Transcript

7.31.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and to
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day I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated July
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August twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio Eye is
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a reading service intended for people who are blind or
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have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for the first article, titled The
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Colorful History of Tarot is as mesmerizing as the decks themselves.
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The original meaning behind the cards, first created five hundred
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years ago, still remains elusive, but that didn't stop our
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reporter from traveling to Milan in an effort to find out.
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By John Last, not far from one of Milan's last
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remaining medieval gates is a tiny shop door sandwiched between
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shuttered store fronts. Cross the threshold and you'll enter a
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gilded world of esoteric symbols, stars, skeletons, and fools. This
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is Il Menegello, the workshop of some of Italy's last
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known great Terot artisans. Inside on the register is a
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portrait of its original owner, Oswalda Menegazzi. While Tero may
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be a game or hobby for many, for Menegazzi, it
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was always first and foremost about the art. Before his
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death in twenty twenty one, he had become world famous
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for his painstaking, hand pain and reproductions of some of
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the world's most ancient and storied terot decks. His desk,
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a mess of paints and materials, is just as he
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left it. On a rainy day last spring, I met
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his niece, Christina d'orcini at the shop. Since Menegazzi's death, Dorcini,
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an art historian and tarot expert in her own right,
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has taken over guiding visitors through the master works created
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by her late uncle. Among the stacks surrounding us are
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three tarots, a cat themed taro, a Hebrew tero, and
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a tiny teracha defumatori smoker's taro, wherein a characterization of
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death can be seen enjoying a curly pipe. Menegazzi published
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more than one hundred such decks, including many of his
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own invention. Each deck offers us los grigno di sapianza
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a treasure trove of wisdom. Dorcini says. What unites these
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diverse decks is their standard form, generally seventy eight cards
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separated into fifty six numbered minor arcana, much like modern
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numbered playing cards and twenty two trumps the major arcana,
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each with a mysterious character. Every card is rich with symbolism,
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adorned with pentacles, stars, chalices, and wands, bearing names like
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the World, Justice and Temperance, and featuring enigmatic characters like
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the Fool, the lovers, or the Hermit. These cards may
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have started life in fifteenth century Italy as a sophisticated game,
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but in the past five hundred years they have taken
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on an entirely different meaning. It's the ambiguity of these
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figures that has drawn fortune tellers, who use combinations of
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images to open a window into the future. Dorcini, following
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her uncle, is skeptical of such uses. We don't do readings,
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declares a sign near the cash register, a frequent point
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of contention with visitors to the shop. Like her uncle,
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Dorcini was first drawn to these cards by their beautiful
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artistry and by a historian's desire to understand the origins
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of their imagery. Tero was a figurative culture that was
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born here in Italy, in Milan, she says. But to day,
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the symbology of each card is really difficult for us
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to understand. In fact, Menagazzi's shop has become famous for
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his decades long quest to collect, study, and meticulously reproduce
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the historic decks that originated many of Taro's most common figures.
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Some of these old decks, with just a few surviving cards,
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are extremely rare. In twenty twenty one, Menagazzi became the
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first person to reproduce one such deck in nearly six
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hundred years. A few days after I first held one
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of Menagazzi's reproductions, I traveled west to Turin, where, for
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a few short minutes I was able to look at
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the original in the former stables of an Italian royal palace,
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I met Frederica Pazzi, the director of scientific laboratories at
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the Center for the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage
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Lavenaria Reale. Here, a team of twelve scientists works to
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analyze everything from large scale paintings to ancient Egyptian sarcophagi,
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as well as some of the oldest tarot cards in
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the world, on which they perform material analysis. Upstairs in
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the conservation lab, the restorer applies paint removable to allow
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for future correction with the tiny brush. Researchers around the world,
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including Pozzi's team, engage in a kind of historical detective
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work with these cards, collaborating with six different institutions, the
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Morgan Library and Museum in New York, the Yale University Library,
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the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art,
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Yale's Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, and the
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Art Institute of Chicago, and drawing on other collections in Italy.
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Pozzi was part of the first team to use advanced
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image techniques, including macro x ray fluorescence spectroscopy, to discover
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invisible layers in the tarot cards. Researchers from Yale managed
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to discern Stationer's watermarks to definitively date one of the
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world's oldest tarot decks to an impressively narrow range between
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fourteen thirty seven and fourteen forty two. These decks, known
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collectively as the Visconti Sportza decks, offer the earliest blueprint
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for the modern tarot, incorporating many of the same suits
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and trumps. Historical documents suggest the oldest of these, the
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incomplete Visconte de Madrone, deck, was commissioned as a wedding
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present for the daughter of Filippo Maria Visconti, then Duke
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of Milan, and her groom Francesco Sporza, founder of a
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powerful family. For many years, historians speculated that a deck
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as n usually fine as this one may have simply
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been meant as a piece of art. Yet Pazzi's research
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has shown that the surviving cards bear signs of regular use,
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worn edges, lost pigments, separating layers. Her lab has confirmed
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that several cards are replacements, suggesting that their owners wanted
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a full deck and corroborating the idea that these cards
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were meant for gaming. Some scholars, like the tarot historian
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Andrea Vitali, argue the figures on such cards were meant
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to offer escala mystika or mystical ladder, instructing wayward gamblers
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in moral and ethical precepts, or else perhaps satirizing those
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precepts by allowing fools and lovers to trump popes. All
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this evidence suggests that the earliest tarot deck may have
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been used for little more than a portly card game,
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an exquisite plaything for the super rich, and yet Tero
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has never been so simple to define, nor its origins clear.
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In Milan, at Manegatzi's workshop, I'd held one of his
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reproductions of the Solabusca Taro, the earliest complete tarot deck
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that survives to day, dating to the late fifteenth century.
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What had struck me about it was just how unlike
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the modern tero it is. In place of the standard
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major arcana is a series of entirely different and unsettling images,
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obscure figures from antiquity or famous villains, like the Roman
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emperor Nero reveling in the burning of babies. The occultist
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Peter Mark Adams called the deck stubbornly and irredeemably odd,
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writing that even after prolonged study, the deck retains its strangeness.
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For Adams, that oddness suggests that there is a foundational
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purpose to these cards other than simple entertainment. After all,
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Tero emerged during a very specific point in European history,
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when the wealthy courts of Renaissance Italy were retaining armies
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of scholars to recover hidden wisdom from ancient texts. In
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the centuries following the production of Visconti's exquisite deck, Taro's
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popularity as a game increased, and its production moved to France.
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Some time in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there a
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new school of artists, thinkers, and card readers began to
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see taro as infused with a deep occult significance. It
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was in this milieu that occult writers first began to
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experiment with the idea that cards like these could be
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a key to greater wisdom. In seventeen seventy, Jean vale
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Baptiste Aliet, under the pseudonym Atailla, published the book How
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to Entertain Yourself with the Deck of Cards, providing one
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of the world's first guides to cardimancy, that is, fortune
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telling with cards, a method still used by many fortune
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tellers to day. Around the same time, Antoine Corte de Gaballin,
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a French pastor, used a section of his Opus le
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Monde Premative The Primitive World, published from seventeen seventy three
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to seventeen eighty two, to rewrite Tarot's origin story and
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suggest for the first time that these cards were far
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more than just a game. If we heard that there
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still exists to day a work of the ancient Egyptians,
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one of their books that escaped the flames which devoured
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their superb libraries, and which contains their purest doctrine about
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interesting objects, everyone would without doubt be eager to know.
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He wrote. If we added that this book is very
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widespread in a large part of Europe, that for many
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centuries it has been in the hands of everyone, the
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surprise would certainly increase. It was the Taro Court de
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Gabayen suggested that contained just such a book. Court, to
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Gabayen's entirely speculative account, which counted Louis the Sixteenth among
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its readers, spurred a European craze for all things ancient
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and Egyptian, and forever tied the origin myth of Taro
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with the stereotype of gipsy fortune tellers, whom Gabayen credited
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with preserving the cards over millennia and carrying them into Europe.
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In reality, there is absolutely no evidence for roma in
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the origin of Tarot cards or for any significant role
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in their spread, says Iguil Esprin, a professor at Stockholm
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University who studies the role of the roma in the
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European history of magic. In the mountains just southwest of Bologna,
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a small stone house is home to the international Tero Museum,
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founded by Marina Pultronieri and Ernesto Fazioli in two thousand seven. Inside,
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Fazioli leads me around a narrow space crammed with pieces
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of Tarot art and decks donated from around the world.
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There are Tero pop up books, Tarot embroidery, and even
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Tarot cards you can eat and drink. Each one is
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simultaneously a reinvention and a reference to Tero's past spiritual uses.
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The seed of a card is universal, Fazioli says, yet
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each artist has a different goal. The psychiatrist Karl Jung
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in nineteen thirty three attributed the suggestive power of Terot's
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imagery to its use of psychological images archetypal symbols like
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crumbling towers and stumbling fools that can take on infinite
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meanings in combination with each other. Not long after Jung
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offered that assessment, Taro became a centerpiece of America's New
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Age revival and underwent thousands of subsequent reinterpretations as a
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tool for spiritual practice. The mother piece Taro, in print
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since the early nineteen eighties, reimagines the deck through a
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feminist lens. The Black Power. Taro, more recently, produced by
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the artists King Kahan and Michael Eaton, reconstructs the major
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arcana around images of black icons. Collaborative decks like the
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Slow Holler Taro enlist dozens of artists from varied, regional,
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and marginalized identities to put their own spin on iconic images. Recently,
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Taro's popularity has been surging again, driven partly by interest
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and cardimancy on social media platforms like tik tok. Some
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sellers say their sales have doubled or tripled in periods
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of strife, including the two thousand eight financial crisis and
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the COVID nineteen pandemic. Many practitioners are uneasy about such booms.
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Jessica Lanyadou, an astrologer and Taro reader in San Francisco,
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says too many think the cards can help micromanage our fate,
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guiding every little decision through easy answers. A more common
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annoyance for long time Terot devotees may be the irony
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with which some new users approach the cards. People have
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a way of saying, Oh, I'm too smart to take
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it seriously, Lanyadu, says Helen Farley, a researcher who has
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written about the history of these cards calls tarot a
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mirror of the society in which it's being used. Peering
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into that mirror to day we might see a more
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atomistic world, with taro just another product to brand and sell.
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Yet all around us taro is being reinvented. A light
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upon the right deck and learn its history, and you
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might discover a piece of our collective future too. And
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accompanying that article the Divine Method. For millennia, curious souls
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have examined a range of worldly phenomena, from the palm
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of the hand to moldy cheese, to prophecy, supernatural knowledge
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about their fates, or sometimes just for fun. By Sonya
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Andersen Cairemancy reading the lines of the palm may have
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originated in India before spreading to the Middle East and Europe.
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Aristotle believed the creases of the palm indicated the length
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of a life, and by the Renaissance, palmistry had become
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so popular that it was denounced by the Pope. Shakespeare
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had Othello tell his wife Desdemona that her hand argues
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fruitfulness and liberal heart. Not all palm readings are so happy,
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according to an English guide published around seventeen hundred, if
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a small half moon shape is launched in some one's
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middle line, there faded to suffer from cold and watery diseases.
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Tassiumency reading tea leaves may have originated in China, Tea's
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birthplace thousands of years ago, when people first began examining
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the wet dregs left at the bottoms of their cups.
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After tea arrived in Europe, tassiumency became a popular pastime
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for English women, especially in the Victorian period. Industrious diviners
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assigned meaning to images they saw in leaves, like animals, objects, numbers,
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or letters, which they would interpret for curious souls. For example,
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a mushroom shape, according to a nineteenth century guide, signified
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a sudden separation of lovers after a quarrel tyremancy. This
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funky divination method, first mentioned derisively by a second century
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a d Greek citizen of Ephesus in present day Turkey,
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works best with varieties like blue cheese and Swiss as
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a diviner discerns fortunes from moldy veins and holes. According
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to the modern practitioner Jennifer Billock, the niche method gained
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popularity in medieval and early modern England, used to predict
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the harvest, a child's future, or even a maiden's romantic fate.
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A hopeful last Billock says, would carve suitor's names into
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a block of cheshire and watch to see which molded fees,
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indicating her first husband. And finally, crystallimancy, seeing visions in
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a crystal ball is one way to scry or divine
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the future from a reflective surface. Celtic Druids are thought
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to have crystal gazed, and traveling romani people have practiced
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the art for centuries after it resurged in Victorian England.
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In nineteen o five. One scholar explained that a squire
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could see either a clear picture or a misty cloud
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dissolving to reveal a vision from the future, but conditions
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have to be right. According to a nineteen twenty's guide,
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the scrying room should be temperate and charged with dull light,
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and the seer must not have recently eaten next over
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six hundred years, the golf ball has evolved from a
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primitive wood sphere to a smart ball with cutting edge sensors,
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tracing the centuries of innovation that sent the golf ball
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on A Wild Ride through History by Miles Corwin. Historians
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speculate that the first golfer was likely a shepherd who
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grew bored with his work one day, swung his crook
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and made contact with a rock that went flying. He
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hit more, and purely by accident, one of the stones
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disappeared into a hole. Legendary sportswriter Herbert Warren wind used
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in nineteen forty eight. Once a second shepherd appeared to compete,
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or perhaps as soon as one of them began cursing
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over a misdirected ball, golf was invented. The earliest man
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made golf balls ever uncovered were primitive spheres made of
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hard wood on the east coast of Scotland in the
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fourteenth century. By the early sixteen hundreds, players were using
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balls of cowhide stuffed with goose feathers. When doused with water,
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the leathers shrank and the feathers expanded, and this rough
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hewn ball would have flown well for the day, enabling
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golfers to make truer shots, but the craftsmanship was expensive,
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creating a sport primarily enjoyed by the well off. With
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the advent of golf country clubs that required membership fees.
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During the next century, it officially became a game for
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the elite. The idea for a greatly improved permutation came
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in eighteen forties. Robert Patterson, a young Scottish divinity student,
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became transfixed by the possibilities of gudapercha, dried gum of
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the Malaysian sapadilla tree, which he found as protective filler
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in a package from Singapore containing a statue of a
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Hindu god. Patterson heeded the sapadilla gum and massaged it
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until he had formed a sphere and later paid at
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white The so called gutty ball was bouncier, easier to control,
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and much more affordable, making the game more accessible. The
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inventor of the modern ball was Coburn Haskell, who had
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an epiphany whilst rolling through the B. F. Goodrich rubber
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factory in Akron, Ohio, spotting piles of elastic Haskell had
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the idea of winding up some of the rubber yarn
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into a golf ball. Haskell eventually added a solid rubber
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corps and a cover. Legendary golfer Bobby Jones, co founder
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of the Augusta National Golf Club as well as the
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Master's Tournament, described the Haskell ball, first brought to market
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in nineteen o one, as the most important development in
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history of the sport. Jones was displeased, however, that the
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Haskell ball required less skill and more strength for long shots,
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and lamented that larger core were needed to accommodate the
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greater distances the new balls sailed. Golfers eventually discovered that
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stuffed golf balls were traveling farther than new ones. Dimples
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were soon added between three hundred and five hundred, depending
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on your taste, after physicists confirmed that air flowed more
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freely over these balls, minimizing drag, and the increased spin
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created more lift and recently, some players have begun sharpening
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their game by using smart golf balls with embedded sensors
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that enable golfers to collect analytics about their shots, identify
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strengths and weaknesses in their game, and of course, to
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help locate those pesky lost balls. For many enthusiasts, these
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innovations make the game more appealing and even addictive, enabling
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duffers on public courses to command drives and puts that
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golfers floundering on the sandy Si Scottish links more than
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six hundred years ago, could never imagine next. This majestic
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monkey has become a beloved neighbor for millions in Vietnam.
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For the critically endangered red shanked duke, proximity to an
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urban center has had surprising benefits. By Alex Fox. With
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run stockings, white sleeves, a heathered gray vest, and an
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orange mask fringed by a wispy white beard, red shanked
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dukes look dressed for a swanky party. These spectacular primates
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live in the tree tops of forests in Vietnam, Laos,
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and Cambodia, where there have been a small number of sightings.
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The duke's leafy diet means that its digestive system must
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process a prodigious amount of fiber to turn foliage into energy.
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The prime mate has a four chambered stomach like a
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cow and relies on gut bacteria to break down the
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ruffage through fermentation. This digestive machinery takes up a lot
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of room, giving the animals a pot belly andiang. A
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primate researcher for Singapore based conservation nonprofit Mandie Nature said
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that When she first saw a red shanked duke in
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the wild, she wondered if it was pregnant. I was told, oh, no,
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that's a male. Unfortunately, these colorful primates are in trouble
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as development and logging, mining, and agriculture have destroyed or
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fragmented their forest habitats. The critically endangered monkeys are also
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hunted for meat and for use in traditional medicine, and
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are sometimes captured for the international pet trade. Researchers now
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estimate the species population declined by more than eighty percent
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in a thirty six year period from nineteen seventy nine
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to twenty fifteen. A model for saving the species can
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be found in Vietnam's Suntra Peninsula, just a few miles
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from the city of Danang, with the population of one
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point three million people. Suntra, also called Monkey Mountain, is
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a forested nature reserve of more than six thousand acres
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that is home to a large population of red shanked
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dukes once thought vanished. When Ha Thang Long co founded
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the Vietnamese conservation organization Green viet and twenty twelve, few
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people in Da Nang knew about their stunning primate neighbors.
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Since twenty thirteen, viet has put up nearly two hundred
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posters with photographs and information about red shank dukes and
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started leading wildlife tours inside Suntra. The campaign has grown
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to include school presentations and wildlife photography exhibitions. This heightened
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awareness became important in twenty seventeen when the Vietnamese government
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announced plans to build luxury hotels in Suntra, threatening the
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duke's habitat Green viet collected some thirteen thousand signatures opposing
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the plan, which, along with efforts from the International Union
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for the Conservation of Nature and Vietnam's Southern Institute of Ecology,
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helped persuade the government to suspend it. As pride in
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this monkey has increased. Untross red shanked duke numbers have
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grown from roughly three hundred and fifty individuals in twenty
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twelve two an estimated two thousand to day. Seeing the
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beauty of the red shanked dukes connects people to nature.
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Ah says, I hope more people see that animals deserve
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to live on this planet just like humans do. Finally,
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some fun facts about owls. Owls can rotate their heads
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up to two hundred seventy degrees. Thanks to extravertebrate in
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their necks, they have specialized feathers that allow for silent flight,
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making them stealthy hunters. There are over two hundred different
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species of owls found all around the world except Antarctica,
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and owls have asymmetrical ears, helping them pinpoint sounds. This
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concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for to day. Your
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reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and
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have a great day.