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Chavalier - VI of Mantegna Tarot

Chavalier - VI

Knight

With all the talks of 'voting rights' don't mistake Renaissance Italy for democratic - it was just straight plutocratic. In Florence for example, a city of about 100,000 people, only 3200 men had the right to vote. Of those the wealthy bankers and merchants had the absolute majority and were hardly ever challenged. The rest of the population had nothing to say when the upper classes just thought that the uneducated masses couldn't speak for themself.
The people of the cities occupied and ruled by Florence - e.g. Pisa, Cortona, Arezza, Volterra - were equally voiceless, no matter their habitus.

The Tarocchi cards of the Renaissance were 'colored' by the rules of those times, they reflected both the reality but also the desires of the people. With the human habit to see days gone by through rosy tinted glasses, the feudal structures of the medieval past were seen as glorious. This pretty much explains the persistence of the court cards.

The Knight found his place in Tarot in the lowest court card, be it as the classic knight, the fan, the page, or in Crowley's Thoth deck, the Princess.



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