Question: Tarot v playing cards
David Moss
the Tarot and standard playing cards?
If so, why are there 14 cards in a Tarot suit? (1-10, Page, Knight, Queen, King).
Regards
David Moss
Consultant
Logica UK Limited
e-mail: mo...@logica.com (or mo...@lilhd.logica.com)
This message does not represent an official statement from my employer
Judson Cohan
: There are 4 suits (and Magic cards) in the Tarot set. Is there a connection between
: If so, why are there 14 cards in a Tarot suit? (1-10, Page, Knight, Queen, King).
The correspondance is:
Swords = Spades
Staves = Clubs
Cups = Hearts
Coins = Diamonds
Regarding the ranks: I don't know quite when, but the Tarot's knight was
dropped from the playing card pack. The page became the jack.
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
Jud Cohan
j...@netcom.com
"Old heroes never die; they just reappear in sequels." - M. Moorcock
Rodney W. Carter
> David Moss (Mo...@Logica.Com) wrote:
> : If so, why are there 14 cards in a Tarot suit? (1-10, Page, Knight, Queen, King).
>
> Regarding the ranks: I don't know quite when, but the Tarot's knight was
> dropped from the playing card pack. The page became the jack.
Well, the reading I've done on the subject says that the page was dropped
and the knight became the jack. (Or that the page and knight melded into
the jack.) (If you look at the jack in most decks, he looks like a knight.)
The Fool became the Joker and I'm assuming that since the Fool holds dual
positions of 0 and 22 in the Tarot that the card metamorphosed into TWO
Jokers instead of one.
_______________________________________________________________________________
> Jud Cohan
> j...@netcom.com
>
> "Old heroes never die; they just reappear in sequels." - M. Moorcock
Rodney Carter
--
I only have two speeds. If you don't like this one, I can guarantee that
you won't like my other one.
Michael Urban
>The correspondance is:
>
> Swords = Spades
> Staves = Clubs
> Cups = Hearts
> Coins = Diamonds
Partlett, in his Oxford Guide to Card Games, says that suits soon
forsook the original Italian (Tarot-like) suits "in favor of concrete
objects drawn from everyday life, whether animals (hounds, deer, hares,
bears), birds (ducks, falcons, herons, parrots), flowers...or hardware
(shields, helmets, banners, bells, keys, purses, thimbles, etc.). ...
Nearly all the suitmarks of traditional Swiss and German packs [Bells,
Acorns, Hearts, Leaves] appear individually before 1450 and in complete
systems perhaps by 1475. On visual grounds, it is vaguely possible to
derive the German suit of acorns from the Latin suit of swords, leaves
from clubs, hearts from cups, and bells from coins; but the preceding
chaos renders such equations less than meaningful. ...
"France's greatest contribution to the world of cards was her invention of
spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds, which first appear as such about 1480.
...Despite a fanciful story deriving the four suits from emblems of the four
estates of medieval life (military, peasantry, clergy, bourgeoisie), they
surely represent a simplification of the German series."
So equating French and Italian suits is a dubious practice at best.
>Regarding the ranks: I don't know quite when, but the Tarot's knight was
>dropped from the playing card pack. The page became the jack.
From the same page,
"Experimentation extended also to the courtly figures. The original
over- and under-marshals variously appear as Knights and Knaves, the
Knaves sometimes as Maids. Queens are mentioned in ... 1429 ... and
in the earliest surviving German cards (1440s) do not come second to
Kings in the same suit, but head two of the suits in place of Kings.
Fifty-six-card packs headed King Queen Knight Valet were common throughout
the fifteenth century... When three courts again became the norm, all but the
French restored the original male hierarchy by dropping the QUeen in
favor of the Knight".
So again, it is not a simple matter of "dropping the knight" or whatever.
It is worth mentioning that modern Italian packs have Tarot-like suits,
and three courts in each suit: King, Knight, and Page.
Michael Urban
Rodney W. Carter <rod...@forsythe.stanford.edu> wrote:
>The Fool became the Joker and I'm assuming that since the Fool holds dual
>positions of 0 and 22 in the Tarot that the card metamorphosed into TWO
>Jokers instead of one.
From Partlett's Oxford Guide to Card Games:
[Joker derived from Fool]: "This is quite fallacious; nor is it even
likely that whoever invented the Joker was influenced by acquaintance
with the Tarot Fool. The first true Joker was added to the American pack
in the mid-nineteenth century to act as the `Best Bower' or top trump in
the game of Euchre, a position it still holds in the derivative
game of Five Hundred."
In other parts of the book, he points out the resemblence between
the name of the Joker and the German spelling of Jucker for Euchre,
and details some transitional forms between the "Best Bower" and
the prankster figure we now see on cards.
Finally, it is probably worth pointing out that there are NO card
games mentioned in Hoyle nor anywhere else that use a Joker prior
to Euchre, and the use of the Fool (Excuse) in Tarot is considerably
different from the use of the Joker.
Wgreview
cards, not
vice versa -- this is a common myth. And tarot cards were devised for
the same
purpose as regular cards -- to play card games, not for fortunetelling.
Michael Keller, World Game Review, 1747 Little Creek Drive,
Baltimore, MD 21207 <Wgre...@aol.com>
mckay_michael
>David Moss (Mo...@Logica.Com) wrote:
>Regarding the ranks: I don't know quite when, but the Tarot's knight was
>dropped from the playing card pack. The page became the jack.
I think most of the orignal European card decks actually only had 3 courts
(King, Over-baron, and under-baron). Interesting question, has the Queen
in Tarot always been a queen? Queens in "normal" decks are realitivly late
period. I guess the thing that prompted this post, is the built-in assumption
of the above post that our current card decks orginated with the tarot. Most
current authroities don't believe this is true. One thing that the Tarot deck
seemed to do, was invent the concept of a "trump" card, albiet using dedicated
cards for trumps (ie. the major arcana). Acorrding to Parlett (using Dummett
as a source), the first solid reference to Tarot cards was around 1430, a good
60 years after the first mention of cards in Europe. -mjm-
mckay_michael
>The Fool became the Joker and I'm assuming that since the Fool holds dual
>positions of 0 and 22 in the Tarot that the card metamorphosed into TWO
>Jokers instead of one.
The joker may date back as far as 1800, but is most likely from the 1870's
(source is Parlett, filtered by possible memory leaks). The Jack has been
used as a joker "type" card for at least a couple hunderd years before that.