Tarot of Marseilles
The Tarot of Marseilles (or Tarot of Marseille), also widely known by the French designation Tarot de Marseille, is one of the standard patterns for the design of tarot cards. It is a pattern from which many subsequent tarot decks derive.
Origins of the Tarot
Michael Dummett's research led him to conclude that the Tarot deck was invented in northern Italy in the fifteenth century. It is believed that tarot cards were introduced into southern France from northern Italy when the French conquered Milan in the Piedmont in 1499. The antecedents of the Tarot de Marseille were probably introduced into southern France at around that time. The game of tarot died out in Italy but survived in France and Switzerland. When the game was reintroduced into northern Italy, the Marseille designs of the cards were also reintroduced to that region.
Tarot de Marseille
The name Tarot de Marseille is not of particularly ancient vintage; it was coined in the 1930s by the French cartomancer Paul Marteau, who gave this collective name to a variety of closely related designs that were being made in the city of Marseille in the south of France, a city that was a centre of playing card manufacture, and were (in earlier, contemporaneous, and later times) also made in other cities in France. The Tarot de Marseille is one of the standards from which many tarot decks of the nineteenth century and later are derived.
Structure
Like most Tarot decks, the Tarot de Marseille contains fifty-six cards in the four standard suits. In French language versions of the Tarot de Marseille, those suits are identified by their French names of Bâtons (Rods, Staves, Sceptres, or Wands), Épées (Swords), Coupes (Cups), and Deniers (Coins). These count from Ace to 10. As well, there are four court cards in each suit: a Valet (Knave or Page), Chevalier or Cavalier (Knight), Reine (Queen) and Roi (King). Occultists (and many tarotists nowadays, whether English- or French-speaking) call this series the "minor arcana" (or "Arcanes mineures", in French). The court cards are sometimes called "Les Honneurs" or "Les Lames Mineures de Figures" in French.
There are also the standard twenty-one trump cards, and one additional card (the Fool) which is unnumbered in the Tarot de Marseille. Occultists (and many tarotists nowadays) call these twenty-two cards the "major arcana" (or "Arcanes majeures", in French).
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I. Le Bateleur (The Mountebank, The Juggler, The Magician) |
XII. Le Pendu (The Hanged Man) |
Variants
The XIII card is generally left unnamed in the various old and modern versions of the Tarot de Marseille, but it is worth noting that in the Noblet Tarot de Marseille (circa 1650), the card was named LAMORT (Death). In at least some printings of the French/English bilingual version of the Grimaud Tarot de Marseille, the XIII card is named "La Mort" in French and named "Death" in English. In many modern tarot decks (e.g., Rider-Waite-Smith), the XIII card is named Death. In at least one 19th century Italian tarot deck (e.g., the one photoreproduced by Italian publisher Lo Scarabeo as the "Ancient Italian Tarots" deck), the card is named "IL TREDICI" (Thirteen).
The use of obviously Christian traditional images (such as the Pope, the Devil, the Grim Reaper and the Last Judgement) and indeed controversial Christian images such as La Papesse — often thought to represent the legendary Pope Joan — have spawned controversies from the Renaissance to the present. One variant on the Tarot de Marseille, now called the Swiss Tarot or the Tarot of Besançon, removes the controversial Papess and Pope and, in their stead, puts Juno with her peacock, and Jupiter with his eagle. More recent decks, following a suggestion by Court de Gébelin, often rename the Papess as the "High Priestess", and the Pope as the "Hierophant". During the French Revolution, the Emperor and Empress cards became the subject of similar controversies and were displaced by Grandfather and Grandmother.
The Valet de Bâtons (i.e., Page of Batons) is another card worth noting in this regard. In the Tarot de Marseille, the title of that card generally appears on the side of the card, while in some old versions of the Tarot de Marseille that card is left unnamed.
Later history of Tarot
Each card, whether in the major arcana or minor arcana, was originally printed from a woodcut; the cards were later coloured either by hand or by the use of stencils. One well-known artisan producing tarot cards in the Tarot de Marseille style was Nicolas Conver, who produced one early attested deck in 1760. Other early attested decks in the Tarot de Marseille family of decks include Noblet's (circa 1650) and Dodal's (circa 1701). The chief use of the deck originally was to play the game of tarot, also known as tarock [German] or tarocco [Italian]; the use of tarot in divination is first attested in the eighteenth century in the journals of Casanova.
It was the Conver deck, or a deck very similar to it, that came to the attention of Antoine Court de Gébelin in the late eighteenth century. Court de Gébelin's writings, which contained much by way of speculation as to the supposed Egyptian origin of the cards and their symbols, called the attention of occultists to tarot decks. As such, Conver's deck became the model for most subsequent esoteric decks, starting with the deck designed by Etteilla forward. Cartomancy with the Tarot was definitely being practised throughout France by the end of the eighteenth century; Alexis-Vincent-Charles Berbiguier reported an encounter with two "sibyls" who divined with Tarot cards in the last decade of the century at Avignon.
French and English Tarot traditions
In the English-speaking world, where there is little or no tradition of using tarots as playing cards, tarot decks only became known through the efforts of occultists influenced by French tarotists such as Etteilla, and later, Eliphas Lévi. These occultists later produced esoteric decks that reflected their own ideas, and these decks were widely circulated in the anglophone world. Various esoteric decks such as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (conceived by A. E. Waite and rendered by Pamela Colman Smith), and the Thoth Tarot deck (conceived by Aleister Crowley and rendered by Lady Frieda Harris) -- and tarot decks inspired by those two decks -- are most typically used. Waite, Colman Smith, Crowley and Harris were all former members of the influential, Victorian-era Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at different respective points in time; and the Golden Dawn, in turn, was influenced by Lévi and other French occult revivalists. Although there were various other respective influences (e.g., Etteilla's pip card meanings in the case of Waite/Colman Smith), Waite/Colman Smith's and Crowley/Harris' decks were greatly inspired by the Golden Dawn's member-use tarot deck and the Golden Dawn's tarot curriculum.
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was essentially the first in the Anglophone world to venture into esoteric tarot. Francophone occultists such as Court de Gebelin, Etteilla, Eliphas Lévi, Oswald Wirth and Papus were influential in fashioning esoteric tarot in the French-speaking world; the influence of these Francophone occultists has come to bear even on interpretation of the pre-occult Tarot de Marseille cards themselves. Even though the Tarot de Marseille decks are not 'occult' per se, the imagery of the Tarot de Marseille decks (especially Conver's deck) arguably shows Hermetic influences (e.g., alchemy, astronomy, etc.).
In the French-speaking world, users of the tarot for divination and other esoteric purposes such as Alexandro Jodorowsky, continue to use the Tarot de Marseille for such purposes, although Oswald Wirth's major-arcana tarot deck has enjoyed such popularity in the 20th century (albeit less so than the Tarot de Marseille). Tarot decks from the English-speaking tradition (such as Rider-Waite-Smith and decks based on it, like the Aquarian and Morgan-Greer) are gradually gaining popularity for such purposes in French-speaking countries. As evidenced by sales in Francophone stores in Québec, among Francophones of Québec, decks based on Rider-Waite-Smith have increasing followings.
Although the Tarot de Marseille was used in earlier times for the playing of the game of tarot, it is generally not used for this purpose anymore in French-speaking countries. Instead, for that purpose, tarock-style gaming tarot decks are used. Tarock-style decks generally have numbered trumps and a Fool card with non-esoteric designs that do not include the Tarot de Marseille iconography and with minor arcana cards that closely resemble regular French playing cards.
Paul Marteau pioneered the number-plus-suit-plus-design approach to interpreting the numbered minor arcana cards ['pip cards'] of the Tarot de Marseille. Prior to Marteau's book Le Tarot de Marseille (which was first published circa 1930s), cartomantic meanings (such as Etteilla's) were generally employed for interpretation de Marseille pip cards. Even nowadays, as evidenced by tarot readings of members of French-language tarot lists and forums on the Internet, many French tarotists employ only the major arcana cards for divination. In fact, in recognition of this, many French-language Tarot de Marseille tarot books (even good ones, such as Picard's) discuss the symbolism and interpretation of only the major arcana. Many fortune-tellers in France who use the Tarot de Marseille for readings will use only the major arcana and will use an Etteilla deck if they are to use all 78 cards for the reading.
Many of the images of the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck are derived from the Tarot de Marseille. However, the influence of other decks is also apparent in the RWS deck, e.g., the 17th century Jacques Viéville deck for the Sun card and the 16th century Sola Busca deck for certain pip cards, notably the 3 of Swords and 7 of Swords. Like certain Italian decks from the 19th century, the Fool card of the RWS deck bears the number 0 (zero). The 19th century deck of Swiss-French occultist Oswald Wirth was also influential for certain of the iconographic features of the major arcana cards of the RWS deck, and its numbering of the Fool card as 0.
English translation of the term 'Tarot de Marseille'
The term "Tarot de Marseille" has, in the past, most often been translated into English as "Tarot of Marseilles" because of the traditional English spelling "Marseilles" for the city whose name in French is spelled "Marseille". (Traditional English spellings for many famous geographical locations around the world differ from the local spelling, e.g., 'Moscow' for the city 'Moskva' in Russia, 'Cologne' for the city 'Köln' in Germany.) The English name 'Marseille' is gradually enjoying greater, concurrent usage to describe the city generally; therefore, the alternate English translation "Tarot of Marseille" for the French term "Tarot de Marseille" is gradually entering concurrent usage. However, the traditional English term "Tarot of Marseilles" still remains correct as well; for the spelling and pronounciation of a long-used technical term consisting in part of a geographical name does not always necessarily follow changes in the geographical name, and so, the term 'Tarot of Marseilles' does not need to necessarily follow the usage of the geographical name; e.g., 'Peking Duck' is still the name for the Chinese dish, even though 'Beijing' is the most prevalent English name for the city of Beijing/Peking in the media and in official contexts.
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The Major Arcana [Trumps and The Fool] of the Tarot de Marseille
The above Major Arcana images are from the Grimaud version of the Tarot de Marseille.
References
Tarot decks
Various facsimilies of Conver's deck and other old decks are available. Philippe Camoin prints a reproduction of the original Deck as well as his own esoteric reconstruction of the cards [1]. The Italian firm Lo Scarabeo prints a reproduction of an 18th century deck by Nicholas Conver, mentioned above [2].
Others offer redrawn decks based on the old models. Grimaud is perhaps the best known such maker; their deck was designed by Paul Marteau, mentioned above. The Spanish firm Fournier prints an edition. Lo Scarabeo prints a version based on an 18th century deck by Claude Burdel.[3]. U.S. Games / Carta Mundi also printed a version based on the 1701 Dodal Tarot de Marseille, but unfortunately that version has recently gone out of print.
Other publications
- The Game of Tarot by Michael Dummett ISBN 0-71-561014-7 - a history of the Tarot, and a compilation of Tarot card games. (out of print)
- A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot by Ronald Decker, Thierry de Paulis, and Michael Dummett ISBN 0-312-16294-4 - a history of the French origin of the occult Tarot, focusing on Etteilla, Le Normand, and Lévi.
- La voie du Tarot by Alexandro Jodorowsky with Marianne Costa ISBN 2-22-615191-5 - Provides Jodorowsky's personal take on Tarot de Marseille card interpretation and on the 20th century French tradition of esoteric tarot (Note: This book is also available in Spanish under the title La Via Del Tarot, ISBN 8478448934)
- Mystical Origins of the Tarot by Paul Huson ISBN 0-89-281190-0 - a historically based introduction to tarot divination.
- Ombres et lumières du Tarot by Carole Sédillot ISBN 2-71-070609-1 - Sédillot's personal take on Tarot de Marseille card interpretation and on the 20th century French tradition of esoteric tarot. Sédillot's approach to the minor arcana cards is inspired in many respects by the circa 1930s classic French language book Le Tarot de Marseille by Paul Marteau.
Web sites of interest
- The Marseilles Family at Tom Tadfor Little's Tarot Hermitage
- The Marseilles Family at Andy's Playing Cards [in 3 consecutive parts]
- History of the Tarot de Marseille by Philip Camoin
- Tarot History by James W. Revak