1. The Tarot Sun Card

On Aeclectic Tarot Forum's Chaldean Oracles thread (http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=56819), someone advanced the idea that Waite's image for the Sun card came from the Golden Dawn's' research on the Chaldean Oracles. Here is the card, followed by the passage from the Oracles. Clearly one is related to the other.

 Quote:

Having spoken these things, you will behold either a fire leaping skittishly like a child over the aery waves; or an unformed fire from which a voice emerges; or a rich light that whirs around the field in a spiral. But [it is also possible] that you will see a horse flashing more brightly than light, either also a fiery child mounted on the swift back of the horse, covered with gold or naked; or even a child shooting arrows, upright upon the horse's back. http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=56819

It is with the second sentence we already see a relationship to the card; and the idea of the whirring in a spiral has its counterpart in the undulations of the flag he is carrying. But the clearest reference is near the end; the child, naked, on the back of a horse.

If so, however, the card comes not only from the Golden Dawn; something similar can be seen in the Sun card of the Vieville tarot deck, c. 1650 Paris (below). All that the Golden Dawn's research on the Chaldean Oracles would have determined is that this Vieville image was the one to be preferred, as opposed to the conventional Marseille image of two boys standing together under a sun. Combining the image with the Oracle, we get:

The Vieville is at the end of a series of cards featuring a male child in association with the sun. We don't know how long the boy had been shown on a horse, but going back to Milan or Lyon at the beginning of the 16th century, on a sheet with other uncut cards, there is a similar boy with a flag, standing on the ground instead of riding a horse (second from left below; in the third out of four, the orange part is the remainder of the card as reconstructed by Andy Pollett.
 
 There are other ways of doing that reconstruction. In particular, there is a diagonal line starting at the lower right corner of the card. It might indicate that the child is standing on a platform ending there. Or, more interestingly, it might be the lower part of a hobby-horse that he is holding with one hand while he holds the flag with another, as for example in the image below, which would appear to be Christ with the seven planets plus an angel. (This image is from a 15th century German astrological manuscript, BNF allem 106, https://iconographic.warburg.sas.ac.uk/vpc/VPC_search/record.php?record=6686, found by Marco Ponzi at http://www.forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=15514#p15514).

Then before that, as one of six cards done by a second artist of the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo (PMB) deck, in Milan of the 1460s -1480s, we find a boy on a cloud reaching for the sun. The odd thing is that while the later part of the Oracle seems to relate to the Vieville card, the first part, quoted below, relates more to the PMB  image. "Aery waves" are probably clouds; another translation has "billowy air"; , on it a fire leaps "skittishly like a child". So we get:

But what is the context of these images? And what are the "things" one is to "have spoken" in order to get them?

The Chaldean Oracles are a group of sayings embedded in Neoplatonic writings of the 4th and 5th century, especially those of Proclus. Their origin is considerably earlier, the 2nd or 3rd century Lebanon or Syria, of a milieu that might be considered a mixture of Greek Middle Platonism and Persian-Babylonian Zoroastrianism.

Vieville's boy on a horse, c. 1650, probably derives from a 1538 edition of the Oracles put out in French, a translation of an earlier edition in Venice. This derives from an edition of some 400 fragments put out by Pratesi in the 1550s.

But in the West they were known by some humanists, in one form or another since at least the 1460s,. That is when Ficino is known to have translated an edition and commentary compiled by the Greek philosopher Gemistos Plethon, who had died c. 1452.

(Note: at this point, if you want a more popular presentation, with more images and fewer quotes from secondary sources, go directly to Chapter 3, which summarizes the material in the rest of this chapter and chapter 2.)

In this regard here is Kristeller, Renaissance thought and its sources p. 161),

Quote:

We have recently learned that Ficino owned and partly copied in his own hand the Greek text of some of Plethon's writings (67), I also found in a manuscript an anonymous Latin translation of Plethon's commentary on the Chaldean oracles and have some reason for attributing this translation to Ficino (68). (67) Eugenio Garin, "Per la storia della cultura filosofica del Riniscimento," Revista critica di storia della filosofia 12 (1957): 3-21); ie., "Platonici bizanti e platonici italiani," Studi sul platonismo medievale (Florence, 1958), pp. 153-219. A. Keller, 'Two Byzantine Scholars and Their Reception in Italy," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20 (1957): 363-370. Cf. Kristeller, Iter Italicum, 1:184. (68) Vat. Ottob. lat. 2955.

In full, the commentary is Commentary on the Magian texts of Zoroaster, I'm not sure when Ficino's translation was published, perhaps not until the Opera omnia, if then. The Greek wasn't printed until 1538 Paris, according to Woodhouse.

The particular Oracle pertaining to the Sun card, however, in the form just quoted, is not in Plethon's version. (We will see Plethon's version in the next section.) It is in a work by the 5th century Neoplatonist writer Proclus, In Rem Publicam, 1.111.3-11 of Kroll’s 1899 Leipzig edition. (I get this information from the book Hecate Soteira: A Study of Hekata’s Roles in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature, by Sarah Iles Johnston, 1990, p. 111.  Her source is Lewy, The Chaldean Oracles and Theurgy. The fragment is his 146 = Kroll’s fragment 57).

This work, In Rem Publicam, was available in various manuscripts in the 15th century. The one in the Laurentian Library (named for Lorenzo de' Medici, whose collection started it) is dated 1492 (per the introduction to Vol. 2, in the Free Library online version). So surely Ficino knew it. A copy was also in the library of the Milan humanist Filelfo, who had brought it with him c. 1427 after studying in Greece. As "Kwaw" determined in a post on Aeclectic, the work is listed in an inventory cited by Hankins, p. 94, footnote 163, of Plato in the  Renaissance:

...Filefo depends on Proclus, In Remp., a copy of which he owned (Calderini, "Richerche". p.384) http://books.google.com.tr/books?id=...page&q&f=false 

Kwaw adds that this is presumably Aristide Calderini, "Richerche intorno alla biblioteca e alla cultura greca di Francesco Filelfo' Studi italiani di filologia classica 20 (1913)". Kwaw explains in later posts that "In Remp." is a standard abbreviation for "In Rem Publicam" and is Proclus's commentary on Plato's Republic.

Filelfo was in Milan from October 1439 until 1476; while there he tutored most of the Sforza children as well as, probably, Bianca Maria in 1440-1441 under the regime of her father Filippo Visconti. (She left Milan in October 1441 to become the wife of Francesco Sforza, not returning until 1450.) The question then is, might even the PMB Sun card have been influenced by the Chaldean Oracles, in one version or anther?  I will address this issue in another section. For now I am going to focus on Plethon and Ficino.

THE CORRESPONDING PASSAGE IN PLETHON'S VERSION

Woodhouse (pp. 51-53) gives an English translation of Plethon's version of the Chaldean Oracles--it's only 60 lines long--as well as a "Brief Explanation" that he wrote. Woodhouse says (p. 48f):

Quote:

Gemistos' text of the Oracles was first translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino, Cosimo de Medici's protege. His version gives the same sixty lines in the same order as Gemistos'; he probably also used, but did not translate, Gemistos' Commentary.

These texts were published in Paris in 1538, with a Latin translation 1539, and with two Latin translations in 1593, Woodhouse says (p. 49). In relation to the PMB Sun card, the following lines seem relevant (13-16, 45):

Quote:

You must hasten towards the light and rays of the Father, Whence your soul was sent out, clothed in abundant intellect. The earth mourns them continually unto their children: Those who thrust out the soul and inhale are easy to loose. ... Draw tight from all sides the reins of the fire with an untouched soul.

The first two lines are clear enough. In the third line, "them" refers to the souls as they were on high, sent out by the Father, now fallen into matter; they are mourned by the earth because of this calamity, which is akin to death. The "children" are then the souls that remain trapped in matter. The earth directs its mourning to them as an indication that they have not always been that way, that they may regain their former life. All they have to do is "thrust out the soul and inhale" the divine rays.

The child on the Sun card could then be the soul speeding toward the light. However I am not satisfied by this interpretation, as the child on the card seems more like a daemon, the image of a daemon seen in trance directing the observer of the card toward the light. The same would be true of the two children on the World card, holding up the world of ideas to the observer, like good daemons directing the soul upwards. Such daemons are spoken of in a later place, line 34

Quote:

Nature gives proof that there exist pure daemons

Now for Plethon's treatment of these lines in his "Commentary." There Plethon says of lines 13-16, as paraphrased by Woodhouse (p. 55):

Quote:

The 'light and rays of the sun of the Father' (l. 13) mean the place from which the soul descends to earth. This is also called Paradise (l. 25). It is the soul's duty to hasten back to that light. Those who do not do so will suffer for their sins, and so will their children (l. 15). It is the task of reason to divert the soul from iniquity and so release it from oblivion (l. 16).

It seems to me that in referring to "oblivion", Plethon is tying line 16 with the lines immediately preceding (i.e. lines 10-12)

Quote:

But the paternal intellect does not admit her volition Until she has issued forth out of oblivion and spoken the word, Having taken in the memory of the holy watch-word of the Father;

The soul ("her") is not admitted to Paradise until she has remembered a token of the divine rays, a memory which, following Plato's methods, can be recovered by the use of reason.

Plethon then interprets lines 13-16 in much the same way I have, except for giving them a moralistic gloss. Instead of merely longing for its home, the soul has return as its "duty"; and the fall is not merely inevitable, once separated from the Father, but a result of "sins."

Plethon's comment on the other line, by which I identify the children on the cards as daemons, is quoted by Woodhouse directly, not merely paraphrased (p. 57):

Quote:

It is said that 'nature, or natural reason, persuades the sacred daemons, and in a word all that proceeds from the God who is good in himself, to be beneficent' (l. 34).

What is important here is that the daemons are referred to as "sacred," proceeding from God, and that they act according not just to nature but to "natural reason". In another place Plethon says more about daemons. Here again is Woodhouse's paraphrase (p. 56):

Quote:

The soul uses a heavenly body as its vehicle, and that vehicle itself possesses soul of an irrational kind (called by philosophers the 'image' of the rational soul), but equipped with imagination and sensation. Through the power of imagination the rational is permanently united with such a body, and through such a body the human soul is united with the mortal body. The souls of daemons have superior, immortal vehicles, and the souls of stars have still more superior vehicles. 'These are the theories of the soul which appear to have been held from an even earlier date by the Magi following Zoroaster.'

The child on the Sun card could be the human soul using the Sun as its vehicle, or a daemon having the Sun as its vehicle, or the soul of the Sun itself.

Another alternative: "children" might be the ideas of God as they exist in the minds of humans. But I have read somewhere that "boy" was a standard image for Intellect, or maybe something from Intellect, in Middle Platonic or Neoplatonic writings, and so an appropriate image for something intermediary between the Sun, i.e. Nous, and humans. If so, it may be that the children on the PMB Sun and World cards didn't need the inspiration of Plethon's version at all; however his attribution of the Oracles, which were frequently quoted by Neoplatonists, to Zoroaster might have given their appearance elsewhere some importance to Filelfo in terms of the "prisca theologia."

Line 45 seems to compare the rays, sent down to humans in the course of meditation or ritual, to horses, whose reins we must grab tightly. But of course there isn't a horse on the PMB card; instead, the boy clutches the sun itself.

OTHER VERSIONS OF THE ORACLES

I notice that an English translation of the Oracles in 1661 has the fragment in question. Here is the relevant part:

Quote:

But also to see a Horse more glittering than Light. Or a Boy on [thy] shoulders riding on a Horse, Fiery or adorned with Gold, or devested, Or shooting and standing on [thy] shoulders.

(http://www.esotericarchives.com/oracle/oraclesj.htm)

It would be interesting to see the 16th century French translation, to be sure it is there, and of course the Latin earlier, and also to see what the wording is. On the whole, the English translation of 1661 looks to me confused. Ficino’s Latin, if it is anything like Woodhouse’s English translation, is much better.

FICINO AND PLETHON

I have been trying to determine more precisely when Ficino got his copy of Plethon’s edition of the Chaldean Oracles. I have not found anything definite, such as a letter thanking someone for it. As I said, I have requested several books on interlibrary loan (including the one you suggested). But my tentative answer: sometime after 1463 and before the end of 1469.

In 1463, when Ficino wrote the preface to his translation of Hermes Trismegistus, he lists Hermes as the first philosopher, in a line ending with Plato, with no mention of Zoroaster. Here is Hankins (p. 462):

Quote:

In the preface to his translation of the Pimander, written in 1463, the Egyptian and Greek theologians are now grouped with Moses as instances of an older dispensation which prefigured the new faith of Christianity...We are also given a new diadoche of six anction theologians, beginning with Hermes Trismegistus, continuing through Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, Phkilalaus, and conclusiing (absoluta) with Plato.

Hankins adds later that it was not until 1474 that Ficino identified Zoroaster as the author of the Oracles, although he “evidently knew Plethon’s commentary as early as 1467/1469” (p. 463).

Why did Hankins give 1467/1469 as the time when Ficino knew Plethon’s version of the Oracles? He doesn’t explain. I turn to (a) Michael J.B. Allen’s Marsilio Ficino: The Philebus Commentary, and (b) an article by Moshe Idel.

Ficino’s Philebus Commentary put Zoroaster at the head of the list of philosophers that ended with Plato. On page 181 of Allen’s edition (p. 180 of the translation):

Quote:

...But as the ancient theologians said—those whom Plato followed, Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras—the vain belief in many gods arose universally from the many names of the Ideas...

Then again on p. 247:

Quote:

Therefore the ancient theologians, Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, since...

The rest of this sentence will appear a little later in this post, as quoted by Moshe Idel. And actually, given that in the remainder of this chapter I am quoting bits and pieces of a particular passage I should also quote the whole passage without interruption:

Plato adds that these gifts were handed down with the brightest fire, for individual things have been revealed by the ray of the divine truth. The ray of a fire has two powers: one burns, the other illuminates. So it is with the sun’s ray too, so too with God’s ray: it purges intelligence and souls with heat, separating them from lower things; it illuminates them with light. With the fervour of heat it inflames and excites the appetite of everything towards itself. With the splendour of light it reveals to all those who desire it the clarity of truth. Therefore the ancient theologians Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, since they brought themselves as near as possible to God’s ray by releasing their souls, and since they examined by the light of that ray all things by uniting and dividing through the one and the many, they too were made to participate in the truth. (stndard pagination, 16c; Allen translation ,p. 246)

According to Allen, using a complex philological argument which I could not possibly summarize (and don’t understand), the Philebus Commentary (of which the above is one paragraph) was written in the latter part of 1469, just after the Symposium Commentary and before Ficino started the Platonic Theology. Allen says (p. 56)

Quote:

In conclusion, then, I would argue for the latter half of 1469 as the period in which Ficino wrote the Philebus commentary.

This chronology seems accepted by other scholars, e.g. Anthony Levi on p. 108 of of Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy ed. Michael J.B. Allen and Valery Rees (in Google Books, see link below).

In addition, the words immediately following the list of philosophers in my second quote from the Philebus Commentary (Allen p. 247) suggest the influence of Plethon’s Oracles. Here I will quote Moshe Idel, p. 151 of his essay “Prisca Theologia in Marsilio Ficino and in Some Jewish Treatments,” pp. 137-158 of Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (http://books.google.com/books?id=CX0...ino%22&f=false
Here is what Idel says (the numbers in parentheses are his footnotes):

Quote:

After enumerating the names of the sages mentioned Ficino maintains that: Quote: they brought themselves as near as possible to God’s ray by releasing their souls, (38) and since they examined by the light of that ray (39) all things by uniting and dividing through the one and the many, they too were made to participate in the truth.(40) This assessment is of paramount importance for the proper understanding of the nature of the ancient theology as envisioned by both Ficino and Pico. By a purifying way, or a mystical technique, the ancient pagan theologians brought themselves into contact with the divine light. It is quite possible that the passage betrays the influence of the Chaldean Oracles, which were attributed in the Renaissance to Zoroaster; using theurgic methods, the ancient figures were able to release their souls in order to attain communion with the divine ray. Participation in the truth is not the result of a revelation but of the ascent of the theurgist’s soul to the source of the Truth. Importantly, Ficino traces the earliest expression of the prisca theologia to Zoroaster. The last in this line is none other than Plato. It is this attribution of the ultimate origin of philosophy to Zoroaster that is characteristic of many of the Christian Renaissance syntheses, by contrast with contemporary Jewish insistence on the ancient Mosaic origin of Greek and pagan thought. (38) On the separation of the soul from the body as part of the teaching of the Chaldeans see Hans Lewy, Chaldean Oracles and Theurgy, rev. edn Paris, 1978, pp. 186-188. (39) On the centrality of the ray and light in the Chaldean Oracles see Lewy, ibid, pp. 60-61, 149-55, 185-200. See also Ficino’s [i]Theologia Platonica X.8, which corresponds to the Chaldean Oracles, verses 13-14; cf. Ilana Klutstein-Roitman, Le Traductions latines des Oracles chaldaiques et des Hymnes Orphiques, Ph.D. Thesis, Hebrew Unviersity, Jerusalem, 1981, pp. 22-23. (40) Ficino, The ‘Philibus’ Commentary p. 246. On Truth as a cosmic entity in the Chaldean Oracles,, see Lewy, Chaldean Oracles, pp. 144-48.

Here are verses 13-14 again, with 15 and 16:

Quote:

You must hasten towards the light and rays of the Father, Whence your soul was sent out, clothed in abundant intellect. The earth mourns them; continually unto their children: Those who thrust out the soul and inhale are easy to loose.

The separation of soul from body would seem to be implied by line 16.

Ficino also shows his affinity with Plethon’s Chaldean Oracles in the sentences at the beginning of the paragraph, immediately preceding the ones just quoted.

Quote:

Plato adds that these gifts were handed down with the brightest fire, for individual things have been revealed by the ray of the divine truth. The ray of a fire has two powers: one burns, the other illuminates. So it is with the sun’s ray too, so too with God’s ray: it purges intelligence and souls with heat, separating them from lower things; it illuminates them with light. With the fervour of heat it inflames and excites the appetite of everything towards itself. With the splendour of light it reveals to all those who desire it the clarity of truth. Therefore the ancient theologians Zoroaster,...

The words following I have already quoted. These sentences clarify what Ficino means by “uniting and dividing” in the part quoted by Idel: heat divides, light unites.

The affinity of Ficino’s words with the Oracles is evident, in lines 13 and 45-48:

Quote:

You must hasten towards the light and rays of the Father, ... Draw tight from all sides the reins of the fire with an untouched soul. When you behold the most holy fire without form Flashing with quivering flames through the recesses of the whole world, Then hearken to the voice of the fire.

So I think we can see why Woodhouse gave 1467/69 as the date when Ficino acquired the Plethon manuscript. For myself, I think we should allow the possibility of an earlier date than Woodhouse’s 1467 because Ficino translated the Philebus in 1464—he read some of it to Cosimo on his deathbed—and then lectured on that dialogue shortly after Cosimo's death, but interrupted (Allen p. 10: this must have been 1466, because Allen discusses the theory that the interruption was precipitated by Francesco Sforza's March 1466 death). There is also the 1464 date of Filelfo’s letter; perhaps there is a causal connection between the two humanists’ information.

It remains unclear from whom Ficino might have acquired Plethon’s manuscript. It was not Bessarion, for Woodhouse says that it is not among Bessarion’s manuscripts bequeathed to the city of Venice (p. 51):

Quote:

Some significance should perhaps be given to the fact that the collection of Gemistos’ manuscripts which Bessarion bequeathed to the Library of San Marco, and which are thought to date mainly from the 1440s, including his autograph of the Summary of the doctrines of Zoroaster and Plato (acknowledged to be a later work), but not the autograph of the Commentary or the Brief Explanation. This tends to confirm their separation in time. It seems reasonable in any case to treat the Commentary and the Brief Explanation as relatively early works, since they evidently reflect an interest which Gemistos owed to Elissaeus.

Elissaeus is a Jewish teacher that Scholarios said introduced Plethon to Zoroastrianism (p. 51), and despite doubts about Scholarios’s truthfulness, Woodhouse considers this Elissaeus the likeliest source for Plethon’s introduction to the Oracles, given their sensitive nature among Christians. By “relatively early,” I think Woodhouse means before the 1440s.

Most likely Ficino got Plethon's compilation and commentary through Cosimo de'Medici, who had been impressed by Plethon's lectures in 1438-1440 in Florence. Plethon had come as part of the Greek delegation to a Greek Orthodox-Roman Catholic conference on unification of the two churches; but as a secular member of the delegation, he had little to do. Cosimo  was known to have esoteric interests, and did Ficino. Cosimo on his deathbed, it is known,  requested Ficino to sing Orphic hymns o his lyre.

But why would Cosimo have waited 25 years to have it translated? When Cosimo got the Corpus Hermeticum, he wanted it translated immediately. Well, it was dangerous stuff. It reflected Plethon's so-called "polytheism", for which George of Trezibond had declared him a heretic. Some time was needed for the accusation to lose its charge. Also, it needed the right transator, someone who was clearly a Christian but with an appreciation for ancient pagan philoosphy. The Orphic-hymn singing Ficino (on his death bed Cosimo requested his prescence with his lyre) was just such a person. Ficino made it clear that while the pagans "ancient theology" anticipated much of Christianity, the theology wasn't completed until Christ's life and sacrifice. This formula preserved the unique salvific role of Christiantiy while providing a place for works such as the Chaldean Oracles.
 
One way Cosimo could have acquired the manuscript later is through followers of Plethon who had landaed in Italy after the Turkish takeover of Greece. A. Keller's article “Two Byzantine Scholars and their Reception in Italy” (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 20 (1957), pp. 363-370), details the later career of one such follower, Demetrios Raoul Kavakes, of whom it is not known when he arrived in Italy, but only that by 1466 he was in Rome and supported himself as a copyist of Greek manuscripts. Here is Keller, drawing mainly on a book in Greek by S. P. Lambros, 1907:

Quote:

The only thing certain about his later career is that he arrived in Rome in 1466, and occupied all of his old age as a copyist, in order to earn a living, and perhaps also to assist in the preservation of Hellenic culture...All of his dated manuscripts are of the period 1480-87. He had some connection with Bessarion after his arrival, since he refers to a conversation with him...He definitely had some dealings with Ciriaco of Ancona, whose notes are found in two of Demetrios’s most important manuscripts. [Footnote: MSS. Est. T.8.12 and Vat.gr.173.] Kavakes died at the age of ninety in Rome, and is buried in Bessarion’s Church of SS. Apostoli. [Footnote: For his epitaph there, see E. Legrand, Bibliographie Hellenique...—Xve et XVIe siecles, Paris 1885-1906.] In one of his manuscripts he tells of a dream he had towards the end of his life, in which Plethon appeared to him, and said, [I omit the Greek] “You have spoken the truth.” If this means by expounding his master’s doctrines he was justified, for there is no doubt of his loyalty to what he had been taught...

Plethon's Neoplatonism, however desseminated, has been connected to the tarot in a few places, such as Wikipedia's article on Bonifacio Bembo, whch says of him, without documentation

After his knowledge with Gemistus Pletho, he absorbed the latter's Neoplatonic ideals; 

The significance for the tarot is that he,, or someone in his workshop, produced at least one of the earliest surviving luxury tarot decks, made for the Sforza family and now called the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo (PMB).  I don't know who Wikipedia's author is here, but it sounds to me like a Google translation of a non-English language source.That Plethon influenced the PMB remains a tantalizing possibility, which I will explore in a later section.

WOULD FILELFO HAVE IDENTIFIED THE QUOTATIONS IN PROCLUS AS FROM THE CHALDEAN ORACLES?

One question I had was how Filelfo would have known that the sayings embedded in Proclus's commentaries were from one tradition or work known as the Chaldean Oracles?  Kwaw did a good job of answering this question. For now I will give just the part of his answer that pertains to the oracle arelated t the Sun card. Kwaw wrote (post of 10.10.2011, at http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=160976&page=11),

Quote:

Proclus refers to Χαλδαίος Θεουργων (Chaldean Theurgists) in connection with Fragment 58 of the Oracles at In Remp II.220 11-18 relating to how the sun "was established at the site of the heart" And in Timaeus Proclus discusses the Platonic and Chaldean order of planets: ...Proclus eventually accepts the plausibility of the new cosmology. His main argument is the authority of the Chaldean theurgists. They hold the sun is set in the middle of the seven zones "having heard from the gods themselves that the solar fire 'was established at the site of the heart'.

An explanation of the "new cosmology" is perhaps in order. In Plato, the Sun is second out from the earth, right after the Moon. But the Babylonion "new order" put it in the middle.

Kwaw also gives this, from Proclus's disciple Marinus, "Life of Proclus," http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/marinus_01_life_of_proclus.htm:

Syrianus had indeed planned to explain to him and to Syrian Domninus, either one of these works, the Orphic writings or the [Chaldean] Oracles, and had left the choice to them. But they did not agree in choosing the same work, Domninus choosing the Orphic, Proclus the Chaldean. This disagreement hindered Syrianus from doing anything, and then he soon died.

Thanks to these quotations and a few more that I will discuss later, we can see howe Filelfo could have determined, in his reading of Proclus, that the "logia" embedded in Proclus were Chaldean verses. He could have determined this on his own. Or he could have learned to recognize them from others while he was in Greece, who perhaps themselves learned it from Plethon, who in turn used a 10th century complilcation in Greece by a certain Psellus and may have been guided by his Jewish teacher. In any case Plethon, probably early in his career, was the one who used Psellus to construct a recognizable Chaldean system that Ficino later made known to the world.

 PLUTARCH AS A POSSIBLE SOURCE FOR THE PMB SUN CARD

(from my post at  http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2896894&postcount=64)

I am left wondering where the images of the child with the sun on the PMB card might have come from--and perhaps other PMB cards, such as the two similar children with the castle on the World card,

On the one hand, "Huck" has hypothesized in numerous places that the cards were gifts from the Medici, painted in Ferrara or thereabouts to Lorenzo's specifications, for the Sforza wedding of 1465. In that case, Lorenzo might have consulted Ficino first, and Ficino might have just been reading the Oracles and Plethon's comments.

On the other hand, the idea might have come from Filelfo in Milan. Besides Proclus's quotation from the Chaldean Oracles, I see the following in Plutarch's "Isis and Osiris," which Filelfo seems to draw from in 1464 (http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html):

Quote:

XI: ...neither do they [the Egyptians] suppose that the sun rises as a new born child out of a lotus, but it is in this way they picture the rising of the sun, enigmatically expressing that the solar fire is derived from moisture.. XLVIII. The Chaldeans hold that the gods belong to the planets, of whom two they call “doers of good,” two “makers of evil;” the other three they describe as intermediate and neutral...Empedocles calls the Beneficent Principle “Love” and “Friendship,” and frequently too, Harmony, “with glowing face,” ... LI: ...they [the Egyptians] regard the Sun as the body of the Good Principle, the visible form of the Intelligible Being...

Since according to Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras learned from both the Chaldeans and the Egyptians, if we combine these passages, we get the child with the sun.

Then someone later, directing Vieville, perhaps noticing Plutarch's reference to the Chaldeans, added the horse mentioned with the child in the Oracles.

On daemons, we have

Quote:

XXV: ...But the good ones [daemons], on the contrary, Hesiod styles “pure daemons,” and “guardians of men”;— “Givers of wealth; and with such royal power.” And Plato terms this species “Hermeneutic” and “Daemonean,” a middle class between gods and men, conveying up thither vows and prayers from mankind, and bringing down from thence to earth prophesies and gifts of things good. Empedocles even asserts that daemons suffer punishment for their sins both of commission and omission:— “Celestial wrath pursues them down to sea; Sea spits them out on earth: earth to the rays Of Sol unwearied: he to the eddying air Sends back the culprits; each receives in turn, And all alike reject the hateful crew:” until having been thus chastened and purified, they obtain once more their natural place and position.

And so they go from earth to sun and down again, sometimes bearing prayers or prophecies, sometimes as punishment.

If the source is Plutarch, the two cards could have been inspired by humanists in either place, Milan or Florence; however we have a reference to the essay in question in Milan of 1464.

The inspiration for the cards could also be both Plutarch and Plethon. Or are there other likely sources for the children on these two cards? Some people talk about the "children of the planets" images as a source. But the "children" shown in those engravings and woodcuts are mostly adults.

MY CONCLUSION (http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2903932&postcount=97)

It is clear that the Vieville image of the boy on a horse has as its likely source the Chaldean Oracle that we have been discussing, as published in.

As for influencing a card earlier,Plethon's version of the oracle remains a possibility, since there is no horse on the earlier versions, and no horse in Plethon. Howeve one does not need Plethon for these versions. Johnston says that the Oracle about the boy and the horse is on p. 111 lines 3-11. We do indeed see quite a few lines of verse there, clearly set off from the rest of the page and preceded by the "theoparadotos pustagogia" that tells us we are dealing with an Oracle:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eJZTBdG4iH...and111vol1.jpg
(It is also at http://www.hellenisticastrology.com/...roll-vol-1.pdf, p. 111)

Such a passage surely would have caught Filelfo's eye. Considering this page, with what I assume is its description of the naked boy and the horse, together with Plutarch's references to the sun as a newborn child at dawn and as the place from which daemons come and go (quoted them earlier), it seems to me that Filelfo wouldn't have needed Plethon's edition of the Oracles as inspiration for the children on the PMB Sun and World cards.

At the same time, he might have had Plethon's work to guide him. I will explore that possibility in other section.  But first I want to see what can be done with the tarot sequence in the context of Plethon's version of the Oracles.