9. The Hermit: Your light guides me, but I do not see you, O Kryphios. Hidden One.
Greco-Roman-Christian base: In the case of the Hermit, the image is a mixture of Christian and Greco-Roman sources from the beginning. In the early lists, he was called "The old man" or "The Hunchback," and he usually (but not always) held an hour-glass. To that extent, he is also Chronos, Time, dripping away like sand in an hourglass. It is always getting short, closer to the hour of death. Do not get lost in the affairs of the moment, he says; look to your life beyond the grave. A 15th century Italian engraving illustrating Petrarch's "Trionfi" shows him with his crutches, on top of his triumphal chariot, as a reminder of time's ravages.
He is also reminiscent, in a Greek pun, of Cronos, the Roman Saturn, last and eldest of the planets, the insecure king who ate his children so as to avoid being deposed by them. The verbal pun seems to be translated into a visual pun on the card, when compared with the "Mantegna" image (above). Like Saturn, time eats our childhood, our youth, our middle age, and so on. Titian compared this aspect of Time, in the form of an old man (perhaps a self-portrait), to a ravenous wolf in his Allegory of Prudence.
Time in this painting has three faces: past, present, and future. Conti compares present and future to Saturn as well:
That he vomited the stone and everything else he had eaten clearly means that as some things are drawn into their final resting place by nature, others arise in their stead...That moreover, Saturn is time and nothing else because it destroys all and creates all is suggested by this verse in Orpheus' "Hymn to Saturn:: "Saturn who produces all and in turn consumes all." And Aeschylus in his Eumenides: "Time, as soon as it grows old, destroys all. (1)By the time of the Noblet card (below left), his hourglass is gone. He carries a lantern, and he is "The Hermit." We are perhaps meant to think of Diogenes the Cynic, who was said to have walked the streets shining a lantern in the middle of the day, looking for an honest man. The meaning is the same, look to the Day of Judgment, not the needs of the moment.
We might also think of the Hermits of the Christian tradition, of whom the most famous early one was St. Anthony, who fought his devil-temptations in the desert. There was also St. Christopher, the wanderer who inadvertently carried the child Jesus on his back. Hermits blend into pilgrims, who traveled the road to Santiago de Compostella, where the bones of St. James were said to be buried. The path was the path of seeking the divine. The one on the card has been there, in his visions, and knows how to get there. Of the ten spheres of the pre-Copernican cosmos, his is the ninth sphere, that called the "Primum Mobile" or "first-moved." It is there where the angels live, according to Pseudo-Dionysus, singing praises to God in nine choirs on nine levels. After him, Dante described these choirs in Canto 28 of his Paradiso (http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Italian/DantPar22to28.htm#_Toc64099969).
Between Chosson 1672 and Conver 1761, the title below the figure identifying the Hermit added an "H". The word for "hermit" in French is "Ermite," not "Hermite." Why the change? No one knows, but one guess is that Conver wanted to suggest the Hermetics, i.e., the ones who followed the mythical Hermes Trismegistus, who knew all things above, below, and on the earth. The lantern is then to guide us in the darkness. The light he holds contains a bit of the heavenly light, just as his robe shows a bit of the rising sun. To the Hermetics, he possessed the knowledge we need to achieve union with the divine. He was also considered the first alchemist, as we shall see in a later section. Alchemists formed a large part of those who called themselves Hermetics. (2)
In the Grail stories that were popular in mid-15th century Italy, "Trismegistus" became "Trevrizent," the old hermit in the forest who, like a good keeper of spells and passwords, tells Parzival what he needs to know when he enters the Grail Castle. I think that this association is very much part of the meaning of the card. (3)
Some readers of Wolfram might have recognized the "Trismegistus" behind "Trevizent." More would have recognized the affinity of Trevizent with the Hermit card. At the start of his adventures, Parzival would have not given Trevizent a second look; all he wanted was to learn knighthood, and he gets a mentor who is appropriate for that. But in the Grail Castle, following his mentor's advice to say little is seen as a callous lack of compassion for the Fisher-King. And afterwards, the witch Kundrie shames him before the whole Round Table. Only a poor root-eating homeless person can tell him what he needs to know.
This card has often been associated by some with the virtue of Prudence, one of the Church's "seven cardinal virtues" but not explicitly the name of any tarot card. It was an intellectual virtue, as opposed to the three moral virtues, which are included, and the three theological virtues, which tarot scholars find in the Cary-Yale deck. Only the Minchiate has all seven by name.
If we look at the Marseille Hermit and Minchiate Prudence together,we see some visual merit in associating the two. The Minchiate figure has the most common identifier of Prudence, her mirror. I surmise that looking in it signified the Delphic maxim "Know thyself"; self-knowledge was the most important aspect of prudence. The Hermit's lantern is in the same place as this mirror, which they hold with the same hand. The Minchiate deck has one other card with a mirror, Faith, but it is on the figure's other side. The snake is another signifier of prudence, as in the Gospel saying, "Be ye wise as serpents and gentle as doves." The snake then appears as a cane on the Hermit card. Like the names of the other virtues, the word "prudentia" is feminine. That the Hermit is masculine might be one reason why he did not get the name "Prudentia."
References, Hermit, Christian:
1. Early lists: http://it.geocities.com/a_pollett/cards26.htm.
Triumph of Time image: http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/trionfi.html.
Cronos/Chronos = Saturn/Time, http://www.maicar.com/GML/Cronos.html.
last section of article, "Note about Cronos and Chronos." Conti: DiMatteo, Conti's Mythologies, p. 64. On Chronos see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronos.
2. Added "H": Daimonax, http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/0et9mathermite3.html. Also http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=4384&page=3&pp=10
3. Trevizent/Trismegistus: Kahane & Kahane, The Krater and the Grail: Hermetic Sources of the Parzival. For Trevizent in the story, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parzival.
Greco-Egyptian perspective. Hermes Trismegistus was a legendary sage of Egypt, where the "Corpus Hermeticum," attested to by no less than Clement of Alexandria, amounted to scores of books, a few of which survived, to be purchased by Lorenzo di' Medici and translated by Marsilio Ficino.
For the Egyptians themselves, the image would have been Imhotep, architect of the first pyramid, great healer, and the one who read the sacred texts of Thoth and so knew the meaning of the rituals. The Greeks identified him with their Aesclepius. A description of a statue of him in a temple, surrounded by pictures of eagles and people, came into European alchemy via the Arabic alchemist they knew as Senior (see the alchemical section of my chapter on the Emperor). The Europeans identified him as Hermes Trismegistus, of course. The picture of him in the Heilegen Dreifaltigheit isn't a bad likeness.
References, Hermit, Egyptian:
1. Clement of Alexandria: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/clement-stromata-book6.html, beginning of chapter 4.
2.Corpus Hermeticum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetica.
4. Imhotep images and information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep, http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/imhotep.htm. Picture in Heilege Dreifaltigkeit: http://www.handschriftencensus.de/14918 (a link supplied to me by Huck Meyer, whom I thank.)
The Dionysian Hermit: On Roman sarcophagi, the initiate is blindfolded and led by the Silenus, or male initiator, pictured on the card. His potential for illumination is suggested by the two suns peeking out of the robe and upper neck. The lantern is more visible; he uses it to lead the initiates through the darkness to the trials they need. But he is not the same as the initiation-master of card 5. He is more otherwordly, not the leader of a hierarchy even of Dionysians. He has experienced the initiations many times and in many ways; he knows what lies ahead for the initiates.(1)
References, Hermit, Dionysian:
1. Silenus: Image and idea from Daimonax, http://www.bacchos.org/tarotht/0et9mathermite2.html.
They used to call it 'Hephaestus,' because the way up to it is, as it were, by smelting and evaporation. (p. 106)Waterfield speculates that
perhaps the image is supposed to suggest that "smelting" is the fusion of monads into the sequence of numbers, but the monad is not exhausted--some part of it "evaporates," in the sense that it can continue the sequence. (p. 106)
But "smelting and evaporating" is also the way of alchemy. Smelting is the dissolution ofsolids into a liquid, with evaporation into sealed upper chambers the next step.
There are several figures in alchemy similar to the Hermit. I have already mentioned Hermes Trismegistus, as pictured in the frontispieces of books by "Senior." He is the wise old man in possession of the way to the elixir, i.e. eternal life. There is also Saturn, in his Renaissance characterization, and those born under Saturn. Saturn was typically shown naked except for a loincloth, and lame, missing one leg below the knee. He is associated with death, decay, lead, and blackness, the nigredo, when the soul has left the body and life seems without spirit. (1)
The scene after the ascent of the little boy, emblem 8 of the Rosarium, is similar. And perhaps it is not too much to ask that the little boy returning is similar to the Hermit, in that he is returning from the heights. Even then, some melancholy remains (the clouds). (2)
This much has been described by O'Neill in his section on how the Hermit relates to alchemy. But I think he should be viewed more positively than merely the mystic's "evil old man..dying and decaying within him." To be sure, those born under Saturn are afflicted with melancholy, but some of them also see beyond the visible into the realm of prophecy and divine inspiration. Agrippa von Nettlesheim (Three Books on Occult Philosophy Book I Ch. LX) listed three types of divine melancholy. According to Tyson's commentary, this positive side of melancholy went back to pseudo-Aristotle, in the 13th of his Problems (that is is another side of the alchemical adept: melancholy much of the time, isolating from society, but also no stranger to spiritual ascent. So we have pictures like that below, of a man in isolation yet in contact with his spirit and soul (the two little birdlike creatures). This man is not, as O'Neill describes him, "within himself, sealed in the 'philosophical egg' or alchemical vessel...overcome with sadness and suffering" (Tarot Symbolism p. 279). The lines in the picture link him to the other world. (3)
In the 17th century, he was sometimes shown with a lantern like the Hermit's, following in Nature's footsteps, as some interpret the image. Or is it Wisdom, in O'Neill's words, "the 'Anima Mundi', the goal of human life? (4)
Whichever, it is the alchemist as searcher; in that case, his despondency comes from his inability to get to where he wants to go. However I think the dominant image is that of the adept, someone already in touch with the divine, which we see in the folds of his robe as the rising sun.
References, the Alchemical Hermit
1. Image: Muylius, Philosophia Reformata 1622, Emblem 6. I take it from Fabricius, Alchemy fig. 173, p. 102,
2. Image: http://www.rexresearch.com/rosarium/rosarium.htm.
3. Image: Daniel Stolcius de Stolcenberg, Viridarium chymicum figuria cupro incisis adornatum et poeticia picturis illustratum 1624, fig. XCIX (after Basilius Valentinus, De occulta philosophia, 1603. I take it from Fabricius fig. 193, p. 109.
4. Image: Maier, Atalanta Fugiens 1618, emblem XLII. I take it from Fabricius, fig. 84 p. 55. O'Neill: Tarot Symbolism p. 279.
The Pythagorean and Kabbalist Hermit. The number Nine in the Theology of Arithmetic is associated with Oceanus, the god that governs that which borders our world and than which nothing further can be conceived:
Here I think a metaphor is intended. The ocean, meaning primarily the Atlantic Ocean, was what was beyond the known. It is similar to what is beyond the sphere of Fixed Stars, the void (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism). It contains the whole cosmos. The realm beyond the fixed stars is like an ocean that acts as boundary to the land. So it is a super-celestial realm of visions not seen by the light of nature. It is the ninth sphere in order from the earth, the last movable sphere before the Emperean, in medieval cosmology.Hence they call it 'Oceanus' [Translator's note: Oceanus was envisaged as an expanse of water encircling the outer limits of the world] and 'horizon,' because it encompasses both of these locations and has them within itself. [Translator's note: Because all things are made from number and 9 is the furthest limit of number.] (p. 105)
It is thus the super-celestial region leading up to the Neoplatonists' One. For the Christian Neoplatonist pseudo-Dionysus, this region was filled with nine choirs of angels, in three groups of three. For the Theology, this was the realm of the Curetes, the initiators of Zeus:
Both Orpheus and Pythagoras made a particular point of describing the ennead a 'pertaining to the Curetes,' on the grounds the rites sacred to the Curetes are tripartite [Translator's note: the Curetes were Cretan deities who in myth looked after the infant Zeus], with three rites to each part, or as 'Kore' [Translator's note: Persephone]; both of these titles are appropriate to the triad, and the ennead contains the triad three times. (p. 107)
The number 9, for the Theology, thus represents the time that Jupiter/Zeus spent growing up in hiding on Crete, being nursed by the Curetes. The “rites of the Curetes” in which Zeus was initiated, the Theology says, had 3 rites of 3 parts each. In Christianity this number corresponds to Pseudo-Dionysus's 9 choirs of angels, in the heavenly realm between the fixed stars and God, the Primum Mobile.
In a similar spirit, the Theology identifies the Muse governing this number as Terpsichore (Waterfield p. 107). From “treperin,” to turn, and “choros,” dance, it interprets the name as “like the turning and revolution in a dance,” an ecstatic dance leading back to the One.
In the Kabbalah, the ninth sefira is Yesod, which Reuchlin says means "fundamentum" in English Foundation It is also Sadai, the base of the world (Sadai, fundamentum mundi), Zion, the source of the fish ponds (fons piscinarum--actually, source of the pools), the just (iustus), the living God (deus vivuns) and so on. Pico says it is the gathering of the waters, the just (28. 27); eighth day, circumcision (28.32); bones of Joseph the just (Tzaddik), sending its influences over the superior earth (28.42); and redeemer (Amos 2:6) (11>21), among other things.
Yesod is situated where the two sides of the Tree of Life come together. That is probably what "gathering of the waters" comes to, combining severity with loving kindness and sending it downward to Malkhut. In that sense it sends the influence from above down to "the superior earth," probably meaning Malkhut. It also mediates between the upper 8 and the lowest, Malkhut, in two senses: it holds up the other 8 as a "foundation."And secondly, as the sefira for circumcision, which occurred on the 8th day of life, it represents the covenant, between God's people and the divine.
It is especially as a mediator between the two worlds, the divine world of the sefiroth and the lower world where the Shekhinah dwells, that this sefira relates to the Hermit card. As situated equally between the two sides, it can send prayers up both sides and send divine influences down from both sides in a balanced way.The Hermit in the Cartomantic Tradition. The Etteilla image that corresponds to the Hermit is his no. 19, which shows a monk holding a lantern and walking with a cane.
The keywords do not fit the Hermit as we have known him up to now: "Traitre" and "Faux Devout," meaning "Traitor" and "False Devout." And when we look at the word-lists for this card, only the Reverseds correspond to the Hermit we know:
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].In my view what has happened is that Etteilla has deliberately mixed together parts of two cards, the Marseille Hermit and the Marseille Hanged Man. The keywords and the Uprights belong to the Hanged Man, while some of the Reverseds apply to the Hermit.
Reversed: [Faux Dévot.] FALSE DEVOUT. Hermit, Anchorite, Solitary, Hidden, Concealed, Disguised, Clever, Cunning, End. Politic [omitted by Revak].
Etteilla has no "Hanged Man" card at all. What he has instead is the fourth cardinal vritue, Prudence. He has decided, following de Gebelin, that the "Marseille" cardmakers saw as a rope what was actually a snake. Below is the Marseille Hanged Man card on the left, the way de Gebelin saw the card in the center, and on the right Etteilla's "Prudence" card, which turns the rope into a snake. The snake is a traditional attribute of Prudence, dating at least to Jesus's "Be ye wise as serpents and gentle as doves."
Thinking the snake was a rope, Etteilla supposes, the card-makers assumed that the man was hanging by one leg and turned the card upside down. Then for the Prudence card, Etteilla used some of the ideas that would normally apply to the Hermit. Here are the words for Etteilla's Prudence:
[La Prudence.] PRUDENCE—Discretion, Wisdom, Circumspection, Restrained, Discernment, Foresight, Forecast, Reserve—Presentiment, Prediction, Prognostication, Divination, Prophet. Horoscope.As you can see, the Uprights fit the Marseille Hermit. So I think that if we take the "Prudence" uprights and some of the "Traitor" Reverseds, we will get something like how the cartomantic tradition before Etteilla might have seen the Hermit. In other words, for the Hermit:
Reversed: [Le Peuple.] THE PEOPLE. Nation, Sovereign, Legislator, Body Politic, Population, Generation.
PRUDENCE—Discretion, Wisdom, Circumspection, Restrained, Discernment, Foresight, Forecast, Reserve—Presentiment, Prediction, Prognostication, Divination, Prophet. Horoscope.Some of the other words then fit the Marseille Hanged Man, i.e.:
Reversed. HERMIT, Anchorite, Solitary, Hidden, Concealed.
TRAITOR—Treason [or Betrayal], Disguise, Dissimulation, Hypocrite, Hypocrisy, Deceiver, Suborner, Corrupter, Seducer.—Trickery [Roguery], Impostor. Fanatic, fanaticism, Ruse, Deceit, Imposture [omitted by Revak].Words associated with "People" drop out as irrelevant to the Marseille. It was added as a reflection of the political situation in France in the late 1780s, the 1790s, and continuing off and on at various times in the 19th century.
Reversed: FALSE DEVOUT. Disguised, Clever, Cunning, End. Politic [omitted by Revak].
The Nines in the Sola-Busca and Etteilla.
The SB Nine of Batons shows a man crossing a stream carrying a heavy load of sticks.
In the Renaissance, the most familiar picture of someone crossing a stream with a load was that of St. Christopher carrying the child Jesus across a swollen river. According to the Golden Legend, he felt like he was carrying the weight of the whole world. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Christopher). The child then told him that not only had he carried the whole world, but also He who made it.
The Theology, as we have seen, the Ennead is associated with Oceanus, the god that governs that which borders our world and than which nothing further can be conceived, similar to what is beyond the sphere of Fixed Stars. It contains the whole cosmos.
However the "Etteilla" list takes a less cosmic approach.
Here it is the Reverseds that fit the SB image directly, and even then not its last three words; they pertain more to Rhea and the Eight. The Uprights convey the idea of a river as something that slows one down. You have to wait for the ferry, or spend a long time finding a place and time to ford it. Spiritually, that may mean a long time between incarnations, or before getting out of Purgatory and into Heaven, or a long time climbing the rungs of Heaven. In terms of the Theology, there is the question, what does one do in the 216 years between incarnations? The author doesn't ponder this question.ETTEILLA 9 OF BATONS: Delay, Waiting Time, Distance, [c. 1838 has Remission, Postponement], Adjournment [not in c. 1838, which has Removal], Deferral, Suspension, Extension, Slowness, Slowing Down. REVERSED: Crossing, Obstacle, Difficulties, Vexation [Displeasure], Disadvantage, Adversity, Pain, Bad Luck, Misfortune, Calamity.
Di Vincenzo in her book Sola-Busca takes a similar approach as Etteilla, seeing the card in terms of obstacles to be overcome. However she adds that the river "separates two existential conditions" and compares the river crossing to baptism (Sola Busca, p. 108). She mentions that Dante's Divine Comedy had nine infernal regions and nine heavens (p. 107). Another interesting detail she notices is that the person has a white ribbon in his or her hair: white ribbons symbolize purity (as in a recent German movie by that title); the person is undergoing a purification. In that way it is like the nine initiatory rites of the Curetes.
Let us move on to Swords. I see very much the same Neopythagorean world-view as in the case of Batons.
The container is here the large vessel containing 8 swords, perhaps corresponding to the 8 spheres between the earth and the void. But the man is not in that vessel. He, and the 9th sword, are mostly outside. Only his hand is inside. It isn't clear what that hand is doing. Di Vincenzo says he is taking swords out of a well (p. 135). I see little basis for saying this, as he is not reaching for a sword. Maybe he is feeling the bottom, to see if it is on terra firma--corresponding to one Neopythagorean interpretation of the 9th sphere, that it is the earth itself, counting from the sphere of the fixed stars as number one. But what I think is that he is standing in our world and reaching into the supercelestial world, where the infants swallowed by Saturn are. The figure is like a person who lives in the world, but who is focused on the other world. Or as the "Etteilla" Uprights have it:
Di Vincenzo makes an interesting point about the putto and what she takes to be a key hanging from the wall. She says that the putto is a beneficent angel that is helping him to unlock the red ribbon (the color of the rubedo, completion of the work) that ties the swords together. In that way the card is about learning to be conscious of the whole, and the need for divine guidance, That point is indeed consistent with the Theology. Wisdom is in part to know and discriminate among the spheres. However I still do not see any action implied in the card; it is about knowledge, not action, perhaps including musical knowledge, listening to the harmony of the spheres, for the Ennead, the Theology proclaims:ETTEILLA 9 of SWORDS: Ecclesiastic, Apostle, Pope, Cardinal, Archbishop, Bishop [these 6 in c. 1838 only], Unmarried Person [Celibat, Celibate], Virginity, Abbott, Priest, Monk, Hermit, Religious Person, Temple, Church, Monastery, Convent, Hermitage, Sanctuary.—Cult, Religion, Piety, Devotion, Rite, Ceremony, Ritual.—Cloistered Person [c. 1838, Recluse], Anchorite, Vestal Virgin. REVERSED: Justified Mistrust, Justified Suspicion, Reasonable Fear, Misgiving, Doubt, Conjecture.—Scruple, Troubled Conscience, Innocent [not in c. 1838], Timidity, Propriety.— Disgrace [not in c. 1838], Shame.
On to Cups....brings numbers together and makes them play in concert, it is is called concord' and 'limitation,' and also 'sun,' in the sense that it gathers things together.[Translator's note: Helios (sun) is linked with halizein (gather together)] (p. 106).
Di Vincenzo says that the sea-creature is a Triton. The figure may have been copied from a an Italian engraving of the late 15th century, according to Hind (Early Italian Engraving, vol 2, Pl 149) done in the North of Italy but derived from a Florentine original. I reproduce here the relevant detail of the engraving, its central image. The circle containing the Triton is flanked by winged putti along with a man on the left offering a ring and a woman on the right offering a wreath.
"Triton" was a generic term denoting a class of sea-demigods with the above appearance. However it also denoted a particular demigod, the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_(mythology)). A complication is that Poseidon had another son, Proteus, by the goddess Tethys, who was represented in the same way. Proteus had a special ability that makes him a more attractive candidate for the sea-creature on the card (and here I am agreeing with http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Cups_Sola_Busca). He could change his shape at will, thereby making him a candidate for the alchemists' elusive Mercurius. The legend was that whoever caught him, despite these changes, would be able to make him prophesy. Here is how Alciati depicted him in his Emblemata of 1551 ( http://www.mun.ca/alciato/e183.html). (And yes, I know that he is shown with horse's legs here; But Triton, too, was sometimes shown that way; see http://www.theoi.com/Pontios/Triton.html.)
Alciato's text (first published 1531) below the image reads:
The motto, above the image, reads: "All that is most ancient is a lie." That's quite a statement for someone like Alciato, who makes his living concocting emblems based on ancient mythology. However it fits in with Proteus's answer in the text, that the earliest myths, like dreams, are just wish-fulfillment fantasies.O Proteus, old man of Pallene, with the form of an actor, who at one moment takes the limbs of a man, at another those of a beast, come tell us why you turn into all shapes, so that, forever changing, you have no fixed form?
I bring forth symbols of antiquity and a primaeval age, of which each man dreams, according to his wishes.
Here is an alchemical reference to Proteus as a form of Mercurius, by Heinrich Khunruth (1560-1605) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteus):
The SB character, whoever he is, has five cups in the air. while he holds onto four with ropes. He is like an accomplished juggler. But it seems to me that the upper cups may also be balloons, held down by similar ropes as hold the lower ones. Then is the character an impostor? Or is it we who jump to conclusions too soon?...our Catholick Mercury, by virtue of his universal fiery spark of the light of nature, is beyond doubt Proteus, the sea god of the ancient pagan sages, who hath the key to the sea and …power over all things, son of Oceanos and Tethys. (From Von hylealischen Chaos p. 54f, as quoted in Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionus p. 56.).
Di Vincenzo's comments that the creature "represents the end of a course, the completion of a cycle, and the beginning of a new life." For in the Nines, besides completing something, as befitting 3x3 (3 as the number of beginnings, middles, and ends), we are starting a return to the Source. She sees the creature as a representative of "Primitive energies preserved by the water," yet in a merely personal way, as "hereditary components, aspects of the personality present in the individual even before birth" (p.51).
The perspective of the Theology is similar, but also grander. We see the similarity in some of the names it gives the Ennead. One is
Similarly, it is'finishing post,' because it has been organized as the goal and, as it were, turning-point of advancement.
Both as Proteus and as number, it is the origin of everything, the beginning that contains, like St. Christopher's Christ-child, all the spheres of being....'Terpsichore,' because the recurrence of the principles and their convergence on it as if from an end to a mid-point and to the beginning is like the turning and revolution of a dance. [Translator's note: Terpsichore, one of the Muses, is assimilated to trepein (to turn) and chorus (dance); in fact, her name means 'delighter in dance.'] (p. 107)
Di Vincenzo shows some awareness of this cosmic aspect of the card when she comments that nine
Similarly the Theology says:...is the number of the angelic choirs, and of the infernal circles, the number of Muses, the parts of the universe in the Orphean philosophy...It is also that of the days and nights required for the creation in Hesiod's Theogony as well as the months required for the completion of the human fetus in the maternal womb, followed by the actual birth. (p. 50.)
Etteilla has some of the limitations of Di Vincenzo's concluding remarks on this card (I mean the merely personal perspective, from her p. 51).The Ennead is the first square based on an odd number. It too is called 'that which brings completion,' and it completes nine-month children, moreover it is called 'perfect,' because it is arises out of 3, which is a perfect number.
The last of our Nines is Coins. Here is the SB's:ETTEILLA 9 OF CUPS: Victory, Success, Attainment, Advantage, Profit.—Pomp, Triumph, Trophy, Pre-Eminence, Superiority [last 2 not in c. 1838, which has Majesty instead].—Spectacle, Pageantry, Paraphernalia. REVERSED: Sincerity, Truth, Reality, Loyalty, Good Faith (not in c. 1838), Frankness, Artlessness, Naivete (c. 1838 only), Candor, Romantic Overture, Unaffectedness (last 3 not in c. 1838).—Liberty, Science (not in c. 1838), Freedom, Familiarity, Boldness, Ease, Dissoluteness (last 2 not in c. 1838).
If the 8 of Coins was a Mortificatio, the 9 looks even more so. A human-identified figure in a fire is not that uncommon in alchemy, for example in Emblem 23 of Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens, where the wolf is Antimony, another form of alchemical Mercury.
Another example from the same work is Emblem 33, where the figure on the fire is more human; it is the Rebus, the alchemical two-in-one, two heads of opposite gender on one body. The fire promotes the further unification of the opposites.
In the SB image, the discs above the fire have the appearance of the triangular Hexad, one of the "perfect" numbers; but there are actually seven. Besides them, there is one above and one below, suggesting the goal, heaven, and the starting-point, earth. The realm of soul is in between. The next perfect number, in fact the most perfect, is the Decad.
The man in the fire is an approximation of the wolf in Meier's image, alchemical Mercury, the purifier of metals. In alchemy, the result is a return to the beginning in purified form. That was one of the roles of Proteus, whom we met in Cups. The discs above the fire are like the Rebus, a one-in-many that will emerge purified and perfected, as he was in the beginning, like the King who walks away in Meier's other image.
In the Theology, one deity associated with the Ennead, we have seen, is Terpsichore, which it says means "turning around." Nine is the number which begins the return to the Monad on a higher level, actualized and purified by its ascension through the numbers. Another deity that the Theology associates with the Ennead is Haephestus:
Thus we see the ninth disc at the very top of the pile, perhaps corresponding to "evaporation" in the Theology. The discs in the container are like the Rebus. The man on the fire is like Mercurius, the agent of transformation. The alchemist is like all of these.They used to call it 'Hephaestus,' because the way up to it is, as it were, by smelting and evaporation...[Translator's note: Haephestus was the metallurgical god; perhaps the image is supposed to suggest that 'smelting' is the fusion of monads into the sequence of numbers, but the monad is not exhausted--some part of it evaporates,' in the sense that it can continue the sequence.] (p. 106)
That the fire, however painful, burns to a good end is reflected in the "Etteilla" Uprights. The Reverseds, it seems to me, describe the false alchemist, the deceiver or "puffer," as other alchemists called them, who claimed to be able to turn base metals into gold--and even gave demonstrations if pressed enough.
The Reverseds perhaps also owe something to Alciato, for whom Proteus was a symbol of primordial wish-fulfillment.9 OF COINS: Effect [c. 1838 only], Result, Achievement, True [Real--but c. 1838 has Immeubles, Real Estate], Accomplishment, Success [the last not in c. 1838, which adds: Evidence, Conviction, Conclusion, Execution, Perfection, Goods, Furniture, i.e. Meubles]. REVERSED: Artifice, Fraud, Deception, Broken Promises, Empty Experiences, Aborted [Failed] Projects. [C. 1838 has for its list: Deception, Deceit, Surprise, Error, Snare, Fraud, Cheat, Ruse, Trickery, Dodging, Swindle, Infidelity.]
All of these Nines thus contain the theme of transcendence of the sensible world into the angelic or supersensible world, which is also the main theme, I believe of the Marseille-style Hermit.
10. Wheel of Fortune: You raise me up, you cut me down, all in your season, O Lenaios, He of the Wine Press.
Christian base: The Wheel of Fortune was a common image in the Middle Ages. Most of the time it signified the transience of material goals. You struggle to get on top, and if you are lucky may be able to get there, but always with the fear and often the reality that you will be thrown down again. Then you struggle again, and the cycle repeats, or you die. The Wheel is turned by a blindfolded Fortune, not shown later. The tile at Siena Cathedral shows ancient philosophers of four different persuasions--Epicurean, Stoic, Platonic, and Aristotelian--all warning not to seek one's happiness in material things. (1)
Christian base: The Wheel of Fortune was a common image in the Middle Ages. Most of the time it signified the transience of material goals. You struggle to get on top, and if you are lucky may be able to get there, but always with the fear and often the reality that you will be thrown down again. Then you struggle again, and the cycle repeats, or you die. The Wheel is turned by a blindfolded Fortune, not shown later. The tile at Siena Cathedral shows ancient philosophers of four different persuasions--Epicurean, Stoic, Platonic, and Aristotelian--all warning not to seek one's happiness in material things. (1)
Sometimes images of the Wheel had someone with a donkey's head going up, signifying that he was a fool Then he was a donkey both up and down when on top, then only a donkey below the waist, and fully human at the bottom. I will discuss the meaning of that imagery in the section on the Dionysian Wheel.
References: Wheel, Christian:
1. Transience: Place. Siena Cathedral: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_Trismegistus.
1. Transience: Place. Siena Cathedral: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_Trismegistus.
Greco-Egyptian perspective: The card-designers could have read about the Wheel in Clement of Alexandria, who in a chapter on symbolism speaks of a "Wheel that is turned around in the precincts of the gods and that was derived from the Egyptians." There was also Hero of Alexander, who said, "In Egyptian sanctuaries there are Wheels of bronze against the door-posts, and they are movable so that those who enter them may set them in motion, because of the belief that bronze purifies." Proclus spoke of the Orphic "Wheel of birth" in the same context, which leads to purification. Since the Greek writers attributed the doctrine of reincarnation to the Egyptians, the card-designers would have assumed, with them, that the wheel in Egypt symbolized purification through successive incarnations. (1)
In this connection there was the "wheel of fire" of St. Catherine. In commemoration, wheels were rolled down hillsides on St. John the Baptist Day. Shakespeare has King Lear imagine himself on a "wheel of fire" when he wakes up in his daughter Cordelia's tent.
In Egyptian parchments and tomb paintings, however, there is no sign of wheels. They were likely a late addition, more Greek than Egyptian. For the Egyptians, the alternations of fortune were represented by the seven Hathors, goddesses present at one's birth, who predict the whole of one's life to those who can hear their speech. The Nile was said to have a fairly predictable cycle of seven good years and seven lean years. The "seven Hathors" thus counseled preparing for bad fortune when you are enjoying the good. It is doubtful that the Renaissance knew the image of the seven cows and one bul, and there is certainly no sign of it in the card. But they might have connected the Biblical imagery of Pharaoh's dream to the card, as one remedy--prepare for the bad times during the good. Moreover one of the genealogies for Tyche, the Greek equivalent of Fortuna, called her the daughter of Foresight. (2)
The sphinx-like little king at the top of the wheel, however, is an Egyptian image: Egyptian sphinxes, as opposed to Greek ones, were representations of the Pharaoh with the body of a lion, as the Greek authors on Egypt recorded. Yet perhaps the card makers attached the Greek meaning to them, derived from the famous story of Oedipus. The Sphinx, with her simple riddle, lured him into becoming King of Thebes and marrying its Queen. He thought he was clever, outwitting the oracle that had predicted he would kill his father and marry his mother. Yet the Queen of Thebes was in fact Oedipus's mother, and the reason she was a widow was that Oedipus had unwittingly killed her husband, Oedipus's father. The Sphinx at the top of the wheel suggests that "pride goeth before a fall," as they say, and that the future is out of one's hands. (3)
References,Wheel, Egyptian:
1. Clement, Hero, Proclus: quoted by Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 591f. More from Proclus: Thomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought... - Google Books Result, p. 145.
2. Seven Hathors, Seven good years: Desroches-Noblecourt: Le Fabuleux Heritage de L'Egypte. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep, section on "Imhotep and Joseph." In the Egyptian version of the story, the Pharaoh is visited in a dream by Khnum, who tells him how to end a drought, one that lasts longer than the usual 7 year cycle, by giving more money to Knum's cult-center on Elephantine Island. My personal theory is that what caused the drought is that funds had been cut to keep the Nile flowing smoothly above the first cataract, in the vicinity of the island, and as a result the desert got most of the benefit of the flood.
3. Lion: Herodotus, Histories II. 175, in Herodotus, trans. William Beloe, at Google books; see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx. Daughter of Foresight: Alkman fr. 64, cited on p. 116 of Paul Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia: a regional history, 1300-362 BC - Google Books Result.
The Dionysian Wheel: Dionysus is the patron deity of tragedy, which was performed in the "theatre of Dionysus" at Athens. The name "tragedy" probably derives from "tragos," a word in Attic Greek meaning "goat." The exemplar in Aristotle is Oedipus, whom the Sphinx, this time a man-eating female, seemingly rewarded but really trapped, when he solved her riddle. In some early cards, such as the one in black and white above, the initiates are shown wiser going down than up, as shown by which part is human. The Sphinx in this way is an agent of the divine, evil serving good. Noblet retains this feature (above right). He also has water below each: one comes out of the primordial water and returns to it. (1)
3. Lion: Herodotus, Histories II. 175, in Herodotus, trans. William Beloe, at Google books; see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx. Daughter of Foresight: Alkman fr. 64, cited on p. 116 of Paul Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia: a regional history, 1300-362 BC - Google Books Result.
The Dionysian Wheel: Dionysus is the patron deity of tragedy, which was performed in the "theatre of Dionysus" at Athens. The name "tragedy" probably derives from "tragos," a word in Attic Greek meaning "goat." The exemplar in Aristotle is Oedipus, whom the Sphinx, this time a man-eating female, seemingly rewarded but really trapped, when he solved her riddle. In some early cards, such as the one in black and white above, the initiates are shown wiser going down than up, as shown by which part is human. The Sphinx in this way is an agent of the divine, evil serving good. Noblet retains this feature (above right). He also has water below each: one comes out of the primordial water and returns to it. (1)
For Noblet and the Marseille-style cards that followed him, however, both the one going up and the one going down, our two hapless initiates, are animals in human dress, like the monkeys or other animals sometimes exhibited at fairs; the cycle simply repeats. This reflects the Orphic view of life as successive incarnations, as much as it does the ups and downs of one life. To escape the wheel, one had to be in the realm of the immortals, spiritually in this life and fully thereafter, provided one has lived right and knows the proper Orphic passwords. The light blue on the card (enhanced by Camoin, below), perhaps signifies that realm, from which the Sphinx also comes. (2)
An Orphic medallion (right, below) shows the "wheel of Tyche," i.e. Fortune, at the bottom left, the ladder by which to climb to the immortals, and the chariot carrying Dionysus and Ariadne. The goal of life is oneness with the god, to become a Dionysus or an Ariadne. (3)
An Orphic medallion (right, below) shows the "wheel of Tyche," i.e. Fortune, at the bottom left, the ladder by which to climb to the immortals, and the chariot carrying Dionysus and Ariadne. The goal of life is oneness with the god, to become a Dionysus or an Ariadne. (3)
References, Wheel, Dionysian:
1. Italian image: Kaplan, Encyclopedia of tarot Vol. 1, p. 125. Tragos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/. Aristotle: http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics.html.
2. Orphic view: http://www.answers.com/topic/orphism.
3. Image, Kerenyi, Dionysus: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life. Wheel of Tyche, ladder: Kerenyi p. 387. Becoming an Ariadne: Kerenyi, p. 369. Both pages in Google Books.
The Alchemical Wheel of Fortune. The only wheel pictured in alchemical illustrations is the great wheel of the spheres around the earth. In one,a small winged creature represents the soul; I presume that it descends through its 22 levels and then reascends the same way. The number 22 is probably chosen because it is the number of Hebrew letters, but its coincidence with the number of trumps is suggestive.
In the other one, the woman is the Queen of Heaven, the world-soul, with two chains, one to the ape below and the other to God. Probably it is suggested by Juno's chain, which kept her in the highest reaches of the air. That she has one foot on the earth and one on the land is probably an attempt to link her with the Star card. The spheres move in a cyclical course around the center. Both illustrations are from Robert Fludd's Utriusque Cosmi, 1617. Thus they are both comparatively late in the development of alchemy. (1)
Before tarot, the early 15th century Heilege Dreifaltigkeit shows a person on a wheel, as one of three instruments of death used in the Middle Ages. I am not sure how it worked, but it must have been painful. The other means of death are hanging from a rope and having one's head cut off, which are reminiscent of trumps 13 and 14 (the scythe and the rope). Alchemically, it is a matter of torturing the metal with heat to remove impurities and speed up the "maturation" process. (2)
The Wheel then shows the motion of circulation, the round of evaporation and condensation that constitutes the purification of the Stone. Each rise and fall purifies one a little, in lifetime after lifetime, until the purity of the Stone is reached.
References, the Alchemical Wheel
1. First Image: Fabricius, Alchemy p. 15. Second image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chemheritage/3554063495/.
2. Scanned from Laurinda Dixon, Bosch p. 269.
The Pythagorean and Kabbalist Wheel
The number 10 is, like the 1, the number of God, but this time fully realized rather than existing in potential. It includes not just the material universe, as in the case of the 4, but the soul in all its microcosmic and macrocosmic manifestation--in the ten spheres of being as well as in the soul of humans. Here what Agrippa says about 10 is especially relevant:
In Kabbalah, we are at the bottom of the tree of life, Malkhuth, meaning Kingdom.. Pico says: Kingdom, severed from the other shoots by Adam's sin (28.4); in the west of Eden, the river Dichon, meaning atonement (Oration, p. 16); tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by which god created the world (28.5);; Keneset Israel, female (28.17); unshining mirror (28.20); sea to which all rivers run, divinity (28.27); , kingdom of David (28.29); universalized bride (28.32); superior earth (28.42); prophecy through the spirit; prophecy through the daughter of the voice (28.46); Adonai,...the Holy Spirit (11>6).
Here Ricci is helpful. He has: Edonai, Kingdom, the congregation of Israel, the temple of the King, the bride, the queen of the sky, the virgin of Israel, the gates of God, the kingdom of the house of David, the garden of David. 30. Of the great corporeal man, the male is the shining machine of the sky; the female is that which is seen more obscurely in the moon and the elementaries... 52. As long as he inhabited the garden of pleasure, the first Adam knew all these ten sephiroth ...by contemplation of mind, without the dictate of the Law. 53. But when...at the stimulation of the serpent and Eve, he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he did not cut around its skin; he cut off a twig from its proper root, and he separated Kingdom from Foundation.
I do not know what all of this means. What I get is this. This tenth sefira is the closest to humanity, but also cut off from the rest of the tree. She is identified with the bride in the Song of Songs, yearning for her beloved who is Tiferet. When he comes for her, the night will be like day. The bride is also identified with the Congregation of Israel, i.e. the people of the covenant. Her deliverance is their deliverance.
The Wheel of Fortune in the Cartomantic Tradition. Etteilla's card here is no. 21, with the keywords "Fortune" and "Augmentation," i.e. Increase.
And here are the word-lists.
The Tens in the Sola-Busca and Etteilla.
From what the Theology of Arithmetic says about the Ennead, that it marks a turning around to the beginning, the source, one might expect that it would talk about the Decad as the Monad in another form. There is some of that, in that it refers to both as "God." But the Decad is not a new beginning; it is rather the fulfillment of what the Monad began: it is the actuality of that which the Monad was in potentiality. We can tell that by the epithets that it lists for the Decad:
In that spirit, I see the SB Tens as expressing different interpretations of life's wholes.
First, in Swords, the man's bent head suggests sorrow. All ten swords are in his bag; the job is completed; what next? It is hard to let go of a project once it is done. You want to keep going over something you've written, for example, perfecting it, adding things you missed, etc. You realize its imperfections; it was not as grand as you had hoped. One might imagine the Creator-god feeling that way, surveying his creation in these latter days. It all works, but with such suffering, such antagonisms, such refusal to accept what he has wrought. The demiurge grieves.
The "Etteilla" Uprights very much capture the feeling of the SB card. The Reverseds suggest the other side of affliction when it occurs by virtue of force of arms. One man's sorrow is another's victory. The Reverseds draw on a tradition that the suit of Swords connoted the soldier and warfare. So the most of Swords would be the most of warfare, which results in the most of sorrow for one side and the most in victory, if not always happiness, for the other.
What is more, from the ten numbers of the Decad alone, the Theology declares, it is possible to know the laws of the whole universe, in microcosm. For example, if 6x6 results in a number ending in 6, the same will be true of all powers of 6 ad infinitum. A less intuitive example is that the sequence of squares is generated by the successive sums of odd numbers, i.e. 1+3=4, 1+3+5=9, 1+3+5+7=16, and so on. By reason, knowing that the universe is inherently comprehesible, we apprehend fate, with trust that the order will continue. This principle, that the macocosm is like the microcosm, has servd scientists well. The same numeric laws that govern the apple falling on Newton's head govern the movements of the planets.
How, then, can knowing our fate by reason bring sorrow and submission? A mundane example is when one's expenses habitually are more than one's income. One is fated to deal with the debt. In classical literature, a non-quantitative example is Sophocles' Oedipus. He goes about intellectually solving the problem of why Thebes is suffering from plague. In the process, he learns his own origins, and thereby deduces by intellect that he is the problem with Thebes, that he must leave, and that he must atone for his hybris. In self-exiling and self-blinding, he submits to the powers of fate he had previously sought to avoid. Thus indeed, his intellectual task is finished, in great sorrow and all the other words in the "Etteilla" word list.
Now I will move on to Batons. There we see another view of a completed whole. I see it as the commemorative tomb of a man whose life was spent honorably and well. It is the positive side of the Creator-god's work: a world of beauty in which suffering is the ladder toward moral loftiness.
Here I like Di Vinzenzo's statement of the card's significance, which also points to the downside of honor, namely, going after honor too much, with too much self-pride.
The "Ettella" Uprights seem to pick up on just the negative side of the man of honor,i.e. the appearance of honor, not its realization. The Reverseds focus on another negative, the difficulties someone might achieve in the completion of one's goal..
The "Etteilla" Uprights seem to me an attempt to reconcile various interpretations.
To keep back one coin, which is what I see the putto doing, suggests to me a hedge against fate, which seems to pull him to have everything deposited in the one place. If all else is lost, the person will at least have something. Or if the one disc is lost, he will still have the rest in safekeeping.
The "Etteilla" Reverseds refer specifically to Fate. Let us recall the Neopythagorean concept of fate as spelled out in the Theology, which I discussed in relation to Swords. It is a rational apprehension, frequently too late, of what is in store for one. While our fate may be deducible from the numbers, the problem is that we never seem to have all the numbers we need. So perhaps the putto is wise to hesitate before throwing in the last disc. Let us not tempt fate with the illusion of security, i.e. the box guarded by the lazy dog. Perhaps we should gamble our last disc, or invest it riskily, or hold it close to ourselves instead of putting it someplace that appears safer. On the other hand, perhaps our fears are groundless, and there is no place safer than the box.
So let us turn to the SB Ten of Cups, which is also the last of the SB cards I am considering on this thread.
This card is rather similar to the Nine of Cups, but with a mature man's face instead of the young sea-god. The cups seem to be dancing around him. We may perhaps get a clue to its meaning from the "Etteilla."
To me the face even suggests Jewishness. It invites comparison to that of King Solomon in one of Marco Zoppo's works. Solomon is conducting a test like that of the true and false mother; here the putative sons of a deceased man are commanded to shoot arrows at the body of their father. Only the true son, protesting at right in the detail below, refuses.
It may only be the beards on the left-hand figures that make me think this, all rather like Solomon's. But Jews were not the only one to wear beards in Renaissance Italy; Alfonso d'Este the duke-apparent of Ferrara, wore one, and also the Doge of Venice,(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agostino_Barbarigo).
The conditions of Jews at that time may be relevant to the card. The numerous Jews in Ferrara had much the same rights as other citizens, and no forced labels on their clothing (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view. ... tter=F#288). Yet there were occasional indignities--and special taxes to be paid. There was also the ranting of preachers, which Leonelo and Pope Nicholas V had combined to suppress. Ercole lifted the special taxes, as the Jewish Encyclopedia relates:
The situation in nearby Venice was much worse; there were occasional forced baptisms, and in 1480, the killing of three in a "blood libel" case (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... enice.html). They could not build synagogues and had to wear yellow badges, yellow considered the most demeaning color, as that associated with prostitutes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_ghettos_in_Europe).
The moral: those who welcomed one, and whom one benefited, could also turn against one.
11. Strength: Gentle One, in your presence even the strongest submits to your will.
Christian base: The earliest version of this card, the Cary-Visconti (upper right, above), shows a lady holding open a rather fish-like lion's mouth. This idea is repeated in the Noblet and other "Marseille" type decks, including the Conver (lower left and right). A medieval prototype appears at Chartres Cathedral, 1392 (upper left). (1a)
1. Italian image: Kaplan, Encyclopedia of tarot Vol. 1, p. 125. Tragos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/. Aristotle: http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics.html.
2. Orphic view: http://www.answers.com/topic/orphism.
3. Image, Kerenyi, Dionysus: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life. Wheel of Tyche, ladder: Kerenyi p. 387. Becoming an Ariadne: Kerenyi, p. 369. Both pages in Google Books.
The Alchemical Wheel of Fortune. The only wheel pictured in alchemical illustrations is the great wheel of the spheres around the earth. In one,a small winged creature represents the soul; I presume that it descends through its 22 levels and then reascends the same way. The number 22 is probably chosen because it is the number of Hebrew letters, but its coincidence with the number of trumps is suggestive.
In the other one, the woman is the Queen of Heaven, the world-soul, with two chains, one to the ape below and the other to God. Probably it is suggested by Juno's chain, which kept her in the highest reaches of the air. That she has one foot on the earth and one on the land is probably an attempt to link her with the Star card. The spheres move in a cyclical course around the center. Both illustrations are from Robert Fludd's Utriusque Cosmi, 1617. Thus they are both comparatively late in the development of alchemy. (1)
Before tarot, the early 15th century Heilege Dreifaltigkeit shows a person on a wheel, as one of three instruments of death used in the Middle Ages. I am not sure how it worked, but it must have been painful. The other means of death are hanging from a rope and having one's head cut off, which are reminiscent of trumps 13 and 14 (the scythe and the rope). Alchemically, it is a matter of torturing the metal with heat to remove impurities and speed up the "maturation" process. (2)
The Wheel then shows the motion of circulation, the round of evaporation and condensation that constitutes the purification of the Stone. Each rise and fall purifies one a little, in lifetime after lifetime, until the purity of the Stone is reached.
References, the Alchemical Wheel
1. First Image: Fabricius, Alchemy p. 15. Second image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chemheritage/3554063495/.
2. Scanned from Laurinda Dixon, Bosch p. 269.
The Pythagorean and Kabbalist Wheel
The number 10 is, like the 1, the number of God, but this time fully realized rather than existing in potential. It includes not just the material universe, as in the case of the 4, but the soul in all its microcosmic and macrocosmic manifestation--in the ten spheres of being as well as in the soul of humans. Here what Agrippa says about 10 is especially relevant:
This number also is as circular as unity, because being heaped together, returns into a unity, from whence it had its beginning, and is the end, and perfection of all numbers, and the beginning of tens. As the number ten flows back into a unity, from whence it proceeded, so everything that is flowing is returned back to that from which it had the beginning of its flux. .. (Book II, Ch. XIII, p. 287 of Tyson's edition.)By "heaped together," Tyson explains, Agrippa means when when the numbers 1 to 10 are added together, they total 55, the numerals of which added together totals 10, which added together totals 1.
In Kabbalah, we are at the bottom of the tree of life, Malkhuth, meaning Kingdom.. Pico says: Kingdom, severed from the other shoots by Adam's sin (28.4); in the west of Eden, the river Dichon, meaning atonement (Oration, p. 16); tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by which god created the world (28.5);; Keneset Israel, female (28.17); unshining mirror (28.20); sea to which all rivers run, divinity (28.27); , kingdom of David (28.29); universalized bride (28.32); superior earth (28.42); prophecy through the spirit; prophecy through the daughter of the voice (28.46); Adonai,...the Holy Spirit (11>6).
Here Ricci is helpful. He has: Edonai, Kingdom, the congregation of Israel, the temple of the King, the bride, the queen of the sky, the virgin of Israel, the gates of God, the kingdom of the house of David, the garden of David. 30. Of the great corporeal man, the male is the shining machine of the sky; the female is that which is seen more obscurely in the moon and the elementaries... 52. As long as he inhabited the garden of pleasure, the first Adam knew all these ten sephiroth ...by contemplation of mind, without the dictate of the Law. 53. But when...at the stimulation of the serpent and Eve, he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he did not cut around its skin; he cut off a twig from its proper root, and he separated Kingdom from Foundation.
I do not know what all of this means. What I get is this. This tenth sefira is the closest to humanity, but also cut off from the rest of the tree. She is identified with the bride in the Song of Songs, yearning for her beloved who is Tiferet. When he comes for her, the night will be like day. The bride is also identified with the Congregation of Israel, i.e. the people of the covenant. Her deliverance is their deliverance.
The Wheel of Fortune in the Cartomantic Tradition. Etteilla's card here is no. 21, with the keywords "Fortune" and "Augmentation," i.e. Increase.
And here are the word-lists.
20. [Fortune.= FORTUNE—Happiness, Felicity, Improvement, Enhancement, Blessing, Prosperity.—Advantages, Riches, Profits—Gifts, Favors.—Fate, Destiny, Adventures, Good Fortune.These words are all positive, both Upright and Reversed. I don't know whether the cartomantic tradition that Etteilla was drawing on did similarly, or if Etteilla just had the good business sense to know that positive fortunes are more popular than negative ones.
Reversed: [Augmentation.] INCREASE, Expansion, Abundance, More.—Development, Growth, Vegetation, Production.
The Tens in the Sola-Busca and Etteilla.
From what the Theology of Arithmetic says about the Ennead, that it marks a turning around to the beginning, the source, one might expect that it would talk about the Decad as the Monad in another form. There is some of that, in that it refers to both as "God." But the Decad is not a new beginning; it is rather the fulfillment of what the Monad began: it is the actuality of that which the Monad was in potentiality. We can tell that by the epithets that it lists for the Decad:
Counting to ten on our fingers, when we complete the count we are still on our fingers. It is only at 11 that we start over, either on our toes or our other hand again. It is the same in the Greek way of writing numerals. One is alpha, Two is Beta, and so on up to Ten, which is Iota (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals). Then Eleven is not Kappa but rather Iota Alpha. The series starts over, on a new level. It is not until Twenty that the letter Kappa is used, and Twenty-one is Kappa Alpha, etc. Iota represents the entirety of what has come before, and that letter followed by Alpha is the new beginning. The Decad is thus the whole, of which the prior numbers are the parts, and after which is only a repetition of what came before.Hence the Pythagoreans in their theology called it sometimes ‘universe,’ sometimes ‘heaven,’ sometimes ‘all,’ sometimes ‘Fate’ and ‘Eternity’, ‘power’ and ‘trust’ and ‘Necessity,’ ‘Atlas’ and ‘unwearying,’ and simply ‘God’ and ‘Phanes’ and ‘sun.’ (pp. 109-110)
In that spirit, I see the SB Tens as expressing different interpretations of life's wholes.
First, in Swords, the man's bent head suggests sorrow. All ten swords are in his bag; the job is completed; what next? It is hard to let go of a project once it is done. You want to keep going over something you've written, for example, perfecting it, adding things you missed, etc. You realize its imperfections; it was not as grand as you had hoped. One might imagine the Creator-god feeling that way, surveying his creation in these latter days. It all works, but with such suffering, such antagonisms, such refusal to accept what he has wrought. The demiurge grieves.
The "Etteilla" Uprights very much capture the feeling of the SB card. The Reverseds suggest the other side of affliction when it occurs by virtue of force of arms. One man's sorrow is another's victory. The Reverseds draw on a tradition that the suit of Swords connoted the soldier and warfare. So the most of Swords would be the most of warfare, which results in the most of sorrow for one side and the most in victory, if not always happiness, for the other.
It is a peculiarity of the Theology's concept of Fate that it is an apprehension of the future perceived not by some sort of trance-state but by conscious rationality. In the Theology, one of the epithets of the Decad is Fate.ETTEILLA 10 OF SWORDS: Affliction, Tears, Crying, Sobs, Groans, Sighs, Moans, Lamentations, Complaints, Ailments, Grief, Sadness, Distress, Jeremiad, Lay [Poetry], Desolation [last 3 not in c. 1838]. REVERSED: Advantage, Gain, Profit, [lucre, c. 1838], Success.—Favor, Gift, Kind Deed, Influence, Ability, Empire, Authority, Power, Usurpation.
To the Pythagoreans, number is what makes possible a rational order in a universe with limitless possibilities. Number equals Fate, the law of God to which, like the man in Swords, all must bow down. What physicist today would disagree? The upside of Fate in this sense, according to the Theology, is trust: because God works by numbers, the future will be like the past. The sun will rise tomorrow not because it always has, in our experience, but because the numbers say it will. Again, this is something with which both Newton and Einstein would agree.Again, they called it ‘Fate,’ because there is no attribute, either among numbers or among things which have been formed by numbers, which is not sown in the decad and the numbers within it, and does not also extend, in the remaining series, step by step, to what follows the decad, and Fate is as it were a connected and orderly result. [Translator’s note: Heimarmene (Fate) is here related to heirmos (series)]. (p. 110)
What is more, from the ten numbers of the Decad alone, the Theology declares, it is possible to know the laws of the whole universe, in microcosm. For example, if 6x6 results in a number ending in 6, the same will be true of all powers of 6 ad infinitum. A less intuitive example is that the sequence of squares is generated by the successive sums of odd numbers, i.e. 1+3=4, 1+3+5=9, 1+3+5+7=16, and so on. By reason, knowing that the universe is inherently comprehesible, we apprehend fate, with trust that the order will continue. This principle, that the macocosm is like the microcosm, has servd scientists well. The same numeric laws that govern the apple falling on Newton's head govern the movements of the planets.
How, then, can knowing our fate by reason bring sorrow and submission? A mundane example is when one's expenses habitually are more than one's income. One is fated to deal with the debt. In classical literature, a non-quantitative example is Sophocles' Oedipus. He goes about intellectually solving the problem of why Thebes is suffering from plague. In the process, he learns his own origins, and thereby deduces by intellect that he is the problem with Thebes, that he must leave, and that he must atone for his hybris. In self-exiling and self-blinding, he submits to the powers of fate he had previously sought to avoid. Thus indeed, his intellectual task is finished, in great sorrow and all the other words in the "Etteilla" word list.
Now I will move on to Batons. There we see another view of a completed whole. I see it as the commemorative tomb of a man whose life was spent honorably and well. It is the positive side of the Creator-god's work: a world of beauty in which suffering is the ladder toward moral loftiness.
Here I like Di Vinzenzo's statement of the card's significance, which also points to the downside of honor, namely, going after honor too much, with too much self-pride.
I would add that there is the danger of achieving the appearance of honor only, and not the real thing, Plato talked a lot about the life of the man of honor, positively and negatively, in Book VIII of his Republic (545ff).Significance: Display one’s successes with pride. Successes in public life, professional rewards, fame, glory. Also, excessive self-love, ostentation of one’s status, narcissism, longing to distinguish oneself at all costs. (p. 119).
The "Ettella" Uprights seem to pick up on just the negative side of the man of honor,i.e. the appearance of honor, not its realization. The Reverseds focus on another negative, the difficulties someone might achieve in the completion of one's goal..
In Coins, I think the SB shows us another response to the completion of a task, namely, to keep something undone, so as not to "close the lid," so to speak--or to keep something in reserve, so as not to put all one's eggs in one basket.ETTEILLA 10 OF BATONS: Treason, Perfidy, Trickery, Deception, Cunning, Surprise, Disguise, Dissimulation, Hypocrisy, Prevarication, Duplicity, Disloyalty, Evil Deeds, Deceitfulness, Subterfuge, Conspiracy.—Impostor. REVERSED: Obstacle, Attentiveness [c. 1838, has Impediment].—Bar, Hindrance, Opposition [c. 1838], Vexations [Contrarities], Difficulties, Pain, Toil.—Inconvenience, Abjectness [c. 1838 has Objection], Quibble, Complaint, Stumbling Block, Fence [c. 1838, Hurdle], Entrenchment, Redoubt, Fortification.
The "Etteilla" Uprights seem to me an attempt to reconcile various interpretations.
We are now in the area of life--for some, the main part--in which the goal is not honor but material things: money, possessions. The tradition that saw Swords as associated with warfare also saw Coins as associated with money an material wealth. De Mellet, in 1781, wrote:ETTEILLA 10 OF COINS: House, Household, Economy, Savings.—Dwelling, Domicile, Residence, Manor, Abode, Regiment [not in c. 1838 which has Logement, Lodging], Hotel, Boutique Palace, Stall, Lodge, Shed, Building or Ship [Batiment], Vessel, Bowl [c. 1838 has Vase].—Archives, Castle, Cottage, [c. 1838 adds: Cabin, Tent, Pavillion, Hostel, Inn, Cabaret, Bistro, Tavern, Religious House, Monastery, Convent, Hermitage, Burial, Tomb, Sepulcher, Stable.]—Family, Extraction, Race, Line [c. 1838 only], Posterity.—Den, Cavern, Lair, Retreat [c. 1838 only]. REVERSED: Game of Chance [c. 1838 only], Lot, Fortune, Gambling [not in c. 1838 which has Jeu, i.e. Game], Fortunate Situation [Cas fortuit, i.e. Coincidence], Fate, Hazard [c. 1838 only], Ignorance, Chance, Destiny, Destined, Inevitability.—Fortunate or Unfortunate Occasion [last 2 not in c. 1838, which has instead Arrest, Decree, Decision, Dowry, Legitimate, Share, Division, Gift, Bonus, Pension, Occasion.]
On the SB card, the box below the putto could be such a person's life savings, or also his house and grounds, all that he will pass on to his heirs. The dog scratching itself in front suggests to me the typical placement of a dog, in front of a house as its guardian--in this case, a rather preoccupied one.Les Coupes en général annonçoient le bonheur, & les deniers la richesse.
(The Cups in general denote happiness, & the Coins riches.) (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherch ... les_Tarots, section IV.)
To keep back one coin, which is what I see the putto doing, suggests to me a hedge against fate, which seems to pull him to have everything deposited in the one place. If all else is lost, the person will at least have something. Or if the one disc is lost, he will still have the rest in safekeeping.
The "Etteilla" Reverseds refer specifically to Fate. Let us recall the Neopythagorean concept of fate as spelled out in the Theology, which I discussed in relation to Swords. It is a rational apprehension, frequently too late, of what is in store for one. While our fate may be deducible from the numbers, the problem is that we never seem to have all the numbers we need. So perhaps the putto is wise to hesitate before throwing in the last disc. Let us not tempt fate with the illusion of security, i.e. the box guarded by the lazy dog. Perhaps we should gamble our last disc, or invest it riskily, or hold it close to ourselves instead of putting it someplace that appears safer. On the other hand, perhaps our fears are groundless, and there is no place safer than the box.
So let us turn to the SB Ten of Cups, which is also the last of the SB cards I am considering on this thread.
This card is rather similar to the Nine of Cups, but with a mature man's face instead of the young sea-god. The cups seem to be dancing around him. We may perhaps get a clue to its meaning from the "Etteilla."
A traditional suit meaning for Cups was the town--in contrast to Batons, which was the countryside. This can be seen in de Gebelin's and de Mellet's essays on the tarot of 1781. De Mellet says:ETTEILLA 10 OF CUPS: Town, City, Homeland, Country, Market Town, Village, Place, Site, Dwelling Place, House, Residence.—Citizen, Citizenry, Town Resident (last 2 not in c. 1838). REVERSED: Wrath, Indignation, Strife, Irritation, Rage, Anger, Violence. [C. 1838 adds: Hate, Aversion, Blame, Animosity, Antipathy, Resentment, Vengeance, Danger, Risk, Peril, Injury, Affront, Outrage, Blasphemy, Thunderstorm, Tempest, Squall, Cruelty, Inhumanity, Atrocity.]
So in this greatest of Cup cards, we have a townsman, perhaps a shopkeeper and his wares. The Reverseds perhaps indicate the hostility a shopkeeper can generate if his wares are deemed too expensive, or of poorer quality than is claimed for them. Or perhaps they turn against the merchant for some reason unrelated to his services; perhaps he is a Jew. I will expand on this point in a moment, but first I want to quote Di Vicenzo on this card (Sola-Busca Tarot, pp. 52-53). She is worth hearing at length:Les Carreaux [Il est à remarquer que dans l'Ecriture symbolique les Egyptiens traçoient des carreaux pour exprimer la campagne.], (les Bâtons), l'indifference & la campagne...Les coeurs & plus particulierement le dix, dévoilent les événemens qui doivent arriver à la ville. La coupe, symbole duc Sacerdoce, semble destinée à exprimer Memphis & le sejour des Pontifes.
Diamonds [note that in the symbolic writing system of the Egyptians diamond squares represent the countryside] (Batons) indifference & the countryside...The hearts & more particularly the Ten, reveal the events that must arrive at the city. The cups, symbol of the priesthood, seem intended to express Memphis & the stay of the Pontiffs. (Section V, at http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherch ... les_Tarots).
Additionally, Di Vincenzo again tries to relate the cups to the 10 sefiroth of the Kabbalah. They do not quite fit that configuration, but their layout is not that far out of line. Here the comparison might have a special appropriateness, for the man in the middle might be a Jew. Since Jews were generally forbidden to own land, they were the quintessential town-dwellers.The number Ten represents fulfillment, the manifestation of the original unity after working out the first nine numbers, the totality of the universe, but also of man. It is the famous Pythagorean Tetraktys, in which the source and the root of the whole of nature is found. The Tetraktys forms a shape with ten points arranged on four planes (1+2+3+4=10)...
The card symbolically represents the achievement of individuality during the last phases of pregnancy. At the same time, it describes the moment in which the individual, perfectly mature and aware, gets ready to resume the road back to the bosom of divinity.
Significance: A face surrounded by ewers—deep reflection is required. Maturity, completeness, end of a cycle, or doubts, perplexity, well-grounded fears, perspicacity.
To me the face even suggests Jewishness. It invites comparison to that of King Solomon in one of Marco Zoppo's works. Solomon is conducting a test like that of the true and false mother; here the putative sons of a deceased man are commanded to shoot arrows at the body of their father. Only the true son, protesting at right in the detail below, refuses.
It may only be the beards on the left-hand figures that make me think this, all rather like Solomon's. But Jews were not the only one to wear beards in Renaissance Italy; Alfonso d'Este the duke-apparent of Ferrara, wore one, and also the Doge of Venice,(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agostino_Barbarigo).
The conditions of Jews at that time may be relevant to the card. The numerous Jews in Ferrara had much the same rights as other citizens, and no forced labels on their clothing (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view. ... tter=F#288). Yet there were occasional indignities--and special taxes to be paid. There was also the ranting of preachers, which Leonelo and Pope Nicholas V had combined to suppress. Ercole lifted the special taxes, as the Jewish Encyclopedia relates:
But the situation could change at any time--and did, after Ercole.in 1473 Duke Ercole I. declared, probably in answer to the pope's request for their expulsion, that in the interest of the duchy he could not spare them, and that he would therefore relieve them not only from all special burdens, but also from the payment of the sums formerly extorted as taxes by papal legates.
The situation in nearby Venice was much worse; there were occasional forced baptisms, and in 1480, the killing of three in a "blood libel" case (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... enice.html). They could not build synagogues and had to wear yellow badges, yellow considered the most demeaning color, as that associated with prostitutes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_ghettos_in_Europe).
The moral: those who welcomed one, and whom one benefited, could also turn against one.
11. Strength: Gentle One, in your presence even the strongest submits to your will.
Christian base: The earliest version of this card, the Cary-Visconti (upper right, above), shows a lady holding open a rather fish-like lion's mouth. This idea is repeated in the Noblet and other "Marseille" type decks, including the Conver (lower left and right). A medieval prototype appears at Chartres Cathedral, 1392 (upper left). (1a)
The lady's pose here, holding the lion's jaws, is similar to representations of Samson or Hercules fighting the lion. Here is Durer's of Samson, 1496-97, of which the relevant detail is below:
But the lady's effort is quite different from Samson's. Samson is holding the Lion's jaws by force, to keep them from biting him. They are in a battle to the death. But on the card, neither seems to want to kill the other. Rather, she is overcoming her natural fear of the lion, and the lion is submitting to her beauty and grace. It would seem to be the moral virtue Fortitude, as opposed to strength in the physical sense. After the disaster of the Wheel, one needs Fortitude to withstand hardship. There were three basic moral virtues in Aristotle; the fourth basic virtue, Wisdom, Aristotle considered an intellectual virtue, as medieval scholars took pains to show. In most early tarot cards, all three are represented by women.
The lion seems to be respecting the lady's courage and gentleness, and he responds in kind. Virtuous behavior inspires virtue in others--even, if one is lucky, one's enemies. An example from Christian art is St. Jerome removing a thorn from a lion's paw. Durer illustrated the incident in a 1492 woodcut, making the lion more like a pet dog. In our card, however, the lion does not seem quite so pet-like. (1b)
The next known version of the card, for the same family (above left), shows a man clubbing a cowering lion. This one could indeed be Hercules, or perhaps Samson and the lion that attacked him. I suspect this theme was chosen by the Duke who was paying the bill. Galeazzo Sforza liked lions; he even bought one for his son, from a Venetian merchant. His last name, Sforza, is the same as the card. As Kaplan has observed, the man on the card has similar features to Francesco Sforza, Galeazzo's father, who was famous for his military exploits (above, right). The name "Sforza," in fact, had been the nickname of Francesco's father Muzio Attendolo, given the name by his men because of the way he could save difficult situations in battlen. Eventually Muzio adopted the name legally. Thus the card changes from Forteza, as it is called in the early lists, to Sforza. (2)
This theme of fortitude expressed as brute strength rather than the power of virtue is repeated more ambiguously in the "Tarot of Mantegna." It was Samson who knocked down the temple columns, but since women represent the virtues, the card designer made him a woman. Samson's lion looks on meekly. Perhaps the lion is to suggest that the lady is Samson, after his hair has grown back, knocking down the Philistines' columns with his new-found strength. The "Gringonneur" card is similar to the Mantegna image. (3)
Future card-makers, at least those doing predecessors to the Marseille-style, went back to the original idea, at least tentatively. We see her in the Cary Sheet, above left, pressing just one hand to the lion's mouth, either to keep the lion down in an act of strength or as an act of trust in the lion's good will. By the time of Noblet, the lion's submission in good will seems to be the dominant impression. Flornoy thinks that Noblet, in 1650, substituted a bear, to make the symbolism fit the audience: a lion in Egypt or Imperial Rome is equivalent to a bear further north. However then Louis XIV imported a lion, and bears were soon forgotten, as we see in the Chosson card, 1672. (4)
From all the various associations in scripture and legend, it was lions that were associated with fortitude and strength more than other animals. ""Lion-hearted" even means "very brave." Pictorially, we see that in Giotto's "Fortitudo," below left, one of his series of seven virtues and seven vices. The lion is on the lady's shield. (4a)
Another Christian symbol that may be part of the meaning of the image, it seems to me, is that of Jesus as the Lion of Judah, proclaimed in the Book of Revelation (5:5). Again let us look at Durer's representation of Jesus at the Last Judgment (above), sword in one hand and scales in the other: the lion is simply an image of Jesus at that time. (5)
The lady putting her hand in the lion's mouth is putting faith in the lion in the way that Christians put faith in Jesus. Like the lion, he is gentle as well as strong. In submitting to his will, moreover, Christians partake of his strength. And in so doing Christianity is stronger than its enemies. "The weakness of God is stronger than the strength of men," said St. Paul (I Cor. 1:25). (The first part of this verse is relevant to the Fool card: "The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men.")
The symbol of the lion here has much in common with the unicorn. Although the story predates Christianity, medieval Europe gave it a Christian interpretation. The unicorn was too swift for hunters to bring down, except with the aid of a virgin. The unicorn would meekly put its head on her lap and fall asleep. Then the hunters could kill it, as the medieval illustration below shows. (6)
Then a final scene, in one series of tapestries, showed the unicorn alive and healthy once more, happy in his small corral even though there were scars in his side. In Christianity the unicorn was Christ, attracted to Mary's womb by her purity. The hunters were the crucifiers of Jesus, and the unicorn alive at the end was his resurrection. (7)
In another set of six tapestries," all of them show a lion opposite the unicorn, with the lady between them (the sixth one is below).
To be sure, the man who commissioned the tapestries had a lion as well as a unicorn on his coat of arms. But from the medieval point of view, the lion was simply the unicorn's alter ego and another representation of Christ. For example, Chretien de Troyes, ca. 1200, wrote a story in which the knight Yvain recovered the love of his lady, whom he had lost due to his arrogance, by triumphs in which he was aided by a lion. The lion is again Christ, in whose presence the knight gains humility even as he triumphs. Likewise the lady on our card is rewarded with the strength of the lion at her service when she shows fortitude and has faith in the lion's goodness. (8)
Another example is the "greene lyon" of George Ripley's 1450s alchemical poem, the Cantilena. (Yes, I will have a section for an alchemical interpretation of this card; but the issue comes up now.) An old king is reborn in his mother, only to prove weak and sickly despite suckling at her breast.The child is cooked (along with his mother) and the flesh is stripped from his bones; this whiteness remakes her into Luna, and he is born again as her "ruddy son," i.e. Sol. (9)
Jung interpreted the first part of this poem, in which the old king enters his mother's womb:
The symbol of the lion here has much in common with the unicorn. Although the story predates Christianity, medieval Europe gave it a Christian interpretation. The unicorn was too swift for hunters to bring down, except with the aid of a virgin. The unicorn would meekly put its head on her lap and fall asleep. Then the hunters could kill it, as the medieval illustration below shows. (6)
Then a final scene, in one series of tapestries, showed the unicorn alive and healthy once more, happy in his small corral even though there were scars in his side. In Christianity the unicorn was Christ, attracted to Mary's womb by her purity. The hunters were the crucifiers of Jesus, and the unicorn alive at the end was his resurrection. (7)
In another set of six tapestries," all of them show a lion opposite the unicorn, with the lady between them (the sixth one is below).
To be sure, the man who commissioned the tapestries had a lion as well as a unicorn on his coat of arms. But from the medieval point of view, the lion was simply the unicorn's alter ego and another representation of Christ. For example, Chretien de Troyes, ca. 1200, wrote a story in which the knight Yvain recovered the love of his lady, whom he had lost due to his arrogance, by triumphs in which he was aided by a lion. The lion is again Christ, in whose presence the knight gains humility even as he triumphs. Likewise the lady on our card is rewarded with the strength of the lion at her service when she shows fortitude and has faith in the lion's goodness. (8)
Another example is the "greene lyon" of George Ripley's 1450s alchemical poem, the Cantilena. (Yes, I will have a section for an alchemical interpretation of this card; but the issue comes up now.) An old king is reborn in his mother, only to prove weak and sickly despite suckling at her breast.The child is cooked (along with his mother) and the flesh is stripped from his bones; this whiteness remakes her into Luna, and he is born again as her "ruddy son," i.e. Sol. (9)
Jung interpreted the first part of this poem, in which the old king enters his mother's womb:
We must consider certain medieval speculations concerning God's need for improvement and the transformation of the wrathful God of the Old Testament into the God of Love in the new: for, like the unicorn, he was softened by love in her lap. Ideas of this kind are found as early as Bonaventure, the Franciscan saint, who died in 1274. (10)
Jung observed that although the unicorn is absent from this fable,
...the lion is likewise a symbol of Mercurius. The virgin represents his passive, feminine aspect, while the unicorn or the lion illustrates the wild, rampant, masculine, penetrating force of the spiritus mercurialis. (11)
Thus the "Greene Lyon" corresponds to the unicorn in the lady's lap, Jesus as son of Mary, while the "ruddy son," the Red Lion or Sol, is the resurrected unicorn, accompanying the reborn soul, now Luna.
In this story about the lion, unlike that of the unicorn, there is no hint of treachery on the part of the lady. Likewise, for Chretien the lion simply serves the knight and his reunification with his lady.
Finally, we might also see the lady here as in the position of St. Jerome, and Christ as his lion. Jerome serves Christ, and Christ conquers first the Roman Empire and then the barbarian invaders, through the same process of providing them something that they eventually recognize they need--not a thorn to be removed, but mortal attachments to be severed. So despite the physical weakness of the mortal Jesus and his followers (who are here like Jerome), Christianity triumphs.
The lady shaking the temple columns is the same, when identified with Samson: Samson persevered and so eventually, with God's strength solar entering his limbs as he acquires his lion's mane of hair, brought down the Philistines. And so it was for Christianity later.
Strength, References, Christian.
1a. Chartres: Flornoy, Pelerinage de l'ame. Also somewhere else, but I can't place it. Aristotle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_virtues. Medieval scholars: Peter Abelard, Collationes, p. cxi, at Google Books.
1b. Durer image: Durer, Complete Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, ed. Knappe, plate 144.
1c. Durer image: Durer: Complete Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, plate 108.
2. Francesco Sforza image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Francsesco_Sforza.jpg. Kaplan: Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. 2, p. 101. Galeazzo and the Lion: Gregory Lubkin, A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Muzio Sforza: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzio_Attendolo.
3. Mantegna and Grigonneur images: Innes, Tarot.
4. Noblet Bear, Louis XIV's lion: Flornoy, Pelerinage des Bateleurs, p. 124f.
5. Giotto: http://www.christusrex.org/www1/giotto/virtues.html. Durer: Panofsky, Durer, fig. 101. Also Plate 25 in Durer: Complete Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts.
6. Image and information at http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast140.htm.
7. Image and information at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/medny/albertini2.html.
8. Image and information: http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/paris-cluny-museu.
9. The poem is in Jung, Mysterium Coniunctio, pp. 274-330. An incomplete version (missing the last 8 verses) is in Fabricius, Alchemy, pp. 134-135.
10. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, p. 281.
11. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 438. This passage is quoted connected to the Strength card by Richard Roberts, "Esoteric Tarot: Symbolism of the Waite-Rider Tarot," in Tarot Revelations, by Joseph Campbell, Colin Wilson, and Richard Roberts, p. 181. The importance of the unicorn legend for interpreting the card was impressed upon me by my friend Steve Marshall.
In this story about the lion, unlike that of the unicorn, there is no hint of treachery on the part of the lady. Likewise, for Chretien the lion simply serves the knight and his reunification with his lady.
Finally, we might also see the lady here as in the position of St. Jerome, and Christ as his lion. Jerome serves Christ, and Christ conquers first the Roman Empire and then the barbarian invaders, through the same process of providing them something that they eventually recognize they need--not a thorn to be removed, but mortal attachments to be severed. So despite the physical weakness of the mortal Jesus and his followers (who are here like Jerome), Christianity triumphs.
The lady shaking the temple columns is the same, when identified with Samson: Samson persevered and so eventually, with God's strength solar entering his limbs as he acquires his lion's mane of hair, brought down the Philistines. And so it was for Christianity later.
Strength, References, Christian.
1a. Chartres: Flornoy, Pelerinage de l'ame. Also somewhere else, but I can't place it. Aristotle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_virtues. Medieval scholars: Peter Abelard, Collationes, p. cxi, at Google Books.
1b. Durer image: Durer, Complete Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, ed. Knappe, plate 144.
1c. Durer image: Durer: Complete Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, plate 108.
2. Francesco Sforza image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Francsesco_Sforza.jpg. Kaplan: Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. 2, p. 101. Galeazzo and the Lion: Gregory Lubkin, A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Muzio Sforza: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzio_Attendolo.
3. Mantegna and Grigonneur images: Innes, Tarot.
4. Noblet Bear, Louis XIV's lion: Flornoy, Pelerinage des Bateleurs, p. 124f.
5. Giotto: http://www.christusrex.org/www1/giotto/virtues.html. Durer: Panofsky, Durer, fig. 101. Also Plate 25 in Durer: Complete Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts.
6. Image and information at http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast140.htm.
7. Image and information at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/medny/albertini2.html.
8. Image and information: http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/paris-cluny-museu.
9. The poem is in Jung, Mysterium Coniunctio, pp. 274-330. An incomplete version (missing the last 8 verses) is in Fabricius, Alchemy, pp. 134-135.
10. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, p. 281.
11. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 438. This passage is quoted connected to the Strength card by Richard Roberts, "Esoteric Tarot: Symbolism of the Waite-Rider Tarot," in Tarot Revelations, by Joseph Campbell, Colin Wilson, and Richard Roberts, p. 181. The importance of the unicorn legend for interpreting the card was impressed upon me by my friend Steve Marshall.
Greco-Egyptian perspective: I could find no comparable image in Egyptian mythology. However there is a Renaissance image that is both similar to the tarot image and applicable to Egypt. I am thinking of the famous Renaissance painting "Pallas and the Centaur," by Sandro Botticelli, c. 1482. Pallas Athena, dressed as a sentry, is holding back a centaur from his hunt (whether for animals or nymphs is not clear). It is Wisdom restraining animal instincts. The painting was a wedding present to one of the di Medicis, as if to say, let feminine wisdom rule, not masculine force. The relevance to Egypt is that Plutarch identifies Athena, Wisdom, with Isis. Therefore it is Isis as much as Athena with the Centaur. Moreover, Isis as Queen is appropriate to the crown that the lady on the card appears to be wearing. (1)
In Egypt, the lion was the animal of the Sun God, Ra or Re. I cannot find any Greek source describing her winning Ra or a lion to her side. The closest match is her success in winning the gods' support in recognizing Horus's legitimacy as king of all Egypt. But as Plutarch presents it, Thoth is the one who does the influencing. So conceivably the card could represent Ra, as chief of the gods, submitting to Isis under the unseen influence of Thoth. (2)
The Pyramid texts said that Isis won over Ra by learning his secret name, or acquiring some of his spittle, i.e. being in a position to use his own power against him. But I cannot find any reference to that story that would have been known in the 15th-17th centuries. For that time, it would simply have been Isis's intelligence and connection to Thoth that enabled her to prevail. (3)
References, Strength, Egyptian:
1. Pallas and the Centaur: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallas_and_the_Centaur. Wedding: Barbara Deiming, Botticelli, p. 50 (at Google books).
2. Horus's legitimacy: http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html, XIX.
3. Isis and Ra: http://www.touregypt.net/ISIS.HTM.
Dionysian Strength: Wine has the gentle but effective power to make angry or irritable people more sociable and good-humored. Cartari says that Dionysus
...was often shown with a garland on his head, because flowers are sign of joyfulness, and of being without thoughts; for this reason the ancients used him for conviviality, when they want to be pleasant and happy-go-lucky. (1)
Not only that, but wine even makes people inspired:
Wine (according to Plato) suffuses both the soul and the digestion with warmth. For this reason we read that Aeschylus, the noblest of poets, never wrote his tragedies except in his cups; that Ennius was full of wine when he began singing his martial poetry; that the ancient heroes took counsel on the most important matters over wine. To be sure, it is not likely that they were drunk or, which is the same thing, that their minds were befuddled when they were writing or taking counsel, but [that they did these things] after having fortified themselves with drink, and dispelled the sluggishness that comes from abstention. (2)Love in all forms is helped by wine; Cartari quotes the proverb, "Nothing is possible to Venus without Bacchus." Cartari goes on to say that ivy is sacred to Bacchus because he ties up and restrains those whose anger is likely to hurt others, just as the plant encircles whatever it is with. Thus Dionysus is often shown with wild beasts who happily follow his command. (3)
Dionysus's power is magnified by the animals he tames. Likewise people who become one with the god in wine get a magnified sense of power, and indeed can tap into pent-up energy. But too much can make one foolhardy and aggressive. Cartari quotes Athenaeus:
Near Leggesi, according to Diodorus, were statues of Bacchus made in two ways, the one severe with a long beard, and the other beautiful, of a happy, delicate, and young face--thereby showing how wine drunk out of measure makes man terrible and irascible, but when drunk moderately induces pleasure and joy. (4)
This "terrible and irascible" behavior is also that of the lion, and of course is not a good thing. Letting oneself be led by one's instincts when drunk is dangerous.
A Roman mosaic of Dionysus on a lion (North Africa 2nd century) shows initiates on either side, with cups. The initiates partake of the energy of the god and the lion, for good or for ill. While the card makers probably would not have known this image, the association of Dionysus with lions and the instinctual power released by wine was well enough documented. Conti, for example, relates that at the time when he was captured by pirates,
Dionysus himself became a lion, making all the pirates, except for the captain, run off in flight, but they turned into dolphins as soon as they jumped overboard. (5)
References, Strength, Dionysian:
1. Cartari: in Italian at http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it/xtf/view? docId=bibit000718/bibit000718.xml&chunk.id=d4789e2395&toc.depth=1&toc.id=&brand=default. Search "ghirlanda in capo". My stab at a translation, using Babelfish and Reverso, as are the other quotes from Cartari here.
2. Cartari, as above, search "Platone".
3. Cartari, search "Venere senza" and "letitia." Image: http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z12.4.html. For more of the mosaic, go to http://www.sfmission.com/cgi-bin/gallery/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=Tunisia/Art_and_History&image=Dionysus-mosaic.jpg&img=&tt=.
4. Cartari, search "Leggesi appresso.". The reference is to Diodorus IV.5. Conti says much the same thing, except that first he says that the beardless look was to make him look feminine: quoting an Orphic hymn: Both female and male, double in nature was he. Then he adds "Others understand that Bacchus has this double nature or appearance from the two kinds of affect that drinking has, wine making some people laugh and others rave." (DiMatteo, Natale Conti's Mythologies, p. 273.)
5. Conti: DiMatteo, p. 279.
Alchemical Strength. As I said in the section on Alchemical Justice, I think the lion in the tarot Strength card represents the alchemist's fire, the one that melts the substances so that they can merge, boil off, etc. Leo in astrology is a fire-sign.
However there are in addition specific references to lions in alchemical writings and pictures that suggest another interpretation (or perhaps refinements in this interpretation). O'Neill refers us to a late alchemical image that portrays a lion being devoured by a toad and being absorbed into a set of concentric circles that suggest the moon (Plates 14 and 15 of Johann Barchusen, Elementa chemiae 1718. Scanned from Fabricius, Alchemy, fig. 105, p. 64.)
The text that inspired the scene on the right (according to Fabricius p. 64) says:
In Ripley's Cantilena, another Arnuldian text, an old king was absorbed into his mother's womb during copulation. In the image above, it is a lion being absorbed, with the toad and the circles as representatives of this feminine substance. The lion is merely the old king in animal form. It is as Jung said in his commentary on the Cantilena,
The old king, I infer, is the alchemical version of the God of the Old Testament, transformed by birth in the Virgin. The Old Testament God is the king before transformation, and also the lion before transformation. Jung says
Jung also refers to a tale in the De Alchimia of "Senior," the Arab alchemist, called "The Lion Hunt." Here is Jung's summary:
O'Neill refers us to other images, this time from Mylius's Philosophia Reformata 1622. Here is one (Emblem 17, in Fabricius fig. 105, p. 163).
O'Neill comments:
My guess about the lion is that as the masculine form of alchemical "mercury," it also referred to the chemical sulfur, which, like mercury, could act as a deadly poison. So we have the poisonous snake and the lion, two forms of the same thing. How "sulphur" gets assimilated to "mercury" I think is as follows. Mercury was used to separate metals from their until sulfuric acid came along; hence their equivalence. Sulfur, the chemical element, in contact with water, as in a paper mill, or in human bodies, becomes a corrosive acid, good for dissolving wood or ore, but poisonous. Yet sulfur, like mercury, was also a key ingredient in some medicines, and in the mineral springs people went to for cures. When the alchemists, stumbling around with these compounds, got something in their laboratory that seemed to cure illness, they thought they were close to making the elixir.
There is an analogy to the Christian God. If you run afoul of him, you will know death, as loss of immortality and as being sent to hell. Similarly, sulfur (the chemical element) when ingested improperly, as poison, causes suffering and death. But sulfur in the right form and amount cures illness and so frees one temporarily from death. Sulfur has its laws just as God does. It is the same as with fire, which kills when uncontrolled but also is an agent of life-sustaining warmth and nurturing chemical transformation.
The Pythagorean and Kabbalist Strength. With number 11, we are back at the beginning, the Monad.
I am aware that some people think that in Kabbalah a reduction to one digit was accomplished by adding the digits, i.e. 11 = 2. However that only holds in the Arabic system of notation. In the Roman, Greek, and Hebrew ways of writing numbers, an entirely different digit was used for ten than for 1, e.g. X for ten in Roman numerals. Adding X and I simply gives XI, not II. The Theology is quite explicit that the Decad is not the same as the Monad, but the Decad returns one to the beginning again. So I will proceed on the assumption that in Pythagoreanism, XI = I.
If we are back at the beginning, where is that shown on the card? In the section above on the Christian interpretation, we already see the answer: God is the lion. However God's manifestation there is quite different than in the Bateleur. He is not a creator-god mixing the four elements, but rather a source of inner strength. The cards from here on all have to do with an inner journey, as opposed to the social orientation of the previous ones. For what is to come after the turn of the Wheel, one needs help. And so the Lion of Judah appears, whom the Christians interpreted as Christ.
In Kabbalah, we are simply reversing direction. We have turned around and are going up the tree. So we are still at Malkhuth, but facing upwards rather than downwards. It is the soul trying to reconnect with its god at its higher levels of manifestation. In the card, it is the woman who embodies the soul.
Strength in the Cartomantic tradition. Etteilla's card no. 11 matches the Marseille card pretty well, with the submissive Lion in each Here is the card, followed by the word-lists.
The Pages.
In the Sola-Busca, the court cards are numbered 11 to 14, beginning with pages, then knights, queens, and kings. That also corresponds to their traditional ranking for the purpose of winning tricks in the trick-taking game. I know that some interpreters, from the 19th century on,make the knights the highest courts, but that is not the Renaissance understanding.
In the Sola-Busca, all the courts except the Pages actually are given names on the cards. They correspond to allegedly historical figures, some from a legend pertaining to the Trojan War and others from the life of Alexander the Great. The two time periods are connected, in that the main female figure of one, Olympia the mother of Alexander, was said to descend from the main female figure of the other, Polyxena, youngest daughter of Priam and Hecuba, King and Queen of Troy.
The court figures in other decks of that period do not look like the ones of the Sola-Busca and probably cannot be identified with the same legendary or historical personalities. Also, the Pages in the Sola-Busca do not have names on them and probably do not correspond to any readily identifiable characters.
In the Sola-Busca, the courts are also correlated to the four temperaments, one per suit. However the correlations break down when it comes to the pages.
When I look at the Marseille-style pages, I do not see either particular historical personages or specific temperaments. Possibly Batons is sanguine, but one suit is not enough. In the Sola-Busca, moreover, Batons is the suit of melancholia (http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=530#p7367. In general, I do not see either particular suits or particular ranks as expressing particular temperaments, at least on a consistent basis. Perhaps others do, but I don't. In any event, temperaments or elements in these early decks are not for me reliable ways of deciphering the meanings of the cards.
However I do see correlations between pages in the Marseille-style and particular trumps in that deck, in fact just those early ones which have the Roman numeral I in them, without other Is. This is something that I see consistently for every court card. So I will use that in interpreting the cards. I also see good correlation between the result and the Etteilla School word-lists for the court cards. So I will go with these lists as well.
To begin with, compare the left side of the Bateleur, holding a coin, with the left side of the Page of Coins, and the right side, holding his wand, with the right side of the Page of Batons.
So we might say that the Page of Batons holds an instrument capable of performing magical transformations. For someone only used to using his fists as weapons, a club is magical indeed. By the same token, the Page of Coins might be seen as holding an object upon which magic can be performed. In the hands of a clever banker, indeed, coins can be made to multiply--and disappear in the hands of someone not so clever.
Similarly, the wreath on the Page of Cups give us a basis for comparing him with the girl on the right side of the Lover card, trump VI. The one in the middle, making the choice, is comparable in posture to the Page of Swords. And the profile of the woman on the left is comparable in profile to the Page of Batons (even more in the Conver Lover card, where her left hand reaches down toward the man). In this interpretation the Page of Batons is a hesitant lover, the Page of Swords someone faced with a difficult choice, and the Page of Batons someone who represents virtue.
Perhaps surprisingly, this interpretation fits certain pages even in the 15th century. The CY Male and Female Pages of Cups resemble the man and woman on the Love card.
The PMB Page of Batons has the green gloves suggestive of sexuality and fertility that all the PMB Baton court figures wear, comparable to the large club of the Noblet page and of course to the phallic finger of the Bateleur. The d'Este Page of Batons holds himself with pride, as though representing virtue.
Only the Page of Swords does not fit the Noblet's charactaerization, as seen here (above rigt) in the PMB. He strikes a confident pose. Other Pages of Swords show him with is sword raised in attack, again with an air of confidence. The Noblet is not like that. I speculate that this difference has to do with the changing nature of war in the space of 200 years. The introduction of gunpowder made it much more deadly than previously, a fact that did not go unobserved in the literature of the time. Swords were the privilege of the nobility. The son of an officer might know more about the effectiveness of cannons than a club-wielding peasant whose village had not yet been caught up in war.
The Etteilla word-lists are useful in showing what different people made of these figures. The Uprights perhaps suggest something of the Bateleur.
1. Cartari: in Italian at http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it/xtf/view? docId=bibit000718/bibit000718.xml&chunk.id=d4789e2395&toc.depth=1&toc.id=&brand=default. Search "ghirlanda in capo". My stab at a translation, using Babelfish and Reverso, as are the other quotes from Cartari here.
2. Cartari, as above, search "Platone".
3. Cartari, search "Venere senza" and "letitia." Image: http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z12.4.html. For more of the mosaic, go to http://www.sfmission.com/cgi-bin/gallery/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=Tunisia/Art_and_History&image=Dionysus-mosaic.jpg&img=&tt=.
4. Cartari, search "Leggesi appresso.". The reference is to Diodorus IV.5. Conti says much the same thing, except that first he says that the beardless look was to make him look feminine: quoting an Orphic hymn: Both female and male, double in nature was he. Then he adds "Others understand that Bacchus has this double nature or appearance from the two kinds of affect that drinking has, wine making some people laugh and others rave." (DiMatteo, Natale Conti's Mythologies, p. 273.)
5. Conti: DiMatteo, p. 279.
Alchemical Strength. As I said in the section on Alchemical Justice, I think the lion in the tarot Strength card represents the alchemist's fire, the one that melts the substances so that they can merge, boil off, etc. Leo in astrology is a fire-sign.
However there are in addition specific references to lions in alchemical writings and pictures that suggest another interpretation (or perhaps refinements in this interpretation). O'Neill refers us to a late alchemical image that portrays a lion being devoured by a toad and being absorbed into a set of concentric circles that suggest the moon (Plates 14 and 15 of Johann Barchusen, Elementa chemiae 1718. Scanned from Fabricius, Alchemy, fig. 105, p. 64.)
The text that inspired the scene on the right (according to Fabricius p. 64) says:
The text is derivative from the Rosarium Philosophorum, which existed in manuscript before 1400. Its 1550 printed version, which I may have shown earlier in this thread, had a woodcut of a naked man and woman copulating in a bath, followed in the next image by a double-headed corpse in a tomb.Joyne therefore (as yt is in the rosary) the most belowed sonn Gabricum with his sister Belia, to whome he gives all that he hath because he came from her. Whence yt may be gathered that without copulation there can be noe pregnacion, and without pregnacion not birth. (Crowne of Nature, early 17th century, p. 8, as quoted and dated by Fabricius, from a manuscript in the Sidney M. Edelstein Foundation Library, New York. Fabricius says that there is a similar image in the manuscript. James Elkins, in What Painting Is: How to think about oil painting using the language of alchemy, p. 226, dates this ms. to the late 16th century.)
In Ripley's Cantilena, another Arnuldian text, an old king was absorbed into his mother's womb during copulation. In the image above, it is a lion being absorbed, with the toad and the circles as representatives of this feminine substance. The lion is merely the old king in animal form. It is as Jung said in his commentary on the Cantilena,
However in the Cantilena (late 15th century), the figure of the lion appears later, and is called "a Lyon Greene," sitting on its mother's lap and drinking her milk, while she drinks his blood.We would probably not be wrong if we assume that the "king of Beasts," known even in Hellenistic times as a transformation stage of Helios, represents the old king, the Antiquus dierum of the Cantilena, in a certain stage of renewal, and that perhaps in this way he acquired the singular title of "Leo antiquus." (Jung Mysterium Coniunctionis p. 297).
This lion is an image of Christ, as Jung points out. Jesus in Christianity (Rev. 5:5) is called "The Lion of Judah" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_of_Judah).A Lyon Greene did in her Lapp reside
(The which an Eagle fed), and from his side
The Blood gush'd out: The Virgin drunck it upp,
While Mecuries Hand did the Office of a Cupp.
(Verse 31, quoted in Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionus p. 323. )
The old king, I infer, is the alchemical version of the God of the Old Testament, transformed by birth in the Virgin. The Old Testament God is the king before transformation, and also the lion before transformation. Jung says
There is similarly the lion side of God, who has a temper tantrum when Adam and Eve disobey him, and so on. It is the same with men (and women) in real life, to the extent that they exercise authority over others.The animal form emphasizes that the king is overpowered or overlaid by his animal side and consequently expresses himself only in animal reactions, which are nothing but emotions. (Jung Mysterium Coniunctionus p. 297.)
Jung also refers to a tale in the De Alchimia of "Senior," the Arab alchemist, called "The Lion Hunt." Here is Jung's summary:
The woman is lying on a bed of coals; so she is the retort or its contents. It is the same as in the Cantilena, with a lion in the place of the old king.Marchos prepares a trap and the lion, attracted by the sweet smell of a stone that is obviously an eye-charm, [Footnote: "The stone which he who knows, places on his eyes"], falls into it and is swallowed by the magic stone. "And this stone, which the lion loves, is a woman." (Mysterium Coniunctionus p. 298f)
O'Neill refers us to other images, this time from Mylius's Philosophia Reformata 1622. Here is one (Emblem 17, in Fabricius fig. 105, p. 163).
O'Neill comments:
That for sure is how the lion ends up in the images he refers us to. I am not sure that absorbing the lion, leading to his death (psychologically, the death of that way of being) is gentle; but the later stage, Ripley's image of the Virgin suckling the newborn. is gentle enough.The overcoming of the instincts, the raw matter in the man, cannot be done by brute strength. It requires a woman's touch, gentle and persistent. Eventually, the ferocity of the lion will disappear and the maiden may even ride him or conduct him about on a leash. (Tarot Symbolism p. 179).
My guess about the lion is that as the masculine form of alchemical "mercury," it also referred to the chemical sulfur, which, like mercury, could act as a deadly poison. So we have the poisonous snake and the lion, two forms of the same thing. How "sulphur" gets assimilated to "mercury" I think is as follows. Mercury was used to separate metals from their until sulfuric acid came along; hence their equivalence. Sulfur, the chemical element, in contact with water, as in a paper mill, or in human bodies, becomes a corrosive acid, good for dissolving wood or ore, but poisonous. Yet sulfur, like mercury, was also a key ingredient in some medicines, and in the mineral springs people went to for cures. When the alchemists, stumbling around with these compounds, got something in their laboratory that seemed to cure illness, they thought they were close to making the elixir.
There is an analogy to the Christian God. If you run afoul of him, you will know death, as loss of immortality and as being sent to hell. Similarly, sulfur (the chemical element) when ingested improperly, as poison, causes suffering and death. But sulfur in the right form and amount cures illness and so frees one temporarily from death. Sulfur has its laws just as God does. It is the same as with fire, which kills when uncontrolled but also is an agent of life-sustaining warmth and nurturing chemical transformation.
The Pythagorean and Kabbalist Strength. With number 11, we are back at the beginning, the Monad.
I am aware that some people think that in Kabbalah a reduction to one digit was accomplished by adding the digits, i.e. 11 = 2. However that only holds in the Arabic system of notation. In the Roman, Greek, and Hebrew ways of writing numbers, an entirely different digit was used for ten than for 1, e.g. X for ten in Roman numerals. Adding X and I simply gives XI, not II. The Theology is quite explicit that the Decad is not the same as the Monad, but the Decad returns one to the beginning again. So I will proceed on the assumption that in Pythagoreanism, XI = I.
If we are back at the beginning, where is that shown on the card? In the section above on the Christian interpretation, we already see the answer: God is the lion. However God's manifestation there is quite different than in the Bateleur. He is not a creator-god mixing the four elements, but rather a source of inner strength. The cards from here on all have to do with an inner journey, as opposed to the social orientation of the previous ones. For what is to come after the turn of the Wheel, one needs help. And so the Lion of Judah appears, whom the Christians interpreted as Christ.
In Kabbalah, we are simply reversing direction. We have turned around and are going up the tree. So we are still at Malkhuth, but facing upwards rather than downwards. It is the soul trying to reconnect with its god at its higher levels of manifestation. In the card, it is the woman who embodies the soul.
Strength in the Cartomantic tradition. Etteilla's card no. 11 matches the Marseille card pretty well, with the submissive Lion in each Here is the card, followed by the word-lists.
11. [La Force.] STRENGTH—Advantage by Strength. Moral Strength, Heroism, Magnanimity, Greatness of Soul, Courage.—Perseverance, Constancy, Ability, Power, Empire, Powerful Influence.—Mental or Moral Work, Patience, Resignation. Domination.It is only in the uprights that the words fit the virtue. The Reverseds suggest to me other ways in which the Marseille Strength card might have been seen, for it is the strong that is in the position of ruling, and there are associated vices as well as virtues.
Reversed: [Le Souverain.] SOVEREIGN. Kingdom, Empire, State, Republic, Government, Administration, Reign, Despotism, Sovereignty, Authority, Commandment, Supreme Power, Absolute Power, Arbitrary Power, People, Nation, Weakness, Imperfection, Quarrel [Discord]. King. Emperor, General. Commander. Captain. Upper leader. Governor. Dominator. Driving Force. Regulator. Curator, Protector.
The Pages.
In the Sola-Busca, the court cards are numbered 11 to 14, beginning with pages, then knights, queens, and kings. That also corresponds to their traditional ranking for the purpose of winning tricks in the trick-taking game. I know that some interpreters, from the 19th century on,make the knights the highest courts, but that is not the Renaissance understanding.
In the Sola-Busca, all the courts except the Pages actually are given names on the cards. They correspond to allegedly historical figures, some from a legend pertaining to the Trojan War and others from the life of Alexander the Great. The two time periods are connected, in that the main female figure of one, Olympia the mother of Alexander, was said to descend from the main female figure of the other, Polyxena, youngest daughter of Priam and Hecuba, King and Queen of Troy.
The court figures in other decks of that period do not look like the ones of the Sola-Busca and probably cannot be identified with the same legendary or historical personalities. Also, the Pages in the Sola-Busca do not have names on them and probably do not correspond to any readily identifiable characters.
In the Sola-Busca, the courts are also correlated to the four temperaments, one per suit. However the correlations break down when it comes to the pages.
When I look at the Marseille-style pages, I do not see either particular historical personages or specific temperaments. Possibly Batons is sanguine, but one suit is not enough. In the Sola-Busca, moreover, Batons is the suit of melancholia (http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=530#p7367. In general, I do not see either particular suits or particular ranks as expressing particular temperaments, at least on a consistent basis. Perhaps others do, but I don't. In any event, temperaments or elements in these early decks are not for me reliable ways of deciphering the meanings of the cards.
However I do see correlations between pages in the Marseille-style and particular trumps in that deck, in fact just those early ones which have the Roman numeral I in them, without other Is. This is something that I see consistently for every court card. So I will use that in interpreting the cards. I also see good correlation between the result and the Etteilla School word-lists for the court cards. So I will go with these lists as well.
To begin with, compare the left side of the Bateleur, holding a coin, with the left side of the Page of Coins, and the right side, holding his wand, with the right side of the Page of Batons.
So we might say that the Page of Batons holds an instrument capable of performing magical transformations. For someone only used to using his fists as weapons, a club is magical indeed. By the same token, the Page of Coins might be seen as holding an object upon which magic can be performed. In the hands of a clever banker, indeed, coins can be made to multiply--and disappear in the hands of someone not so clever.
Similarly, the wreath on the Page of Cups give us a basis for comparing him with the girl on the right side of the Lover card, trump VI. The one in the middle, making the choice, is comparable in posture to the Page of Swords. And the profile of the woman on the left is comparable in profile to the Page of Batons (even more in the Conver Lover card, where her left hand reaches down toward the man). In this interpretation the Page of Batons is a hesitant lover, the Page of Swords someone faced with a difficult choice, and the Page of Batons someone who represents virtue.
Perhaps surprisingly, this interpretation fits certain pages even in the 15th century. The CY Male and Female Pages of Cups resemble the man and woman on the Love card.
The PMB Page of Batons has the green gloves suggestive of sexuality and fertility that all the PMB Baton court figures wear, comparable to the large club of the Noblet page and of course to the phallic finger of the Bateleur. The d'Este Page of Batons holds himself with pride, as though representing virtue.
Only the Page of Swords does not fit the Noblet's charactaerization, as seen here (above rigt) in the PMB. He strikes a confident pose. Other Pages of Swords show him with is sword raised in attack, again with an air of confidence. The Noblet is not like that. I speculate that this difference has to do with the changing nature of war in the space of 200 years. The introduction of gunpowder made it much more deadly than previously, a fact that did not go unobserved in the literature of the time. Swords were the privilege of the nobility. The son of an officer might know more about the effectiveness of cannons than a club-wielding peasant whose village had not yet been caught up in war.
The Etteilla word-lists are useful in showing what different people made of these figures. The Uprights perhaps suggest something of the Bateleur.
ETTEILLA, PAGE OF BATONS: Stranger, Unknown, Extraordinary.—Strange, Uncommon, Unusual, Unheard Of, Surprising, Admirable, Wonderful, Marvel, Miracle.—Episode, Digression, Anonymous. REVERSED: Announcement, Instruction, Opinion, Warning, Admonition, Anecdotes, News, History, Stories, Fables, Notions [Revak has "Notiens," which he translates as "Postmen"; but the c. 1838 list has "Notion"], Education.In Cups, the Lover is suggested in the Reverseds. The Uprights merely suggest his youth.
ETTEILLA, PAGE OF CUPS: Fair [Fr. Blond] Young Man, Studious.—Student, Application [Diligence], Work, Thought, Observation, Consideration, Reflection, Contemplation, Job [not in c. 1838].—Business [c. 1838 has Occupation], Profession, Employment. REVERSED: Tendency, Bent, Proclivity, Inclination, Attraction, Taste, Sympathy, Passion, Affection, Attachment, Friendship.—Heart, Craving, Desire, Appeal, Promise, Seduction, Invitation, Agreeableness.—Flattery, Cajolery, Fawning, Sycophancy [not in c. 1838, which has Adulation], Praise, Approbation.—Inclined towards threatening ruin and complete destruction. [This last, starting with "Inclined" not in c. 1838, which has instead Courtier, Coax, Entice, Siren Song (Courtisan, Amadouer, Aflecher, Chant des Sirenes)].In Coins, the banker's son is suggested, as well as his youth. The Reverseds suggest the trappings and dangers of wealth:
ETTEILLA, PAGE OF COINS: Dark Young Man, Study, Instruction, Diligence [not in c. 1838], Application, Meditation, Reflection.—Work, Occupation, Apprenticeship.—Scholar, Disciple, Student, Apprentice, Amateur, Pupil, Speculator, Negotiator [last 2 not in c. 1838]. REVERSED: [Extravagance, c. 1838], Profession [not in c. 1838, which has Profusion], Superfluity, Magnanimity, Luxuriousness, Sumptuousness, Splendor, Abundance, Myriad.—Liberality, Kind Deed.—Generosity, Charity.—Crowd, Multitude.—Degradation, Wasting, Pillage, Dissipation.In Swords, many of the words are uncannily descriptive of Hamlet and his situation:
ETTEILLA, PAGE OF SWORDS: Spy, Curious [from c. 1838], Onlooker, Observer, Searcher, Overseer, [Connoisseur--not in c. 1838, which has "Amateur"], Intendant [Entendant, i.e. Discerning].—Examination, Note, Remark, Observation, Annotation, Speculation, Count, Calculation, Computation—Learned, Artistic. [last 6 not in 1838] REVERSED: Without Foresight [Imprevoyance, c. 1838 only], Without Warning, Sudden, Suddenly, Suddenly Interrupting [last 3 not in c. 1838], Astonishing, Surprising, Unexpectedly. [Fortuitously, c. 1838]—Improvise, Act and Speak Without Preparation, Compose and Recite Straightaway [last 2 not in c. 1838].Hamlet spies and is spied upon; he is an observer trying to determine the truth; he is learned and artistic; when he acts, he tends to surprise others. He is the consummate master of words.
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