Decoding The Sola-busca Tarocchi By Peter Mark Adams

Transcript

Decoding the Sola-Busca Tarocchi Peter Mark Adams Brief Facts • • • • • • • • Oldest complete deck & one of the finest Engraved in Ferrara, centre of tarot  production (Mark Zucker). Production –  Production – London, London, Paris, Hamburg, Vienna, Naples Version Sola-Busca 1491 Venetian client, Venier and Sanudo S anudo Carefully preserved 1907 photographs exhibited British Museum Purchased by Italian Ministry of Culture in 2009 & now held in Brera Gallery in Milan. Brief Facts • • • • • • • • Oldest complete deck & one of the finest Engraved in Ferrara, centre of tarot  production (Mark Zucker). Production –  Production – London, London, Paris, Hamburg, Vienna, Naples Version Sola-Busca 1491 Venetian client, Venier and Sanudo S anudo Carefully preserved 1907 photographs exhibited British Museum Purchased by Italian Ministry of Culture in 2009 & now held in Brera Gallery in Milan. “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” there ” • • • • • • • • Magic pervasive Elite sanctioned sorcery Clerical underworld / grimoires ‘arcana imperii’ imperii’ – the – the secret arts of government Machiavelli Product elite Ferrarese culture, Duke Ercole d’Este Music & necromancy Deck’s Deck’s system on a different level  –  – Platonic metaphysics Hellenistic theurgical & magical tradition Rich Surface Texture • Standard structure / uncommon imagery • Trumps named, male, military figures  –  – • Connecting thread : North Africa 9 of 12 named Court cards / Alexander Romance literature  –  – • Plutarch’s Parallel Lives or Livy’s  History of Rome no reference anything Alexander did concerned Alexander’s conception  by Afro-Levantine god Ammon in form of a dragon Suit Cards enigmatıc, homoerotic & grotesque scenes Encryption Keys • • • Polysemy – images multi-layered, support different readings Ambiguity – generic & misspelled names (Roman gens) Use of proportions, colour, number  • Symbolic markers • Emergent themes • Extensive use classical sources Decrypting the Deck’s Many Layers Historical Layer  • gens Postumia • Palm tree & star = Carthage • Punic Wars • Livy’s History of Rome • Lucius Postumius Albinus • • • Ambushed, decapitated, skull set on an altar as libation vessel Depicts ritual killing Hardly ‘illustrious’, we need change our lens & take another look …. Hypothesis ‘the deck encodes Mithraic imagery’ Why Mithraism? Male military dress Phrygian caps Astral imagery Tauroctony maps a portion of Zodiac = Renaissance astral magic? II POSTUMIO XI TULIO VII DEO TAURO / Deiotarus / Plutarch Parallel Lives of the Greeks & Romans XIII CATONE / Plutarch Parallel Lives of the Greeks & Romans Ovid. Metamorphoses X-check our reading • Solstices also symbolised  by celestial globe with 2 intersecting bands Sestertius of Antonius Pius 2nd century CE “The Milky Way girdles the Zodiac Souls pass through these portals going from the sky to the earth and returning from earth to the sky…” Macrobius. Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. Significance • • • • • • • Combination of Mithraic imagery / Neoplatonism Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs Exegesis Platonic metaphysics Pre-existence & immortality of the soul Process of metempsychosis Heretical since mid-6th century Platonic metaphysics directly drawn from & supported spiritual praxis Theurgic Death Ritual “A power higher than all human wisdom embracing the blessings of divination, the  purifying powers of initiation, and all the operations of divine possession.” Proclus • • • • Post-mortem, soul returns through the Gates of the Sun Theurgist sought to emulate this  process, projecting the soul along the same trajectory Unification with the demiurge  Navigate & control processes of death & rebirth Cosmology Gaius Lutatius Catulus  No other planets, all malefic … need to look deeper Zeus Ammon Alexander  as `son of  Ammon Saturn Kronus Ammon Sources of Deck’s Saturnianism • • • Plethon’s ‘Summary of the Doctrines of Zoroaster and Plato’  Nomoi On Fate “The Olympians are the creators and rulers of the immortals in the heavens, but the Tartareans rule the mortals here; so that  Kronos of the Tartareans, himself the leader of the Titans, rules over the mortal form altogether .” George Gemistus Sources of Deck’s Draconian Imagery • • • • • Orphic theogony / Rhapsodies Damascius / First Principles Athenagoras / Legatio Eusebius of Caesare / Preparation for the Gospels Hippolytus / Refutation of all Heresies Ritual Grammar  Proskynesis “after the honours paid to the Olympians … assign the Even and the Left … to the gods of the underworld” Plato. Laws 717a • • • Hellenistic Left / right Ritual gestures  –  – • greeting obeisance Appropriate prayers / Orphic Hymns Hellenistic Source of Deck’s Ritual Grammar  “Face upward, kneel on both knees, raise the hands with  palms up, and cry, ‘O gods, be  propitious.’ … after pronouncing this invocation … worship the rest of the gods with the left hand and with the same words” George Gemistus Plethon ‘Laws’ Proskynesis to the Underworld Gods • Opening of the rite • Aposkopein  – • Left hand covers right eye Addressed to a chthonic god • Curtsy • Places herbs in a brazier  Invocation of Deity • Dress  – • • • Diacetto (DP Walker ’Spiritual & Demonic Magic’) Dragon cap and ram’s horn chair  Dodecahedron Hekate’s Top / Chaldean Oracles “Being whirled inwardly, this tool calls forth the gods; outwardly, it sends them away.” Damascius Sacrifice • Gaius Claudius Nero or Emperor Nero? • Frenzied appearance • Tintanabula • Toys of Dionysus • Small camp fire? “As to sacrificing human beings, there was nothing in the world that gave him greater pleasure” Pliny on Emperor Nero Theurgic Possession • • • Golden diadem / tzitz indicates illumined state Dragon wings indicate the nature of the possessing energy Xoanon bears the image of the god “And to Kronos himself he gave two wings upon his head, one representing the all-ruling mind, and one sensation” Cited in Eusebius of Caesarea Calling Down the Moon “Do not invoke the self -manifesting image of Physis” Chaldean Oracles • • • • Waning moon / Physis Use of turbo / spinning top Beard dipped in it Act of materialization “Pay attention to the Moon in every magical working … she brings about manifestation … for she is the mediatrix … receiving the influences and impressions of the stars and planets and pouring them out to the … world .”   Picatrix Conclusions ‘Phanes, being a first-born god (born from the  primordial egg) has the body or shape of a dragon’ Athenagoras. Apology/Legatio 18 - 20 George Gemistus aka Plethon • • • • Pagan Leading Platonist of his era Member Byzantine elite Two hierarchies:  –  – • • celestial Olympians chthonic Titans Titans inhabit Tartarus / the material world Ruled by Kronus-Saturn “the only initiated and initiator into the divine knowledge of the Platonists”  Bessarion “Ananke was united with the Dragon-Serpent Kronos, being of the same nature, or Adrastea” Damascius. On the First Principles 123 • Saturnianism – worldly rulership of the supercelestial Kronus-Saturn • Ananke=Necessity=Fatalism – ‘trahor fatis’ • Immortality of the soul & metempsychosis • Theurgically illumined elite / synarchism Saturnalia • • Synthesibus, pileus, red/purple vittae worn flamines Candle, altar, serpent belt ‘How Zeus’ mother, Rhea, sought to avoid his advances by changing into a dragon; but Zeus, also changing into a dragon, bound her with what is called the Herculean knot of which the rod of Hermes is a symbol’ The End