Subject: Re Tarot and Hermeticism

Dear Friends,

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 J. Hurst kindly wrote

*You are exactly right. Modern occultism developed from Renaissance occultism

gradually, over a period of centuries. Tarot just happens to have been the last

major piece to be added, one which wasn't well incorporated until the 19th

century. Best regards, .*

In regard to the emergence of the Tarot, in the 15th, my point is that the

prototypes existed previously in one form or another, that is to say, before

they coalesced into the Tarot. Now perhaps, in answer to Greer, there is

too much uncritical acceptance of the Renaissance as the source of all that has

flown onwards to European modernity. To illustrate this very important point,

seconda me, is a quote from Seznec:

*As the Middle Ages and the Renaissance come to be better known, the traditional

antithesis between them grows less marked. The medieval period appears *less

dark and static,* and the Renaissance *less bright and less sudden.* 1 Above

all, it is now recognized that pagan antiquity, far from experiencing a

*rebirth* in fifteenth-century Italy, had remained alive within the culture and

art of the Middle Ages. Even the gods were not restored to life, for they had

never disappeared from the memory or imagination of man.* end quote

Now the note 1 in the above, refers to a book, H. Haskins, _The

Renaissance of the Twelfth Century_, Cambridge, Mass., 1927, Pref., p. vii. I

managed to find the 1927 edition in Turin last year and Xeroxed and scanned as

much as I could. It may be out of print? At the same time I have been

researching the astrological images of , that appeared when he was

in Palermo as court Astrologer to the Emperor Frederick II. As Seznec proves,

the transmission of the Scot images, eventually influenced the various

fresco cycles in Northern Italy and we can trace these images through the

work of many eminent scholars in the Journal of the Warburg Institute in London.

In a fascinating article by Diane O'Donovan entitled ** Scot's rebus

figure of *Juppiter* as prototype for the tarot pack's *Magus*/*Bateleur**,

which is available online. I do not agree with her conclusions, but she

precipitated me into researching the images. We had already been

collecting material on on Adam Mcleans Alchemy website and over

at TarotSalon. Some of the images have been published in the collected

works of Fritz Saxl, the great Warburg historian of astrology. And in these

images we see representations that are almost identical to the Major Acana. As

a discipline, I concentrated on The Hierophant, Arcanum 5 - which goes into the

pigeon hole for Jupiter. The Hierophant eventually becomes, of course, The

Pope. In some of these images, the triple crown appears, in others, a crown, or

even a turban, but the sceptre of Jupiter is always present, and often Jupiter

appears in one instance in a mandorala, the vesica pisces, as he does in the

Mantegna Tarot. And sometimes with, or without the eagle.

This week I found a wonderful website which amplifies in great detail the

symbolic content in the work of the songwriter Sinfield for the group

called King Crimson. This website has gathered together a mass of details on

the Emperor Frederick II - and mentions , and the entire work is

illustrated with the Tarot cards and has received amplification from the

Pythagorean website, plus a wealth of interesting hyperlinks. It also deals with

Castel del Monte, the mystical castle of the Emperor, which leads on to the

Templars via th symbolism of the number 8. The url is:

http://www.songsouponsea.com/Promenade/ChapterOne.html

This is merely a rough sketch, which will emerge as a study, with pictures

whenever. But the point I wish to make - is that the Tarot did not spring

fully armed out of nowhere, as a tabula rasa. And that we should look further

back than the Renaissance as the point of origin, not of the *form* as we know

it, but of the archetypes of which it is constituted.

The next point, and this is a personal one, is that I never, ever, use the word

*occult* in any of my writing. I prefer to use the word *esoteric* as laid out

in the overview presented by ANTOINE FAIVRE AND KAREN-CLAIRE VOSS, WESTERN

ESOTERICISM AND THE SCIENCE OF RELIGIONS, _NUMEN_, Vol. 42, 1995, E.J. Brill.

Leiden, p.48 ff. To quote the opening sentence:

* * The term *esotericism " refers here to the modern esoteric currents in the

West (15th to 20th centuries), i.e. to a diverse group of works, authors,

trends, which possess an *air de famille* and which must be studied as a part of

the history of religions because of the specific form it has acquired in the

West from the Renaissance on. ** end quote.

This seems to me an admirable context for research in the Tarot at an academic

level. But again, I have to disagree. I would prefer to place the Tarot and its

proto-history in *renascences* as indicated by: Erwin Panofsky, _Renaissance and

Renascences in Western Art_, Harper & Row, London, 1969.

Yours sincerely

Samten de Wet

EMAIL: samten@

Cell:

" To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake, is to be continually

thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to always be in no man's land, to

experience each moment as completely new and fresh. "

Pema Chodron

[Guest guest]

This is a very important distinction. I am very interested in how far one can

actually

trace these archetypes back. Thanks, Mark

>

>

> This is merely a rough sketch, which will emerge as a study, with pictures

whenever. But the point I wish to make - is that the Tarot did not spring

fully armed

out of nowhere, as a tabula rasa. And that we should look further back than the

Renaissance as the point of origin, not of the *form* as we know it, but of the

archetypes of which it is constituted.

>

>

>