In the first known list of the trumps, that in the so-called "Steele Sermon" of the late 15th century Ferrara area, the title for this card was Impichato, meaning "Hanged Man". Folengo,, 1527 Mantua, spelled it appiccato. This title was repeated by Citollini in Venice 1561 and Piscina c. 1565, with the spelling "Impiccato". Many lists, more than the other, have Traditore, the Traitor. Variants are Crux, by Alciati 1544 and Juda, Giovio 1550 (sources: http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards26.htm, http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=552).In the Marseille tarots it is Le Pendu, The Hanged Man, a translation of Impicatto.
These titles, and their associated images, can be related to Dionysus in various ways. Onemight be to the traitor Lycurgos in Diodorus, imagined in a traditional Italian emblem of betrayal. Another is as the candidate for initiation being lowered into the earth, like a seed being planted..It is the PMB image (at left below) that particularly suggests this latter, by the indentation underneath the figure's head. The same detail is preserved in the Marseillle-style cards of two centuries later (Noblet, center, and "Chosson" right). .
Men were said to have been carried off by the gods--because they had been attached to machines and whisked away out of sight to hidden caves; they were people who refused to enter the conspiracy or to join in the crimes, or to commit violations.But those who studied the Roman sarcophagi in the 16th-17th centuries could see with their own eyes that the lower level was merely where the initiations took place: notice the woman on top, probably on the ground floor. (I don't know what is happening there.)
They have made no way of descent to the bottom, but when a man comes to Trophonios, they bring him a narrow, light ladder. After going down he finds a hole between the floor and the structure. Its breadth appeared to be two spans, and its height one span. The descender lies with his back on the ground, holding barley-cakes kneaded with honey, thrusts his feet into the hold and himself follows, trying hard to get his knees into the hole. After his knees the rest of his body is at once swiftly drawn in, just as the largest and most rapid river will catch a man in its eddy and carry him under..In the Orisis myth, what is parallel is the episode in which Typhon closes the lid on the coffin which Orisis innocently lay down in for size, as described by Plutarch (sec. 13). The Hanged Man imagery of course does not fit this act But when the coffin floats to shore, a mighty tree grows up around it.
Both Osiris and Dionysus are what is known as "vegetation gods": that is, their burial, death, and rebirth is seen as analogous to the of the plants that are sacred to them. The seed is buried in the earth, just as a person is. There the shell of the seed disintegrates, but within it develops the beginnings of a new plant. In the PMB Hanged Man, the hole beneath him is like the hole that is dug when one plants a seed. His bodily shell will disintegrate, but his life will be born anew, assuming he is one of the "initiates". That is also what is going on in the Dionysian initiation itself, except that it is not physical death that is involved, but the death of a certain limited, fixed personality, with a hard shell that only being underground can get rid of, so that the new being can emerge.
How do we know that the Hanged Man is an initiate, rather than a traitor, a Judas, who will not be born again? I think we have to look particularly at the PMB image. He is colored green, the color of plants when they are growing, taking in carbon from the carbon dioxide in the air and releasing the oxygen left over. Green appears in other PMB cards as a symbol of fertility, too: the Empress and all the Baton Courts have green sleeves. Green stains on clothing was a sign of sexual acts done in secret on the grass out of doors (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensleeves. Batons are singled out because wood is the trunk of green trees. Another thing is the unusual space in the PMB's trousers, extending further from the crotch than usual, as though to hold a rather large sexual organ. This same space in the clothing of the Noblet and Conver is even colored differently, to suggest a codpiece.
I suspect that this particular card, done for the Sforza of Milan, was meant to refer to a particular person to whom this image had been directed.. Muzio Attendola, Francesco Sforza's father, had switched sides away from Antipope John XXIII and to his enemy the King of Naples. John's response was to have him hung upside down in effigy on all the bridges of Rome, with a poster declaring him traitor on 12 counts. The best documentation I have seen of this is in a discussion at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=605&p=8805&hilit=caricature#p8805. To me the significance of the event (not discussed) is that his switching sides helped to upset the balance of power between different claimants to the papacy and resolve the schism, by enabling the King of Naples, Muzio's new employer, to weaken John sufficiently to make him participate in a conclave, at which Martin V was elected (see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08434a.htm about this, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzio_Sforza about Muzio). So of course the Sforza wouldn't consider him a traitor. Not only did he help end the schism, but Bianca Maria Sforza's father's wife's father was elected pope. I think the point is that all people labeled "traitor" aren't necessarily traitors. John XXIII was, by the time the Sforza card appeared, an antipope, i.e. a pretender, and deserting him helped to bring the church back on track. In the Bible, even Jesus was considered a traitor to his religion by the Sanhedrin.
In the Marseille-style versions, there are other indications that the person being hung is destined to be reborn. His hair forms a halo around his head. The Noblet's two poles are green and white, i.e. living and dead (see Flornoy's restoration at http://www.tarot-history.com/Jean-Noblet/pages/le-pendu.html). Since neither Jesus nor Judas was ever alleged to have been hung upside down, he might even be, as "traitor", Jesus rather than Judas. The "Chosson" and Conver cards do not have different colored poles, but they do have poles with 6 notches on each side, as opposed to 6 and 5 on the Noblet. Flornoy's restored versions of Noblet and Dodal are below, along with the Conver. As you can see, in the Dodal and Conver there is a 13th notch next to the rope from which the Hanged Man is suspended; that would be for someone other than the 12, i.e. Jesus. (To the far right, I also include the extant fragment of the Cary Sheet card, showing how it is similar to the Marseille designs, with the odd fingers, or whatever they are, hanging down.)
B14. Morte.
The Death card, always Morte in Italian, or La Mort in French, was always number 13. Perhaps the unluckiness of 13 comes from that fact. In Italy at that time, there was nothing unlucky about the number; the unlucky one was 17. For the Death card, given the man with the scythe, there corresponds the dismemberments in the myths. I have already alluded to the texts about Osiris but not quoted the precise parts dealing with the dismemberment. First, Diodorus Library of History Book I:21 (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/1A*.html).
When Osiris was ruling over Egypt as its lawful king, he was murdered by his brother Typhon, a violent and impious man; Typhon then divided the body of the slain man into twenty-six pieces and gave one portion to each of the band of murderers, since he wanted all of them to share in the pollution and felt that in this way he would have in them steadfast supporters and defenders of his rule.And Plutarch Isis and Osiris 18, after Isis found the coffin (here as "coffer") containing Osiris's body (http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html):
But when Isis had gone to see her son Horus (who was at nurse in the city Buto), and had put the coffer away, Typhon being out a hunting by moonlight came upon it, and recognizing the corpse, tore it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them abroad.. It is also the dismemberment of the infant Dionysus, as various authors reported. Here is Diodorus, speaking of Dionysus (V: 75 at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/5D*.html
... Orpheus has handed down the tradition in the initiatory rites that he was torn in pieces by the Titans.It could also be the dismemberment of Pentheus in Euripides Bacchae, after the Maenads discover him but think he is a wild animal. The Marseille versions of the card, as if to emphasize the theme of dismemberment, correspondingly show body parts on the ground.
...the statement that he was torn to pieces, while yet a youth, by the "earth-born" signifies the harvesting of the fruit by the labourers...Thus the scattered body parts in the Marseille-type cards (center and right above). However in this case, if 12 represents the putting of the seed in the ground, the two cabbage-like heads could represent the rebirth, and Death's sweep of thescythe merely clears away weeds.
The result, shown on the Noblet and"Chosson" (center and right above) is the seeds sprouting as the heads of our initiates, like bulbous plants. And Death seems not to be aiming to cut them down, as in the Cary-Yale (at left) but merely to clear the weeds that are near them.
B15. Diavolo.
Besides Diavolo, other early titles were Pluto and demonio. The Devil might be Typhon, whom Dionysus fights on behalf of his father in Diodorus, and whom Horus, also called Typhon, fights on behalf of his father Osiris in Plutarch. He is the force of disorder who must not, in Plutarch's account, be destroyed. He could also be Hades, whose realm Dionysus must enter in order to bring his "mother" (was it originally his wife?) out of Tartarus. Correspondingly, it is the journey through darkness in the "mysteries", of which Apuleius wrote (Marvin Meyer, The Ancient Mysteries, p. 189):
I approached the confines of death. I trod the threshold of Proserpine, and borne through the elements I returned. At midnight I saw the Sun shining in all his glory. I approached the gods below and the gods above, and I stood beside them, and I worshipped them. Behold, I have told my experience, and yet what you hear can mean nothing to you.In the "Marseille" versions, the lower figures are tied by ropes to the upper one. This might have been suggested by a relief along a causeway at Sakkara (unfortunately I cannot find the book documenting this)..
Sakkara is near Cairo and could easily have been copied on papyrus by some enterprising Egyptian and sold to a passing European merchant-tourist, as early as the 15th century. The Cary Sheet card (at right above) conveys the same idea, the binding of those captured by the horned figure, whether Devil, the Egyptian Seth-animal, or the goat-horned Dionysus (from a Christian point of view).
B16. Fuoco
The Tower card was originally Fuoco, “Fire”, then later "House of Pluto", House of the Devil" and in France "Maison-Dieu", literally, "God-House". In Dionysus's myth, the card corresponds to the palace of Pentheus, seemingly destroyed by lightning and earthquake in Euripides' Bacchae, as shown on the Charles VI and Rothschild cards (below, left to right). As you can see, the main difference is in the two falling figures.
The Marseille design has one figure falling from the tower, the other lying down, or perhaps crawling out a small opening..
In Euripides' play, there is the fall of Pentheus from a tree later in the drama. It might also be the state of things after Dionysus's defeat by Perseus and the death of Ariadne, when he dives—or Perseus throws his body--into a lake near Argos, called Lernaean by some, Alkyonian by others; the myth says he entered Hades by way of its bottom, looking for his mother, which is odd considering that it was his wife who just died (Pausanias 2.37.6. Diodorus Siculus, 4.25.4, Hyginus, Fabulae 251, Clement of Alexandria, etc. all in sections 5 and 7 at http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/DionysosMyths2.html). A good summary of the various accounts, most of them available in the Renaissance, is in Daniel Ogden’s Perseus, pp. 28ff, at http://books.google.com/books?id=c5HPJtxbjEEC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=Dionysus+defeat+by+Perseus&source=bl&ots=52dKinRjZ3&sig=qiQDwqWmFh5Qp4gbFfxwZ9JuQ5g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5sVwT9fTJ4eKiAKI8pG7AQ&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Dionysus defeat by Perseus&f=false. Similarly, the Noblet card's one figure is falling into water, at least as Flornoy has restored the card, center above:
Comparing the Noblet and Conver (above right)The direction of the smoke and fire is of interest it seems to be coming out of the tower, reaching up tothe sun in the Noblet, but going the other way in the Conver. In Noblet's way, there is a sense of calamity within the structure causing the smoke, which is now reaching up to God, or the god, in supplication.
Another similarity between card and myth is brought out by comparison with Dionysian sarcophagi.
In this way of taking the image, the tower is genuinely phallic, and it is exploding upward in a giant ejaculation, one that by that act perhaps destroys its physical being but reaches up to the godhead above. In less sexualized form, it is something like the madness that Erasmus described, doing things that if taken to extremes would be taken as signs of impending voluntary death, such as fasting and renouncing one's possessions and by this means for a brief moment actually leaving the body and entering the divine realm. This meaning is muich attenuated in the Conver, where the smoke, fire, and destruction is coming from above, as in the 15th century cards, as though divine retribution for transgression..
No comments:
Post a Comment