TdM Haiku

[dodalisque]

TdM MILLENIUM EDITION (by Wilfiried Houdouin, 2012)

As they sink lower
The two women and the crab
All have empty arms

[Pen]

TdM MILLENIUM EDITION (by Wilfiried Houdouin, 2012)

As they sink lower
The two women and the crab
All have empty arms

Love the mystery of this one - it raises so many questions and possible answers.

[Pen]

Madame Soleil's Dusserre Dodal Tarot

1) Death: Frail hands plead 'Mercy!'
2) Magician: His slight hands are deceptive...
3) Ace of Cups: The monstrance stands proud.

[dodalisque]

1) Death: Frail hands plead 'Mercy!'
2) Magician: His slight hands are deceptive...
3) Ace of Cups: The monstrance stands proud.

I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't know the word "monstrance", but my wife, who was raised a Catholic, saved me a trip to the dictionary. That makes the whole thing come alive. The Magician with the deceptive hands immediately becomes a fallible priest, capable of deceiving those with frail hands lifted in prayer pleading sincerely for mercy, fearing death. In fact his table is a kind of secular parody of a Christian altar. But the spiritual validity of the host itself, housed in the monstrance, is not tainted. "Slight" is cute, a "deceptive" pun on "sleight of hand". Sneaky. A nice distinction between frail and slight. Slightness should not always be equated with weakness, the haiku itself being an example. The similarity of "frail" and "flail", the threshing tool, is also lurking somewhere in the background of the first card. The skeleton's body is in the shape of a letter "R" but his scythe is an "L", so that causes further confusion between "frail" and "flail".

I notice the word monstrance comes from the Latin "monstrare" - to show or display. But the object is also sometimes known as the "ostensorium" - from the Latin "ostensere" - which means roughly the same. But it must be the root of our words "ostentatious" and "ostensibly", which has come to be used to convey a disparity between appearance and reality. I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make, but there's something in there about the relationship between display and deception.

[dodalisque]

TdM Millenium Edition (Wilfried Houdouin, 2012)

Emperor: Right leg over left
Sun: Such a minor difference
Hanged Man: Left leg over right

[Pen]

You're really good at this! It feels almost wonderful to have been able to link the cards in a way that's understandable yet concealed enough to retain some mystery/ambiguity. I have to admit that I hadn't noticed the letters 'R' or 'L' in the Death card - once I saw those faint little hands they seemed to take over.

Thanks for:

I notice the word monstrance comes from the Latin "monstrare" - to show or display. But the object is also sometimes known as the "ostensorium" - from the Latin "ostensere" - which means roughly the same. But it must be the root of our words "ostentatious" and "ostensibly", which has come to be used to covey a disparity between appearance and reality. I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make, but there's something in there about the relationship between display and deception.

- I've never come across "ostensorium", it was the similarity between 'monstrous' and 'monstrance' that struck me. Now the reading has gained yet another dimension - this has been one of the more satisfying haikus.

[Pen]

TdM Millenium Edition (Wilfried Houdouin, 2012)


Emperor: Right leg over left
Sun: Such a minor difference
Hanged Man: Left leg over right

Those legs are a gift - a story presents itself. The Emperor is thinking back to his youth when, rightly or wrongly, he was hanged by the left leg, either in reality or in a 'shame' painting for being (or being suspected of being), a traitor. Or perhaps the Hanged Man was his twin brother - they were almost identical - 'such a minor difference' between them. And of course, the Emperor had been born a few minutes before his twin, making his brother Somebody Minor. Long ago he 'turned his back' on his brother and disowned him.

[dodalisque]

Emperor / Sun / Hanged Man

Those legs are a gift - a story presents itself.

How about:

"Double-crossed? How so?"
The legs on cards 1 and 3
Predict betrayal

I like the story you get from the haiku. Your idea that the youngest of the twins is regarded as being the "minor" of the two is good. Perhaps Edmund and Edgar in King Lear? I'm tickled by the way the poem takes for granted that the people on the two outside cards are complete opposites. It's not mentioned and it's left to the reader to notice this and join the dots. A "minor difference" between the two young people, presumably twins, on the Sun card - some microscopic disparity in their respective DNA - resulted in them taking very different paths through life. One ended up as an Emperor and the other became an outcast. I was also thinking of that cliche, a "minor difference of opinion". One of those can make people involved in an argument become adversarial and take radically different positions. And of course a "minor" is a young person while also meaning "trivial", so that pun was a gift too. This haiku worked out well, by accident of course. I wish they all came so easily. I'd love to make something of the fact that the Emperor's chain of office and the Hanged Man's rope are both nooses. The Emperor is hamstrung by a life of duties and responsibilities, so maybe they are not so different after all.

[dodalisque]

Millenium Tdm (Wilfired Houdouin, 2012)

Chariot: I held my weapon
Justice: More firmly to show resolve
Tower: But pulled down lightning

[Pen]

Madame Soleil's Dusserre Dodal

1) King of Coins: Power in his hands
2) Valet of Cups: Distrust, envy in their eyes
3) Valet of Swords: Blinking not advised...

[dodalisque]

1) King of Coins: Power in his hands
2) Valet of Cups: Distrust, envy in their eyes
3) Valet of Swords: Blinking not advised...

The two powers on the right do seem to be massed against the King guarding his possession. Youth versus age seems to be an issue too - newness versus the established order. But they all seem nasty characters. The two young guys are literally indulging in "cloak and dagger" activities. The near rhyme of "eyes" and "advised" is nice.

BTW, we talked earlier about the possibility of using a 42 card deck - 22 majors + 16 courts + 4 aces - I guess we could call it the Douglas Adams Solution - and you said that you drew from the complete deck but put any minors aside and drew another card. It just struck me that that means you are already using a 42 card deck. I feel the 42 card deck calling to me but EE is such a purist about using majors-only that I might persevere with that for a while longer. I would like to get past my habit of constantly using my favourite pet ideas with the majors and force myself to stretch my imagination a bit - try somehow to come at them fresh each time. When I have a good idea about a particular card I can't seem to forget it and get stuck in a rut.

I think the elemental symbols on the courts are what EE objects to. To acknowledge them introduces the notion of the 4 Elements into readings which are associated with occultism, and he is determined to rescue the TdM from the Golden Dawn. He wants us to look at the 3 cards as if they were a painting in a gallery or scenes happening around us on the street rather than tokens for conveying magical doctrines. He does read with the full deck including the minors, but even then he likes to think of, say, the 8 of Swords card not as "the 8 of Swords" but as "8 Swords". There's a subtle but vital difference - the latter is much more concrete and literal. That said, I personally really like the extra variety that the court cards and aces add to the readings. The majors do seem to have a monolithic iconic quality to them that is different from the flesh and blood human beings on the courts, but the contrast is interesting.

[Pen]

dodalisque wrote:

Chariot: I held my weapon
Justice: More firmly to show resolve
Tower: But pulled down lightning

Love the surprise in that last line.

dodalisque wrote: When I have a good idea about a particular card I can't seem to forget it and get stuck in a rut.

I wouldn't call it a rut - I believe that first thing you notice - the initial strong attraction - is part of the intuitive process, but I have to admit that sometimes my readings seem similar, as if I'm just saying the same thing in a different way.

[dodalisque]

I have to admit that sometimes my readings seem similar, as if I'm just saying the same thing in a different way.

I think that just means that you have found your own voice. I don't see any repetition of subject matter.

[dodalisque]

Millenium TdM (Wilfired Houdouin, 2012)

World: Holding her drumsticks
Chariot: Seated behind her drum-kit
Temperance: She weaves strange rhythms

[Pen]

This one so perfectly fits the image that I found myself wondering who in the 'real' world (if the world is indeed real or ever has been) it could be about. Trying to think - I know there was someone but she's not on this list and I've forgotten who...

[dodalisque]

I found myself wondering who in the 'real' world (if the world is indeed real or ever has been) it could be about. Trying to think - I know there was someone but she's not on this list and I've forgotten who...

I'm not sure either but her first name begins with a P, probably Prudence. The 4 cardinal virtues of the Catholic church are of course Justice (VIII), Strength (XI), Temperance (XIIII), and Prudence. Three of these are neatly spaced out, each three cards apart - the mystical magical 3 of the Christian three-person Trinity - in the major arcana. But where is Prudence? It's a strange omission because in medieval Christianity Prudence was regarded as the greatest of the 4 Virtues.

To carry on the 3 card spacing would make the Star (XVII) card correlate to that virtue, but in her nakedness and profligacy she doesn't look very prudent. The World card (XXI) is another candidate. It is the culminating card of the majors and is often associated with the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, Sophia. Other cards have been put forward as the Prudence card. My own theory is that Prudence was deliberately excluded from the deck. After all, the tarot was originally a set of cards used for gambling. Gamblers don't need prudence, they wouldn't be gamblers if they had it. Putting myself into the minds of those gamblers smoking and drinking together I would find it kind of humorous to know that that particular Virtue was missing from the deck.

We tend to treat the tarot as a sacred object but perhaps those gamblers needed the cards as a break from all that holiness. Of course the images would have to stop short of actual blasphemy. There would have to be sly hints and perhaps a deliberate confusion of biblical stories with other scraps of folk wisdom. That might explain why so many of the images are puzzling from our standpoint as we look back on the obsessively Christian society in which they appeared.

I seem to see jokes all over the place in the TdM, hiding in plain sight, cheekily hinting at ideas contrary to Catholic doctrine. The TdM was used in taverns for card games, so surely the images would have been designed to appeal to somewhat cynical ordinary citizens. Perhaps it's the tarot of wise-guys rather than wisdom. But a lot of anti-doctrinal-Catholicism is wisdom! (Anti-doctrinal-anything, in fact.) The similarity between the Pope and the Devil cards is an example. That thing about the Magician's table resembling a Christian altar is another. The Wheel of Fortune and the Chariot are also symbols that are usually associated with change and progress, yet the versions of those symbols on the cards are both stuck. The Wheel is as constantly precarious as gambler's luck. I had a thought yesterday about the Sun card when I was looking at Joan-Marie's Card of the Day - I put it in Comments. It is probably common knowledge in the TdM community but I have never seen it written down anywhere. There must be a literature in France about this kind of thing but I don't read French. My Latin and Greek is better than my French. I feel like I'm missing out on so much in the TdM by not being French. The English have football and fish 'n' chips and they have the TdM.

viewtopic.php?f=74&t=843&start=25

[Pen]

Madame Soleil's Dusserre Dodal

1) Judgement: It's a wake-up call.
2) Death: He works without compassion
3) King of Batons: His left hand hidden...

[Pen]

dodalisque wrote: The 4 cardinal virtues of the Catholic church are of course Justice (VIII), Strength (XI), Temperance (XIIII), and Prudence. Three of these are neatly spaced out, each three cards apart - the mystical magical 3 of the Christian three-person Trinity - in the major arcana. But where is Prudence? It's a strange omission because in medieval Christianity Prudence was regarded as the greatest of the 4 Virtues.

To carry on the 3 card spacing would make the Star (XVII) card correlate to that virtue, but in her nakedness and profligacy she doesn't look very prudent. The World card (XXI) is another candidate. It is the culminating card of the majors and is often associated with the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, Sophia. Other cards have been put forward as the Prudence card. My own theory is that Prudence was deliberately excluded from the deck. After all, the tarot was originally a set of cards used for gambling. Gamblers don't need prudence, they wouldn't be gamblers if they had it. Putting myself into the minds of those gamblers smoking and drinking together I would find it kind of humorous to know that that particular Virtue was missing from the deck.

Re. Prudence, your idea makes sense. I wonder why though, if this is the case, she's missing from the Visconti decks - if they're indeed older than the TdM, and were created for the use of a noble family, then I'd have expected to find her there, although if I remember correctly, four cards are missing, so she could be among those. She is present among the 50 cards of the Tarocchi di Mantegna (circa 1465)- I might look mine out and work with that for a while.

[dodalisque]

Re. Prudence, your idea makes sense. I wonder why though, if this is the case, she's missing from the Visconti decks - if they're indeed older than the TdM, and were created for the use of a noble family, then I'd have expected to find her there, although if I remember correctly, four cards are missing, so she could be among those. She is present among the 50 cards of the Tarocchi di Mantegna (circa 1465)- I might look mine out and work with that for a while.

Dammit, once again you succeed in finding holes in my pet theories. I have never seen, or even heard of, the Tarocchi di Mantegna. [...researching...researching...] Ah, well, I see that they are considered instructional cards rather than a playing card deck, so that disqualifies them from the debate. Or they might even support my idea, insofar as Prudence should have been present and explicitly named whenever the other 3 Cardinal Virtues show up.

The missing cards in the Visconti deck are The Devil, The Tower, Three of Swords and Knight of Coins, and I doubt that any of those would have been the missing Prudence. The Devil and Tower are dark cards and Prudence is the essence of light. The persistence of the Devil and Tower cards in all other versions of the deck suggests that Prudence was probably not originally part of a different mythological ordering, i.e. taking the place of either the Devil or Tower cards.

I wonder where Prudence is the Petrarch's poem "I Trionfi", which is generally regarded as an early precursor of the tarot. Where was Prudence in those early street processions, and how was she portrayed? Was the girl dressed as Prudence shown holding a Star? The Visconti majors are untitled, so I'm guessing that what corresponds to the TdM Star card would have been instantly recognised - like the other 3 Virtues - by users of the deck as representing Prudence. The mathematical spacing of the 4 Virtues - all 3 cards apart - seems to suggest this. I would have to know more about Renaissance symbolism and church architecture to answer that. There must surely be hundreds of depictions of the 4 Virtues in sculptures, paintings and tapestries of the period. Surely all 4 of them would have been shown together. Unless Prudence as the greatest of the Virtues was afforded a special status. I still find it very odd that Prudence doesn't have a titled card to herself in the TdM. There is no "Christ" or "Virgin Mary" card in the deck. Perhaps Prudence was too holy to be mentioned by name in a mere deck of secular playing cards. Her presence had to be hinted at, as the Papesse card perhaps hints at the person of Mary and the World card hints at Christ. I need to do a lot more research on this. The answer is undoubtedly somewhere here on the late Michael J. Hurst's amazing website - in fact I notice an article on the subject on the very first page:
https://pre-gebelin.blogspot.com/2016/

The French TdM tradition grew out of the earlier Italian decks, I thought, and I guess I'm reading the French deck as a kind of lower-class gamblers' version of those high-falutin decks made for the Italian Catholic aristocracy. Folk wisdom commenting on and correcting the doctrinal party-line. Much of the appeal of the Dodal for me is how "working-class" the deck feels. That's why I generally prefer the Type I decks to the later Type II like the Conver. It was almost like the middle-class caught wind of something good in the card games being played by their servants and tidied up the artwork a bit. The Type II decks seem bourgeois in comparison to Type I. But I make an exception for the Houdouin Millenium deck because, for me, for some unexplored psychological reason, the deliciously neurotic mathematical precision outweighs class considerations for once.

[dodalisque]

1) Judgement: It's a wake-up call.
2) Death: He works without compassion
3) King of Batons: His left hand hidden...

Very mysterious. Is he Napoleon or Captain Hook? Did he lose his left hand to the crocodile on the middle card?

[dodalisque]

Millenium TdM (Wilfied Houdouin, 2012)

To his amusement
The same 4 people all change
While staying the same

or,

Lovers: This state of affairs
Magician: Needs a miracle for all
Judgement: To emerge unscathed

[Pen]

Re. Prudence, there's a number of discussions in which she is mentioned on the Tarot History Forum. I used to be obsessed with tarot history but seem to have lost touch with all the delicious details. I think Gertrude Moakley was the first to suggest that the tarot trumps were based on Italian triumphal processions, mentioned in Petrach's poem, in which there are six triumphs.

Prudence is usually depicted elsewhere holding a mirror, possibly looking both forwards and backwards at the same time.

Michael Hurst is greatly missed.


Re. '...the crocodile in card 2' I've looked and looked but can't see the beast...

dodalisque wrote:

To his amusement
The same 4 people all change
While staying the same

or,

Lovers: This state of affairs
Magician: Needs a miracle for all
Judgement: To emerge unscathed

Both very clever - I feel happy if I can manage one.

[dodalisque]

Re. '...the crocodile in card 2' I've looked and looked but can't see the beast...

Thanks for the link to the Tarot History Forum. I like the idea of the 4 Virtues being associated with the 4 suit symbols - Temperance/Cups, Justice/Swords, and in the earlier decks Strength/Wands (i.e. Hercules whacking a lion with a club), and Prudence holding a Coin-like mirror. But that doesn't apply so neatly to the French TdM. I still like my ridiculous gamblers' deck idea but I have a lot more messages on the Forum to trawl through.

The inhuman quality of the crocodile in Peter Pan - basically just a mouthful of teeth on legs - to me makes it seem very similar to the TdM skeleton. Peter Pan chopped off Capt Hook's hand and it was gobbled up by a croc, who likes the taste so much he follows Hook around looking to eat the rest of him. It's a symbol for death, following us around waiting to pounce at any moment. The croc has also swallowed a ticking clock, which seems like a very good image for death: "You're time is up!" Card 12, Le Pendu, is a pendulum, and in the very next card 13 we get the pendulum of the scythe swishing back and forth minus the human element. There seems to be something going on in the images about Time.

In the last TdM haiku I did featuring the Judgement card I thought perhaps the angel's trumpet leading back up to the hole in the sky, through which the angel appears, looks like a nuclear mushroom cloud. Maybe the "ribbon of Anjou", or Angevin ribbon, around the angel even looks like the gills on the underside of a mushroom. The Ukraine issue, of course, is what I mostly had in mind in the haiku and perhaps the threat of nuclear war will be what finally persuades all parties involved to stop the hand to hand fighting that we see on the Lovers card earlier in the spread.

BTW did you notice how the usual image of the Lovers card is laterally reversed in Houdouin's Millenium TdM? His skeleton on the Death card is also heading in the opposite direction. These two simple changes take a lot of getting used to after years of seeing the images the other way round. But I might even prefer the way the Millenium has it now that I've rationalised of the differences. Still it seems an odd choice for Houdouin to make. I'm sure he has lots of good reasons for such a controversial choice.

I always promise myself I'm going to make a serious study of Michael J. Hurst's site but quickly get overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of information. Trying to put ourselves into the minds of the people of the early Renaissance so as to get a better feeling for what they saw in the images might not actually be very helpful when it comes to reading the cards. It might make it more difficult for our imagination to step back to see the symbolic potential of the cards. I had a number of questions I wanted to ask Michael when he posted on Aeclectic but he seemed such a prickly character that I never had the nerve. I gave up the History option at school as soon as I could. I've never really had much appetite for the real world. Maths and structure and abstraction seem so much simpler and cleaner and more manageable somehow. Actual life - history, nature, biology - is way too messy. The trouble is that when your attention is given over entirely to structure - the bones of the skeleton - your life takes on a deathlike quality and the real world has a way of coming back to bite you - like that crocodile.

[Pen]

Madame Soleil's Dusserre Dodal

1) Strength: Extracting a tooth
2) Knight of Swords: May provoke mixed reactions
3) The Tower: But worse things happen...

[dodalisque]

1) Strength: Extracting a tooth
2) Knight of Swords: May provoke mixed reactions
3) The Tower: But worse things happen...

This gets an LOL, but it does have wider moral and political implications beyond the world of dentistry, for sure. Now The Tower is even starting to look to me like a tooth - maybe one that's damaged and hurting and needs to get capped or pulled. Funny the way the Tower card keeps showing up for both of us since the Ukraine thing started.