History of tarot; was Tarot FAQ v. 2.0, pt 2
Margaret Young
Diane Purkiss (pur...@purkiss.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: Paragraphs accompanied by a > in the left-hand margin are by jk in his
: so-called 'FAQ', or trollspoor; these will be red in some servers (as in
: 'see red'). Paragraphs naked of flights of arrows are by me, Diane.
: >There is NO evidence that tarot originated
: >for any other purpose than as a gaming device. On the other
: >hand, it is fair to say that no one can reasonably speculate
: >about what the people who used tarot in the beginning (or
: >prior to 1781) either thought about it, nor how they may
: >have used it, in addition to gaming.
: Well, yes. One can also speculate on life-forms on planets elsewhere in
: the universe. But without evidence, it's rather pointless, unless you
: enjoy fiction. I do, but you don't.
Oops, not a good analogy. There is evidence in the cards themselves
that indicate what people thought about them, as well as some
comments made about the cards. What we don't have is conclusive
evidende.
That's quite different than no evidence, which, x-files notwithstanding,
is the case with extraterrestrial lifeforms.
: >there is no written record to support that belief.
: Who has pointed this out? A comparison with other games at courts in
: 15th century Italy might be useful - Twelfth Night games, for instance.
: I think you'll find that they have little to do with neoplatonism, or
: the art of memory, or high Renaissance magic, or any of the other things
: that occultists have tried to link to them.
Well, I've pointed it out, among others, though I don't think
a source for the idea is particularly important. It should rise
or fall on its own merits. As to the rest of this, is there any
linkage of Twelfth Night games to tarot? Why is the study of them
more useful than the study of, say, neoplatonism? Could you
expand here?
: >Why 22? Is the
: >number arbitrary? Or does it mean that there is some mystical
: >connection between tarot and other systems containing 22 elements,
: >like kabbala?
: When were there 22? You don't know there were 22 in Visconti Sforza, or
: Mantegna either.
Sloppy Diane, sloppy. The 22 trumps were listed by a monk around
1500--actually, the manuscript was probably slightly earlier. Also,
the first mention of tarot referred to 21 trumps--it is unclear,
given the card's ambiguous position in tarocchi, whether this would
include the Fool. If not, and the Fool existed, we're back to 22.
: >
: >If you refer to the timeline (see answer to question 3) you will see
: >that MANY of the tarot legends or traditions developed only recently,
: >and in response to the growth of a general popular interest in tarot
: >as an oracular, instead of a gaming, device.
: Well, yes. But that interest was created, and nurtured, by the late
: eighteenth and nineteenth century occultists, not by anything intrinsic
: to the cards.
Depends what you mean by intrinsic. Clearly, there was something
intrinsic. The question is whether there was something intentional.
And I think both you and Jess agree--probably not.
I'll add, however, that it's hard to make such a clearcut judgment
about work from an age where everything was, in a sense, symbolic.
The astrological meanings of the sun and moon were part and parcel
of the definition of those heavenly bodies. The mindset is so
extremely different than ours that we have great difficulty
truly understanding how it worked.
: >And, in all fairness to him, even
: >someone like Michael Dummett, who excoriates almost ALL occultists
: >(oddly, he finds some intellectual kinship with A. E. Waite!!), admits
: >that de Gebelin's ideas were at least in the same ideological ballpark
: >as those of Renaissance magicians. And what that means is that, even
: >though occult interpretations of tarot can NOT be shown to have
: >been identical with any early understanding of it possessed by the
: >originators of the cards, they are nevertheless close enough,
: >in sentiment and form, to often represent a reasonable (one
: >hesitates to say 'logical') evolution of those ideas,
: Where does Dummett admit this? Give a page reference. If he does, he's
: not as bright as I thought. De Gebelin's ideas have very little to do
: with Renaissance hermeticism or Paracelsian magic or the neoplatonism of
: someone like Pico, which in turn has little to do with the decks created
: in fifteenth-century Italy. Cynthia Giles sensibly points out that the
: Renaissance wrote a heap of stuff on the occult, every aspect of it, and
: somehow failed to mention tarot. If it had been used for divination at
: a large court like the Este family court, it would have been known to
: writers like Weyer and Scot.
Umm, I don't think that's what he's saying--more that their is
a similarity in the overall view of the cosmos, but Jess should
answer this.
: >and are not,
: >as are many postmodern tarot decks, just mindless drapings of newage
: >pop-isms onto an archaic frame whose meaning is, by now,
: >quite irrelevant to designer and buyer alike.
: Your own historical scholarship is nonexistent, resting entirely on
: secondary sources, yet you trash others for postmodern lack of interest
: in truth. It would be meioitic to call this cheek of the first order.
Now, Diane, how do you know what Jess has or has not read? That
he refers to history books does not automatically mean he has not
read primary sources. You're making unwarranted assumptions here.
I won't even go into that sloppy use of "post-modern." You're trying
to build a case for a more open acceptance of recent tarot decks,
but making these kind of assumptions isn't the way to go about it.
: >11. What are the symbolic 'roots' of tarot?
: >All this is to say that when you start messing with the politics
: >of tarot, you can rapidly be declared a heretic by all kinds of
: >people for all kinds of reasons. At least they can't burn you
: >at the stake (so far).
: Just watch me. I'm the Grand Inquisitor, and you probably know little
: enough about the Inquisition in Italy to find that frightening.
But what's an inquisitor without the backing of church and state?
: >
: >If you really want a good start on learning about the symbolic
: >roots of tarot, get 'The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo',
: >by Gertrude Moakley. I'm not claiming Moakley's theory is entirely
: >correct, but she has shown the 'way' to those who wonder if tarot
: >symbolism can be deciphered without recourse to newage
: >relativisms.
<snip>
: to working on the tarot, she had never studied Petrarch or his
: contemporaries. All in all, she was singularly ill-equipped for the job
: she took on. _At least she took it on, though_, unlike those who are
: content to cite her having talked largely of following up her notes and
: references.
: >
: Now, there's nothing wrong with any of this in itself. But to cite
: Moakley as if she were some great scholarly authority is misleading.
: She is an authority - a Bible - because no-one, including jk, has really
: followed up her work and tested her conclusions. I mention her
: limitations in large letters because the poor woman is being loaded up
: with more significance than she can bear. Jk, try thinking for
: yourself. Don't let Moakley do your thinking for you ;).
Ummm, he didn't. . . . it's a guarded recommendation, not so different
than yours, actually.
:
: It's about time this followup work was done. Dummett has come closest,
: but hasn't really discussed the question of where the symbols come from
: in enough depth to convince, or with a wide enough range of reference.
: I haven't done that work either, but I can say in a preliminary way that
: Moakley's theory is inherently extemely unpersuasive, for reasons which
: I'm happy to enlarge upon if anyone wishes.
I'm interested and would appreciate an enlargement.
:
: Here's the gist, then: I think tarot was originally nothing but a card
: game with some social and perhaps ethical significance, like most court
: games of the late middle ages and Renaissance, until the occultists got
: to work in 1781. If they changed its meaning and purpose, why can't
: Vicki Noble (designer of Motherpeace)?
:
: Jk, toleration is the word, not ecumenism. I'm not eager to see tarot
: amalgamated with the Olympic logo, though I might enjoy the Lion King
: tarot as fiction. If it happens, I'll just go on quietly with my
: occultist decks. Why can't you?
I don't think Jess is strictly speaking against all revisions. It
appears to me that there are particularly agendas he dislikes.
Personally, I think there's an interesting thread that could
evolve on feminism and tarot, but there are so many touchy feelings
on the topic that the whole thing would go up in flames before
anything meaningful got said.
My own beef isn't with revisionism, per se, but BAD revisionism.
Whereas Thoth and Waite-Smith are decks that were created with
specific ideas in mind, most recent decks seem to be diluted
versions of Waite, with little understanding by the deck's creators
of what Waite intended in his own deck. They subtract from
earlier decks and add little. What we have now are decks created
for the purpose of selling. The emphasis is increasingly on
various types of visual gadgetry, not on the conveyance of
meaningful symbolism. Many of these decks are charming,
but have little depth.
The case with Motherpeace is slightly different. Obviously,
Noble had some ideas she wanted to convey--the question here,
then, does her agenda and art have the depth to make her deck
a worthy successor to its predecessors? Do her additions
justify her substractions? Do her revisions shed needed new
light, or do they debase the whole idea of occult tarot?
I don't think tolerance is really the issue. None of us
has the power or the desire, I think, to ban the Motherpeace
deck. But being tolerant does not mean the surrender of
all critical judgment. The notion that it does is degraded
post-modernism. In the case of tarot, this laxness has
meant market-driven tarot decks and decadence of its
symbolic language.
:
: Oh, and hi, everyone. I'm back.
Hi, glad to see you,
margaret: --
: Diane
Aladdin Sane
Margaret Young wrote:
>
> Diane Purkiss (pur...@purkiss.demon.co.uk)
snip snips snip
On the other
> : >hand, it is fair to say that no one can reasonably speculate
> : >about what the people who used tarot in the beginning (or
> : >prior to 1781) either thought about it,
snip snip snip
> : >Why 22? Is the
> : >number arbitrary? Or does it mean that there is some mystical
> : >connection between tarot and other systems containing 22 elements,
> : >like kabbala?
> : When were there 22? You don't know there were 22 in Visconti Sforza, or
> : Mantegna either.
>
Several of the so called "Mystery Schools" trace the roots of Tarot to the city of
Fez in Moracco in the 12th to 13th century. Representatives of various mystical
traditions supposedly met to, in a sense, codify their knowledge. They chose to
develop the Tarot as a pictoral reference much as the Mandalla of the Eastern
traditions, or the cathedral statuary of the Gothich era in Europe. Although most
aspirants were well educated in terms of the day, they spoke many languages. Also,
there were a number of illiterate aspirants. The pictoral representations would
speak directly to the sub-conscious mind. In effect, Tarot became a "language" of
its own.
As to the number 22, there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. As the Hebrew
alphabet was a combination of pictoral as well as utilized for script, and as the
Hebrew alphabet had a mystical tradition (Qabalaha) already associated with it, it
was determined to wed the Tarot to the Qabalaha and the Hebrew alphabet.
Or so I've been told.
Or maybe not.
snip snip snip
> : >11. What are the symbolic 'roots' of tarot?
The symbolic roots of tarot is the mystical relationship that is the Universe. The
Universe is one and united, and it is many. But the separation we see is the
illusion. Tarot represents the various aspects of the one, aspects we create to
better understand the whole.
The Fool - The Universal Life Force, so vast we can comprehend It only through Its
Manifestations.
The Magician - Conscious Mind which gives direction and focus to desire and
Creation.
The High Priestess - Sub-conscious Mind which gives energy and form to Creation.
The Empress - The nurturing aspect which brings Creation into being.
The Emperor - The rational aspect which brings order to Creation
The Heirphant - The Inner Wisdom which directs Creation.
The Lovers - who bring diversity and discrimination to Creation.
The Chariot - The Inner Self or Soul who directs the personality.
Or so I have been told.
Or maybe not.
snip snip snip
> :
> : Here's the gist, then: I think tarot was originally nothing but a card
> : game with some social and perhaps ethical significance, like most court
> : games of the late middle ages and Renaissance, until the occultists got
> : to work in 1781. If they changed its meaning and purpose, why can't
> : Vicki Noble (designer of Motherpeace)?
snip snip snip
Or so we are being told.
Or maybe not.
Aladdin Sane
New York Theosophical Society
J. Karlin (r3wi...@io.com) wrote:
: Aladdin Sane wrote:
: > Several of the so called "Mystery Schools" trace the roots of Tarot to the city of
: > Fez in Moracco in the 12th to 13th century.
: What evidence is there to support such a theory?
We have a couple of members at the NYTS who are quite
knowledgeable in that area (Michael Gomes and Prof. John Milisenda). I
will see if they know anything about this.
Bart Lidofsky
George Leake
myo...@Market.NET (Margaret Young) wrote:
> Sloppy Diane, sloppy. The 22 trumps were listed by a monk around
> 1500--actually, the manuscript was probably slightly earlier. Also,
> the first mention of tarot referred to 21 trumps--it is unclear,
> given the card's ambiguous position in tarocchi, whether this would
> include the Fool. If not, and the Fool existed, we're back to 22.
--
George Leake 512-471-9117 tali...@mail.utexas.edu
"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine."-George Washington
"For we are instinctively all too greedy for praise, and there is no sound or song that comes sweeter to our ears; praise, like Sirens' voices, is the kind of music that causes shipwreck to the man who does not stop his ears to its deceptive harmony."-B.Castiglione, "The Courtier"
George Leake
JK wrote
>>>and are not, as are many postmodern tarot decks, just mindless drapings
of newage pop-isms onto an archaic frame whose meaning is, by now, quite
irrelevant to designer and buyer alike.
>Diane Purkiss (pur...@purkiss.demon.co.uk) wrote:
>:Your own historical scholarship is nonexistent, resting entirely on
secondary sources, yet you trash others for postmodern lack of interest in
truth. It would be meioitic to call this cheek of the first order.
myo...@Market.NET (Margaret Young) wrote:
>Now, Diane, how do you know what Jess has or has not read? That he
refers to history books does not automatically mean he has not read
primary sources. You're making unwarranted assumptions here.
*yes. Good point. What JK has read is not really the question (imho, he
has demonstrated much knowledge, though it may be difficult to tell here
sometimes). The difficulty is that Diane is calling JK on something she
really does not have all the facts on. JK is pretty well read in this
area. Whether his conclusions are sound is another question.
*and also about primary sources--its going to be awfully difficult to read
many of them since the origins of tarot extend before the advent of
Gutenberg.
>I won't even go into that sloppy use of "post-modern."
*careful, Margeret. JK's as guilty of sloppy usage of that term as anyone
round here. He uses it like Rush Limbaugh uses the term "PC".
>You're trying to build a case for a more open acceptance of recent tarot
decks, but making these kind of assumptions isn't the way to go about it.
*well, if that's what she's after, then yr right, but isn't that an assumption?
>:>If you really want a good start on learning about the symbolic
roots of tarot, get 'The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo', by
Gertrude Moakley.
>snip>
>:to working on the tarot, she had never studied Petrarch or his contemporaries.
*I must say I find this point of Diane's troubling. Few have investigated
Petrarch and Tarot. Moakley and Dummett are the only two I know of who
have. Giles relies on their work for her Tarot book.
*speaking of spade-work--we should definitely start with Petrarch and the
Trionfi paradigm.
>:Now, there's nothing wrong with any of this in itself. But to cite
Moakley as if she were some great scholarly authority is misleading. She
is an authority - a Bible - because no-one, including jk, has really
followed up her work and tested her conclusions.
*I can't speak for anyone else, but Giles, Dummett and I have all been
very balanced about her work. Moakley did *some* things, but her scope was
limited. And Dummett and Giles have indeed followed up her work. Let me
say here that some of Giles' conclusions about Moakley I found rather
weak.
>Don't let Moakley do your thinking for you ;).
>Ummm, he didn't. . . . it's a guarded recommendation, not so different
than yours, actually.
*yeah...well...Moakley's book is definitely worth reading and no one
should stop there. All this nonsense about treating it like a Bible though
is quite irrelevant.
>:It's about time this followup work was done. Dummett has come closest,
but hasn't really discussed the question of where the symbols come from in
enough depth to convince, or with a wide enough range of reference. I
haven't done that work either, but I can say in a preliminary way that
Moakley's theory is inherently extemely unpersuasive, for reasons which
I'm happy to enlarge upon if anyone wishes.
>I'm interested and would appreciate an enlargement.
*All 3 of us are agreed. First then, let's all go read Moakley. THEN
Dummett. If we can get JK in a magnamous mood, he really has done a lot of
spade work on this subject already, I've done a bit (including having
identified every painting at the Louvre with Trionfi paradigms in them).
>:Here's the gist, then: I think tarot was originally nothing but a card
game with some social and perhaps ethical significance, like most court
games of the late middle ages and Renaissance, until the occultists got to
work in 1781. If they changed its meaning and purpose, why can't Vicki
Noble (designer of Motherpeace)?
>:Jk, toleration is the word, not ecumenism. I'm not eager to see tarot
amalgamated with the Olympic logo, though I might enjoy the Lion King
tarot as fiction. If it happens, I'll just go on quietly with my
occultist decks. Why can't you?
>I don't think Jess is strictly speaking against all revisions.It appears
to me that there are particularly agendas he dislikes.
*as far as "agendas", I'm really not interested in debating that. I do
agree about tolerance, though I think the better word is balance, being
critical abou both what one rejects and accepts.
*but back to one of JK's statements--"I think tarot was originally nothing
but a card game with some social and perhaps ethical significance, like
most court games of the late middle ages and Renaissance"--it depends on
how much emphasis one puts on social and ethical significance--perhaps
that's what I'd play up--along with a certain amount of transcendence of
symbols from the Ancient civilizations that formed Europe, trickling down
separate streams then reunited of late.
>My own beef isn't with revisionism, per se, but BAD revisionism.
*always difficult to figure this out
Whereas Thoth and Waite-Smith are decks that were created with
> specific ideas in mind, most recent decks seem to be diluted
> versions of Waite, with little understanding by the deck's creators
> of what Waite intended in his own deck.
*well, its obvious enough that's partially Waite's fault
>They subtract from earlier decks and add little. What we have now are
decks created for the purpose of selling. The emphasis is increasingly on
various types of visual gadgetry, not on the conveyance of meaningful
symbolism. Many of these decks are charming, but have little depth.
*hard to generalize, but there are enough shallow decks out there that its
easy to grasp yr meaning
>The case with Motherpeace is slightly different. Obviously, Noble had
some ideas she wanted to convey--the question here, then, does her agenda
and art have the depth to make her deck a worthy successor to its
predecessors?
*hard to say...though I think the art is sloppy at times
Do her additions justify her substractions? Do her revisions shed
needed new light, or do they debase the whole idea of occult tarot?
*not as much as say the Enchanted tarot
>I don't think tolerance is really the issue. None of us has the power or
the desire, I think, to ban the Motherpeace deck. But being tolerant does
not mean the surrender of all critical judgment.
*right. What I was telling you a month ago. One should be consistently
critical.
The notion that it does is degraded
> post-modernism.
*if post-modernism is the term for it at all
In the case of tarot, this laxness has
> meant market-driven tarot decks and decadence of its
> symbolic language.
*the ancient greeks labelled it low magic.
Aladdin Sane
I look forward to their information. What I related was information I have heard, but
not seen corroborated.
Diane
In article <4tm1u8$u...@Market.NET>, Margaret Young <myo...@Market.NET>
writes
>
I wrote
>: Well, yes. One can also speculate on life-forms on planets elsewhere in
>: the universe. But without evidence, it's rather pointless, unless you
>: enjoy fiction. I do, but you don't.
>
>Oops, not a good analogy. There is evidence in the cards themselves
>that indicate what people thought about them, as well as some
>comments made about the cards. What we don't have is conclusive
>evidende.
which they beleive are evidence, just as you beleive the cards are
evidence. The problem lies in interepreting this so-called evidence,
surely?
<snip>
>As to the rest of this, is there any
>linkage of Twelfth Night games to tarot? Why is the study of them
>more useful than the study of, say, neoplatonism? Could you
>expand here?
Renaissance game, it is useful to try to understand the others,
especially those we know a bit more about. The general linkage is that
Twelfth Night games wre satiric carnivals in which the high put on the
clothes of the low, not a million miles from the idea of tarot as a form
of carnival, as proposed by Moakley.
The famous friar's sermon objects to the game of trumps on gournds of
social decorum. He complains (more-or-less,a nd I'm relying on a
transaltion here) that it's undiginfied for God and the emperor and the
Pope to be involved in a card game. What might owrry a medival mind is
that such a game overtly distrupts social hierarchy; the meperor might
be 'lost' to a _misero_, a beggar. Which is rather like carnival, or
twelfth night.
>
>: >Why 22? Is the
>: >number arbitrary? Or does it mean that there is some mystical
>: >connection between tarot and other systems containing 22 elements,
>: >like kabbala?
>: When were there 22? You don't know there were 22 in Visconti Sforza, or
>: Mantegna either.
>
>Sloppy Diane, sloppy. The 22 trumps were listed by a monk around
>1500--actually, the manuscript was probably slightly earlier.
Except that the trumps he listed are different from those available from
Visconti_Sforza, Inc. Anyway, he was a Franciscan friar, not a monk.
>Also,
>the first mention of tarot referred to 21 trumps--it is unclear,
>given the card's ambiguous position in tarocchi, whether this would
>include the Fool. If not, and the Fool existed, we're back to 22.
It's kind of touching the way you're all assuming I don't know about the
friar and the deck, as though this _one_ piece of evidence is
conclusive..
>
>: >
>: >If you refer to the timeline (see answer to question 3) you will see
>: >that MANY of the tarot legends or traditions developed only recently,
>: >and in response to the growth of a general popular interest in tarot
>: >as an oracular, instead of a gaming, device.
>: Well, yes. But that interest was created, and nurtured, by the late
>: eighteenth and nineteenth century occultists, not by anything intrinsic
>: to the cards.
>
>Depends what you mean by intrinsic. Clearly, there was something
>intrinsic. The question is whether there was something intentional.
>And I think both you and Jess agree--probably not.
>
Well, I can't speak for Jess :). But that's certainly my position.
Intrinsic; all I mean is, there was nothing that made the occultists'
interpretations naturla or inveitable.
>I'll add, however, that it's hard to make such a clearcut judgment
>about work from an age where everything was, in a sense, symbolic.
>The astrological meanings of the sun and moon were part and parcel
>of the definition of those heavenly bodies. The mindset is so
>extremely different than ours that we have great difficulty
>truly understanding how it worked.
>
You're absolutley right in principle, which is precisely why I'm not
confident about the general occultist line; that the cards contain
symbols which are timeless, or whose meaning is metaphysical. The
meaning of a loaf of bread in c. 1500 was metaphysical.
<snip>
>: >and are not,
>: >as are many postmodern tarot decks, just mindless drapings of newage
>: >pop-isms onto an archaic frame whose meaning is, by now,
>: >quite irrelevant to designer and buyer alike.
>: Your own historical scholarship is nonexistent, resting entirely on
>: secondary sources, yet you trash others for postmodern lack of interest
>: in truth. It would be meioitic to call this cheek of the first order.
>
>Now, Diane, how do you know what Jess has or has not read?
I don't. I only know what he says and what he cites. I've been here
for six months now, and he hasn't come up with much outside secondary
sources; not even any detailed analyses of individual pre-1781 cards.
It may be that he knows more than this; why should anyone believe this
_either_ without evidence?
>At least they can't burn you
>: >at the stake (so far).
>: Just watch me. I'm the Grand Inquisitor, and you probably know little
>: enough about the Inquisition in Italy to find that frightening.
>
>But what's an inquisitor without the backing of church and state?
Joke over. To answer your question, though: an inquisitor is someone
who asks questions because they are in search of the truth.
>Jk, try thinking for
>: yourself. Don't let Moakley do your thinking for you ;).
Again, joke over. George got v. excited some weeks back over the
erroneous idea that I wanted others to let experts do their thinking for
them. Now Jess seems to think the same, even though I've been arguing
tirelessly for someone to do some researcha nd make it available to
public scrutiny.
>
>Ummm, he didn't. . . . it's a guarded recommendation, not so different
>than yours, actually.
>
Except that I've said what my reservations are.
>:
>: It's about time this followup work was done. Dummett has come closest,
>: but hasn't really discussed the question of where the symbols come from
>: in enough depth to convince, or with a wide enough range of reference.
>: I haven't done that work either, but I can say in a preliminary way that
>: Moakley's theory is inherently extemely unpersuasive, for reasons which
>: I'm happy to enlarge upon if anyone wishes.
>
>I'm interested and would appreciate an enlargement.
See my response to jk under my name.
>: Jk, toleration is the word, not ecumenism. I'm not eager to see tarot
>: amalgamated with the Olympic logo, though I might enjoy the Lion King
>: tarot as fiction. If it happens, I'll just go on quietly with my
>: occultist decks. Why can't you?
>
>I don't think Jess is strictly speaking against all revisions. It
>appears to me that there are particularly agendas he dislikes.
What do _you_ think?
>Personally, I think there's an interesting thread that could
>evolve on feminism and tarot, but there are so many touchy feelings
>on the topic that the whole thing would go up in flames before
>anything meaningful got said.
>
Why don't we try? We can go to email if it gets too hot out here. What
are your feelings about feminist revisiinist decks? As everyone knows,
I'm not crazy about Motherpeace myself, though I think it's interesting.
And which if any cards do you think need revising in thoth or Rider-
Waite-Smiht or any other central occultist deck?
>My own beef isn't with revisionism, per se, but BAD revisionism.
>Whereas Thoth and Waite-Smith are decks that were created with
>specific ideas in mind, most recent decks seem to be diluted
>versions of Waite, with little understanding by the deck's creators
>of what Waite intended in his own deck.
Can you explain why this is essential? Even supposing that it's doable?
> What we have now are decks created
>for the purpose of selling. The emphasis is increasingly on
>various types of visual gadgetry, not on the conveyance of
>meaningful symbolism. Many of these decks are charming,
>but have little depth.
Can you give instances? Art Nouveau tarot? Wonderland? Personally, I
like some of these decks, because I think not all tarot needs to be a
desperately serious spiritual force. It can be a joke, a fiction, a
pastime. As it probably was in 1500 or so.
>
>The case with Motherpeace is slightly different. Obviously,
>Noble had some ideas she wanted to convey--the question here,
>then, does her agenda and art have the depth to make her deck
>a worthy successor to its predecessors? Do her additions
>justify her substractions? Do her revisions shed needed new
>light, or do they debase the whole idea of occult tarot?
Quite. Let's talk about this. Could we take one card - the High
Priestess, say - and discuss whether it works in Motherpeace? For one
thing, Vogel's drawing does away with the notion of chastity or closure
prominent in some reperesentations. Despite sundry worries about
Motherpeace, I have to say that I'd prefer it to Barbara G. Walker,
anyway.
>
>I don't think tolerance is really the issue. None of us
>has the power or the desire, I think, to ban the Motherpeace
>deck.
Tolerance involves rather more positive action than a reluctance to ban.
Ridicule is also a way to silence something. Or somebody.
> But being tolerant does not mean the surrender of
>all critical judgment.
Good Lord, no. But critical judgement does not have to entail abuse.
It's fun, but it's in no sense tolerant.
>Hi, glad to see you,
>
Nice to see you too.
>margaret: --
>
--
Diane
Diane Purkiss
In article <taliesin-020...@duncan.hrc.utexas.edu>, George
Leake <tali...@mail.utexas.edu> writes
>*and also about primary sources--its going to be awfully difficult to read
>many of them since the origins of tarot extend before the advent of
>Gutenberg.
manuscript resources in Italian and probably other large libraries. As
far as I know, no-one has done this - certainly not me, as I said right
at the beginining.
>decks, but making these kind of assumptions isn't the way to go about it.
>*well, if that's what she's after, then yr right, but isn't that an assumption?
wanted to talk about tarot history. But I also see Jess's FAQ as
inconsistent because it's critical of some forms of invention without
being clear enough about why it approves of others.
>
>*speaking of spade-work--we should definitely start with Petrarch and the
>Trionfi paradigm.
significant differences between the Petrarchan trionfi poems and the
surviving fifteenth-century decks?
>
>>:Now, there's nothing wrong with any of this in itself. But to cite
>Moakley as if she were some great scholarly authority is misleading. She
>is an authority - a Bible - because no-one, including jk, has really
>followed up her work and tested her conclusions.
>*I can't speak for anyone else, but Giles, Dummett and I have all been
>very balanced about her work. Moakley did *some* things, but her scope was
>limited. And Dummett and Giles have indeed followed up her work. Let me
>say here that some of Giles' conclusions about Moakley I found rather
>weak.
but has _she_ done any primary research?
>
>>:It's about time this followup work was done. Dummett has come closest,
>but hasn't really discussed the question of where the symbols come from in
>enough depth to convince, or with a wide enough range of reference. I
>haven't done that work either, but I can say in a preliminary way that
>Moakley's theory is inherently extemely unpersuasive, for reasons which
>I'm happy to enlarge upon if anyone wishes.
>>I'm interested and would appreciate an enlargement.
>Dummett. If we can get JK in a magnamous mood, he really has done a lot of
>spade work on this subject already, I've done a bit (including having
>identified every painting at the Louvre with Trionfi paradigms in them).
offer a few comments on Petrarch's trionfi in context? May I also ask
waht spade work you think we should all be doing, and where exactly you
think it appropriate to dig? This is not a test. I myself suspect that
the best place to start is indeed iconography contemporary with the
surviving decks, and also court literature contemporary with and derived
from Petrarch.
>*but back to one of JK's statements--"I think tarot was originally nothing
>but a card game with some social and perhaps ethical significance, like
>most court games of the late middle ages and Renaissance"
>--it depends on
>how much emphasis one puts on social and ethical significance--perhaps
>that's what I'd play up--
appreciate clarification.
>along with a certain amount of transcendence of
>symbols from the Ancient civilizations that formed Europe, trickling down
>separate streams then reunited of late.
han those invented last week, or not if it's historical specificity that
they're supposed to transcend. Yes, of course, therer are classical
figures in the cards, but reinterpreted through medieval spectacles.
>
--
Diane
ata
93
The theory you mention was put forward by the designer of The Moroccan
Deck (if that's what it was called), who was also one of the founders of
MENSA. I don't have the exact details, but can find them. I have to dig
out the deck when I get home, though. The theory has - as far as I know -
never spread beyond this.
93 93/93
MLYoung
Subject: Re: History of tarot; was Tarot FAQ v. 2.0, pt 2
From: tali...@mail.utexas.edu (George Leake)
Date: 2 Aug 1996 21:55:39 GMT
George's comments denoted by asterisks.
>I won't even go into that sloppy use of "post-modern."
*careful, Margeret. JK's as guilty of sloppy usage of that term as anyone
round here. He uses it like Rush Limbaugh uses the term "PC".
Not exactly. He did define what he meant by it. It's not exactly
in keeping with the usual definition, but he did tell us what he meant
by it and why he used the term. Not ideal, but clear. Diane appeared
to be using "post-modern" in a way that obscured rather than clarified.
However, this is not all that important in and of itself, IMHO.
>You're trying to build a case for a more open acceptance of recent tarot
decks, but making these kind of assumptions isn't the way to go about it.
*well, if that's what she's after, then yr right, but isn't that an
assumption?
No, she says as much at the end of her post.
>My own beef isn't with revisionism, per se, but BAD revisionism.
*always difficult to figure this out
Why? In too many cases, it's depressingly obvious.
In fact, an obviousness, a sentimentality, a triteness in ideas and
artwork are generally the dead giveaways.
Whereas Thoth and Waite-Smith are decks that were created with
> specific ideas in mind, most recent decks seem to be diluted
> versions of Waite, with little understanding by the deck's creators
> of what Waite intended in his own deck.
*well, its obvious enough that's partially Waite's fault
I disagree. I don't think most contemporary deck creators even
get to the point where that becomes a problem. They just import
the images wholesale and apply whatever gimmick happens to
characterize the particular deck.
The notion that it does is degraded
> post-modernism.
*if post-modernism is the term for it at all
Yes, in this case. The notion that no truth is absolute and all truths
are subjective is degraged into the notion that all truths are created
equal.
--margaret
George Leake
mly...@aol.com (MLYoung) wrote:
>Not exactly. He did define what he meant by it. It's not exactly in
keeping with the usual definition, but he did tell us what he meant by it
and why he used the term. Not ideal, but clear.
see clear definitions. What exactly is it if you can quote or paraphrase?
>>You're trying to build a case for a more open acceptance of recent tarot
>decks, but making these kind of assumptions isn't the way to go about it.
>*well, if that's what she's after, then yr right, but isn't that an
>assumption?
>No, she says as much at the end of her post.
*I guess one could say that. Though all this is very vague. I'm not sure
if Diane's hyping all or some contemporary decks or if her idea of
postmodernistic is the same or different from JK's.
>>My own beef isn't with revisionism, per se, but BAD revisionism.
> *always difficult to figure this out
>Why? In too many cases, it's depressingly obvious.
*in those case, I think there is indeed consensus. Its the Voyager Decks
of the world that cause more debate
>In fact, an obviousness, a sentimentality, a triteness in ideas and
artwork are generally the dead giveaways.
*I would agree with you here. However, not everyone agrees on all these,
and what about decks who meet some of these conditions or sit on the
fence? THAT's what I mean by difficulty. And, btw, I fail to see how any
of this has anything to do with postmodernism, if in fact it was implied
at all.
>Whereas Thoth and Waite-Smith are decks that were created with
>>specific ideas in mind, most recent decks seem to be diluted
>>versions of Waite, with little understanding by the deck's creators
>>of what Waite intended in his own deck.
>*well, its obvious enough that's partially Waite's fault
>I disagree. I don't think most contemporary deck creators even
>get to the point where that becomes a problem. They just import
>the images wholesale and apply whatever gimmick happens to
>characterize the particular deck.
*no, actually we agree on that point, on the decks where its obviously
happening. However, not every deck to come out in the last 10-25 years
that has Waitian elements or this or that person labels post-modernistic
was designed within these sets of conditions. Clearly, the Enchanted
Tarots of the world do.
>The notion that it does is degraded post-modernism.
>*if post-modernism is the term for it at all
>Yes, in this case. The notion that no truth is absolute and all truths
are subjective is degraged into the notion that all truths are created
equal.
*what does that statement of yours have to do with the concept of
"post-modernism"?
George Leake
mly...@aol.com (MLYoung) wrote:
>No, because Diane was asking when was there a first mention of 22 trumps.
*I coulda sworn she was actually questioning Jess Karlin's new version of
tarot FAQ
>That the Tarot de Mantegna has more than 22 trump does not change the
fact that around 1500 at least one deck did indeed have 22 trumps that are
akin to the modern trumps and this deck's trumps were listed.
*no argument there. Dummett proved this convincingly. The French invaded
Milan in the late 15th century. Then, notice how the Marseilles and other
decks follow suit. Also in the ordering of the Trumps.
>What I think the Tarot de Mantegna does argue against, however, is there
being a special symbolism to the number of trumps that was widely known.
In other words, to most people, including the designers in many cases, it
was just a game.
*exactly my point. Also the trionfi paradigm was not all that consistent
either. Just like the blues.
George Leake
mly...@aol.com (MLYoung) wrote:
>It's really a different kettle of fish. In the case of UFOs, there is no
generally accepted evidence of their existence No one seriously doubts the
existence of tarot cards.
*the parallel of course is with certain "tarot origins" stories.
>The cards exist; they are referred to in contemporary manuscripts.
*as does the trionfi paradigm.
>What is akin to a belief in extraterrestrial life is the belief that they
are a book of secret knowledge passed down from ancient Egypt. The
possibility is there (as is the possibility of intelligent
extraterrestrial life), but there's nothing solid.
*right. What doesn't get talked about as much are tarot origins theories
that do have documentary backup to at least some extent. Instead, romantic
notions about gypsies prevail.
Diane Purkiss wrote-->
>The general linkage is that Twelfth Night games wre satiric carnivals in
which the high put on the clothes of the low, not a million miles from the
idea of tarot as a form of carnival, as proposed by Moakley.
Marg-->
>It seems reasonable to me to study those things--but then so does the
study of anything, such as neoplatonism, that might shed light on the
origins of tarot symbolism.
*I happen to think you're absolutely right on track. And suspect that
there might be some common roots in the Carnival and neoplatonism.
>While tarot cards may have begun as a game, I personally find it hard to
believe that the images of the tarot trumps emerged full-fledged in the
decks without antecedents.
*exactly. There are many examples in art and literature of the trionfi
paradigm and other symbols in early tarot.
>The weight of the symbolism seems to go far beyond the requirements of
the game. Indeed, our modern playing ards have a much simpler symbolism.
*yes.
>There's also the problem of the tarot trumps not really following a
strict social hierarchy--at least one that's obvious. While the Pope is
above the Emporer, what's that Hanged Man, or traitor, doing above the
virtues? I haven't seen a fully satisfying explanation of the organizing
principal behind this, though the order seems to have been established
fairly early. The Mantegna seems to have simply rectified the troublesome
cards out of existence, but that's not the case with other decks.
*I think that's because those who created the deck and the trionfi
paradigm didn't take it quite so seriously in that respect. The cards were
for a game. The trionfi allusions were simply allusions to a very living
morality tale cycle including the 7 deadly sins and virtues. Nobody goes
to a deck of cards for instruction. OTOH, they were obviously NOT seen as
evil or anti-Christian by most contemporaries, as Dummett aptly describes.
All games in much of Western Europe were outlawed somewhere around 1500,
except for three: chess, backgammon and cartes di trionfo. Cardinals and
Bishops were seen playing all three in public. It was no big thing.
Perhaps there were a few who took it too seriously, as I've seen people
take Monopoly too seriously (after all, let's be honest, money and
property and status are our gods now).
>From this, we can infer that at least one tarot deck did indeed have 22
trumps that correspond roughly to those in later decks.
*I'm simply saying that there's nothing mystical about the number. We have
22 trumps as a common conceit largely because the Milanese court was the
most prosperous one and got conquered by the young impatient French King.
Dummett also says this is why the last three cards are the Sun, Angel
(Last Judgement) and World (Universe), and other things are in more or
less the Milanese order.
>Or that the friar had a lousy memory.
*those still clinging to the oral tradition definitely would have claimed that.
>But by whose standards? You're assuming that there's no inherent meaning
in a coincidence. That's not how an occultist views the world. The whole
notion is that coincidences do have a meaning. If there are 22 letters in
the alphabet and 22 trumps, that means something. It is the occultists job
to uncover it. It's more a creative than scientific process.
*I'd have to agree with the line of thought "by whose standards"; in other
words this is all rather subjective when one speaks of whats and whys of
using tarot now.
*but this notion that the notion of the 22 or any other coincidence having
meaning! Get real! Do I have to go drag out Robert Anton Wilson or another
brilliant satirist--surely you've heard the bit about the number 23 and
the Discordians? Quite honestly when I see or hear someone talking
seriously about this 22 coincidence being meaningful nonsense I instantly
think they're trying to bullshit me or they've bullshitted themselves and
are trying to bullshit the rest of the world.
>Again, joke over. George got v. excited some weeks back over the
erroneous idea that I wanted others to let experts do their thinking for
them. Now Jess seems to think the same, even though I've been arguing
tirelessly for someone to do some researcha nd make it available to public
scrutiny.
*Here's what I think--whether its Moakley, Dummett, Karlin or
anyone--their theories should be carefully weighed and the evidence
examined. Much of my fairly recent problems with Jess Karlin was I thought
and still think he was being lazy in rejecting Greer. Even Bob Dole has
his moments.
>In exchange for what precisely? You're more likely to get a response if
you proffer up some research yourself. No one gets paid to post. What
reward is there if Jess does an extensive post? Look what's happened with
the FAQ-- a kneejerk reaction of outrage from a couple of people, and some
weird assumption that Jess had shanghaied it.
*agreed. It is a lot of hard work. And people did over-react over the
Tarot FAQ. I still say they should do one themselves.
>You can say Jess has earned the abuse, but I don't think you can expect
him to post great droves of research without some form of incentive--such
as a good argument, or some other form of excitement. Or even some
serious attention. (off the Jess soapbox)
*right. Another reason why I say let's try to keep this serious and not so
personal.
>>I don't think Jess is strictly speaking against all revisions. It
>>appears to me that there are particularly agendas he dislikes.
>What do _you_ think?
>Well, I state what I think below. I don't share his antagonism at the
feminist agenda, per se (though I'm simplifying his views as I know them
here), but I am impatient with those who simplify and sentimentalize the
complex and ambiguous.
*d'accord
>That there is something inherently better about a matriarchy than a
patriarchy is one of those gross simplifications as is the assumption that
there was some sort of ur great Goddess. Wishful thinking--dangerous in
that it distorts our past and prevents us from honestly evaluating the
roots of sexual inequality.
*si. Claro.
>Can you give instances? Art Nouveau tarot? Wonderland? Personally, I
like some of these decks, because I think not all tarot needs to be a
desperately serious spiritual force. It can be a joke, a fiction, a
pastime. As it probably was in 1500 or so.
>You assume jokes, fictions and past-times are somehow superficial. All
three can be extremely telling.
*good point, Margeret. The Salvador Dali deck is kind of humorous at
first glance. I find the Thoth deck to be the opposite. Serious from the
outside, or perhaps arcane is a better term.
>But anyway, I'd say most theme decks fall into this category--such as the
very pretty St. Petersburg deck. It's nice as something to look at, but I
never read with it. It's not intriguing. There's nothing "rich and
strange" in it. No challenge, in a sense.
*I'd have to put Enchanted in that category. What makes me really dislike
the latter is there's all kinds of hype tied up in it.
>Generally, anything with too many gently smiling people, like the
Connally. Don't know too many gently smiling people myself--and I'm not
sure I trust them.
*any deck that includes figures that could easily be highlighting consumer
items in bikinis on the same stage with Bob Barker should be a tip-off.
>Also can't standing Rachel Pollack's Shining Woman Tarot.
*thanks for the warning. Perhaps you shoulda posted a review of it before...
>I'm not against humor, per se, but these decks lack humor. Wonderland and
PoMo appear to be exceptions to the rule. Certainly, there's a snakey
sense of humor in Thoth, for that matter.
*I like humor but the timing and content has to work. PoMo comes across as
a waste of card stock.Seems like you could use it a few times and then the
novelty wears off. Mary Greer and I had huge fights about its creator
(Brian Williams I think?) who also designed the really mediocre
"Renaissance" tarot. Cynthia Giles also is *quite* fond of this person's
work. Why do I have the feeling that there's some sort of Tarot clique and
these folks go to cocktail parties with each other then later hype each
other's work? Those two decks are simply a waste.
*another type of deck that has no sense of humor is typified by the Gareth
Knight deck--first of all the art concept is utterly bizarre. Can someone
please explain how this deck is supposed to appeal to the user? I've tried
to get Servants of the Light members on here to speak for themselves or
their organization, but no luck. Also, Knight doesn't seem to have much of
a sense of humor, the SOL has a reputation as a goody two shoes
organization, and some ideas floating around that camp promote a sort of
tarot eirenism that apparently ignores the fact that Waite and Crowley
alone were off on totally different directions.
George Leake
> > >The notion that it does is degraded post-modernism.
> > >*if post-modernism is the term for it at all
> > are subjective is degraged into the notion that all truths are created
> > equal.
> > *what does that statement of yours have to do with the concept of
> > "post-modernism"?
> As the term is applied to tarot, just about everything.
*well, in many cases, that is definitely true. I happen to be a stickler
for specificity. This might be true with Margeret or Wolf Distributing or
Mary Greer or Pollack or Giles or Starhawk or Bill Heidrick or your
definition of postmodernism vis a vis tarot, but it certainly is not "as
the term is applied to tarot" absolutely since there's at least one of us
who disagrees. Let's examine the term postmodernism. Here from the UT
online encyclopedia:
postmodernism
In a culture and during a time when rapid change is the norm
and old values, standards, and categories seem to have little
relevance, the notion that there are modes of thought and
expression that transcend the modern and mark a new age of
postmodernism has proved to be useful to critics and creators
of the arts, as well as to contemporary scholars in the social
sciences and philosophy.
MODERNISM, in current usage, is a movement that began in the
early 20th century and attempted to reject or profoundly modify
the received wisdom about the proper shapes, subjects, and
perceptions of the arts. The products of modernism were
eventually subjected to the same kinds of formalist criticism
that had been applied to earlier "isms" in the arts. In response, some
thinkers--particularly the French philosophers
Jacques DERRIDA and Jean Francois Lyotard--began to question
the justifications for authoritative statements on meaning or
significance in the arts (see DECONSTRUCTION). Lyotard claimed
that the work of the postmodern creator is not governed by
preestablished rules and cannot be judged according to given
categories. In effect, both writers questioned the basis for
authority and offered, instead, a world of many competing and
equal ideas and "isms." The term postmodernism began to be
widely used in the late 1960s, at first to describe new styles
of architecture, where its influence could easily be seen.
Postmodern architects rejected the tenets of the INTERNATIONAL
STYLE and found their inspiration in an eclectic mix of
previous architectural movements.
Similar changes were taking place in other arts and in other
academic fields. A wide-ranging eclecticism, a tendency toward
parody and self-reference, and a relativism that refuses to
distinguish good from mediocre or new from outmoded marks the
work of postmodernist writers (Thomas PYNCHON, for example),
artists (Nancy GRAVES), musicians (John CAGE), filmmakers
(Quentin Tarantino), theater directors (Robert WILSON), and the
many others who today are labeled postmodernist.
Bibliography: Fineberg, J., Art since 1940 (1994); Kay, N.,
Postmodernism and Performance (1994); Lyotard, J. F., The
Postmodern Explained (1986; Eng. trans., 1992); McGowan, J.,
Postmodernism and Its Critics (1991); Natali, J., and Hutcheon,
L., A Postmodern Reader (1993); Rosenau, P. M., Postmodernism
and the Social Sciences (1992); Trachtenberg, S., ed., The
Postmodernist Moment (1985); Womark, J., Aliens and Others:
Science Fiction, Feminism, and Postmodernism (1994).
George Leake
"J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
>Better is this from 'The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics'---
>"Part description, part normative projection, and part self-promoting
distortion, concepts of modernism and post-modernism have become
fundamental for isolating a distinctive experimental tradition in
postromantic art and then positing imperatives for change within it. As
David Antin puts it, 'From the modernism you choose you get the
postmodernism you deserve.'"
*sure that's the cynical view of literary and generally academic criticism
using what are generally accepted as a postmodernistic literary tradition.
That said, there is hardly an accepted view about what exactly is
"postmodernist literature". Some theories describe an aesthetic, some
describe a time frame, some try to descibe a movement which many of us
don't believe actually exists. Unlike in other arts. In architecture, the
postmodernistic aesthetic is much easier to pin down. In art, you have a
funny thing happening in contrast to literature, especially if you take
the pov that postmodernism is a reaction to modernism. However, there is
hardly a comparison aesthetically speaking between modernist literature
and the art of the early 20th century. Much of that art, at least in
Western Culture and in painting, stems from in one sense or another, from
Cezanne. There is no single comparable figure amongst the the modernists.
Some posit the assertion that the postmodernists are reacting against
Joyce, but others would say Finnegans Wake and the novels of Samuel
Beckett are the first examples of the postmodernistic genre. In any case,
let's not make the mistake this guy and those he's critiquing are caught
in (almost as in a feedback loop): let's not get into deconstruction and
literary criticism. Let's talk about the art itself. Only there can we
discuss any similarities or substantial differences in and from tarot deck
renderings.
>And, perhaps the most relevant part of this article to our discussion---
>"We are left with four basic normative positions on the relation between
modernism and postmodernism. If one stresses formal committments, one can
say either that postmodernism carries out certain experimental strategies
that modernism withdrew from,
*one basic problem here is we are not sure which forms this guy is talking
about. I would assume he's talking about literary modernism, in which case
this critique falls down--Ulysses is generally regarded as the pinnacle of
high modernist literature and one certainly cannot argue that Ulysses
withdraws from experimental strategies. And this is without even getting
into the issue of art and architecture.
or one can say that postmodernism exposes the fundamental poverty of an
art that, in Lukacs' terms, replaces 'the concrete universal by an
abstract particularity' and pursues the doomed sublimity of hoping that
art can realize values no longer accessible to religion and philosophy.
*here I find that any any connections between this and tarot are void.
Tarot, however inane, is still at its core a form of philosophy and
religion.
The situation is even more complex politically: if modernism offers a
significant critique of bourgeois values, then one must consider it a
living source of oppositional energies that can be exercised against an
increasingly commodified social and artistic culture.
*again, more things that don't apply at all to tarot. I know no early 20th
century decks that fit into this "modernistic" mode.
However, one can argue just as well that modernist opposition is an
elitist quest for aesthetic autonomy which must be rejected in favor of an
art willing to accept the responsibility to the people basic to any future
revolution.
*an insipid argument that obviously some people make. Mostly, of course,
external to the art itself. And again, with little to connect it to tarot.
Perhaps the ultimate test of postmodernism is whether one thinks these
confusions are to be resisted or embraced."
*who would consciously embrace confusion?
>Replace 'aesthetic' with 'symbolic' up there and you get a pretty good
description of the argument as it relates to pomo tarot.
*not at all. I see that the connections being asserted are so frivolous
that I can't bring myself to even call them tenuous.
>One might then describe the occult tarot as the 'bourgeois value' or the
'doomed sublimity' or the 'elitist quest' against which the 'people'
deserve a pomo 'revolution'.
*anyone who thinks that then is totally off their rocker. If that was the
case, I'd certainly be arguing with them. That's the thing though--occult
tarot is FAR from "bourgeois". I'm not even sure which decks you're
labelling as pomo, but lets say for argument's sake Connolly and Enchanted
are two of them, they are certainly more bourgeois than revolutionary.
Obviously the designers were only in it for the money.
>One of the reasons I think we don't discuss these problems in detail is
that few of us have the inclination to join in a label-fest of art theory
jargon
*good point. Though I don't think its art so much as lit crit and
deconstruction yr talking about here.
>(well illustrated by the article quote I provided here), given that our
own tarot jargon is confusing enough. When I use terms like
'carto-feminist' I am generally making fun of people who are fond of such
neologisms.
*a good point. That's one of the frustrating things with all this. Except
I think tarot's a lot easier to discuss and find consensus with than
postmodernism, whatever the hell that is...
>However, the fact that I have to point that out in order to keep the cf's
from getting their cardwax burned is, on the one hand, evidence that there
is some truth in the neologism, and, on the other, a rather dismal comment
on the lack of humor so prevalent in this 'study'. In that respect, though
my inclination is, as described in the article, to resist the 'confusion',
I am forced, rather out of necessity, to embrace it all the same. It makes
me feel quite postmodern.
*jess...you are capable of humor...pretty funny...
>Finally, I did not create the notion of postmodern tarot.
*excellent. Who did?! Get them in here right now and explain what the fuck
they meant!
>Perhaps I will have the distinction of making everyone so sick of the
term that they will give it up, along with its more nonsensical
prejudices.
*I think that they should define what they mean before throwing it out.
Kinda like a lot of terms with various meanings, including traditional,
christian, feminist, marxist, and magic.
Gordon Dahlquist
On Wed, 7 Aug 1996, J. Karlin wrote:
> Better is this from 'The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and
> Poetics'---
<snip>
> accessible to religion and philosophy. The situation is even
> more complex politically: if modernism offers a significant
> critique of bourgeois values, then one must consider it a living
> source of oppositional energies that can be exercised against
> an increasingly commodified social and artistic culture. However,
> one can argue just as well that modernist opposition is an
> elitist quest for aesthetic autonomy which must be rejected
> in favor of an art willing to accept the responsibility to
> the people basic to any future revolution. Perhaps the
> ultimate test of postmodernism is whether one thinks these
> confusions are to be resisted or embraced."
And yet the problem with so much postmodern art/thought/tarot is that in
rejecting the aesthetic elitism found in modernism - as much as modernism
itself plays with concepts of high and low art, postmodernism tends more
to explode them - it's very easy to land instead into the "all views are
equal" mindset, where any reference has some currency simply because it's
been selected and inserted into a given context, and whatever resonances
(say doric columns on an art-and-crafts style dwelling) a given
appropriation conveys are equally made up of the history behind the
reference - ie. the ideals of ancient greece - and those of the context
it's been placed within - ie. the the ideals of an elitist yet egalitarian
design movement: a basic juxtaposition sparks "significance" in direct
relation to both the viewer/reader's feelings and knowledge of the
reference and the artists care about making the juxtapostions in the first
place - ie it's worth a lot or nothing, but the worth isn't "inherent" so
much as within the exchange. This may be implicit in any art or thought,
but in postmodernism it becomes the foundation. Postmodernism can - and
frequently does - act as a catch-all justification for very lazy, glib art
and thinking. It doesn't have to, but it places a great deal of
repsonsibility - even more responsibility - in the hands of the artist,
simply by virtue of removing that much more structure around the entire
enterprise. Characterizing postmodernism as "giving control to the people"
is accurate, I think - and what it creates is as "valid" or as
"worthwhile" as anything from a situation where "anything's possible" ...
most of it's lazy, easy, superficial, aiming to please - and most people
could care less. It doesn't have to be - and perhaps as a mode of thought
it's a more accurate reflection of the world we live in - but human beings
are what they are.
> Replace 'aesthetic' with 'symbolic' up there and you get a
> pretty good description of the argument as it relates to
> pomo tarot. One might then describe the occult tarot as the
> 'bourgeois value' or the 'doomed sublimity' or the 'elitist
> quest' against which the 'people' deserve a pomo 'revolution'.
This strikes me as quite accurate, and again, I don't have a problem per
se with the notion of a "pomo revolution" over the the "occult bourgeois"
(which is a rather charming phrase), but freedom isn't worth a whole
lot without responsibility.
Diane Purkiss
In article <4u76pp$7...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, MLYoung <mly...@aol.com>
writes
> No one seriously doubts the existence of tarot cards. The cards
> exist; they are referred to in contemporary manuscripts.
>
>they
> are a book of secret knowledge passed down from ancient Egypt.
> The possibility is there (as is the possibility of intelligent
>extraterrestrial
> life), but there's nothing solid.
divinatory use prior to the occultists.
And the cards themselves can be used as evidence (and have been) for
pretty nearly everything.
>
><snip>
>>As to the rest of this, is there any
>>linkage of Twelfth Night games to tarot? Why is the study of them
>>more useful than the study of, say, neoplatonism? Could you
>>expand here?
>The point I was trying to make was that in order to understand one
>Renaissance game, it is useful to try to understand the others,
>especially those we know a bit more about. The general linkage is that
>Twelfth Night games wre satiric carnivals in which the high put on the
>clothes of the low, not a million miles from the idea of tarot as a form
>of carnival, as proposed by Moakley.
>
> does the study of anything, such as neoplatonism, that might
> shed light on the origins of tarot symbolism.
them. Neoplatonism is not especially or obviously more relevant to
tarot of the fifteenth century than (say) amatory games at the French
courts of love.
> While tarot cards
> may have begun as a game, I personally find it hard to believe that
> the images of the tarot trumps emerged full-fledged in the decks
> without antecedents.
occult significance? Or are they (as I'm arguing) merely the nuts nd
bolts of late medieval iconography?
> The weight of the symbolism seems to go
> far beyond the requirements of the game. Indeed, our modern playing
We live in a world of simpler symbols than fifteenth-century Italy.
What you've said is thoughtful, but not ultimately altogether
persuasive. The same images crop up in medieval miracle plays, in
estate satires, in iconography reprsentative fo persons and states like
the Sienese Good and Bad Government. None of these things have the
significance you assign to tarot; yet similar complex images are
present.
>
>The famous friar's sermon objects to the game of trumps on gournds of
>social decorum. He complains (more-or-less,a nd I'm relying on a
>transaltion here) that it's undiginfied for God and the emperor and the
>Pope to be involved in a card game. What might owrry a medival mind is
>that such a game overtly distrupts social hierarchy; the meperor might
>be 'lost' to a _misero_, a beggar. Which is rather like carnival, or
>twelfth night.
>
>It can always be safely played, but it won't take the trump.
Sorry. Too long since I played tarocchi (it was 1985, in fact). Ok,
then: The Devil, or even The Hanged Man (see below), or Death. If
anything this strengthens the argument that thse cards represented
carnival, because all those conquerers of emperoros were acknowledged
and even accepted (in theory) by emperoros themselves, adn carnival was
even meant to represent them, whereas The Fool, the beggar, might be a
bit subversive.
>A book on healing crystals is now safely lodged next to
>a copy of the Skeptical Inquirer--much to the dismay of both, no doubt.
>Anyone want to discuss Fanny Kemble?)
Love to. Can we discuss Sarah Siddons as well? And Hazlitt (he's next
to Kaplan on my shelf).
>
>There's also the problem of the tarot trumps not really following a
>strict social hierarchy--at least one that's obvious. While the Pope
>is above the Emporer, what's that Hanged Man, or traitor, doing
>above the virtues?
virtues, and a traitor can also overthrow all hierarchy and degree. Re-
read Macbeth?
>I haven't seen a fully satisfying explanation of the
>organizing principal behind this, though the order seems to have
>been established fairly early. The Mantegna seems to have simply
>rectified the troublesome cards out of existence, but that's not
>the case with other decks.
> trumps were somewhat different? He was still listing 22 trumps
> at a time roughly contemporaneous with the first known tarot
> decks. You asked when were there 22? I gave you an answer. That
> there were variations in different decks doesn't change the fact that
> a contemporary document lists 22. From this, we can infer
> that at least one tarot deck did indeed have 22 trumps that correspond
> roughly to those in later decks.
>
numbers. We affirm 22 because that's what's in later decks, not becuase
it was the fifteenth-century rule. We don't really know whether there
were a standard number of cards.
> As for being "conclusive," what do you mean? Unless you have
> reasons to believe that the document is a later forgery (always a
> possibility),
I'm always a little distrustful of MSS that are muchcited froma signel
source in occult histories. Forgery is so very common that one has to
be a little wary. However, that was not my point.
>I think it is conclusive evidence that at least one
>person
> at the time thought the deck has 22 particular trumps. I will hop a
> step further and say that we can reasonably infer that at least one
> deck probably did.
Agreed, but that doesn't make it the norm. About whihc we still have
little information.
> But by whose standards? You're assuming that there's no
> inherent meaning in a coincidence. That's not how an
> occultist views the world.
fiction, does not commend itself to me as a useful rule of historical
evidence. More importantly, it is NOT the way a fifteenth century
artist or wirter would have seen the world.
>>Now, Diane, how do you know what Jess has or has not read?
>I don't. I only know what he says and what he cites. I've been here
>for six months now, and he hasn't come up with much outside secondary
>sources; not even any detailed analyses of individual pre-1781 cards.
>It may be that he knows more than this; why should anyone believe this
>_either_ without evidence?
>
> pre-1781 decks in such a way that primary sources would be
> particularly pertinent?
There was the row I started a few weeks back. George did a good thread
on Mantegna, to which I contributed. Jess often does twenty or more
posts a week. If he's silent on these topics, I'm entitled to remark
upon it.
>I think
> you'll find that Jess pretty much went through the decks to see
> when and where the word appeared. Admittedly, he looked at
> pictures in Kaplan, but given what he was looking for I don't
> see that his not actually traveling around the world to look at
>decks
> was a serious omission.
Probably not :). But Moakley's theory, which is where we began with
this round of Mornington Crescent, was based on more than 'looking at
the decks'. It was also based on Petrarch, on (not very good) social
history, on familiy customs, on festivals. Those all have primary
sources beyond the decks themselves. And you're all citing this friar
like mad: he's not a deck either. So you do think other primary sources
are of value.
> He was looking at deck reproductions
> rather than taking someone's word for what they did and did not
> contain.
So I should hope.
> In exchange for what precisely?
> You're more likely to get a
> response if you proffer up some research yourself.
personally neglected. I'm merely engaged n the relatively meek academic
pastime of pointing out a neglected area. Since it is neglected, I
don't think we should rush to _sound_ conclusive about it.
> No one
> gets paid to post.
> extensive post?
concerned with his motives. However, if he has time (and he evidently
does) to reply at length to every Tom, Dick and Aladdin, then he has
time to do some research. It might be worth adding that some people can
be motivated by a disinterested wish to pass on their knowledge to
others. Others are motivated by a wish to arrive at the truth through
the public sphere.
> Look what's happened with the FAQ--
> a kneejerk reaction of outrage from a couple of people, and
> some weird assumption that Jess had shanghaied it.
would be most surprised if Jess somehow failed to anticipate this.
> Well, I state what I think below. I don't share his antagonism
> at the feminist agenda, per se (though I'm simplifying his
> views as I know them here), but I am impatient with those who
> simplify and sentimentalize the complex and ambiguous.
>
> That there is something inherently better about a matriarchy
> than a patriarchy
virtually no evidence
>is one of those gross simplifications
> as is the assumption that there was some sort of ur great
> Goddess.
to anyone interested.
> Wishful thinking--dangerous in that it distorts
> our past and prevents us from honestly evaluating the
> roots of sexual inequality.
>
in with this? Personally, I too dislike some of it, but not because
it's bad revision of the tarot, but because it's 'difference' feminism,
in which I do not believe, and generally grounded in bogus history to
boot. If anyone else wants to add their two cents, I'd be most
interested. There'll be no flames from me.
>> What we have now are decks created
>>for the purpose of selling. The emphasis is increasingly on
>>various types of visual gadgetry, not on the conveyance of
>>meaningful symbolism. Many of these decks are charming,
>>but have little depth.
>Can you give instances? Art Nouveau tarot? Wonderland? Personally, I
>like some of these decks, because I think not all tarot needs to be a
>desperately serious spiritual force. It can be a joke, a fiction, a
>pastime. As it probably was in 1500 or so.
>
> All three can be extremely telling.
dislike it when occultists want to turn them into spiritual evolution.
My tarot was violated in 1781.
> I don't spend a lot of time disliking decks; I simply don't buy them.
> But anyway, I'd say most theme decks fall into this category--such as
> the very pretty St. Petersburg deck. It's nice as something to
> look at, but I never read with it. It's not intriguing. There's
> nothing "rich and strange" in it. No challenge, in a sense.
>
Motherpeace too. What's the matter with them (only IMHO, natch) isn't
just bogus historical scholarship; it's an over-studied wish that things
should dovetail, taken together with the characteristic modern
assumption taht anythign upsetting or hard-edged must be removed. So we
get relatively anodyne Swords, Devil, Death, etc, and divinatory
meansings are revised also. The same thing has happened with
astrology's transformation from prediction and adjunct to medieince to
method of character-analysis.
However, though none of this suits my particular little book, I don't
feel very worried about it either. Some people apparently can't see the
world in Thoth, or even RiderWaite-Smith, and so they need Greenwood or
something. Lucky them?
> I'm not against humor, per se, but these decks lack humor.
>Wonderland
> and PoMo appear to be exceptions to the rule. Certainly, there's
> a snakey sense of humor in Thoth, for that matter.
Yes. The loss of play is just what I'm complaining about, though Waite
seems pretty humourless to me too.
>Tolerance involves rather more positive action than a reluctance to ban.
>Ridicule is also a way to silence something. Or somebody.
>
> Depends on the ridicule. It can also be a means to get someone
> to examine assumptions. A jolt. A snapping of fingers.
Sometimes. But you need to have some sense of who you are addressing.
Picking out the vulnerable, which sometiems seems to be what's
happening, is likely to intensify their need for gently smiling tarot
cards by making them feel weak and weedy and in need of a security
blanket.
>
> I might add that the most aggressive attempts I've seen to
> ridicule someone off alt.tarot have been directed against Jess.
Agreed. But Jess also picks on people who obviously can't fight back;
people against whom he's bound to win. Which is out of order, IMHO.
> I've also found that the most effective defense against ridicule is
> to simply answer the questions put to me rather than take them
> as a personal affront.
Quite. You know I don't mind any of this myself; I like to fight. But
you and I know full well that others do, and that people have been
driven away.
--
Diane Purkiss
George Leake
>>*sure that's the cynical view of literary and generally academic criticism
>You mean the funny view? Oh that's right, we can't laugh at it if it's
'serious' academic critcism.
*'serious' academic criticism is too broad a category to generalize about.
And certainly some cynical viewpoints towards certain things certainly
should be laughed at.
>>using what are generally accepted as a postmodernistic literary
tradition. That said, there is hardly an accepted view about what exactly
is "postmodernist literature".
>I think that was the point of the article.
*I don't really think it was. It seemed more directed to certain schools
of criticism. In fact it wasn't a very well directed attack,
unfortunately.
>>let's not get into deconstruction and literary criticism.
>Why not? That critique has inspired much of pomo tarot.
*what do you mean by "pomo" tarot?
*whatever it is, I'm sure very few people involved out there have the
wherewithal to begin to even start to grasp deconstructionism
>>Let's talk about the art itself.
>If you can find enough 'art' to talk about.
*better yet, let's make sure we all agree on what postmodernist art is.
>>Only there can we discuss any similarities or substantial differences in
and from tarot deck renderings.
>To do this while ignoring the sentiments or ideologies of the designers
is just stupid. Then something like 'Triumph of the Will' becomes a great
piece of documentary work and nothing more.
*sorry. In many cases the sorts of things certain deck designers have
stolen from postmodernism is on the threshold, on the surface. Wanless and
Arriens have demonstrated little knowledge about the occult, much less
deconstructionism. The only thing vaguely "postmodernist" about the
Voyager Tarot, to take an isolated example, is the art, which vaguely
recalls the pastiche aesthetic of postmodernist artists such as
Rauschenberg. And that the artist could have stolen from the cover of
friggin Talking Heads album. Not that I desire to puff up Triumph of the
Will or anything, but certainly a lot more thought went into that than in
a lot of post Age of Aquarius tarot decks.
>>>"We are left with four basic normative positions on the relation
between modernism and postmodernism. If one stresses formal committments,
one can say either that postmodernism carries out certain experimental
strategies that modernism withdrew from,
>>*one basic problem here is we are not sure which forms this guy is
talking about. I would assume he's talking about literary modernism, in
which case this critique falls down
>No, it's a purely general discussion, although focused on the literary
end of things. Why is that a problem?
*because his argument doesn't work on anything but criticism itself. Its a
common failing. And one Camille Paglia used years ago.
>Most of the impetus for postmodernism and PM critical theory is literary
(which is no surprise given that the theories themselves are that).
*in theory yes, but no one at the MLA (Modern Language Association) ever
critiques primary sources anymore. No one discusses literature there, they
all discuss criticism and critiques of criticism. The term PM critical
theory, btw, means nothing. This guy is most likely talking about
deconstructionism
>>--Ulysses is generally regarded as the pinnacle of high modernist
literature and one certainly cannot argue that Ulysses withdraws from
experimental strategies.
>Nor was the article writer suggesting anything like that. He was pointing
out that PM may be interpreted as a reaction to a perception that
developed about modernism that it had abandoned its principles.
*if that's the case, then I'd agree completely with him criticizing such
ideas, which don't make sense at all. Literary modernism is a style, an
aesthetic, as is romanticism, impressionism, cubism, classicism. Pound and
Eliot had some very contrasting principles.
>>And this is without even getting into the issue of art and architecture.
>No, it's just theory, no applications are required.
*perhaps so. I still don't see how most of the Tarot designers you're
speaking about could possibly ever fathom deconstructionism. Watered down
versions, maybe. Most likely, imho, if there's any postmodernist influence
its vaguely through art. Without of course grokking the cultural and
intellectual context behind them.
*one thing ignored in all this, even in the painting/art world there are
movements that say extend from Cezanne, there are always people who stand
on their own, say Malevich.
>>However, one can argue just as well that modernist opposition is an
elitist quest for aesthetic autonomy which must be rejected in favor of an
art willing to accept the responsibility to the people basic to any future
revolution.
>>>*an insipid argument that obviously some people make.
>Marxists are fond of it.
*only the stupid ones
>>Mostly, of course, external to the art itself.
>All theory is external, so is the experience of the art, so what?
*now THERE'S a big subject for debate--the experience of the art is ALWAYS
EXTERNAL? Have you ever created art?
>>And again, with little to connect it to tarot.
>This is where your ignorance about the subject of tarot is handicapping
you. You need to read more tarot books and see how pervasive postmodern
critical theory is in tarot and in the newage in general.
*here's where your ignorance about postmodernist art and literature and
architecture and deconstructionist theory is failing you. I have seen
these books, I have seen the arguments, and they can use that term, but
its meaningless in the way they use it, and has no connection whatsoever
to the academic world. And there's no such thing as "postmodern critical
theory".
>>Perhaps the ultimate test of postmodernism is whether one thinks these
confusions are to be resisted or embraced."
>>*who would consciously embrace confusion?
>Postmodernists.
*wait--who are they?
>I can see you've not experienced postmodernism.
*experienced it? What do you mean by "experienced" it?
Have you read much about deconstruction?
*make up your mind. Are you talking about deconstructionism or
postmodernism. If you can't discern the differences between them, then you
need to hit the books.
Did you get it as well as you did Levi?
*who are you to judge about understanding Levi?
>>>Replace 'aesthetic' with 'symbolic' up there and you get a pretty good
description of the argument as it relates to pomo tarot.
>>>*not at all. I see that the connections being asserted are so frivolous
>Well, they may be concise, but they are certainly more helpful than your
little encyclopedia quotation, which, by the way, is not the sort of hard
evidence that one offers in anything other than a fairly frivolous
argument.
*you are the one who keeps saying its all theory. I've pointed out
specific works of art and artists who are modernist and postmodernist. I
think you have no grasp whatsoever of the aesthetics involved.
>>>One might then describe the occult tarot as the 'bourgeois value' or
the 'doomed sublimity' or the 'elitist quest' against which the 'people'
deserve a pomo 'revolution'.
>>*anyone who thinks that then is totally off their rocker.
>A lot of tarot book writers are.
*d'accord.
>>If that was the case, I'd certainly be arguing with them.
>It's the case and you aren't.
*you haven't made a good case and that's what I'm arguing with you about.
I guess its time to make a bibliography for you.
>>That's the thing though--occult tarot is FAR from "bourgeois".
>I disagree. Occultism, while certainly elitist, is generally so in the
same way that something like golf is (so far, we've not developed a
handicapping system for the occult). However, Waite's deck is one of the
most bourgeois things I've ever seen. Even Thoth is, on the surface, not
much more revolutionary than Alice Cooper. Crowley disliked practical
(that is, 'real') revolutionaries, just as would any good British
gentleman, but at the same time his theories demanded that revolution be
the tool of choice to initiate the New Aeon.
*while I could quibble over the relevance of judging how revolutionary
Alice Cooper is in 1996 or Crowley for that matter, I basically agree with
your assesments. My problem with it is that Waite and Crowley do *not*
comprise the entire occult movement much less represent them.
>>I'm not even sure which decks you're labelling as pomo,
>Read the FAQ.
*from the FAQ: There are many decks which fall into this category---
Morgan-Greer and Aquarian being 'good' examples of the lot, along with
(obviously) the PoMo Tarot deck itself.
*having re-read it, I still fail to see how you call these
postmodern--including the POMO deck itself.
>>but lets say for argument's sake Connolly and Enchanted are two of them,
they are certainly more bourgeois than revolutionary.
>Yes, that's the point. That's really the point about all 'revolutionary'
ideology, not argued at the point of a gun (or at least the point of a
devastating critique).
*which brings us back to Crowley. Devastating critique was indeed his m.o.
>I know the term was used in a NYT article on James Wanless about 5 years
ago or so, but this was after the PoMo deck came out, I believe, so I'm
not sure who coined the term.
*that explains it. I've seen Wanless use that term in connection with
Voyager. And the only way in which its valid is in reference to the
pastiche-like quality of Voyager's art. The Pomo Tarot deck itself is as
interesting as reruns of Three's Company. No wait. Little House on the
Prairie.
>However, postmodern critiques of tarot have been around for at least
10-15 years.
*really? I'd love to see an example.
>>Get them in here right now and explain what the fuck they meant!
>You can read their books for that, something I've been suggesting you do.
And I doubt 'they' will be joining us here.
*if that worked, I'd have the programmers for NBC's Olympics coverage in
here explaining why archery and fencing was blacked out this year. And why
they spent 30 minutes documenting the Battle of Atlanta one night.
George Leake
Diane Purkiss <pur...@purkiss.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Ok. All the same, there's no evidence beyond the cards themselves for
divinatory use prior to the occultists.
>And the cards themselves can be used as evidence (and have been) for
pretty nearly everything.
*sure, anyone can make up anything they want, but proving and arguing
convincingly is another matter
>They have antecendents. the question is, are those antecedents of occult
significance? Or are they (as I'm arguing) merely the nuts and bolts of
late medieval iconography?
*again. We need to start with Petrarch. And examine early tarot and
contemporary iconography. And other literature.
>I'm always a little distrustful of MSS that are muchcited froma signel
source in occult histories. Forgery is so very common that one has to be
a little wary.
*I am in rare books and archives institution. Perhaps there's a particular
piece in question. I can find people who can certify such things.
George Leake
Gordon Dahlquist <gd...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>And yet the problem with so much postmodern art/thought/tarot
"thought" is a bit generous considering the decks JK has mentioned...
>is that in rejecting the aesthetic elitism found in modernism
*what "postmodern" art concerns itself with such rejection or seems even
conscious of it?
- as much as modernism itself plays with concepts of high and low art,
postmodernism tends more to explode them -
*which postmodernism are you talking about? Clearly there's no resemblance
in aesthetic or principles between what is most often dubbed postmodernist
literature and postmodernist architecture.
>it's very easy to land instead into the "all views are equal" mindset,
*I have a hard time trying to see that in postmodernist architecture, the
pastiches of Rauschenberg, or in the novels of Thomas Pynchon.
>where any reference has some currency simply because it's been selected
and inserted into a given context, and whatever resonances (say doric
columns on an art-and-crafts style dwelling) a given appropriation conveys
are equally made up of the history behind the reference - ie. the ideals
of ancient greece - and those of the context it's been placed within - ie.
the the ideals of an elitist yet egalitarian design movement: a basic
juxtaposition sparks "significance" in direct relation to both the
viewer/reader's feelings and knowledge of the reference and the artists
care about making the juxtapostions in the first place - ie it's worth a
lot or nothing, but the worth isn't "inherent" so much as within the
exchange.
*now you're actually describing a kind of aesthetic, really a kind of
anti-aesthetic somewhat akin to dada. The problem with this though is
these are the interpretations and mo of the few and not the greater. Some
have suggested this much consciousness in the creation of art is the
height of elitism. I think these are the same who stress the importance
being in the process rather than something more result oriented. Art as
commodity is an example of something more result oriented.
>This may be implicit in any art or thought, but in postmodernism it
becomes the foundation.
*all in the theory yes.
>Postmodernism can - and frequently does - act as a catch-all
justification for very lazy, glib art and thinking.
*not to mention glib categorization of disparate movements. What you've
described above hardly fits the aesthetic of novels often dubbed
postmodernist. It's my assertion that postmodernist means different things
in different contexts, and perhaps the only tangible connection you can
make to say this theory about art and the novels of John Barth is they
both came after World War II.
>It doesn't have to, but it places a great deal of repsonsibility - even
more responsibility - in the hands of the artist, simply by virtue of
removing that much more structure around the entire enterprise.
*then by extension then modernist tarot as represented by Crowley then
also represents structure--but Thelemic thought is wholly free in an of
itself--finding the True Will is escaping all bonds of structure, thus
giving control to the people.
Characterizing postmodernism as "giving control to the people" is accurate,
*hardly. In this kind of Epcot Egalitarianism, though, I suppose it'll do.
Just as Clinton's proposed healthcare system would've "helped the people".
I think - and what it creates is as "valid" or as "worthwhile" as anything
from a situation where "anything's possible" ... most of it's lazy, easy,
superficial, aiming to please - and most people could care less.
*sure. I think we all agree that spoon-feeding defeats the purpose.
*however, what I think you and JK have missed *completely* here, besides
what I've been saying over and over, is that modernism and postmodernism
are in essence aesthetics, just like impressionism and classicism and
baroque. The question of substance and quality is another one altogether.
And while we're talking about aesthetics, I don't think Gordon's gotten it
quite right. This seems to be a blend of art theory, a dash of
postmodernist architecture, and a lot of critical theory and pop leftist
theory.
>>Replace 'aesthetic' with 'symbolic' up there and you get a pretty good
description of the argument as it relates to pomo tarot. One might then
describe the occult tarot as the 'bourgeois value' or the 'doomed
sublimity' or the 'elitist quest' against which the 'people' deserve a
pomo 'revolution'.
>This strikes me as quite accurate,
*in what way? Crowley's approach is completely symbolic as is nearly
everyone else's. JK's real problem is one of quality. You're both off.
and again, I don't have a problem per se with the notion of a "pomo
revolution" over the the "occult bourgeois" (which is a rather charming
phrase), but freedom isn't worth a whole lot without responsibility.
*its just that the notion is completely backwards. ee cummings had to
create his own structure.
George Leake
"J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
>You mean to take 'seriously'?
*you brought it up yourself.
>>And certainly some cynical viewpoints towards certain things certainly
should be laughed at.
>Better that, in this case, they should be thought about first.
*sure. Of course.
>Having been down this road before with you, and once is too much, I'm not
going to argue with you about what you don't understand. I consider you,
in fact, to be functionally illiterate. As far as I'm concerned your
opinions about ANYTHING, but particularly anything requiring reading, are
of no value whatsoever.
*what an intellectual! I understand, and perhaps I can start going on and
on about how you cannot argue, you can only insult when you've lost the
argument. Clearly, you have NO idea what the hell you're talking about
with postmodernism.
>Also, if you really want to understand postmodernism, as it is practiced
in tarot, read what you write on alt.tarot. It's like a primer for being a
PM tarot book writer.
*Coming from someone who cannot even articulate what he means by "pomo
tarot"? Much less has no understanding whatsoever of postmodernism. I
understand. There, there, its ok Jess. Does the little boo-boo hurt?
Gordon Dahlquist
Long post - and apologies in advance for all the quoting ...
On 8 Aug 1996, George Leake wrote:
> "J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
> >Better is this from 'The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics'---
> >"Part description, part normative projection, and part self-promoting
> distortion, concepts of modernism and post-modernism have become
> fundamental for isolating a distinctive experimental tradition in
> postromantic art and then positing imperatives for change within it. As
> David Antin puts it, 'From the modernism you choose you get the
> postmodernism you deserve.'"
> *sure that's the cynical view of literary and generally academic criticism
> using what are generally accepted as a postmodernistic literary tradition.
Why is this cynical - to me it seems self-evident. And on what basis to
you lump this sentiment with an "academic criticism" point of view,
implying that it is somehow incomplete or innaccurate?
> That said, there is hardly an accepted view about what exactly is
> "postmodernist literature". Some theories describe an aesthetic, some
> describe a time frame, some try to descibe a movement which many of us
> don't believe actually exists. Unlike in other arts. In architecture, the
> postmodernistic aesthetic is much easier to pin down. In art, you have a
> funny thing happening in contrast to literature, especially if you take
> the pov that postmodernism is a reaction to modernism. However, there is
> hardly a comparison aesthetically speaking between modernist literature
> and the art of the early 20th century. Much of that art, at least in
> Western Culture and in painting, stems from in one sense or another, from
> Cezanne. There is no single comparable figure amongst the the modernists.
> Some posit the assertion that the postmodernists are reacting against
> Joyce, but others would say Finnegans Wake and the novels of Samuel
> Beckett are the first examples of the postmodernistic genre. In any case,
> let's not make the mistake this guy and those he's critiquing are caught
> in (almost as in a feedback loop): let's not get into deconstruction and
> literary criticism. Let's talk about the art itself. Only there can we
> discuss any similarities or substantial differences in and from tarot deck
> renderings.
George, I really think what you're saying here is whacked. There are
clear parallels between post-modernism in literature and other art forms,
nor do I think there's anything like the doubt or confusion you posit
about what might consitute a postmodern literature. I would be very very
surprised for anyone to lump Joyce in - including FW - with postmodernism
(anyone with a brain, that is), the agenda is >clearly< a modernist one,
in reference to a kind of "collective unconscious" that Joyce is invoking
with the wealth of cultural/linguistic correspondences within the text.
As for Beckett, certainly his work continued into the more obviously
postmodern period, but again,the driving aesthetic is in terms of
modernism (even if he's rejecting many modernist claims within the works
themselves, the form of the works retains a kind of formal unity that is
certainly connected to modernism). To divide painting from literature
because there's "no cezanne" seems absurd - and I'd contest the singular
primacy of cezanne in any case - but in >any< case, the notion that a
single source in any way determines the "validity" of modernism is
nonsense. The briefest look at all the arts in the early 20th century
will show an intense cross-referencing from different forms - the
practical differences between media are such that an 800 page book is
going to convey something different than a painting, but in terms of a
larger cultural view, the parallels between painting and literature seem
very clear - what possibly makes you think there's "hardly a comparison"?
> >And, perhaps the most relevant part of this article to our discussion---
>
> >"We are left with four basic normative positions on the relation between
> modernism and postmodernism. If one stresses formal committments, one can
> say either that postmodernism carries out certain experimental strategies
> that modernism withdrew from,
> *one basic problem here is we are not sure which forms this guy is talking
> about. I would assume he's talking about literary modernism, in which case
> this critique falls down--Ulysses is generally regarded as the pinnacle of
> high modernist literature and one certainly cannot argue that Ulysses
> withdraws from experimental strategies. And this is without even getting
> into the issue of art and architecture.
Well, I think he's not specifying forms because it's more a less a
cultural given that this kind of tension between modernism and
postmodernism exists across the cultural board. And please, don't be so
literal - experiment can mean different things. Certainly Joyce is
intensely experimental in his writing, yet it's clear that one could take
(given a souring world view) some of his assumptions a different way.
Joyce is writing about finding a kind of inherent, universal significance
in the complexity of "normal" existence - a significance he generates
through the accretion of layers and layers of references and resonances
... it's a commonplace that postmodernism explores a similar crazyquilt of
references without the inherent structure of universal significance
beneath it, resulting in a different series of "experimental" strategies
perhaps contained in the assumptions of modernism but outside what it
might delineate as "acceptable ground".
> or one can say that postmodernism exposes the fundamental poverty of an
> art that, in Lukacs' terms, replaces 'the concrete universal by an
> abstract particularity' and pursues the doomed sublimity of hoping that
> art can realize values no longer accessible to religion and philosophy.
> *here I find that any any connections between this and tarot are void.
> Tarot, however inane, is still at its core a form of philosophy and
> religion.
Here again, I think you're whacked. If you look at the world of
modernism, you can see clearly that the "religion and philosophy"
that's being refered to is a deeply rooted and reified network of
institutional christianity and the "great power's" politics of power and
privilege - the "establishment" that careened up to and through the 1st
world war and beyond. If the folks at the golden dawn weren't positioning
their own beliefs/startegies as a kind of "art" in opposition to this
hierarchy of religion and politics, I don't know what else they were
doing. It seems again you're being very literal - I think this question
speaks exactly to many of the on-going issues related to tarot kicked
around here ...
> The situation is even more complex politically: if modernism offers a
> significant critique of bourgeois values, then one must consider it a
> living source of oppositional energies that can be exercised against an
> increasingly commodified social and artistic culture.
> *again, more things that don't apply at all to tarot. I know no early 20th
> century decks that fit into this "modernistic" mode.
Only waite and thoth - does this really make no sense to you? This
applies exactly to tarot - what else is the golden dawn effort effort for
a synthesized system of occult symbology vs "legitimate" religious
experience if not comparable to something like joyce's efforts to surpass
the "classic" narrative strategies of the balzacian novel?
> However, one can argue just as well that modernist opposition is an
> elitist quest for aesthetic autonomy which must be rejected in favor of an
> art willing to accept the responsibility to the people basic to any future
> revolution.
> *an insipid argument that obviously some people make. Mostly, of course,
> external to the art itself. And again, with little to connect it to tarot.
Well, you might find it insipid, but it's the exact argument people are
making when they appropriate waite/smith deck designs for their own
purposes, and it's the exact argument people are making when they
suggest that card meanings are connected to what "feels right" or "makes
sense", or when people squirm under the horrible burden of that man
crowley and want to do it their own way.
> Perhaps the ultimate test of postmodernism is whether one thinks these
> confusions are to be resisted or embraced."
> *who would consciously embrace confusion?
You don't live in New york, do you George? Seriously, a lot of people see
that art should in some way hold a mirror to nature, and a lot of people
see the present day world as fundamentally chaotic, so yes, there is a lot
of postmodern art that takes as a primary subject notions of chaos,
incoherence and insignificance - and they do this most frequently by
exploiting an overwhelming number of superficial connections, which they
posit as a relentlessly defining element of contemporary life.
> >Replace 'aesthetic' with 'symbolic' up there and you get a pretty good
> description of the argument as it relates to pomo tarot.
> *not at all. I see that the connections being asserted are so frivolous
> that I can't bring myself to even call them tenuous.
Well, I think you are being narrowminded and wrong.
> >One might then describe the occult tarot as the 'bourgeois value' or the
> 'doomed sublimity' or the 'elitist quest' against which the 'people'
> deserve a pomo 'revolution'.
> *anyone who thinks that then is totally off their rocker. If that was the
> case, I'd certainly be arguing with them. That's the thing though--occult
> tarot is FAR from "bourgeois". I'm not even sure which decks you're
> labelling as pomo, but lets say for argument's sake Connolly and Enchanted
> are two of them, they are certainly more bourgeois than revolutionary.
> Obviously the designers were only in it for the money.
Well, it's also sort of a joke, George, but when the point of view moves
into postmodernism the entire playing field slides a little - from the pov
of postmodernism the presumption of significance that modernism holds to
can be seen as naive and "bourgeois" - as much as those modernist works
were intense reactions against a conventional morality and worldview. In
tarot terms, waite and crowley >are< the old guard, and quaint in their
insistence on learning, scholarship and tradition - and a lot of people
find the ground upon which their terms are defined to be elitist. The
point Jess is making seems crystal clear and occurate - the fact that the
pomo result may be as pedestrian and sentimental ("bourgeoise" traits) is
just more irony to the argument. It's >also< the case that most of the
pomo decks that Jess is talking about contain none of the irony or
self-referentiality normally associated with postmodernism ... my own
explanation for this is that most people designing these decks are
unsophisticated artists.
> >(well illustrated by the article quote I provided here), given that our
> own tarot jargon is confusing enough. When I use terms like
> 'carto-feminist' I am generally making fun of people who are fond of such
> neologisms.
> *a good point. That's one of the frustrating things with all this. Except
> I think tarot's a lot easier to discuss and find consensus with than
> postmodernism, whatever the hell that is...
Well, that may be, but I think the issues are intertwined, regrettably or
no - and what's the big fat mystery about postmodernism, anyway? It's
been around for a while ...
> >Finally, I did not create the notion of postmodern tarot.
> *excellent. Who did?! Get them in here right now and explain what the fuck
> they meant!
I know you're sort of joking here, but definitions happen across
boundaries - that's why you develop a critical vocabulary (and I'm not
just talking about word-usage) that can travel, because culture travels
all the time.
George Leake
Gordon Dahlquist <gd...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>1) it's very true that "postmodernism" is a term is used very freely,
very sloppily and freuqntly to signify any that's "not modernism" or
anything "created recently". It's also true that postmodernism itself is
changing, and that the concerns of an artist like pynchon are a little
different from kathy acker, both "postmodern" writers ...
*the Acker and Pynchon examples raises another aspect--just how conscious
are these artists in taking on this label--and how much is the term
externally applied...
>2) there's good art and bad art. I can think of artists in just about any
discipline that I see as "postmodern" whose work I find substanatial,
sophisticated and rich, and on "postmodern terms". But there is a lot of
bad postmodernism, which operates with a kind of superficial appropriation
as a guiding principle. Much of the what I wrote in response to jess's
complaints about post-modernism necessarily characterizes this negative
aspect (while much of the interesting - hey, to me - theory/analysis of
postmodernism comes from thinking about the art that succeeds and lends an
actual authority to the aesthetic) - primarily because the kinds of
post-modern gestures (and I'm not suggesting they're all completely
self-conscious) oen finds in tarot are generally the result of lesser
artists, and as such become emblematic of the less successful aspects of
postmodernism.
*all good points. Are we coming to a consensus that however we define
postmodernism it is, at least, an *aesthetic* and not a *philosophy*?
>3) That said, I agree with jess that a tarot deck from a post-modernist
perspective created by a thoughtful, sophisticated artist would be the
best thing to happen to tarot since thoth - and would in my sense of
things go a long ways to looping back to "original" iconographic sources
instead of relying on the trail of occult breadcrumbs back to 1871.
*course, from here, one has to define postmodernism. Depending on which
direction one takes with defining this aesthetic, one could say that
Crowley himself used something not too unlike it.
>Well, I'd say the architecture of Robert Venturi, Frank Gehry (sp?) and
Michael Graves, the painting of Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and
Andy Warhol, the writing of Thomas Pynchon, the french New Novel,
Burroughs, Coover, Kathy Acker, the theater of Richard Foreman, the
Wooster Group, Steven Berkoff ... I mean, this is off the top of my head
and I grant that part of the "problem" of sophisitcated postmodern art is
that the strategies used to reject the "elitism" of modernism frequently
result in work that is difficult and requires a certain engagement in the
viewer/reader, ie a lot of peope find it even more elitist, but I think
the goal of these strategies is based in seeking an immmediacy and an
egalitarianism seen as lacking in great modernist art.
*whether they are exploding one elitism and creating another is one issue.
And while I have little quibble with the inclusion of most of these
artists, I have a difficult time imagining how "reacting to
modernism/exploding its elitism"(my summary of your working definition of
postmodernism...please correct me if I've mischaracterized it) applies to
Warhol and Burroughs, indeed I have a hard time imagining them using the
same aesthetic. Perhaps their strong personalities are getting in my way.
>You don't think that the pastiche elements in the architects cited above
has a connection to Pynchon's pastiche strategy in something like "V"? I
think you're too grounded in the specifics of the media.
*I do indeed see a connection there. Not everyone consents though that
pastiche is an indelible part of the postmodern aesthetic. I do, however,
see it in the ones you mention, and indeed many on that list you've made.
Although one can think of exceptions. Burroughs and Brion Gysin did play
around with cut and paste, but many of Burroughs' stories are
straightforward first person narrative (albeit very strange ones).
*back to Tarot for a moment: there are several decks that use pastiche.
Dali, Voyager and Rohrig. There are others I'm sure I forget atm. Now
here's a key question--how strict should one get about a pastiche
aesthetic? Couldn't one make the case that the syncreticism of the Golden
Dawn might not equate to this aesthetic?
>Well, I'd agree with you, because I think they're successful p-m artists
and that the "all things are equal" p-m art is less successful. But I do
think they certainly overlap on enough easthetic issues that we can safely
consider them all "postmodern".
*well, now we have some consensus. Though many assert there are other
strategies beyond pastiche. The works of Christine Brooke-Rose and
Finnegans Wake I think provide further road signs.
>No, it's not like dada at all, it's a much more fundamentally grounded
post-war worldview - and these issues of objective authority and primacy
of experience are at the heart of post-modern art.
*well then what about the works of Eugene Ionesco--clearly both the post
WWII experience and dada are major influences
>Successful postmodern art examines how real experience collides with
these questions, and lame p-m art just piles on the references and throws
its hands in the air.
*nice observation. Contrast Satyricon to Diva.
>Well, again, I disagree with you - I think it has a lot to do with
narrative perspective and assumptions about how subjectivity functions in
relation to, say, a modernist classic like Ulysses.
*that's the strongest assertion you've made yet. Now we're getting
somewhere. I guess then in this definition of postmodernism this would
translate to the other art forms?
>Certainly post-modernism is a slippery term, and a more self-consciously
p-m author - like Coover, for example - is certainly glib, but also I
think very grounded.
*yeah, even Joyce can be glib. Such versatility of voice makes him
stronger than Beckett.
>Well, Thelemic thought or no, I think Crowley's writings on Tarot and the
Thoth deck are very much an expression of structure, a very deeply rooted
specific one, and yes, very obviously "modernist".
*I guess I just don't see how its "modernist" aesthetically speaking
>I think you're willfully missing the point here - it's a more complex and
grounded notion than you're allowing.
*no, it was a reference to someone else's definition of the term--rather a
satirization of it.
>Yes, but if you're considering the success of an artistic enterprise
you're considering it on aesthetic terms and it necessary to examine the
aesthetic assumptions from which the work proceeds - and for god's sake
I'm not saying it's doctrinaire or the french academy ...
*you might have a point about Crowley's Thoth having some modernist
aspects, but its not the same as Joyce consciously crafting his work in
reaction to DH Lawrence's...Crowley's working within a context that
doesn't allow much comparision to say Joyce or Pound (I take that
back...the Pound comparison might work...hadn't thought of that...)...just
as I have trouble imagining Warhol and Burroughs working within a similar
aesthetic--Rauschenberg and Pynchon, however--that's a different story
>Well, sorry if you think so George, but there's no fowler guide to
post-modernist usage.
*yeah, I know. I'm not so sure these connections really exist. One keeps
thinking its all motivated by ambition within the academy--which btw is
the common thread between critical theory and what JK is really talking
about...
>Post-modernism is an eclectic aesthetic, and it draws from exactly those
sources you cite - what's the problem.
*the eclecticism is the problem--there's not even consensus about the
term! Only within narrowly defined fields can we find consensus that such
an aesthetic is a movement (architecture probably being the strongest)
>One of the defining aspects of post-modernism is the breaking of
boundaries between high and low art and between media, and between
journalism or criticism and "art".
*this began to happen before anyone came up with the label. Its not so
self-conscious. Many will say this is simply evolution.
Diane Purkiss
In article <3209D8...@io.com>, "J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> writes
>George Leake wrote:
>>
>> "J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
>
>> let's not get into deconstruction and
>> literary criticism.
>
What do you understand by deconstruction, and how does it relate to
tarot, pomo or otherwise?
And BTW, postmodernism is not solipsism, or relativism. It does not
claim to justify or elucidate the reiterated claim in New Age circles
that one should consult one's own feelings to determine the validity of
whatever is before you. No claim could be more ridiculously pre-post-
modern to the postmodern theorist.
--
Diane
George Leake
Diane Purkiss <pur...@purkiss.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Deconstruction is not postmodernism.
*thank you Diane!
>What do you understand by deconstruction, and how does it relate to
tarot, pomo or otherwise?
*exactamundo
>And BTW, postmodernism is not solipsism, or relativism.
*funny...that sounds like a pickup line at an MLA conference...
*again, I think there's no consensus as to what it means, but it does seem
in most cases to be an aesthetic of this or that or many art-forms.
>It does not claim to justify or elucidate the reiterated claim in New Age
circles that one should consult one's own feelings to determine the
validity of whatever is before you. No claim could be more ridiculously
pre-post- modern to the postmodern theorist.
*right.
George Leake
Gordon Dahlquist <gd...@columbia.edu> wrote:[much editing for brevity]
>>David Antin puts it, 'From the modernism you choose you get the
postmodernism you deserve.'"
>>*sure that's the cynical view of literary and generally academic
criticism using what are generally accepted as a postmodernistic literary
tradition.
Why is this cynical - to me it seems self-evident.
doesn't even address art so much as it addresses critical response
>And on what basis to you lump this sentiment with an "academic criticism"
point of view,
*to me it seems self-evident...seriously though, art since WWII is
generally not as self conscious as is academic criticism
>implying that it is somehow incomplete or innaccurate?
*if by it you imply academic criticism, yes it does not suffice because in
many cases those critics are trying to hard to make something fit that
doesn't.
>George, I really think what you're saying here is whacked. There are
clear parallels between post-modernism in literature and other art forms,
nor do I think there's anything like the doubt or confusion you posit
about what might consitute a postmodern literature. I would be very very
surprised for anyone to lump Joyce in - including FW - with postmodernism
(anyone with a brain, that is), the agenda is >clearly< a modernist one,
in reference to a kind of "collective unconscious" that Joyce is invoking
with the wealth of cultural/linguistic correspondences within the text.
*if you're really surprised about those sorts of ideas about Joyce, then I
suggest you spend a month on the Joyce distlist and check out criticism on
Joyce over the last 15 or so years. In any case, to label Finnegans Wake
the ur-Postmodernist novel is by no means an original idea of
mine--believe me, I had problems with the suggestion myself when I first
ran into some 4-5 years ago. If you really wanna check it out, I can
backtrack and find some bibliographic citations for you.
>As for Beckett, certainly his work continued into the more obviously
postmodern period, but again,the driving aesthetic is in terms of
modernism (even if he's rejecting many modernist claims within the works
themselves, the form of the works retains a kind of formal unity that is
certainly connected to modernism).
*right there I suppose could call you really whacked, but let's try to
keep this civil--ok? Your phrasing implies the period is a determinative
factor--is that part of what you think about postmodernism? Is it a matter
of period or aesthetic?
*others have written on Joyce and Beckett and modernism and postmodernism.
Needless to say if you think the Wake is modernism, many would really have
problems with you characterizing Beckett as postmodernist
>To divide painting from literature because there's "no cezanne" seems
absurd - and I'd contest the singular primacy of cezanne in any case -
*it does, but you yourself talked about the importance of response to
earlier art in movements. Actually, I'm not dividing them at all, I'm
actually pointing out how patently silly it is to compare them--what in
literature is the parallel to cubism??? Dos Passos?
>but in >any< case, the notion that a single source in any way determines
the "validity" of modernism is nonsense.
*well, you're the one bringing up the concept. Of "validity", that is.
>The briefest look at all the arts in the early 20th century will show an
intense cross-referencing from different forms - the practical differences
between media are such that an 800 page book is going to convey something
different than a painting, but in terms of a larger cultural view, the
parallels between painting and literature seem very clear - what possibly
makes you think there's "hardly a comparison"?
*perhaps because none of this is new? Do you actually think mixing medias
and high and low art has never happened before? It's patently obvious that
there's obviously few parallels between the arts--even less so the closer
you look at each artist.
>Well, I think he's not specifying forms because it's more a less a
cultural given that this kind of tension between modernism and
postmodernism exists across the cultural board.
*A given? Hardly...are you serious about that assertion?
>And please, don't be so literal - experiment can mean different things.
*I understand that, but its weak to speak in such generalities.
>Certainly Joyce is intensely experimental in his writing, yet it's clear
that one could take (given a souring world view) some of his assumptions a
different way.
*sure. And he has no monopoly on experimenting...
>Joyce is writing about finding a kind of inherent, universal significance
in the complexity of "normal" existence - a significance he generates
through the accretion of layers and layers of references and resonances
*I can more or less accept that
... it's a commonplace that postmodernism explores a similar crazyquilt
of references without the inherent structure of universal significance
beneath it, resulting in a different series of "experimental" strategies
perhaps contained in the assumptions of modernism but outside what it
might delineate as "acceptable ground".
*so you're saying that the term postmodernism is NOT an aesthetic, but
signifies an absence of or a "willy-nillyness it doesn't matter one way or
the other-ness" about universal significance? Not only does no one else
out there agree about what postmodernism is, you can't even keep your own
beliefs straight paragraph to paragraph about it...perhaps that's the
point...argument for the sake of argument...
>>or one can say that postmodernism exposes the fundamental poverty of an
art that, in Lukacs' terms, replaces 'the concrete universal by an
abstract particularity' and pursues the doomed sublimity of hoping that
art can realize values no longer accessible to religion and philosophy.
>>*here I find that any any connections between this and tarot are void.
Tarot, however inane, is still at its core a form of philosophy and
religion.
>Here again, I think you're whacked.If you look at the world of modernism,
you can see clearly that the "religion and philosophy" that's being
refered to is a deeply rooted and reified network of institutional
christianity and the "great power's" politics of power and privilege - the
"establishment" that careened up to and through the 1st world war and
beyond.
*have you read Joyce and Pound? The one talks about the problems of his
motherland being the tyranny church, state and family, and the other raves
like a maniac about usury (not to mention many other topics not very
friendly at all to the status quo)...
*I just realized that this doesn't even follow or refute or address the
point I was making--which was that post 1781 tarot is largely a spiritual
and philosophical matter--do you deny this? Now perhaps aesthetics of
interceding art movements have affected the artwork--but how can it
possibly affect questions of philosophy? And how *does* it?
>If the folks at the golden dawn weren't positioning their own
beliefs/startegies as a kind of "art" in opposition to this hierarchy of
religion and politics, I don't know what else they were doing.
*to call what the Golden Dawn was working on an art does not suffice.
Certainly their ideas opposed the status quo. In fact, I think I said as
much in an earlier post.
>It seems again you're being very literal
*perhaps its because its difficult to argue against such specific points?
>I think this question speaks exactly to many of the on-going issues
related to tarot kicked around here ...
*I wish we could get back into that and abandon this altogether...this
argument is getting nowhere...except the idea that the Tarot decks of
Wanless and Connolly use the same aesthetic as John Barth, and that all
amorphous leftists (since you are so uncomfortable with people who think
issues through very carefully, apparently) have the same beliefs as
Beckett, Warhol and Coover in religion and politics, all that just makes
me laugh.
>Only waite and thoth - does this really make no sense to you?
*I'd really like to hear some justification for that assertion. Really.
I'm really getting the impression at this point that you're taking a lot
of this for granted.
>This applies exactly to tarot - what else is the golden dawn effort
effort for a synthesized system of occult symbology vs "legitimate"
religious experience if not comparable to something like joyce's efforts
to surpass the "classic" narrative strategies of the balzacian novel?
*actually, that's a good argument. If of course, that's all or even mostly
what's up with Joyce. And of course you'll get the arguments that it would
only extend until 1922 (the year Ulysses was published).
*although, Mathers et al weren't really trying to create something new,
really just fitting certain parts together a certain way--think about what
cause the split--certain parts were embraced by some and not by
others--Christian influence, references to sex, ritual magick, equality of
men and women--all these things and probably just a lot egos and power
struggles--made up their conflicts. I really don't see that the Golden
Dawn parallels Joyce's aesthetic that much. In fact, they both borrow and
use almost a pastiche aesthetic, which sounds like...you...know...what...
>>However, one can argue just as well that modernist opposition is an
elitist quest for aesthetic autonomy which must be rejected in favor of an
art willing to accept the responsibility to the people basic to any future
revolution.
>>*an insipid argument that obviously some people make. Mostly, of course,
external to the art itself. And again, with little to connect it to tarot.
>Well, you might find it insipid, but it's the exact argument people are
making when they appropriate waite/smith deck designs for their own
purposes, and it's the exact argument people are making when they suggest
that card meanings are connected to what "feels right" or "makes sense",
or when people squirm under the horrible burden of that man crowley and
want to do it their own way.
*I don't even think most of those who steal from Waite/Crowley are THAT
aware! And I cannot off the top of my head think of an example of a deck
that rejects the "elitist aesthetic autonomy" of Waite/Crowley in favor of
"an art willing to accept the responsibility to the people basic to any
future revolution." The closest I've seen something like that articulated
(outside of you and JK) was Giles justifying more emphasis on Frieda
Harris' contributions to the Thoth deck in the name of "affirmative
action." I think you guys are blowing this all out of proportion and are
starting to remind me of the colonel in Dr. Strangelove worried about
fluoride...
>>Perhaps the ultimate test of postmodernism is whether one thinks these
confusions are to be resisted or embraced."
>>*who would consciously embrace confusion?
>You don't live in New york, do you George?
*touche.
>Seriously, a lot of people see that art should in some way hold a mirror
to nature,
*right. Not a new concept
>and a lot of people see the present day world as fundamentally chaotic,
so yes, there is a lot of postmodern art that takes as a primary subject
notions of chaos, incoherence and insignificance - and they do this most
frequently by exploiting an overwhelming number of superficial
connections, which they posit as a relentlessly defining element of
contemporary life.
*ok, the thing is I don't see this as defining--you don't think the middle
ages were chaotic? Try the Plague Years...
>>>Replace 'aesthetic' with 'symbolic' up there and you get a pretty good
description of the argument as it relates to pomo tarot.
>>*not at all. I see that the connections being asserted are so frivolous
that I can't bring myself to even call them tenuous.
>Well, I think you are being narrowminded and wrong.
*I think the same thing of you. In fact let me add vague. What is meant by
"pomo" tarot besides one deck actually called that? This is as bizarre as
the Rush Limbaugh show...
>>>One might then describe the occult tarot as the 'bourgeois value' or
the 'doomed sublimity' or the 'elitist quest' against which the 'people'
deserve a pomo 'revolution'.
>>*anyone who thinks that then is totally off their rocker. If that was
the case, I'd certainly be arguing with them. That's the thing
though--occult tarot is FAR from "bourgeois". I'm not even sure which
decks you're labelling as pomo, but lets say for argument's sake Connolly
and Enchanted are two of them, they are certainly more bourgeois than
revolutionary. Obviously the designers were only in it for the money.
>Well, it's also sort of a joke, George, but when the point of view moves
into postmodernism the entire playing field slides a little - from the pov
of postmodernism the presumption of significance that modernism holds to
can be seen as naive and "bourgeois" - as much as those modernist works
were intense reactions against a conventional morality and worldview.
*allow me to take a different tack--please try to follow this--seen
through your eyes, this all makes sense--except that this world view does
not seem to be shared by "all of them"--believe me--I know a number of New
Agers with odd views about Crowley and the Golden Dawn--they have no
consciousness whatsoever about this "postmodern theory" yr talking about,
and if it there's a bourgeoisie or enemy out there, its Christianity, the
patriarchy, the Republicans--not Crowley. And even Waite is too outside
the grid. In fact, Waite's deck is largely seen as traditional and
friendly. Even Thoth is regarded like a warm and fuzzy bear--why else
would Haindl and Pollack steal from it?
>In tarot terms, waite and crowley >are< the old guard, and quaint in
their insistence on learning, scholarship and tradition - and a lot of
people find the ground upon which their terms are defined to be elitist.
*that's hardly the case with everyone...
>The point Jess is making seems crystal clear and occurate - the fact that
the pomo result may be as pedestrian and sentimental ("bourgeoise" traits)
is just more irony to the argument.
*yes, that's very obvious, but then the further irony you two don't grasp
is that your embracing of this idea of a "pomo" tarot movement at
all--which comes from a Wanless press release hyping the Voyager deck if I
understand the story right--which of course has little to do with the
concept of postmodernism, you two have taken the New Agers' concept of the
term to heart--that's VERY IRONIC.
>It's >also< the case that most of the pomo decks
*the "pomo decks"...the "pomo decks"--don't you realize this sort of
vagueness is as anti-intellectual as these people you despise?
>that Jess is talking about contain none of the irony or
self-referentiality normally associated with postmodernism
*well, I'm still unsure which decks, but as I said if you mean Connolly
and Enchanted for instance--sure...its too obvious a point to even
raise...
>... my own explanation for this is that most people designing these decks
are unsophisticated artists.
*we certainly agree on that. I go back to something before though--the
difference between philosophy, aesthetics and quality...
>>*a good point. That's one of the frustrating things with all this.
Except I think tarot's a lot easier to discuss and find consensus with
than postmodernism, whatever the hell that is...
>Well, that may be, but I think the issues are intertwined, regrettably or
no - and what's the big fat mystery about postmodernism, anyway? It's
been around for a while ...
*the term has, indeed. Not only can I find scholars who will heatedly
debate WHAT it is, but I know half a dozen scholars who think THERE'S NO
SUCH AESTHETIC. I wonder why you seem so eager to sit on your assumptions.
>>>Finally, I did not create the notion of postmodern tarot.
>>*excellent. Who did?! Get them in here right now and explain what the
fuck they meant!
>I know you're sort of joking here, but definitions happen across
boundaries - that's why you develop a critical vocabulary (and I'm not
just talking about word-usage) that can travel, because culture travels
all the time.
*but its happened in recent history...I think the earliest use was Wanless.
Gordon Dahlquist
Okay, again, a long post - but before I wade in to george's specific
comments, I'd like to make two points that we all seems to be either
side-stepping or taking for granted in the discussion:
1) it's very true that "postmodernism" is a term is used very freely, very
sloppily and freuqntly to signify any that's "not modernism" or anything
"created recently". It's also true that postmodernism itself is changing,
and that the concerns of an artist like pynchon are a little different
from kathy acker, both "postmodern" writers ...
2) there's good art and bad art. I can think of artists in just about any
discipline that I see as "postmodern" whose work I find substanatial,
sophisticated and rich, and on "postmodern terms". But there is a lot of
bad postmodernism, which operates with a kind of superficial appropriation
as a guiding principle. Much of the what I wrote in response to jess's
complaints about post-modernism necessarily characterizes this negative
aspect (while much of the interesting - hey, to me - theory/analysis of
postmodernism comes from thinking about the art that succeeds and lends an
actual authority to the aesthetic) - primarily because the kinds of
post-modern gestures (and I'm not suggesting they're all completely
self-conscious) oen finds in tarot are generally the result of lesser
artists, and as such become emblematic of the less successful aspects of
postmodernism.
3) That said, I agree with jess that a tarot deck from a post-modernist
perspective created by a thoughtful, sophisticated artist would be the
best thing to happen to tarot since thoth - and would in my sense of
things go a long ways to looping back to "original" iconographic sources
instead of relying on the trail of occult breadcrumbs back to 1871.
Anyway ...
On 8 Aug 1996, George Leake wrote:
> Gordon Dahlquist <gd...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> >And yet the problem with so much postmodern art/thought/tarot
> *the problem is that the connections are tenuous at best. The word
> "thought" is a bit generous considering the decks JK has mentioned...
>
> >is that in rejecting the aesthetic elitism found in modernism
> *what "postmodern" art concerns itself with such rejection or seems even
> conscious of it?
Well, I'd say the architecture of Robert Venturi, Frank Gehry (sp?) and
Michael Graves, the painting of Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and
Andy Warhol, the writing of Thomas Pynchon, the french New Novel,
Burroughs, Coover, Kathy Acker, the theater of Richard Foreman, the
Wooster Group, Steven Berkoff ... I mean, this is off the top of my head -
and I grant that part of the "problem" of sophisitcated postmodern art is
that the strategies used to reject the "elitism" of modernism frequently
result in work that is difficult and requires a certain engagement in the
viewer/reader, ie a lot of peope find it even more elitist, but I think
the goal of these strategies is based in seeking an immmediacy and an
egalitarianism seen as lacking in great modernist art.
> - as much as modernism itself plays with concepts of high and low art,
> postmodernism tends more to explode them -
> *which postmodernism are you talking about? Clearly there's no resemblance
> in aesthetic or principles between what is most often dubbed postmodernist
> literature and postmodernist architecture.
You don't think that the pastiche elements in the architects cited above
has a connection to Pynchon's pastiche strategy in something like "V"? I
think you're too grounded in the specifics of the media.
> >it's very easy to land instead into the "all views are equal" mindset,
> *I have a hard time trying to see that in postmodernist architecture, the
> pastiches of Rauschenberg, or in the novels of Thomas Pynchon.
Well, I'd agree with you, because I think they're successful p-m artists
and that the "all things are equal" p-m art is less successful. But I do
think they certainly overlap on enough easthetic issues that we can
safely consider them all "postmodern".
>where any reference has some currency simply because it's been selected
> and inserted into a given context, and whatever resonances (say doric
> columns on an art-and-crafts style dwelling) a given appropriation conveys
> are equally made up of the history behind the reference - ie. the ideals
> of ancient greece - and those of the context it's been placed within - ie.
> the the ideals of an elitist yet egalitarian design movement: a basic
> juxtaposition sparks "significance" in direct relation to both the
> viewer/reader's feelings and knowledge of the reference and the artists
> care about making the juxtapostions in the first place - ie it's worth a
> lot or nothing, but the worth isn't "inherent" so much as within the
> exchange.
> *now you're actually describing a kind of aesthetic, really a kind of
> anti-aesthetic somewhat akin to dada. The problem with this though is
> these are the interpretations and mo of the few and not the greater. Some
> have suggested this much consciousness in the creation of art is the
> height of elitism. I think these are the same who stress the importance
> being in the process rather than something more result oriented. Art as
> commodity is an example of something more result oriented.
No, it's not like dada at all, it's a much more fundamentally grounded
post-war worldview - and these issues of objective authority and primacy
of experience are at the heart of post-modern art. Successful postmodern
art examines how real experience collides with these questions, and lame
p-m art just piles on the references and throws its hands in the air.
> >Postmodernism can - and frequently does - act as a catch-all
> justification for very lazy, glib art and thinking.
> *not to mention glib categorization of disparate movements. What you've
> described above hardly fits the aesthetic of novels often dubbed
> postmodernist. It's my assertion that postmodernist means different things
> in different contexts, and perhaps the only tangible connection you can
> make to say this theory about art and the novels of John Barth is they
> both came after World War II.
Well, again, I disagree with you - I think it has a lot to do with
narrative perspective and assumptions about how subjectivity functions in
relation to, say, a modernist classic like Ulysses. Certainly
post-modernism is a slippery term, and a more self-consciously p-m author
- like Coover, for example - is certainly glib, but also I think very
grounded.
> >It doesn't have to, but it places a great deal of repsonsibility - even
> more responsibility - in the hands of the artist, simply by virtue of
> removing that much more structure around the entire enterprise.
> *then by extension then modernist tarot as represented by Crowley then
> also represents structure--but Thelemic thought is wholly free in an of
> itself--finding the True Will is escaping all bonds of structure, thus
> giving control to the people.
Well, Thelemic thought or no, I think Crowley's writings on Tarot and the
Thoth deck are very much an expression of structure, a very deeply rooted
specific one, and yes, very obviously "modernist".
> Characterizing postmodernism as "giving control to the people" is accurate,
> *hardly. In this kind of Epcot Egalitarianism, though, I suppose it'll do.
> Just as Clinton's proposed healthcare system would've "helped the people".
I think you're willfully missing the point here - it's a more complex and
grounded notion than you're allowing.
> I think - and what it creates is as "valid" or as "worthwhile" as anything
> from a situation where "anything's possible" ... most of it's lazy, easy,
> superficial, aiming to please - and most people could care less.
> *sure. I think we all agree that spoon-feeding defeats the purpose.
> *however, what I think you and JK have missed *completely* here, besides
> what I've been saying over and over, is that modernism and postmodernism
> are in essence aesthetics, just like impressionism and classicism and
> baroque. The question of substance and quality is another one altogether.
Yes, but if you're considering the success of an artistic enterprise
you're considering it on aesthetic terms and it necessary to examine the
aesthetic assumptions from which the work proceeds - and for god's sake
I'm not saying it's doctrinaire or the french academy ...
> And while we're talking about aesthetics, I don't think Gordon's gotten it
> quite right. This seems to be a blend of art theory, a dash of
> postmodernist architecture, and a lot of critical theory and pop leftist
> theory.
Well, sorry if you think so George, but there's no fowler guide to
post-modernist usage. Post-modernism is an eclectic aesthetic, and it
draws from exactly those sources you cite - what's the problem. One of
the defining aspects of post-modernism is the breaking of boundaries
between high and low art and between media, and between journalism or
criticism and "art". And p-m thought tends to be leftist, so sue me. I
think your terms are narrowly defined.
Gordon Dahlquist
On 9 Aug 1996, George Leake wrote:
> Gordon Dahlquist <gd...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> >1) it's very true that "postmodernism" is a term is used very freely,
> very sloppily and freuqntly to signify any that's "not modernism" or
> anything "created recently". It's also true that postmodernism itself is
> changing, and that the concerns of an artist like pynchon are a little
> different from kathy acker, both "postmodern" writers ...
> *the Acker and Pynchon examples raises another aspect--just how conscious
> are these artists in taking on this label--and how much is the term
> externally applied...
Well I'd say extremely self-consciously as far as Acker goes, and also so
for Pynchon, though 1) he's of a different generation and 2) his work is
far more grounded in conventional narrative ... of course every serious
artist we bring up in this discussion is tricky because they're all
idiosynchratic (and that goes, I think with just about any major artist
from any period) ... Pynchon is such a recluse that he probably wouldn't
identify himself with anything, but I do think he's very self-conscious
about certain narrative gestures (like having the "main" character of
Gravity's Rainbow disappear 3/4 through the novel) that could be seen as
postmodern ... and it is true that at a certain point the discourse of
criticism makes connections independent of the artist's will or intention,
but it's also true that artists join into this discourse themselves ...
> >2) there's good art and bad art. I can think of artists in just about any
> discipline that I see as "postmodern" whose work I find substanatial,
> sophisticated and rich, and on "postmodern terms". But there is a lot of
> bad postmodernism, which operates with a kind of superficial appropriation
> as a guiding principle. Much of the what I wrote in response to jess's
> complaints about post-modernism necessarily characterizes this negative
> aspect (while much of the interesting - hey, to me - theory/analysis of
> postmodernism comes from thinking about the art that succeeds and lends an
> actual authority to the aesthetic) - primarily because the kinds of
> post-modern gestures (and I'm not suggesting they're all completely
> self-conscious) oen finds in tarot are generally the result of lesser
> artists, and as such become emblematic of the less successful aspects of
> postmodernism.
> *all good points. Are we coming to a consensus that however we define
> postmodernism it is, at least, an *aesthetic* and not a *philosophy*?
Well, sure, but any serious aesthetic is grounded in philosophy - perhaps
it's a chicken and egg thing (with critics and artists tending to weigh in
on different sides of the hen house), but I don't think it's an easy
distinction to make ...
> >3) That said, I agree with jess that a tarot deck from a post-modernist
> perspective created by a thoughtful, sophisticated artist would be the
> best thing to happen to tarot since thoth - and would in my sense of
> things go a long ways to looping back to "original" iconographic sources
> instead of relying on the trail of occult breadcrumbs back to 1871.
> *course, from here, one has to define postmodernism. Depending on which
> direction one takes with defining this aesthetic, one could say that
> Crowley himself used something not too unlike it.
Well, perhaps in purely aesthetic terms - but here's where perhaps we
still disagree. There's an ideology to crowley's work that's connected to
modernism's notion of an underlying/universal significance that can be
discovered through "art" - that there's a primary sense to be made, that
there are genuine and relevant connections being made in modernism's
attempt to re-create the world. My distinction between crowley (or waite)
as modernist decks and some of newer decks we're all kicking around is
when newer decks rely on a strategy of both visual pastiche as well as a
kind of ideological appropriation of various interpretations, cultures,
references, often without regard to the unity of the "whole" - or that
this kind of "whole" is not particularly valorized, where for the C/W
decks, the unified system (and I mean the ideological/refential baggage
behind the cards themselves as well as the aesthetic of the deck) is the
entire point.
> >Well, I'd say the architecture of Robert Venturi, Frank Gehry (sp?) and
> Michael Graves, the painting of Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and
> Andy Warhol, the writing of Thomas Pynchon, the french New Novel,
> Burroughs, Coover, Kathy Acker, the theater of Richard Foreman, the
> Wooster Group, Steven Berkoff ... I mean, this is off the top of my head
> and I grant that part of the "problem" of sophisitcated postmodern art is
> that the strategies used to reject the "elitism" of modernism frequently
> result in work that is difficult and requires a certain engagement in the
> viewer/reader, ie a lot of peope find it even more elitist, but I think
> the goal of these strategies is based in seeking an immmediacy and an
> egalitarianism seen as lacking in great modernist art.
> *whether they are exploding one elitism and creating another is one issue.
> And while I have little quibble with the inclusion of most of these
> artists, I have a difficult time imagining how "reacting to
> modernism/exploding its elitism"(my summary of your working definition of
> postmodernism...please correct me if I've mischaracterized it) applies to
> Warhol and Burroughs, indeed I have a hard time imagining them using the
> same aesthetic. Perhaps their strong personalities are getting in my way.
Well, maybe warhol's an anomaly - certainly Burroughs is extremely
postmodern, the cut-up methods for one and the relentless recylcing of
genre and convention for two - but I thnk there's some ground in the way
warhol's use of large series of images drawn from external sources has a
connection to the same lot of issues ... the quotes are more cultural than
painterly (as opposed to Lichtenstein, say) and less personal than
Rauschenberg, but still the equation seems obvious - maybe too obvious,
he's not a particularly subtle artist. If the soup cans and brillo boxes
aren't a response to elitism in art (as well as commodification in
general, I grant) I don't know what else they are.
> >You don't think that the pastiche elements in the architects cited above
> has a connection to Pynchon's pastiche strategy in something like "V"? I
> think you're too grounded in the specifics of the media.
> *I do indeed see a connection there. Not everyone consents though that
> pastiche is an indelible part of the postmodern aesthetic. I do, however,
> see it in the ones you mention, and indeed many on that list you've made.
> Although one can think of exceptions. Burroughs and Brion Gysin did play
> around with cut and paste, but many of Burroughs' stories are
> straightforward first person narrative (albeit very strange ones).
> *back to Tarot for a moment: there are several decks that use pastiche.
> Dali, Voyager and Rohrig. There are others I'm sure I forget atm. Now
> here's a key question--how strict should one get about a pastiche
> aesthetic? Couldn't one make the case that the syncreticism of the Golden
> Dawn might not equate to this aesthetic?
Again, I think pastiche is a primary strategy of postmodern art, but it
also has to do with perspective and intention ... pastiche does happen all
the time, and certainly the waite minors are victorian-medieval pastiche
all over the place ... I sort of mentioned this above - and I've never
seen the Rohrig deck - but some of this is also about the arbitrary nature
of the images' connection to the meanings for the cards, or what/any
tradition this is tied to (or if this is seen as necessary).
> >No, it's not like dada at all, it's a much more fundamentally grounded
> post-war worldview - and these issues of objective authority and primacy
> of experience are at the heart of post-modern art.
> *well then what about the works of Eugene Ionesco--clearly both the post
> WWII experience and dada are major influences
Well, he's french - what can you do? Seriously, I'd say that Ionesco's
earlier works are transitional, and I think you're right to cite dada -
but as his work progresses it becomes much more "conventionally
postmodern" (a really regrettable phrasing) - in Macbett, for example.
But sure, there are exceptions - and artists change/develop/reject ...
again, while I obviously feel there's a primary definition of
postmodernism that's coherent enough to be useful, at a certain point all
of these terms have to be seen to be elastic ... it's not the french
academy (though ionesco did get admitted to the french academy, which he
had to have seen a colossally good joke) ...
> >Successful postmodern art examines how real experience collides with
> these questions, and lame p-m art just piles on the references and throws
> its hands in the air.
> *nice observation. Contrast Satyricon to Diva.
Or godard to tarentino.
> >Well, again, I disagree with you - I think it has a lot to do with
> narrative perspective and assumptions about how subjectivity functions in
> relation to, say, a modernist classic like Ulysses.
> *that's the strongest assertion you've made yet. Now we're getting
> somewhere. I guess then in this definition of postmodernism this would
> translate to the other art forms?
I would say so - to me it has a lot to do with denying the
inhrent authority of an 'accepted' narrative perspective, 'narrative'
being defined as just about any sequence of information, visual, aural or
otherwise.
> >Certainly post-modernism is a slippery term, and a more self-consciously
> p-m author - like Coover, for example - is certainly glib, but also I
> think very grounded.
> *yeah, even Joyce can be glib. Such versatility of voice makes him
> stronger than Beckett.
But Beckett's pretty damn whimsical, once you get in the groove - the
whimsy doesn't redeem anything, but it's pervasive. I mean, Joyce is so
herculean, but in his narrower way Beckett is too - they're so different
it's hard for me to stack them up against each other - and certainly
Beckett changed the theatre as much as joyce the novel.
> >Yes, but if you're considering the success of an artistic enterprise
> you're considering it on aesthetic terms and it necessary to examine the
> aesthetic assumptions from which the work proceeds - and for god's sake
> I'm not saying it's doctrinaire or the french academy ...
> *you might have a point about Crowley's Thoth having some modernist
> aspects, but its not the same as Joyce consciously crafting his work in
> reaction to DH Lawrence's...Crowley's working within a context that
> doesn't allow much comparision to say Joyce or Pound (I take that
> back...the Pound comparison might work...hadn't thought of that...)...just
> as I have trouble imagining Warhol and Burroughs working within a similar
> aesthetic--Rauschenberg and Pynchon, however--that's a different story
Well, there are differnces, but I think Crowley saw himself engaged in a
similar relationship to convention (and his more conventional occut peers)
as Joyce and Pound, or Lawrence - the terms of the struggle change, but
the dynamic holds, I think.
> >Post-modernism is an eclectic aesthetic, and it draws from exactly those
> sources you cite - what's the problem.
> *the eclecticism is the problem--there's not even consensus about the
> term! Only within narrowly defined fields can we find consensus that such
> an aesthetic is a movement (architecture probably being the strongest)
Again, I disagree with you - it's not exhaustive with these fields (August
Wilson, b'way most lionized playwright at the moment, writes plays like
Arthur Miller or Tenessee Williams), but there are clear aesthetic lines
within them, and across them - and more than architecture. What-ever.
> >One of the defining aspects of post-modernism is the breaking of
> boundaries between high and low art and between media, and between
> journalism or criticism and "art".
> *this began to happen before anyone came up with the label. Its not so
> self-conscious. Many will say this is simply evolution.
Sure, it's all degree (speaking of Ulysses ...), but Joyce references a
popular song because it >does< connect to a larger mythic structure ...
Acker references Cervantes because it doesn't.
MLYoung
George gets confused:
*well, in many cases, that is definitely true. I happen to be a stickler
for specificity.
I was very specific, George. I defined exactly what concept I
considered "degraded post-modernism."
This might be true with Margeret or Wolf Distributing or
Mary Greer or Pollack or Giles or Starhawk or Bill Heidrick or your
definition of postmodernism vis a vis tarot, but it certainly is not "as
the term is applied to tarot" absolutely since there's at least one of us
who disagrees. Let's examine the term postmodernism. Here from the UT
George, you're not disagreeing. You simply don't seem to understand
the concept. I have yet to see you come up with anything like
a definition.
<Snip>
e, some
thinkers--particularly the French philosophers
Jacques DERRIDA and Jean Francois Lyotard--began to question
the justifications for authoritative statements on meaning or
significance in the arts (see DECONSTRUCTION). Lyotard claimed
that the work of the postmodern creator is not governed by
preestablished rules and cannot be judged according to given
categories. In effect, both writers questioned the basis for
Okay, George. LOOK VERY CAREFULLY AT THIS.
Now, THINK. What are the pre-established rules in terms
of tarot decks? How would agreement or disagreement over
pre-established rules affect one's view of recent tarot decks?
How might feminism be involved here?
Now, think a little more. If you throw out preestablished
rules, how do you determine the value or worth of something?
How do you determine what is true, if all truths are relative?
Some people would say you can't, that all truths are equal.
I say that's not what Derrida said and is degraded post-
modernism.
I was quite specific. The problem is that you have a great
deal of difficulty with abstract concepts--particularly when
it comes to taking a concept and applying it to different areas.
You're unable to see connections and are highly suspicious of
those who can.
Quit blaming others for your limitations.
--margaret
>
--
MLYoung
In article <taliesin-080...@duncan.hrc.utexas.edu>,
tali...@mail.utexas.edu (George Leake) writes:
>>Having been down this road before with you, and once is too much, I'm
not
>going to argue with you about what you don't understand. I consider you,
>in fact, to be functionally illiterate. As far as I'm concerned your
>opinions about ANYTHING, but particularly anything requiring reading,
are
>of no value whatsoever.
>*what an intellectual! I understand, and perhaps I can start going on and
>on about how you cannot argue, you can only insult when you've lost the
>argument. Clearly, you have NO idea what the hell you're talking about
>with postmodernism.
Why, because he insulted you? How do you deduce this?
What's your definition of post-modern George? In your own
words, not the dictionary's? Before you go about casting
judgment, show us that you have some grasp of the concept
itself.
>Also, if you really want to understand postmodernism, as it is practiced
in tarot, read what you write on alt.tarot. It's like a primer for being a
PM tarot book writer.
*Coming from someone who cannot even articulate what he means by "pomo
tarot"? Much less has no understanding whatsoever of postmodernism. I
understand. There, there, its ok Jess. Does the little boo-boo hurt?
What was that you were saying about insults in place of
arguments?
Awaiting your definition, George.
And don't forget to be specific.
--margaret
Robert Hof
In <taliesin-090...@duncan.hrc.utexas.edu>
tali...@mail.utexas.edu (George Leake) writes:
>
>>artists, and as such become emblematic of the less successful aspects
of
>postmodernism.
>*all good points. Are we coming to a consensus that however we define
>postmodernism it is, at least, an *aesthetic* and not a *philosophy*?
>
Ummm, George? Hate to break it to you, but aesthetics is a
branch of philosophy.
You continue to fret over puzzle pieces without having a clue
as to the whole picture.
--margaret (please send e-mail to myo...@market.net)
Diane Purkiss
In article <320C3D...@io.com>, "J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> writes
>> Deconstruction is not postmodernism.
>
>I never said it was. However, to suggest, as George did, that
>the two have no relationship, is just stupid.
What is their relationship?
>
>> What do you understand by deconstruction, and how does it relate to
>> tarot, pomo or otherwise?
>
>what it says.
Agreed. But as Barbara Johnson points out, the word contains not only
destruction, but construction, being itself an unstable third term orf
undecidable meaning.
>And it applies to postmodernism (ideally)
>in the sense of a stripping away of what some people
>might regard as stale or static or irrelevant rules
>of structure (whatever 'structure' means in the context
>in which it is being exposed to the 'de-').
No. Not ideally or in any other way.
You'll certainly find the word being used this way in the TV pages of
the broadsheets over here.
But this betrays nothing but a confusion of effect with method. The
effect of (usually fairly crap attempts at) deconstruction are sometimes
as you describe. But deconstruction as conceived by Derrida is a
critique of Western metaphysics using a particualr theory of the
workings of language.
That sounds pretty opaque, I know. This theory was then modified by the
Yale School so that it could be applied to literature, and slowly other
disciplines adopted the Yale School version.
Essentially, this involved pointing to the way in which rules contain
their own opposites, but pretend not to. An overused instance might be
gender categories in a particualr work (say, a speech by Newt about
wlefare mothers). A deconstructionist might come along and show that
Newt's metaphors identified him with welfare mothers just where he was
most keen to disntinguish himself from them.
>the tepid nature of the
>postmodernism that is displayed (much of it quite literally
>unconsciously) by designers of post-modern tarot.
>
Which has nothing to do with deconstruction, or postmodernism, or even
postmodernity. The fact that something is called 'Spring Fresh' don't
make it so. The same is true of the Pomo tarot.
NB One of the main errors being made by just about everyone here is a
conflation of postmodernism (the theory, the conscious aesthetic
practice) with postmodernity (the state of affairs that the theory and
works of art aim to portray). Thus, postmodernity is characterised by
solipsisitc assumptions and relativistic values, but to a postmodern
theorist (and hence to postmodernism) these are entirely illusory, since
those who adhere to them are actually merely the destinations of
whatever fragmentary bits of textual trace passed ove them last week.
Postmodern subjects (that's people) think they are uniquely autonomous,
while actually being uniquely subject ot manipulation and social
construction.
--
Diane
MLYoung
>George Leake wrote:
>>
>> "J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
>
>> let's not get into deconstruction and
>> literary criticism.
>
>Why not? That critique has inspired much of pomo tarot.
Deconstruction is not postmodernism.
No, it's its philosophical root, as should be clear in George's
dictionary definition.
What do you understand by deconstruction, and how does it relate to
tarot, pomo or otherwise?
And BTW, postmodernism is not solipsism, or relativism. It does not
claim to justify or elucidate the reiterated claim in New Age circles
that one should consult one's own feelings to determine the validity of
whatever is before you. No claim could be more ridiculously pre-post-
modern to the postmodern theorist.
Yes. It's why I called it degraded post-modernism.
I don't think the argument is about "consulting one's own feelings,"
per se, but more about deck creation.
--margaret
--
Diane
George Leake
Margeret gets personal
>I was very specific, George. I defined exactly what concept I considered
"degraded post-modernism."
>This might be true with Margeret or Wolf Distributing or Mary Greer or
Pollack or Giles or Starhawk or Bill Heidrick or your definition of
postmodernism vis a vis tarot, but it certainly is not "as the term is
applied to tarot" absolutely since there's at least one of us who
disagrees. Let's examine the term postmodernism. Here from the UT
>George, you're not disagreeing. You simply don't seem to understand the
concept. I have yet to see you come up with anything like a definition.
*I'm afraid that you and a couple of others are in the same boat with
Wanless and others who use the term postmodernism precariously. None of
you seem to have any understanding--just re-read what you just said--it's
a clue to your lack of understanding. There is NO single definition of the
term. The definition JK bantered about is awash in the same kind of sloppy
ignorance one expects from feel-good NewAGers, not a "serious" Tarot
scholar. I am disagreeing, because in this case I know better, and I know
that I know better, because I'm much more well versed in the subject.
There's a wealth of litcrit and artcrit etc out there which you can easily
avail yourself of. I'm not sticking by any one definition, because I think
the concept is rife with arbitrariness.
>Jacques DERRIDA and Jean Francois Lyotard--began to question the
justifications for authoritative statements on meaning or significance in
the arts (see DECONSTRUCTION). Lyotard claimed that the work of the
postmodern creator is not governed by preestablished rules and cannot be
judged according to given categories. In effect, both writers questioned
the basis for
Marg wrote
>Okay, George. LOOK VERY CAREFULLY AT THIS. Now, THINK.
*you know, you can dish it out but you can't take it. I'd really prefer it
if you would treat me with the same respect that you have demanded of me
in your private email rants that you sent me a month back...my replies to
which were either ignored or given disrespectful responses.
*yeah, let's look carefully at this, Margeret. Do you have any experience
at all with Derrida? Can you distinguish between the concepts of criticism
and art itself? A lot of people have trouble making that distinction, I
know. In any case, this is a hackneyed description of (pay attention now)
*a critical approach*. Understand that?
*now, the term post-modernism, admittedly has many definitions, but most
of them involve a description of what? An *artistic* approach (one in
which may involve criticism, depending on who the definer of the term is
and who the artist is).
>What are the pre-established rules in terms of tarot decks?
*you tell me.
>How would agreement or disagreement over pre-established rules affect
one's view of recent tarot decks?
*that's a huge question...needless to say the implications of which are
almost endless
>How might feminism be involved here?
*again, one would tend not to put a definite cast on it depending upon
what rules one speaks of. As far as I can tell, there's always been so
much disagreement, that there really are no "rules".
>Now, think a little more. If you throw out preestablished rules, how do
you determine the value or worth of something?
*at this point, the only way I can honestly answer this is to apply it to
something other than tarot. Let's say we're talking about the rules of
baseball. If you threw out the pre-established rules, then determining the
value would largely be subject to the resulting merits of the sport on its
own terms (and probably to a large degree to the subjective values of the
observer).
>How do you determine what is true, if all truths are relative?
*I'm not sure how relativity necessarily follows. But if they are all
relative, then I would say that only through observation of cause and
effect can one garner truth. Even then, one wonders.
>Some people would say you can't, that all truths are equal. I say that's
not what Derrida said and is degraded post- modernism.
*well, then I would agree with you here. Degraded post-modernism is
certainly an acceptable term. Some would strongly suggest that every
version of this so-called aesthetic or dogma or whatever the hell you call
it is degraded.
>I was quite specific.
*certainly, here you were.
>The problem is that you have a great deal of difficulty with abstract
concepts--particularly when it comes to taking a concept and applying it
to different areas.
*your problem is that you are a huge hypocrite. Rather than rattle off a
litany to the newsgroup of how disingenuous you've been acting, let me set
the record straight once and for all. The problem really in this case is
you simply are ignorant. You have assumed one thing and have been very
slow to understand the truth. Let me try to explain my position on this.
There is no single consensual definition of the term post-modernism.
Deconstruction is not post-modernism. If there's a definition to the term
post-modernism I would agree with, and there are many, its probably as an
art aesthetic. I think its furthermore arbitrary to try to connect
movements in different art forms--that's another debate. I know its
difficult for you grasping these abstract concepts...(LOL) you probably
know what you know from reading Mother Jones. I can accept easily the term
degraded post-modernism, though.
>You're unable to see connections and are highly suspicious of those who can.
*you are utterly mistaken once again. Perhaps you and JK realize you've
been outdanced again? I mean, really! You two are totally out of your
element and are simply over-reacting. Keep it up...
>Quit blaming others for your limitations.
*kind of like the pot calling the kettle black, eh? You've shown nothing
but defensiveness and an utter ignorance of the subject. Go back to
discussing tarot now. Unless of course you have some other unsubstantiated
accusations
George Leake
talking about. Talk about limitations...
>What's your definition of post-modern George? In your own words, not the
dictionary's? Before you go about casting judgment, show us that you
have some grasp of the concept itself.
*this I've already done. Again, this time actually read it ok--my opinion
is that there is no consensus about postmodernism, there are many
definitions, the one JK and Gordon are bantering about (especially JK) is
insipid, Gordon's is kinda the pop version of it. In any case, I don't
think such a movement, depending on how one defines it, exists, unless one
restricts oneself to certain artists. In any case, every time I've seen
someone try to apply the term to tarot it comes across as arbitrary.
That's the point here.
>What was that you were saying about insults in place of arguments?
*I'm just following your lead
George Leake
"J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
>>Deconstruction is not postmodernism.
>I never said it was. However, to suggest, as George did, that the two
have no relationship, is just stupid.
see you've finally come around on that point, though.
>>What do you understand by deconstruction, and how does it relate to
tarot, pomo or otherwise?
>However, I would simply say that deconstruction means just what it says.
And it applies to postmodernism (ideally) in the sense of a stripping
away of what some people might regard as stale or static or irrelevant
rules of structure (whatever 'structure' means in the context in which it
is being exposed to the 'de-').
*that I can accept on its own terms. It might not have much connection to
those terms outside of this context, but as long as one does not connect
them where they don't apply, then its acceptable
>Now, we can descend into discussions of theoretical distinctions between
architectural, literary, and even ideological deconstructionism, and how
that may or not relate to postmodernism, but that is really not required
to deal with the tepid nature of the postmodernism that is displayed (much
of it quite literally unconsciously) by designers of post-modern tarot.
*now we're getting somewhere. I'm simply trying to get these terms
defined. And as you've done above, and here rejecting a connection to
other art forms, then I find less of a problem. And I repeat am glad
you're not trying to bring Derrida into it.
*my only hesistancy is there's of a shift from how many define
postmodernism going on here--normally in art the term describes an
aesthetic--rather than say an ethic--which I think is your representation
of "pomo Tarot"--a fucked up ethic maybe
>For myself, I use the term, in respect to tarot, partly as sarcasm,
*yeah, well, there I would agree. The term is such an albatross, I really
am more concerned about context
>and partly as a convenient historical division between decks that involve
a complex structural system in their symbolism (mostly occult),
*well, this is much more reasonable. I'm glad to see this. I still though
have problems with people trying to label Thoth as Modernist. In fact, I'm
starting to think the best term might be Baroque (and perhaps Rider-Waite
is Romantic).
>on the one hand, and those which, on the other hand, either consciously
or unconsciously deconstruct those systems, often to the point where
little if anything of the 'original' idea of the card remains (and,
indeed, where anything resembling an idea has also been DC'd).
*again--this is a much better use of the terms...
George Leake
"J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
>According to George, you can't make that statement or ANY definite
statement about 'what it is', because 'it' 'defies definition'.
*not exactly...I'm saying that it defies definition because its rather
arbitrary in the first place, and there's no consensus.
>To suggest that postmodernism is not relativistic AND solipsistic (isn't
all art relativistic and solipsistic?) is just ignorant.
*OK...you got me on that one. I'm just saying that you can't make
generalizations about something that is so ill-defined.
George Leake
mly...@aol.com (MLYoung) wrote:
>No, it's its philosophical root, as should be clear in George's
dictionary definition.
ultimate authority. You should see what Britannica Online says about
Crowley.
>What do you understand by deconstruction, and how does it relate to
tarot, pomo or otherwise?
*the former is a long story, and as far as the rest, I honestly fail to
see how such pursuits are helpful to anyone.
>Diane wrote-->
>And BTW, postmodernism is not solipsism, or relativism. It does not claim
to justify or elucidate the reiterated claim in New Age circles that one
should consult one's own feelings to determine the validity of whatever is
before you. No claim could be more ridiculously pre-post- modern to the
postmodern theorist.
>Marg wrote
>Yes. It's why I called it degraded post-modernism. I don't think the
argument is about "consulting one's own feelings," per se, but more about
deck creation.
*yeah, the deck creation aspect is probably more relevant at least
considering the fact that many definitions of the term refer to
aesthetics.
George Leake
ro...@ix.netcom.com(Robert Hof ) wrote:
>Ummm, George? Hate to break it to you, but aesthetics is a branch of
philosophy.
aren't big enough to admit it when their wrong--kinda like a cornered
animal hissing
George Leake
*glad you FINALLY grasped the concept
George Leake
"J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
>Precisely, yet you offered that in the same post in which you claimed 'I
happen to be a stickler for specificity', and then offered the
encyclopedia definition to illustrate your 'stick', which, by
'definition', is generalized.
*to be precise though in the case of defining postmodernism, one realizes
that one must acknowledge there is no single definition, no consensus, no
single truth and no independently verifiable evidence.
>Then be concise. If you actually know anything about the subject you
should be able to provide those aspects of an answer you consider to be
most relevant.
*sure. As far as I know, there is nothing in Derrida that relates to tarot.
>You've been asked a specific question here. Respond to it.
*I'm still waiting for your answers from posts from last week. In fact, I
think there are some others I could dredge up. Instead, <insert gratuitous
insult>.
George Leake
"J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
>>*I did not.
>Of course you did.
*do I have to belittle your reading comprehension skills? One cannot make
definitive statements about terms that are vaguely or variously defined.
What I will say is some have made linkages and some have denied them.
Personally, I see that deconstructionists are largely critics, and
postmodernism comes closest to being a consistent term when describing
certain art aesthetics. Even then, these descriptions vary.
>First, you criticized the article I posted because, in your words, it
dealt with deconstruction (this criticism offered despite the fact that
the definition YOU posted here contained a discussion of deconstructionism
in relation to postmodernism), even though later you showed you had not
even understood what the article said at all.
*hardly--switching from postmodernism to deconstruction without any
supporting argument for doing so garners criticism--to those of us still
paying attention
>>I ridiculed that connection and continue to do so.
>Wait a minute!! You just said you DID NOT attack the connection between
the two, now you are claiming you ARE ridiculing it.
>Obviously, you are so confused about what your are or are NOT doing here
it becomes pointless, as usual, to carry on a discussion with you.
*if that was the case why would you continue? Guess discussion of tarot
itself has gotten so stale of late...
*the problem is you just don't quite understand what I'm ridiculing--I am
ridiculing connecting the two for the same reason I can't make any
determination about postmodernism--because its a rather meaningless term
*I understand your frustration though. Your modes of argument are so consistent.
>Quote to me where I EVER said that deconstruction and postmodernism were
the same thing.
*LOL...
>>*that I can accept on its own terms. It might not have much connection
to those terms outside of this context,
>Sure it does. As I pointed out in the first post, it works perfectly well
with a general definition of postmodernism.
*well, then I'm glad you've finally defined your terms and arguments
properly instead of sitting on your assumptions
>Be very specific, if that's possible for you, explain to us exactly how
'they' are not applicable to tarot.
*what do you mean by "they"?
>No, most of us 'got there' a long time ago. You and Diane were the only
ones requiring some remedial reading on the thing.
*no, its clear now and was clear then we're both far more
knowledgeable...all you've done is change your wording around.
>No, you're not. You offered a definition and so did I.
*nope--I would not waste my time offering a definition for a term I find
mostly an excuse for academics to get/keep jobs in the first place.
>You did not like mine, because it was more relevant to what we were
talking about.
*actually, that's what I was hoping for, not a whole hell of a lot of
arguing with people who plainly have not studied the subject as much as I
have (though Gordon showed quite a bit of understanding), and then acted
all huffy and arrogant about it.
>And, since you don't know what we are talking about here, you were confused.
*I'm confused because I don't know how the hell you came up with some of
the ideas you had...Crowley a modernist? Arriens, using the same aesthetic
as Thomas Pynchon?
George Leake
"J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
>What's arbitrary? In what way is it so, any more than any attempt to
discuss ideas is arbitrary?
*your definition of postmodern in the Tarot FAQ--what's not is how similar
it is to certain definitions proffered by certain NewAgers.
>So? There's no 'consensus' on whether tarot was invented by Egyptian
priests. That does not mean that the lack of consensus invalidates all
discussion about tarot origins, or about the value of that one idea.
*of course rejection or acceptance of one explanation would not invalidate
discussion of said subject...consensus is not the standard for tarot
origins, just as independently verifiable evidence is not the standard for
classifying movements and aesthetics of artforms
>I was not trying to 'get you', I was trying to get you to shut up and pay
attention.
*if you want to do the latter, then just fucking instruct us instead of
"trying to be the alpha male of alt.tarot"(quote from John Merritt)
>Think of your keyboard as your mouth, George, when you are typing you are
not learning.
*a very dangerous ANALogy coming from you...
>Granted that you have to write to discuss, but you don't have to write
such long tedious shit to make points which, so frequently, end with
'OK...you got me on that one'
*now you know exactly how Diane and I have felt listening to you lecture
us about postmodernism. That's ok--we know you're ignorant in some things.
That's why we're here I hope, to maybe learn.
Gordon Dahlquist
Well, granting that over the weekend this has opened up into the usual
alt.tarot genial exchange of views ...
I'm aware that I'm crossing posts with George - that I've responded to two
threads on this and the space between them tends to escalate things ... I
wanted to let this drop, because I'm not confident that anything's going
to get settled at all but couldn't resist wading in once more, trying to
be clear-headed about it all ...
One prefatory remark to this whole discussion, though - and I mention it
because again, it's the one shred of actual tarot-related interest in this
whole thing - is that I think much of the confusion about this thread is
in the disjunction between postmodernism as it's understood in general
(and specifically in relation to both emblematic, successful works of art
and equally emblematic more superficial works) and as its takes form in
tarot - which I would characterize as a significantly debased, less
sophisticated and frequently unconscious display of postmodern gestures
and strategies. I don't know of a deck that I'd characterize as
"successfully" post-modern. I can think of decks that place themselves in
relation to earlier "authoritative" decks in a manner which I find fits
the paradigm of post-modern vs modernist. I do not reject postmodernism
per se, nor do I think it has no place tackling tarot, but I don't think
post-modernism is an excuse for a lack of rigor, either - and until
there's a postmodern deck made by someone as rigorous as waite or crowley,
tarot is that much more bereft.
On 9 Aug 1996, George Leake wrote:
> Gordon Dahlquist <gd...@columbia.edu> wrote:[much editing for brevity]
> >>David Antin puts it, 'From the modernism you choose you get the
> postmodernism you deserve.'"
> >>*sure that's the cynical view of literary and generally academic
> criticism using what are generally accepted as a postmodernistic literary
> tradition.
> Why is this cynical - to me it seems self-evident.
> *because it ties down something that really eludes definition. Actually it
> doesn't even address art so much as it addresses critical response
Are you assuming that the "you" is always a viewer as opposed to an
artist? Art is frequently the very conscious result of reaction and
influence (as is criticism). I guess I also don't understand what you
mean when you say it ties down something that eludes definition. I think
Antin is granting the scope of a movement like modernism and acknowledging
how something with so many different forms and directions can lead into a
great number of specific responses - but the range of the responses
doesn't necessarily dislodge a connection between them one might recognize
as "post-modern".
> >And on what basis to you lump this sentiment with an "academic criticism"
> point of view,
> *to me it seems self-evident...seriously though, art since WWII is
> generally not as self conscious as is academic criticism
I don't think this is true. If anything, since WWII the territory between
high and low and popular and elitist seems to have widened, with the
"high" and "elitist" elements becoming more progressively self-conscious.
(I'd also argue that this self-consciousness is fundamental to a
postmodern sensibility.) Ironically, at the same time a great deal of
this "high" art partakes of traditionally "low" elements - a good example
of this is pop art, specifically someone like Lichtenstein, incorporating
advertising, comics and pulp illustration. I say ironic because the works
were seen as incomprehensible and an affront by the "low art" audiences,
appreciated by a refined, ironic taste-making elite ... It may be that
post-war criticism is even >more< self-conscious, which I'd agree with,
but I don't think it follows or is true that the art is that much less
self-conscious.
> >implying that it is somehow incomplete or innaccurate?
> *if by it you imply academic criticism, yes it does not suffice because in
> many cases those critics are trying to hard to make something fit that
> doesn't.
This seems like a really general statement, considering it's flying over
the jagged lands of structuralism post-structuralism, deconstruction,
etc.
> >George, I really think what you're saying here is whacked. There are
> clear parallels between post-modernism in literature and other art forms,
> nor do I think there's anything like the doubt or confusion you posit
> about what might consitute a postmodern literature. I would be very very
> surprised for anyone to lump Joyce in - including FW - with postmodernism
> (anyone with a brain, that is), the agenda is >clearly< a modernist one,
> in reference to a kind of "collective unconscious" that Joyce is invoking
> with the wealth of cultural/linguistic correspondences within the text.
> *if you're really surprised about those sorts of ideas about Joyce, then I
> suggest you spend a month on the Joyce distlist and check out criticism on
> Joyce over the last 15 or so years. In any case, to label Finnegans Wake
> the ur-Postmodernist novel is by no means an original idea of
> mine--believe me, I had problems with the suggestion myself when I first
> ran into some 4-5 years ago. If you really wanna check it out, I can
> backtrack and find some bibliographic citations for you.
I'm not surprised that people think these things about Joyce, I think
they're dead wrong and stupid for thinking these things. It's not that
I'm ignorant about recent critical responses to Joyce, but I think it's
easy to filter out those who want to incorporate their favorite author
into their favorite contemporarily fashionable aesthetic and those who
have a more grounded perspective about what he was doing and - as much as
we can determine, which is a lot - why.
> >As for Beckett, certainly his work continued into the more obviously
> postmodern period, but again,the driving aesthetic is in terms of
> modernism (even if he's rejecting many modernist claims within the works
> themselves, the form of the works retains a kind of formal unity that is
> certainly connected to modernism).
> *right there I suppose could call you really whacked, but let's try to
> keep this civil--ok? Your phrasing implies the period is a determinative
> factor--is that part of what you think about postmodernism? Is it a matter
> of period or aesthetic?
What I mean is simple. Beckett started writing plays in the 40's, a
"contemporary" - however laughable the comparison - to Miller and
Williams. His writing continued into the 80's, by which time the progeny
of his influence - a generally post-modern progeny - were active all
around him, though I would say that Beckett himself is not a post-modern
writer.
> *others have written on Joyce and Beckett and modernism and postmodernism.
> Needless to say if you think the Wake is modernism, many would really have
> problems with you characterizing Beckett as postmodernist
I didn't characterize him as such - if you got that impression I
apologize. I think Beckett is a modernist - different in specifics than
Joyce, but sharing some over all structures and intentions - I believe I
said "the driving aesthetic is in terms of modernism". As is Joyce, and
as is FW.
> >To divide painting from literature because there's "no cezanne" seems
> absurd - and I'd contest the singular primacy of cezanne in any case -
> *it does, but you yourself talked about the importance of response to
> earlier art in movements. Actually, I'm not dividing them at all, I'm
> actually pointing out how patently silly it is to compare them--what in
> literature is the parallel to cubism??? Dos Passos?
I'm not sure there's the need for a specific parallel from media to media
- something as radical as cubism seems thoroughly dependent on the form,
the notion of multiplicty, of mechanization, of time. I think these kinds
of issues - the desire to portray multiple levels of experience (or
information) within a given moment - are certainly addressed by a number
of authors, and in other forms ...
> >The briefest look at all the arts in the early 20th century will show an
> intense cross-referencing from different forms - the practical differences
> between media are such that an 800 page book is going to convey something
> different than a painting, but in terms of a larger cultural view, the
> parallels between painting and literature seem very clear - what possibly
> makes you think there's "hardly a comparison"?
> *perhaps because none of this is new? Do you actually think mixing medias
> and high and low art has never happened before? It's patently obvious that
> there's obviously few parallels between the arts--even less so the closer
> you look at each artist.
Well, I think there's a recognizable self-conscious to both modernism and
pos-modernism, and that one kind trace this across different forms. What
you find "patently obvious" I find unexamined, and vice versa. What-ever.
> >Well, I think he's not specifying forms because it's more a less a
> cultural given that this kind of tension between modernism and
> postmodernism exists across the cultural board.
> *A given? Hardly...are you serious about that assertion?
Sure I am - it's not categorical, but nothing in 20th century culture is.
Anyway, you disagree, fine.
> ... it's a commonplace that postmodernism explores a similar crazyquilt
> of references without the inherent structure of universal significance
> beneath it, resulting in a different series of "experimental" strategies
> perhaps contained in the assumptions of modernism but outside what it
> might delineate as "acceptable ground".
> *so you're saying that the term postmodernism is NOT an aesthetic, but
> signifies an absence of or a "willy-nillyness it doesn't matter one way or
> the other-ness" about universal significance? Not only does no one else
> out there agree about what postmodernism is, you can't even keep your own
> beliefs straight paragraph to paragraph about it...perhaps that's the
> point...argument for the sake of argument...
Well I can't speak for "no one else out there", but I stand by the
sentence you quoted. I also don't see your point in applying labels of
"aesthetic" or "philosophy" in this discussion - they strike me shifts of
emphasis within a sustained cultural discourse. The distinction between
"absence" and "willy-nillyness" is one of seriousness and magnitude and
sophistication - a continuum which to me is evident in any view of
postmodernism.
> >Here again, I think you're whacked.If you look at the world of modernism,
> you can see clearly that the "religion and philosophy" that's being
> refered to is a deeply rooted and reified network of institutional
> christianity and the "great power's" politics of power and privilege - the
> "establishment" that careened up to and through the 1st world war and
> beyond.
> *have you read Joyce and Pound? The one talks about the problems of his
> motherland being the tyranny church, state and family, and the other raves
> like a maniac about usury (not to mention many other topics not very
> friendly at all to the status quo)...
I think we agree here ... if modernism pusures a sublimnity of art to
reach goals no longer accessible through religion or politics, someone
like Joyce has clearly articulated this kind of oppositional relationship
in his work. Now, the postmodern critique of this work would be a lack of
faith in the authority or worth of the sublimnity being created (as well
as the original status quo). It's also an element of this dynamic that -
in artistic terms - modernism won its fight, and developed into a
status-quo of its own (despite the fact of the church & state's continued
existence).
> *I just realized that this doesn't even follow or refute or address the
> point I was making--which was that post 1781 tarot is largely a spiritual
> and philosophical matter--do you deny this? Now perhaps aesthetics of
> interceding art movements have affected the artwork--but how can it
> possibly affect questions of philosophy? And how *does* it?
You're missing my point by connecting the "spiritual" nature of gd tarot
with the "religion" modernism seeks to supplant by art. I don't
think that's the accurate way to parse the comparison, because gd/occult
tarot saw itself - howver spiritual - equally opposed to organized
religious experience (ie the "art" can still be spiritual, in fact its
primary goal is to reclaim the spiritual impulse from a moribund
institution).
> >Only waite and thoth - does this really make no sense to you?
> *I'd really like to hear some justification for that assertion. Really.
> I'm really getting the impression at this point that you're taking a lot
> of this for granted.
What "justifies" it is the logic of the next point you quote, which you
seem to agree with. Waite/Thoth are unified systems of signification
created in opposition to an estabished status quo. Their success in turn
establishes them as a kind of status quo, subject to critique and
revision - generally from a (consciously or no) postmodern perspective.
If you disagree with this, fine.
> >This applies exactly to tarot - what else is the golden dawn effort
> effort for a synthesized system of occult symbology vs "legitimate"
> religious experience if not comparable to something like joyce's efforts
> to surpass the "classic" narrative strategies of the balzacian novel?
> *actually, that's a good argument. If of course, that's all or even mostly
> what's up with Joyce. And of course you'll get the arguments that it would
> only extend until 1922 (the year Ulysses was published).
I think my point stands, and I don't want to wade into any more
expounding on Joyce - but I think it is "mostly" what's up with joyce,
because that "mostly" is a fundamental aesthetic and philosophical
revision of how narrative contains, perpetuates and gives meaning to the
whole of human experience.
> *although, Mathers et al weren't really trying to create something new,
> really just fitting certain parts together a certain way--think about what
> cause the split--certain parts were embraced by some and not by
> others--Christian influence, references to sex, ritual magick, equality of
> men and women--all these things and probably just a lot egos and power
> struggles--made up their conflicts. I really don't see that the Golden
> Dawn parallels Joyce's aesthetic that much. In fact, they both borrow and
> use almost a pastiche aesthetic, which sounds like...you...know...what...
Well, I think that's our perspective. I think >they< felt they were doing
something new and earth-shattering - a profound sunthesis. I don't
think they were great artists.
> >Well, you might find it insipid, but it's the exact argument people are
> making when they appropriate waite/smith deck designs for their own
> purposes, and it's the exact argument people are making when they suggest
> that card meanings are connected to what "feels right" or "makes sense",
> or when people squirm under the horrible burden of that man crowley and
> want to do it their own way.
> *I don't even think most of those who steal from Waite/Crowley are THAT
> aware! And I cannot off the top of my head think of an example of a deck
> that rejects the "elitist aesthetic autonomy" of Waite/Crowley in favor of
> "an art willing to accept the responsibility to the people basic to any
> future revolution."
What about Motherpeace?
> >and a lot of people see the present day world as fundamentally chaotic,
> so yes, there is a lot of postmodern art that takes as a primary subject
> notions of chaos, incoherence and insignificance - and they do this most
> frequently by exploiting an overwhelming number of superficial
> connections, which they posit as a relentlessly defining element of
> contemporary life.
> *ok, the thing is I don't see this as defining--you don't think the middle
> ages were chaotic? Try the Plague Years...
This isn't the same thing - european culture of the middle ages may have
been subject to chaos and pestilence and convulsion, but it was still
founded >firmly< on a coherent world view that provided a structure
through which to understand the chaos. It's about where/how significance
is generated, and how much currency it's seen to have.
> >Well, it's also sort of a joke, George, but when the point of view moves
> into postmodernism the entire playing field slides a little - from the pov
> of postmodernism the presumption of significance that modernism holds to
> can be seen as naive and "bourgeois" - as much as those modernist works
> were intense reactions against a conventional morality and worldview.
> *allow me to take a different tack--please try to follow this--seen
> through your eyes, this all makes sense--except that this world view does
> not seem to be shared by "all of them"--believe me--I know a number of New
> Agers with odd views about Crowley and the Golden Dawn--they have no
> consciousness whatsoever about this "postmodern theory" yr talking about,
> and if it there's a bourgeoisie or enemy out there, its Christianity, the
> patriarchy, the Republicans--not Crowley. And even Waite is too outside
> the grid. In fact, Waite's deck is largely seen as traditional and
> friendly. Even Thoth is regarded like a warm and fuzzy bear--why else
Well I'm not claiming that every "new" deck is a postmodern one: the
central argument here is about the perpective of "revisionist" decks to
symbological divinatory traditions. And I do think that Waite and Thoth
are the poles through which the majority of new decks pass, whether it's a
matter of appropriation or refusal. Besides, you can admire something and
still feel like it needs to be improved upon, revised, made relevnt - for
good reasons or bad.
The discourse about postmodernism - both art and criticism - tends to be
a rarified one, and I would also posit that most new agers just swim
in that pond, it doesn't make what they might ocme up with immume from
critical analysis. What-ever, again.
> >The point Jess is making seems crystal clear and occurate - the fact that
> the pomo result may be as pedestrian and sentimental ("bourgeoise" traits)
> is just more irony to the argument.
> *yes, that's very obvious, but then the further irony you two don't grasp
> is that your embracing of this idea of a "pomo" tarot movement at
> all--which comes from a Wanless press release hyping the Voyager deck if I
> understand the story right--which of course has little to do with the
> concept of postmodernism, you two have taken the New Agers' concept of the
> term to heart--that's VERY IRONIC.
No, it's not from a Wanless press release. It's common sense. It's
applying critical thinking to the culture as you find it. Again, you
disagree. I don't find it "ironic" to charcterize a deck like, say,
motherpeace, as "postmodern (I also find it - as a deck - feeble,
softheaded, ill-drawn, and toothless), because I don't think the deck
authors we are talking about have any serious understanding of
postmodernism (and I would include wanless) beyond it being a buzz-phrase,
if they have any sense of it at all. This does not eliminate the
possibility that I might (accurately) characterize the work as postmodern.
> >Well, that may be, but I think the issues are intertwined, regrettably or
> no - and what's the big fat mystery about postmodernism, anyway? It's
> been around for a while ...
> *the term has, indeed. Not only can I find scholars who will heatedly
> debate WHAT it is, but I know half a dozen scholars who think THERE'S NO
> SUCH AESTHETIC. I wonder why you seem so eager to sit on your assumptions.
Again, we disagree. My sense of this mysterious aesthetic is not an
assumption, but based years of experience both in the arts and academe.
It exists. You obviously dispute its authority.
Undoubtedly the conclusive evidence resides in atlantis, or with the
gypsies, or buried in Fez.
Apologies to others for the behemoth posts. I'm finished.
MLYoung
>George, you're not disagreeing. You simply don't seem to understand the
concept. I have yet to see you come up with anything like a definition.
*I'm afraid that you and a couple of others are in the same boat with
Wanless and others who use the term postmodernism precariously. None of
you seem to have any understanding--just re-read what you just said--it's
a clue to your lack of understanding. There is NO single definition of the
term. The definition JK bantered about is awash in the same kind of sloppy
Actually, George, it's fairly easy to define. The problem you have is
that the definition of post-modernism, unlike say that of Snicker's
bars,
tends to be somewhat context-dependent.
We'll start with the general definition. Post-modernism, as may be
deduced from the word's construction, is a reaction to modernism.
It is an umbrella term that includes reactions to the various
expressions
of modernism. Thus, post-modernism is not limited to lit.crit, or art
crit. The post-modern reaction is manifested in many disciplines.
However, core to this general post-modern reaction is post-modern
philosophy, a key component of which is deconstructivism.
Deconstructivism is a reaction to modernist philosophers such
as Nietzsche, who were the last to try to present a total worldview.
In other words, deconstructivism is not, and has never been, merely
a branch of literary criticism. Though there are deconstructivist
critics.
Now, this seems to be about the time you get confused. How can
it be both a form of lit. crit and philosophy? How can post-modernism
include art, lit crit, and philosophy and still be defined?
Well, in every case, the reaction against modernism in a particular
area is classified as post-modernism. Furthermore, these reactions
share ideas in common, perhaps the most important being a
rebellion against absolutes, of previously accepted norms and
structures, such as, in the case of writing, traditional narrative.
In a sense, there are different post-modernisms in that there
are different accepted structures and norms in different disciplines.
However, this doesn't make post-modern beyond defintion.
What it does do is make a concise definition of a given use of
"post-modern" context dependent. If we're discussing philosophy,
post-modern applies to those reacting to Nietzsche and Co. In
drama, it's playwrights reacting Ibsen's et al. prescription for
realistic drama.
That post-modern is best defined through its given context, rather than
discretely, does not render it "beyond definition."
The context in alt.tarot, as Jess made clear, is tarot decks. He,
furthermore, defined which decks he considered which. You may
dispute his divisions, but he did make them clear.
Now, the real shame about this whole thing is that the reaction to
the "modern" Waite and Thoth decks is an interesting phenomena.
As is the question of how one judge's the value of a deck if you
disregard the parameters set forth by Waite and Crowley? How do
you even define a tarot deck?
>Now, think a little more. If you throw out preestablished rules, how do
you determine the value or worth of something?
*at this point, the only way I can honestly answer this is to apply it to
something other than tarot. Let's say we're talking about the rules of
baseball. If you threw out the pre-established rules, then determining the
value would largely be subject to the resulting merits of the sport on its
own terms (and probably to a large degree to the subjective values of the
observer).
I've left this in because you're almost getting somewhere. Let's
take this a little further, if you have no pre-established rules,
how do you know if it's baseball?
Or tarot?
--margaret
--
MLYoung
ro...@ix.netcom.com(Robert Hof ) wrote:
>Ummm, George? Hate to break it to you, but aesthetics is a branch of
philosophy.
*no doubt about it--but its not quite the same thing--guess some people
aren't big enough to admit it when their wrong--kinda like a cornered
animal hissing
Yeah, that pretty much describes your behavior.
So, tell me, if you agree that aesthetics is a branch of philosophy
(as you do above), how can you say that post-modernism is an
aesthetic as opposed to a philosophy (as you did earlier)?
--margaret
Diane Purkiss
In article <320C40...@io.com>, "J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> writes
>
>To suggest that postmodernism is not relativistic AND solipsistic
>(isn't all art relativistic and solipsistic?) is just ignorant.
disagreement with jk. What is your evidence this time? It's quite true
that the popular usage of postmodernism to mean relativism has become
widespead, but the inventors of the term meant the opposite. Go away,
read Lyotard's _The Postmdern Condition_ and then we'll talk.
>
>Why don't you violate George's solipsistic
George's declaration is not solipsistic, or relativistic either. You
seem incapable of fine conceptual distinctions.
I'm not going to debate the nature of postmodernism with someone whose
definition of it derives from an encyclopedia read through the lens of
God-knows-what popular press reports. I repeat: read the primary
theoretical texts: then you can posture. Hell, everyone else has :)
Incidentally, I notice you have been silenced by my repsonse to the
historical inconsistencies of your FAQ. You're on two strikes, matey.
--
Diane
Gordon Dahlquist
On 12 Aug 1996, George Leake wrote:
> "J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
> >Then be concise. If you actually know anything about the subject you
> should be able to provide those aspects of an answer you consider to be
> most relevant.
> *sure. As far as I know, there is nothing in Derrida that relates to tarot.
Derrida is writing about the way meaning is generated within the shifting
complexities of culture and history. Simply because he may not use the
word "tarot" as an explicit subject is no excuse to turn off your brain
and decide that his writings have "no relation" to tarot - or to any
particular element of culture. One may take issue with JD, but he's one
of the most influential thinkers of the last 30 years, and a derridean
critique of tarot would be an illuminating - and I think very helpful -
aid to sorting a lot of contemporary nonsense.
In my opinion, tarot "thought" and tarot "art" are generally about three
laps behind on the raceway, perhaps just because of this kind of
literalism.
Gordon Dahlquist
On 12 Aug 1996, MLYoung wrote:
> >Now, think a little more. If you throw out preestablished rules, how do
> you determine the value or worth of something?
> *at this point, the only way I can honestly answer this is to apply it to
> something other than tarot. Let's say we're talking about the rules of
> baseball. If you threw out the pre-established rules, then determining the
> value would largely be subject to the resulting merits of the sport on its
> own terms (and probably to a large degree to the subjective values of the
> observer).
>
> I've left this in because you're almost getting somewhere. Let's
> take this a little further, if you have no pre-established rules,
> how do you know if it's baseball?
>
> Or tarot?
>
> --margaret
molto grazie. this is where the whole discussion should have started.
MLYoung
Subj: Fwd: Re: History of tarot; was Tarot FAQ v. 2.0, pt 2
Date: 96-08-11 19:59:27 EDT
From: ro...@ix.netcom.com (Robert Hof)
To: mly...@aol.com
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From: Diane Purkiss <pur...@purkiss.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.tarot
Subject: Re: History of tarot; was Tarot FAQ v. 2.0, pt 2
Once upon a time before we were arguing ad nauseum about pomo,
there was another argument. Returning now to those feuds of old
(last week, I think?)
The discussion is between myself and Diane Purkiss.
Diane wrote:
Ok. All the same, there's no evidence beyond the cards themselves for
divinatory use prior to the occultists.
I haven't said there were. Merely that the symbolism carries
weight beyond that needed for tarocchi.
And the cards themselves can be used as evidence (and have been) for
pretty nearly everything.
Sure, but that doesn't mean that they're equally good evidence for
each bit of speculation.>
>
> It seems reasonable to me to study those things--but then so
> does the study of anything, such as neoplatonism, that might
> shed light on the origins of tarot symbolism.
Quite, but one ought to be prepared to reject links as well as to forge
them. Neoplatonism is not especially or obviously more relevant to
tarot of the fifteenth century than (say) amatory games at the French
courts of love.
Well, clearly not everyone agrees with you. I'm no expert in the
area (either games or neoplatonism), and frankly I've no reason,
at this point, to reject either out of hand. You're not giving me
solid reasons to do so. At this point, it's your opinion against
the pro-neoplatonists.
> While tarot cards
> may have begun as a game, I personally find it hard to believe
that
> the images of the tarot trumps emerged full-fledged in the decks
> without antecedents.
They have antecendents. the question is, are those antecedents of
occult significance? Or are they (as I'm arguing) merely the nuts nd
bolts of late medieval iconography?
Actually, that's not my question, nor has it been my assertion.
I'm not sure trying to decide whether a symbol has specifically
"occult" significance is all that important. Certainly, it's not
provable by currently known evidence.
What does interest me is deciphering the allegory or world view
in the cards and how they might relate to other views developed
or incorporated later. After all, if something is the "nuts and
bolts,"
it's rather important, isn't it?
I should point out that my interest in tarot is neither strictly
occult (though I can and do read the cards), nor is it strictly
historical. I am interested in how cognitive systems develop,
how symbols are adapted, how meanings and theories evolve.
> The weight of the symbolism seems to go
> far beyond the requirements of the game. Indeed, our modern
playing
> cards have a much simpler symbolism.
We live in a world of simpler symbols than fifteenth-century Italy.
You haven't seen my computer lately. I'd say our world
is more, not less, semiotically complex. The symbolism,
however, is more diffuse.
What you've said is thoughtful, but not ultimately altogether
persuasive. The same images crop up in medieval miracle plays, in
estate satires, in iconography reprsentative fo persons and states like
the Sienese Good and Bad Government. None of these things have the
significance you assign to tarot; yet similar complex images are
present.
Again, I'm not really trying to persuade you of a particular
viewpoint--
more that an open mind should be kept. At least given what's
so far been presented here.
>
> Umm, well, no. As I understand it, the Fool is worth zero
points.
>It can always be safely played, but it won't take the trump.
Sorry. Too long since I played tarocchi (it was 1985, in fact). Ok,
then: The Devil, or even The Hanged Man (see below), or Death. If
anything this strengthens the argument that thse cards represented
carnival, because all those conquerers of emperoros were acknowledged
and even accepted (in theory) by emperoros themselves, adn carnival was
even meant to represent them, whereas The Fool, the beggar, might be a
bit subversive.
Well, as I recall, the role of the Fool was to say anything to
anybody
precisely because he was powerless. As for the rest, from what you
say later on, the Emporer is not subject to any other human besides
the Pope. I don't see the subversion you claim, interesting though
that
might be.
>Anyone want to discuss Fanny Kemble?)
Love to. Can we discuss Sarah Siddons as well? And Hazlitt (he's next
to Kaplan on my shelf).
Ah, you sound alphabetical.>
>There's also the problem of the tarot trumps not really following a
>strict social hierarchy--at least one that's obvious. While the Pope
>is above the Emporer, what's that Hanged Man, or traitor, doing
>above the virtues?
Treachery (as in Dante) is the ultimate vice because ti overthrows all
virtues, and a traitor can also overthrow all hierarchy and degree.
Re-
read Macbeth?
Good point, though one that would indicate a continuation rather
than
an inversion of the hierarchy.
>the case with other decks.
But other decks (mantegna, for instance) list different cards,
differnet
numbers. We affirm 22 because that's what's in later decks, not
becuase
it was the fifteenth-century rule. We don't really know whether there
were a standard number of cards.
Now, did I say there were? I don't think anyone's come out and
said there was a standardized deck at that time.
> As for being "conclusive," what do you mean? Unless you have
> reasons to believe that the document is a later forgery (always a
> possibility),
I'm always a little distrustful of MSS that are muchcited froma signel
source in occult histories. Forgery is so very common that one has to
be a little wary. However, that was not my point.
Well, I'm not sure why an occultist would forge a manuscript that
refers to an occult tool as a game . . .
> But by whose standards? You're assuming that there's no
> inherent meaning in a coincidence. That's not how an
> occultist views the world.
Agreed. But that way of viewing the world, though attractive as
fiction, does not commend itself to me as a useful rule of historical
evidence. More importantly, it is NOT the way a fifteenth century
artist or wirter would have seen the world.
Again, this reflects a difference in interest. I'm not trying to
put forth the occultist reasoning as a type of historical evidence,
but more as an understandable worldview, one that we usually
dismiss out of hand because it doesn't make sense under our
current paradigm. It is certainly not empirical.
But then, I find it interesting to consider things from different
worldviews, as an interesting creative exercise if nothing else.
As for how a 15th century artist or writer would have seen the
world? What do you mean? We're talking about a period when
astrology was a science and there was no question that God
was running the show. And, whatever you may think of Gebelin's
graft work regarding tarot, he was incorporating ideas that largely
originated prior to tarot.
> particularly pertinent?
There was the row I started a few weeks back. George did a good thread
on Mantegna, to which I contributed. Jess often does twenty or more
posts a week. If he's silent on these topics, I'm entitled to remark
upon it.
Yes, but given the example I gave, I don't think you can assume
his not commenting on something is an automatic admission of
ignorance. BTW, I've known him to quote ad nauseum when he gets
going. His primary interest does appear to be occult tarot, so
perhaps you haven't noticed this.
However, enough of Jess, if you don't mind. I can't see the point
of going round and round in circles at this time.
pastime of pointing out a neglected area. Since it is neglected, I
don't think we should rush to _sound_ conclusive about it.
Agreed. But I don't think anyone's done that.
> Well, I state what I think below. I don't share his antagonism
> at the feminist agenda, per se (though I'm simplifying his
> views as I know them here), but I am impatient with those who
> simplify and sentimentalize the complex and ambiguous.
Can you give some instances?
Great Goddess worship will do for a start. Decks, such as
MotherPeace, that are a grab bag of different religious and
ethnic traditions divorced of their cultural context.
In the case of Goddess worship, there's a willful ignorance
of archaeological fact and mythological roots. There are
lots of old earth goddesses all right and I wouldn't say any
of them were kindly benefactresses. I don't see anyone
castrating themselves to become priests of Cybele.
As you might have gathered, hwoever, it's the insipidness
rather than the "ahistoricism" that bugs me the most.
>
> That there is something inherently better about a matriarchy
> than a patriarchy
if there ever was a matriarchy in Western Europe, for which there is
virtually no evidence
Nope. Another problem I have with the whole thing. I can't
think of a matriarchal society. Even matrilineal ones tend
to cede political power to men. The main difference is that
the family head is the mother's brother rather than the husband.
>is one of those gross simplifications
just so
> as is the assumption that there was some sort of ur great
> Goddess.
Quite. I've argued against this in print, and will provide references
to anyone interested.
Hmmm, I don't think we're going to have a fight about
feminism here. At least not without some help.
> Wishful thinking--dangerous in that it distorts
> our past and prevents us from honestly evaluating the
> roots of sexual inequality.
>
Full agreement. But can you explain where so-called feminist tarot
fits
in with this? Personally, I too dislike some of it, but not because
it's bad revision of the tarot, but because it's 'difference' feminism,
in which I do not believe, and generally grounded in bogus history to
boot. If anyone else wants to add their two cents, I'd be most
interested. There'll be no flames from me.
Well, I think it's pretty clearly in the agenda of Rachel Pollack,
at least her later work. (I don't see it in 78 degrees) It's
particularly clearly expressed in her fantasy work, but readily
apparent in her work on tarot.
It's also in Mother Peace and Daughters of the Moon--I believe
that's the deck where you get a male set and a female set
of lovers--all very equal opportunity, but throwing occult
traditions
out the window.
Now regarding why it matters whether it's "bad tarot" or not.
Your view is, I believe, it ain't the original, anyway, so why
should we care if it gets distorted some more?
Well, the occult use of tarot may not have occurred til several
hundred years after the original decks, but in its 200 years
of verifiable existence it has developed its own tradition and
system. There is a complex and, to me, interesting belief
system incorporated in that tradition that has, so far, reached
its fullest expression in Waite-Smith and Thoth.
Furthermore, it is this system, not a medieval game of cards,
that, dare I say "Pomo", designers are interested in rectifying.
The MotherPeace is not being offered as a tarocchi deck, but
an occult tool. In which case, I think it's perfectly legitmate
to look at earlier occult tarot decks and systems and see how
it stacks up.
>
>like some of these decks, because I think not all tarot needs to be a
>desperately serious spiritual force. It can be a joke, a fiction, a
>pastime. As it probably was in 1500 or so.
>
> You assume jokes, fictions and past-times are somehow
superficial.
> All three can be extremely telling.
The assumption is your own. I think pastimes are so serious that I
dislike it when occultists want to turn them into spiritual evolution.
My tarot was violated in 1781.
Yes, I think here we simply have different interests.
> the very pretty St. Petersburg deck. It's nice as something to
> look at, but I never read with it. It's not intriguing. There's
> nothing "rich and strange" in it. No challenge, in a sense.
>
This applies to many decks I've seen, and it seems to me true of
Motherpeace too. What's the matter with them (only IMHO, natch) isn't
just bogus historical scholarship; it's an over-studied wish that
things
should dovetail, taken together with the characteristic modern
assumption taht anythign upsetting or hard-edged must be removed. So
we
get relatively anodyne Swords, Devil, Death, etc, and divinatory
meansings are revised also.
Yes, I agree with much of what you say here. In a sense, it's
almost a matter of taste. Wimpy decks offend my aesthetic
sense as much as anything.
However, though none of this suits my particular little book, I don't
feel very worried about it either. Some people apparently can't see
the
world in Thoth, or even RiderWaite-Smith, and so they need Greenwood or
something. Lucky them?
Well, here matters get a bit loaded. You take it lightly, but then
you don't have that strong an interest, or so it appears, in the
occult systems being rectified. Clearly, some people do. I
don't think you can expect a true believer, shall we say?, to
take the alterations gently, as nicely civil that would be.
Also, I don't think it's particularly easy to reform people if
they're
not interested, particularly over the Internet, irresistably
tempting
though it sometimes is.
I'm not against humor, per se, but these decks lack humor.
>Wonderland
> and PoMo appear to be exceptions to the rule. Certainly,
there's
> a snakey sense of humor in Thoth, for that matter.
Yes. The loss of play is just what I'm complaining about, though Waite
seems pretty humourless to me too.
Definitely one of the more earnest types. Perhaps he spent
too much time in America. We tend to be a touch more
earnest than your lot, or so it says in George Bernard Shaw.
--margaret
Diane Purkiss
---- End Forwarded Message
Diane Purkiss
In article <4urjrk$9...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, MLYoung <mly...@aol.com>
writes
>The discussion is between myself and Diane Purkiss.
<snip snip snip>
> I should point out that my interest in tarot is neither strictly
> occult (though I can and do read the cards), nor is it strictly
> historical. I am interested in how cognitive systems develop,
> how symbols are adapted, how meanings and theories evolve.
>> Umm, well, no. As I understand it, the Fool is worth zero
>points.
>>It can always be safely played, but it won't take the trump.
>Sorry. Too long since I played tarocchi (it was 1985, in fact). Ok,
>then: The Devil, or even The Hanged Man (see below), or Death. If
>anything this strengthens the argument that thse cards represented
>carnival, because all those conquerers of emperoros were acknowledged
>and even accepted (in theory) by emperoros themselves, adn carnival was
>even meant to represent them, whereas The Fool, the beggar, might be a
>bit subversive.
>
> Well, as I recall, the role of the Fool was to say anything to
>anybody
> precisely because he was powerless.
> As for the rest, from what you
> say later on, the Emporer is not subject to any other human besides
> the Pope. I don't see the subversion you claim, interesting though
>that
> might be.
>
beings.
>Treachery (as in Dante) is the ultimate vice because ti overthrows all
>virtues, and a traitor can also overthrow all hierarchy and degree.
>Re-
>read Macbeth?
>
> Good point, though one that would indicate a continuation rather
>than
> an inversion of the hierarchy.
ethey are marked _as_ reversals of order. That is, a boy bishop or a
festive king points to the absent 'norm' and thus reinforces it. This
is probably how tarot worked.
As for amatory games, I have asource (well, a possible source) from
England in the 1620s which links drawing pieces of card as love-fortunes
(they have figures on them) with other love-games. THere's also a
possible reference in Andreas Cappelanus to using chance to determine
the outcome of love games. By contrast, I have no evidence that
Renaissance neoplatonism has naything to do with any tarot prior to the
occultists.
>
> Now, did I say there were? I don't think anyone's come out and
> said there was a standardized deck at that time.
No, but everyone writes as if there were a standardised number - as if
the number 22 could be related to ther things that there are 22 of, like
the kabbalah.
>
>> As for being "conclusive," what do you mean? Unless you have
>> reasons to believe that the document is a later forgery (always a
>> possibility),
>I'm always a little distrustful of MSS that are muchcited froma signel
>source in occult histories. Forgery is so very common that one has to
>be a little wary.
> However, that was not my point.
>
> Well, I'm not sure why an occultist would forge a manuscript that
> refers to an occult tool as a game . . .
Quite; we both know we're joking. What I mean is, none of us have
actually looked at this MS itself.
> Again, this reflects a difference in interest. I'm not trying to
> put forth the occultist reasoning as a type of historical evidence,
> but more as an understandable worldview, one that we usually
> dismiss out of hand because it doesn't make sense under our
> current paradigm. It is certainly not empirical.
>
No, I know. But I don't think it can stand in for a proper historical
investigation. Which none of us have done. In which case, the correct
(or the merely honest) thing to do is to say so.
> As for how a 15th century artist or writer would have seen the
> world? What do you mean? We're talking about a period when
> astrology was a science and there was no question that God
> was running the show.
Okay, but that doesn't imply the kind of weight that an occultist (or,
say a pop-Junigan) woudl give to coincidence.
> And, whatever you may think of Gebelin's
> graft work regarding tarot, he was incorporating ideas that largely
> originated prior to tarot.
Such as? I don't see this myself.
> However, enough of Jess, if you don't mind.
I agree. How I agree!!!!!
And there's also a level of agreement between you and I on feminism
that's almost cosy. So I reiterate:
>If anyone else wants to add their two cents, I'd be most
>interested. There'll be no flames from me.
>
> Well, I think it's pretty clearly in the agenda of Rachel Pollack,
> at least her later work. (I don't see it in 78 degrees) It's
> particularly clearly expressed in her fantasy work, but readily
> apparent in her work on tarot.
>
I've lost track of what 'it' is; Goddess-worship, I presume? Agreed.
But couldn't you extend the same abstract interst and toleration to
Pollack that you want me to extend to the occultists?
>
> Now regarding why it matters whether it's "bad tarot" or not.
> Your view is, I believe, it ain't the original, anyway, so why
> should we care if it gets distorted some more?
>
My view is that there _may_ be no 'original', that even if there is none
of us have doen enough contextual work to understand it, and that
therefore claims of authenticity are specious.
> Well, the occult use of tarot may not have occurred til several
> hundred years after the original decks, but in its 200 years
> of verifiable existence it has developed its own tradition and
> system.
So might Vicki Noble after an equivalent period of time.
> There is a complex and, to me, interesting belief
> system incorporated in that tradition that has, so far, reached
> its fullest expression in Waite-Smith and Thoth.
But see how you're driven back into mild solipsisim to defend these
decks: 'to me'. What's to prevent someone arguing for hte Barbara G.
Walker Tarot on the same grounds?
>>like some of these decks, because I think not all tarot needs to be a
>>desperately serious spiritual force. It can be a joke, a fiction, a
>>pastime. As it probably was in 1500 or so.
>>
>> You assume jokes, fictions and past-times are somehow
>superficial.
>> All three can be extremely telling.
>The assumption is your own. I think pastimes are so serious that I
>dislike it when occultists want to turn them into spiritual evolution.
>My tarot was violated in 1781.
This too was partly a joke, a parody of some occultists' response to new
tarots. I don't really think I have a taort, or that nay tradition can
really be violated simply by innovation.
>
>However, though none of this suits my particular little book, I don't
>feel very worried about it either. Some people apparently can't see
>the
>world in Thoth, or even RiderWaite-Smith, and so they need Greenwood or
>something. Lucky them?
>
> Well, here matters get a bit loaded. You take it lightly, but then
> you don't have that strong an interest, or so it appears, in the
> occult systems being rectified. Clearly, some people do.
Ok, but this is solipsism again. If I allow occultists their interest
in the occult (which I don't share) then surely they (having demanded
this toleration) must also extend it to others?
> Also, I don't think it's particularly easy to reform people if
>they're
> not interested, particularly over the Internet, irresistably
>tempting
> though it sometimes is.
I quite agree. Reformation is not my aim. I'm just enjoying myself in
my own argumentative way.
> Definitely one of the more earnest types. Perhaps he spent
> too much time in America. We tend to be a touch more
> earnest than your lot, or so it says in George Bernard Shaw.
So I've noticed. Only the US could have invented a form of prose in
which jokes require an indicator lest people miss them :) :) :).
--
Diane
Diane Purkiss
In article <321038...@io.com>, "J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> writes
>
>Explain the difference, precisely, between 'popular' usage
>and whatever other kind of usage you feel has more importance
>in this discussion of pomo tarot.
Distinguishing between academic and popular usage assigns no value to
either. How absurdly oversensitive you are on these 'credentialist'
(your ugly word) issues.
>> I'm not going to debate the nature of postmodernism
>your definition, what about other readers here who might 'benefit'
>from your knowledge?
If anyone still has the hardihood to carry on reading this endless knot
of a thread, I urge them to go away and _read the primary texts_, rather
than accepting someone else's definition of either postmodernism or
deconstruction because it will certainly be partial and will quite
likely be wrong.
I suggest they start with Steven Connor's excellent introduction,
Postmodern Culture, and then go on to Lyotard's Postmodern Condition in
the MUP translation followed by Baudrillard's writing as selected in the
volume published by Basil Blackwell. With regard to this debate - about
relativism and solipsism - they might then like to look more
specifically at two books by Andrew Ross; one is an essay collection
about postmodern politics and the other is his fascinating _Strange
Weather_, on the New Age and postmodernity.
On deconstruction, the best starting-point for a beginner is Barbara
Johnson's World of Diference, but those with ambitions can move quickly
on to Derrida's 'Structure, Sign and Play in thw Field of Human
Sciences'. Incidentally, avoid Gayatri Spivak's translations where
possible; they're not unusually inaccurate, but her prose is awful.
Jess, you haven't done the necessary work to understand these ideas.
You haven't read the thinkers you're discussing. You're embarrassing
yourself and the rest of us. Drop it.
>You know, the real problem here is that both of you know if we
>expose everyone here to even a few paragraphs of 'scholarly'
>debate about this question, they will immediately know what
>a nebulous pile of shit the academic discussion really is.
Thank you, Allan Bloom. Or are you Jesse Helms? (Jess=Jesse - Nah).
How terribly anti-academic you are. So eager to cut down others as
insufficiently learned (for instance, a previous thread on Shakespeare),
and so banally anti-intellectual yourself. You're not Camille Paglia,
by any chance???
>
>That's already, and remarkably easily too, been illustrated
>by my little quote from Derrida.
I must have missed that. Do repost it; I'd hate to miss out on the one
piece of Derrida you know. I hope it wasn't 'il n'y a pas de hors-
texte'. Incidentally, if you are going to quote Derrida, perhaps you
should read 'Signature Event Context'?
>Nope, just don't have the inclination to do your research for you
>for free.
I'm happy for you to publish your alleged research in a learned journal
under your own name, which would render it safe for ever from plagiarism
from the likes of wicked, thuggish me. You could then simply post the
reference to alt.tarot, and we could all read your research, yet if we
used it, we would have to cite it.
You could even print your research in a not-so-learned occult journal.
Then you would at least be identified with the ideas and research
therein.
This is the second time I've suggested it. Yet you seem strangely
reluctant.
This 'research' of yours, according to your chum Margaret, consists of
looking at the reproductions of decks in a secondary source. If this is
really what you are swanking about, delete the initial 's' of that word.
Let me make myself absolutely clear. I don't want your research. I
don't want to steal it or use it in any way. I just don't believe it
exists. I will guarantee not to republish it if you post it here. if
you email it to me, ditto, plus I will post to say that I have received
it. But I don't think either of these things will happen. Because I
don't think there is any research.
What do others think?
> You are one in a long and indistinguished
(do you mean undistinguished, or indistinguishable?)
>line of
>half-educated nitwits who blunder on here from time to time
>blustering about how 'their tarot' was killed back in 1781.
I never said that. Violated was the word I used. And it was a joke.
It was, in fact, a parody of you and your endless miserable sighs about
the violation of your beloved occultists by 'postmodernists'.
Incidentally, long line of nitwits: how curious that I've never seen any
postings from you. You've all been oddly silent during these historical
debates. Perhaps you are living on the same planet as Jess's research?
--
Diane
MLYoung
mly...@aol.com (MLYoung) wrote:
>No, because Diane was asking when was there a first mention of 22 trumps.
*I coulda sworn she was actually questioning Jess Karlin's new version of
tarot FAQ
One does not cancel out the other. The question was: When were there
22 trumps? Answer: very early, but there were also decks with other
numbers of trumps very early and very late. I have a recent deck,
for example, with 23.
Which brings us to the question--does the fact that this one deck
has 23 Major trumps negate the occult meaning of 22 trumps in the
Thoth and Waite decks?
Or, for that matter, that the Mantegna deck had more than 22 major
trumps does not really say much one way or another about the
possible occult significance of the 22 major trumps in other
contemporaneous decks. It merely says that that occult signifcance
was either not known or ignored by the creator of the Mantegna deck.
Note, I am not saying that there was an occult significance in those
decks with 22 majors, just that the number of trumps in the Mantegna
doesn't prove all that much conclusively.
--margaret.
--margaret
MLYoung
If anyone still has the hardihood to carry on reading this endless knot
of a thread, I urge them to go away and _read the primary texts_, rather
than accepting someone else's definition of either postmodernism or
deconstruction because it will certainly be partial and will quite
likely be wrong.
Well, you know, I thought I'd do just that. So, I consulted
some academics I know . . .
I suggest they start with Steven Connor's excellent introduction,
Postmodern Culture, and then go on to Lyotard's Postmodern Condition in
the MUP translation followed by Baudrillard's writing as selected in the
volume published by Basil Blackwell. With regard to this debate - about
relativism and solipsism - they might then like to look more
specifically at two books by Andrew Ross; one is an essay collection
about postmodern politics and the other is his fascinating _Strange
Weather_, on the New Age and postmodernity.
and most of these books weren't on the list. In fact,
the only one was the Lyotard--though one academic says that's
just lit. crit.
On deconstruction, the best starting-point for a beginner is Barbara
Johnson's World of Diference, but those with ambitions can move quickly
on to Derrida's 'Structure, Sign and Play in thw Field of Human
Sciences'. Incidentally, avoid Gayatri Spivak's translations where
possible; they're not unusually inaccurate, but her prose is awful.
Well, Derrida's primary, though Johnson isn't on the list.
Meanwhile, you omitted Foucault, Gadamer, Lacan and
Heidegger. Personally, I've a longstanding fondness for
Levi-Strauss.
What, by the way, is your authority for making these
recommendations?
Thank you, Allan Bloom. Or are you Jesse Helms? (Jess=Jesse - Nah).
How terribly anti-academic you are. So eager to cut down others as
insufficiently learned (for instance, a previous thread on Shakespeare),
and so banally anti-intellectual yourself. You're not Camille Paglia,
by any chance???
Paglia is, of course, an academic as was Bloom. Two reasons
not to give undue weight to academic credentials.
Now, about that Jesse Helms reference--sounds like a reference
to American politics to me. I assume that if you're going to
refer to American politics that you have, of course, read the
primary
texts. I look forward to your analysis of the Federalist papers.
This 'research' of yours, according to your chum Margaret, consists of
looking at the reproductions of decks in a secondary source. If this is
really what you are swanking about, delete the initial 's' of that word.
Now, there's misconstruing matters for you.
Now, from what I can see, this is all going downhill pretty fast.
Instead of defining post-modernism, or at least clearly
showing what's wrong with the way the term is being used,
you're simply saying people have no right to use the term
unless they've read particular texts. You have some academic
credentials and you figure other people don'tt, so you're using
this as a form of one upmanship.
Stop it. At this point, you put Jess' arrogance to shame with
your own.
There is an interesting topic to be discussed--what defines a
tarot deck should be--but all this bickering over the use of
sacred words has left such a discussion in the dust.
--margaret
MLYoung
Subject: Re: History of tarot; was Tarot FAQ v. 2.0, pt 2
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 22:31:26 +0100
In article <4urjrk$9...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, MLYoung <mly...@aol.com>
writes
>The discussion is between myself and Diane Purkiss.
I don't mind if others want to comment on what I write.
Diane, it was a description, not a prescription. Calm down.
> Well, as I recall, the role of the Fool was to say anything to
>anybody
> precisely because he was powerless.
I think this is a fool, rather than a misero.
> As for the rest, from what you
> say later on, the Emporer is not subject to any other human
besides
> the Pope. I don't see the subversion you claim, interesting
though
>that
> might be.
>
I don't see how this follows from anything I say. Traitors are human
beings.
Yes, but your defense of the placement is that the card represents
a concept--Treachery because that is what conquers the
virtues.
>Treachery (as in Dante) is the ultimate vice because ti overthrows all
>virtues, and a traitor can also overthrow all hierarchy and degree.
>Re-
>read Macbeth?
>
> Good point, though one that would indicate a continuation rather
>than
> an inversion of the hierarchy.
So does carnival in that all reversals are recuperable precisely becaus
ethey are marked _as_ reversals of order. That is, a boy bishop or a
festive king points to the absent 'norm' and thus reinforces it. This
is probably how tarot worked.
Yes, but we don't have a reversal at work here, remember? The
order of the cards is their order in tarocchi. An emporer is
stronger
than any person other than the Pope.
As for amatory games, I have asource (well, a possible source) from
England in the 1620s which links drawing pieces of card as love-fortunes
(they have figures on them) with other love-games. THere's also a
possible reference in Andreas Cappelanus to using chance to determine
the outcome of love games. By contrast, I have no evidence that
Renaissance neoplatonism has naything to do with any tarot prior to the
occultists.
Hmmm, 1620s. You know, I finally unearthed my Kaplan and it
strikes me that there are some interesting refereces. By 1589,
for example, Aretino's Les Cartes Parlantes is talking about
the interpretation of the cards--such as the Emporer representing
the laws of the people. Right above the Aretino is a reference to
Marcolino's Le Sorti, in which a form of divination using cards
(minors in this case) is discussed.
Looks like there was a sense early on that the trumps were not
simple markers in a card game. The symbolism always mattered.
>
> Now, did I say there were? I don't think anyone's come out and
> said there was a standardized deck at that time.
No, but everyone writes as if there were a standardised number - as if
the number 22 could be related to ther things that there are 22 of, like
the kabbalah.
Another interesting note in Kaplan. That troublesome exception
Tarot de Mantegna is by no means definitely a tarot deck. It
bears closer kinship to minchiate decks. In which case,
the 22 may be more standardized than it first appears.
>
> Well, I'm not sure why an occultist would forge a manuscript that
> refers to an occult tool as a game . . .
Quite; we both know we're joking. What I mean is, none of us have
actually looked at this MS itself.
I'm curious, except for ascertaining authenticity, what is looking
at the actual manuscript rather than a reproduction going to
show?
> Again, this reflects a difference in interest. I'm not trying to
> put forth the occultist reasoning as a type of historical evidence,
> but more as an understandable worldview, one that we usually
> dismiss out of hand because it doesn't make sense under our
> current paradigm. It is certainly not empirical.
>
No, I know. But I don't think it can stand in for a proper historical
investigation. Which none of us have done. In which case, the correct
(or the merely honest) thing to do is to say so.
To what are you responding here?
I don't think there's anyone saying that Gebelin was some
great historian or that his use of the tarot as an occult tool
was based on a solid historical foundation. I do think it's
a valid creative response and consistent with a cultural
tradition--thus I don't find it a violation the way you do.
If anything, I find that a somewhat simplistic notion.
That said, I think there's always room for factual and empirical
investigation. I don't know anyone who'd seriously disagree.
.
> As for how a 15th century artist or writer would have seen the
> world? What do you mean? We're talking about a period when
> astrology was a science and there was no question that God
> was running the show.
Okay, but that doesn't imply the kind of weight that an occultist (or,
say a pop-Junigan) woudl give to coincidence.
Umm, occultism was part of the 15th c. viewpoint. Indeed, in
many ways, occultism is seeing the world through a
Renaissance lens. You can't simply spin it off as something
not integral to the culture in which tarot evolved, whether or
not tarot had anything to do with it.
> And, whatever you may think of Gebelin's
> graft work regarding tarot, he was incorporating ideas that largely
> originated prior to tarot.
Such as? I don't see this myself.
The significance of 22 is well established in Qabalism. Before
I go any further, let me ask? How familiar are you with occult
traditions and Qabalism?
>If anyone else wants to add their two cents, I'd be most
>interested. There'll be no flames from me.
>
> Well, I think it's pretty clearly in the agenda of Rachel Pollack,
> at least her later work. (I don't see it in 78 degrees) It's
> particularly clearly expressed in her fantasy work, but readily
> apparent in her work on tarot.
>
I've lost track of what 'it' is; Goddess-worship, I presume? Agreed.
But couldn't you extend the same abstract interst and toleration to
Pollack that you want me to extend to the occultists?
No. There's a large difference in quality. Not all occultists
are of equal interest; same with modern tarot writers. I
judge each according to her or his merits. The information is
available to Pollack that undercuts her premise--why doesn't
she re-examine her work in light of this information? I don't
respect that unwillingness to scrutinize one's own work.
> Now regarding why it matters whether it's "bad tarot" or not.
> Your view is, I believe, it ain't the original, anyway, so why
> should we care if it gets distorted some more?
>
My view is that there _may_ be no 'original', that even if there is none
of us have doen enough contextual work to understand it, and that
therefore claims of authenticity are specious.
> Well, the occult use of tarot may not have occurred til several
> hundred years after the original decks, but in its 200 years
> of verifiable existence it has developed its own tradition and
> system.
So might Vicki Noble after an equivalent period of time.
I doubt it. Good myth-making does not consist of divorcing
things from their cultural context and making them nice.
Self-conscious cuteness has never had much aesthetic
merit.
> There is a complex and, to me, interesting belief
> system incorporated in that tradition that has, so far, reached
> its fullest expression in Waite-Smith and Thoth.
But see how you're driven back into mild solipsisim to defend these
decks: 'to me'. What's to prevent someone arguing for hte Barbara G.
Walker Tarot on the same grounds?
Sigh, well I'm being a bit lazy right here because I don't
really feel like going into what does and does not make a
valid cognitive system. The short answer is, you could argue
that about Barbara Walker, but when it came to examining the
specifics, the cognitive system would not hold up to scrutiny.
Throwing an animal skin on the magician neither a shaman nor
a magician makes. It's trite cross-culturism. By doing this,
what has really been illuminated? That they're really the same
thing? To think that, shows a superficial understanding of both.
It's the sort of thing that gives pastiche a bad name--it's why
I called such decks degraded postmodernism. I like Levi-Strauss'
notion of the briquoleur, but there are good and bad briquoleurs--
appropriations that resonate and reveal deeper truths and ones
that do not.
o serious that I
>dislike it when occultists want to turn them into spiritual evolution.
>My tarot was violated in 1781.
This too was partly a joke, a parody of some occultists' response to new
tarots. I don't really think I have a taort, or that nay tradition can
really be violated simply by innovation.
>
Simply by innovation--no. If anything, innovation is a necessity
for continued relevance. Once again, however, it's a question of
good and bad innovation. We can go deck by deck, if you wish
and I can tell you why or why not I think the innovation does or
does not work.
But I think I'll turn this around: on what grounds, besides a
generic
tolerance of innovation in an impure tradition, do you defend the
MotherPeace deck? What makes it worthy?
>However, though none of this suits my particular little book, I
don't
>feel very worried about it either. Some people apparently can't see
>the
>world in Thoth, or even RiderWaite-Smith, and so they need Greenwood or
>something. Lucky them?
>
> Well, here matters get a bit loaded. You take it lightly, but
then
> you don't have that strong an interest, or so it appears, in the
> occult systems being rectified. Clearly, some people do.
Ok, but this is solipsism again. If I allow occultists their interest
in the occult (which I don't share) then surely they (having demanded
this toleration) must also extend it to others?
You've set up a strawman here. No one's said that these decks
can't exist. All that's happened, all that probably can happen
in
a usenet forum, is that some people have sharply criticized the
decks. Once again, despite you're having said this is not the
case, you're equating tolerance with lack of judgment.
> Also, I don't think it's particularly easy to reform people if
>they're
> not interested, particularly over the Internet, irresistably
>tempting
> though it sometimes is.
I quite agree. Reformation is not my aim. I'm just enjoying myself in
my own argumentative way.
Hmmm, just make sure you make arguments instead of sermons.
Lately, you've had a bit of a "How dare you!" attitude, but you
don't offer reason or evidence for your assertions.
I mean, it's a little annoying to be told I can't use a word
because
I haven't read a particular set of books--particularly when there
seems to be no indication that I've misused or misunderstood it.
--margaret
>
--
Diane
Autorbis
The following I want to put in the discussion:
I think, the first real evidence for any "22" connected to any sort of
tarot
is the Lazzarelli Manuscript, which is dated 1471 and was later in the
possession of Montefeltro.
There are 22 pictures sorted out of the Mantegna-Tarot in it (actually
only 18 are from the Mantegna, the four remaining were Victoria, Pluto,
Neptun and Juno. It is a strange gathering of Greek gods, I don't
understand the system behind it.
The second one is the Boiardo-poem and he also looks not very near to the
Tarot as it is common today (maybe around 1480 or later).
It contains two sonnetts and 78 terzines. It's name is "Capitoli del
giuoci de tarocchi", but the name should be younger than the poem. Some
interpreters believe, that it was produced in the latest years of Boiardo
(died in the 90ies pf 15th century). It was printed first in an anthology
1526 (don't know the title).
The third one is the Sola-Busco-Tarot from 1491, but it is also quite
different.
The fourth is rather near to it: The list of this franciscian monk (around
1480 - 1500)
has 22 names, only one - sagitta for tower - is a little bit surprizing.
A photographical picture is in one of the Kaplan encyclopedias.
Lothar
Diane Purkiss
nearly the only substance in jk's post derives from Ellis>
>John Ellis has pointed out how some deconstructionists
>(and the argument certainly applies to pomo 'theorists' as
>well) protest that their opponents have not read 'all the
>texts in question', or that they have read them wrong (in
>an 'anti-deconstructionist' spirit).
Well, yes. But so do those who disagree about manuscript emendations
of Aristotle. Moreover, some of the critics of poststructuralism and
deconstruction really haven't read very much of what they criticise,
though this does not apply to Ellis. We don't learn anything from all
this about the nature of postmodernity or postmodern theory. What we
learn is that academics often resort to the same boring modes of
invective when cornered, like some trolls I know.
>Ellis further remarks (and this really goes to the heart of
>the problem for Diane in this discussion) that 'any theory,
>philosophical position or argument worth the name will be
>capable of accurate statements in a form that can be judged
>on its merit by anyone who has taken the trouble to understand
>it, and not just by those---the born again converts---who
>have read absolutely everything and done so, moreover, in a
>spirit of unquestioning acceptance.
An _accurate_, moderately lucid statement of the nature of the various
branches of postmodern theory, and an additional argument about what
constitutes postmodernity, would be long (maybe 50 000 words +); Eliis
knows this, which is why he's written a book and several articles on
this and related topics, rather than faffing about in newsgroups.
I'm not going to post something of that length here. Or write it, for
that matter, unless someone pays me to; they'd have to pay a lot,
because I really find the whole topic boring. Which is why I suggested
that people read a diversity of primary texts, incidentally not all in
agreement with me or each other, rather than reading what would indeed
be an inadequate summary from me or anyone else.
>the basic distrust so many
>people have in any kind of TRUE explanation of tarot,
>is postmodern.
>I believe it is unquestionably
>so since it evokes a 'fragmentary' view of tarot symbolism
>(each symbolic 'language game' is thus valid because it
>is autonomous and does not require linkage to some organic
>whole, such as an 'occult' paradigm).
That's not my critique of your own positions; your efforts to build up a
picture of me would not get you a job profiling criminals for the FBI.
First I was a New Age ecumenist. Now I'm a British snob who's in love
with postmodernity. These fantasies can't all be true.
I don't see the occultists' symbology as fragmentary, but simply as
historically constructed, like anyone else's. Mine included. Far from
being autonomous, I would see the occultists and for that matter
Visconti-Sforza and Mantegna, as deeply 'derivative', in the sense that
they are redeploying existing symbolic sytems and recombinbing them to
creat an ostensibly 'new' effect. So what is the relevance of your
remark?
>I like
>Camille Paglia so I don't consider your remark particularly
>insulting.
It wasn't an insult. It was a joke <wearily>. (She likes tarot, which
is why I thought of it.) Hi, Camille, are you here too? :) Loved your
rude essays on the academy, but the classical scholarship in _Sexual
Personae_ had whiskers. Oh, and the attack on Jack Winkler was ott.
>As I've said in the past, the research is done AND published.
>If you've not found it yet that's your problem.
Post me the reference, publicly or privately, and I'll take back every
harsh word I've said about your research and the lack thereof, provided
of course said publication has some relevance to what we've been
discussing all along, the history of tarot.
If you don't, I'm off to Boot Hill, to slay myself on the grave of the
Western. But you might want to recall the plot of _High Plains
Drifter_.
>You ARE sort of a thug. You attempted to bully everyone here away
>from discussions which you decided were in YOUR territory.
The words 'pot', 'kettle' and 'black' come rather forcibly to mind. So
do the words 'poacher', 'turned' and 'gamekeeper'.
>No, I think it was actually written in a moment of self-confession,
>where you pointed out to us all how you really think and feel
>about tarot. Since 'your' tarot died in 1781, nothing that
>has come since is really tarot.
Wrong again. I don't think the pre-1781 tarot is sacred, or the post
1781 tarot, or any other tarot. I have preferences but these too are
historical artefacts. As are yours.
--
Diane
George Leake
auto...@aol.com (Autorbis) wrote:
>I think, the first real evidence for any "22" connected to any sort of
tarot is the Lazzarelli Manuscript, which is dated 1471 and was later in
Mantegna-Tarot in it (actually only 18 are from the Mantegna, the four
remaining were Victoria, Pluto, Neptun and Juno. It is a strange gathering
of Greek gods, I don't understand the system behind it.
understands the Triumph conceit. If you have seen depictions of the
Triumph conceit in painting and other graphic arts you'd see such "strange
gatherings of Greek Gods".
George Leake
"J. Karlin" <r3wi...@io.com> wrote:
>And that's been the history of this thread, those who were annoyed about
my use of the term 'postmodern' in the FAQ have NEVER been able to show
in concrete terms why the usage was 'wrong'.
*"annoyed" is another assumption of yours just like the assumption that
there is a consensus about what postmodernism means. Personally, I
continue to be *amused*. Twice in the last month you've proven my theorem
that we're all ignorant, just in different areas. Carry on. Perhaps we can
put this to a video.
>Worse than this, it appears that their understanding of postmodernism
eliminates the possibility of having ANY right or wrong opinions about it,
*I've said it before--its a question of your definition being vague. In
any case, this is pointless. Shooting fish in a barrel becomes boring.
>I've read all the people who have any relavance to these ideas in this
context---tarot.
*I still don't see the connection. Or evidence that ANY tarot deck writer
or tarot deck designer has an inkling of what postmodernism means.
George Leake
mly...@aol.com (MLYoung) wrote:
> One does not cancel out the other. The question was: When were there
> 22 trumps? Answer: very early, but there were also decks with other
> numbers of trumps very early and very late. I have a recent deck,
> for example, with 23.
> Which brings us to the question--does the fact that this one deck
> has 23 Major trumps negate the occult meaning of 22 trumps in the
> Thoth and Waite decks?
negates the meaning of anyone else's (in this case Waite and Crowley's
decks) work? In other words, of course not.
> Or, for that matter, that the Mantegna deck had more than 22 major
> trumps does not really say much one way or another about the
> possible occult significance of the 22 major trumps in other
> contemporaneous decks. It merely says that that occult signifcance
> was either not known or ignored by the creator of the Mantegna deck.
*right.
> Note, I am not saying that there was an occult significance in those
> decks with 22 majors, just that the number of trumps in the Mantegna
> doesn't prove all that much conclusively.
*in other words the numbers in and of themselves do not mean anything
Diane Purkiss
In article <4v7uct$3...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, MLYoung <mly...@aol.com>
writes
I wrote this many moons ago, but my server has been behaving oddly,
refusing to have any truck with this newsgroup.
>So does carnival in that all reversals are recuperable precisely becaus
>ethey are marked _as_ reversals of order. That is, a boy bishop or a
>festive king points to the absent 'norm' and thus reinforces it. This
>is probably how tarot worked.
>
> order of the cards is their order in tarocchi. An emporer is
>stronger
> than any person other than the Pope.
are struggling on the table together. And treachery overcoming the
emperor would not be seen as part of a divinely endorsed hierarchy.
Incidentally, and something I've been meaning to ask for ages: how do
you see the gender of Death in early decks? In Petrarch's trionfo it's
female.
> Hmmm, 1620s. You know, I finally unearthed my Kaplan and it
> strikes me that there are some interesting refereces. By 1589,
> for example, Aretino's Les Cartes Parlantes is talking about
> the interpretation of the cards--such as the Emporer representing
> the laws of the people. Right above the Aretino is a reference to
> Marcolino's Le Sorti, in which a form of divination using cards
> (minors in this case) is discussed.
>
> Looks like there was a sense early on that the trumps were not
> simple markers in a card game. The symbolism always mattered.
Yes, I think we can agree absolutely on this. The question is, did it
have occult significance? yoru Kaplan comments (esp. the Aretino) are
well-taken. Does Aretino's rather odd significance as THe Renaissnace
libertine matter here?
>No, but everyone writes as if there were a standardised number - as if
>the number 22 could be related to ther things that there are 22 of, like
>the kabbalah.
>Quite; we both know we're joking. What I mean is, none of us have
>actually looked at this MS itself.
>
> I'm curious, except for ascertaining authenticity, what is looking
> at the actual manuscript rather than a reproduction going to
> show?
Well, its also possible that there are mistranscriptions, abbreviations,
deviations, and general emendations of the MS text. It's always better
to look at an original if you can :). In this case, the thing is
translated and we don't even have an actual transcription.
It's usually easier to ascertain provenance if that's unknown with the
vol. in your hands: you can look at binding, paper or parchment, any MS
notes or inscriptions, marginalia, and what it's bound with, if
anything. A real expert, which I certainly am not, can virtually tell
which scriptorium it came from just form the line ruling. Sometimes you
can learn a lot from the hand. Sometimes it's even identifiable.
All of which may be and often is a complete waste of an airfare, but I
always worry in my tidy way if no-one's done this work, and everyone
cites the thing regardless. I've seen so many cases of
mistranscriptions elevated to the status of scholarly fact that I'm
admittedly paranoid.
> To what are you responding here?
> I don't think there's anyone saying that Gebelin was some
> great historian or that his use of the tarot as an occult tool
> was based on a solid historical foundation.
> I do think it's
> a valid creative response and consistent with a cultural
> tradition--thus I don't find it a violation the way you do.
> If anything, I find that a somewhat simplistic notion.
I think it's fine as a _creative_ response. As I say elsewhere, the
'violated' was kind of a joke because you're all so down on Motherpeace
as a violation.
In a way, this whole thread and its predecessor have been tonally a kind
of serious legpull; what if I wrote about the pre-occultist tarot in
relation to the occultists with the same anguished and slightly self-
righteous earnestness that you all write about Thoth in relation to
'postmodernity'?
It was all meant to force the boot, however briefly, onto the other
foot, hence my hectoring tone and minatory style, which were of course
copies too.
Hpwever, I also mean what I've said quite seriously, and have always
told the truth as I see it.
> Umm, occultism was part of the 15th c. viewpoint.
Yes and no. 15th century beliefs about the supernatural were very
different from thsoe available in 1781.
> Indeed, in
> many ways, occultism is seeing the world through a
> Renaissance lens.
I disagree completely. The Renaissance occultists are not very like
the Romantic occultists.
Just one difference: take, for instance, Pico's idea that man could make
himslef like an angel by learning about the supernatural. That sound
superficially like alter ideas of self-advancement, but it's really
hugely more transgressive because it fleis int eh fac eof accepted
Renaisance wisdom on the subject. romanticism, on the other hand, backs
the self-fashioning outsider. The context is different; therefore the
ideas have difernet meanings.
> The significance of 22 is well established in Qabalism. Before
> I go any further, let me ask? How familiar are you with occult
> traditions and Qabalism?
Qabalism, just the basics, I think. Just the tree, really, and a few of
its uses.
Occult traditions: which ones? I know a fair amount (not a lot; there's
so much to know) about virtually every Renaissance interest in the
supernatural in Western Europe. On the Romantics and post-Romantics, I
know a bit about the French movements in the immediately pre-
Revolutionary era, and something about the Golden Dawn, Yeats and the
Celtic twilight. But I'm not an expert and have never pretended to be.
Er.. how about you?
> No. There's a large difference in quality. Not all occultists
> are of equal interest; same with modern tarot writers. I
> judge each according to her or his merits.
Ok, but what I'm trying to get at are your criteria. I think there's a
large area of aesthetic agreement between us. In other areas, I'm less
clear about what you are saying.
>
> I doubt it. Good myth-making does not consist of divorcing
> things from their cultural context and making them nice.
> Self-conscious cuteness has never had much aesthetic
> merit.
Agreed, but that doesn't unfortunately make it prone to disappearance,
Cute tiny fairies with fluffy wings have lasted for 350 years or so, and
largely driven out the aesthetically more satisfying bogles and nasties.
Christianity saw off the worship of Mithras and the cult of Apollonius
of Tyana, both more interesting than itself.
> Sigh, well I'm being a bit lazy right here because I don't
> really feel like going into what does and does not make a
> valid cognitive system.
Well, then this discussion has nowhere to go.
> The short answer is, you could argue
> that about Barbara Walker, but when it came to examining the
> specifics, the cognitive system would not hold up to scrutiny.
> Throwing an animal skin on the magician neither a shaman nor
> a magician makes.
Agreed. But what makes this universally true? Some people appear to
like trite cross-culturalism. Millions of people saw Dances With
Wolves, and took Kevin Costner for some kind of Wise Man.
My feeling is that it's difficult to avoid solipsism, overt or covert,
when discussing these matters.
I also wonder how Motherpece would look if we saw it not as history
(we're agreed that it's incredibly bad history) or as art (we're agreed
it's not great art too) but as fiction. I would want to put in a genre,
feminist sf or fantasy, with a lot of other sories I din't like but
found interesting for what their subtexts told us aobut how those women
wanted the world to be.
For instance, if we look at the she-magician in Motherpeace, this isn't
just about being furry and hence linked with the land and with tribes.
Being furry symbolises something. It's about being embodied, physically
and thus symbolically maternal. In other words, it's a Romantic fantasy
of unruly femininity: Woman as the pre-civilised unconscious of the
West. Which I find both depressing and stupid as a world-view, but
interesting as a fiction.
> I like Levi-Strauss'
> notion of the briquoleur,
The Visconti-Sforza decks are bricolage too.
>but there are good and bad briquoleurs--
> appropriations that resonate and reveal deeper truths and ones
> that do not.
What makes them 'good' or 'bad', though? That's what doesn't seem clear
to me yet. Sorry if I'm being dense.
> But I think I'll turn this around: on what grounds, besides a
>generic
> tolerance of innovation in an impure tradition, do you defend the
> MotherPeace deck? What makes it worthy?
Sorry - the ones you've excluded were my sole grounds for defending it,
and I think that's been clear all along. That's an elegant formulation
of them, though.
>Ok, but this is solipsism again. If I allow occultists their interest
>in the occult (which I don't share) then surely they (having demanded
>this toleration) must also extend it to others?
>
> You've set up a strawman here. No one's said that these decks
> can't exist. All that's happened, all that probably can happen
>in
> a usenet forum, is that some people have sharply criticized the
> decks.
Yes, but what I'm quarrelling with is the grounds on which this is done,
some of which are still unclear to me in your particualr case.
That is, if tarot really is an impure tradition, then Motherpeace can't
be wrong because it's a break with tradition. If its worth derives from
longevity, then worth may eventually be attached to Motherpeace. And so
on.
Judgement is fine, but it needs to be clearly grounded in relatively
consistent criteria.
>
> Hmmm, just make sure you make arguments instead of sermons.
> Lately, you've had a bit of a "How dare you!" attitude, but you
> don't offer reason or evidence for your assertions.
I did originally offer quite a lengthy posting on why postmodernidsm and
psotmodern theory are different things, and why neither is relativism.
If that counts as reason. Then things got a bit inflamed, and some
shooting from the hip went on all round.
>
> I mean, it's a little annoying to be told I can't use a word
>because
> I haven't read a particular set of books--particularly when there
> seems to be no indication that I've misused or misunderstood it.
Hang on a minute. I never said you couldn't use any word you like. You
can. And you do.
What I did and do say is that many people talk largely about that they
wot not of in these areas, and also that postmodernism is not solipsism,
relativism or the notion that it's all your own opinion, innit?
Some people here seemed to think it was, and I suggested they read the
primary sources and learn.
I don't think I even saw your original post on postmodernism, so I can't
comment on your specific use of it.
--
Diane
Diane Purkiss
In article <4v7uce$3...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, MLYoung <mly...@aol.com>
writes
I wrote this many moons ago, but my server has refused to send email to
newsgroups for some odd reason of its own.
>
> Well, you know, I thought I'd do just that. So, I consulted
> some academics I know . . .
> the only one was the Lyotard--though one academic says that's
> just lit. crit.
texts are, especially across disciplinary boundaries. I don't know what
discipline the people you consulted were from, but IMHO their 'list' is
really a list of structuralists and poststructuralists. Even so, one
could quibble. Why not Nietzsche, for instance, who's really more
'primary' than anyone? Why so few actual theorists of postmodernity?
But I think I see what you mean. The problem with arguments about
primary texts is that there's always something more 'primary' than any
text you cite; if Lacan, why not Freud, etc, if Freud, must we also read
Charcot, Krafftt-Ebbing, Edward Jorden, Aristotle, and on and on.
Of course that's completely right in theory, but in the real world there
are degrees of primacy. For instance, a debate is going on here about
Thoth and what books to read, and I think most of us might agree that
Crowley's Book of Thoth is more 'primary' than Angleles Arrien's book on
tarot, which uses the Thoth deck.
> Paglia is, of course, an academic as was Bloom. Two reasons
> not to give undue weight to academic credentials.
I don't know why you all keep referring this whole thing back to
academic credentials. I don't care whehter any of you have them or not.
for all I know, you're all triple PhDs. Good for you. My point, and it
applies to the well-credentialled Bloom, Harold or Allan, is that if you
want to refer to something you should read it up. Privately, or at the
taxpayers' expense; I don't care which.
>I assume that if you're going to
> refer to American politics that you have, of course, read the
>primary
> texts. I look forward to your analysis of the Federalist papers.
Laughter, hollow. I take your point, and perhaps my view of Jesse Helms
is as much of a caricature as Jess' view of postmodernity. If so, I'd
be delighted to be better informed.
> Now, there's misconstruing matters for you.
Sorry if so. Could you explain what you did mean? I don't want to get
you or anyone else wrong if it's at all possible to get them right.
>
> Now, from what I can see, this is all going downhill pretty fast.
You're dead right there. All the way to the bottom of Boot HIll.
>
>You have some academic
> credentials and you figure other people don'tt, so you're using
> this as a form of one upmanship.
Wait a minute. How do you know I have ANY academic credentials? I've
never advertised any academic credentials, or made them part of the
discussion, and I never would because it would be silly, pointless and
genuinely divisive.
I think we agree about a lot here, but I'm at a loss to know why you are
all so anxious about credentials. Is this some kind of US static I just
don't understand? All the heat here seems to come from the assumption
that I somehow want to be horrible about your collective credentials.
The only 'credential' I'm interested in is whether you are well-informed
about the subject under discussion.
Admittedly, in my experience, which no doubt is limited, few people
outside the academy are very well-informed about postmodern theory,
precisely because so much of it is trivial silly academic gameplaying,
and few are motivated to sift through it for the nugget unless they're
paid to do it.
Moreover, many, many academics have written lengthily on postmodern
theory and also on poststructuralism from a position far less informed
than the one you and Jess seem to be defending in tandem. If I knew
their email addresses, I would say to them just what I've said to you.
What would you think of someone who posted endlessly on Thoth and had
never read ANY Crowley? You'd think they were ignorant, and some of you
would say so. Very rudely. As I've jsut said to Jess, the words 'pot'
and 'kettle' do come to mind.
Actually, there's a wonderful irony here that I've only just seen. I
suppose I am defending a kind of 'tradition' of intellectual exchange
here, and you are arguing for more of a free-for-all, whereas we have
reached the opposite positions vis-a-vis Motherpeace.
> There is an interesting topic to be discussed--what defines a
> tarot deck should be--but all this bickering over the use of
> sacred words has left such a discussion in the dust.
I agree, but remember that I didn't start this postmodernity row. You,
George and Jess were doing just fine on your own.
I'd be more than glad to drop it; it's deeply boring, and I've had my
two-cents worth, which is very simply that postmodern theory and
deconstruction are complex, realted theories about which a lot of
disinformation exists, mostly in the media but oriignating wiht some
academics, and which need to be investigated a little before rushing to
pronoucements about their connection with tarot or the New Age.
End of story, as far as I'm concerned.
--
Diane
George Leake
Diane Purkiss <pur...@purkiss.demon.co.uk> wrote:
By contrast, I have no evidence that Renaissance neoplatonism has naything
to do with any tarot prior to the occultists.
Triumph conceit. And even so, those connections with neoplatonism per se
are very few. Of course there's more to the Renaissance (some might even
ask *which* Renaissance) than neoplatonic ideas resurfacing.
>My view is that there _may_ be no 'original'
*true. However, what most people considers tarot descends to Waite/Thoth,
then to Marseilles, then back to the decks of the Milanese court. IMHO,
that's as close as we're going to get to an 'original'.
George Leake
Diane Purkiss <pur...@purkiss.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>If anyone still has the hardihood to carry on reading this endless knot
of a thread, I urge them to go away and _read the primary texts_, rather
than accepting someone else's definition of either postmodernism or
deconstruction because it will certainly be partial and will quite likely
be wrong.
another newsgroup at this point
Autorbis
Im Artikel <taliesin-220...@duncan.hrc.utexas.edu>,
tali...@mail.utexas.edu (George Leake) schreibt:
>>I think, the first real evidence for any "22" connected to any sort of
>tarot is the Lazzarelli Manuscript, which is dated 1471 and was later in
>the possession of Montefeltro.There are 22 pictures sorted out of the
>Mantegna-Tarot in it (actually only 18 are from the Mantegna, the four
>remaining were Victoria, Pluto, Neptun and Juno. It is a strange
gathering
>of Greek gods, I don't understand the system behind it.
>*that's been a big part of the problem over the last 215 years. Nobody
>understands the Triumph conceit. If you have seen depictions of the
>Triumph conceit in painting and other graphic arts you'd see such
"strange
>gatherings of Greek Gods".
>
That's quite a difference to understand the 22 pictures of the Lazzarelli
manuscript and the 22 normal mayor arcana of tarot, it's just another
problem. The Lazzarelli manuscript presents (clearly) 22 gods and the
normal Tarot presumely not.
Btw.: Does anybody know the original text of the Lazzarelli manuscript?
Lothar