Gerardo Lonardoni
LA VIA DEL SACRO. I SIMBOLI DEI TAROCCHI FRA ORIENTE ED OCCIDENTE
The Way to the Sacred One. The Symbols of Tarot between East and West

In Italian

Presentation by Franco Cardini
Introduction by Andrea Vitali

142 pages,  80 photos in colour  and 23  in black and white  

Martina Editions - Bologna - www.edizionimartina.com)

ISBN 978-88-7572-069-8

Through Western history flows the subterranean stream of symbolism, appearing in architectural styles, literary works, the plastic arts and every other expression of human thought. Many examples are well known, but scholars do not often talk about them, as if the apparent meaning of a work were more worthwhile than the hidden one. The Divine Comedy and a large part of medieval poetry are examples; Romanesque and Gothic Cathedrals in their turn are full of symbolical representations. On the threshold of Siena Cathedral, one is welcomed by the mysterious figure of Hermes Trismegistus, the “Lord of Mystery” par excellence of the Renaissance age. But many more symbolic manifestations still remain unknown.

The Duomo of Orvieto, another masterpiece of Italian Gothic in Central Italy, has a magnificent rose window created by the great sculptor Andrea di Cione, called Orcagna. It is a beautiful circle of carved stone, bearing in the centre a sculpted head of Christ; it is inscribed within a square flanked by the painted heads of Saints and Prophets. On looking beyond the purely aesthetic beauty of the masterpiece, one observes that the head of Christ is surrounded by twenty-two rays, and that along the sides of the external square there are fifty-six heads of Saints and Prophets. Why twenty-two and fifty-six? Twenty-two is the number of Books in the Old Testament, as Origen, Father of the Church, notes: “In their arrangement, numbers contain a certain power over things, and that power has been used by the Creator of the Universe… we must recognize that the books of the Old Testament as handed down by the Jews are twenty-two in all and it is meaningful that the Hebrew characters total the same number. Just as twenty-two letters seem to be the introduction to the knowledge and doctrine impressed by these figures on men, so the twenty-two books of Scripture are likewise the foundation of and introduction to the wisdom of God and knowledge of the world” (select. In Ps I – PG 12, 1084). What about the number fifty-six? To find its meaning we must search further.

Prof. Franco Cardini, author of the foreword, raises the subject of the migration of symbols: in the Indo-Iranian god Varuna we recognize the Ouranos of the ancient Greeks, while the Asuras, demonized in India, were long considered gods by the Germans who named them Asen. Symbols and goods travelled together for thousands of years along the Silk Road, while mutual exchanges and influences took place among civilizations and cultures; so in 8th-century Himalayan Kashmir we find the Hindu text “Shivasutra” consisting of 22 primary aphorisms and 56 lesser ones, and the nearby Tibetan tableland produced the ancient cult of the 22 forms of Tara “The Saviouress”. Even the twenty-two letters about which Origen wrote were not the Latin ones (of which there were twenty-three, and twenty-six in the modern version) but Hebrew. Ex oriente lux.

Symbolic forms seem to chase each other from East to West, changing their shape but remaining simple derivations of the same archetypes. A Chronograph written in 354 A.D. by Furius Dionisius Philocalus contains a fragment of a Christian liturgical calendar used in Rome in 326 A.D. or perhaps earlier. Under the date VIII kalendas januarias – that is December 25th – you may read: “natus est Christus in Betleem Judaeae”, Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea. That is a baffling statement, as in the Gospels there is no clue to the date when Jesus was born; quite the opposite, Luke hints at something completely different when he says: “there were shepherds in that region keeping watch by night over their flocks”. Sheep-raising has always been practised in Palestine between spring and autumn.

The fact is, December 25th is a symbolic date: all solar gods, called Invincible Suns, like Apollo and the Persian god Mithras whose cult was imported to Rome by soldiers returning from the Persian campaigns, were born on December 25th. In Greece this applied to Apollo and also his brother Bacchus, and in Syria to Adonis. Egypt celebrated the birth of Osiris and his son Horus on that day. In Babylon they celebrated the god Tammuz, the only son of the goddess Ishtar portrayed with her child in her arms and a 12-starred halo around her head: the icon of mother and new-born child dates back to immemorial times and symbolizes Mother Earth producing her fruits. But why that date? Because December 25th falls around the winter solstice, which is the gateway between the old year and the new; the god who was born at that period bears a new message and new hope. East and West thus prove connected to the same archetypes.

At the root of Christian thought lies the symbol of the Mystical Ladder. Medieval theology assigns a specific order to the Universe, structured as a symbolic ladder going up from Earth to Heaven; from the top of which God, the Prima Causa, governs the world with no direct intervention, but working ex gradibus, that is through a continuous series of intermediaries so that divine power can descend to inferior beings. If we read the same symbol in the opposite direction, from the bottom upwards, the ladder shows how man can gradually raise himself in the spiritual order and, through science and virtue, get closer to God. As Origen taught, there are numbers that God used to create the world, and these can be used by man to return to God: like twenty-two, and fifty-six.

In Western countries a set of symbols have long been studied by historians and scholars of iconology, explored by depth psychology, yet ignored by most would-be learned people. Their rise dates back approximately to the same period as the Orcagna masterpiece in Orvieto. During Humanism they were designated by the noble title of “Triumphs”. This was later replaced by the name “Tarot”, often used in a disparaging sense though its real meaning and origin still remain unknown.

The set is composed of 78 cards, divided into two groups of 22 and 56. Twenty-two “Major Arcana” displaying elaborate medieval-looking pictures, deeply Christian like “the Pope” and “the Hermit”, or pagan like “Strength”, or even vaguely heretical like “the Popess”; and fifty-six “Lesser Arcana” which remind us of ancient numerology. In fact the numbers four and ten, which the Pythagoreans considered to be sacred, appear in the four “court cards” and ten “numeral cards” of each suit.

“The Way to the Sacred” begins with a lengthy section devoted to Tarot history, then examines the symbolic and iconographical meanings of the single cards and the analogies existing between Tarot cards and some important oriental sets of symbols, such as the 78 “Aphorisms of Shiva” and the “twenty-one emanations of Tara”. A route is delineated through the twenty-two most important images, with a view to restoring the Tarot to its ancient meaning as a representation of the Mystical Ladder, that is the ascent of man to spiritual heights. The book also contains a rich iconographical set of pictures from the ancient deck “Bernardine Suzanne”, the 22 Taras and India’s most important religious and symbolic representation, Shiva Nataraja, “Lord of Dance”. One section outlines the relations between the Tarot and the most important wisdom book of China, the I-Ching. The I Ching structure is based, like the Tarot’s, on a definite numerological sequence and has been ascribed by tradition to the Confucian school; its meaning was thoroughly investigated by the famous Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung.            
      
The author is a member of the Cultural Association Le Tarot, committed to systematic study of the cards with regard to their iconography, history and symbolism. The Association has set up several most important national and international exhibitions of Tarot, and among its members are leading figures from the academic world. The author’s present work is the fruit of long-lasting innovatory research into the relations between western and eastern symbolism, as well as the numerous unsolved problems raised by the appearance and evolution of the Tarot in western countries.

INDEX AND CONTENTS OF THE BOOK

Foreword by prof. Franco Cardini, Middle Age historian
Introduction by prof. Andrea Vitali, Tarot history and iconology scholar

Preface
A lengthy summary of Tarot history, introducing both the evolution of Tarot in Western countries and the existing analogies between their structure and Eastern symbolical sets such as the Sivasutra and the Buddhist Tara.

1. The vitalization of the symbols.
The way to use symbols creatively. The main structure of the Tarot symbology.

2. Tarot and the Eastern Traditions.
An overview of the analogies existing between Tarot cards and some important oriental sets of symbols, such as the 78 “Aphorisms of Shiva” and the “twenty-one emanations of Tara”. A route is delineated through the twenty-two most important images, with a view to restoring the Tarot to its ancient meaning as a representation of the Mystical Ladder, that is the ascent of man to spiritual heights.

3. Numerological aspects of Tarot
The ancient science of Numbers, and its relations with the tarot symbolical structure.

4. Tarot and the Yi King
The outlines of the relations between the Tarot and the most important wisdom book of China, the I-Ching. The I Ching structure is based, like the Tarot’s, on a definite numerological sequence and has been ascribed by tradition to the Confucian school; its meaning was thoroughly investigated by the famous Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung.                 

5. The Arcana of Transformation
A thorough analysis of the comparative meanings of the Major Arcana, the Sivasutras and the “twenty-one emanations of Tara”.  

6. The Lesser Arcana: the Path of Evolution
Iconography and symbolism in the pip and court cards.

7. Vision of Shamballa
A short essay about the ancient Oracles and the use of Divination, presenting a new scheme for consulting the Tarot, inspired by its numerological structure.

8. Notes about Divination
Further considerations about the practice, the meaning and the limits of Divination.

9. Epilogue
Final considerations about the issues discussed in the book.

10. Bibliography

11. Acknowledgments