Ad patriam vitae noctis da valle vocati, / virtutum gradibus scandite lucis iter. / Arduus atque arctus fert ad coelestia callis: / devexa ad mortem ducit, et amplia via (Called from the Valley of the Death to Life climbing along the path of light through the steps of virtue, the difficult and narrow path leads to heaven, the broad jump and downhill brings to death).
Prosper Aquitanus, Epigrammata ex sententiis S. Augustini, 655 LXIX
As we have seen from the first section that shows the exhibition of "Tarot: History, Art, Magic" with the title The Celestial Harmony, the 22 triumphal cards represented, in the XV century, the mystical teachings of Asceticism. The origin of the Mystic Scale concept in Christian dates back to the famous biblical passage, who tells the Jacobs dream during his trip to Harran, city of Mesopotamia (Genesis, 28, 12-13). Jacob left quickly, traveling all day. When night came, he fell asleep under the stars, using a stone for a pillow. As he slept, he had a dream about a beautiful stairway that reached all the way from earth up to heaven. God appeared and promised to give him and his children (descendant), that is the people of Israel, the land that he lying upon (figure 1 - The Jacob’s dream, Bible of Vinceslao, cod. 2759, fol. 27r, 1389 ca. -1395. Hofbibliotheck, Wien / figure 2 - Raphael Sadeler, 1569 - c. 1628. The Jacob’s dream, etching). It is necessary to observe that the scale remembers the big steps of Ziqqurat, who led on from the soil to the top, where God used to live.
Jacob woke up and said: "Surely God is in this place". And he made a vow to God. Then he took the stone he had slept on and set it upright to remember this special place. He called that place Betel, that is “God’s home”.
Fathers of West and East Church provided, about this episode, several allegorical interpretations. Philo from Alexandria (I century), Clement Alessandrino († before the 215) and Origen (185-253/254) compared the Angels to the human soul and their rising up and down was compared with the ascension to the sky. Meanwhile for other Father, the Scale means tie between the spiritual and the material World, whereas the Angels absorbed to divine words. In addition, the Scale was seen as symbol of Mary and Jesus in the role of intermediary between heaven and heart (figure 3 - Guglielmo Borremans, The Mistic Scale, 1722, St Mary of Pity Church, Palermo. Photo by Angela Bisesi).
In the primitive Christianity, the street to the heaven was imagined as ascension, as well as those of Christ end Elijah. To represent the trip of the humans towards God, the Scale became the most important element together with an high mountain. This representation had a big iconographic and hagiographic success: Perpetua, the Carthaginian martyr, while she was forced in prison had a vision of a high and narrow staircase rising to the sky, with swords, spears and other weapons of fate that contrasted the way from the sides while a dragons stir up on its base, signifying the way to heaven through martyrdom.
The greatest humility and divine bliss could be attained in earthly life by an ascent, erecting a scale, to be carried by their own works, like that of Jacob, relying in the first place to the virtues (the moralizing stairs of virtue are usual in the medieval art of miniature) capable of breaking down the pride “that sinks the man preventing his elevation" (Saint Benedict of Norcia).
With the thought of Scholasticism - that confirmed the truths of faith through the use of reason and the use of authority - was born a new and fruitful connection between theology and philosophy so Scientia (Science) and Sapientia (Wisdom) - including Philosophia, which prepares all understanding of faith, and Theologia wanted to be supreme expressions - were considered mystical rungs of the ladder, which appear on the engraving accompanying the work of the Bishop Antonio Bettini El monte sancto di Dio (The Holy Mountain) (1477), "a symbolic writing that shows the way to attain the eternal happiness " (figure 4).
In this work, the Jesuit who climbs the ladder one foot rests on the head of the devil, which we find as a dragon in the vision of the martyr Perpetua, where, as observed St. Augustine, its head formed on the first rung of the ladder. Its meaning is simple: it could not be taken any way the elevation until they had crushed the head of the devil, that is rejected.
To represent the ascent route, in addition to the scale, we find a mountain as it appears in the Antonio Bettini’s engraving, although the two motives will live for the most part independently.
In the Tarot of Charles VI a mountain in stylized form is on the trail of the Hermit (figure 5): its top, as close to heaven, takes part in the symbolism of transcendence, a meeting point between heaven and earth and the end of the human ascension. Juan de la Cruz wrote about this in his writing The Rising up to the Carmelo’s Mountain (1579-1585): “The Soul that wants to climb the mountain of perfection in order to speak to God has to renounce all material things and let them down" (I, 5,6). A wonderful depiction of the Ascension Mountain is the Allegory of the Mount of Wisdom, inlaid marble floor built by Bernardino di Betto, called Pinturicchio, in the Cathedral of Siena in the years 1505 and 1506 (figure 6).
Here a classic of Fortune is depicted as a wheel of a ship which has led to the foot of Mount of Wisdom the philosophers who wish to reach the top through a dark and turbulent sea (read about the Wheel of Fortune at the link "Iconological Essays" by Andrea Vitali). The narrow path to the sea that leads to the top of the mountain is studded with pitfalls: snakes everywhere (devils) are lurking to invalidate the path of the philosophers. With the same symbolic significance we find the devil in some representations of the scale (figure 7 - The Paradise Scale, Monastery of Saint Catherine at Sinai).
On the flat top of the mountain an elegant elegiac couplet (figure 8) towers above the figure of Wisdom: HUC PROPERATE VIRI / SALEBROSUM SCANDITE / MONTEM / PULCHRA LABORIS ERUNT / PREMIA PALMA QUIES (O men, hurry to come up here, climb the rugged mountain, nice premium to fatigue will be the palm that gives serenity). To the right and left of Wisdom there are Socrates and Crates, the latter in the act of throwing jewels into the sea, clear sign of surrender to any material good as a necessary step to ascend to happiness. The episode of Crates casting their riches into the sea is mentioned elsewhere as, for example, in St. Jerome Epistolae: “Crates ille Thebanus, homo quondam ditissimus, cum ad philosaphandum Athenas pergeret, magnus auri pondus abiecit, nec putavit se posse et virtutes simul et divitia possedere” (58,2).
Another character, who is along with others in the first part of the trail, is the philosopher Zeno of Cyrus, a pupil of Crates, to which Diogenes Laertes in his Lives of Philosophers has dedicated too much space: «The meeting with Crates was passed as follows: after bought in the Phoenicia, some purple, sank with all the load near the Piraeus. Went up in Athens (he had already the age of thirty) and sat in the shop of a bookseller, who read the second book of the Commentaries of Xenophon, and Zeno felt so much gladness to ask where he could never find men like Socrates. At that moment just passed Crates and the bookseller pointed him saying "Follow this man". Since then he became a pupil of Crates: his spirit was very tense to philosophy ...Someone attribute him those words: "So, I made a good journey, when I was wrecked" and "Lucky Me, that the fate bring me to philosophy"» (Edition 1998, pages 243-244). In marquetry, Zeno which is depicted with a large cloak edged with yellow and a hat with the same color, it shows the right hand open and the left closed with clenched fist, an attitude that connects to the meaning of rhetoric (the open hand) and dialectics, which needed to gather with consistent conclusions (the clenched fist), as we can see illustrated in the Orator (32, 113) and in the Finibus honorum et malorum (2,6,17) by Cicero. Petrarch, in the Triumph of Fame, says in reference to Zeno: "I saw Zeno, father of Stoics, stood up in order to illustrate better his words, with one palm open and a clenched fist" (115-118,a).
If we have dwelt on this character, is to highlight the importance of Science as expressed previously, during the travel to the ascension. A Science, which included in addition to philosophy, rhetoric, dialectics, etc., and they belonged to the Muses (see Tarot of Mantegna) interpreted by Cicero and Fulgenzio as personifications of intellectual faculties, depicted together with the ancient philosophers and identified precisely with the Science, were represented on sarcophagus. The Muses also participated in the journey to the gods in classical thought as we find in Catullus (Carmina 105): "Mentula conator Pipleium scandere montem / Musae fucillis praecipitem eiciunt" (Mamurra, above-said Cock, try to climb the heights of Mount Parnassus, the Muse throw him down with violence).
Another example equivalent to the scale or to the Mountain of Ascension, even if physically is composed of concentric walls that enclose many fences with gates that allow the passage between them, is the Tabula Cebetis, a dialogue of the I century d.C, which represents the path of human being towards the Happiness, depicted seated on a rock in the middle of the three fences (figure 9 - Tabula Cebetis, from Educational letters around the Count Cornelius Pepoli VC Cebetis’ table Queen of Arcadia with pastoral name of Cratejo Erasiniano, Venice, 1771). Here, there are some verses from the work, with the form of dialogue between an old and some strangers, where the old man gives warning to foreign men about the risks arising from ignorance: "The Old: If you pay attention to understand what it was said, you will be wise and happy, otherwise, you’ll become senseless and unhappy, hateful and ignorant and so you will live badly. These things then, if you don't understand, will destroy you not all at once...but little by little during the entire existence, such as those sentenced to life. If someone comes to know, there is no reason to die, at the contrary, he is saved and becomes blessed and happy for life" (Translated by D. Pesce, 1982, page 43).
The whole scene is full of allegorical figures symbolizing passion, human vices and virtues. After to be passed through various obstacles "an impervious road, rough and rocky" he reach the hill where there is the true Culture that is described as "a beautiful woman, face detention, already mature age, dressed in a simple and unadorned”. It is up to her leading men face to Science and other Virtues, which in their turn, will guide all human beings towards happiness.
In the 22 Triumphs, which reflecting the teaching of the Scale in the shape of game - as wrote Bishop Lorenzo Dattrino the number 22 in Christian Mysticism "establishes the foundation and the introduction to the wisdom of God and to World’s knowledge" (Tarot: Art and Magic, Le Tarot Editions, 1994, page 71) - will be the senselessness of the Fool, that is one who does not believe, to "destroy" himself leading to the ruin of his soul. The Wise men, that is, those who will understand the right way through intellect and reason (Virtus mentis sciendi et iure adhibendi rationem est. Homines, qui sapientiam student, sapientes nominantur), avoiding riches and honors, according to the virtues and loving God, they'll ascend with him in the glory of heaven.
In all likelihood, the term "Tarot" came to replace that of "Triumph" when the concept of Mystic Scale was just so overwhelmed by the fun and included the game among those considered only gambling that as we know, they were thwarted several times by the religious authorities, even if some good lawyer saw in the game of tarot "something of virtuous".