6. Lover: Great Hues, God of Fertility and Moisture, you bring us tears of both joy and anguish.
Christian base: The first cards show a man and a woman with a blindfolded Cupid above them. The Cary-Visconti or Cary-Yale card is decorated with heraldic emblems of the Visconti family and the House of Savoy. It suggests a commemoration of Philippo Maria Visconti's 1428 marriage to Maria of Savoy. But there are Sforza insignia in one of the suits, suggesting a depiction of the 1441 marriage of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Visconti. Known portraits of the couple resemble the card, in both that version and that in the so-called Visconti-Sforza or PMB. The title of the card was probably "Love." (1)
Meanwhile, the Gringonneur Lovers card has several such couples and Cupids, blindfolds off as they take careful aim; the subject would seem to be courtship and not marriage. In the Cary Sheet, the man's pleated kilt, probably meant to be the same as the Visconti-Sforza one, seems lifted up so that it ends half-way up his hips, perhaps exposing his genitals; but it is hard to distinguish details. (2)
The Schoen horoscope adds a priest, as though to say, it is time we made the theme of marriage explicit! This image is for the 7th house, that of partnerships and contracts. Love is a serious business; Cupid is absent. Vieville's version appears to represent the same scene. An older figure, male as nearly as we can tell, puts his hand on a young man's shoulder, while he clutches his belt, and the young woman beside him (or perhaps another man) puts her hand on his heart. (3)
By 1650 and Noblet, Cupid has his blindfold again, while the older figure appears more female than male. Vieville's and Noblet's are the first cards I have found that have a fourth figure. The older figure wears a wreath of leaves, while the younger one wears flowers. The long leaves are characteristic of laurel, associated with the god Apollo and victory. But who is this figure, who looks female and not like a Christian priest? (4)
An allegorical meaning for the wreath of leaves was proposed by de Gebelin in 1781 In the 16th century it appears in both Alciati and Cartari. Cartari's comment next to the engraving says that the wreathed woman is the mother, Truth; the father is Honor; and Love is their bond. The whole scene is the "Image of Faithfulness." (5)
In the tarot, from this perspective, the Father has been changed to the young woman, and Love is divided into two, Cupid and the Lover. The mother remains, with the same laurel wreath. To me the association between the two scenes is too much of a stretch. Yet the woman with the leaves does look maternal. The lovers must be sanctioned by family, even more than by a priest.
In these images so far, we are moving from authority-figures such as the Pope and the Emperor to a claiming our own authority, entering the life of an adult. Taking on the responsibilities of marriage is the entry to adulthood. Yet it is not a sharp break from the family, if indeed the laurel-wreathed figure stands for a parent.
References, Lover, Christian:
1. Images: for Cary-Yale and Cary Sheet, Beinecke Library, at
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/, then "Visconti" or "Cary Sheet" (Cary Sheet is lower left image). For Visconti-Sforza, Dummmet, The Visconti-Sforza tarot cards.
2.For Gringonneur: Ines, The tarot: how to use and interpret the cards, p. 29. Commemoration of marriage: Ines, p. 29. Also Kaplan, Place.
3. Schoen zodiac: Ernst and Johanna Lerner, Astology and Astronomy: a pictorial archive of signs and symbols. Vieville: Heron. Contracts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_(astrology).
4. Noblet: http://tarot-history.com/. Cartari: 1647 edition, p. 84. Long leaves: p. 218
5. De Gebelin: J. Karlin, Rhapsodies of the Bizarre, p. 21
A Greco-Roman Interpretation: the Choice of Hercules. A favorite interpretation of the 19th and 20th century occultists, starting with Paul Christian in 1862, has the card being about making choices, specifically that between virtue and pleasure. There is ample justification for thinking that this interpretation existed long before that time.
The Renaissance knew the tale of Hercules' choice from Xenophon. Hercules came to a crossroads where two maidens offered opposing advice. One advocated the easy, level road of Pleasure, while the other urged the long, steep ascent of Virtue. Hercules of course chooses Virtue. Drawing on this tale, artists and performers depicted individual rulers in the position of Hercules: Emperor Maximilian I (1497), Massimilliano Sforza (c. 1497), Emperor Charles V (1510), King Henry III (1562), Maximilian of Bavaria (1595), Louis XIV (1650), and others. The relevant details from two other versions, by Carraccii and Veronese, are below (1):
Notice that Virtue has a laurel wreath in both depictions, particularly clear in Carracci as a wreath rather than as a crown. As for Pleasure, she has a wreath of flowers in the Veronese; the Carracci she appears not to wear one. The parallel to the Marseille-style tarot card is particularly clear for the Veronese.
In the Noblet, Cupid is about to bury his arrow into the young man's heart. In the myths, when Cupid strikes his victim will fall in love with the next person he or she sees. In the card, it is to the left that the young man looks. He will fall in love with Virtue. Thus the woman on the right, with the wreath of flowers, frowns. She is the one who will be rejected. (2)
The 19th century occultists saw the choice as between Virtue and Vice. However they tended to identify Vice with the woman wearing leaves, whom they associated with wine and vice (see the various texts at http://www.green-door.narod.ru/tarotocc.html). Their interpretation is the exact opposite of the way the two women are portrayed in the 16th century Italian paintinsgs. Perhaps, looking at Conver's version, they saw the one with the leaves as trying to seduce the man sexually by reaching for his genitals with her right hand. This interpretation does not fit Noblet, which has no hand reaching down on the other. Dodal, in the middle below, stands halfway between the two other versions. (3)
The occultists overlooked another Renaissance interpretation of the choice. According to this tradition, pleasure and virtue were not mutually exclusive. On this theme, Wind has a chapter called "Virtue Reconciled with Pleasure." He describes Raphael's painting "The Dream of Scipio" (below). The sterner of two women offers Scipio the book of Wisdom and the sword of Courage, to put the allegory in terms of Plato's Republic. The other woman offers the flowers of sensual delight, the physical appetites. The pagan Neoplatonist Macrobius had commented in his essay on Scipio's dream that it means that the hero should reject pleasure and pursue the active and contemplative virtues. But the Renaissance understanding was different: Wind cites Ficino complimenting his patron Lorenzo on his adoration of all three goddesses in accord with their merits (p. 82). Scipio can choose both sides. (4)
In England, Wind relates (p. 82), there were at least three theatrical works portraying Queen Elizabeth as combining the Wisdom of Minerva, the power of Juno, and the grace of Venus. Later, in 1618, the playwright Ben Jonson put on a masque for James I called "The Reconciliation of Virtue and Pleasure." Published in 1640, it made the point that even so-called lower pleasures such as dancing--which the English Puritans opposed--are not necessarily opposed to virtue: some dances even promote virtue--e.g. the ones in Jonson's masque. What is noble should be sweet," Jonson said. Yet the two poles are not equal: "Pleasure the servant, Virtue looking on," he concludes. Virtue must be in command. (5)
Similarly, although Pleasure in Noblet is dismayed at the young man's attention to Virtue, Virtue in fact approves of the young man's match with Pleasure precisely for the same reason--namely, that he only chooses Pleasure when she is in accord with Virtue.
In this vein, as early as 1498 Albrecht Durer did an etching, which he called simply "Hercules" (above), in which the figure of Virtue is about to club the recumbent Pleasure. Hercules blocks Virtue's swing with his cudgel. It is as if to say that Virtue need not oppose Pleasure, that the two can co-exist. The two ladies here are similar to two portraits Durer did at that time, of the same young woman, once as Piety and the other as Voluptas, Joy. They are the two aspects which when combined made a young woman attractive as a mate, as Panofsky observed. (6)
From this standpoint, we can see more in the card than a simple choice between one and the other. The figure representing pleasure has her hand to the young man's heart, as though to say that the pleasure she offers is of a loftier kind than mere sensuous enjoyment: her love is of the heart. And Virtue looks at both young people with a kindly expression: she is not pleasure's rival at all. Virtue blesses the union of the young man with the mate of his heart.
Some writers of the time went further. In 1580 Montaigne said, "Even in virtue our ultimate aim---no matter what they say--is pleasure. " Even the pursuit of virtue is high pleasure, for it means being near her:
In the Noblet, Cupid is about to bury his arrow into the young man's heart. In the myths, when Cupid strikes his victim will fall in love with the next person he or she sees. In the card, it is to the left that the young man looks. He will fall in love with Virtue. Thus the woman on the right, with the wreath of flowers, frowns. She is the one who will be rejected. (2)
The 19th century occultists saw the choice as between Virtue and Vice. However they tended to identify Vice with the woman wearing leaves, whom they associated with wine and vice (see the various texts at http://www.green-door.narod.ru/tarotocc.html). Their interpretation is the exact opposite of the way the two women are portrayed in the 16th century Italian paintinsgs. Perhaps, looking at Conver's version, they saw the one with the leaves as trying to seduce the man sexually by reaching for his genitals with her right hand. This interpretation does not fit Noblet, which has no hand reaching down on the other. Dodal, in the middle below, stands halfway between the two other versions. (3)
The occultists overlooked another Renaissance interpretation of the choice. According to this tradition, pleasure and virtue were not mutually exclusive. On this theme, Wind has a chapter called "Virtue Reconciled with Pleasure." He describes Raphael's painting "The Dream of Scipio" (below). The sterner of two women offers Scipio the book of Wisdom and the sword of Courage, to put the allegory in terms of Plato's Republic. The other woman offers the flowers of sensual delight, the physical appetites. The pagan Neoplatonist Macrobius had commented in his essay on Scipio's dream that it means that the hero should reject pleasure and pursue the active and contemplative virtues. But the Renaissance understanding was different: Wind cites Ficino complimenting his patron Lorenzo on his adoration of all three goddesses in accord with their merits (p. 82). Scipio can choose both sides. (4)
In England, Wind relates (p. 82), there were at least three theatrical works portraying Queen Elizabeth as combining the Wisdom of Minerva, the power of Juno, and the grace of Venus. Later, in 1618, the playwright Ben Jonson put on a masque for James I called "The Reconciliation of Virtue and Pleasure." Published in 1640, it made the point that even so-called lower pleasures such as dancing--which the English Puritans opposed--are not necessarily opposed to virtue: some dances even promote virtue--e.g. the ones in Jonson's masque. What is noble should be sweet," Jonson said. Yet the two poles are not equal: "Pleasure the servant, Virtue looking on," he concludes. Virtue must be in command. (5)
Similarly, although Pleasure in Noblet is dismayed at the young man's attention to Virtue, Virtue in fact approves of the young man's match with Pleasure precisely for the same reason--namely, that he only chooses Pleasure when she is in accord with Virtue.
In this vein, as early as 1498 Albrecht Durer did an etching, which he called simply "Hercules" (above), in which the figure of Virtue is about to club the recumbent Pleasure. Hercules blocks Virtue's swing with his cudgel. It is as if to say that Virtue need not oppose Pleasure, that the two can co-exist. The two ladies here are similar to two portraits Durer did at that time, of the same young woman, once as Piety and the other as Voluptas, Joy. They are the two aspects which when combined made a young woman attractive as a mate, as Panofsky observed. (6)
From this standpoint, we can see more in the card than a simple choice between one and the other. The figure representing pleasure has her hand to the young man's heart, as though to say that the pleasure she offers is of a loftier kind than mere sensuous enjoyment: her love is of the heart. And Virtue looks at both young people with a kindly expression: she is not pleasure's rival at all. Virtue blesses the union of the young man with the mate of his heart.
Some writers of the time went further. In 1580 Montaigne said, "Even in virtue our ultimate aim---no matter what they say--is pleasure. " Even the pursuit of virtue is high pleasure, for it means being near her:
Those who proceed to teach us that the questing after virtue is rugged and wearisome whereas to possess her is delight can only mean that she always lacks delight. (For what human means have ever brought anyone to the joy of possessing her.) Even the most perfect of men have been satisfied with aspiring to her--not possessing her but drawing near to her. (Essays, a Selection, p. 18f.)
Only the vain and proud--like the Puritans satirized in Shakespeare's plays, and their 15th century equivalents--delude themselves into thinking, in their self-satisfied way, that they possess Virtue. And the path of virtue is not the wearisome climb such people make it out, according to Montaigne; rather, it is a delight. (7)
In Noblet and Dodal, Cupid is blindfolded. Only the Conver takes the blindfold off. The occultists, who thought that self-control and a rational appreciation of one's choices was paramount, favored Conver. But the blindfold, from a Renaissance perspective, is important. One meaning of the blindfold is that when Cupid strikes, reason and good sense go out the window. But the Renaissance philosophy of Pico della Mirandolla kept the blindfold for another reason: Love is blind "because he is above the intellect" (Wind, p. 54). The divine love here is that extolled by Plato, the love of God, the "joy above understanding" (Wind p. 56), to be experienced on the wings of Dialectic.
Discussing this point (p. 58), Wind notes Shakespeare's "mocking echo" of this philosophy.In Noblet and Dodal, Cupid is blindfolded. Only the Conver takes the blindfold off. The occultists, who thought that self-control and a rational appreciation of one's choices was paramount, favored Conver. But the blindfold, from a Renaissance perspective, is important. One meaning of the blindfold is that when Cupid strikes, reason and good sense go out the window. But the Renaissance philosophy of Pico della Mirandolla kept the blindfold for another reason: Love is blind "because he is above the intellect" (Wind, p. 54). The divine love here is that extolled by Plato, the love of God, the "joy above understanding" (Wind p. 56), to be experienced on the wings of Dialectic.
Love looks not only with the eyes, but with the mind;This speech is from the love-struck Helena, whose love, like the flower-wreathed tarot woman, is not yet reciprocated. In her case, she loves both her beloved's virtues and his vices. To the lover, she observes, even the beloved's bad qualities assume a "form and dignity." They are part of the whole human who is loved.
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
(Midsummer Night's Dream 1.1.234f.)
In that way Love is a deceiver, in the service of a unity between lover and beloved that is compelling but not always wise. It is in this same vein that the disillusioned King Lear says:
Do thy worst, blind Cupid, I'll not love!Love has been Lear's downfall, he thinks, in fostering illusions. Yet Shakespeare does not disagree with Pico. For in Lear's very next scene, he does love, and the object of his love is the daughter he formerly scorned, whom he now loves with an enlightened mind that sees his former rejection as a product of his own faults.
(King Lear 4.6.134.)
Helena's love has something in common with that dialectic. She perceives her beloved's faults for what they are and loves them as part of the person she loves. It is an acceptance of imperfection in others. First we love blindly, not seeing the other's faults. Then we see them, and find them unacceptable; for us to continue loving the person, he or she must remove these faults, because they compromise the integrity of the one who loves. Then there is the loving of a person that includes accepting his or her faults, and perhaps seeing one's own faults as well.
In each case, love is not a choice between virtue and pleasure. It is an activity of the whole person toward another whole person. It is a choice that remains largely unconscious, hence blind; yet by seeing with the mind we can become more conscious and so gradually move up the ladder of love.
References, Choice of Hercules
1. Xenophon: Memorabilia of Socrates, II.1.21-34, at http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Memorabilia.html. (Search "Hercules.") Depictions as Hercules: Allen Ellenius, Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation, p. 40ff, at Google Books. Images: Carracci, at http://witcombe.sbc.edu/baroquetheory/allegory.html, Veronese at http://www.twi-ny.com/twiny.04.26.06.html.
2. sight: for example, in the tale of Cupid and Psyche, Cupid pricks himself on his arrow and immediately after sees Psyche from afar.
3. Paul Christian: History and Practice of Magic, relevant sections on web at http://www.green-door.narod.ru/tarotocc.html. Occultists: see other pages of this site.
4. Image at http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/r/raphael/2firenze/1/21knight.html&find=scipio.
5. Ben Jonson: Leah S. Marcus, The Politics of Mirth, p. 113f-119. At Google Books. 1st Jonson quote, Wind p. 85; 2nd at http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/pleasure/index.html.
6. Durer at http://www.bmagic.org.uk/objects/1955P47/images/94104. Portraits: Panofsky, Durer, p. 41 and figs. 67, 68.
7. Montaigne: The Essays: a selection, trans. M.A. Screech, p. 18f. At Google Books.
A Greco-Egyptian perspective: It is not hard to see the Marseille-style Lover card as an Egyptian scene. The wreathed figure would be Isis, blessing the marriage of her son Horus with Hathor, goddess of beauty and the arts, whom the Greeks identified with Aphrodite. In Ptolemaic times the heiros gamos, sacred marriage, was reenacted yearly by bringing the statue of Hathor from her temple at Dendera to Horus's temple at Edfu. It was the occasion of a great festival and auspicious time for conception. (1)
The only problem I see it is that I cannot find Horus's marriage to Hathor even mentioned in Greek and Roman sources available to educated Europeans in the 15th-17th centuries, or in the mythology handbooks that they read. The descriptions I have found of the Hathor-Horus hieros gamos celebrations all say they are based on Greek sources from Ptolemaic times. But all I find before modern Egyptology is that Hathoris is a cow-goddess. So I am not sure what to make of the two young people. They can't be Isis and Osiris, because then who would the older woman be? If anyone is Isis, it is she. Perhaps one could see the young people as initiates into the Mysteries of Isis.
The fourth figure, i.e. the Cupid floating above, would then be Isis and Osiris's child conceived after Osiris's death, the weak Harpocrates (Plutarch distinguishes these two children of Isis and Osiis). Cartari portrayed him with wings. In Cartari's caption to the woodcut, Isis is called Angerona, goddess of the returning sun, because Harpocrates' birthday was celebrated at the Winter Solstice. Carpocrates was one of several precursors to Christ, whose feast days Christianity co-opted. Both he and the hawk-god and hero Horus were seen by the Greeks as equivalent to Apollo, the sun god, appropriate for the sunburst behind the child on all the 17th century images.
In other styles of card, as in the PMB, below, or where the person in the middle is clearly a priest, any application to Egypt becomes questionable. It looks like a couple pledging their troth with Cupid overhead, and nothing else. But if other cards are clearly Egyptianate, one can project onto it Isis and Osiris, with Horus the hawk-god, or Harpocrates the winged boy, overhead. (Harpocrates, which just means "Horus the child," is the more likely because he was the one most often shown between Isis and Osiris. In Plutarch, "Horus the child" designated Horus the Younger, born after Osiris's death.) Both were identified by the Greeks with Apollo, the sun god, as befitting the sunburst beind the winged child. An example is in the illustration below: Serapis is the name of the Hellenized Osiris, who took on some features of the Greek gods. (3)
In Cartari's illustrations, Harpocrates has his finger to his mouth. Cartari, following the Greeks, explains that gesture as signifying the silence to be maintained about the mysteries, and so the Renaissance understood it and adopted it enthusiastically with the same meaning. It probably also warned of the all-hearing ears of the Inquisition. In fact the gesture was only the Egyptian hieroglyph for "child." Children often had their fingers in their mouths, and before a certain age, their not speaking was not out of duty but of not having learned how. (4)
If Harpocrates is above the couple, Isis and Osiris, then the hieros gamos takes on another meaning. In Plutarch, the conceiving of Harpocrates occurs after Osiris's death. Osiris is resurrected by Isis; and is inseminated by means of an artificial phallus (since the original was hacked off by Seth and not recovered). This episode is not only described in Plutarch but pictured in the temple at Dendera, the same place where the zodiac was. Traveling merchants could easily have seen the scenes of Isis in the form of a kite lowering herself onto Osiris's erect phallus (http://www.passion-egyptienne.fr/Dendera.htm). It is thus a rather graphic anticipation of the incarnation of Christ.
References, Lover, Egyptian:
1. Hathor and Horus: http://www.mafdet.com/hathor.html, among others. Hathor and Horus festival: http://www.philae.nu/akhet/BeautReun.html.
2. Cartari 1647, p. 198. Angerona: mentioned explicitly in the caption to the illustration. Information about her: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angerona.
2. Images: Top left, from Dummett, The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards. Top right: Robert Turcan, Cults of the Roman Empire. Bottom: Cartari 1647, p. 326.
4. Finger at mouth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpocrates.
5. Plutarch: Isis and Osiris XIX, at http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html.
The Dionysian Lover: It is fairly clear that the card was seen by some as depicting the marriage of Dionysus and Ariadne, with a Bacchante looking on. An Italian painting of 1713 captures this way of seeing the card:
Missing from the painting is the wreath on the older woman; but followers of Dionysus were frequently pictured wearing wreaths on their heads, in their case ones of ivy. It is again the hieros gamos, the marriage with the god. The initiates, male and female, enact the role of god and goddess and thereby are elevated mystically to divine status. We know from reading about the secret societies that so-called "sex magic" was part of their quest for merger with the divine, at least in their imaginations. On the card, it might be that the marriage is not yet settled. Perhaps, like Tamino and Pamina in Mozart's Magic Flute, they must first prove themselves worthy by undergoing initiations to come. (1)
If the god's phallus is a Dionysian magical object, then--as Daimonax observes--there is nothing objectionable about the older woman's hand in the direction of the young man's privates, so as to touch his phallus. It is a powerful object cable of rejuvenating the one making the touch. We have already seen that wearing the image of a phallus with wings was a fertility charm in Renaissance Flanders. If touching a sanctified phallus coudl bring fertility, why not youth? For Daimonax, the younger woman is simply the older one, after a transformation occasioned by the touch. (2)
Whatever the validity of Daimonax's interpretation of the older woman's hand, the young man and the young woman are initiates enacting a sacred Dionysian drama; we were introduced to them in the previous card, where they were the acolytes taking an oath before the initiation-master. The older woman wearing the wreath is still the Domina. And there is another initiator, above them: Cupid, the Greek Eros. Now he is Dionysus, too. The Orphics identified Phanes, the first incarnation of Dionysus, the god who hatched out of the primal egg, with Eros:
References, Choice of Hercules
1. Xenophon: Memorabilia of Socrates, II.1.21-34, at http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Memorabilia.html. (Search "Hercules.") Depictions as Hercules: Allen Ellenius, Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation, p. 40ff, at Google Books. Images: Carracci, at http://witcombe.sbc.edu/baroquetheory/allegory.html, Veronese at http://www.twi-ny.com/twiny.04.26.06.html.
2. sight: for example, in the tale of Cupid and Psyche, Cupid pricks himself on his arrow and immediately after sees Psyche from afar.
3. Paul Christian: History and Practice of Magic, relevant sections on web at http://www.green-door.narod.ru/tarotocc.html. Occultists: see other pages of this site.
4. Image at http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/r/raphael/2firenze/1/21knight.html&find=scipio.
5. Ben Jonson: Leah S. Marcus, The Politics of Mirth, p. 113f-119. At Google Books. 1st Jonson quote, Wind p. 85; 2nd at http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/pleasure/index.html.
6. Durer at http://www.bmagic.org.uk/objects/1955P47/images/94104. Portraits: Panofsky, Durer, p. 41 and figs. 67, 68.
7. Montaigne: The Essays: a selection, trans. M.A. Screech, p. 18f. At Google Books.
A Greco-Egyptian perspective: It is not hard to see the Marseille-style Lover card as an Egyptian scene. The wreathed figure would be Isis, blessing the marriage of her son Horus with Hathor, goddess of beauty and the arts, whom the Greeks identified with Aphrodite. In Ptolemaic times the heiros gamos, sacred marriage, was reenacted yearly by bringing the statue of Hathor from her temple at Dendera to Horus's temple at Edfu. It was the occasion of a great festival and auspicious time for conception. (1)
The only problem I see it is that I cannot find Horus's marriage to Hathor even mentioned in Greek and Roman sources available to educated Europeans in the 15th-17th centuries, or in the mythology handbooks that they read. The descriptions I have found of the Hathor-Horus hieros gamos celebrations all say they are based on Greek sources from Ptolemaic times. But all I find before modern Egyptology is that Hathoris is a cow-goddess. So I am not sure what to make of the two young people. They can't be Isis and Osiris, because then who would the older woman be? If anyone is Isis, it is she. Perhaps one could see the young people as initiates into the Mysteries of Isis.
The fourth figure, i.e. the Cupid floating above, would then be Isis and Osiris's child conceived after Osiris's death, the weak Harpocrates (Plutarch distinguishes these two children of Isis and Osiis). Cartari portrayed him with wings. In Cartari's caption to the woodcut, Isis is called Angerona, goddess of the returning sun, because Harpocrates' birthday was celebrated at the Winter Solstice. Carpocrates was one of several precursors to Christ, whose feast days Christianity co-opted. Both he and the hawk-god and hero Horus were seen by the Greeks as equivalent to Apollo, the sun god, appropriate for the sunburst behind the child on all the 17th century images.
In other styles of card, as in the PMB, below, or where the person in the middle is clearly a priest, any application to Egypt becomes questionable. It looks like a couple pledging their troth with Cupid overhead, and nothing else. But if other cards are clearly Egyptianate, one can project onto it Isis and Osiris, with Horus the hawk-god, or Harpocrates the winged boy, overhead. (Harpocrates, which just means "Horus the child," is the more likely because he was the one most often shown between Isis and Osiris. In Plutarch, "Horus the child" designated Horus the Younger, born after Osiris's death.) Both were identified by the Greeks with Apollo, the sun god, as befitting the sunburst beind the winged child. An example is in the illustration below: Serapis is the name of the Hellenized Osiris, who took on some features of the Greek gods. (3)
In Cartari's illustrations, Harpocrates has his finger to his mouth. Cartari, following the Greeks, explains that gesture as signifying the silence to be maintained about the mysteries, and so the Renaissance understood it and adopted it enthusiastically with the same meaning. It probably also warned of the all-hearing ears of the Inquisition. In fact the gesture was only the Egyptian hieroglyph for "child." Children often had their fingers in their mouths, and before a certain age, their not speaking was not out of duty but of not having learned how. (4)
If Harpocrates is above the couple, Isis and Osiris, then the hieros gamos takes on another meaning. In Plutarch, the conceiving of Harpocrates occurs after Osiris's death. Osiris is resurrected by Isis; and is inseminated by means of an artificial phallus (since the original was hacked off by Seth and not recovered). This episode is not only described in Plutarch but pictured in the temple at Dendera, the same place where the zodiac was. Traveling merchants could easily have seen the scenes of Isis in the form of a kite lowering herself onto Osiris's erect phallus (http://www.passion-egyptienne.fr/Dendera.htm). It is thus a rather graphic anticipation of the incarnation of Christ.
References, Lover, Egyptian:
1. Hathor and Horus: http://www.mafdet.com/hathor.html, among others. Hathor and Horus festival: http://www.philae.nu/akhet/BeautReun.html.
2. Cartari 1647, p. 198. Angerona: mentioned explicitly in the caption to the illustration. Information about her: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angerona.
2. Images: Top left, from Dummett, The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards. Top right: Robert Turcan, Cults of the Roman Empire. Bottom: Cartari 1647, p. 326.
4. Finger at mouth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpocrates.
5. Plutarch: Isis and Osiris XIX, at http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html.
The Dionysian Lover: It is fairly clear that the card was seen by some as depicting the marriage of Dionysus and Ariadne, with a Bacchante looking on. An Italian painting of 1713 captures this way of seeing the card:
Missing from the painting is the wreath on the older woman; but followers of Dionysus were frequently pictured wearing wreaths on their heads, in their case ones of ivy. It is again the hieros gamos, the marriage with the god. The initiates, male and female, enact the role of god and goddess and thereby are elevated mystically to divine status. We know from reading about the secret societies that so-called "sex magic" was part of their quest for merger with the divine, at least in their imaginations. On the card, it might be that the marriage is not yet settled. Perhaps, like Tamino and Pamina in Mozart's Magic Flute, they must first prove themselves worthy by undergoing initiations to come. (1)
If the god's phallus is a Dionysian magical object, then--as Daimonax observes--there is nothing objectionable about the older woman's hand in the direction of the young man's privates, so as to touch his phallus. It is a powerful object cable of rejuvenating the one making the touch. We have already seen that wearing the image of a phallus with wings was a fertility charm in Renaissance Flanders. If touching a sanctified phallus coudl bring fertility, why not youth? For Daimonax, the younger woman is simply the older one, after a transformation occasioned by the touch. (2)
Whatever the validity of Daimonax's interpretation of the older woman's hand, the young man and the young woman are initiates enacting a sacred Dionysian drama; we were introduced to them in the previous card, where they were the acolytes taking an oath before the initiation-master. The older woman wearing the wreath is still the Domina. And there is another initiator, above them: Cupid, the Greek Eros. Now he is Dionysus, too. The Orphics identified Phanes, the first incarnation of Dionysus, the god who hatched out of the primal egg, with Eros:
First (I have sung) the vast necessity of ancient Chaos,Phanes is Greek for "light-bringer," a suitable epithet for who is the center of intense rays of light. Dionysus as Eros is the instigator of love and passion. It is in this role, too, that Dionysus has his epithet Hues, god of moisture and fertility, for wine is the lubricator of procreation. Cartari says that the ancients called Priapus the son of Venus and Dionysus because sexual love results from the combination of beauty and wine; however this function is also one that Dionysus himself serves. Phallen is one of his epithets. Cartari also quotes a saying that Venus can do nothing without Bacchus. (4)
And Cronus, who in the boundless tracts brought forth
The Ether, and the splendid and glorious
Eros of a two-fold nature,
The illustrious father of night, existing from eternity.
Whom men call Phanes... (3)
Cupid is blindfolded in Noblet and Dodal (see below). This is in keeping with a Renaissance revival of Orphism. The Orphics were the ancient revivalists of Dionysus in the Greek city-states, starting around the 5th century b.c.e. Plato refers to them, often sympathetically. For them, as for Renaissance thinkers of many persuasions, it is by the union of the opposites, among them the male and the female, that one achieves merger with God, a love beyond the capacity of the mind to grasp. Thus when Pico spoke of a blind Cupid, he was consciously echoing a line from an Orphic hymn quoted by the Roman-era philosopher Proclus: "...in his breast guarding eyeless swift love" (Wind, p. 57). For Proclus and Pico alike, "blind Amor" (Amor is Latin for "love") was an Orphic phrase for the love beyond intellect. (5)
Vieville, Chosson, and Conver after them, take off Cupid's bandage. Cupid now knows where he is shooting. The older woman, who in our current Dionysian reading is the Domina, in Chosson and Conver gesture down, as though toward the young man's genitals. She does not appear to be in competition with the younger woman; nor does the young woman look like she is the older woman transformed, for both young people are looking at her with the respect due an elder. The Domina has one hand maternally on the young man's shoulder. Cupid, the friend of Dionysus, obeys the Domina and aims to the right-hand side of the scene. (6)
In this context of ritual hieros gamos, I can think of another interpretation of the older woman's hand, pointing in the direction of the phallus. Perhaps, as either his mother or his female initiator, she is asking him, "Do you know how to use that thing?" The young man, for his part, has his middle finger sticking out of his belt, pointing toward the young woman's lower midriff, as if to say, "Sure, it goes in there!" The young woman has her left hand on the young man's heart, as if to assure the older woman that she truly loves him and wants only his heart. Cupid, with his bandage off, has shifted his arrow and is ready to shoot her. Cupid, I mean Dionysus, do your worst! Well, even card-players can make sexual jokes sometimes.
There remains the hand between the two young people. Is it his or hers? It could be either. From the position of the thumb in what appears to be a hand turned palm down, my best guess is that it is his. If so, it reinforces the gesture of his other hand. On the other hand, if it is hers, she may be warding him off, saying playfully that he is being indecent. Or she may be telling the domina that she is already pregnant!
But the subject is not merely physical procreation: it is production from passion, giving pleasure to oneself and others, by work or hobbies, for example, or even the marriage with Christ.
And if another meaning of the card is that of being at a crossroads, perhaps the choice is not only between duty and pleasure, but of how to handle a crisis of passion. Flornoy has a charming story in connection with this card, another way in which it suggests crisis in love and its resolution. A young woman of 36 comes to him because she cannot shake her melancholy after being cast aside by her boyfriend. In the course of their interaction he notices her talent in drawing, a talent belittled by her family and which she now does secretly. Flornoy praises her talent. When he hears from her six months later, he learns that she made drawings for her employer and now has been promoted from saleswoman to designer in the wallpaper company she works for. The sadness about the boyfriend is a thing of the past; she has an inner passion now. (7)
In this story the two woman represent two forms of passion, one of dependency on another and another coming from within and not a longing for fusion with another. It is not, I think, to say that dependency on another is wrong, but only that it can be one-sided without the other. The longing for peaceful contentment in fusion, a feeling left over from the womb, is what is to be transcended.
Production from passion, however, also has its downside. It is not in the card, but we know it from life, and interpreters of the card notice that this card comes up often when there has been, or soon will be, a disappointment in the results and a crisis in the soul The great feeling of oneness with another person shows its twoness soon enough. One's passionate production in work or art is unappreciated and rejected. Despite one's devotions, God is silent. The child one longed for dies or has some serious disability. Is this really one's bliss that one has been following? So the card becomes a card of crisis, a crossroads, where one of the choices may not even yet be known. (8)
References, Lover, Dionysian:
1. Italian painting: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Sebastiano_Ricci_008.jpg. Chosson: http://tarotchoco.quebecblogue.com/tdm-edition-de-francois-chosson-photoshoped-arcanes-majeurs/
2. Domina: Daimonax. http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/6amour1.html.
3. Quotation from http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/af/af10.htm.
4. Cartari: digitalized version. Hues, Phallen: http://www.theoi.com/Cult/DionysosTitles.html.
5. Plato and Orphics: Graeme Nicholson, Plato's Phaedrus and the Philosophy of Love. pp. 132ff
Robert McGehey, The Orphic Moment: From Shaman to Poet-thinker in Plato, Nietzsche, and Mallarme, pp. 37ff, etc.
6. Images: Noblet and Dodal at http://www.tarot-history.com/. Conver:
http://www.interhobby.net/tarot/viCard.php3?Code=545÷ID=AM..
7. Love crisis: Flornoy, Pelerinage des Bateleurs, p. 85f.
8. My friend Paul Bergner holds that the basic meaning of the card is that of crisis in a matter about which one cares deeply, whether it be a person or a calling.
The alchemical Lover: The images on the Lover card, from the Cary-Yale on, correspond to one of the dominant thenes of the Rosarium and its descendants: the coniunctio between King and Queen.
The text says that the pair are brother and sister. That might be an allusion to Egypt, where it was well known that the Pharaoh married his sister, or to Adam and Eve or Jupiter and Juno. To me it looks as though the woman was considerably older than the man, and the artist made them mother and son. If so, there might be associations to Oedipus.
In the Rosarium woodcuts of 1550, there are only two people, no Cupid. But I see the dove as comparable to the Cupid overhead on the Lover card.In some later versions there is actually a winged boy in place of the dove, perhaps influenced by the tarot card. The first is the conceptio from the Pandora, c. 1500; the second and third are from Mylius's Anatomia Aura, 1628. I include two from Mylius, because the child doesn't get its wings until the pregnatio, after the Queen has absorbed the King). These emblems resemble the Cary-Yale and PMB Love cards. It is hard to know which way any influence would have gone.
Another illumination is more parallel to the Marseille Lover card. That one occurs in the c. 1420 series of illuminations for ms. apostolica vat. lat. 1066. There a woman stands between the King and Queen, as though either to bless the marriage or to be their initiation leader in what follows. Instead of a child on top, rain falls from a cloud, and a rainbow surrounds the head of the woman in the middle. The text identifies her as Juno, identifiable by the rainbow that accompanies her, as well as the peacocks.
The trash-can like things are to me reminiscent of alchemical containers. The text refers to unguents, i.e. aromatic oils. A double meaning is possible.
Rain from clouds is a feature of many Rosarium-based alchemical illustrations, in the mundificatio or "washing", which immediately follows the conceptio in the sequence.
Juno is the goddess of marriage; so it is be surprising for her to be in the sequence, to bless the union of the king and queen. The same would apply to the older woman on the card. Yet there may be another meaning, since a similar lady occurs in several other illuminations in the same manuscript. As someone bigger than Juno, a female initiator, she may be leading the king and queen through a series of initiations. It might be as in Mozart's Magic Flute. There it is not enough that Tamino and Pamina love each other. They must also prove themselves in initiations that follow.
De Rola (in Alchemy: the Secret Art) says that the rainbow makes her Iris, the female Mercury, conductor of souls to the underworld. That is one of the functions of an initiator, to lead souls into a symbolic underworld.
The mythologist Natale Conti wrote a compendium of stories about the gods in 1551, entitled Mythologies. In it he includes what he specifically calls an alchemical interpretation of Juno. He calls her "water of Mercury," and says, among other things,
She is in charge of marriages because "she is the means for conjoining the sulphuric vapors, Venus and Mars, as it were, and because before the distilling process, she is joined with Jove, and the two together engender the alchemical Sun, hence her being called the wife of Jove. She is the queen of the Gods because she controls, dissolves, joins, separates and constrains the metals, which are named after various Gods. (Anthony DiMatteo, Natale Conti's Mythologies, A select translation, p. 81)Here again we see Juno depicted as that which brings about the transformation of others, in this case envisioned as vapors and metals, in other words their initiator into higher stages of development. As for the "alchemical Sun" engendered by Jupiter and Jove, we meet him in the next card, the Chariot.
In the same series of alchemical illuminations as the one I have just shown, there is one that might fit Daimonax's interpretation of the Conver Lover card, in which the older lady, by touching the phallus (which he imagines her reaching for on the card, above), changes into the younger lady (http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/6amour1.html).
The illumination has Juno on the left side and Venus on the right.
Juno, although of much wealth, was said to have been confined to the upper air by Jupiter, "hung down a golden chain from her hands" (DiMatteo p. 77). In the illumination, consequently, we see her in a tower, counting her gold, with a golden belt. The peacock's tail also suggests the golden chain.
Venus, for her part, was said by the alchemists to have been born from the foam that was generated when Jupiter flung his father Saturn's testicles into the sea. Conti gives the alchemical interpretation of this act. First, he says, the say that "Jove" represents a certain salt-derivative from "Saturn," which is another salt. Then:
...because this "Jove" carries off within himself the "virile parts," that is, cuts off and separates the sulphur hidden within the salt, the residue being received into a vessel placed for the reception of it, he is said to have cut off the potency of Saturn. And since salt sinks down in water, "in the sea," Venus is said to be born from this compound of salt and sulphur. (DiMatteo, p. 77).It seems to me that this "potency of Saturn," the sulphur hidden within the salt, could just as well, by its toucht, serve to renew an older lady as merely give birth to a younger. In alchemy, I am speculating, the effect of the elixir. when it comes into contact with an aging body, is to act as a fountain of youth. In contact with base metals, correspondingly, it changes them to gold.
This process, called multiplicatio in alchemy, is nor depicted as such in the manuscript. But we do have the renewal of the queen. On the left is the middle-aged Juno, cooking in her oven (we can even see the fire buening at the bottom), and on the right, Venus on her seashell. The red spots on Venus are identified in the text as roses, sacred to Venus. But de Rola says that such spots in alchemical treatises are characteristic of the Stone in the final stages of preparation, "the red flowering out of the white" (Alchemy the Secret Art p. 57).
So the two women might be the same substance at different stages, before and after contact with the elixir under heat.At least that is one interpretation that occurs to me. The fountain of youth was a popular theme in 15th century frescoes; perhaps it is based in an alchemical teaching about the elixir, in which the birth of Venus gets an odd twist. However it is something that would happen at the end of the process, not in its early stages as Daimonax finds it in the tarot. The card from this perspective perhaps hints at what is to come.
The Pythagorean and Kabbalistic Lover: The number 6 governs the animal soul, the soul of that which can move its body from place to place of its own volition (Theology of Arithmetic pp. 72-73) in any of the six directions: up, down, left, right, forward, back (p. 78). As such, it corresponds to the sixth day of creation in Genesis, when God made the four-legged animals--although a Pythagorean account would probably hold that all animals would have been made on that day. Genesis also has God making humans on that day. But humans possess rational as well as animal souls, and to that extent correspond to the Pythagorean Seven.
In Pythagoreanism, for higher animals, moving means not just growing in whatever direction it can, like a plant, but making choices, a combination of instinct and reason. The Hexad is called "presider over crossroads" (p. 81). In human beings, reason is supposedly dominant, but instinct probably plays more of a role than we realize. As bearing the number for choices, the interpretation of the Lover card in terms of the choice between Pleasure and Duty fits best. The choice was actually called "the Pythagorean Y," the Y being the crossroads of Hercules.
The number 6 is also one of two numbers of marriage in Pythagorean theory, based on two ways of combining 2 and 3, the first female and male numbers. Added, the result is 5, and since that is an odd number it was called the male number of marriage. Multiplied, the two numbers are 6, an even number and hence the female number.
In the 15th century Christian Kabbalah, the 6th sefirah is named "beauty"; "orna" is what Reuchlin's Latin reads, a fitting name for the choices of love, because in Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus, what inspires love in the sense of Eros is beauty. In Ricci's Latin translation of Gikkatila, Portae Lucis p. 86, the word is "pulchritude." Reuchlin adds that Tifferet is also "the tree of life" (lignum vitae), pleasure (voluptas), the Line of the Mean (linea media), the High Priest (sacerdos magnus), the rising of the sun (ortus solis), and the color purple (species purpurea)--presumably, as the royal color. By "line of the mean" I presume is meant the middle column of the tree of life.
Pico, in his 900 Theses, says that in the Scriptures, love of male and female denotes mystically the conjunction of Tiferet and Keneset Israel [Malkhut], or of Bet [Binah] and Tiferet (28.17). Right there we have the man between two women, as in the Marseille card, one elder, Binah, and the other younger, Malkhut. For Pico, Tiferet is also "the shining mirror," "the full sun," and in the soul, "free choice." Pico adds "When the light of the mirror not shining becomes just like that of the shining mirror, then Night will be just like Day, as David says" (28.20). That is the Judgment day, the "Great Jubilee" in Binah. I gather from these cryptic remarks that Tiferet is to join himself to both Binah and Malkhuth, and thereby bring the light coming down from the one to the darkness of the other. He chooses both Binah, his light-source, and Malkhut, the mirror in darkness. That is how I interpret the "choice of Hercules" presented by the card, too: in choosing Virtue (the woman on the left), he is also choosing Pleasure (the woman on the right).
The Lover in the Cartomantic Tradition. The Etteilla card that corresponds to the Marseille Lover is his number 13, later called "The High Priest." It shows a high church official, probably a bishop, in the middle between a man and a woman, whose hands he is joining. He is clearly marrying them, as in one historical version of the Lover card. It is also similar to scenes of marriage in alchemical emblems.
The keywords on the card are "Mariage" and "Union," i.e. Marriage and Union. "Union" is the joining of two things or people that includes otherways besides marriage. Here are the word-lists:
[Mariage.] MARRIAGE (13)—Union, Meeting, Joining, Assembling, Bond, Alliance, Vow, Oath, Intimacy, Copulation, Coupling, Chain, Slavery, Financial Straits [Gene; Stockman has “discomfort or difficulty “], Captivity, Servitude.Thus we see more than union in the Uprights: there is a Vow or Oath, as in marriage. Such a contract can also be a form of captivity if one person dominates without the consent of the other. The reverseds have trems that could apply to metals or chemicals as much as to people; moreover, there are terms there for relationships between humans outside of marriage. To me this suggests strongly that at least one way of seeing the Lover card before this time was as Marriage, or some other intimate relationship, with perhaps some suggestion of an alchemical analogy.
Reversed: [Union.] UNION. Society, Contacts, Concubinage, Adultery, Incest, Alloy, Blending, Mixture, Compounding.—Peace, Concord, Accord, Harmony, Correct [Good] Understanding [bonne intelligence; Stockman has “good terms”]. Reconciliation, Patching up.
The Sixes, in the Sola-Busca and the Cartomantic Tradition.
The Theology' of Arithmetic (pp. 72-73) has Six as the number governing the animal soul. In the ancient world, what defined an animal, as opposed to a vegetable, was locomotion, the ability to change the location of its entire body by means of its own power, unlike a plant, which is either rooted in one place or has its motion imparted to it by something else--the wind, an animal's fur, etc. As though to express that essential property, the Sola-Busca Six of Swords shows us a man walking, albeit laboriously, given the six swords he is carrying. That difficulty reflects a fact of life in those days, that travel for many people was not that easy. It was also dangerous; one needed all the protection one could get.
The Etteilla School's word-list shows a similar emphasis on self-movement, at least in the uprights.
I have no idea where many of the Reverseds come from. Some, e.g. "Declaration," "Proclamation," etc. perhaps have something to do with the meaning of "messenger" in the Uprights. Others, i.e. "Vision, Revelation, Apparition," may be connected with another aspect of the Hexad, its connection with Hecate (p. 81). In ancient Alexandria, she was the goddess of witches and curses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecate). In medieval Germany, hexagonal designs were painted on buildings as protection against hexes, perhaps because of the linguistic similarity; but I can find no evidence for an actual etymological connection between "hex" meaning "witch" and "hex" meaning "six."6 OF SWORDS, UPRIGHTS: Road, Path, Lane, Walk, Passage, Footpath, Route—Walking, Trafficking, Canvassing [last 2 not in c. 1838], Thoughtfulness [the text reads: Prévenance; but if Provenance is meant, then the translation is: Provenance; c 1838 also has Prévenance], Driving [not in c. 1838], Means, Manner, Way, Expedient, Voyage [not in c. 1838], Course, Stroll, Pattern, Tracks, Trace [last three not in c. 1838, which has Carriere, Career or Quarry], Envoy, Commissionaire [Messenger]. REVERSED: Declaration, Declaratory Act, Exposition, Discussion, Interpretation.—Charter, Constitution, Diploma, Manifest Law, Ordinance [last 9, starting with "Declaratory Act," not in c. 1838].—Publication, Proclamation, Conspicuousness, Public Notice, Publicity, Authenticity, Fame.—Denunciation, Counting.—Enumeration [for last 2, c. 1838 has Denotation, Designation].—Knowledge, Discovery, Exposure, Vision, Revelation, Apparition, Appearance, Admission, Confession, Protestation, Approval, Authorization.
In the SB Cups, we see three childlike cherubs playing on a large cup in which five other cups are part of its design.
The theme might be that of childhood. The Etteilla School's list also suggests that theme, at least in the Uprights, although stated in terms of the past, which for most of us is where childhood is. In the Reverseds, however, the theme is the future.
What do childhood, the past, and the future have to do with the number six? The Theology speaks of six as divisible by three, and hence, like the Triad, pertaining to beginning, middle, and end (p. 78). But in the 6, these three are in the context of the animal soul, which unlike the plant remembers its past, has these memories available to it in the present, and can use them in anticipating the future. Beginning, middle, and end have become past, present, and future. In the Theology, we do not find this point made in so many words; all it says, obscurely, is that the Hexad is "measurer of time in twos," p. 81. However it would seem that the Renaissance linked time with the animal soul, as for example in Titian's famous Allegory of Prudence, which has a wolf and an old man for the past, a lion and a man in the prime of life for the present, and a dog and a youth for the future (see http://www.abcgallery.com/T/titian/titian76.html. In Cups, we see the past in the "Etteilla" Uprights and the future in the Reverseds. In the SB card, we see one image of the past: the play and exploration of childhood.ETTEILLA 6 OF CUPS: The Past, Times Gone By [not in c. 1838, which has Dried Up, Desséché], Wilted, Faded, Formerly, Earlier, Previously, Long Ago [c. 1838, In The Past, Jadis], In The Olden Days.—Old Age, Decrepitude, Antiquity. REVERSED: Advent [not in c. 1838], Future.—After, Following, Subsequently, Later.—Regeneration, Resurrection.—Reproduction, Renewal, Repetition [from "Regeneration" on, not in c. 1838].
The Theology relates the Hexad to childhood in three other ways. First, like the 5, multiplying 6 by itself, once or as many times as one likes, always results in a number ending with 6: the child is like the parent. The Theology says:
And later, after discussing 6 as a number of marriage by multiplication (female 2 x male 3), it adds:When squared, it includes itself, for 6x6=36; when cubed, it no longer maintains itself as a square, for 6x36=216, which includes 6 but not 36. [Translator's note: That is, 36 is circular, 216 is spherical.] (p. 75)
Second, it says, the number of days, from conception, after which a human fetus is viable on its own (self-moving, in other words) is 216, the cube of 6 (p. 83)....it is the function of marriage to make offspring similar to parents. (p. 75)
And third, from Pythagoras's account of his former lives--legend had it that he could remember previous incarnations--the author deduces from the historical facts Pythagoras mentioned, that the time between incarnations was 216 years, again the cube of 6 (p. 84). Thus 216 is the number for regeneration or rebirth into childhood as well as generation in the womb resulting in a self-moving child.
The SB Six of Coins shows a man pounding out a pattern on a metal plate, while other metal plates, in the shape of discs, hang on the wall. The arrangement of discs on the wall corresponds to a particular feature of the Six, that it is a "triangular" number, that is, its units can be laid out with equal spaces between them and forming an equilateral triangle. This concept was carefully explained in medieval and Renaissance arithmetic books, for example the passage below from the same 1570 Parisian book I showed in relation to the Tetrad:
Three is another triangular number. Correspondingly, the SB Three of Coins also has the discs laid out in the shape of an equilateral triangle. The next one is ten.
Turning to the bottom of the card, we see a worker very much in the present. He is focused, attending and very much on-task, and careful not to make errors. It is, I think, the third part of time, not covered in Cups, which has past in the Uprights and future in the Reverseds.
The "Etteilla" word list for Coins similarly speaks of the present time, and of attention and care for the present activity:
Finally, the SB Batons shows a man carrying large arrows and holding a lantern.ETTEILLA, 6 OF COINS: The Present, At the Moment, Presently, Now, Forthwith, Suddenly, Instantly, At This Time, Today, Assistant, Witness, Contemporary.—Attentive, Careful, Vigilant. [6 of last 7, not in c. 1838, which has instead: immediately, at once, at first, contemporary]. REVERSED: Ambition [c. 1838 only], Desire, Wish, Ardor, Overzealousness [last 2 not in c. 1838, which has Searches], Passion, Affectations [not in c. 1838], Cupidity, Envy [not in c. 1838], Jealousy, Illusion.
The ribbon divides the arrows into groups of three, two, and one. This division corresponds to a special feature of the Hexad as presented in the Theology of Arithmetic. The first sentence of the chapter reads:
That is, its factors when added together yield the number itself.The hexad is the first perfect number; for it is counted by its own parts, as containing a sixth, a third, and a half. (p. 75)
As for the man, he is reminiscent of the Hermit card. Since in its early form that card showed a man with an hourglass, I can't help wondering if perhaps this man in the 6 of Batons carried an hourglass, too, in an earlier version. In that way it would relate to the theme of time.
In the engraving, I imagine him as a servant forced to get up and answer the door for his master, or do labor past the time he would normally have stopped for the day. The man didn't even have time to put on his pants! Here I am influenced by the "Etteilla" word-list, which again reads like a meditation upon the SB card.
The Uprights are consistent with the interpretation of the man as a servant. The Reverseds convey what he is feeling: it is again about time, but now about emotional attitudes about the future from the perspective of the present: hope, fear, confidence, etc., all emotions that the higher animals might have as well. Since he is traveling, we again have locomotion in space; but the fourth dimension of time is there, too.ETTEILLA 6 OF BATONS: Domestic Worker, Servant, Valet, Lackey, Maid, Mercenary, Subordinate, Slave.—Courier, Messenger, Domestic Help.—Interior of a House, Housekeeping, Family, All Domestic Servants. [none in c. 1838 after Messenger; instead: Message, Announcement, Commission, Housework, Servitude] REVERSED: Waiting, Expectation, Hope [Desire], Believe Deep Down, Base Yourself On, Trust, Promise Yourself [last 3 not in c. 1838].—Confidence, Foresight.—Fear, Apprehension.
The themes that tie together all of these cards, and also includes the Lover, are those of motion and time: past, present, future, traveling, and the choices we make.
7. Chariot: Direct our will that we may pull your cart straight, O God of the Triumphal Hymn.
Christian base: The game of triumphs, or trumps, is modeled after processions of allegorical floats that marked special occasions, reviving a tradition from ancient Rome, of victory processions. Petrarch had recalled the practice in his poem [i]Il Trionfi[/i], another source for the tarot. In Rome, the victor rode in a chariot. For Christians, this image, besides bringing to mind the pagan conqueror, also evoke Pharaoh's chariot, chasing the Israelites, and also the Chariot of God seen by Ezekiel in the Bible. They represent success, and awesome power, but also, when carrying mortals, the arrogance of power. Any crisis that developed in the previous stage has definitely been overcome--for the moment.
The Cary-Visconti (CY) Chariot card shows a lady on top and a man on the horses. From his dress, he is the same as the man in the Lovers card. It is hard to make out what she is carrying. It might be a golden orb; it as though to say, she has the world in her hands. The canopy suggests that she is in a victory parade, not fighting a battle. Likewise, one early name for this card was "the triumphal chariot."
It may be the triumphal procession of a lady to her new home upon marriage. The man presents himself as her servant, and she is elevated to the status of a goddess. Thus the man is at the bottom of the card serving as groom. Probably this is the same man as we saw on the Love card. There are two types of occasion where that type of card makes sense. First, to commemorate a wedding procession. There was the entry into Milan of Marie of Savoy in 1428, where she became the husband of Filippo Visconti. There may have been a wedding procession in 1441 for the marriage of Bianca Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza.
The main military victory that it could commemorate is that of 1450, when Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria rode into Milan as its Duke and Duchess. But winning Milan for Bianca, after her father the Duke had expressly removed her, and implicitly her husband, from the succession in his will--that was a triumph. And Francesco made the most of it, not coming in on a triumphal chariot but merely on horseback, while his men distributed bread to the populace he had starved into submission. Similarly, on the card he is the lady's servant, bringing her somewhere she deserves to be. (1)
So the meaning of the card depends on what it commemorates. If for a wedding, it is a triumph of Chastity. If for the military victory, it is a triumph of Fame. These are two of the triumphs in Petrarch's poem.
References: Chariot, Christian:
1. See previous section for references to Cary-Yale, Visconti-Sforza, Cary Sheet. From now on I will save both myself and the reader trouble by not giving the references for these cards, or the d'Este, Noblet, or Dodal either, unless for some reason they have changed from what they have been. I also will not give the reference to the Schoen zodiac or the interpretation of the Houses. I have put the relevant links in a separate section, immediately following this one. "triumphal chariot: http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards26.htm.
Interpretation in terms of Plato's Phaedrus. In the Visconti-Sforza (PMB) card (above right) there is no man and no reins. Instead, the horses are winged. This suggests the winged horses that lead the chariot of the soul in Plato's Phaedrus, a favorite text in the Renaissance. Here is how Plato describes the souls of gods and humans as charioteers:
...Now the winged horses and the charioteers of the gods are all of them noble and of noble descent, but those of other races are mixed: the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is noble and of noble breed, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him... (1)
In the case of the Visconti-Sforza (PMB) card, both horses go the same way and have the same color. The lady on the chariot must be one of Plato's goddesses, who rode their chariots in the highest part of the circuit of heaven. She is Chastity or Temperance, Truth, or some other virtue.
In the Cary-Visconti (Cary-Yale) card, on the other hand, a groom is actually on top of one horse. That one has all four feet on the ground; that is Plato's horse of honor. The other has no human guide and is rearing its front feet, as though to charge ahead on its own initiative. It is the ignoble horse, the one that gives the charioteer a lot of trouble. The charioteer is actually the one on the horse, not the one on the chariot. So he is controlling his ignoble side by directing his noble side by reason. The result is either an honorable marriage or a military victory. Possibly it served the first purpose originally, and then was adapted to serve the other later. I say this because the later Chariot cards dropped the lady on top but retained the two contrasting horses. An example very close in time to the CY and PMB is the Chariot card from a Ferrara deck of c. 1450 (below left) that probably goes with two other trumps in Warsaw. A later example is the Catelin Geoffrey card of 1557 (below right), which like the Cary-Yale has a groom holding the noble horse, while replacing the woman with an older man. The horses are colored light and dark, as in the Phaedrus's allegory. The groom is on the other side as compared with the Cary-Yale, but since the horses have also switched sides that makes no difference. (1a)
The contrast between the horses also occurs in the Cary Sheet (below left): their bodies tend in opposite directions, while their heads point in the same direction. It is as though the horse on our left were only pretending to go the same way as the horse on our right, while actually trying to lead the chariot in a different direction. These horses appear to have lost their wings, a condition that Plato says happens when they descend to earth.
Noblet continues the body positions of the Cary Sheet, and puts the two horses on the same sides as in the Cary-Visconti. Plato says that the noble horse is on the "better" side, which would be the right. Noblet is following Plato here. He follows Catelin Geoffrey in making the horses different colors. Plato has something to say about that later in his story:
In the Cary-Visconti (Cary-Yale) card, on the other hand, a groom is actually on top of one horse. That one has all four feet on the ground; that is Plato's horse of honor. The other has no human guide and is rearing its front feet, as though to charge ahead on its own initiative. It is the ignoble horse, the one that gives the charioteer a lot of trouble. The charioteer is actually the one on the horse, not the one on the chariot. So he is controlling his ignoble side by directing his noble side by reason. The result is either an honorable marriage or a military victory. Possibly it served the first purpose originally, and then was adapted to serve the other later. I say this because the later Chariot cards dropped the lady on top but retained the two contrasting horses. An example very close in time to the CY and PMB is the Chariot card from a Ferrara deck of c. 1450 (below left) that probably goes with two other trumps in Warsaw. A later example is the Catelin Geoffrey card of 1557 (below right), which like the Cary-Yale has a groom holding the noble horse, while replacing the woman with an older man. The horses are colored light and dark, as in the Phaedrus's allegory. The groom is on the other side as compared with the Cary-Yale, but since the horses have also switched sides that makes no difference. (1a)
The contrast between the horses also occurs in the Cary Sheet (below left): their bodies tend in opposite directions, while their heads point in the same direction. It is as though the horse on our left were only pretending to go the same way as the horse on our right, while actually trying to lead the chariot in a different direction. These horses appear to have lost their wings, a condition that Plato says happens when they descend to earth.
Noblet continues the body positions of the Cary Sheet, and puts the two horses on the same sides as in the Cary-Visconti. Plato says that the noble horse is on the "better" side, which would be the right. Noblet is following Plato here. He follows Catelin Geoffrey in making the horses different colors. Plato has something to say about that later in his story:
The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made: he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose: his colour is white, and his eyes dark; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and admonition only. The other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion; the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and spur.
This passage gives us an idea why reins are not needed. The first horse responds to the words of the charioteer. Yet Plato later describes how the other horse is so rebellious that he can be restrained only when the charioteer pulls on the reins so strongly that the bit brings blood to the horse's mouth, and even then only after many repetitions. Here Noblet is departing from Plato. It must be that the rebellious horse is restrained by the obedient one, rather than the charioteer himself. It is like when the citizens of a state rebel against its ruler; the ruler himself does not put down the rebellion, but relies on his soldiers to do it for him. The two horses are two powers in the soul, one good and one evil; one moderate and obedient to the voice of reason, the other inclined to follow its own irrational desires.
What then of the charioteer himself? Plato says he is the part of the soul that stands high enough up so that once he could see absolute Goodness, Beauty, etc., but now only discerns them dimly when he sees their imperfect copies in the material world, though a hazy recollection of his life before entering matter. He "sees through a glass dimly," the Jowett translation has it. Actually, the Greek is not so close to St. Paul's wording, although the sense is similar: he sees through darkened organs of perception. (2)
We see also that in making the two horses different colors, Noblet is also following Plato, making one more whitish and the other reddish. Actually, in comparing the web translation by Jowett (1895) with more recent English versions, I find that three say the second horse has "black skin"; one says it is "dark skin." Perhaps the horse is black in the way that in French pinot noir is noir: i.e. dark in comparison to its lighter version.
This contrast is more apparent in the Noblet original than in Flornoy's restoration. In looking at the original of the Noblet, I have to wonder whether the pinkish color Flornoy puts here wasn't originally more a medium red, and the harness a darker red. We will see in the next section a "Marseille" style chariot card whose horses are white and red, as in the quotation above. In any case, it is the horse on the charioteer's left, our right, that is the unruly one. At the moment captured in the card, its head follows the noble horse, while its body tends the other way. (3)
The second horse, in Plato's allegory, sees Beauty from afar and goes toward it, to satisfy its desire upon it without respect for its sacredness. Paradoxically, in so doing it also leads the chariot closer, so that the charioteer comes near to "true beauty, whom he beholds in company with Modesty like an image placed upon a holy pedestal." These terms, Modesty and Beauty, are reminiscent of the allegory of Virtue and Pleasure we saw in relation to the Lover card, the two together rather than opposed. It is as when we see a beautiful Renaissance painting: it is our senses that are attracted at first, and then we want to understand better what is being said. In this way the reddish horse now represents Pleasure, and the whitish one Virtue.
Neither horse has wings. Yet at the sight of Beauty, they start to grow back, as painfully as if they were new teeth. If the unruly horse has its way, then the horses are in danger of losing their wings for the next 9000 years. It depends on the strength of the charioteer--Plato has a vivid description of his effort reining in the unruly horse. That both horses are growing wings means that both are impulses toward the divine. But such impulses can go wrong without proper guidance. Only the strongest and most alert effort of will, in our card represented by the charioteer and the noble horse, can give the unruly horse a "holy fear," so that the chariot is directed well. Then both horses will move in the direction of the noble horse, as is starting to happen in the card.
All this is in accord with Christian Neoplatonism. Divine beauty is none other than God, whom we must not try to be at one with through excessive zeal but approach in holy fear as well as desire, with no care for life, possessions, or other considerations of ordinary prudence, but with a respect born of fear.
The situation on the Chariot card can be expressed in the same terms used in one interpretation of the Lover card. One horse, Virtue, pulls one way, and the other, Pleasure, pulls the other, and our charioteer, looking at Virtue, looks anxious. Has he understood the situation properly? How do his commands measure up to the standards of the ideal ruler?
In the "Marseille" model, the canopy is a leftover from the Cary-Visconti parade chariot. Yet here, it shelters a man in armor, riding at attention and wearing a ducal crown. Although the victory is his for the moment, winning the peace is another matter. Francesco's son Ludovico, for example, rode triumphantly into Milan in 1500, after being expelled by the French. Yet within months he was languishing in a French jail. To win the peace, one must curb the desire for honor as well as that for pleasure, as Francesco knew. The canopy, appropriate for a parade, makes the chariot too top-heavy for battle, and keeps the charioteer out of the light of reason. (4)
Of relevance here is what Plato says about the charioteer traveling in the company of the god that suits him best. He observes,
What then of the charioteer himself? Plato says he is the part of the soul that stands high enough up so that once he could see absolute Goodness, Beauty, etc., but now only discerns them dimly when he sees their imperfect copies in the material world, though a hazy recollection of his life before entering matter. He "sees through a glass dimly," the Jowett translation has it. Actually, the Greek is not so close to St. Paul's wording, although the sense is similar: he sees through darkened organs of perception. (2)
We see also that in making the two horses different colors, Noblet is also following Plato, making one more whitish and the other reddish. Actually, in comparing the web translation by Jowett (1895) with more recent English versions, I find that three say the second horse has "black skin"; one says it is "dark skin." Perhaps the horse is black in the way that in French pinot noir is noir: i.e. dark in comparison to its lighter version.
This contrast is more apparent in the Noblet original than in Flornoy's restoration. In looking at the original of the Noblet, I have to wonder whether the pinkish color Flornoy puts here wasn't originally more a medium red, and the harness a darker red. We will see in the next section a "Marseille" style chariot card whose horses are white and red, as in the quotation above. In any case, it is the horse on the charioteer's left, our right, that is the unruly one. At the moment captured in the card, its head follows the noble horse, while its body tends the other way. (3)
The second horse, in Plato's allegory, sees Beauty from afar and goes toward it, to satisfy its desire upon it without respect for its sacredness. Paradoxically, in so doing it also leads the chariot closer, so that the charioteer comes near to "true beauty, whom he beholds in company with Modesty like an image placed upon a holy pedestal." These terms, Modesty and Beauty, are reminiscent of the allegory of Virtue and Pleasure we saw in relation to the Lover card, the two together rather than opposed. It is as when we see a beautiful Renaissance painting: it is our senses that are attracted at first, and then we want to understand better what is being said. In this way the reddish horse now represents Pleasure, and the whitish one Virtue.
Neither horse has wings. Yet at the sight of Beauty, they start to grow back, as painfully as if they were new teeth. If the unruly horse has its way, then the horses are in danger of losing their wings for the next 9000 years. It depends on the strength of the charioteer--Plato has a vivid description of his effort reining in the unruly horse. That both horses are growing wings means that both are impulses toward the divine. But such impulses can go wrong without proper guidance. Only the strongest and most alert effort of will, in our card represented by the charioteer and the noble horse, can give the unruly horse a "holy fear," so that the chariot is directed well. Then both horses will move in the direction of the noble horse, as is starting to happen in the card.
All this is in accord with Christian Neoplatonism. Divine beauty is none other than God, whom we must not try to be at one with through excessive zeal but approach in holy fear as well as desire, with no care for life, possessions, or other considerations of ordinary prudence, but with a respect born of fear.
The situation on the Chariot card can be expressed in the same terms used in one interpretation of the Lover card. One horse, Virtue, pulls one way, and the other, Pleasure, pulls the other, and our charioteer, looking at Virtue, looks anxious. Has he understood the situation properly? How do his commands measure up to the standards of the ideal ruler?
In the "Marseille" model, the canopy is a leftover from the Cary-Visconti parade chariot. Yet here, it shelters a man in armor, riding at attention and wearing a ducal crown. Although the victory is his for the moment, winning the peace is another matter. Francesco's son Ludovico, for example, rode triumphantly into Milan in 1500, after being expelled by the French. Yet within months he was languishing in a French jail. To win the peace, one must curb the desire for honor as well as that for pleasure, as Francesco knew. The canopy, appropriate for a parade, makes the chariot too top-heavy for battle, and keeps the charioteer out of the light of reason. (4)
Of relevance here is what Plato says about the charioteer traveling in the company of the god that suits him best. He observes,
Now the lover who is taken to be the attendant of Zeus is better able to bear the winged god, and can endure a heavier burden; but the attendants and companions of Ares, when under the influence of love, if they fancy that they have been at all wronged, are ready to kill and put an end to themselves and their beloved...The lover attending Zeus is the philosopher, as Plato says. In describing the attendant of Ares, he has in mind the wounded pride of the warrior, quick to react without thinking out the implications. However there is a mature side to the warrior, which Francesco Sforza exemplified. Willing to risk everything to get what he wanted, he also knew when to quit. (5)
So there is an issue here that Plato did not explore. If the charioteer is exercising his rational faculties "dimly" or "darkly" (as translations have it) then he may communicate excessive honor to the noble horse, and the chariot is as much headed for trouble as if it were led by the other horse. It can lead the chariot into rash action, and also can draw it back in fear unnecessarily. The "Marseille" rider seems to be relying on his armor for protection--not a good sign. He stands stiffly in the upper part of the chariot, like a person operating from the upper part of his body.
Perhaps he needs to get down some of the time and ride with the horses, so as to feel their own desires, of which while he is on top he may be unaware. Yet he also needs to continue to be the one in control, directing the chariot toward a goal that is ascertained by rational thought.
Some say that considering the way the wheels are pointing, against the direction of the horses, the chariot cannot move at all. However I think that the artist is deliberately using an archaic style, one from before perspective was used. It is not that perspective techniques were too new: the Cary-Visconti's artist used perspective, in the depiction of the canopy. Likewise, in the Noblet, the King of Bastons card shows the use of simple perspective in the floor. Perhaps the artist of the Marseille style, from the Cary Sheet onwards, wanted to give the cards an antique look. A similar chariot appears on a 4th century sarcophagus, perfectly preserved in a Roman house. The deceased, a former polo player, rides in his triumphal chariot, and the design is pleasing despite its ridiculousness. (6)
In the Schoen zodiac, the house corresponding to this card is the 4th, the house of family. The wheeled vehicle is a plow, and the father is teaching the son. What connects it to the card is the theme of labor, of keeping one's nose to the grindstone and all one's senses attuned, so to speak, for the sake of one's love.
References, Interpretation in terms of Plato's Phaedrus
1. Robert Place, History and Symbolism of the tarot, makes this connection to the Phaedrus. I quote from the Jowett translation, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.1b.txt.
1a. Warsaw: http://trionfi.com/0/j/d/ferrasingle/ Geoffrey: http://www.poker168.com/bwg/bwg_tl6.htm.
2 and 3. The other translations are
4 and 5. Ludovico and Francesco Sforza: Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. 2.
6. Roman polo player: a book on Roman art the name of which I have not tracked down.
The Chariot, Greco-Egyptian perspective: Before Conver, the horses were different colors. In Noblet as restored by Flornoy (above), they appear to be light red and gray. One 18th century Swiss deck even has them as red and white. These were the colors of the crowns of Lower and Upper Egypt. (1)
The Renaissance probably knew what these two crowns looked like; the combined crown is in the Bembine tablet, worn by the hawk-headed Horus (see the section on the Pope card, above). They also knew at least one way of assigning colors, from Plutarch: Horus was white, Osiris black, and Seth red. That is one explanation for the red and white.
But if Horus wears the combined crown, then he is red plus white. In that case, white would be Osiris, representing Lower Egypt. There is a contradiction, and I am not sure how to resolve it. One way might be the following. That one horse is gray in Noblet may indicate a kind of dirty white, a purity and vision tarnished by the charioteers' failures to see clearly and consequent misdeeds. In Plutarch's characterization, Osiris is the one who did not see what was going on, who he was having sex with--or the seriousness of his sin if he did--and who was conspiring against him. So the white horse, representing Upper Egypt and Osiris, sees "through a glass dimly," as Jowett translates Plato, and so needs the clearer vision of the Charioteer. (2)
In any case, it was white Horus who defeated red Seth and took the leadership of Lower Egypt. Thus red, the devotees of Seth, follows the lead of white Horus. The Swiss card captures this color scheme in having the red horse's head following that of the white horse.
Seth, as Plutarch described him, was the god of disorder, the unruly passions, and the hot winds off the desert. Osiris is the god of order and life-giving moisture. In this characterization, Seth had a harmful, evil quality. Yet both order and disorder were needed for the universe to run well, Plutarch said. Some of this quality appears also in Plato; for it is the unruly horse that draws the chariot toward the Beloved, while the noble horse forces them to honor her for the divinity that she is. (3)
In Christian Europe, chariots of course were quintessentially Egyptian, if only because of Pharaoh's host chasing the Israelites across the Red Sea in their battle-chariots (as in the tomb painting above; it is an image the tarot designers could not have seen, although evoked clearly enough in the Bible). But even for Plato they probably connoted Egypt, among other land-dominated places. I suspect it is no accident that the colors he chose for his chariot's horses were red (if that is a correct translation; if not, then dark) and white. He may have simply taken an Egyptian symbol and made it his own.
References, Chariot, Egyptian:
1. Images: Osiris with crown: http://www.egyptian-gods.net/osiris.php. The red and white crowns: http://africanhistory.about.com/od/glossaryd/g/def_DoubleCrown.htm. One eighteenth century version: Andy's Playing Cards, at http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards43.htm.
2. Red, white, and black: Plutarch, Isis and Osiris XXII, http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html. Seth (often called Typhon) and Osiris: Plutarch XXXIII, XLIX, LXIV. Plato quote: (1) http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html; (2) http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0174;query=section%3D%23856;layout=;loc=Phaedrus%20250c.
3. Plutarch: Isis and Osiris XLIV, XLIX. Plato: Phaedrus, http://www.wutsamada.com/alma/ancient/chariot.htm. Image of Egyptian chariot: http://www.ashmolean.org/gri/9chario0.html.
The Dionysian Chariot: Dionysus is said by Cartari to be have invented the tradition of triumphal processions after a victory. In Dionysus's case, the parade was after his victories in India, and he rode an elephant. And at such processions they would sing the Thriambos, the Triumphal Hymn. According to my Webster's New World Dictionary, the word "Triumph" comes from this word "Thriambos," meaning "hymn to Bacchus sung in festal processions." (1)
There are numerous images of Dionysus riding a chariot in procession. One example in Cartari is the following:
That the artist was not simply making this up to Cartari's specifications is evident when we compare the illustration to a Roman sarcophagus. Too many details are the same for it to be coincidence: the harp-playing centaurs, the figure of Cupid on one centaur's back, even the goat in the background. There are a few differences, to be sure, but the artist seems clearly to be copying a sarcophagus scene at least similar to this one. (2)
Let us consider the Conver card of 1761 (below). As in the other Marseille-style cards, one of the horses tends to pull in a different direction than the other, while their heads face the same way. From the perspective of a Dionysian initiation, they are the two initiates, one with the face of Virtue and the other of Pleasure. There may be a differentiation in gender here, with pink or red as feminine, the pleasures of women and relaxation and the white or gray the ardors of masculine achievement and overcoming of obstacles.
The Dionysian perspective ties the horses in with another detail: the epaulettes on the shoulders. Although the expressions on the faces are not well differentiated, they may be the happy, waxing moon, and the sad, waning moon, and also the masks worn in the Dionysian theatre: the happy mask of comedy, the sad one of tragedy. The bumpy ground suggests that it is rough going, no longer just passion. His wide-open eyes suggest both fear and wonder. (3)
The remaining fragment of one early card (below left) shows the chariot being driven by Cupid, while what looks like a man and a woman are riding. An Orphic medallion shows a similar scene, with Cupid applying the whip, Mercury holding the reins, and Ariadne and Dionysus as passengers. It is the same as in Plato's Symposium (199-202) and Phaedrus: Love, the desire for union with the Beloved, is what spurs the chariot on. Unable to remember its goal and blinded by the things of this world, it needs a guide. We will meet him in Card 9. (4)
Here is a composite image to sum up the features of this card:
References, Chariot, Dionysian:
1. Cartari 1647, Italian digitalized edition.
2. Plato quotation, Phaedrus 250d. Images: Cartari 1647, p. 221; Daimonax at http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/7chariot1.html.
3. Epaulettes: Daimonax, http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/7chariot1.html.
4. Card: Kaplan Encyclopedia of Tarot Vol. p. Medallion: in Carl Kerenyi, Dionysos: archetypal image of indestructible life, trans. Ralph Mannheim.
The Alchemical Chariot. O'Neill says that what corresponds to the Chariot card is the stage in alchemy that he calls "the birth of the philosopher's son," "the first union, the Royal Son," or "the triumph of Apollo or Mars." Moreover (p. 287):
The birth of the philosopher's son only completes the first stage of the operations. The King's son must die, be buried, travel through the underworld and be resurrected into a higher unity. Thus, the Chariot card represents Apollo, the sun god, about to travel into the sea to initiate the "night sea journey."O'Neil's account of the King's son in alchemy is very close to the interpretation I quoted earlier from Natale Conti in 1551. Conti says of Juno:
...before the distilling process, she is joined with Jove, and the two together engender the alchemical Sun... (DiMateo, Natale Conti's Mythologies, p. 81)What O'Neill does is to refer us to ms. palat. 1066, where there are images with chariots. One is of Apollo leading his horses skillfully. There are also the nine Muses, a typical accompaniment to illustrations of Apollo, the son of Jove if not of Juno. When with the Muses, he usually is shown with his lyre. Here he has a bow and arrow. That is also one of his attributes, the weapon with which he kills the Python of Delphi. A black crow and a red man sit on the chariot, two of the colors of alchemy. The text that goes with the illumination is about Apollo. The crow is part of Apollo's myth and a typical accompaniment; I don't know how the red man fits into his myth, although red men occur often enough in alchemy. The horses are reddish and whitish, corresponding to some versions of the tarot card.
Another illumination in palat. 1066, the one immediately following the one of Apollo, has a younger person at the reins, and a devil grabbing them. Below him the same figure being helped out of the water and put into a tomb. The accompanying text is about Phaeton, the son of the sun god Helios, who tried managing the chariot of the sun but couldn't control it. Struck by a bolt of lightning from Zeus, he falls out of the chariot to his death, where his sisters mourn him.
The illustration is in some respects typical of illustrations of Greek mythology at that time. But what is usually shown is just the fall out of the chariot (for example, in the" tarot of Mantegna" Sun card, shown at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantegna_Tarocchi. In the comments accompanying the illumination, no devil is mentioned, nor do the sisters help him out of the water and into a tomb.
The scene in the alchemical illustration seems to me to be one of volatilization and then fixation, in an early stage of the process. Vapors from the heated substance in the alchemist's retort are released into the tubing above it, where it will condense on the sides. They are in a state of heat and agitation, in other words, of high-flying aspiration. Similarly, the man on the chariot is seeing with his mind's eye the ideal images of the upper world that he is now recalling, and at the same time trying to guide his horses accordingly. But he is out of contact with the horses and the rest of the material world. He doesn't even have reins; all he has is his voice. For one horse, that is enough, but not for the other. The chariot is headed for disaster. But it is a purifying disaster, like the boiling over of the alchemist's substance, because the boy will return with more knowledge than he had before.
As far as the Chariot card, it is not clear whether the mature Apollo or the immature Phaeton applies. I would think Phaeton, but perhaps it is intentionally ambiguous.
A problem with the images in palat. 1066 is that they are not in an unambiguously alchemical manuscript; they are in a manuscript talking about the Greek gods. It might help to see what in the unambiguous alchemical imagery corresponds to these images of Apollo and Phaeton.
Unfortunately O'Neill does not give us anything; so I will try. After the marriage of King and Queen, what follows in the Rosarium series is the act of coitus, in a bath. Next, the bath has turned into a tomb, and we see one body with two heads; and third, a small boy ascends into the sky from the fused body. It is this small boy that I identify with O'Neill's "royal son." Here are what the 1555 woodcuts look like (http://www.rexresearch.com/rosarium/rosarium.htm). Number 5 is top left, 6 bottom left, and 7 on the right.
The first is the "coniunctio or coitus"; the second (below the first) is the "pregnatio, or putrefactio"; and the third is the "extractio, or impregnatio animae" i.e. impregnation of the soul. For the third image, the motto is
Here the Four Elements are separated,So far only this last scene is relevant to the Chariot card, in that it shows a young person in the air. What about the other scenes, between the marriage and the little boy? Well, they are not in the tarot, at least not explicitly. If the Lover card was meant to represent the hieros gamos of Isis and Osiris, anticipating that of God and Mary--then that may include the death scene, because Osiris was already dead, and Isis would soon join him. Isis in effect was making love to Osiris in his tomb.
And the Soul is most subtly severed from the Body.
In the Marseille-style Lover card, Cupid corresponds to what we are now taking as the Royal Son. It is a Cupid who has lost his wings and is all grown up. Now it is the allegory of the Phaedrus that most clearly applies, and the three parts of the soul. The rational part, the charioteer, is quite a bit separated from the other two. If we can say that the rational part is the immortal part, then in that sense it is separated from the mortal parts, in that he is on one level, they are on another, and there is nothing connecting the two. But how does this relate to the Apollo and Phaeton images?
I think the relationship will become closer if we see an additional image from Mylius's Anatomia Aurea of 1628, the "Coitus" image, right before the two I showed in connection with the Lover card. I will show "Coitus" first; the others will follow (I take these images from de Rola's Golden Game).
In the Coitus image, the King says. "Come my beloved, let us embrace and generate a new son who will not resemble his parents." The Queen replies, "Here I come to you, most eager to conceive a son who shall have no equal in the world." These comments, although they come from the Rosarium text, are what is new in our understanding of the imagery. Psychologically, it is very much a recipe for inflation if communicated to the child. According to de Rola, the lady in the vessel in the top image is the Mercury of the Wise. and the youth is the Sulphur of the Wise. De Rola comments (Golden Game p. 207).
The sexual embrace of the purified Principles causes pregnancy, which, as the winged Spirit at the top of the vessel shows, is a Volatization of the Fixed.He is referring to the child in the "Pregnatio" image. It is the same result as I got for the Phaeton illumination, volatization. It will be followed by sublimation.
Whether by accident or design, the embracing couple with the child above them is pictorially similar not only to the early tarot Love cards but also to the Marseille-sryle Chariot cards, the two horses taking the place of the embracing couple. Both here and in the account described by Conti, the sequence goes directly to the "engendering of the alchemical Sun" without the intervening "putrefactio" of the Rosarium; in the process, the man has disappeared from the vessel in the "Praegnatio"because he has been fully absorbed by Lady Mercury. The old king is dead, and his successor and heir flies overhead.
In the Rosarium sequence, the volitalization is the little boy flying up from the tomb into the clouds. The sublimation comes two emblems later, when the boy returns. That stage, it seems to me, is what corresponds in the Phaeton myth to Phaeton falling from the sky. One version of the Rosarium image, a year earlier than the well-known 1550 version, actually shows a child falling rather than flying (http://www.alchemywebsite.com/virtual_museum/rosarium_side_gallery_sources.html. This is of a second volitization-sublimation process in the sequence, emblems 14 and 16, which involves a little winged girl; I presume that the sequence has a similar image earlier for the little boy.
In such a manner does the charioteer come to earth after living in the clouds of his ambitions. Something similar happens in the tarot as well, when the Wheel of Fortune turns and the Charioteer finds himself at the bottom of the wheel. It is the Charioteer as Alexander the Great, poisoned at a banquet, or Julius Caesar, assassinated in the Capitol.
The Pythagorean and Kabbalistic Chariot. The number 7 in the Theology of Arithmetic is associated with the rational soul (p. 73). That is where the charioteer is in Plato's Phaedrus, looking above him to the perfections he sees in heaven. If there were a Pythagorean creation myth, the seventh day would be for creating rational beings in the physical world, i.e. humanity. The Theology divides life into distinct periods of seven hours, days, months, and years, starting even before birth. At the end of each is a critical period, which must be surmounted to reach the next. Taking life as a whole, moreover, there were said to be seven main stages:
Seven are the seasons, which we call ages--child, boy, adolescent, youth, man, elder, old man. One is a child up to the shedding of teeth, until seven years; a boy up to puberty, until twice 7; an adolescent up to the growth of the beard, until three times 7; a youth during the general growth of the body, until four times 7; a man up to one short of fifty years, until seven times seven; an elder up to 56 years, until seven times 8; from then on one is an old man. (Theology of Arithmetic p. 87f.)The middle stage was called in Latin iuventas, youth. It is a person at the height of his or her physical and mental powers, aged 21 to 28 . After that came vir, man, in which a person perfected these powers. It is in one or the other of these stages, or perhaps the point between the two, that seems to be depicted on this card.
In the Christian Kabbalah, Reuchlin (p. 285) translated the name of the 7th sefira, Netzach in Hebrew, as victory (Latin, Triumph); he associates it with the "prophet's vision" and with the prophet Moses (p. 291). Reuchlin's source, Gikatilla as translated into Latin by Ricci, called it "place of counsel and conferring with higher powers" (p. 75); triumph (Neza victoria p. 76); Eye of Mercy (oculum miseracordiae p. 76). Pico says that it is "that which converts to superior things" (11>67). It is victory attained by looking to what is above one, reason or God. All of that is very much in keeping with the Chariot card in the tarot as it would have been understood at the time. (1)
In the "Egyptian" section on this card, I mentioned how red symbolized the energy of Seth and white the purity of Horus--or perhaps the purity of Osiris, it wasn't clear. An interesting application of the colors red and white occurs in the Jewish Kabbalah as presented in the 16th century by Moses Cordovero. The work in which this appears was intended as a summation of Kabbalah before him, so this idea probably appeared earlier as well. He correlates red with the 5th sefirah on the Tree of Life, Judgment, and white with the 4th sefirah, Love. Then he makes the 6th sefirah about, in part, the combination of red and white: "Within the mystery of this quality are all things compounded of red and white, fire and water, warmth and wetness, judgment and grace." Red is the God's judgment, and white is God's love. They combine in the Messiah. If red is warmth and fire, moreover, it is similar to the Egyptian Seth. In this metaphor, white is wetness, the property of Osiris. And if the left side of the Tree of Life is red, that includes Binah, whom we have seen as Isis the mother of Horus. The conjunction of the two is the combination of love and severity that is needed by the successful king, i.e. Horus as the sun engendered in Tifereth but triumphant in Netzach. (3)
That the Renaissance may have been aware of this symbolism of red and white, either from a Kabbalist or Egyptian-based source, is suggested by an illumination of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, done around 1468, when he had just become Duke of Milan after the death of his father. (The text says 1464, but the illumination has him as "Dvx," i.e. Duke. (4)
The odd red and white leggings may symbolize the combination of passion and reason that he identified with as ruler. Of the two, passion ruled Galeazzo, as it did Phaeton, more than reason; he was assassinated at age 32.
References, the Pythagorean and Kabbalistic Chariot
1. To come up with the list from Ricci, I read the English translation of Gates of Light and then verified that the Latin equivalent was in the abridgement. For the Latin, I went to the "Paolo Riccio" entry in Wikipedia and used its link to the Portae Lucis. In Meditation and Kabbalah (in Google Books). Ariel Kaplan says that "as one of the few Kabbalistic works published in translation" it "exerted a powerful influence on many occult groups in Europe."
2. Cordovero: in Daniel Matt, ed., The Essential Kabbalah, p. 45.
3.. Essential Kabbalah, p. 44.
4.. http://thiswritelife.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/galeazzo-maria-sforza/.
The Chariot in the Cartomantic Tradition. The Etteilla card is his number 21, looking very much like the Marseille Chariot card.
There is one keyword, "Dissension," both upright and reversed. The keywords in the word-lists are "Dissension" and "Arrogance," a change that was adopted in later versions of the deck:
[Dissension.] DISSENSION—War, Dispute, Disruption, Troubles, Insurrection, Sedition, Faction, Rebellion, Defection, Riots, Unrest, Battle, Fight, Combat.—Duel. Arrogance, Haughtiness, Vanity, False Glory, Pomp, Ostentation, Daring [Audacite: Audacity], Temerity.—Violence, Disorder, Anger, Injury, Abuse, Presumptuousness, Vengeance.These words strongly suggest to me that in one tradition before Etteilla, the Chariot card had the sense of someone trying to dominate but losing control of the situation, like Phaeton but perhaps not as a one-time childish stunt but as a way of life: in other words, someone heading for a fall.
Reversed: [Arrogance.] ARROGANCE. Unrest [bruit; Stockman has noise], Racket, Quarrel, Disagreement, Contesting, Lawsuit, Harassment, Arguments, Debates.
The Sevens, in the Sola-Busca and Etteilla.
Here are the Sola-Busca Sevens, from http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Sola-Busca_gallery:
What could possibly make these cards reflections of the number Seven, apart from there being seven of the suit number on each card? I think that they are modifications of the "seven ages of man" section of the Theology (p. 87f) that I quoted n the previous section. That these "seven ages" were well-known is evident from a famous marble tile in the pavement of Siena Cathedral, c. 1480. Here is a reproduction (not a good one but it is all I have). The ages go clockwise from the bottom left:
Notice that the figure labeled "iuventus" has a similar bird as the figure on the SB Seven of Coins.
What I think is that the four SB figures represent four of the seven ages, with the moping young man with the bird one of them: not "iuventus" but rather the one before, "adolescencia." The bird would fit either of these "ages," but I think that with another example, we will see that "juventus" fits the man in the SB Seven of Swords.
The only other example of the seven ages that I know of is the poem by by the melancholy Jaques in Shakespeare's As You Like It, 2.7.139ff:
The seven ages also correlate with the seven planets, from the Moon to Saturn, as is evident in Jaques' speech.JAQUES. All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
The Sola-Busca could not use all seven of these ages for its four suits. So it picked four of them, representing the whole. There were said sometimes, e.g. in discussions of the Tetrad, to be only four stages of life: childhood, youth, maturity, and old age.
Childhood is the second age, the puer. For that one, of Mercury, Shakespeare has a schoolboy with his "shining morning face." There is just such a bright-eyed, alert, eager boy on the SB Seven of Cups, standing confidently on his cup. Admittedly, when looked at closely, his face is not as shining as one would hope. That may be due to the painter, as opposed to the engraver, not grasping the point. In any case, we are dealing with a metaphor, for an attitude associated with late childhood that can occur at any age; and the same is true for the other "ages" depicted. The pose is reminiscent of Bruneleschi's David, later adapted by Michelangelo.
(In the card, the letters he is running over, SPQR, stand for "Senatus Populusque Romanus, "Senate and People of Rome,' an abbrevation associated with the Roman Republic [see Wikipedia]. These letters are not part of the engraving before it was painted; I think they are meant for the painter's patron, probably a citizen of the Republic of Venice. As Zucker [Illustrated Bartsch, Vol. 24 Part 3, p. 66] points out, Trump XV has SPQV on Metelo's shield, the same abbreviation except referring to Venice.)
Shakespeare's image for adolescencia, the third age, of Venus, is different from the card's--he has a lover writing sonnets to his girlfriend--but there is the same "woeful" look on the boy in the 7 of Coins.
Sofia Di Vincenzo, in her book Sola Busca Tarot, makes some observations about this card that connect it to alchemy. She says that the rod on which the falcon is perched controls ventilation into a circular store, which heats the coins that are above it. What the young man is doing is purifying the metals of their defects, corresponding to "the passions, the instinctive elements of the personality, the base thoughts generated by the struggle to assert one's external ego" (p. 76). That explains the red wings around them: they represent the uplifting heat, serving as wings to make them take flight as they are purified.
So he is also purifying himself as he goes through the "ages" in his own life. If successful, it will culminate in what Di Vincenzo says is the alchemical rubedo, represented by the highest disc, around which there is a red ribbon. In the seven ages, I would add, that one corresponds to lead or Saturn, which now instead of being "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything," as Shakespeare's Jaques would have it, is a purification transcending all the senses. In the Theology of Arithmetic, however, this state is not reached until the Eights and Nines. The Sevens are the realm of the "rational soul" (p. 73).
For the fourth age, juventas and Mars, we have just such a soldier as Shakespeare describes, "seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth": the SB card has a young man running, with four swords on his back and three more in his hands. I would guess that he is either about to attack or is leaving quickly with his booty after a raid.
Our fourth SB card, the man bending double under his load, corresponds to the senex, Shakespeare's sixth age, of the "shrunk shank" and high-pitched voice; he is not the man he used to be.
As far as I am concerned, the meaning of the Sevens is now clear. They are four of the seven ages of man, omitting the first, last, and the long one from age 28 to 49. (That one is on the Chariot card.) They also might be meant to suggest the four temperaments: a sanguine boy, a phlegmatic adolescent, a choleric youth, and a melancholy elder. And they are not literal stages, but metaphorical ones, at any time of life: aspirations, frustration and delay, realization, and knowing when to take it easier.
Then there are the Etteilla School's word-lists. Do they retain the sense of the Sola-Busca cards as I am seeing them? For Cups, twe have:
Especially in the Reversed, many of these words have to do with a life, or part of a life, not yet realized, just as the second "age of man" in fact is. On the other hand, the words are so various and general that they could apply to other SB images, including the SB Seven of Coins next to it (but not, I think, to the other two).7 OF CUPS, UPRIGHT: Thought, Soul, Mind, Intelligence, Idea, Memory, Imagination, Understanding, Notion, Meditation, Contemplation, Reflection, Deliberation, View [not in c. 1838], Opinion, Sentiment. REVERSED: Projects, Design [Plan], Intention, Desire, Will, Resolution [Decision], Determination, Premeditation. [Words in brackets not in c. 1838]
For Coins, the "Etteilla" has:
The third group of words, after whiteness, fits the SB's adolescent with the falcon and coins well--or, for that matter, the boy on the cup; the Reversed meanings, however, fit the adolescent alone. (Revak has "ingenuity" in brackets after "Artlessness"; but in Papus's and the c. 1838's French, the word is ingénuité, ingenuousness.)7 OF COINS, UPRIGHT: Money, Wealth, Sum, Silver.—Silverware.—Whiteness, Purity, Naïveté, Innocence, Artlessness [ingénuité], Moon.—Purgation, Purification. REVERSED: Inquietude [c. 1838 only], Anxiety [Agitation--not in c. 1838], Mental Torment, Impatience [not in c. 1838], Trouble, Despondent, Worry, Concern, Care, Attention, Diligence, Applying Yourself.—Apprehension, Fear, Distrust, Mistrust, Suspicion [these last 5 not in c. 1838].
Next, Swords:
These words could fit any of the four. In fact, some are already in the list for Cups. But many--"Brag," "Fantasy," "Design," "Wish"--do apply to a daring venture, such as a raid; however in the Reverseds, one is usefully warned and even admonished for one's idea.7 OF SWORDS, UPRIGHT: Hope, Expectation, Expect, Want, Promise Yourself, Brag, Essence, Design [last 4 not in c. 1838], Will, Desire, Wish, Longing, Craving, Liking, Fantasy. REVERSED. Sage Advice, Good Counsel, Useful Warning, Instruction, Lesson.—Observation, Reflection, Remark, Catching Sight Of, Thought.—Reprimand, Slander [last 9, starting with "Instruction," not in c. 1838]—News, Announcement, Public Notice.—Consultation, Admonishment.
And finally, Batons. At first glance, there is not much similarity with the card:
But if the sixth age is construed in a positive sense, as a time for talking and negotiating rather than fighting, these words fit. It is time to let someone else shoulder the weight. I am reminded of a line at the end of the film Lawrence of Arabia, where Alec Guinness, playing Prince Faisal, tells Peter O'Toole, playing Major Lawrence:7 OF BATONS, UPRIGHT: Negotiations [c. 1838 only], Discussion, Interview, Conference, Symposium [not in c. 1838], Conversation, Dissertation, Deliberation, Talk [not in c. 1838].—Word, Pronunciation, Grammar, Dictionary [last 2 c. 1838 only] Language, Idiom, Dialect, Negotiation, Purchase [c. 1838 marché, i.e. market], Barter [c. 1838 has échanger, exchange], Evaluation [c. 1838 mesure, i.e. measure], Commerce, Trade, Correspondence.—Speak, Say, Utter, Confer, Chatter, Chat, Share [not in c. 1838], Prattle, Converse. REVERSED: Indecision, Indecisiveness, Uncertainty, Perplexity, Fickleness, Flightiness, Variation, Variety, Diversity, Hesitate, Hesitation.—Waver, Vacillate, Changeability [not in c 1838, which has Teeter].
The Prince's characterization of "young men," of course, fits the scene in Swords. In Batons, we are with the "old men." The Uprights express negotiation in a positive way, while the Reverseds indicate the hazards to be avoided.Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage, and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution.
8. Justice: O Merciful One, at your feast all share equally, and none is immune from your wrath.
Christian base: Justice and the other virtue cards were put in different places in different early lists of the order of the cards. Early on, Justice was number 20, between the Last Judgment and the World. It signified Christ's judgment upon the "quick and the dead" at his second coming. In other early decks, it was placed third of the three virtue cards, one after the other at about this place in the deck. Justice was higher than Temperance and Courage in the Platonic ordering of the virtues according to the ordering of the parts of the soul. Temperance was a virtue pertaining to the bodily part, Courage to the "spirited part," concerning emotions, and Justice to the intellectual part. (1)
But the Marseille-style decks of 1650 onwards put it in the number 8 spot, so that is where it will go here. This order creates a problem in interpretation. If the other virtues are to trump Justice, then they will have to be reinterpreted as not only pertaining to the three parts of the soul.
By the same token, the meaning of Justice varies depending on the cards that are before and after it, if it is to trump and be trumped in an allegorical way. These complications I will look at at the end of this section.
As a further complication, modern decks sometimes have Justice as number 11, for reasons related to correlations between the tarot trumps and the Hebrew alphabet: the sign of Libra, Justice's scales, is correlated with the 11th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Lamed, meaning "scales." If we look at one of Cartari's illustrations of Justice, we can see that it pertains to both Force, the Marseille number 11, and the Scales, the Hebrew 11th letter (although in the Hebrew numbering system, which used letters to designate numbers, Lamed was our number 30). The club-wielding maiden in Cartari fits the club-wielding man of some of the "Force" cards (see chapter on "Strength," below) just as well as it does the image of "Justice." (2)
The early tarot cards, in both Milan and Ferrara, used the familiar Roman image of a woman holding a sword in one hand and a scales in the other. Justice weighs each side against the evidence and enforces its decision with the power of the state--or in the case of the Last Judgment, the power of the Almighty. In the event that the state is weak or too geographically limited to go after the guilty, the sword is held by a knight, such as the one on top of the Visconti-Sforza card, who fulfills his lady's wishes.
In none of these images is Justice blindfolded, although the image of blindfolded Justice did start being used at the end of the 15th century. The goddesses Dike (also called Astraea) and Themis as personifications of the ideal had no need for blindfolds. However Plutarch relates that the statue of the Chief Judge in Egypt was represented with his eyes closed, to represent his blindness to influence. Similarly the statues of ordinary judges were shown with no hands, to signify their imperviousness to bribes. I suspect that the idea of blindfolding the image of Justice came from such descriptions that the Renaissance found in the Greek writers. (3)
The middle image above shows the scales tilted a bit. Noblet (below) shows them horizontal, but with her elbow on the scales. Is this accidental or on purpose? I can see a case for its being done on purpose. On the one hand, it suggests that justice in this world is far from ideal, and those in charge of its enforcement are corrupted by all sorts of biases. On the other hand, it suggests that justice itself is not simply a matter of equal distribution, either of rewards or punishments.
I have found a relevant discussion of justice in relation to the tarot in a c. 1838 book on the Etteilla version of the card. The translation is mine:
Justice, said the Sages, signifies Equity, but this word is only a sound; for it not to be arbitrary, but on the contrary, fixed, we must give a true idea of all that this harmonious sound contains, and analyze it, or otherwise man will pronounce Justice and Equity a hundred thousand times, and he will not be the less unjust.The matters of interpretation given at the end of this passage are in addition to what, by statute, fits a particular harmful act. Some acts have results that no reasonable person could anticipate, for example. Or it happens as a result of carelessness, a lesser crime than an intentional act. It is the issue of compassion for others' situations, a mater of concern in both the Christian and Jewish traditions. (4)
Justice comprises the natural positive rights of men; the rights of the fathers of families; of the sovereign, of the masters, and finally of superiors over inferiors.
It comprises the right of giving recompense, of commuting the punishment of crimes, proportionally to their nature, following the intention [volunte], or the action, considering the knowledge, or ignorance of the guilty; this is called interpretation of the law. ("Julia Orsini," The Art of Drawing the Cards, p. 63)
References, Justice, Christian:
1. Three parts of the soul: Place, The tarot, History, Symbolism, and Divination, pp. 99f. See also "Riddle of tarot," http://web.archive.org/web/20040919015803/http://geocities.com/cartedatrionfi/Riddle.html.
2. Image: Cartari 1647, p. Hebrew alphabet: http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_One/Aleph-Bet/aleph-bet.html. Hebrew numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_numerals.
3. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris X.
4. Elbow: Flornoy, Pelinerage des Bateleurs. p. 101, although my interpretation of what considerations might influence Justice is not the same as his.
Justice, Greco-Egyptian perspective:
That the scales would appear at the Last Judgment--although I don't know if the Renaissance would have known this--is seen also in the Egyptian image of the weighing of the heart of the deceased against the feather of Ma'at, goddess of justice. If the heart weighed more than the feather, the soul and its heart would be gobbled up by the monster standing by. Otherwise, it would be welcomed into the fields of the blessed by Osiris. The one recording the results is Thoth, sometimes represented with an Ibis head, as above, and sometimes as a small baboon perched on top of the middle of the scales. (1)
Otherwise, we have Plutarch's account of justices in Egypt shown blindfolded. Perhaps people assumed assume from that account that the justices were also depicted with scales.
In the Osiris myth as told by Plutarch, the agent of Justice is Isis. Plutarch simply identifies Isis with "Justice-Wisdom": they are one and the same. This identification is suggested in the Noblet version of the card (below), Justice has her breasts exposed, as in the Cartari image of Isis (see Popess section). In Egyptian papyri, both Isis and Ma'at were portrayed as winged; Noblet might have only had Plutarch to work from, plus reports from Egypt. Plutarch relates an incident where Isis turns herself into a swallow. Another source of information would probably have been Dendera, the temple famous for its zodiac, which shows a winged Isis lowering herself on the dead Osiris's phallus, as we have already seen in the section on the Lover.
But Isis, unlike Ma'at, is not merely an ideal or a standard of judgment in the next world; she works in this world. In Plutarch's account of the myth there are two agents of this-world justice, Isis and Horus. Isis appeals to the court of the gods to recognize her son Horus as the true successor to Osiris, whom Isis and Osiris's younger brother Seth murdered. She thereby is a seeker after Justice, although hardly an impartial one. Horus is the one who actually defeats Seth in this world, after many years capturing him in battle and bringing him to Isis for disposition. He is like the knight at the top of the Visconti-Sforza card (above left). We will see his mother's decision in the section on card 11. Horus is another representative of Justice, in this world against Seth historically and continuing by means of the Pharaohs who embody his spirit; and perhaps has some influence in the next world as well; the image of Libra at Dendera shows Harpocrates, i.e. Horus the Child, sitting on top of the scales with his finger in his mouth--and as the hawk god as well. (3)
References, Justice, Egyptian:
1. "Weighing of the heart": National Geographic Society, Ancient Egypt.
2. Plutarch: Isis and Osiris III, XVI. Winged Ma'at: http://www.egypt7000.com/wingodmaatpa.html.
3. Dendera image, Dendera: Laroche-Noblecourt, Le fabuleux héritage de l'Egypte.
Dionysian Justice: His feasts were open to all, sharing equally, and he was Isodaites, the giver of equal shares. Wine is also available to all, rich and poor. But Dionysus, through Nemesis, goddess of vengeance, brings down those who fall victim to overweening pride, as the tragedies portrayed, of whom Dionysus was the divine patron. Those who repress or dishonor him also get madness, poverty, sickness, or crime. At Pompeii the agent of his wrath was represented as a winged woman with a whip. She is Nemesis, goddess of divine wrath or vengeance. (1)
The card-makers knew well enough that Nemesis was the goddess of vengeance, appropriate to Dionysus, even though they would not have seen the Pompeii image. But how can we know that they intended it to be her? The detail that is of interest is the wings in Noblet's card. In Greco-Roman times, Nemesis was depicted with wings (above right). Justice was not so depicted; nor is she so depicted in Cartari, as the illustration at the beginning of this section indicates. But was Nemesis seen in Noblet's time as winged? That is easy to answer. All we have to do is turn to page 241 in Cartari, which shows winged Nemesis conversing with Fortuna. Fortuna is identifiable by her wheel. (2)
For better or worse, later card makers saw Noblet's wings as an error, since the title of the card was Justice, not Vengeance (the Dionysian equivalent of Justice). They discreetly changed the wings into the sides of a chair. (3)
Let us return to the issue of Justice's impartiality. Notice on the Noblet card (on left above) that her elbow rests on one side of the scales, as though skewing the result, putting her feelings above the actual facts. This feature is continued on the later Marseille images (although perhaps ambiguously in Chosson). Dionysian justice, like justice in this imperfect world, is affected by the feelings of the one administering it. As a result, those from whom Dionysus demands obedience are often caught in a dilemma. Those who avoid his wrath by worshiping him face the divine wrath of Hera, goddess of marriage and foe of Dionysus, who was her husband's son out of wedlock. As with Dionysus himself, she visited those unfaithful to her with madness, etc. (3)
This problem also applies to Isis. Was Seth's killing of Osiris really murder, or justified vengeance for something Osiris did to Seth? We have not heard Seth's side of the story.
The two initiates, whom we last left pulling Dionysus's chariot, may be the two sides of the scales, like Osiris and Seth, continuing their roles from the Chariot card. Justice is perhaps wanting to favor one of them, or wanting to be on the side of both, or both of these alternatives.
Here we have a clear example of how Justice trumps the Charioteer, the one who achieves victory, if by so doing he has offended one or another of the gods. The goddess Nemesis is not impartial, and her wrath, as portrayed in Greek tragedy, is often far out of proportion to the offense.
References, Justice, Dionysian:
1. Madness inflicted by Dionysus: At Thebes, Hyginus, Fabulae 184, among others, all at http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/DionysosWrath2.html#Pentheus. Madness inflicted at Argos: Apollodorus, Library 2.37, at http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/DionysosMyths2.html#Perseus. Identification of Pompeii angel and tarot Justice as Nemesis: Daimonax, http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/10et13roueforunemort.html. Image of Nemesis: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nemesis_Getty_Villa_96.AA.43.jpgg.
2. This argument complements Daimonax, who does not himself discuss the wings.
3. The tilted scales: Flornoy, Pelerinage des Bateleurs, p. 101. Madness inflicted by Hera: Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 26-29, at http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/DionysosMyths.html#Birth.
Alchemical Justice: In the alchemical laboratory, scales are for weighing ingredients so as to know their proportions relative to each other. Sometimes specific proportions are given in the texts, and sometimes not. But it is important to know what combinations produce the results that are described in the text. The various scenes with scales indicate the importance of balance in the work, with the four elements used equally. Below, a monk (variously identified as both Roger Bacon and Basil Valentine) holds equal portions of fire and water, while the cloud (air) and stone (earth) balance each other. He exclaims, "Make the elements equal and you will have it." Measured quantities are also a part of the process of creation, from the random combinations of chaos, as in the second illustration below. (1)1. Madness inflicted by Dionysus: At Thebes, Hyginus, Fabulae 184, among others, all at http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/DionysosWrath2.html#Pentheus. Madness inflicted at Argos: Apollodorus, Library 2.37, at http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/DionysosMyths2.html#Perseus. Identification of Pompeii angel and tarot Justice as Nemesis: Daimonax, http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/10et13roueforunemort.html. Image of Nemesis: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nemesis_Getty_Villa_96.AA.43.jpgg.
2. This argument complements Daimonax, who does not himself discuss the wings.
3. The tilted scales: Flornoy, Pelerinage des Bateleurs, p. 101. Madness inflicted by Hera: Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 26-29, at http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/DionysosMyths.html#Birth.
The two illustrations so far do not show the sword that is present in the card. It sometimes appears in alchemy as well. Here are two examples. In the first, a Justice-like figure stands guard over a sealed retort while the Stone cooks. She has probably used the sword and scales to make sure the proportions of the various ingredients inside were right. I would guess that the sword represents the knife that the alchemist would use to cut off the excess. (2)
Here is another illustration with both scales and sword. (3)
Certain ingredients are being added to alchemical Saturn, so as to free his potency. In this case, what is being freed seems to be the children he has eaten. In this case, the lady with the scales holds in her other hand a pitcher of water, with which she washes the figure of the new or renewed king as well as the old king. This pitcher connects her to the pitcher-carryin ladies in the tarot, i.e. those in Temperance and the Star.
In general, I think that all the virtue cards pertain to alchemical operations. Force has to do with the fire: the lion that appears there is associated with fire, and its mane has vertical, fire-waves. Temperance has to do with distillation and the mixing of liquids, the one operration making alcoholic drinks stronger and the other making them weaker. Other cards also have associations to alchemical operations, notably the Wheel of Fortune, showing circulation. We will see about the Star card when we get to it.
Like everything else in alchemy, these operations also have a spiritual meaning. Keeping good accounts and weighing things carefully is something that applies to life in general. Chemicals are hard task-masters and often unforgiving. Equality among the various components of life is also important. The sword suggests trimming off excess. I do not see much in alchemy pertaining to justice in the sense of reward and punishment; the emphasis is on maintaining proper order, everything in its place and in the right quantity. This has little in common with Judeo-Christian ethics directly, but is much in keeping with the exemplar of the ideal society as developed in Plato's Republic.
References, Alchemical Justice.
1. The first image is from Michael Maier's Tripus Aureus, 1618, as reproduced in de Rola's Golden Game p. 119. Fabricius explains how it shows the elements in balance, in his Alchemy, p. 92. He gives the source of the quote as Maier's Symbolae Aurea Mensae, 1617 (where the same image appears), p. 450. The second image is from Caneparius, Petrus Maria: de atramentis cuiucunque generis, Venice 1619, as reproduced in Fabricius, fig. 155, p. 90. All of the images in this section are ones to which I was directed by the footnotes to O'Neill's discussion of the Justice card in his chapter on alchemy in Tarot Symbolism, p. 278. He has several more: figs. 30, 254, and 325. 30 has scales with water and fire, like the one with the monk. The other two show the alchemist and the soror preparing ingredients for the retort, from the Mutus Liber of 1677.
2. Image from Maier's Tripus Aureus, 1618, as reproduced in de Rola's Golden Game p. 122. It is also in Fabricius, Fig. 272, p. 144. The words on the neck of the retort are "Sigillum Hermetis," "Hermetic Seal," according to Fabricius p. 145. I do not agree with Fabricius that Justice "executes judgment over the Stone." De Rola says that "the scales and double-edged sword respectively symbolize the weights of Nature and the Secret Fire" (Golden Game p. 125).
3. Image from De Alchimia, by Pseudo-Thomas Aquinas, 16th century, as reproduced in de Rola, Alchemy, the Secret Art, plate 43, and Jung, Psychology and Alchemy p. 300.
Pythagorean and Kabbalist Justice. The Theology of Arithmetic gives several numbers to justice; it was Macrobius who gave it to 8, as representing equality cubed, 2x2x2. He says:
The Pythagoreans, indeed, called the number eight Justice because it is the first number that may be divided into two equal numbers and divided again into two more equal even numbers... It is also the product of equals: two times two times two. Since it is the product of equal even numbers and may be divided unequally, even down to the unit, which does not admit of division to mathemaatical computation, it deserves to receive the name Justice. (Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, trans. Stahl, p. 98)Since Macrobius wrote in Latin, his argument was better known than the Theology's.
In the Kabbalah, the 8th sefira is Hod, explained by Reuchlin as "Praise" (p. 285) and "God of Hosts." He associates it with the prophet Aaron. Pico has "converts to inferior things," in contrast to Netzach's "converts to superior things," and Venus as opposed to Saturn. It is also where petitions for sons are denied rather than, in Netzach, granted (11>50). So for Pico it is more negative than Netzach. The most complete explication in Latin is in Ricci's Latin translation of Gikatilla's Gates of Light. Here are some of its descriptors of Hod: dressed in courage and might (English trans. p. 123, deus est magnificientia et fortitudo Latin p. 71); Boaz, one of the columns of Solomon (E125, L72); prayers of supplication and thanksgiving, for annulment of verdicts (E123, confessio L72); flames of Seraphim to burn the unworthy (E125, L72); place of counsel with higher powers (E138, locus consilij L75). (1)
The basic idea, I think, is that Hod is the enforcement arm of the "judgment" side of the tree of life. It has the heavenly hosts that wage war on evil and enforce God's law. It is situated directly under Gevurah, severity, but also is under Tifereth, which gives it the power to exercise compassion to those who show proper humility through acts of praise and supplication.
References, Pythagorean and Kabbalist Justice.
1. To come up with the list from Ricci, I read the English translation of Gates of Light and then verified that the Latin equivalent was in the abridgement. For the Latin, I went to the "Paolo Riccio" entry in Wikipedia and used its link to the Portae Lucis. In Meditation and Kabbalah (in Google Books). Ariel Kaplan says that "as one of the few Kabbalistic works published in translation" it "exerted a powerful influence on many occult groups in Europe."
References, Pythagorean and Kabbalist Justice.
1. To come up with the list from Ricci, I read the English translation of Gates of Light and then verified that the Latin equivalent was in the abridgement. For the Latin, I went to the "Paolo Riccio" entry in Wikipedia and used its link to the Portae Lucis. In Meditation and Kabbalah (in Google Books). Ariel Kaplan says that "as one of the few Kabbalistic works published in translation" it "exerted a powerful influence on many occult groups in Europe."
Justice in the Cartomantic Tradition. I have already quoted Orsini's footnote on Justice, giving the ways in which the concept differs from that of strict Equality. Here is the c. 1910 card, conforming very closely to Etteilla's original design:
The keywords are "Justice" and "Le Legiste," meaning "The Legal Expert." And the word-lists:
The keywords are "Justice" and "Le Legiste," meaning "The Legal Expert." And the word-lists:
[La Justice.] JUSTICE —Equity, Probity, Honesty, Rightness, Right, Uprightness, Rectitude, Reason.—Tribunal. Administering [Executing] Justice. Thot, or the book of Thot.The card merely has its traditional meaning as a cardinal virtue. There is an emphasis here on the moral aspects in the Uprights, and the legal aspects in the reverseds, although both are in both.
Reversed:[Le Légiste.] JURIST. Legislation, Legislator.—Law, Decree, Code, Ordinance, Statutes, Precept, Commandment, Domination, Institution, Constitution, Temperament, Complexion, Natural law and moral law, religious law, Political laws, Natural Rights, Human Rights, Public Law [or right, Droit], Civil Law [or Rights, Droit], Military Law [Droit de la guerre, i.e. rights of war]. The Jurist is under the immediate influence of this hieroglyph.
The Eights, in the Sola-Busca and Etteilla.
Among the Sola-Busca Eights, I am starting with Batons because it is the only one of the four SB Eights to have all eight of the suit-sign objects together. Swords and Coins are both 7+1; Cups is 6 + 2.
From the perspective of Renaissance popular art, not drawing on Greek myth or philosophy, the most obvious interpretation is that the batons are phallic symbols, and the cup a vagina. The batons might also be children and the cup a uterus.
Sofia Di Vincenzo, in her book Sola-Busca Tarot, takes this line of thinking seriously:
Among the Sola-Busca Eights, I am starting with Batons because it is the only one of the four SB Eights to have all eight of the suit-sign objects together. Swords and Coins are both 7+1; Cups is 6 + 2.
From the perspective of Renaissance popular art, not drawing on Greek myth or philosophy, the most obvious interpretation is that the batons are phallic symbols, and the cup a vagina. The batons might also be children and the cup a uterus.
Sofia Di Vincenzo, in her book Sola-Busca Tarot, takes this line of thinking seriously:
Commenting on the flower petals that adorn the vase, she adds:First of all, the vase is a symbol of the uterus in which a new life is formed; symbol of the secret forces of nature, receptacle of the drink of immortality, image of the universal heart, of the secret center from whence the souls of the just come and in which they return. (Sola-Busca Tarot p. 105)
In connection with another of the Eights, the Eight of Cups, she also observes:The lotus, or waterlily, in Egyptian iconography represents rebirth...[(p. 105)
Examination of the Theology of Arithmetic's chapter on the Ogdoad, the Eight, suggests that Di Vincenzo is on track in the passages I have cited. The Theology says (p. 103) :There being eight orifices in the female body, this number is traditionally associated with the vagina--the door through which a new life enters into the world. (p. 48)
Page 46 of the Theology (the translator's reference above) is in the chapter on the Dyad. The Triad, or enformed matter, is the product of the Monad, pure form in the mind of God, and the Dyad, unformed matter: God is the father, matter the mother. In the ancient world, Rhea was more than the mother of the gods: she was the Great Mother, the mother of all nature (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhea_(mythology)). P. 46 of the Theology says that the Dyad is Rhea because it is flux, i.e. matter in flux, with no definite form. A note by the translator informs us that the Greek word for "flux" is similar to "Rhea." Then Rhea reappears in the Ogdoad, which is the cube of 2. Here she is not mere matter, but a strong personality with her own myth.Hence they used to call the ogdoad 'mother,' perhaps referring to what has already been said (for even number is female), but perhaps, since Rhea is the mother of the gods, because although the dyad was shown to belong to Rhea seminally, the ogdoad does in extension. [Translator's note: see p. 46: 8 and 2 cubed.] And some think that the word 'ogdoad' was coined to resemble 'ekdyad'--that is, the one which is generated 'out of the dyad,' when it is cubed.
Rhea's myth is that of a mother who sees her husband, mindful of a prophecy that one of his children will overthrow him, eat his children one by one shortly after giving birth. She doesn't like it; she argues with him, we imagine, but to no avail. For her the situation is of crisis proportions.
One thing that doesn't fit the myth is the presence of all these foetuses in one uterus. Rhea, as her myth is told, conceived her children one at a time. So the womb here is perhaps a super-celestial womb, holding all her children prior to conception. Another thing is the number of swords. Rhea had six children, not eight (http://www.pantheon.org/articles/r/rhea.html; Wikipedia says seven, but that seems to be a mistake). But there have to be eight swords, to direct our attention to Rhea, goddess of the Ogdoad.
On the one hand, Rhea is the source of all life, all things fruitful. We see these enumerated in the Etteilla Uprights. On the other hand, for her husband Cronos/Saturn, she is a source of marital strife and of regret for her part in this infanticide. This side of her is indicated in the Etteilla Reverseds.
The Sola-Busca's harmoniously placed arrows flanked by flower petals reflect the side of Etteilla Uprights, Rhea as Great Mother. The Reverseds reflect the problem with her husband.ETTEILLA 8 OF BATONS: Countryside [c. 1838, Party in the Countryside], Field, Plain, Agriculture, Cultivation, Plowing, Landed Property, Real Estate, Solid [Fr. Immeuble, building], Farm, Smallholding [c 1838 only], Garden, Orchard, Meadow, Woods, Grove, Foliage, Pleasure, Divertissement, Amusement, Pastime, Relaxation, Festivities, Peace, Calm, Tranquility, Innocence, Country Living.—Forest, Small Valley, Mountain, War Camp [not in c. 1838, which has Bergerie, sheep-fold]. REVERSED: Domestic Dispute [c. 1838 has Dispute Intestine, i.e. Internal Dispute], Examination, Reasoning [neither in c. 1838], Discord [Quarrel].—Regrets, Remorse, Repent, Internal Trouble [c. 1838 has Agitation], Indecision, Uncertainty, Inconceivable, Incomprehensible, Doubt, Scruple, Troubled Conscience [last 5 not in c. 1838].
Let us move on to the SB Eight of Swords:
Again I think some of what Di Vincenzo says is instructive:
So this card is actually referring to the Seven, with the addition of a personal response by the human figure.....the naked youth (like truth) embraces seven swords, symbols of the indispensable virtues for achieving the inner balance (strength, justice, prudence, temperance, faith, hope charity) which is inevitably reflected outside the self. The eighth sword represents the will required for fighting against one's own defects. (p. 133)
I think that the Pythagoreanism that the card is drawing on is something that Aristotle said about the Pythagoreans, in a lost work quoted by others, that seven is the number of kairos, translated as "opportunity" or "critical time" (Pythagoras: his life Teaching, and Influence, 2005, p. 81, in Google Books). In his surviving works, Aristotle alludes to this doctrine in Metaphysics Book I sect. 5, mentioning "kairos" but not associating it with a specific number. The Theology, however, clearly associates the concept with the Heptad:
Among its numerous illustrations of this point are the critical points in the development of the human organism: semen fertilizes the egg within seven hours or not at all, then come seven days before the embryo is stable in the womb, after which abortion is more difficult; then seven months until a viable birth, seven hours before the severance of the umbilical cord, seven more months until teeth are cut, 2x7 for sitting up, 3x7 for talking, 7 years for shedding the first set of teeth, and so on, through the seven stages of life( pp. 91-94). In each case, seven marks a critical point, when something must happen if the organism is to develop.Hence many things, both in the heavens of the universe and on the Earth--celestial bodies and creatures and plants--are in fact brought to completion by it. And that is why it is called 'Chance,' because it accompanies everything which happens, and 'critical time,' because it has gained the most critical position and nature.
So: in the myth of Rhea, she is at a crisis point, associated with the number seven even though she is pregnant with her sixth child. Similarly, in the alchemical illustration Di Vincenzo gives for the Seven (which she continues in the Eight), after the purification of all the metals, the work is at a crisis point: something must come next, the result of living conformably with all the virtues, the three Christian virtues and the four pagan ones.
The "Etteilla' word-list reads like a reflection upon this situation:
In comparison to the grasped sword and sad resolve to act in the Sola-Busca, the Etteilla list only describes the situation and says how critical and unfortunate it is, without coming to any conclusion.ETTEILLA 8 OF SWORDS: Criticism, Regrettable Situation, Critical Moment, Critical Time, Decisive Moment, Unfortunate Situation, Delicate Circumstance, Crisis.—Examination, Discussion, Investigations, Blame, Censure, Commentary, Conclusion, Monitoring, Disapproval, Condemnation, Abrogation, Judgment [last two not in c. 1838], Contempt. REVERSED: Incident, Difficulty, Exceptional Situation, Conjunction, Event, Accessory, Unconscious, Obstacle, Delay, Waiting.—Abjection.—Dispute, Contradiction, Opposition, Resistance [last 13 not in c. 1838, except Dispute], Squabble.—Unexpected, Unforeseen, Fortunate Occurrence [Cas Fortuit, which means Coincidence], Adventure, Occurrence [c. 1838 only], Destiny, Fate, Accidents, Misfortunes, Disgrace, Unfortunate, Symptom.
Coins also has the 7+1 motif. But this time the one outside the main group has a skull next to it.
What are we to make of that skull? I think we can get something of a clue from the "Etteilla" word-list, which here is uncommonly short, and quite different from the one in the c. 1838 book.
In the list given by Papus, "Great night" is quite suggestive: The eighth sphere of the heavens is the sphere of the Fixed Stars, which are mostly visible only at night. It is also the boundary of the universe as it is knowable by reason and the senses. "Passive" and "lack of ambition" suggest the defeated ego. Rhea is in fact powerless against the will of her husband--until she comes up with an idea.8 OF COINS, UPRIGHT: A Dark Girl, Passive, Great Night. REVERSED. Lack of [Voided] Ambition, Avarice, Usury.
C. 1838 has UPRIGHT: Dark Girl, Honest Girl, Obliging Welcome, Thoughtfulness, Politeness, Honesty, Civility, Complaissance, Condescension, Hospitality, Morals, Character, Natural. REVERSED: Usury, Advantage, Increase, Majority, To Advantage, Very Much, Copiously, Abandoning, Usury. Exorbitant, Exaction, Urusious, Avarice. More than... More of... Again, Importance. Elevation. Height or Haughtiness, Pride, Vanity.
Seven, in the basket, is the number of Athena, rational intellect. The Eight is reason come up against its limit. The defeat of the ego feels like a death, Jung says somewhere. Rhea's crisis is a negative situation, crying for illumination.
The other words in Papus's list don't relate much to the Theology: "dark girl" comes from Coins' equivalent in French suits, Clubs (from the pattern on some Italian suits of coins); and "Avarice, Usury" are negative words connected with money, corresponding to the basketful of riches on the SB card, but nothing in Rhea's myth.
In the c. 1838 lists we are perhaps seeing in the Uprights how she appears to her husband. Then in the Reverseds we see how he would see her if he knew of her deception.
Di Vincenzo has some appropriate comments about the Eight:
She also says that Eight isThe tree, which sheds and bedecks itself with leaves each year, represents the continuous evolution of life (death and regeneration)... {p. 77)
It seems to me that the tree on the card is that of the crucifixion, the tree of death which will become the tree of life. The card shows us the part of the process pertaining to death. The bird is most likely a vulture, which picks the flesh off of dead bodies, transforming it to its own living substance and leaving the bones. The vulture was worshipped as such by the Egyptians...the symbol of the resurrection of Christ and the promise of the resurrection of man transfigured by grace. (p. 77)
Despite my quibbles, what Di Vincenzo's ends with for this card eems to me excellent:
Finally we come to the Sola-Busca's Eight of Cups:From an alchemical point of view, this card represents the Nigredo, or the black Opera, that is, the total dissociation of inner activities from external ones that leads to the sleep of the consciousness, a trance state similar to death. The so-called Regime of Saturn is, in effect, an essential element in the transformation of the individual through the passage for the eighth form, as is evidenced by the initiatory rites of every tradition, which all foresee the symbolic death of the candidate. (p. 78)
In terms of the myth of Rhea, what I see is hope. Six cups, representing her five children already born, are on the ground, but two remain, representing her one pregnancy left. The added cup in both places is probably there simply so that the total will add up to 8.
In her impotence and despair, Rhea asks her mother Gaia and father Uranos for a way to save her child. The answer is to give her husband a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead of the newborn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhea_(mythology). Then her child will be raised in a remote place where her husband will not find her. All that remains is to execute the plan, in fear and trembling, yet with great hidden joy.
The Etteilla School's list is consistent with some of my interpretation in terms of Rhea's myth, but not all of it, especially its idea of "public joy, spectacle, pomp." Rhea's joy is now still of a hidden nature.
ETTEILLA 8 OF CUPS: Fair [Blonde] Girl, Honest Girl, Practical Girl, Honor, Propriety, Modesty, Restrained, Timidity, Fear, Apprehension, Sweetness [Mildness], Attractiveness [Mildness and Attractiveness not in c. 1838]. REVERSED: Satisfaction, Pleasure [c. 1838], Happiness, Contentment, Gayety, Joy, Elation, Festivity, Entertainment, Feast.—Apology, Atonement, Exoneration.—Public Joy, Spectacle, Pomp, Dressing, Preparation, Arrangement [last 3 not in c. 1838].
Love, Chariot, and Justice, in different orders.
In different cities at different times, these three cards occurred in different orders in the sequence. Love usually but not always was right after the Pope. In a few orderings, the Chariot is earlier, after Temperance. And sometimes, for example in the Minchiate, Justice and the other virtues were between Love and the Chariot. How can one card trump another when the order keeps changing? (1)
Here is what I think the differences amount to. Love trumping the Chariot means the triumph of love over war and the warrior, as in the famous painting "Mars and Venus" by Botticelli, in which Mars is asleep, watched over by Venus, while cherubs play with his armor.
In different cities at different times, these three cards occurred in different orders in the sequence. Love usually but not always was right after the Pope. In a few orderings, the Chariot is earlier, after Temperance. And sometimes, for example in the Minchiate, Justice and the other virtues were between Love and the Chariot. How can one card trump another when the order keeps changing? (1)
Here is what I think the differences amount to. Love trumping the Chariot means the triumph of love over war and the warrior, as in the famous painting "Mars and Venus" by Botticelli, in which Mars is asleep, watched over by Venus, while cherubs play with his armor.
For the Chariot to trump Love, it might be that once you find someone or something to love, then you work for it--to get it, to nourish it, to protect it. If you do so wrongly, then Justice, as Nemesis, will trump your Chariot. In this sense, the Chariot does not overcome Love; it simply comes after and is that for which the Chariot triumphs.
On the other hand, the Chariot can also trump Love in the sense of being something stronger, such as Duty, Honor, or Fame. A man goes off to war despite his wife's pleading, for example.
For the Chariot to trump all three virtues in addition to Love is to be the Lover whose horses, so to speak, have fed on the virtues and thereby be on track for meeting the Beloved. This idea might be what the Kabbalists had in mind with Tiferet, i.e. Beauty, Compassion, and the Messiah, following Judgment, i.e. Strict Justice, and Love. Negatively, for the Chariot to trump the virtues could mean mean the sacrifice of virtue for the sake of ephemeral victory.
It is the same with Love. To love rightly, you need justice; Pleasure must be overseen by Virtue. If you love wrongly--immoderately or not enough--justice, or Nemesis, will get you. Shakespeare comes to mind: Mark Antony's fate in Antony and Cleopatra, the warrior consumed by love. This moral is represented by justice trumping love.
Likewise, one needs love to render justice properly: think of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, who renounces love. This is love trumping justice.
These stories were not original with Shakespeare: Antony's is in Plutarch's Lives of the Famous Greeks and Romans, Shylock's in a 1558 story by Giovanni Fiorentino, Il Pecorone. Justice admonishes and renders judgment on what comes before it, and is tempered by what comes after it. (2)
So there is a slightly different version of the story depending on the order. It was important to know the particular story in use when one played the trick-taking game. These days, people don't play that game. They do divination. But the order still matters, as the cards are dealt and turned up in a certain order.
References, Love, Chariot, and Justice in different orders:
1. This issue is raised most clearly by Michael J. Hurst in "Riddle of Tarot," towards the end, at http://web.archive.org/web/20040919015803/http://geocities.com/cartedatrionfi/Riddle.html. A good summary of the various orderings is at http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards26.htm.
2. Antony: http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/antony.html. On The Merchant of Venice, http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/merchant.html.
References, Love, Chariot, and Justice in different orders:
1. This issue is raised most clearly by Michael J. Hurst in "Riddle of Tarot," towards the end, at http://web.archive.org/web/20040919015803/http://geocities.com/cartedatrionfi/Riddle.html. A good summary of the various orderings is at http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards26.htm.
2. Antony: http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/antony.html. On The Merchant of Venice, http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/merchant.html.
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