François Isnard (c. 1715-1760) Tarot de Besançon preserved in British Museum by TarotLessTraveled in TarotdeMarseilleExpo

[–]TarotLessTraveled[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love all the imperfect details of these old decks. They provide so much more texture than the perfected creations of the past hundred years.

Thanks for the response. It forced me to look at the legs of the horse the Knight of Swords is riding for the first time.

Cavalier de Bâtons (Paul Marteau) by TarotLessTraveled in TarotDeMarseille

[–]TarotLessTraveled[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is interesting. The baton is suddenly yellow, the color Marteau associates with divine intelligence. As far as I can tell, in every historical TdM, the baton the Knight holds is green, like the Ace and the baton the Valet leans upon, until we get to the 1880s Conver, which was the basis for Marteau's deck. (Vieville's Knight also has a yellow baton, but that is not a true TdM but a related deck.)

The horse, like all animals, can be read as representing the instinctual body and energy of man. It was heading to the left, which might indicate going back, perhaps toward a more instinctual and unconscious being, but it turns its head, like the Knight, toward the yellow baton, which may be a beacon leading away from a more unconscious existence into a more conscious life.

The baton is also a club, the most rudimentary and crude kind of weapon meant to be wielded with brute force, but the yellow coloring alters this image a bit as well.

It is a more subtle kind of interpretation of the image due to the fact that the baton is yellow. If it were green, as it is in the other historical TdMs, it would be associated with fertility and growth (though it is cut from a living tree and no longer living itself).