APPEARANCE OF THE BOHEMIAN NOMADS
At the beginning of the fifteenth century hordes of unknown swarthy
wanderers began to spread through Europe.[235] Sometimes denominated
Bohemians, because they claimed to come from Bohemia, sometimes
Egyptians, because their leader assumed the title of Duke of Egypt,
they exercised the arts of divination, larceny and marauding. They
were nomadic tribes, bivouacking in huts of their own construction;
their religion was unknown; they gave themselves out to be Christians;
but their orthodoxy was more than doubtful. Among themselves, they
practised communism and promiscuity, and in their divinations they made
use of a strange sequence of signs, allegorical in form, and depending
from the virtues of numbers. Whence came they? Of what accursed
and vanished world were they the surviving waifs? Were they, as
superstitious people believed, the offspring of sorceresses and demons?
What expiring and betrayed Saviour had condemned them to roam for ever?
Was this the family at large of the Wandering Jew, or the remnants of
the ten tribes of Israel, lost sight of in captivity and long enchained
by Gog and Magog in unknown regions? Such were the doubting questions
at the passage of these mysterious strangers, who seemed to retain only
the superstitions and vices of a vanished civilisation. Enemies of
toil, they respected neither property nor family; they dragged their
women and children after them; they pestered the peace of honest
house-dwellers with their pretended divinations. However all this may
be, their first encampment in the vicinity of Paris is told by one
writer as follows:—
“In the next year, 1427, on the Sunday after the middle of August,
being the 17th of the month, there came to the environs of Paris twelve
so-called penitentiaries—a duke, earl and ten men, all on horses,
saying that they were good Christians, originally of Lower Egypt. They
stated further that in former times they were conquered and turned
to Christianity, those refusing being put to death, while those who
consented to baptism were left as rulers of the country. Some time
subsequently the Saracens invaded them, and many who were not firm in
the faith made no attempt to withstand or defend their country, as in
duty bound, but submitted, became Saracens and abjured our Saviour. The
Emperor of Germany, the King of Poland and other rulers having learned
that the people renounced their faith so easily, becoming Saracens and
idolaters, fell upon them and conquered them again easily. It appeared
at first as if they had the intention to leave them in their country,
so that they might be led back to Christianity, but, after deliberation
in council, the emperor and the rest of the kings ordained that they
should never own land in their native country without the consent of
the Pope, to obtain which, they must journey to Rome. Thither they
proceeded in a great body, the young and the old, involving great
suffering for the little ones. They made confession of their sins at
Rome, and the Pope, after considering with his advisers, imposed on
them, by way of penance, a seven years’ wandering through the world,
sleeping in no bed. He ordained further that every bishop and croziered
abbot should give them, once and for all, ten livres of the Tours
currency as a contribution towards their expenses. He presented them
with letters to this effect, gave them his benediction, and for five
years they had been wandering through the world.
“Some days afterwards, being the day of the martyrdom of St. John
the Baptist, or August 29, the general horde followed and were not
permitted to enter within Paris, but were lodged at the Chapelle St.
Denis. They numbered about 120 persons, including women and children.
They stated that when they left their own country they consisted of
one thousand or twelve hundred souls; the others had died on the road,
their king and queen among them; the survivors were still expecting to
become possessors of worldly goods, for the holy father had promised
them good and fertile lands when their penance was finished.
“While they were at the chapel there was never so great a crowd at
benediction, for the people flocked to see them from St. Denis,
Paris, and the suburbs. Their children, both boys and girls, were the
cleverest tricksters. Nearly all had their ears pierced and in each
ear were one or two silver rings, which they said were a sign of good
birth in their own country; they were exceedingly dark and with woolly
hair. The women were the ugliest and blackest ever seen; their faces
were covered with sores, their hair was black as the tail of a horse,
their clothes consisted of an old _flaussoie_ or _schiavina_ tied
over the shoulder by a cord or morsel of cloth, and beneath it a poor
shirt. In a word, they were the most wretched creatures who had ever
been seen in France, within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. Their
poverty notwithstanding, they had sorceresses among them who inspected
the hand, telling what had happened to the person consulting them in
their past life and what awaited them in the future. They disturbed
the peace of households, for they denounced husband to wife and wife
to husband. And what was still worse, while talking to people about
their magic art, they managed to fill their purses by emptying those of
their hearers. One citizen of Paris who gives account of these facts
adds that he himself talked to them three or four times without losing
a halfpenny; but this is the report of the people everywhere, and the
news reached the bishop of Paris, who went thither taking a Minorite
friar called the little Jacobin, and he, by the bishop’s command,
preached a great sermon and excommunicated all, male and female who had
told fortunes and all who had shewn their hands. The horde was ordered
away and departed accordingly on September 8, proceeding towards
Pontoise.”
It is not known whether they continued their journey North of the
capital, but their memory has survived in a corner of the Department
du Nord. “As a fact, in a wood near the village of Hamel, five hundred
feet from a druidic monument consisting of six stones, there is a
fountain which is called the Sorcerer’s Kitchen, and it is there,
according to tradition, that the _Cara Maras_ rested and quenched
their thirst. Now these were assuredly the _Caras’mar_, namely, the
Bohemians, or wandering sorcerers and diviners, to whom ancient Flemish
charters granted the right to be fed by the inhabitants.”
They left Paris, but others came in their place, so that France was
exploited as much as other countries. There is no record of their
landing in England or in Scotland, but before very long the latter
kingdom numbered more than one hundred thousand.[236] They were called
_seard_ and _caird_, as much as to say artisans, craftsmen, for the
Scotch word is derived from the Sanskrit k + r, whence comes the verb
to do, the _Ker-aben_ of the gipsies and the Latin _cerdo_ or bungler,
which they are not. If there was no trace of them at the same period
in northern Spain, where the Christians took refuge against the Moslem
domination, it was doubtless because the Arabs in the South were more
to their liking; however, under John II the gipsies were clearly
distinguished from these latter, though no one knew whence they came.
To sum up, it came about that, from the time in question forward,
they were generally known over the whole European continent. One of
the bands of king Sindel appeared at Ratisbon in 1433, while Sindel
himself, accompanied by his reserve, camped in Bavaria in 1439. He
seemed to have come from Bohemia, for the Bavarians, unaware that in
1433 the tribe had given themselves out as Egyptians, termed them
Bohemians, under which name they reappeared in France and so have been
known therein. Willy-nilly, they were tolerated. Some perambulated
the mountains, seeking gold in the rivers; some forged shoes for
horses and chains for dogs; others—more marauders than pilgrims—crept
about, ferreting everywhere, and everywhere thieved and pilfered. A
few of them, weary of shifting and fixing their tents continually,
came to a stand and hollowed out hovels, square huts of four to six
feet, underground, and covered with a roof of green branches, the
ridge of which, set across two stakes, in the form of a Y, rose
scarcely more than two feet above the soil. It was in this den, of
which little more than the name has remained in France, that the whole
family was huddled together pell-mell. In such a lodging, with no
opening but the door and a hole for the smoke, the father hammered,
the children—crouched round the fire—blew the bellows and the mother
boiled the pot, which contained only the spoil of poaching. Among
old clothes, a bridle and a knapsack hung from long wooden nails,
with no other furniture than an anvil, pincers and hammer—there met
credulity and love, maid and knight, lady of the manor and page.
There they shewed their bare white hands to the penetrating glance of
the sibyl; there love was purchased, happiness was sold, and lying
found its recompense. Thence came mountebanks and cardsharpers, the
star-spangled robe and peaked hat of the magician, the vagrants and
their slang, street dancers and daughters of joy. It was the kingdom
of idleness and _trupherie_, of Villon manners and free meals. They
were people who were continually busy in doing nothing, as a simple
story-teller of the middle ages terms it. A scholar who is equally
modest and distinguished, M. Vaillant, author of a history of the
_Rom-Muni_ or Bohemians, some of whose pages we have cited, gives no
more flattering portrait, though he ascribes to the gipsies great
importance in the sacerdotal history of the ancient world. He recounts
how these strange Protestants of primitive civilisation, travelling
through the ages with a malediction on their foreheads and rapine
in their hands, excited curiosity at first, then mistrust, finally
proscription and hatred on the part of mediæval Christians. It will be
readily understood what dangers might attach to this people without
a fatherland, parasites or the whole world and citizens of nowhere.
They were Bedouins who perambulated empires like deserts; they were
nomadic thieves who glided about everywhere and remained nowhere. It
came to pass speedily that the people regarded them as sorcerers,
even as demons, casters of lots, stealers of children, and there was
some ground for all this. Moreover, the nomads began to be accused
everywhere of celebrating frightful mysteries in secret; they were held
responsible for all unknown murders, for all mysterious abductions,
as the Greeks of Damascus accused the Jews of killing one of their
fraternity and drinking his blood. It was affirmed that they preferred
boys and girls from twelve to fifteen years old. Here was an effectual
way to insure that they should be held in horror and avoided by the
young; but it was odious all the same, for the child and the common
people are only too credulous, while as fear begets hatred, so also
it tends to breed persecution. It was this which came to pass; they
were not only avoided and fled from, but they were refused fire and
water; Europe became like India in their respect and every Christian
was a Brahman armed against them. In some countries, if a young girl
approached one of them to give alms out of charity, her distracted
governess would warn her to beware, for the gipsy was a _katkaon_, an
ogre, who would suck her blood when she was asleep in the night. The
girl drew back trembling. If a boy passed near enough for his shadow to
fall on the wall near which they were seated, and where perhaps a whole
gipsy family was eating or basking in the sun, his master would cry:
“Keep off, child; these vampires will steal your shadow and your soul
will dance at their Sabbath through all eternity.” So did Christian
hatred resuscitate the _lemures_ and goblins, the vampires and ogres
as a ground of their impeachment. “They were descended from Mambres,
whose miracles competed against those of Moses; they were sent by the
king of Egypt to spy everywhere on the children of Israel and render
their lot intolerable; they were the murderers made use of by Herod to
exterminate the first-born of Bethlehem; they were pagans indeed, for
others, but they did not understand a single word of Egyptian, their
language comprising, on the contrary, a good deal of Hebrew, and they
were therefore the refuse of that abject race who slept in the tombs
of Judea after devouring the corpses which they contained; they were
otherwise those miscreant Jews who were tortured, chased and burned in
1348 for having poisoned our wells and cisterns, and they had returned
once again to the work. As a final alternative, whether Jews or
Egyptians, Essenians or Chusians, Pharaohnians or Caphtorians, Assyrian
Balistari or Philistines of Canaan, they were renegades, and it was
testified in Saxony, France and everywhere that they were fit only for
burning and hanging.
The proscription which came upon them fell also on that strange book in
which they used to consult destiny and to obtain oracles. Its coloured
cards bearing incomprehensible figures are undoubtedly the monumental
summary of all ancient revelations, the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics,
the keys also of Solomon, the primeval scriptures of Enoch and Hermes.
The author to whom we refer gives proof here of uncommon sagacity,
speaking of the Tarot as a man who as yet does not understand it
perfectly but has made it a profound study. What he says is as follows:—
“The form, disposition, arrangement of these tablets, and of the
figures which they depict, though considerably modified by time, are
so manifestly allegorical, while the allegories correspond so closely
to the civil, philosophical and religious doctrine of antiquity, that
one is compelled to regard them as a synthesis of the matter of faith
among ancient peoples. We have sought to make evident already that
the Tarot is a deduction from the sidereal _Book of Enoch_, who is
Henochia; that it is modelled on the astral wheel of Athor, who is
As-taroth; that, like the Indian Ot-tara, which is the polar bear or
Arc-tura in the northern hemisphere, it is the force major (_tarie_),
on which rests the solidity of the world and the sidereal firmament
of earth. Consequently, like the polar Bear, which is regarded as the
chariot of the sun, the chariot of David and of Arthur, it is the Greek
fortune, the Chinese destiny, the Egyptian hazard, the lot of the
Romanies; and that, in their unceasing revolution about the polar Bear,
the stars pour down on earth those auspices and fatalities, that light
and shadow, cold and heat, whence flow the good and evil, the love and
hatred which make up human happiness.
“If the origin of this book is so lost in the night of time that
no one knows where or when it was invented, everything leads us to
believe that it is of Indo-Tartaric origin and that, variously modified
among ancient nations, according to the phases of their doctrines and
the characteristics of their wise men, it was one of their books of
occult science, possibly even one of their sibylline books. We have
sufficiently indicated the road by which it has reached us; we have
seen that it must have been known to the Romans and that it came to
them not only from the first days of the empire but of the Republic
itself, by the intervention of those numerous strangers of eastern
origin, who were initiated into the mysteries of Bacchus and of Isis,
and who brought their knowledge to the heirs of Numa.”
Vaillant does not say that the four hieroglyphical signs of the
Tarot—being Wands, Cups, Swords and Deniers, or golden circles—are
found in Homer, sculptured on the shield of Achilles; but according to
him: “the Cups are the arcs or arches of time, the vessels or ships of
heaven. The Deniers are the constellations, fixed and movable stars.
The Swords are fires, flames, rays; the Wands are shadows, stones,
trees, plants. The Ace of Cups is the vase of the universe, the arch of
celestial truth, the principle of earth. The Ace of Deniers is the sun,
the great eye of the world, the sustenance and element of life. The
Ace of Swords is the spear of Mars, whence come wars, misfortunes and
victories. The Ace of Wands is the serpent’s eye, the pastoral crook,
the cowherd’s goad, the club of Hercules, the emblem of agriculture.
The two of Cups is the cow, Io or Isis, and the bull Apis or Mnevis.
The three of Cups is Isis, the moon, lady and queen of night. The
three of Deniers is Osiris, the sun, lord and king of day. The nine of
Deniers is the messenger Mercury, or the angel Gabriel. The nine of
Cups is the gestation of good destiny, whence comes happiness.”
Finally, M. Vaillant tells us that there is a Chinese diagram
consisting of characters which form great oblong compartments, of
equal size and precisely that of the Tarot cards. These compartments
are arranged in six perpendicular columns, the first five consisting
of fourteen compartments each, making seventy in all; whilst the sixth
is only half filled and contains seven compartments. Moreover, this
diagram is formed after the same combination of the number seven; each
complete column is of twice seven or fourteen compartments, while the
half column contains seven compartments. It is so much like the Tarot
that the four suits of the latter occupy the four first columns; in
the fifth column are the twenty-one trumps, while the seven remaining
trumps are in the sixth column, the last representing the six days
constituting the week of creation. Now, according to the Chinese, this
diagram goes back to the first epoch of their empire, being the drying
up of the waters of the deluge by IAO. The conclusion is, therefore,
that this is either the original Tarot or a copy thereof; that in any
case the Tarot is anterior to Moses, is referable to the beginning of
the ages, or the epoch of the formulation of the Zodiac; and that its
age is consequently six thousand six hundred years.[237]
“Such is the Romany Tarot from which by transposition the Hebrews have
made the word _Torah_, signifying the Law of Jehovah. So far then from
being a game, as it is at the present day, it was a book, and a serious
book, the book of symbols and of emblems, of analogies or the relations
between stars and man; the book of destiny, by the aid of which the
sorcerer unveiled the mysteries of fortune. Its figures, their names,
their number, and the oracles drawn from these made it naturally
regarded by Christians as the instrument of a diabolical art, a work of
Magic. It will be hence understood with what severity they proscribed
it, the moment it became known to them by that abuse of confidence
which the rashness of the _Sagi_ committed on public credulity. In this
manner, faith being lost in its message, the Tarot became a game, while
its pictures underwent modification according to the taste of nations
and the successive spirit of centuries.[238] It is to the work in this
trivial form that we owe our modern playing cards, the combinations
of which are comparable to those of the Tarot in the same way as the
game of draughts is comparable to the game of chess. It follows that
the origin of cards is attributed wrongly to the reign of Charles VI,
and it may be noted further that the initiates of the Order of the
Belt, established before 1332 by Alphons XI, king of Castile, pledged
themselves not to play cards. Le Sage tells us that, in the days of
Charles V, St. Bernard of Sienna condemned cards to be burnt and that
they were then called _triumphales_ after the game of triumph played in
honour of the victorious Osiris or Ormuzd, represented by one of the
Tarot cards. Furthermore, that king himself proscribed cards in 1369
and the reason that little Jean de Saintré was honoured by his favour
was because he did not play. In those days cards were termed _Naipes_
in Spain and _Naibi_ in Italy, the _Naibi_ being she-devils, sibyls and
pythonesses.”
M. Vaillant, from whom we have been again quoting, considers therefore
that the Tarot has been modified and altered, which is true for the
German examples bearing Chinese figures, but not for those of Italy,
which have only been altered in details, nor for those of Besançon,
in which traces remain of primitive Egyptian hieroglyphics. In the
_Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic_, we have shewn how
untoward in their results were the labours of Etteilla or Alliette
in respect of the Tarot. This illuminated hairdresser, after working
for thirty years, only succeeded in producing a bastard set, the Keys
of which are transposed, so that the numbers no longer answer to the
signs. In a word, it is a Tarot suited to Etteilla and to the measure
of his intelligence, which was not of great extent.
We are scarcely in agreement with M. Vaillant, when he suggests that
the gipsies were the lawful proprietors of this key to initiations.
They owed it doubtless to the infidelity or imprudence of some
Kabalistic Jew. The gipsies originated in India, or their historian
has at least shown the likelihood of this theory. Now the extant Tarot
is certainly that of the gipsies and has come to us by way of Judea. As
a fact, its keys are in correspondence with the letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, and some of its figures reproduce even their forms. What then
were the gipsies? As a poet has said: They were the debased remnant of
an ancient world; they were a sect of Indian Gnostics, whose communism
caused them to be proscribed in every land; as they may be said to
admit practically, they were profaners of the Great Arcanum, overtaken
by a fatal malediction. A horde misled by some enthusiastic fakir,
they had become wanderers through the world, protesting against all
civilisations in the name of a pretended natural law which dispensed
them from almost every duty. Now the law which seeks to prevail in
violation of duty is aggression, pillage and rapine; it is the hand of
Cain raised against his brother, and society in defending itself seems
to be avenging the death of Abel.
In 1840 certain mechanics of the Faubourg St. Antoine, weary, as they
put it, of being hoodwinked by journalists and of serving as tools
for the ambition of ready speech-makers, resolved to found and to
edit a journal of pure radicalism and of logic apart from evasion
or circumlocution. They combined therefore and deliberated for the
firm establishment of their doctrines; they took as their basis the
republican device of liberty, equality and the rest. But liberty seemed
to them incompatible with the duty of labour, equality with the law
of property, and they therefore decided on communism. One of them,
however, pointed out that in communism the sharpest would preside over
the division and would get the lion’s share; it was decreed thereupon
that no one should have the right to intellectual superiority. But
it was further remarked that even physical beauty might constitute
an aristocracy, so they decreed that there should be an equality
in ugliness. Finally, as those who till the ground are yoked to
the ground, it was settled that true communists could not follow
agriculture, must have only the world for their fatherland and humanity
itself for their family, whence it became them to have recourse to
caravans and go round the world eternally. We are not relating a
parable, we have known those who were present at the convention in
question and we have read the first number of their journal, which was
entitled _The Humanitarian_ and was suppressed in 1841. As to this, the
press reports of the period may be consulted. Had the journal continued
and had the incipient sect recruited proselytes for the Icarian
emigration, as the old attorney Cabet was doing at the same period, a
new race of Bohemians would have been organised, and vagabondage would
have counted one race the more.