A3: Dionysus and the cards

So how does this word for senselessness get applied to the game, and deck, of cards? Well, of course there is the Church, wishing to deride it. But they derided every gambling game: why give the label to this one in particular, especially one which was often exempted from the Church's prohibitions? Also, in the places where the word first appears, 1505 Ferrara and Avignon, the people most involved, ie. the d'Este and the French cardmakers, like the game. They aren't particularly interested in deriding it.

But there were two types of madness and foolishness, the worldly and the divine, or the foolish and the wise. To an extent, this is already on the authority of St. Paul in I Corinthians 1:18 (http://www.latinvulgate.com/verse.aspx?t=1&b=7):

verbum enim crucis pereuntibus quidem stultitia est his autem qui salvi fiunt id est nobis virtus Dei est  (For the word of the cross, to them indeed that perish, is foolishness: but to them that are saved, that is, to us, it is the power of God.)

But here the word is "stultitia," which means the stupid sort of foolishness, not the angry and manic type.

However, divine madness as such was already a theme in medieval literature. There is the poem by the 13th century Umbrian friar Jacopone da Todi; Marco Ponzi translated it at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=764&start=0#p11030. I need to translate it a little differently, because "foolishness" in English is the stupid, simple kind, not the same as "follia" in Italian, which I think includes craziness. Here are the stanzas I want to pick out. It starts out:

Udite nuova pazzia / Che mi viene in fantasia. (Listen to the new craziness [not only Marco's "foolishness"] / that came to me in fantasy.)

Then we have:

Se io 'no nomo il vo mostrare; / Vo me stesso rinagare / E la croce vo portare / Per far un gran pazzia. (I want to prove that I'm a man / I want to renegade myself / I want to carry the cross / So as to make a great craziness [not only foolishness].

La pazzia e cosi fatta / Metteromme a gran sbaratta / Tra gente grossalana e matta / Matta di santa soltizia. (This craziness [not only foolishness] is such / That I put myself in great confusion [not "risk": see http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/florio/search/481c.html] / among gross and crazy people / Crazy [not only foolish] with a holy foolishness.)

Or odi, che m'ho pensato,/ D'essere matto riputato, / Ignorante e smemoranto / E uom pen di bizzarria. (Now listen to what I have thought / I want to be considered crazy [not only a fool], Ignorant and without memory, / A very strange man.) ...

"Semplice e puro intelletto / Se ne va su tutto schietto; / Sale al divinal cospetto / Sensor lo filosofia." (A simple and pure intellect / Goes up all clean; / He rises to the presence of God / Without their philosophy.)  ..

Io ho un mia capitale / Che mi son uso de male: / Intelleto he ben reale, / Chi intenda mia frenesia. (I have capital / That I have used badly / Whoever understands my raving [or frenzy] / Has a keen intellect.)

Mettemi alla tua pedeta / Pur cosi alla scapistrata /  La mia mente furiata / Altro che disia.":(Let me be at your feet, / even in a reckless way; / my frenzied [or crazy] mind / desires only you.)

This poem combines, in the divine madness, the simplicity of the "natural fool" with the frenzy of the maniac, which is yet different from the restlessness of the ordinary person.

Besides lower and upper foolishness, there was lower and upper ignorance. In the Renaissance this idea was the end result of Nicholas of Cusa's famous 1440 De Docta Ignorantia, On Learned Ignorance, a phrase taken from Augustine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Docta_Ignorantia). It was a matter of transcending the paradoxes of philosophy to arrive at an apprehension of truth beyond concepts, a philosophical version of the "mystical staircase." I will say more when discussing Ficino.

Another aspect of the divine frenzy--not to be sure, in the poet just cited--is the access to prophecy in that state. This is of relevance to the cards' possible use in sortilege, i.e. simple divination. Cicero's De Divinatione gave examples, for example in 1.18, of "persons who prophesy while in a frenzy"--even without aids like cards--and "unaided by reason or deduction or by signs which have been observed and recorded, forecast the future while under the influence of mental excitement, or of some free and unrestrained emotion" (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Divinatione/1*.htm). Cornelius Agrippa in 1533 (Three Books on Occult Philosophy 3, 47) quotes one of Cicero's examples, the Erythrean Sibyl, as an example of "Dionysian frenzy," probably reflecting a common view that this type of frenzy was Dionysian in character. The Sibyls, in that they were considered to have prophesied the coming of Christianity, were taken quite seriously for the validity of their trance-states.

So those who first applied the word to the game are hypothesized as taking advantage of the double meaning, the higher and lower craziness/foolishness. They needed a word to distinguish the game and the deck from the one that used regular cards, which had appropriated the name "Ludus Triumphorum."  So they call it tarocchi, not only the game of the Madman, but the path of the Madman, from his mad state of frantic gambler and unwitting dupe to divine Dionysian ecstasy. In this way a word for "fool" and “crazy person” becomes a word of praise as well as disapproval.

In fact the word "triumph," which is what tarot was called before it was called tarocchi (and, in France, taraux), is a Dionysian word. Here is Diodorus again, in the same section in which he mentions Tharopes: (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/3E*.html):

The myth also relates that he gathered a great mass of booty, such as would result from such a campaign, and that he was the first of all men to make his return to his native country in a triumph.

At such processions they would sing a particular type of song called a Thriambos. According to my 1967 Webster's New World Dictionary, the word "triumph" in fact comes from this word thriambos, meaning "hymn to Bacchus sung in festal processions."  (Notice here also the shift from "th" to "t.") So in adopting the word "tarochi," they were simply applying another Dionysian word to the same game.

Another word from the same section 65 of Book III of Diodorus as Tharopes and Triumphos, appearing in relation to the tarot of this time, is one as obscure as Tharopes: the word Thamyris. Here is the first mention of Thamyris in the 1531 Poggio, sec. 67 of Book III:

In English:

Linus also, who was admired because of his poetry and singing, had many pupils and three of greatest renown, Heracles, Thamyras, and Orpheus. Of these three Heracles, who was learning to play the lyre, was unable to appreciate what was taught him because of his sluggishness of soul, and once when he had been punished with rods by Linus he became violently angry and killed his teacher with a blow of the lyre. Thamyras, however, who possessed unusual natural ability, perfected the art of music and claimed that in the excellence of song his voice was more beautiful than the voices of the Muses.

Names similar to Thamyras occur in another source available in c. 1500, Boccaccio's Of Famous Women (De mulieribus claris). In Chapter LVI (pp. 230ff of Brown's Latin and English facing pages), a "Thamaris" is named as a famous female artist in Athens, famous for a painting of Diana preserved at Ephesis. Then in chapter XLIX (p. 198ff), there is a "Thamiris" who is Queen of Scythia. Boccaccio says that she was famous for defeating Cyrus of Persia's invasion of her country; not only that, but Cyrus was killed. Having his severed head put in a leather bag filled with her soldiers' blood, she said, "Take your fill of the blood for which you have thirsted."

The only other place I have seen a similar name is in the so-called Leber Tarot, an Italian deck of c. 1500-1520. The card is below right, with some other interesting cards of the same deck. There, she is "Thamiris Regina Mastagitarum," exactly the same spelling as in Boccaccio. This Queen of Swords is undoubtedly the same fierce queen as in Boccaccio. "Mastagitarum is simply a corruption of "Massagetae", Herodotus's word for a tribe resembling the Scythians (Herodotus, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/History_of_Herodotus/Book_1), who indeed, according to him, defeated Cyrus under the command of its Queen, whom he calls "Tomyris", and did with the head as Boccaccio relates.

So the deck designer need not have known the "Tharopes" section of Diodorus in order to find the name "Thamiris" as a title. For one thing, the "Thamyras" in Diodorus is male. But how did he happen to pick the particular personnage he did? The name in Boccaccio was at least as obscure as any in Diodorus.  Let us look at the other named figures in the Leber deck.

The King of Swords (center) is Alexander the Great, another son of Zeus, who consciously followed Dionysus after his own conquest of India, wearing the ivy wreath, and other ways, as Cartari relates (p. 359 of 1581 edition): "Onde Allesandro Magno volendolo imitare, quando ritorno vincitore delle India face,.." (Whence Alexander the Great wanted to imitate him, when he had returned from India...").

The King of Batons (at right above) is called "Ninus." This might be the biblical king of Nineveh, but it is also the name of the King of India in the "Tharopes" section of Poggio. Where modern editions have "Myrrhanus" Poggio has "Ninus," as may be seen in the last line of the passage reproduced below. Like Lycurgus and Pentheus, he was slain by Dionysus.:

Below are three more suit cards from the same deck. (All of these images, the previous three as well as the following ones, are at http://trionfi.com/0/j/d/leber/. However for the 2 of Batons I give the better reproduction in Dummett's Game of Tarot, plate 17.)

For the Ace of Cups, what we have is a card copied by Cicognara, the early 19th century playing card historian, one of several which are thought to be of the same deck. It depicts satyrs, associated with Dionysus by Diodorus and many others. And the Two of Batons, with a fox reaching for grapes, is the Song of Songs' equivalent of Virgil's goat, which we will see below in the section on the Fool card. The King of Coins is Mydas, for whom, in Ovid's Metamorphoses (http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses11.html#2), Dionysus granted his wish that whatever he touch would turn to gold.

So if someone was designing a deck with cards suggestive of Dionysus and looked in Diodorus, seeing the name "Thamyras" there (as well as Ninnus) might have reminded such a designer of the similar name in Boccaccio's On Famous Women.

For a Dionysian theme, moreover, there are other reasons for picking Boccaccio's Thamiris, even without the suggestion from Diodorus. One reason has to do with wine. As Boccaccio tells it, Cyrus first lured troops commanded by Thamiris's son into capturing an empty Persian camp with wine and rich food lying about, which Cyrus knew was unfamiliar to these people. Then, when the wine rendered them defenseless, Cyrus came and massaced them, including Thamiris's  son. (For Herodotus's slightly different version see sections 211-212 at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/History_of_Herodotus/Book_1).

Another reason for including this Thamiris in the deck is the fierceness of her revenge, which by killing Cyrus accomplished something no one else had been able to do. Such fierce vengeance is characteristic of Dionysus, as exemplified by Dionysus's revenge against Lycurgus and against Pentheus later. Such a consideration would also explain another choice of names in the deck, Achilles as Page of Swords. "The wrath of Achilles" was a well known subtitle for the Iliad; its first line, in fact is "Wrath—Sing, Goddess, the wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles" (http://antiquitopia.blogspot.com/2008/08/wrath-of-achilles.html; other translations have "anger" or "rage".). The only other named personnage in the Leber deck is Marcus Curtius, the Knight of Swords, on whom I have no information.

But who, influential enough to have established a trend, would have understood the connection between the already existing word "tarocco" and the "Tharopes" of Diodorus, thus connecting the deck with the god? That will be the topic of the next section.