Recently I took a course that focused on Renaissance art and the history of the tarot. The instructor is an art historian, jewellery designer, and artist. His name is Robert M. Place and he is also a well-respected tarot historian and deck designer. I came to know him in a round about way.
While browsing in a used book store, I came across an intriguing tarot deck. It was bound only by a single rubber band, with no box or ‘little white book’ to indicate the title of the deck, but I fell in love with the artwork. The images were unfamiliar and seemed to resonate with me, so I bought the deck and managed to track down the name after all. It turned out to be the Alchemical Tarot, illustrated by none other than Robert M. Place. Funny how things in life like that happen. It turns out he is a warm, compassionate person and has even granted me permission to use his images in my tarot readings. His artwork has a simplicity in design that I enjoy from an aesthetic view and it reminds me of the woodcut printing style from the middle ages. And as always with the tarot, each card is replete with symbolism, and his deck is no exception.
The two-part course focused on the historical aspects of the art in the tarot and the influence of the art movement as the Renaissance was beginning. And the wonderful thing about this course is that where I started is not where I ended up at all! I love when that happens. We covered the true history of the tarot and compared the images from the earliest decks and managed to end the first night looking at a picture of the ‘heavenly spheres’, and the philosophical aspects of this construct. It was during the Hellenistic period that the concept of these spheres was posited- much like the layers of an onion. The layers encased the earth. Each sphere was a step on the ladder. Seven steps up, or seven steps down, depending on one’s direction. The goal was to move from vice to virtue.
Within this construct also arose the notion of ‘music of the spheres’, which was not really music at all, not like we know music today. No, this ‘music of the spheres’, of the sun, the moon, and the planets was a mystical, mathematical, and philosophical construct. It was based on how the planets moved about the earth and how they were geometrically related and perfect, all seven heavenly bodies in a celestial song, with a mathematical resonance that was at once perfect and divine.
Here is the interesting part- a sort of ‘synchronicity’ in my studies: At the time I took the class, I had also been reading Johannes Kepler’s biography and how he had been working to prove the earth was in motion around the sun and mathematically he knew the movements were elliptical instead of spherical. And eventually he wrote “Harmonice Mundi”, or “Music of the World”. He understood the original theory of harmony based on Pythagorean mathematics (as described in a book written by Galileo Galilei’s musician father, Vincenzo). There was a harmony to the universe and the planets themselves- known as the “Harmony of the Spheres”. I was so intrigued by this concept I found a copy of Kepler’s work (a translation with introduction by Stephen Hawking) but I could not understand much of it for the mathematics were far beyond my reach. It was incredibly frustrating. Since I don’t understand the language of math it felt like I was missing out on something mysterious and incredible.
So you see, the path was one from art and symbolism, to ‘music’, to mathematics. How interesting that these things are interwoven, especially when one looks at all aspects of a particular era of history. Each history includes philosophy, politics, religion, the arts, the sciences, all of which are juxtaposed against the backdrop of the social fabric of the time. Of course, the more I read, the more I learn. But with this comes the realization that really, I know so very little, which simply spurs me on to continue my own independent study.
Image: by William Cunningham, The Cosmographicall Glasse, London 1559.
The two-part course focused on the historical aspects of the art in the tarot and the influence of the art movement as the Renaissance was beginning. And the wonderful thing about this course is that where I started is not where I ended up at all! I love when that happens. We covered the true history of the tarot and compared the images from the earliest decks and managed to end the first night looking at a picture of the ‘heavenly spheres’, and the philosophical aspects of this construct. It was during the Hellenistic period that the concept of these spheres was posited- much like the layers of an onion. The layers encased the earth. Each sphere was a step on the ladder. Seven steps up, or seven steps down, depending on one’s direction. The goal was to move from vice to virtue.
Within this construct also arose the notion of ‘music of the spheres’, which was not really music at all, not like we know music today. No, this ‘music of the spheres’, of the sun, the moon, and the planets was a mystical, mathematical, and philosophical construct. It was based on how the planets moved about the earth and how they were geometrically related and perfect, all seven heavenly bodies in a celestial song, with a mathematical resonance that was at once perfect and divine.
Here is the interesting part- a sort of ‘synchronicity’ in my studies: At the time I took the class, I had also been reading Johannes Kepler’s biography and how he had been working to prove the earth was in motion around the sun and mathematically he knew the movements were elliptical instead of spherical. And eventually he wrote “Harmonice Mundi”, or “Music of the World”. He understood the original theory of harmony based on Pythagorean mathematics (as described in a book written by Galileo Galilei’s musician father, Vincenzo). There was a harmony to the universe and the planets themselves- known as the “Harmony of the Spheres”. I was so intrigued by this concept I found a copy of Kepler’s work (a translation with introduction by Stephen Hawking) but I could not understand much of it for the mathematics were far beyond my reach. It was incredibly frustrating. Since I don’t understand the language of math it felt like I was missing out on something mysterious and incredible.
So you see, the path was one from art and symbolism, to ‘music’, to mathematics. How interesting that these things are interwoven, especially when one looks at all aspects of a particular era of history. Each history includes philosophy, politics, religion, the arts, the sciences, all of which are juxtaposed against the backdrop of the social fabric of the time. Of course, the more I read, the more I learn. But with this comes the realization that really, I know so very little, which simply spurs me on to continue my own independent study.
Image: by William Cunningham, The Cosmographicall Glasse, London 1559.
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