12. The Hanged Man: Reveal to me my darkness, O Niktiphaes, Illuminator of the Night.
Christian base: The card was called "Il Traditore," The Traitor, in many early Italian accounts. The earliest image of a man hanging from one foot prior I have seen dates to 1410, in the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna. The sin these damned souls committed is idolatry. It was thought to be the ultimate treason, Vitali explains, because idolaters took all the benefits of creation without acknowledging the one Creator: (1)
The first known representation of the Hanged Man in the tarot is in the Sforza deck.Gertrude Moakley sees a direct relationship to the Sforza family. She points out that the "Anti-Pope" John XXIII put up posters on all the bridges of Rome with this image, the name, "Muzio Attendolo" the word "traditore," and the accusation that Muzio committed 12 treasons against John. The card, perhaps not coincidentally, has always been the 12th in the sequence. Muzio Attendola, who later adopted his nickname "Sforza" as his last name, was Francesco Sforza's father. He switched sides, deserting the "Pope" in Rome in favor of his foe the King of Naples. However in terms of service to God and the "true Pope," Muzio was not in fact a traitor, as his switching sides, by weakening the anti-Pope, helped to end the schism. (2)
The Hanged Man was not simply a dramatic poster. People in Italy were actually given this punishment. It was a common punishment for theft. In Germany and the Netherlands it was given specifically to Jews, to distinguish them from Christians, who apparently were hung right side up. In another case, the crime was desecration of the image of the Virgin. Below is a 1515 woodcut of this punishment; below the victim a fire burns, and a dog is hung next to him, partly to suggest a comparison and partly so to inflict more punishment from the dogs' bites. At least one tarot card had a hanged man tied in the same way, that of Catelin Geoffrey in 1557. (3)
Another example of the image is in Edmund Spencer's Fairie Queene, 1596. It relates how one knight “by the heeles him [i.e. his foe] hung upon a tree” so that “all which passed by” could see the punishment dealt “they who treason doe trespass." Here the crime is treason again. (4)
In Schoen's horoscope, the Hanged Man corresponds to House 12, portraying a man in the stocks. That was a punishment of the time given for minor offenses, usually in public places so as to humiliate the person being subjected to it. The person's footwear was taken off, and he might be tickled or whipped on the soles of the feet, as well as exposed to all kinds of weather. (5)
In some early cards, the Gringonneur Hanged Man (right, below) would appear to be Judas, weighed down by his pieces of silver, although they are gold on the card. To be sure, Judas is said in only one gospel to have hanged himself, and then right side up; but that is not the point: it is his status as traitor.
Another image of the upside-down man is in Plato's Timaeus, cited often throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Man is naturally upright, so that he may contact with his head the high realms of Heaven. The man who is enslaved to his animal nature is then like a man with his head downward, toward matter and the dark underworld, as a text quoted by Vitali affirms. This also connects the card to Judas. (6)
One final connection to Judas, made by a couple of tarot historians on the Web, is Giotto's 1305 Disparazione, a representation of the vice of Desperation or Despair. It shows a woman hanged right side up, like Judas. It is one of several Giotto images reminiscent of tarot trumps (see my sections on the Fool, Popess, Pope, Strength, Maison-Dieu, and Star cards). (7)
But the word "traitor" applies to another person in the gospel story. The Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious authorities, considered Jesus the traitor rather than Judas--a traitor to the Jewish religion of his birth. Jesus was not enslaved by his animal nature, of course, but he did go to the underworld after his death, to free the faithful ones there. The Hanged Man's leggings are green, a sign of regeneration, and his hair is blond, an image of the sun. In contrast, the Ferrara Judas figure has red hair--for the Devil, presumably-- and purple leggings. This is card number 12. Correspondingly, there are 11 or 12 notches on the poles, suggestive of either Jesus and the 11 (without Judas), or the 11 and Judas; or all 12, and the Hanged Man as the 12 or 13th, Jesus.
In Dodal and Conver, the notches, 6 on each side, are colored red, I would guess for the blood of Jesus and the disciples. (The Chosson, not shown, is the same as the Conver.) Dodal has green poles, suggesting Christian regeneration. Noblet has 11 notches, of various colors, but another, colored green, is on the top pole next to the rope. As on the Sforza card, this color strongly suggests Jesus rather than Judas. In the later cards, this notch has been turned into a piece of the rope. Noblet's gray and green poles suggest the tree of knowledge, i.e. death, and the tree of life, with Jesus between the two.
The colors of the Hanged Man's legs on these Marseille-style cards differ among decks. Yet for most of them, their colors are exactly the same as those of the Emperor in the same deck. (Chosson, below right, seems to be an exception to this rule; there the Emperor's legs appear to be blue and green, and the Hanged Man's both blue.) The suggestion of a relationship between the two figures is unavoidable. Perhaps we are to think that the Hanged Man is the son of the Emperor, like Jesus to God the Father. The legs' various colors all suggest regeneration: red for blood and the baptism of fire; blue for baptism by water; green for plants and the regeneration of spring.
Yet the Hanged Man's upper body, the face and the jacket, is more like the Bateleur's, above. In an early image of a cups-magician (above left) the man has his legs crossed in a manner reminiscent of the Hanged Man and the Emperor, perhaps as though to link the three.
But perhaps the Hanged Man is the Emperor's follower, as opposed to a son, like an Imperial soldier wearing the Emperor's colors. In this case the Emperor could be Jesus (or his Father, if you think the Emperor is too old to be Jesus) and the Hanged Man again, Jesus or Judas. The issue of betrayal remains problematical.
The issue of betrayal remains problematical. Did Jesus betray the God of the Jews, or fulfil that God's plan. Did Judas, as God's follower (whether in the first or second person), betray that God or protect him?
It is even problematical in the gospels. There is a strong hint in the Gospel of John that Judas was not betraying Jesus, but rather carrying out his wishes. One does not have to be the follower of some Gnostic sect (as in the newly translated "Gospel of Judas") to recognize that handing Judas the "sop," or piece of bread, is Jesus's way of pointing out Judas as the “betrayer” to the disciples (John 13:21), after they asked who the "betrayer" was. Then Judas gets up to go out and Jesus says, "What are to do, do quickly." The narrator's explanation that the disciples do not interfere because they supposed he had business to do is weak.
In fact it is unclear whether Jesus in this passage is really speaking of betrayal at all. The word in Greek translated as “betray” is paradidomi, from “para,” i.e. “near,” and “didomi,” meaning “give.” Its primary meaning is the neutral “give over” or “deliver up,” rather than the negative “betray.” Judas is the one who will deliver Jesus up, at Jesus's own request. Without Judas’s act, the Son of Man would not be glorified (John 13:31), and scripture would not be fulfilled. (8)
It is hard for me to imagine that people reading John before Kazanzakis’s Last Temptation of Christ never thought of this. It just wasn’t safe to say it too loudly. Such an interpretation of the card would hence be an “esoteric” meaning. Judas’s agony from this perspective is almost worse than Jesus’s, in that he is more misunderstood and more alone.
In any event, the card signifies not just betrayal but the torture, isolation, and shame incurred as a result of this punishment. We see the pain particularly in the positions of the fingers, extending below his back in the Cary Sheet, Noblet, and Dodal. His arms have apparently been dislocated and tied together at the elbows. And whether the person undergoing this suffering, the punishment for betrayal, actually is a traitor is an open question. (9)
References, Hanged Man, Christian:
1. Andrea Vitali, http://trionfi.com/0/i/c/12/v/subframe2.html.
2. See Ross G. Caldwell, post for 16-02-2008, http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=93338&page=3&pp=10.
3. W.J. Hurst at http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=93371.
4. Spencer: the quote is in the pdf file at http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/fqintro.html.
5. Schoen: Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 207, or E. and J. Lehner, Astrology and Astronomy. Stocks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocks.
6. Timaeus 43e-44a: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html. Search "upside-down."
7. The association is made at http://www.hermetics.org/tarocchi.html and http://www.tarothistory.com/caryyalevisconti.html. The first of these authors, Ioannis Marathakis, makes associations to three more of Giotto's figures. to me, however, these associations, Infidelity with the Hermit and Charity with the Pope, are either conceptually or visually not very close. Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cappella_degli_Scrovegni_(Padua).
8. paradidomi: see http://net.bible.org/verse.php?book=Joh&chapter=13&verse=21 and http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=3860.
9. Dislocated, tied arms: Jean-Michel David, unpublished material.
Greco-Egyptian perspective: The Hanged Man image is a product of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Nonetheless its content, signifying betrayal and shame, has a place in the myth of Osiris. According to Plutarch, Seth betrayed Osiris by inviting him to a banquet, then offering an elaborate casket to whoever it fit. He secretly had Osiris measured before making it. Osiris lay in it, and the casket closed over him; Seth and his co-conspirators sealed it and threw it into the Nile. Osiris slowly asphyxiated as he and his coffin floated downriver. (1)
What a dastardly deed, we say, done out of envy for Osiris's throne! But as Plutarch tells the story, Seth had been wronged. There was proof of Osiris's adultery with Seth's wife Nepthys. The ground was wet in her bed, upriver from Isis's land, causing flowers to spring up in the barren ground. Osiris was the god of water and the rising Nile. Nepthys said she deceived Osiris by disguising herself as Isis. But this was a lame excuse. It occurred on the land of Nepthys, the desert upriver from the first cataract. Is it believable that Osiris would not suspect that the woman he was making love to in that place was not his wife? (2)
In this case there is more than enough shame to go around. Osiris is the blue water, Seth the red desert heat. Hence the blue and red legs on Noblet's card; both Osiris and Seth are in shame. Green, the color on the Sforza card, is the color of Horus, the color that springs up as vegetation when blue water merges with yellow or brown earth. Hence the blue and green legs in Dodal and Chosson, as Osiris and Horus. The shame of the father is also that of the son, until the father is avenged. The all-blue legs of Conver are fine for the emperor, Osiris, but oversimplify the Hanged Man. Osiris is not the only one wronged. (3)
The Hanged Man might also be imagined as a candidate for initiation into some Egyptian cult, being lowered into a subterranean chamber. Since Daimonax has already suggested this alternative for the Dionysian interpretation, I will discuss the Roman-Egyptian version, as described by Apuleius, in the next section.
References, Hanged Man, Egyptian:
1. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris XIII, http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html.
2. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris XXXVII.
3. Isis and Osiris XII identifies Seth as red, Osiris black, and Horus white. It is perhaps no coincidence that these are the main colors of alchemy. But Osiris is also the water of the flood, as opposed to Isis as the land. And Horus is the new generation that comes from their union. Hence blue is appropriate for Osiris and green for Horus.
The Dionysian Hanged Man: In the Dionysian rites at Pompeii, the male initiate may have been lowered into a basement, to learn there his hidden darkness. The place was a side chapel of the Temple of Isis, where Dominax noticed an outside stairway leading to a basement. The chapel is dedicated to Dionysus; Dominax apparently was not given access to the basement itself. Also, some sarcophagus scenes show two levels, above and below.
The card designers, however, had even less access to Pompeii than Daimonax. If such underground chambers have any relevance to the tarot, they have to have been known in some other way. And in fact Daimonax does provide additional evidence, namely, a passage in Livy's history of Rome (http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/12pendu1.html).
Daimonax asks us to imagine a machine that lowered people into underground caves. Livy's account says that the initiations involved horrible deeds, and that participants who objected had something happen to them, out of sight. However Livy is an unsympathetic reporter, at a time when the state was trying to stamp out the Dionysian cult. That part could be taken with a grain of salt;, Ut the 16th and 17th centuries, people could see sarcophagi showing initiations on two levels (reproduced by Daimonax at http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/12pendu2.html). The underground level was not a place to get rid of people; it was simply part of the initiations....Men were said to have been carried off by the gods--because they had been attached to machines and whisked away out of sight to hidden caves; they were people who refused to enter the conspiracy or to join in the crimes, or to commit violations...(Translation from Marvin Meyer, The ancient Mysteries: a Sourcebook, p. 86, in Google Books.)
There was also the testimony of Pausanias, who described an oracle in which people lowered themselves into a cave and had unusual experiences there (induced by the drugs Pausanias said they took, as well as sensory deprivation, I would say). Then they got back up by use of a ladder:
On my re-interpretation of Livy (following Daimonax), the Hanged Man's rope is attached to a pulley that lowers him into the cave, but we can't see the pulley--it would be just above the top of the Dodal image (below). There is a drawing of such a contraption in Alberti's De Re Aedificatoria, 1452 (reproduced in Lefaivre, Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, p. 119). Alberti is a writer sometimes linked with the tarot, as I mentioned in the chapter, "250 years of history." Notice also the branch hanging down on the right, much like the piece of rope hanging down on the Marseille card.They have made no way of descent to the bottom, but when a man comes to Trophonios, they bring him a narrow, light ladder. After going down he finds a hole between the floor and the structure. Its breadth appeared to be two spans, and its height one span. The descender lies with his back on the ground, holding barley-cakes kneaded with honey, thrusts his feet into the hold and himself follows, trying hard to get his knees into the hole. After his knees the rest of his body is at once swiftly drawn in, just as the largest and most rapid river will catch a man in its eddy and carry him under. After this those who have entered the shrine learns the future, not in one and the same way in all cases, but by sight sometimes and at other times by hearing. The return upwards is by the same mouth, the feet darting out first. (http://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Trophonios.html)
All we have to do is turn Cupid upside down, and we get something like the "machine" described by Livy. There is in fact a Renaissance engraving that does just that, originally posted by M.J. Hurst at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=370. The whole engraving, of a Triumph of Venus built as part of festivities in 1616 Stuttgart, can be seen there; I will just focus on Cupid. All that is missing are the pulleys; but the ropes are quite similar to the tarot card.
On this reading, the Hanged Man is a candidate for initiation, probably having undergone a period of fasting and sexual abstention beforehand, now being lowered underground in a disorienting way that subjects the person to the whims of others. On the PMB and also the "Marseille" versions, the space between the two poles is a hole, the bottom of which is not visible. (1)
To the Greeks and Romans, worship of Isis and Osiris was the same as worship of Dionysus; They were the same gods in different countries, with similar "mysteries." In this light we may read Apuleius as describing a subterranean initiation into the "mysteries of Isis":
I approached the confines of death. I trod the threshold of Proserpine, and borne through the elements I returned. At midnight I saw the Sun shining in all his glory. I approached the gods below and the gods above, and I stood beside them, and I worshipped them. Behold, I have told my experience, and yet what you hear can mean nothing to you. (2)
Since the "threshold of Proserpine" is beneath the earth, reached only by portals in caves or lakes, we may assume that Apuleius's hero has gone underground, where he had experiences of some kind, perhaps aided by torches and paintings or statues on the walls. Perhaps it is the experience of descending to the depths and seeing the sun continuing its course in the Egyptian underworld.
We might wonder what being "borne through the elements" means. Since the elements of air and fire were imagined as above the earth, and the narrator of the tale says that he approached the gods above as well as the gods below, perhaps along with a descent there was an ascent, in which the initiate saw the sun and the constellations. In this context, the twelve branches could represent the twelve constellations of the zodiac, seen from below.
In this context a suggestion by Camoin makes sense. He imagines that the 12 notches on the poles form the sides to a ladder by which the initiate may ascend to heaven. The Orphics envisioned such a ladder (see sections on the Wheel and World cards), as well as the Bible in its story of Jacob. So did Pico della Mirandola (see next section). Pico's way went down before it went up. So did Jesus's: before the resurrection and the ascension came the harrowing of hell. By descending into the darkness, one found a path to the stars and beyond. (3)
Another place upside-down men appear is in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. In the Garden of Earthly Delights, the upside-down men appear to be in some kind of trance, an ecstatic state, of the kind the Dionysians were known to be fond. Similarly, Noblet's Hanged Man has his tongue hanging out. Perhaps his tongue is dry with thirst. Or is he making a defiant gesture to the authorities? Or has he has been breathing hard, even hyperventilating, as Flornoy suggests in his analysis of the card? Such activity, over the course of an hour or so and in the company of someone who has done the same, is an easy way to have some strange experiences, at first perhaps unpleasant and then, especially with repeated efforts, moreecstatic. (4)
The Hanged Man is from this perspective an initiate on the way to becoming a Dionysus, as shown by his crossed legs matching those of Dionysus as Emperor. The waxing and waning moons on the pockets of his jacket, evident in the 1761 Conver (below) , made more obvious by Camoin and Jodorowsky, are the same as the masks of comedy and tragedy on the epaulettes of the man in the Chariot. They are the two outcomes, tragic sacrifice and miraculous grace. (5)
References, Hanged Man, Dionysian:
1.For pictures and more discussion, see http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/12pendu2.html
2. Camoin: http://en.camoin.com/tarot/Jacobs-Ladder-Marseilles-Tarot.html.
3. Apuleius: The Golden Ass, Book XI, p. 249 of Jack Lindsey translation. Reproduced at Google Books in Marvin Meyer's The Ancient Mysteries, p. 189.
4. Bosch: see image at http://www.follydiddledah.com/image_and_quote_16.html, scroll down. Flornoy: La Pelinerage des Bateleurs, p. 129.
5. Epaulettes: Daimonax, http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/7chariot1.html. Final images: Chosson 1672, Camoin-Jodorowsky 1999. You can see here how the upper notch became part of the rope, or perhaps even a rose.
The alchemical hanged man.
I want to continue discussing the Hanged man as hyperventiling, coupled with increased blood flow to the head. A suggestion of this aerated state might befound in the alchemists' way of illustrating the process of distillation. The substance to be distilled was first in solution, then with heat converted to a gas. In non-alchemical contexts, the substance released was often alcohol, which cooled and collected in coiled tubing leading to a different container. The result was a higher concentration of alcohol in the liquid. For the alchemists, the process would have been purification through repeated attainment of the gaseous state. Anyone who breathed the alcohol-rich fumes was easily inebriated.
Such a "high," without the alcohol but with whatever substance was in the berries his people are shown eating, may have been what Bosch had in mind. The Gringonneur Hanged Man's adoption of the same leg positions suggests a similar purification. Perhaps influenced by Bosch or the alchemical image, William Blake arranged the legs of his personification of the element "Air" in his Book of Urizen in the same position. (1)
Now let us look at the alchemical texts, building on some remarks of O'Neill's. Looking at the two poles as trees, he refers to images of alchemists in trees, or even becoming trees. He sees trees as maternal images; to be in or turning into a tree is then equivalent to Attis emasculating himself at the base of a symbol of the Great Mother. However, trees were a common medieval image; climbing a tree was like climbing a ladder, meaning a spiritual ascent.
O'Neill (Tarot Symbolism p. 281) relates the Hanged Man to a short medieval poem, the "Epigram of the Hermaphrodite,} an alchemical allegory of about 1150. Jung quoted it in paragraph 89 of Mysterium Coniunctionis and attributed it to Mathieu de Vendome (ca. 1150). Jung found it in Lorichius, Aenigmatum libri III, fol. 23r, Frankfurt 1545:
According to de Rola, the motto of the first image is "This knowledge requires a true Philosopher not a foolish one." The second image is reminiscent of the "Jacob's ladder" of which Camoin speaks, except that heaven is not his reward. Like the first image, it suggests great peril. The moral, according to the words around the circle is, "It is not for Man's industry alone, but in God's hands, to will and encompass All in All." In other words, success is up to God and not man.
O"Neill concludes that from an alchemical perspective
I agree with this line of thinking. However it is a state of intense connection with the other world as well as despair in this one. It is like the state of the visionary melancholic that I discussed in connection with the Hermit, but more intense.
Along the same lines as O'Neill, another detail on the card interests me: the hole in which his head extends. It seems to me that the Hanged Man is like a seed being planted in the earth. It is the death that will bear rich fruit. Alchemical images make this same comparison, for example (3):
In both images, the stage of the work is that called "fermentation." A dead seed in the earth will bring forth new life, as something that will happen to it rather than its birthing itself by its own efforts. In the second image above, notice the shape of the crosses on the graves: a triangle on top of a cross. In alchemy this shape is the symbol for sulphur, the masculine principle, to which the tarot Emperor also conforms.
I looked up sulfur--the real chemical, not the "philosophical" one--on the Internet. It is a vital ingredient in plants, and the soil naturally does not have enough of it. Adding sulphur compounds to the soil promotes the development of the young plants. So there is a genuine chemical basis for the symbolism. Putting the Emperor in the soil brings about new life.
De Rola cites two biblical verses that connect well to this aspect of the Hanged Man:
References, the alchemical Hanged Man
1. Images: Left, Laurinda Dixon, Bosch, p. 256, Folio 40 of Ms. 29, Wellcome Institute, London.
Right: Photo taken by Ela Howard at the Beinecke Library, Yale University. Interpretation from David Erdman, The Illuminated Blake, p. 196. The personification is named Thuriel, one of the "sons of Urizen" in Blake's Book of Urizen.
2. Images from Johann Daniel Mylius, Opus medico-chymicum, 1618. In de Rola, Golden Game p. 144, or Fabricius, Alchemy fig. 29, p. 20. De Rola's translation of mottos is on his p. 152.
3. Upper image from Mylius, Philosophia Reformata, 1622, emblem 14. In de Rola p. 171. Lower image from Michael Maier, Tripus aureus 1618. In de Rola p. 122. De Rola's discussion is on his p. 125f.
The Pythagorean and Kabbalist Hanged Man. In Pythagoreanism, 12 = 2. Instead of the Popess, we have the Hanged Man. The Two is separation and a yearning for reconnection with the One. The first step up is down, into the Two's materiality. Yet it is also a step into spirit, into the Wisdom of Sophia, Hochmah. Hence the Hanged Man's head has a halo, and perhaps his arms, dislocated as they are, have grown feathers.
In Kabbalah, the first step upwards is Yesod. Pico connects that sefira with the" eighth day," that of "circumcision" (28.32); it is "redeemer" (Amos 2:6) (11>21), and "the bones of Joseph the just (Tzaddik), sending its influences over the superior earth" (28.42). The rite of circumcision is that signifying the covenant. Gikatilla lists covenant (foedus p. 62); circumcision (circumcisio Latin 62); "redeemer' as an attribute of Yesod. But for the Christian Kabbalist, the crucifixion, the sacrifice which makes circumcision unnecessary, is what makes possible the reconnection of fallen humanity with the divine.
The Hanged Man in the Cartomantic Tradition. The Etteilla image that corresponds to the Hermit is his no. 12, which is of the virtue Prudence. I described how one gets from the Hanged Man to Prudence in two easy steps. Here are the images again, first the Marseille (Conver 1961, then de Gebelin's "correction" of it, and finally Etteilla's "improvement" of that.
But Etteilla's words for Prudence obviously do not fit the Hanged Man, far from it. Instead, the appropriate keywords and word-lists are those of his card 18, the image for which we have already seen in connection with the Hermit.
And the corresponding word-lists:
The Pages, in the Sola-Busca and Etteilla.
XII corresponds to the Knights. The corresponding low numbers in the trumps are II and VII. Since II is a female figure, and there are no horses, we can skip it for now. But there are interesting parallels to the Chariot.
What is of interest, in relation to the Noblet Knights, are the horses. Notice their color. One chariot horse is peach or light red, the other gray. In the Knights, Batons' horse is all peach, while Coins' is all gray (except for the mane). Both Cups and Swords' horses are, in the legs, part one and part the other.
What could this set of arrangements mean? In Plato's Phaedrus, one horse, the red or dark one, acts from the sensuous impulse to possess the beautiful object, and the other from thought and recollection of the archetype of beauty. Perhaps Batons is the one acting from impulse, and Coins the one acting from thought. This distinction between two "parts of the soul" was very much alive in the Renaissance. For example, it is in the French philosopher Pierre de la Primaudaye. (4):
The peasant rebels in response to his senses--his hunger, and his numbers as against his few masters--without thinking through the forces against him and his own limitations. The merchant, to get rich, has to ignore his impulses--to reduce his prices to those in need, for example, or to trade in what he likes rather than what will sell--and consider thoughtfully how best to make his profit, comparing expenses to the price at which he can best sell his goods. It is a heartless business. The warrior, however, needs both the fire of impulse against his enemy and a thoughtfulness about how to best win a conflict. Likewise the monk or lover needs both the flame of desire, leading him to the "divine madness," and the rationality that will keep him from overzealousness and real madness. Or so I imagine Plato's framework in the context of the four Knights.
In the Knights of Swords vs. Batons, there is a suggestion of class distinction. Peasants were not allowed to own or use swords; their only defense was a club. And in fact in the 16th century and 17th centuries there were horrible battles in the countryside of Europe. The worst was in the 1520's, when hundreds of thousands of German peasants rose up against their masters in hopes of a better life under Protestantism. Luther did not support them, and hundreds of thousands were slaughtered by the bearers of the sword.
The German artist Albrecht Durer was moved to design a monument to these peasants, which of course never was built. (The part at right is the continuation upwards of the base at left.) At the top is a peasant in despair, a sword in his back, while below his own weapons--scythes, hoes, shovels, and other tools of his work--are tied tightly together. (10)
This result seems reflected in the Noblet Aces. Both Swords and Batons have tear-like drops falling downward from these weapons. It is the tears of death and destruction brought about by warfare between town and country, meaning primarily the peasants against the professional soldiers against the peasants.
Within a century these tears changed to rays of power emanating upward from the weapons. It is now as de Mellet says: "These two characters seem to say that Agriculture & the Sword are the two hands of Empire and the support of Society." But the sword is now blood-red, suggesting the blood that will be shed; the club continues to have blood on its top and sides, suggesting to me the young shoots of manhood that have been cut off to grow no more. (11)
To the peasants it must have seemed impossible at first to lose their struggle, so much did the they outnumber their masters. But numbers are not everything: he knows nothing of war. Moreover, in a war one needs to eat, and the only food is the harvest, to which this same rebel must attend in place of his war.
The Page of Batons looks at his impressive club with confidence; it will service him, he thinks. But the Knight is not so sure; already he is wheeling his horse around.
Here is Etteilla, starting in Swords:
Batons seems to me to describe the peasant who has lost:
And Cups:
And finally Coins:
With this information, I can think of characters in classical literature that fit these Knights. The Knight of Swords is classically a natural-born knight, like Parsifal. Or someone cold-bloodedly calculating, like Octavius Caesar, as described by Plutarch. The Knight of Cups is classically Paris, whose love of Helen started the Trojan War. There is also Tristan, betraying his Lord for love of his Lady. The Knight of Batons is someone who leaves the fray rather than fighting to the finish, so as to live to fight another day. There are not many models in literature. There are the Greeks at Troy; but they only seemed to retreat.
References, the Pages
4. the soul, according to La Primaudaye: The French Acadamie, translated by T.B., 1586, p. 24.
8. From Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. 2, p. 277.
10. Durer: image from Karl-Adolf Knappe, Durer: The Complete Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, p. 369.
11. de Mellet: in his section IV, Karlin, p. 56.
13. Death: O Xenos, Stranger, why do you abuse my welcome?
Christian base. In the Cary-Visconti and most later versions, Death is the Grim Reaper whom no one can escape, whatever their station in life. The image is drawn from the theme of the "dance of death," in which Death chooses for his dance partner people from all walks of life. None is ready for him, not even the Pope, except the hermit who has already renounced the world. (1)
Death here, with his scythe, is an agricultural figure, mowing the crop that will be threshed and winnowed to provide food for the winter, and from which seeds will be taken to plant the new crop. He is thus the transition to a new form of being. It is one of the “four last things” of Roman Catholic tradition. This card poses the question, to which the other three are answers. What will become of our souls when our body lies lifeless? The answer is the other three "last things": Judgment, and then Heaven or Hell. (1)
The Sforza image is of Death as the Hunter. His aim is sure; those fleshless sockets are not blind. He is the opposite of Cupid. It, too, was a common image. From his image in the upper part of the woodcut below, German of 1463, I would guess that as bowman he strikes from a distance at those who try to flee him, perhaps hitting one while leaving others alone, at least until the next arrow. (2)
References, Death, Christian:
1. "Four last things" as medieval concept: http://www.luc.edu/publications/medieval/emsv10.html.
2. From Der Ackermann aus Boehmen, Bramberg, in Arthur H. Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, Vol. 1, p. 278.
Greco-Egyptian perspective: Osiris has suffered the shame of his adultery and his failure to see Seth's trap. Isis finds the body, inside the trunk of a magnificent tree on the shore of Lebanon. She brings him back to Egypt, so as to revive him. Seth discovers the body and hacks it into pieces, 14 or 28, corresponding to a cycle of the Moon, whose deity he is. (In another version the part about the casket is omitted: Seth's original deed is the hacking into pieces.) He buries the pieces all over Egypt; Isis recovers all but one, the phallus, which was eaten by a fish. She makes a phallus "by her art," revives Osiris, and conceives Horus in her womb. On the card, the one with the scythe is Seth, and the body parts scattered about are the limbs of Osiris. (1)
Pico, in his Oration (after his death titled Oration on the Dignity of Man), uses this myth as a metaphor. Speaking of the mind as being on a kind of ladder, he says:
We might wonder what being "borne through the elements" means. Since the elements of air and fire were imagined as above the earth, and the narrator of the tale says that he approached the gods above as well as the gods below, perhaps along with a descent there was an ascent, in which the initiate saw the sun and the constellations. In this context, the twelve branches could represent the twelve constellations of the zodiac, seen from below.
In this context a suggestion by Camoin makes sense. He imagines that the 12 notches on the poles form the sides to a ladder by which the initiate may ascend to heaven. The Orphics envisioned such a ladder (see sections on the Wheel and World cards), as well as the Bible in its story of Jacob. So did Pico della Mirandola (see next section). Pico's way went down before it went up. So did Jesus's: before the resurrection and the ascension came the harrowing of hell. By descending into the darkness, one found a path to the stars and beyond. (3)
Another place upside-down men appear is in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. In the Garden of Earthly Delights, the upside-down men appear to be in some kind of trance, an ecstatic state, of the kind the Dionysians were known to be fond. Similarly, Noblet's Hanged Man has his tongue hanging out. Perhaps his tongue is dry with thirst. Or is he making a defiant gesture to the authorities? Or has he has been breathing hard, even hyperventilating, as Flornoy suggests in his analysis of the card? Such activity, over the course of an hour or so and in the company of someone who has done the same, is an easy way to have some strange experiences, at first perhaps unpleasant and then, especially with repeated efforts, moreecstatic. (4)
The Hanged Man is from this perspective an initiate on the way to becoming a Dionysus, as shown by his crossed legs matching those of Dionysus as Emperor. The waxing and waning moons on the pockets of his jacket, evident in the 1761 Conver (below) , made more obvious by Camoin and Jodorowsky, are the same as the masks of comedy and tragedy on the epaulettes of the man in the Chariot. They are the two outcomes, tragic sacrifice and miraculous grace. (5)
References, Hanged Man, Dionysian:
1.For pictures and more discussion, see http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/12pendu2.html
2. Camoin: http://en.camoin.com/tarot/Jacobs-Ladder-Marseilles-Tarot.html.
3. Apuleius: The Golden Ass, Book XI, p. 249 of Jack Lindsey translation. Reproduced at Google Books in Marvin Meyer's The Ancient Mysteries, p. 189.
4. Bosch: see image at http://www.follydiddledah.com/image_and_quote_16.html, scroll down. Flornoy: La Pelinerage des Bateleurs, p. 129.
5. Epaulettes: Daimonax, http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/7chariot1.html. Final images: Chosson 1672, Camoin-Jodorowsky 1999. You can see here how the upper notch became part of the rope, or perhaps even a rose.
The alchemical hanged man.
I want to continue discussing the Hanged man as hyperventiling, coupled with increased blood flow to the head. A suggestion of this aerated state might befound in the alchemists' way of illustrating the process of distillation. The substance to be distilled was first in solution, then with heat converted to a gas. In non-alchemical contexts, the substance released was often alcohol, which cooled and collected in coiled tubing leading to a different container. The result was a higher concentration of alcohol in the liquid. For the alchemists, the process would have been purification through repeated attainment of the gaseous state. Anyone who breathed the alcohol-rich fumes was easily inebriated.
Such a "high," without the alcohol but with whatever substance was in the berries his people are shown eating, may have been what Bosch had in mind. The Gringonneur Hanged Man's adoption of the same leg positions suggests a similar purification. Perhaps influenced by Bosch or the alchemical image, William Blake arranged the legs of his personification of the element "Air" in his Book of Urizen in the same position. (1)
Now let us look at the alchemical texts, building on some remarks of O'Neill's. Looking at the two poles as trees, he refers to images of alchemists in trees, or even becoming trees. He sees trees as maternal images; to be in or turning into a tree is then equivalent to Attis emasculating himself at the base of a symbol of the Great Mother. However, trees were a common medieval image; climbing a tree was like climbing a ladder, meaning a spiritual ascent.
O'Neill (Tarot Symbolism p. 281) relates the Hanged Man to a short medieval poem, the "Epigram of the Hermaphrodite,} an alchemical allegory of about 1150. Jung quoted it in paragraph 89 of Mysterium Coniunctionis and attributed it to Mathieu de Vendome (ca. 1150). Jung found it in Lorichius, Aenigmatum libri III, fol. 23r, Frankfurt 1545:
Since the poem has to do with the hermaphrodite, O'Neill, like Jung, considers it an alchemical poem. O'Neill connects it with an alchemical image of the alchemist confronting himself, or a fellow alchemist, hanging upside down in a tree (at left below). (2)When my pregnant mother bore me in her womb,
they said she asked the gods what she wuold bear.
A boy, said Phoebus, a girl, said Mars, neither, said Juno.
And when I was born, I was a hermaphrodite.
Asked how I was to meet my end, the goddess replied: By arms;
Mars: on the cross; Phoebus: By water. All were right.
A tree overshadowed the waters, I climbed it;
the sword I had with me slipped, and I with it.
My foot caught in the branches, my head hung down in the stream;
And I--male, female, and neither--suffered by water, weapon, and cross.
According to de Rola, the motto of the first image is "This knowledge requires a true Philosopher not a foolish one." The second image is reminiscent of the "Jacob's ladder" of which Camoin speaks, except that heaven is not his reward. Like the first image, it suggests great peril. The moral, according to the words around the circle is, "It is not for Man's industry alone, but in God's hands, to will and encompass All in All." In other words, success is up to God and not man.
O"Neill concludes that from an alchemical perspective
The Hanged Man basically represents the intensification of the blackening stage which began with the Hermit. The glory of the first coniunctio has faded into darkness and despair...Now at last he is ready for the total surrender which is implied in the Hanged Man. ... The Hanged Man is the stage of surrender which prepares the alchemist for the mystical death which follows" (p. 282).What O'Neill, and Jung before him, have in mind is a kind of imitatio Christi in which the alchemist experiences rejection and failure, leading to death. It is like Christ on the cross saying "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The alchemical poem explicitly brings out the analogy, in saying that the hermaphrodite is dying on the cross. The cross of the crucifixion was commonly referred to as a tree.
I agree with this line of thinking. However it is a state of intense connection with the other world as well as despair in this one. It is like the state of the visionary melancholic that I discussed in connection with the Hermit, but more intense.
Along the same lines as O'Neill, another detail on the card interests me: the hole in which his head extends. It seems to me that the Hanged Man is like a seed being planted in the earth. It is the death that will bear rich fruit. Alchemical images make this same comparison, for example (3):
In both images, the stage of the work is that called "fermentation." A dead seed in the earth will bring forth new life, as something that will happen to it rather than its birthing itself by its own efforts. In the second image above, notice the shape of the crosses on the graves: a triangle on top of a cross. In alchemy this shape is the symbol for sulphur, the masculine principle, to which the tarot Emperor also conforms.
I looked up sulfur--the real chemical, not the "philosophical" one--on the Internet. It is a vital ingredient in plants, and the soil naturally does not have enough of it. Adding sulphur compounds to the soil promotes the development of the young plants. So there is a genuine chemical basis for the symbolism. Putting the Emperor in the soil brings about new life.
De Rola cites two biblical verses that connect well to this aspect of the Hanged Man:
"Verily, verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." (John 12:24).(One slight correction: The sense of the last three words should be "its own body," as in Douhay-Rheims and other translations since the King James.) De Rola observes that from these verses came the alchemical axiom, "No generation without prior corruption. " Even then, what happens is in God's hands. By ourselves, we are simply dead. Then the hermaphroditic Mercury impaled on the tree is a symbol not just of a tortuous death, but of the resurrection to come, made possible by Jesus's death, which is what the PMB figure is, with his green leggings, and the Marseille as well, more ambiguously.
"Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body." (I Corinthaians 15.36-38).
References, the alchemical Hanged Man
1. Images: Left, Laurinda Dixon, Bosch, p. 256, Folio 40 of Ms. 29, Wellcome Institute, London.
Right: Photo taken by Ela Howard at the Beinecke Library, Yale University. Interpretation from David Erdman, The Illuminated Blake, p. 196. The personification is named Thuriel, one of the "sons of Urizen" in Blake's Book of Urizen.
2. Images from Johann Daniel Mylius, Opus medico-chymicum, 1618. In de Rola, Golden Game p. 144, or Fabricius, Alchemy fig. 29, p. 20. De Rola's translation of mottos is on his p. 152.
3. Upper image from Mylius, Philosophia Reformata, 1622, emblem 14. In de Rola p. 171. Lower image from Michael Maier, Tripus aureus 1618. In de Rola p. 122. De Rola's discussion is on his p. 125f.
The Pythagorean and Kabbalist Hanged Man. In Pythagoreanism, 12 = 2. Instead of the Popess, we have the Hanged Man. The Two is separation and a yearning for reconnection with the One. The first step up is down, into the Two's materiality. Yet it is also a step into spirit, into the Wisdom of Sophia, Hochmah. Hence the Hanged Man's head has a halo, and perhaps his arms, dislocated as they are, have grown feathers.
In Kabbalah, the first step upwards is Yesod. Pico connects that sefira with the" eighth day," that of "circumcision" (28.32); it is "redeemer" (Amos 2:6) (11>21), and "the bones of Joseph the just (Tzaddik), sending its influences over the superior earth" (28.42). The rite of circumcision is that signifying the covenant. Gikatilla lists covenant (foedus p. 62); circumcision (circumcisio Latin 62); "redeemer' as an attribute of Yesod. But for the Christian Kabbalist, the crucifixion, the sacrifice which makes circumcision unnecessary, is what makes possible the reconnection of fallen humanity with the divine.
The Hanged Man in the Cartomantic Tradition. The Etteilla image that corresponds to the Hermit is his no. 12, which is of the virtue Prudence. I described how one gets from the Hanged Man to Prudence in two easy steps. Here are the images again, first the Marseille (Conver 1961, then de Gebelin's "correction" of it, and finally Etteilla's "improvement" of that.
But Etteilla's words for Prudence obviously do not fit the Hanged Man, far from it. Instead, the appropriate keywords and word-lists are those of his card 18, the image for which we have already seen in connection with the Hermit.
And the corresponding word-lists:
18. [Traitre.] TRAITOR—Treason [or Betrayal], Disguise, Dissimulation, hypocrite, Hypocrisy, Deceiver, Suborner, Corrupter, Seducer.—Trickery [Roguery], Impostor. Fanatic, Fanaticism, Ruse, Deceit, Imposture [omitted by Revak].As we have seen, all that has to be done is to remove "Hermit, Anchorite, and Solitary" from this list, and it is appropriate for one way of taking the Hanged Man, probably the dominant one in the cartomantic tradition.
Reversed: [Faux Dévot.] FALSE DEVOUT. Hermit, Anchorite, Solitary, Hidden, Concealed, Disguised, Clever, Cunning, End. Politic [omitted by Revak].
The Pages, in the Sola-Busca and Etteilla.
XII corresponds to the Knights. The corresponding low numbers in the trumps are II and VII. Since II is a female figure, and there are no horses, we can skip it for now. But there are interesting parallels to the Chariot.
What is of interest, in relation to the Noblet Knights, are the horses. Notice their color. One chariot horse is peach or light red, the other gray. In the Knights, Batons' horse is all peach, while Coins' is all gray (except for the mane). Both Cups and Swords' horses are, in the legs, part one and part the other.
What could this set of arrangements mean? In Plato's Phaedrus, one horse, the red or dark one, acts from the sensuous impulse to possess the beautiful object, and the other from thought and recollection of the archetype of beauty. Perhaps Batons is the one acting from impulse, and Coins the one acting from thought. This distinction between two "parts of the soul" was very much alive in the Renaissance. For example, it is in the French philosopher Pierre de la Primaudaye. (4):
...But the most sensible, common and true opinion, which the wisest among the Philosophers had of the soule, is that which divideth it into two parts onely, under which all the rest are comprised: the one being spiritual and intelligible, where the discourse of reason is; the other brutush, which is the sensuall will, of itself wandring and disordred, where all motions contrarie to reason, and all evill desires have their dwelling...The peach color, as we have seen, is actually darker on the original, and perhaps more red than peach. It is the color of the Chariot's inferior horse, the one that responds energetically to what he sees without the restraints imposed by Reason. Correspondingly, the all-peach horse is that of Batons and the peasants. Peasants, on this conception, live in a world of bodily appetites and feeling without abstract thought. They plow, plant, harvest, and store, and in between have as much fun as their hard lives will allow. If they rebel, it will be spontaneous, ill-prepared, and sandwiched in between farm duties. If it isn't over quickly, they lose, and it is never over quickly.
The peasant rebels in response to his senses--his hunger, and his numbers as against his few masters--without thinking through the forces against him and his own limitations. The merchant, to get rich, has to ignore his impulses--to reduce his prices to those in need, for example, or to trade in what he likes rather than what will sell--and consider thoughtfully how best to make his profit, comparing expenses to the price at which he can best sell his goods. It is a heartless business. The warrior, however, needs both the fire of impulse against his enemy and a thoughtfulness about how to best win a conflict. Likewise the monk or lover needs both the flame of desire, leading him to the "divine madness," and the rationality that will keep him from overzealousness and real madness. Or so I imagine Plato's framework in the context of the four Knights.
In the Knights of Swords vs. Batons, there is a suggestion of class distinction. Peasants were not allowed to own or use swords; their only defense was a club. And in fact in the 16th century and 17th centuries there were horrible battles in the countryside of Europe. The worst was in the 1520's, when hundreds of thousands of German peasants rose up against their masters in hopes of a better life under Protestantism. Luther did not support them, and hundreds of thousands were slaughtered by the bearers of the sword.
The German artist Albrecht Durer was moved to design a monument to these peasants, which of course never was built. (The part at right is the continuation upwards of the base at left.) At the top is a peasant in despair, a sword in his back, while below his own weapons--scythes, hoes, shovels, and other tools of his work--are tied tightly together. (10)
This result seems reflected in the Noblet Aces. Both Swords and Batons have tear-like drops falling downward from these weapons. It is the tears of death and destruction brought about by warfare between town and country, meaning primarily the peasants against the professional soldiers against the peasants.
Within a century these tears changed to rays of power emanating upward from the weapons. It is now as de Mellet says: "These two characters seem to say that Agriculture & the Sword are the two hands of Empire and the support of Society." But the sword is now blood-red, suggesting the blood that will be shed; the club continues to have blood on its top and sides, suggesting to me the young shoots of manhood that have been cut off to grow no more. (11)
To the peasants it must have seemed impossible at first to lose their struggle, so much did the they outnumber their masters. But numbers are not everything: he knows nothing of war. Moreover, in a war one needs to eat, and the only food is the harvest, to which this same rebel must attend in place of his war.
The Page of Batons looks at his impressive club with confidence; it will service him, he thinks. But the Knight is not so sure; already he is wheeling his horse around.
Here is Etteilla, starting in Swords:
ETTEILLA, KNIGHT OF SWORDS, UPRIGHT: Soldier [c. 1838 Militaire, Military Person], Man With a Sword, Man-At-Arms, Fencing Master, Swordsman.—Soldier From an Entire Corps or Army [c. 1838 simply has Soldat, i.e. Soldier], Combatant, Enemy.—Dispute, War, Combat, Battle, Duel.—Attack, Address [not in c. 1838], Defense, Opposition, Resistance, Destruction, Ruin, Reversal.—Enmity, Hate, Wrath [c. 1838 Colere, Anger], Resentment.—Courage, Valor, Bravery.—Satellite [Attendant], Mercenary [Stipendiary]. REVERSED: Incompetence, Ineptitude, Foolishness, Folly, Stupidity [Imbecility], Imprudence, Impertinence, Extravagance, Ridicule, Silliness.—Fraud, Swindling, Mischief, Cunning. [last 4 not in c. 1838]These words describe the professional soldier, in all his fearsomeness, and also folly.
Batons seems to me to describe the peasant who has lost:
ETTEILLA, KNIGHT OF BATONS, UPRIGHT: Departure, Moving, Alienation, Absence, Abandonment, Change, Flight, Desertion, Transmigration, Emigration.—Transposition, Translation, Transplantation, Transmutation, Escape. REVERSED: Discord, Breach, Rupture, Dissension, Division, Going Off, Separation, Splitting Up.—Faction—Quarrel, Sorting Out—Cut, Break, Discontinuity, Interruption.The peasants, to survive, have to be on the move. Even though they are tied to the soil, yet in the 16th17th centuries the old feudal relationships were changing, due to the wars of religion--changing but not ending. Many tens of thousands died. Those that didn't, moved so as to serve the lord practicing their own religion. Or they became independent but landless, migrating to the cities or emigrating to the New World.
And Cups:
KNIGHT OF CUPS, UPRIGHT: Arrival, Coming, Approach, Access, Reception, Entrance, Bringing Closer.— Similarity.—Advent, Reunion [c. 1838 only]. Approximation.—Accession To .—Flow [Fr. Affluence] .—Comparison [not in c. 1838]. REVERSED: Mischief, Deceit [1838 only, Fourberie], Villainy, Duplicity, Cunning, Artifice.—Keenness (c. 1838 has Dexterity, Adresse], Shrewdness, Suppleness, Trickery [c. 1838 only, Tricherie] Fraud.—Subtlety, Irregularity.—Evil Deed. [c. 1838 does not have last 2].We have "arrival" here because the horse, by its bowing, is clearly approaching. The knight is paying homage to his Lady, or to his Lord. The Reverseds warn of the danger, fealty misapplied.
And finally Coins:
KNIGHT OF COINS, UPRIGHT: Utility, Serviceable [not in c. 1838, which has Advantage], Benefit, Gain, Profit, Interest.—Profitable, Interesting, Worthwhile, Important, Necessary, Obliging, Officious. REVERSED: Inaction [c. 1838 only], Peace, Tranquility, Repose, Sleep, Apathy, Inertia, Stagnation, Inactivity, Idleness [Unemployment].—Leisure, Pass-times [should be "pastime"].—Recreation, Carefree, Nonchalance, Indolence, Laziness, Doing Nothing, Dullness, Discouragement, Exhaustion [not in c. 1838, which has Aneantissement, i.e. Annihilation, Ruin].The Uprights emphasize this knight's role as a traveling representative of a merchant or banking firm. He must ingratiate himself with the local powers that be and selling himself to them. The Reverseds are again the opposites of his industriousness, many of them dangers to be avoided.
With this information, I can think of characters in classical literature that fit these Knights. The Knight of Swords is classically a natural-born knight, like Parsifal. Or someone cold-bloodedly calculating, like Octavius Caesar, as described by Plutarch. The Knight of Cups is classically Paris, whose love of Helen started the Trojan War. There is also Tristan, betraying his Lord for love of his Lady. The Knight of Batons is someone who leaves the fray rather than fighting to the finish, so as to live to fight another day. There are not many models in literature. There are the Greeks at Troy; but they only seemed to retreat.
References, the Pages
4. the soul, according to La Primaudaye: The French Acadamie, translated by T.B., 1586, p. 24.
8. From Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. 2, p. 277.
10. Durer: image from Karl-Adolf Knappe, Durer: The Complete Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, p. 369.
11. de Mellet: in his section IV, Karlin, p. 56.
13. Death: O Xenos, Stranger, why do you abuse my welcome?
Christian base. In the Cary-Visconti and most later versions, Death is the Grim Reaper whom no one can escape, whatever their station in life. The image is drawn from the theme of the "dance of death," in which Death chooses for his dance partner people from all walks of life. None is ready for him, not even the Pope, except the hermit who has already renounced the world. (1)
Death here, with his scythe, is an agricultural figure, mowing the crop that will be threshed and winnowed to provide food for the winter, and from which seeds will be taken to plant the new crop. He is thus the transition to a new form of being. It is one of the “four last things” of Roman Catholic tradition. This card poses the question, to which the other three are answers. What will become of our souls when our body lies lifeless? The answer is the other three "last things": Judgment, and then Heaven or Hell. (1)
The Sforza image is of Death as the Hunter. His aim is sure; those fleshless sockets are not blind. He is the opposite of Cupid. It, too, was a common image. From his image in the upper part of the woodcut below, German of 1463, I would guess that as bowman he strikes from a distance at those who try to flee him, perhaps hitting one while leaving others alone, at least until the next arrow. (2)
References, Death, Christian:
1. "Four last things" as medieval concept: http://www.luc.edu/publications/medieval/emsv10.html.
2. From Der Ackermann aus Boehmen, Bramberg, in Arthur H. Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, Vol. 1, p. 278.
Greco-Egyptian perspective: Osiris has suffered the shame of his adultery and his failure to see Seth's trap. Isis finds the body, inside the trunk of a magnificent tree on the shore of Lebanon. She brings him back to Egypt, so as to revive him. Seth discovers the body and hacks it into pieces, 14 or 28, corresponding to a cycle of the Moon, whose deity he is. (In another version the part about the casket is omitted: Seth's original deed is the hacking into pieces.) He buries the pieces all over Egypt; Isis recovers all but one, the phallus, which was eaten by a fish. She makes a phallus "by her art," revives Osiris, and conceives Horus in her womb. On the card, the one with the scythe is Seth, and the body parts scattered about are the limbs of Osiris. (1)
Pico, in his Oration (after his death titled Oration on the Dignity of Man), uses this myth as a metaphor. Speaking of the mind as being on a kind of ladder, he says:
At one time we shall descend, dismembering with titanic force the 'unity' of the 'many,' like the members of Osiris; at another time, we shall ascend, recollecting those same members, by the power of Phoebus, into their original unity. Finally, in the bosom of the Father, who reigns above the ladder, we shall find perfection and peace in the felicity of theological knowledge. (2)
Notice that Pico mixes Greek and Egyptian myth in one sentence: Titanic force dismembers Osiris, and Apollo gathers him up. The Titans are the ones who dismember Dionysus. I do not know the reference to Apollo; but since he is associated with the sun, he is it is the power of light and heaven.
Flornoy considers the body parts on the ground in the Noblet to be "destroyed visions of the world" (my translation), current incapacities, that derive from past traumas, to be remembered and reintegrated into consciousness.
In all the cards (below), the scythe misses the two heads--the heads of our hapless initiates--and instead seems aimed at clearing the vegetation: next to them are flowering stalks about to have their heads lopped off. Jodorowsky compares the heads to sprouting seeds, just emerging from the soil; and the plants are the weeds that Death is clearing out. Osiris, after all, was a vegetation god. He was the seed and the new shoots. (4)
On a metaphysical level, the idea may be that Death in this card does not wish to touch the soul; it wants to clear the weeds so that the soul may grow all the better. I agree with Jodorowsky in Way of the Tarot, who says:
The figure in Arcanum XIII is using his scythe to cut down the bad growth so the new being can develop (p. 284).Part of the Osiris legend is the story, seemingly extraneous, of a boy whom Isis holds each night in a fire, turning him black. The mother finds out and takes him back, horrified. But Isis was trying to confer immortality on him, not harm him. That is the role of purifying Death here as well. (5)
In the Cary-Visconti card, there is a suggestion of a corpse in the strip of linen that trails Death on his horse. Until the Renaissance, corpses were wrapped in winding sheets rather than clothed. In this vein, de Gebelin says that the Egyptians, during feasts, would bring out a skeleton, to remind people not to overindulge. Plutarch, on the contrary, says that the custom was to bring out "a dead man in his coffin...to warn one to make use of the present and enjoy it, as very soon they themselves will be as he." (6)
The passage was probably well known. Montaigne draws attention to it in a famous early essay "To Philosophize is to learn how to die." He says:
I want a man to act, and to prolong the functions of life as long as he can; and I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden" (Essays III.20).But how to overcome the fear of death? He speaks of a man who found himself dying in the middle writing a history, and he had only gotten to the 15th or 16th French king. "We must rid ourselves of these vulgar and harmful humor," Montaigne says. Against such fear, which he himself at that age, his early 30's, must have felt, he wishes not to avoid thinking about death but to confront it head on. His example is Egypt:
And as the Egyptians, after their feasts, had a large image of death shown to the guests by a man who called out to them 'Drink and be merry, for when you are dead you will be like this"; so I have the habit of having death continually present, not merely in my imagination, but in my mouth.So Montaigne culls ancient texts for insight on this subject and talks of it with others. He cites Lucretius, among others, on the fear of leaving things incomplete: "Our lives we borrow from each other/...And men, like runners, pass along the torch of life" (7)
This essay and others are well worth studying even today. We, too, are confronted with the reality of death in the tarot, not merely as a sign of the "death of the ego" and of transformation in our lives, but of the "undiscovered country" to which Death will transport us all. I will give one more quotation, from the last essay of Montaigne's life, "On Experience," this time giving his final thoughts on the subject:
We are great fools. "He has spent his life in idleness," we say; "I have done nothing today." What, have you not lived? That is not only the most fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations. "If I had been placed in a position to manage great affairs, I would have shown what I could do." Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all. To show and exploit her resources Nature has no need of fortune; she shows herself equally on all levels and behind a curtain as well as thought one. To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most. (8)And so we cultivate not only cabbages but the virtues, as the antidote to the fear of death.
References, Death, Egyptian:
1. Isis and Osiris XVIII, at http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html. Another version: Diodorus Siculus, Library of History I.21.2 at: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/1A*.html#21.
2. Pico quote at http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Mirandola/.
3. Alchemical illustration: Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618), Emblem 44, at http://hidelboy.club.fr/atalanta_xliv.html. English translation of Maier's text: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/atl41-45.html.
4. Flornoy, Pelerinage des Bateleurs, p. 138f. Jodorosky, La Via del Tarot, p.
5. Boy in fire: Plutarch, Isis and Osiris XVI.
6. De Gebelin: Carlin, p. 27. Plutarch: Isis and Osiris XVII.
7. Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. David Frame, p. 62, p. 65.
8. Complete Essays, p. 850f.
Dionysian Death: Osiris's dismemberment has its parallel in the Orphic myth. The child Dionysus Zagreus, in the Orphic myth, was dismembered by the Titans, who came as guests and distracted him with gifts. An urn shows the scene: the child-god suddenly noticing the sickles and knives, starting to transform himself into various animals in a futile effort to escape. (1)
On the card, we see the dismembered child. Flornoy associates to this card images of childhood trauma, or even, since this was in Dionysus's earlier incarnation, trauma in a past life. It is fitting that some of the weeds are shaped like hands reaching up out of the earth: Human hands, like the Titans' with their sickle and knife, are often the means by which trauma is inflicted on a child, both physical and sexual. But Death may be doing a service instead: cutting out the weeds, as one would weed a garden or prune a grapevine, so the human sprouts can grow strong. One brings the traumas to consciousness, apprehends them in all their horror, accepts them with compassion, and thereby transcends them in catharsis, Greek for purification. In an important sense, death is implied not only in this card but in the three preceding it as well. As Flornoy emphasizes, the Wheel was an instrument of torture and death in the Middle Ages. Hanging upside down was a painful form of execution in the Renaissance. And now we have the blade or the arrow, the most merciful of the three. (2)
References, Death, Dionysian:
1. Titans and Dionysus: Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6. 155 ff;" Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 2.15, other sources, all at http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Zagreus.html.
2. Past lives: Flornoy, Pelerinage des Bateleurs, p. 137. Catharsis: p. 144.
Alchemical Death.
I will show again the illustration of three forms of execution, from the Heilege Dreifaltigkeit. Instead of a scythe, we have a sword. The introduction to the book advertises that "He who from this book of God hears well, and follows it rightly, will get from it rich pay, both silver and also the noblest red gold." Since gold is not red, I infer that the author means spiritual gold, of the rising sun. (1)
In my section on Egyptian imagery, I related the card to Osiris's dismemberment and death. In addition, there is an alchemical illustration pertaining to this theme, emblem XLIV of Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens. The motto reads "By treachery Typhon slays Osiris and scatters his limbs abroad, but majestic Isis reassembles them." So in the emblem we see the dismembering first, then a scene that looks much like a Christian Eucharist, suggesting that to the alchemists the death and resurrection of Osiris prefigured that of Christ. (2)
The story of Isis burning her foster-child in the fire to make him immortal also has its equivalent in alchemy. In Emblem XXXV of Atalanta Fugiens, Maier shows on the left Ceres with Triptolemus and on the right Thetis with Achilles. The motto is "As Ceres made Triptolemus--and Thetis made Achilles--able to stay in the fire, so the Artist makes the Stone." (3)
Maier explains (http://www.alchemywebsite.com/atl31-4.html):
...It is by much Use and Custom that the Philosophers fix their Stone in Fire proper for it..Arnold in the Rosary, Book 2 Chapter 7 says, "Yet the Medicine must be long time roasted by Fire and nourished as a child by the breast." The Ancient Philosophers would demonstrate these very things by the Allegories of Triptolemus and Achilles, and their lyeing under Fires to be hardened by them, since each of them denote nothing Else but the Chemicall Subject,...Ceres as a Nurse nourished Triptolemus all day with her milk and at night placed him in the Fires, by which means the boy being very well grown...Achilles is likewise said to be hardened by his Mother after the same manner as Triptolemus was before...Maier sees the myth of burning something in a high heat as a stage in "fixing" the Stone so as to make it the elixir. It is perhaps like taking arsenic in small doses that increase over time, which provides one with immunity against a dose that would be lethal otherwise. A metallurgical metaphor might be the process of making iron into steel by burning it with charcoal, hardening it by means of fire and carbon.
Death as a skeleton occurs on many alchemical illustrations. It is what all the cards from the Hermit after have been leading up to. However in alchemy the image of death occurs much earlier than in the tarot, right after the coniunctio in fact, because death is what makes possible the transmutation into higher forms. In the Marseille cards, we see heads sticking up like sprouts, looking alert, perhaps fearful, but definitely not dead; we see the new beings already being formed.
O'Neill observes that there are similarities between the tarot image and the alchemical image of Saturn. Both have scythes, and in the Marseille card, Death's missing lower leg might parallel Saturn's portrayal in alchemy, also as without a lower leg. For O'Neill (p. 282), the symbol of Saturn suggests the melancholy of someone coping with death. However it might be that the wood used in making the card lost a piece as a result of repeated use, and what we have are the later printings minus the lower leg.
References, Alchemical Death.
1. Image from Laurinda Dixon, Bosch, p. 269. Text from http://www.alchemywebsite.com/f1-50html.
2. De Rola Golden Game p.93.
3. De Rola Golden Game p. 88.
The Pythagorean and Kabbalist Death.
In the Theology of Arithmetic, Three is associated with the birth of the divine child. That corresponds to the heads on the card, the new life emerging from the soil in which the seed had been deposited. Death offers them protection from the weeds that threaten to choke them.
Going up the Tree of Life, we are at Hod. For a Kabbalistic interpretation, we might use an association with Saturn, his swallowing his children. It strikes me that an Old Testament equivalent is the swallowing of Jonah by the whale. Hod, as we have seen, is the agent of God's wrath; and that is what brings Jonah to the whale, because Jonah had failed to carry out what God wanted him to do. He is alive but enclosed, in darkness because of something he failed to do. His repentance will be his deliverance. In the case of Saturn, the failure was on the part of their mother Rhea: she had not thought of how to protect them. Only when she takes measures to secure her last child can all of them be saved.
The Queens.
The tarot Queens reflect all the females of the trumps early in the sequence, Popess and Justice as well as Empress. And the ambiguities of the Death card appear in the Queens as well: Swords is a widow, while Batons embodies fertility.
In the earliest tarot Queens, the main iconographic similarity was with the Empress. But gradually more differentiation developed.
I will start with Coins. Here there is a clear similarity with the Empress, both in her staff and in the found object they hold. The Queen has been made older than the Empress, to match the age of her bearded husband the King of Coins. The Empress's clueless love of opulence is carried in the suits by the Queen of Coins, who perhaps now is not so clueless. Presumably their husbands are rich, either because of their office or their business.
The Etteilla School's word-list reflects this attribute of wealth in the Uprights. Wealth makes for a certain sense of security and hence boldness. The Reverseds have the opposite of this last.
The SB has for this card Helen of Troy, shown looking at herself in a mirror. Such a person certainly would like opulence and exhibit boldness. She would also be untrustworthy, from her husband's perspective. Another candidate would be Cleopatra, as Plutarch describes her.ETTEILLA, QUEEN OF COINS: A Dark Woman, Opulence, Wealth, Prosperous, Luxury, Magnificence.—Self-Confidence, Reliability, Trust, Certainty, Affirmation.—Security, Boldness, Liberty, Candor. REVERSED: Untrustworthy [not in c. 1838, which has Mal Certain, Certain Evil], Doubtful, Unsure, Doubt, Indecision, Uncertainty.— Fear, Dread, Fright, Timidity, Apprehension, Wavering, Hesitation.—Undecided, Indecisive, Puzzled, A Person Held in Suspense. [last 4 not in c. 1838]
In Cups, the similarity is with the Popess.
Both the Popess and the Queen of Cups look to our left at the sacred object they hold there, in the one case the Bible and the other case the cup. The veil behind the Popess is suggested by the fabric above the Queen's head. The religious aspect of the Popess has rubbed off on the Queen of Cups, reinforcing the religious interpretation of Cups made by de Gebelin and de Mellet.
The Etteilla School's word-list takes a different approach, emphasizing her honesty rather than her connection to God.
But one who is connected to God is supposedly full of virtue. The SB's Queen of Cups, Polyxena, youngest daughter of Priam, is virtuous, true to her country. And of distinguished rank. She was also dishonest with Achilles, betraying him to his enemies when he told her how he could be killed."ETTEILLA" QUEEN OF CUPS, UPRIGHT: Fair [Blonde, c. 1838] Woman—Honest Woman, Virtue, Wisdom, Honesty. REVERSED: A Woman of Distinguished Rank, Honest Woman [not in c. 1838].—Vice, Dishonesty, Depravity, Dissoluteness, Corruption, Scandal.
It seems to me that the Queen's inspiration is not merely the words of a book, as suggested by the Popess, but her own direct connection to the divine. She looks at her cup in the way that a fortune-teller might look in her crystal ball. I am reminded of Cassandra, who was given the gift of prophecy and also the curse of having no one believe her. She spoke the truth. Shakespeare's Cassandra was similar, as well as the character of Margaret in his Richard III, who predicts the calamitous reign and downfall of Richard III.
In Swords, the parallel seems to me to be with the second trump with III in it, Justice.
However she looks at her sword with dismay. We can see why by looking at the Etteilla School's word-list.
Etteilla's 1773 book has, for Spades, "Femme veuve. R. Femme du monde, vous regarderez si c’est present, passe, ou avenir": "Widow. Reversed, woman of the world, you will watch if it is present, past, or future." The basic interpretation was there even then.ETTEILLA, QUEEN OF SWORDS, UPRIGHT: Widowhood, Widow, Privation, Absence, Dearth, Sterility, Indigence, Poverty.—Empty, Vacant, Deserted, Idle, Inactive, Unoccupied. [last 6 not in c. 1838]. REVERSED: Evil Woman.—Bale, Malice, Trickery, Subtlety, Artifice, Mischievousness, Bigotry, Prudery, Hypocrisy.
The Etteilla Reverseds may have come from the SB association. Olympias was said to have murdered her husband Phillip. This perhaps relates the card to the 13th trump, Death. She is also an evil woman: malicious, subtle, and tricky. The malicious nature of the Queen of Spades was by Tchaikovsky as the title role of an opera: she is the prototypical femme fatale.
The Queen of Swords' fate as widow seems to be in the cards quite early, as early as the d'Este deck. In contrast to the PMB (at left), there is a wistfulness as she waves good-bye to her husband going off to war, a fear that he will not return alive.
I suspect that it is part of the growing realization of the deadliness of gunpowder-based warfare, of which the Ferrarese had first-hand experience in the war with Venice of the 1470s.
For Batons, it may be that the card is drawing some inspiration from the Chariot card. The flesh-color in ignoble horse gets repeated in the Queen of Batons. She is the object of sensual love and so an image of fertility, as shown by her exposed nurturing breasts.
This connection to sex and fertility goes back at least to the PMB (at right), with its green gloves in all the Baton courts.
The Etteilla School's word-list emphasizes her relationship to the country and her qualities as a housewife.
"ETTEILLA" QUEEN OF BATONS, UPRIGHT: Woman of the Country, Housewife, Economy, Honesty, Politeness.—Gentleness, Virtue.—Honor, Chastity. REVERSED: Good Woman, Kindness, Excellence.—Obliging, Officious, Helpful.—Favor, Service, Duty.
14. Temperance: I am an empty vessel, may I receive your spirit, O Dionysos Oiketor, Indweller of the Cup.
A woman pours water from one vessel into another. From Noblet onwards, she is not just a woman but an angel. From reflection upon the inevitability of death, the previous card, I see three Christian interpretations of this card.
(1) If she is just pouring a liquid from one vessel to another, that might mean: Death is not the end, but simply the soul’s transition to a new body, a body of Resurrection.
The story of the wedding at Cana in the Gospel of John puts this pouring of one jug into another in terms of the miracle there, of filling the wine jugs with water and then finding there the most delicious wine. So in Christ our souls become transformed into immortal spirit. (2)
(2) If the crowned lady is mixing water and wine for the table, then that is to dilute the wine, reduce its ill effects, and prolong one's life accordingly. "Temperance" means not abstention but moderation, by which death can be forestalled. It is a virtue that relates particularly to the lower trunk of the body, just as Fortitude does to the heart area and Justice to the head. In some early decks, Temperance was placed lowest in the order of the virtues, to suggest its place in the body.
(3) Water and wine are mixed in the Eucharist, symbolizing the water that came from Christ's side and the blood that from the piercing nails. A Renaissance image of the two liquids being collected by an angel at the crucifixion is by Durer, 1516, below. The placement of Temperance higher in the order than the other two virtues might suggest just this Eucharistic "trumping" of death, through redemption: after Death, the card before, one may by its means escape the Devil, the card after. (3)
References, Temperance, Christian:
1. Wedding at Cana: John 2:1-11. Image: Laurinda Dixon, Bosch. Painting on line at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marriage_Feast_at_Cana_(Bosch).
2. Correspondences in the body: Place, Tarot its History and Symbolism. Mixing water and wine: Cartari, Italian ed., paraphrase of Athenaeus in http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it/xtf/view?docId=bibit000718/bibit000718.xml. Something like this paraphrase is in Athenaeus' The Deipnosophists, p. 733, in Google Books.
3. Image: Detail of "Christ on the Cross with Three Angels," in Durer, the Complete Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, plate 337.
Greco-Egyptian perspective. As with the Christian interpretations, there are several Egyptian ones. If it is water being poured into an earthen jug, that is in Plutarch a metaphor for the rising Osiris inseminating fertile Isis, water entering the parched earth of Egypt for its regeneration. Plutarch also describes a ritual in Egypt where water and earth were mixed, so as to ensure a good flood. Metaphysically it is spirit into matter. (1)
At the same time, notice how in most versions one vessel is on a red background and the other on blue. These are colors of Seth and Osiris. In Egypt there are statues and tomb inscriptions showing the Pharaoh accepting both of the rival gods, Horus and Seth. The combined mixing of red and white leggings on young men in Renaissance paintings might suggest the same message. It is the mixing of disorder and order, energy and calm. Both are needed. Thus when Horus asks permission from Isis to kill his captive Seth, she lets him go. Both are needed. As though to suggest Isis mixing the two energies, Dodal dresses the angel in the Egyptian style for women, breasts exposed. (2)
The Renaissance may not have known about the images of Pharaoh embracing the two opposites. But they would have read in Plutarch about the mixing of the two principles, Osiris/Horus and Seth, good and evil. Plutarch quotes Euripides: “Evil and good cannot occur apart; There is a mixture to make all go well.” In Noblet's day people would have also known this principle from Montaigne, in one of the last things he wrote:
Our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things, also of diverse tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one sort, what effect would he produce? He must be able to use them together and blend them. And so must we the good and the evil which are consubstantial with our life. Our being cannot subsist without this mixture, and one group is no less necessary to it than the other. (3)References, Egyptian, Temperance:
1. Water and land: Isis and Osiris XVIII, at http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html. Mixing water and earth: Isis and Osiris XXXIX.
2. Ramses II statue, image at: www.ancient-egypt.org/
3. Euripides: Isis and Osiris XLV. Montaiigne, Essays 3. 13, "On Experience." Knopf ed., p. 290.
Hebe, Iris, or Nike as Temperance. For my first Greco-Roman reference to the Temperance card, I want to talk about Greco-Roman goddesses. My favorite for Temperance is Hebe, cupbearer to the gods before she married Hercules. As cupbearer, she was responsible fo mixing the wine, as the late Roman Empire writer Nonnus says:
All the inhabitants of Olympos were sitting with Zeus in his god-welcoming hall, gathered in full company on golden thrones. As they feasted, fairhair Ganymedes drew delicious nectar from the mixing-bowl and carried it round. For then there was no noise of Akhaian war for the Trojans as once there was, that Hebe with her lovely hair might again mix the cups, and the Trojan cupbearer might be kept apart from the immortals, so as not to hear the fate of his country." [N.B. During the Trojan War, Ganymedes became distressed, and so Zeus had Hebe temporarily resume her former station as cup-bearer of the gods.] ( http://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Hebe.htm)She was also famous for having a shrine where escaped slaves and prisoners could go, pray to the goddess, and win their freedom. Pausianas, writing about this shrine, says:
Of the honours that the Phliasians pay to this goddess the greatest is the pardoning of suppliants. All those who seek sanctuary here receive full forgiveness, and prisoners, when set free, dedicate their fetters on the trees in the grove. ((http://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Hebe.html)This story is also cited in Cartari, 1581, with a picture (from http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/ca...1/jpg/s038.html).
It appears that she has 2 cups. And you can see the prisoners' fetters hanging from the trees. She has the power to forgive of sins. Since that is what the Eucharist is about, it would make sense to put her on the card, if that is one meaning of the scene there.
The only problem I see with this attribution is that Hebe was never described in the classical literature as having wings. Nike and Iris were, e.g. by Aristophanes, Birds 574 (trans. O'Neill):
Hermes is a god and has wings and flies, and so do many other gods. First of all, Nike (Victory) flies with golden wings, Eros (Love) is undoubtedly winged too, and Iris is compared by Homer to a timorous dove.We have already seen, in connection with the Justice card, that Nemesis had wings. But it's not likely her. Iris was the Iliad's equivalent of Mercury, the transporter of souls to the underworld. Considering where the next card--the Devil--takes us, Iris is a reasonable hypothesis. Nike, meaning victory, is also possible, if Temperance is a victory for the spirit. But artists in search of new subjects were known to synthesize elements from different goddesses. For example, Durer did a Nemesis standing on a globe, which is an attribute of Fortune. My hypothesis is that she combines Hebe, Iris, and maybe Nike: Hebe as cup-bearer, Iris as guide to the underworld, Nike as the victory over death that the two jugs represent.
Dionysian Temperance: Altough Hebe mixed nectar and wine for the gods, mortals were forbidden the nectar which bestowed immortality. Yet wine might have been considered as a subsitute even before Christianity started using it in its sacraments. Wine, of course, is associated with Dionysus. He's even on the card, hidden from view. He's the pitchers, and his name is Oiketor, Greek for "Indweller of the Cup" (http://www.neokoroi.org/dionysos.htm). That's one of the epithets of Dionysus, god of wine. Wine is the nectar of the humans.
If you look at historic Temperance cards, from the PMB to the Chosson-Conver, you will see that the lady's dress has a red side and a blue side. The red side is invariably with the top pitcher. That should mean that the top pitcher is red wine, the bottom one water. For some reason, the liquid coming out of the top pitcher is not red--perhaps they thought it was just too weird, red liquid flowing between the two pitchers.
In any case, the way to practice temperance in wine-drinking was to mix it with water. With mixed wine, enemies become friends; unmixed, they turn the party into a brawl. Cartari (multiple editions from 1551 on; I ran the section on Bacchus, in the 1647 Italian edition, through a couple of translation-engines) cites numerous authors to that effect.
But in the context of mixing water with wine, Dionysus was also the divine spirit, with the cups as the initiates' souls. Dionysus introduced the grape, while Triptolemus introduced the grain. Thus we have the bread and wine of Christianity. In a sense both were introduced by the same god. Like many others in the Renaissance, the alchemist Michael Maier noted the similarity of the myths and identified Dionysus, Triptolemus, and Osiris as one god. (1)
Dionysus also had his own "Miracle at Cana": each year at his temple in the city of Elis in Southern Greece; onlookers would gather as water was poured into giant vats in his temple. Then the vats would be sealed. The next morning the seals would be broken and the water would have turned to the finest wine, available for all to partake. In partaking of the wine, one was also partaking of the god; he was the Oiketor, Indweller of the Cup.
An ancient mosaic from Libya shows the god pouring his gift into the cup of the worshiper. I am tempted to wonder whether Catelin Geoffrey may have used such an image as this mosaic in designing his version of the card (at left below). But more likely he was thinking of Hebe, pouring out the drink of immortality to the gods. (2)
All seems well. Yet we are also, in this part of the initiation, in the dark land of the dead. As god of wine, Dionysus is also the god that brings addiction. Using alcohol to escape one's troubles is all right in moderation, but the addict uses it to avoid dealing with the very problems his addiction has brought on. Mixing water with wine is an ancient way to avoid addiction and prolong one's life. The one who drinks it straight, or who defeats its purpose by drinking more, is the addict, to whom good may come at first but never for long. Addiction in its many forms is one of the motors turning the cruel Wheel of Fortune. (3)
An ancient mosaic from Libya shows the god pouring his gift into the cup of the worshiper. I am tempted to wonder whether Catelin Geoffrey may have used such an image as this mosaic in designing his version of the card (at left below). But more likely he was thinking of Hebe, pouring out the drink of immortality to the gods. (2)
All seems well. Yet we are also, in this part of the initiation, in the dark land of the dead. As god of wine, Dionysus is also the god that brings addiction. Using alcohol to escape one's troubles is all right in moderation, but the addict uses it to avoid dealing with the very problems his addiction has brought on. Mixing water with wine is an ancient way to avoid addiction and prolong one's life. The one who drinks it straight, or who defeats its purpose by drinking more, is the addict, to whom good may come at first but never for long. Addiction in its many forms is one of the motors turning the cruel Wheel of Fortune. (3)
However Dionysus also supplies the true wine, the drinking of which provides a substitute for the addiction. It is the cultivation of a sacred practice, the nature of which varies from individual to individual: becoming "born again" into a religious institution, learning a sacred language like Hebrew or Sanskrit through its texts, writing poems, sketching, even writing analytical essays like this one. Thus the cup of Dionysus flows into us. But the pull of the addiction is still there, locked in the very substance of our bodies. Even our spiritual practice can become an addiction.
References, Temperance, Dionysian:
1.Triptolemus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triptolemus. Identification of Triptolemus, Dionysus, and Osiris by Michael Maier, http://www.alchemywebsite.com/atl31-4.html.
2. Vats: Pausanias, Description of Greece 6.26.1-2 , at http://www.theoi.com/Cult/DionysosCult.html. Mosaic, image from Internet, but I can no longer locate it.
3. Oiketor, meaning Indweller: http://www.neokoroi.org/dionysos.htm. Unmixed wine: Cartari 1647. Mixing water and wine: Cartari, Italian ed., paraphrase of Athenaeus in http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it/xtf/view?docId=bibit000718/bibit000718.xml. Left-hand image is re-creation by Camoin and Jodorowsky.
The Alchemical Temperance. The jugs in alchemy correspond, of course, to vessels used in the distillation process. With the application of heat, substances turn gaseous, go up the tube, and condense in the upper flask. Pictures of the process occur as far back as there are surviving alchemical manuscripts, for example this page of the Dresden Heilege Dreifaltigkeit, c. 1450.
Here what O'Neill says is very much to the point:
O'Neill 's example is the one below, from Maier's Symbolae aurae mensae of 1617; he compares her specifically to the angel on the card.
The female figure is identified in the alchemical text as Maria Prophetess. She might qualify as a female guide in the work, even to worlds beyond this one, but she is not meant as an angel. Zozimos of Panapolis in the third century identified her as Maria or Miriam, the sister of Moses. According to de Rola (Golden Game p. 114), she is credited with the invention of the water-bath, still called the bain-marie in French.
De Rola's analysis of the picture is as follows:
The Pythagorean and Kabbalistic Temperance. In Pythagoreanism, 14 = 4. We are in the realm of the material universe, before the introduction of soul. In Plato's theory of the soul, there were three parts, each with a corresponding virtue. The rational part had the virtue of Justice, the spirited part that of Fortitude, and the appetitive part that of Temperance. So Temperance is the virtue that corresponds to the number 4.
On the Tree of Life, 14 corresponds to the seventh sefira, 4th from the bottom, called Netzach or Victory. So "Netzach" and "Nike" mean the same thing. Netzach is on the "love" side of the tree, as opposed to the "severity" side. Pico characterizes it as the place for the "addressing of petitions for the birth of sons, and their granting" (11>50); in the soul, it is "that which converts to superior things" (11>67). Gikatilla called it "Eye of Mercy" (English trans. p. 143, oculum miseracordiae Latin p. 76). So this sefira looks favorably on prayers and moves one up the ladder.
In the story of Jonah, I think this sefira corresponds to God's acceptance of his prayer for forgiveness, after which the whale expels him from its stomach. It is a major victory, since he has escaped from the jaws of death. Jonah has one more chance to avoid God's wrath.
On the right side of the pillar, this sefira is in the right place for forgiveness and acceptance. It is actually the first wholly on this side in the upward journey; there won't be another until the Star. The ascending soul is up for some severe tests.
The Kings.
A 16th century proofsheet has this series of the four kings. Cups is pointing upwards, toward heaven. It is the cup as sacramental vessel. Batons point to himself. The baton is about his own authority. It is not clear where the other two are pointing, if anywhere. Perhaps one is pointing down and the other at us, but I cannot tell.
If we look at Kings of Swords in sequence, from Cary-Yale to the PMB and the d'Este (below), what we see is a victorious soldier who looks progressively more gloomy. As the highest member of a traditionally doleful suit, he has negative connotations. His skill and judgment decide matters of life, death, and other considerations of material life.
By the Noblet, he even looks fearful. With his sideways glance, he suspects even his friends, conveys both his power of life over death and how "uneasy lies the crown," as Shakespeare had a similar King of Swords say, in his Henry IV Part 2. He acts on behalf of Justice, but others have their idea of Justice, too.
Here is Etteilla; he has broadened the Kingship to include some of his subjects; yet even these form an exclusive club.
The King of Batons bears a relationship to the Charioteer that complements his wife's. The Queen of Batons, as we have seen, took on the color of the reddish horse, signifying sensuous passion. Her husband has the color of the other horse, the noble one's dull white, his version of rule through rationality. From his picture, he would seem to be mostly concerned about his own authority, as in the 16th century black and white version. Another in the same tradition would seem to be the d'Este, in which the King merely stares at his baton, his symbol of authority
Here is the Etteilla School's take on the King of Batons.
If the Queen of Cups relates to the Popess, it is to be expected that the Kign of Cups should be reminiscent of the Pope.
Here is the Etteilla School list for the King of Cups.
So we come to the King of Coins, who holds his suit sign near where the Emperor has his. Both are bearded, older figures.
The Etteilla School gives his professions in the Uprights:
A melancholia pervades this suit in Noblet, especially noticeable in the King. It is as though to say, riches don't buy happiness. Earlier ones were more genial, such as the Cary-Yale, the PMB, and the d'Este.
2. Vats: Pausanias, Description of Greece 6.26.1-2 , at http://www.theoi.com/Cult/DionysosCult.html. Mosaic, image from Internet, but I can no longer locate it.
3. Oiketor, meaning Indweller: http://www.neokoroi.org/dionysos.htm. Unmixed wine: Cartari 1647. Mixing water and wine: Cartari, Italian ed., paraphrase of Athenaeus in http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it/xtf/view?docId=bibit000718/bibit000718.xml. Left-hand image is re-creation by Camoin and Jodorowsky.
The Alchemical Temperance. The jugs in alchemy correspond, of course, to vessels used in the distillation process. With the application of heat, substances turn gaseous, go up the tube, and condense in the upper flask. Pictures of the process occur as far back as there are surviving alchemical manuscripts, for example this page of the Dresden Heilege Dreifaltigkeit, c. 1450.
Here what O'Neill says is very much to the point:
The stone cycles between solid (matter) and gas (spirit). The vessel is raised to white heat by the internal conflict and struggles. The stone rises in the retort. When it strikes the cooler upper portions, it condenses and falls. The pouring of water between the two ewers on the Temperance card sugests the same process. (Tarot Symbolism p. 283)If you heat wine below the boiling point of water, but above the boiling point of alcohol, you will get more alcohol than water flowing out of the top as a result. That is more of the essence of Dionysus and that much closer to the sought-after elixir. But the alchemists were concerned with a more elusive chemical than alcohol, called "philosophical Mercury." In this context, the winged lady becomes the soror mystica of the alchemist. Female figures were often shown pouring liquids together with the alchemist, for example (from the Mutus Liber of 1677):
O'Neill 's example is the one below, from Maier's Symbolae aurae mensae of 1617; he compares her specifically to the angel on the card.
The female figure is identified in the alchemical text as Maria Prophetess. She might qualify as a female guide in the work, even to worlds beyond this one, but she is not meant as an angel. Zozimos of Panapolis in the third century identified her as Maria or Miriam, the sister of Moses. According to de Rola (Golden Game p. 114), she is credited with the invention of the water-bath, still called the bain-marie in French.
De Rola's analysis of the picture is as follows:
The Mountain, in alchemical symbolism, is the Materia Prima, which must first be reincrudated, "made green again," in order to produce the desired results. The fumes rising and falling between the vessels symbolize the circular process of Dissolution and Fixation (Solve et Coagula), preceding the birth of the Quintessence--five flowers on a single stem.This analysis very much corresponds to what O'Neill described in more psychological language. The Temperance lady is showing us one of the main tools of the alchemist, with which success is possible. She might also be one out of several representations of a female psychopomp leading us through an initiatory sequence.
The Pythagorean and Kabbalistic Temperance. In Pythagoreanism, 14 = 4. We are in the realm of the material universe, before the introduction of soul. In Plato's theory of the soul, there were three parts, each with a corresponding virtue. The rational part had the virtue of Justice, the spirited part that of Fortitude, and the appetitive part that of Temperance. So Temperance is the virtue that corresponds to the number 4.
On the Tree of Life, 14 corresponds to the seventh sefira, 4th from the bottom, called Netzach or Victory. So "Netzach" and "Nike" mean the same thing. Netzach is on the "love" side of the tree, as opposed to the "severity" side. Pico characterizes it as the place for the "addressing of petitions for the birth of sons, and their granting" (11>50); in the soul, it is "that which converts to superior things" (11>67). Gikatilla called it "Eye of Mercy" (English trans. p. 143, oculum miseracordiae Latin p. 76). So this sefira looks favorably on prayers and moves one up the ladder.
In the story of Jonah, I think this sefira corresponds to God's acceptance of his prayer for forgiveness, after which the whale expels him from its stomach. It is a major victory, since he has escaped from the jaws of death. Jonah has one more chance to avoid God's wrath.
On the right side of the pillar, this sefira is in the right place for forgiveness and acceptance. It is actually the first wholly on this side in the upward journey; there won't be another until the Star. The ascending soul is up for some severe tests.
The Kings.
A 16th century proofsheet has this series of the four kings. Cups is pointing upwards, toward heaven. It is the cup as sacramental vessel. Batons point to himself. The baton is about his own authority. It is not clear where the other two are pointing, if anywhere. Perhaps one is pointing down and the other at us, but I cannot tell.
If we look at Kings of Swords in sequence, from Cary-Yale to the PMB and the d'Este (below), what we see is a victorious soldier who looks progressively more gloomy. As the highest member of a traditionally doleful suit, he has negative connotations. His skill and judgment decide matters of life, death, and other considerations of material life.
By the Noblet, he even looks fearful. With his sideways glance, he suspects even his friends, conveys both his power of life over death and how "uneasy lies the crown," as Shakespeare had a similar King of Swords say, in his Henry IV Part 2. He acts on behalf of Justice, but others have their idea of Justice, too.
Here is Etteilla; he has broadened the Kingship to include some of his subjects; yet even these form an exclusive club.
ETTEILLA, KING OF SWORDS, UPRIGHT: Lawyer, Man of the Law, Judge, Councilor, Assessor, Senator, Businessman, Medical Practitioner, Attorney, Public Prosecutor, Doctor, Physician.—Jurist, Jurisprudence.—Litigant, Jurisconsult. REVERSED: Ill-Intentioned, Wickedness, Perversity, Perfidy, Crime, Cruelty, Barbarity, Inhumanity.The Reverseds give the downside of power backed by law.
The King of Batons bears a relationship to the Charioteer that complements his wife's. The Queen of Batons, as we have seen, took on the color of the reddish horse, signifying sensuous passion. Her husband has the color of the other horse, the noble one's dull white, his version of rule through rationality. From his picture, he would seem to be mostly concerned about his own authority, as in the 16th century black and white version. Another in the same tradition would seem to be the d'Este, in which the King merely stares at his baton, his symbol of authority
Here is the Etteilla School's take on the King of Batons.
KING OF BATONS, UPRIGHT: Man of the Country, Good and Strict Man, Well Intentioned Man [last 2 not in c. 1838], Honest Man—Conscientiousness, Integrity.—Man Who Pursues Agriculture, Laborer, Farmer. 1838 adds: Villager, Yokel (Rustre). REVERSED: Good and Severe Man.—Leniency, Austerity [c. 1838 has Indulgent Severity], Indulgence, Complaisance [last 2, c. 1838 only], Tolerance, Condescension.This list seems to alternate between severity and leniency. Well, he is still young. Historically the suit in general has to do with the countryside. The Noblet's green club, which goes back to the PMB's geen gloves, suggests the greenery of field, orchard and forest. Thus we have the designation "countryman." Etteilla's descriptions suggests the country gentleman, in all his honesty, friendliness, and conscientiousness in administering his estate, as opposed to other traits more likely cultivated by the absentee landlord in the city.
If the Queen of Cups relates to the Popess, it is to be expected that the Kign of Cups should be reminiscent of the Pope.
Here is the Etteilla School list for the King of Cups.
KING OF CUPS, UPRIGHT: Fair Man, Honest Man, Integrity, Equity, Arts, Sciences. REVERSED: Distinguished Man [c. 1838, Man of High Rank], Honest Man [not in c. 1838].—Dishonest Man.—Exaction, Misappropriation of Public Funds, Injustice, Bandit, Swindler, Rogue.—Vice, Corruption, Scandal [Swindler and last 3 not in c. 1838, which has Waste [gaspillage], Embezzlement (Dilapidation), Thief (Voleur)]These attributes are similar to the Queen's. Positively, it is the man of calm vision whose passion is to a higher realm than this earth. "Fair" is Etteilla's association of this suit with Hearts, a red suit. In the Reverseds, I am reminded of Hamlet's uncle, the apparently generous and diplomatic King Claudius.
So we come to the King of Coins, who holds his suit sign near where the Emperor has his. Both are bearded, older figures.
The Etteilla School gives his professions in the Uprights:
KING OF COINS, UPRIGHT: A Dark Man, Shopkeeper, Merchant, Banker, Stockbroker, Calculator, Speculator, Physicist [c. 1838 only].—Physics, Geometry [c. 1838 only], Mathematics, Science—Teacher [British: Master], Professor. REVERSED: Vice, Flaw, Weakness, Defective, Faulty Conformation [not in c. 1838], Misshapen Nature.—Dissoluteness [c. 1838 dereglement, i.e. disorder], Ugliness, Deformity.—Corruption.—Arrogance [not in c. 1838, which has Puanteur, i.e. Stench].Merchants and businessmen are featured here, as well as the skills needed for success in business, a head for calculations.. The leap to mathematics in general is not a great one. The dark side of business is corruption. Historically the theme of the miser would have been included: not necessarily corrupt, just unfeeling; perhaps that is what Etteilla had in mind with "vice" and "misshapen nature." The word "dark" in the list merely shows that Coins, for Etteilla, corresponds to the regular suit of Clubs.
A melancholia pervades this suit in Noblet, especially noticeable in the King. It is as though to say, riches don't buy happiness. Earlier ones were more genial, such as the Cary-Yale, the PMB, and the d'Este.
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