Class with Christine Payne-Towler
9 weeks:
Interactive sessions on Thursdays - No class scheduled for 2005
This is a class for someone who wants to have an overview into how the images of Tarot's Trump series utilizes and reflects primary intellectual models of the early Renaissance. Making a 9-week stroll through subjects of interest to the Italian literati and educated Europeans in general, we will visit numerous philosophical paradigms which, taken together, reveal the incredible depth and expressive potential of this late Medieval Rebus, the Trumps.
Starting with the Journey of the Fool/Hero, we will spend three weeks exploring the several "plot lines" which originally defined Trump orders in the 1400's and 1500's. After that we will give two weeks to investigating the Hebrew Alphabet connections which link the cards to the signs and planets of Astrology, and get so much play in esoteric circles. Next we will spend two weeks getting introduced to the Pythagorean and Sacred Geometry connections which assert themselves through the number canon of the Trumps.
Rounding out the roster of disciplines, we will revisit the Astrological model to help us make sense of some of the Magical and Alchemical allusions present on the Trumps. This class will be mind-expanding just because of the variety of worldviews which can be seen to intersect in the Trumps of Tarot, but it will be especially interesting for those who have wondered how the Trumps might have looked to an educated and cosmopolitan citizen of the 1500's.
We will meet weekly for an hour-long conference call with Christine, which will be largely lecture. Students will also each be expected read the assigned essays, and also to make weekly contributions to the class forum at Tarot University. Participants who for some reason miss a class will have the option of asking for a taped copy and replaying the lecture at their convenience.
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