37
Delaforge wrote:
For Waite, as for the GD, Cups correspond to Water, Swords to Air, Wands or Batons to Fire and Pentacles (Pence/Coins) to Earth. Thus, in Etteilla's system, the court cards of Pence/Coins are dark in coloring, because they belong to Earth, the darkest Element.
Thanks Melissa,

Yes this is what I understood to be the case. Its just that my friend who runs a Tarot group seems to think the original attribution of the suits elementally fits her chosen elemental approach of Wands=Air, and Swords=Fire. But I see no evidence of that.

I think she is perhaps mixing this point up with the issue that Eteilla and the Golden Dawn seem to have somewhat misattributed the development of the suits to modern playing cards.

In particular the origins of Diamonds and Clubs was assumed as the origin of Wands and Pentacles rather than vice versa as amongst modern cartomancy scholars.

Still, I dont see what relevance this fact has to the debate in modern Tarot between attributing Swords=Air/Wands=Fire (as per Golden Dawn) versus the alternative approach of Swords=Fire/Wands=Air.

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

Astrological Associations of the Tarot by Golden Dawn?

38
Mark,
In particular the origins of Diamonds and Clubs was assumed as the origin of Wands and Pentacles rather than vice versa as amongst modern cartomancy scholars.

Still, I dont see what relevance this fact has to the debate in modern Tarot between attributing Swords=Air/Wands=Fire (as per Golden Dawn) versus the alternative approach of Swords=Fire/Wands=Air.
I don't know what kind of relevance you're expecting.

To deal with the first paragraph above first. Etteilla's original foray into cartomancy was with a piquet deck of playing cards, which has only 32 cards. He soon moved on to the tarot and that meant had to produce meanings for a 78 card pack. For the minor arcana he artfully adapted the meanings he had previously used for the playing card deck, adding new meanings where he had to. He exported the meanings more or less by suit, so that his earlier Club meanings became Pence/Denier meanings, his Heart meanings Cup meanings, and so on.

His perceived illogicality at making Clubs correspond to Pence and Diamonds to Rods/Batons was "corrected" by later commentators. Some did this by the simple expedient of exchanging the Pence and Rods meanings. Thus, prior to the arrival of the Waite-Smith deck and Waite's influential "Key to the Tarot", two competing sets of meanings for Pence and Rod cards were in circulation, causing a certain amount of confusion. The source of the confusion was removed - elliminated - by the wide adoption of Waite's (and the GD's) Element/suit correspondences and the GD interpretations of the minor arcana.

Now to your second paragraph. I suspect there is no relevance between the foregoing and the main controversy that exists today over which Elements correspond to which tarot suits, namely whether Swords are Fire or Air and whether Rods are Air or Fire. But maybe I have misunderstood you.

Melissa

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Hi, I'm back! :)

A few comments on various issues that have been raised in this fast moving thread.

Neptune was correlated with Pisces initially by Theosophical astrologers in writings published at the end of the 19th century. However, his rulership remained a matter for debate. Much later still, Crowley had the idea to make him the ruler of all the mutable signs, whereas Uranus would rule the fixed signs and Pluto the cardinal signs, respectively. In this scheme, the Transsaturnians became "quadruplicity rulers" (much like the classical triplicity rulers) while the classical planets continued their rulerships over the individual signs.

As far as Tarot is concerned, there seems to be a consensus among modern occultists that Neptune corresponds to The Hanged Man while Uranus belongs to The Fool and Pluto to Judgement (The Aeon in the Thoth Tarot) - Mark mentioned it initially.

The earliest published deck directly based on Mather's prototype Tarot - which itself was never published, only expected to be reproduced by Golden Dawn students as part of their curriculum - was the Golden Dawn deck illustrated by Robert Wang under the instruction of Israel Regardie. It shows an ocean on The Hanged Man card, so likely this was a feature of Mather's card as well.
Image
The Whare Ra deck mentioned by Waybread is a comparatively recent invention from a neo-Golden Dawn temple in New Zealand and follows Wang's Golden Dawn symbolism much like other modern GD based decks do.

http://dobrytarot.pl/viewtopic.php?f=103&t=5907

The Tau cross was mentioned by Eliphas Levy in his Transcendental Magic, chapter 22:
Symbol, a man hanging by one foot, with his hands bound behind his back, so that his body makes a triangle, apex downwards, and his legs a cross above the triangle. The gallows is in the form of a Hebrew TAU, and the two uprights are trees, from each of which six branches have been lopped. We have explained already this symbol of sacrifice and the finished work.
The symbolism of an initiate hanging upside down for a period of time is a universal archetype that can be encountered in various tales, from Odin on the World Tree Yggdrasil to Eiji Yoshikawa's Musashi.

Regarding the astrological attributions to the cards, yes, the topic lends itself to further exploration. On the other hand, a practical approach is to take the attributions at face value in relation to a particular deck. For example, in the Thoth deck, its particular astrological attributions are so interwoven with the imagery as to be inseparable from a cards' essence.

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Mark Wrote:
In particular the origins of Diamonds and Clubs was assumed as the origin of Wands and Pentacles rather than vice versa as amongst modern cartomancy scholars.

Still, I dont see what relevance this fact has to the debate in modern Tarot between attributing Swords=Air/Wands=Fire (as per Golden Dawn) versus the alternative approach of Swords=Fire/Wands=Air.
Delaforge wrote:
To deal with the first paragraph above first. Etteilla's original foray into cartomancy was with a piquet deck of playing cards, which has only 32 cards. He soon moved on to the tarot and that meant had to produce meanings for a 78 card pack. For the minor arcana he artfully adapted the meanings he had previously used for the playing card deck, adding new meanings where he had to. He exported the meanings more or less by suit, so that his earlier Club meanings became Pence/Denier meanings, his Heart meanings Cup meanings, and so on.

His perceived illogicality at making Clubs correspond to Pence and Diamonds to Rods/Batons was "corrected" by later commentators. Some did this by the simple expedient of exchanging the Pence and Rods meanings. Thus, prior to the arrival of the Waite-Smith deck and Waite's influential "Key to the Tarot", two competing sets of meanings for Pence and Rod cards were in circulation, causing a certain amount of confusion. The source of the confusion was removed - elliminated - by the wide adoption of Waite's (and the GD's) Element/suit correspondences and the GD interpretations of the minor arcana.
Thank You. That helps explain a lot.

Intriguingly, in his book Mystical Origins of the Tarot, Paul Huson expresses the view that he believes Etteilla's attribution of Tarot suits to playing cards was probably correct. In other words he supports the view that Batons/Rods evolved into Diamonds and Coins evolved into Clubs.
Its customary among historians to derive the Trefle, the Cloverleaf French suit sign we call a Club, from the Italian baton. However, its my belief (along with Cartomancers of the French school) that its far more likely that the cross-shaped Clover Leaf represented the pattern to be found on the interior of the Italian Coin. Mystical Origins of the Tarot, by Paul Huson, p15
Both Etteilla and Mathers equate batons with diamonds, the French suit sign Carreau, or Paving Tiles. If this is an accurate identification, which I believe it is , then the Paving Tile possibly derives its identity from the lozenge-shaped holes in the lattice made by the Mamluk polo sticks and subsequently, the Italian Batons. In English this is rendered 'diamond' according to the Oxford English Dictionary a jewelers term used since the fifteenth century to describe the shape made by a plane section of an ochtahedral crystal when its diagonals are arranged in a vertical and horozontal position. Mystical Origins of the Tarot, by Paul Huson p224
Delaforge wrote:
Now to your second paragraph. I suspect there is no relevance between the foregoing and the main controversy that exists today over which Elements correspond to which tarot suits, namely whether Swords are Fire or Air and whether Rods are Air or Fire. But maybe I have misunderstood you.
No no misunderstanding. I was simply seeking validation for my view the two issues had nothing in common!

Melissa
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

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GR wrote:
Mystical Origins of the Tarot is really neat, Mark
I couldn't agree more Gabe. My copy had arrived when I got home today and I wasn't able to put it down for literally hours. An utterly fascinating read.

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

43
I was once wandering through either the National Gallery or the National Portrait Gallery in London. I can't remember which. I remember being very tired and sitting down staring at a wall of paintings, then my companion came and sat next to me and pointed out that these paintings were Major Arcana tarot cards. There must have been at least ten of these paintings arranged together on the huge wall, and though they had traditional, religious titles they were very clearly tarot cards. I remember The Hermit, which I think was the biblical St Anthony but can't remember exactly. The Wheel of Fortune, The Hanged Man, The Lightning-Struck Tower, and lots more.

Obviously the London National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery would deny all knowledge if you asked them about tarot cards, and I have never been back and wouldn't know where to find them again. I don't know if they were a permanent display but I think they were. I just remember walking through a long corridor through a lot of rooms of paintings, and sitting down because I got tired. I wish I had remembered who the artist was, I seem to think the style was the religious type of thing of late Medieval or early Renaissance.

Astrological Associations of the Tarot by Golden Dawn?

44
Re: Fleur's observations.
No matter how distinctive or idiosyncratic the subjects of the Trumps seem to us, or how unusual some of them appeared to citizens of eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe, we should not forget that they were, every one, commonplace illustrations so far as Medieval and Renaissance Italy was concerned, a point made again and again by Paul Huson in "Mystical Origins of the Tarot".

Melissa

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Hi Fleur,

I wonder if these were works by the German artist Albrecht Durer you saw?

Some of his woodcuts, such as "Melencolia" or "The Knight, Death, and the Devil," have a definite tarot aura about them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melencolia_I

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight,_De ... _the_Devil

More specifically though Stuart Kaplan, in his Encyclopedia of Tarot Volume 1, page 47, shows 6 of D?rers 21 (or 22 - as another source said) Mantegna Tarocchi. It seems, that the project was never completed,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantegna_Tarocchi

http://www.wopc.co.uk/italy/visconti.html

Possibly Durer's work or some other Mantegna Tarocchi artist may provide the answer to what you saw exhibited.

Mark

.
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

46
Fleur, you raise an interesting point, that many of the Tarot images were actually widespread in the fine arts and popular culture, pre-dating or coexisting alongside the Tarot cards. Of course, Tarot card designers borrowed heavily from a rich and complex pre-existing lore.

We've mentioned The Hanged Man, above, based on popular depictions of traitors and thieves in Renaissance Italy.

A major one that comes to mind is the Wheel of Fortune, which was a popular metaphor in the Middle Ages, and with precursors in Hellenistic society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rota_Fortunae

Spenser in The Faerie Queen (1590s) gives verbal images of the major virtues (including temperance and justice,) and the figures of Una and the Lion (symbolizing to him the True Church) seem a lot like the Strength card.

The prospect of a fall from a high station to a position of shame preoccupied Hellenistic astrologer Vettius Valens as it did his successors-- it just needed a graphic portrayal centuries later (The Tower) to bring it into the Tarot fold.

Actual religious hermits would have been known figures in Catholic Europe, whether historical/legendary (like Saint Jerome) or real people. (The Hermit)

As with astrological character delineation and prediction today, divination with tarot cards was probably originally more practical than esoteric.

To me, it seems as though a lot of the esoteric symbolism of the Tarot grew out of a deck of cards with real, almost practical meanings for Renaissance folk, that later acquired most of its occult linkages during the Romantic/early modernistic era.

Astrological Associations of the Tarot by Golden Dawn?

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Waybread wrote:To me, it seems as though a lot of the esoteric symbolism of the Tarot grew out of a deck of cards with real, almost practical meanings for Renaissance folk, that later acquired most of its occult linkages during the Romantic/early modernistic era.
That is certainly the indication of the surviving manuscript instructions for reading the tarot found in Bologna. Also, at least one Bologna deck still in existence has the meanings (very close to those in the manuscript) written on the cards.

The records of this tradition are later than the Renaissance, dating to round about the time of Etteilla in France, but their contents point to the existence of a different way of approaching tarot divination prior to the interest taken in the medium by occultists, just as waybread suggests.

Melissa

48
Waybread wrote:
To me, it seems as though a lot of the esoteric symbolism of the Tarot grew out of a deck of cards with real, almost practical meanings for Renaissance folk, that later acquired most of its occult linkages during the Romantic/early modernistic era.
This issue is picked up by Paul Huson in his book Mystiical Origins of the Tarot,
Michael Dummett, who is opposed to what he regards as the misappropriation of the tarot by occultists, doubts that the images depicted on the trumps taken as a set contained any special meaning to their earliest users, inasmuch as they were standard subjects of medieval and Renaissance iconography.

I, on the other hand, for the very same reason, believe the trumps to have been pregnant with meaning from the start, their symbolism drawn from the world of medieval drama, of miracle, mystery, and morality plays, with a hint of Neoplatonism evident here and there, which lent itself very readily to esoteric uses such as divination.

Furthermore, we shall see that the court cards in the so-called Minor Arcana spring from a heady brew of pagan and medieval myth, also handy for the would-be diviner.

Moreover, as Dummett himself has so ably demonstrated, the symbolism of the four suit signs seems to have evolved from a source even older than that of the trumps, a source that I believe can be traced to the Persian Empire before the time of the Islamic conquest in 642 C.E. Consequently, they also carry definite meanings exploitable by the diviner.
The oldest completely preserved Tarot deck from 15th century Italy is known as the Sola-Busca (circa 1490). Building on the work of Italian researchers Peter Mark Adams suggests these cards have imagery inspired by alchemy.

http://www.petermarkadams.com/sola-busca-tarot/

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/sola-busca/

This renaissance deck is also the only one known to illustrate the 4 suits pip cards before the Waite-Smith deck appeared in 1909.

Several of the minor arcana cards illustrated by Pamela Coleman-Smith seem to have been directly inspired by the Sola-Busca.

https://solabuscatarot1998mayer.wordpre ... ith-tarot/

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly