h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Tarot: a brief history from Italy to England - A9348933
Author: philebus1972 - U3203183

There seems to be a lot of stuff out there about divination and the occult but very little about how the cards came to be thought of that way - or that makes any mention of the card games. I would like to follow this up with some entries giving rules for some of the games - in particular, some of the more neglected Italian & Sicilian games.

Hi there! This is really interesting. I've often wondered about this subject and it is very difficult to find anything written down about it.

The main thing that this entry suffers from is the lack of headers, which would break the text up into different sections. Pick something like "Early History", "The Occult" and so on.

The easiest way to add the headers is just to put them on a separate line with a blank line before and after them. If you feel brave, you could convert the whole thing to GuideML which is h2g2's markup language. To do this you have to add a lot of extra codes to the text, but these will make the headers look nicer. If you don't want to do this, it will be done anyway by a subeditor if this gets picked to be in the Edited Guide.

Good work!

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it. I'm going to have to make a little edit though - I've just spotted a howler of a mistake, writting 15th century instead of 14th! If you are interested in reading more about his subject, you might like to look for books by Michael Dummett (also with Ronald Decker and Thierry Depaulis).

Dummett is better known for his work in philosophy but he is possibly the world's top expert on the history of Tarot, both the games and the occultist history. His first book, The Game of Tarot (Duckworth 1980) is now very difficult to find, with second hand copies costing from £180 to £500. It is worth trying your library, they may be able to get a copy for you. This book traces the history of the cards and the development of the games, including their rules at different periods. He has since published two more books on the games but these are still not cheap (about £80 a volume) and I've not been able to see copies yet.

In collaborations he published two books, much easier to obtain, on the history of the occult beliefs: "A Wicked Book of Cards" and "A History of Occult Tarot". The first of these traces the early history in 18th century France to the 19th century, whilst the second picks up the story at the end the 19th century to about 1970, telling how they reached England and the States.

I do also recommend the games - they are my favourites. If you want to buy cards to play these, check out www.playingcardsales.com - I've bought a LOT of cards there and have always found them very reliable, with prompt service, fair prices, and the best range of cards anywhere on the net.

There is a lot of information out there but the occult beliefs surrounding the cards in the English speaking world have kept the games from reaching us. Waddingtons did try to launch the French game in England in the 1970s (I found a pack in a second hand bookshop) under then German name "Tarrock" but it didn't take off. It is amazing the number of people who will, after being presented with the facts, agree that the occultist history is baseless but still refuse to play games with the cards - even the French suited ones! Superstition can be very powerful.

This may be of interest too, though I'm not sure A461927

It's in the Flea Market, so fair game as such.

MJ

Still working on this philebust1972?

oh it's going to be a real shame if this one is abandoned...

All I have to add is that as Gnomon said, it would be easier to read with some headers.

But it's really interesting. I had no idea about any of this.
<ok<

Author hasn't posted in nearly two months, but is this pickable as it is? It certainly fits the guidelines, but no-one has really commented on whether the content is correct, or complete, or not.

Maybe Seraphina knows something of this?

It would be a shame to lose this one.

I've invited her over to have a read

As far as I know the Tarot is believed to date back considerably further than 14th century Italy, but its very cloudy n difficult to trace.

Having had a more through look , its a nice entry ,definately needs some reorganisation and headers though!

The author appears to have Elvised, Serephina, we're discussing whether this is pickable as it is, (meaning it can be tidied up by the sub-ed) or vote for a move to the Flea Market, which would be a shame.

What do you think?

If theres a sub willing n with time to do the work it needs then yeah, but flea market seems more realistic.

I'll give you a Scout/Sub's opinion tomorrow, if you like; just very tired right now!

I agree with GB, if it's just headers and structure I think it's ok to pick it, but if the content needs work, then I'd suggest it's away to Flea Market with it so that someone else can work on it.

Serephina the sub-ed will have access to the PR thread also and can add information given here that's not in the entry.

Plus if it's recommended, the author will get an email saying that - and may therefore be encouraged to return to h2g2 and start their second entry so that's another thing to consider.

I think its a flea market job myself

well, I'm not in favour of the sub-ed adding content, so I'll second a FM motion

I'll add it to my list if that's ok.

I've already added it to the Database, but we don't know if Jimster wants us to use it yet, so it's worthwhile having a list as well