Minor Arcana Correspondences

bradford

As fond as I am of correspondences, I ceased long ago to look for historical threads in most of them. A very few may have historical bases but most systems are after-the-fact endeavors to create or expose additional meanings in parallel systems. And most are put together without a great deal of deep or comprehensive thought. I put the assignments of both the spot and court cards to the decans of astrology in this category, and don't think them worthy of even a footnote.
While this lack of historical connections removes much hope of certainty from our quest for the perfect system, it at least affords us the opportunity to be a little more scientific and test the various systems of correspondences to see if they work. This is what distinguishes Consilience from Magical Thinking in the realms of correlative thought. I have a system that works really well for me, but it's admittedly artificial and patched together from lots of pieces, maybe half of them from Crowley and the Golden Dawn.
 

DoctorArcanus

Greg Stanton said:
None of the above works are Egyptian, nor can they be traced to Egypt. Please explain.

Scion's Guide to the Decans 2.3 said:
According to Gundel, the "Egyptian Names of the Decans" in 777 are actually Egyptian (!) by way of Hephaiston, Firmicus and the Spahera Barbarica. Crowley's "Names" are degraded Hellenistic Egyptian, by way of Greek (Hephaiston) and Latin (Firmicus)... (for example: TOS ARK -> THOSOLA ->THESOGAR).

Wilhelm Gundel is the author of "Dekane und Dekansternbilder. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Sternbilder der Kulturvölker", 1936. More information about this book and the study by Scion and Kwaw of the Liber T decans can be found in this thread.
 

Scion

Greg Stanton said:
None of the above works are Egyptian, nor can they be traced to Egypt. Please explain.
Well, crazy as it sounds Dr. A is speaking truth... and he's speaking about the Decans.

The Decans are pretty much the only contribution of Egypt to Astrology, and by way of the Golden Dawn, the structure beneath their minors and thence the minors of the vast majority of decks in print. The subject is a little knotty, but the short answer is that the role played by the Decans in the minors is a result of exactly the cultural mutation ManifestDestino laments above. But the trail begins in Egypt. :)

ManifestDestino, for what it's worth Payne-Towler's book is a VERY mixed bag. Check out my review of it. She gets a lot wrong, fudges often, misleads occasionally, and some of her sources are outright embarassing. It's worth reading, but mostly after you've read all the worthwhile books in her biblio so you can pick through the garbage.

The Huson book recommended above is wonderful. A must read for you, based on what you've said.
 

Greg Stanton

Sorry, whenever I hear something about Egypt in regard to tarot, my warning bells go off.

Tho I have to say, the decan attributions to the minor arcana 2-9 (Liber T) is yet another contribution (corruption, enhancement, whatever you like) by the Golden Dawn that takes the tarot further from its source. I find esoteric correspondences to the tarot interesting, but once it hit home how arbitrary they are I've had difficulty giving them the credence or power they need to work.

So in reality, it doesn't really all go back to Egypt. I used this analogy in another thread: Bic pens resemble ancient Egyptian styluses and are used for basically the same purpose. No one would ever say that the Pic pen originated in ancient Egypt, despite the similarities.

Or maybe I'm just taking this too seriously. :)
 

Scion

Actually, no. The metaphor doesn't apply here. The Decan symbols from which the Golden Dawn meanings derive are in fact Egyptian in origin, though mangled and distorted over the course of about 2200 years... They are literally a product of Egyptian calendrical worship and are the source for the minor meanings through a series of cultural shifts and syncretisms taht's been tracked by a lot of superb scholarship over the past century.

I understand your feeling about Egypt and the resulting bells, but this is actually historically supported, archaelogically based info. Having said that, the association with the Tarot is the Golden Dawn's, so the hinkiness occurs when much of it does, with the popularizatiion of divination in postindustrial Europe.

To extend your metaphor, this is more as if the Golden Dawn started writing all their order documents on papyrus recovered from tombs, and then claiming they were original pyramid texts.
 

Greg Stanton

There is no historical evidence that the decans have anything whatsoever to do with tarot -- until the Golden Dawn drew this imaginary correlation. I think we agree, and that's all I was trying to say.
 

Scion

Well, Pitois, and Etteilla, and the Comte de M, etc etc. Astrology is linked to Tarot before the GD, but not before the 18th century in any case. But the Decans and their symbols/interps are legitimately Egyptian.

For that matter, there's scant historical evidence that Tarot has anything to do with divination until the same era... although there are shreds. More to do with magick than divination, but the point stands. So unless you're using the deck to play a trick-taking game, you're left to dig in the ashes.

I don't have a problem with arbitrary attributions; most of civilization derives from arbitrary attributions torn free from their cultural underpinnings. Humans are syncretic. But I love that you're interested in Tarot without those accretions. It's almost like Stone Soup with nothing but the stone. Do you read or just collect Tarots for the artwwork?
 

Greg Stanton

I'm a reader.

I'm also highly biased against the GD and its works (Crowley too), based on personal experience. After taking a break from the cards for many years, due to the negative experiences I had, I'm back.

I use TdM, and how I read the cards now is based on my own study and personal system.

The decan attributions to the MA 2-9 are, from what I have deduced, an attempt by Mathers (or his cohorts) to offer something unique and decidedly esoteric to the members of the GD. After all, why would they pay their dues if what they were getting had already been published in books that were already available? That the applicable passages are quoted nearly verbatum from the Latin Picatrix makes me believe the document was hastily compiled, rather than a legitimate work based on actual working experience and research. In short, a hoax which I don't take seriously at all.
 

John Meador

Before the Golden Dawn, Mathers was a member of the Society of Eight; supposedly the understudy of Frederick Holland, who had composed his own Tarot utilizing the Shem ha-Mephoresch (Name of 72) in the pips. A 'Continental Tradition' applies this to 5 degree segments of the zodiac instead of decanate. How far back this system extends is unknown (at least to me). There is a discussion in Decker/Dummett: "History of the Occult Tarot" pp49-52, if I'm not mistaken.

-John
 

ManifestDestino

Well, I am very appreciative that this thread spawned into a lot of interesting information for me.

Thank you for linking your review to the Underground Stream, Scion.(as well as sending me your pdf via email)

With regards to your review, I agree with it almost completely. I"m barely starting to get a grasp of all this Tarot literature, so picking up that book has taught me a lot I didn't know, if anything familiarizing me with names like Levi and Ettellia.

However, I knew the book wasn't all I was thinking right out of the box, looking like it was printed in someone's basement in an Oregon forest town. Then like you said, when she gets into "Holy Blood, Holy Tarot" I was taken aback by all of a sudden reading a Mary Magdalene romance story...

I like the idea Bradford has regarding all of this, because really, it's all we can do, is test out all these arbirtary attributions and see how they work. And as Scion points out, that's where most of civilization comes from....

and I do lament, just at how unorganized this Tarot book is, especially when the majority of the Tarot's writers who I read about these correspondences from argue and contradict each other. They remind me of snobby intellectuals in school fighting over who is right and more elite than the other person, getting hot-headed and biased in the process. I'm thinking of Waite and Christine Payne Towler specifically, at the moment.

I mean, put yourself in my shoes,or anybody wanting to read about this stuff. I got into Tarot about 3 years ago simply because a coworker gave me a reading with the Thoth Tarot deck, and everything he said came true, so specifically. Wanting to harness this power myself, I try to educate myself on the subject. I consider myself somewhat intelligent, and an avid self-reader, and this has been one of the hardest subjects I've encountered to get straight answers on. How can I feel comfortable knowing what the Tarot is when the first two books you can read on the subject on the shelf of any bookstore or library mostly state completely different card interpretations, different astrological correspondences to court cards, and spread guidelines?

You have to sift through the bullshit and in the end we become just like all these writers and people we have been talking about. We, out of sake for what we feel works for us, plug in what we feel works and use our own system. Arbitrarily attributing, just like Mathers.

This can be a very frustrating in the process, and a lot of the knowledge pursued can seem useless- I mean, when do you decide what you've learned, or what Mathers or anyone has learned, is good enough for you?

I do agree with something in Israel Regardie wrote in the Golden Dawn though, and that's that it is best to have any method of divination be executed in tandem with the closet esoteric correspondences possible, in order to give you a more accurate reading. As I already have stated before, the I-Jing's is built in, and makes it a whole lot easer to use.

If you're planning a road trip, you do get to your destination quicker and more efficently with proper knowledge of directions, or directions based on a directions website based on proper cartographic and geographic correspondences, right? Hey, don't get me wrong, I've been reading a lot of this new age/law of attraction literature and it tells you all you gotta do is listen to your intuition and it can tell you when to turn right on a certain street to avoid traffic, and even get the closet parking space to the mall entrance. I'll use that, but let me tell you I will still be using MapQuest too.

Oddly enough as well, researching what all these occultists have to say about what the Tarot is and isn't brings me closer to a spiritual and intuition based understanding of the cards I wouldn't have otherwise, whether I agree with their system or not. This in turn has given me a completely different perspective and approach to life, in a manner most would call spiritual growth.

Spiritual growth, that's supposed to be worth more than all the gold in the world right? I mean, that's what the Buddhists say right? I mean, that's what I've read at least....