the Judaic origins of the noblet
3 cards from the Jean Noblet’s tarot de Marseille, Paris 1650 - BNF
Today, I would like to talk about the judaic origins of the Jean Noblet’s tarot de Marseille from 1650.
If this tarot caused much ink to flow (Seeing the World: Tarot Signposts on the Path to Perception - JC Flornoy ; History of Tarot - Isabelle Nadolny ; The Tarot step by step - Marianne Costa, etc.) no one dared to talk about the possible judaic origin of this historical deck.
This hypothesis has been developped by the life-long student of torah, Stav Appel from “The Torah in the Tarot”.
According to his researches, the tarot of Jean Noblet was made for judaic instruction therefore it contains many hidden judaic meanings.
During the XVII th century, jewish religion was still prohibided in France, it was not allowed to own a Torah, to practise religious rythes or even to teach the religion.
For these reasons, jewish people had to hide every religious artifact, symbols or books, in short, they had to be creative to practise their religion in spite of the prohibition.
In this historical context, a wise jewish may have ordered the creation of this tarot from the “Maitre Cartier” and engraver Jean Noblet to instruct jewish children in secret. Using cards for instruction was very common in Europe from the XVI th century to the XVII th century.
As tarots de Marseille were very popular in this period, using this art as a tool for clandestine jewish education could be a very good choice not to be suspected of heresy. It may explain the little size of this tarot (9,2 x 5,7 cm) that is better suited for children hands than for adult hands.
According to Stav Appel, every trump of this tarot reffer to a figure from the old testament, a jewish religious pratice or a cabalistic element.
It may explain why the iconography of the Jean Noblet’s tarot is so unique and particular and does not reffer to type 1 or type 2 tarot de Marseille.
All those elements should help us reconsidering the purpose of the creation of this tarot.
More news about the Noblet are coming so stay tuned here and on Instagram.