Minor Arcana Correspondences

Bernice

Hello Kwaw,

(1) The ranking of pip cards in ascending and descending arcs is found in descriptions of card games from at least early 15th century, and the rule is also to be found in earliest descriptions of the game of tarot.

(2) Numerical ordering of the planets in ascending and descending arcs is ancient.
(1) This, I agree with :)
(2) I'm not sure that the early card designers incorporated planetry associations in their decks.

Concepts of the souls movement in ascending and descending arcs is common to Christian, Jewish and Islamic mystical theology.
I have no doubt about this either! :)

Planet to sephiroth attributions are ancient and the above attributions are attested too from at least the 13th century.
This, I'm not too sure about (for marseille divination). I know that the Qabalah underwent changes - lots of bits have been added into it over time. Evolution.

I spent some years with the ToL, and the depth & breadth of it's scope is all-encompassing. The RWS 'tarot' decks are admirably tailored for it. But the Suit & Pip cards preceeded the Trumps and were probably not related to the Qabalah at all. I wish I knew how the Mamluks used them....

Bee :)
 

kwaw

Bernice said:
This, I'm not too sure about (for marseille divination).

Your not sure that planet were associated with sephiroth in a variety of orderings from an early (pre-tarot) period??? (That is all that is stated, not that such were associated with pip cards from the 13th century).

I also state that the planetary order was numbered in ascending and descending arcs - which you agree with, but I am not claiming that the pips were 'originally' associated with such either.

So I think we are perhaps at cross purposes.

I think such associations can be made with any pip cards, modern, antique or even just an ordinary deck of playing cards sans tarot trumps. I don't see what reasons there are to exclude the marseille pips (which are just after all an ordinary set of Italian suited pips) in particular from such.

However, as I said, adapted it to personal preferences; ignore the sephirothic attributions if wished; place the fool in 21st place if one prefers 19th century french occult school orderings (who were the first to also associate the pips with the sephiroth as well, not the GD / RWS); or transfer the position of justice / strength if one wishes to use the RWS ordering, etc., I am not precious about it.
 

Bernice

So I think we are perhaps at cross purposes.

I think such associations can be made with any pip cards, modern, antique or even just an ordinary deck of playing cards sans tarot trumps.
Yes, cross purposes. :grin:

Yes indeed, any associations can be used for divination purposes (and any medium/tool...). As I said before, I love the at-a-glance diagrams, sums all the 78 cards up beautifully.

Do you have any idea what the Mamluks did with their deck? I thought islamic peoples didn't gamble, but perhaps that was a later developement....

Bee :)
 

kwaw

Bernice said:
Yes indeed, any associations can be used for divination purposes (and any medium/tool...).

Yep, but I prefer to use period appropriate associations, and there is no historical anachronism of using that table with the TdM.

Bernice said:
I wish I knew how the Mamluks used them....

To play games, to gamble, possibly even for parlour type fortune telling games - exactly the same as they were used in the west I imagine (some of the mamluk cards have verses on them that could possibly be read as a fortune - the divans were popularly used for bibliomancy so reading verses written on cards would not be a huge departure from that).

Of course there are anti-gambling and anti-fortune telling edicts in Islam as there is in Christianity - this did not and does not stop gambling or fortune telling taking place any more than it did or does in nominally Christian states. It may have an effect on the design or representation of a game, a 'serious' game, one that relied on skill for example rather than pure chance, or had some nominally educative value, could possible escape anti-gaming edicts meant to restrict gambling.

It would be interesting to know what symbolic significance and correspondences the mamluk emblems had, if any, to the mamluks.

More interesting to me is what associations, correspondences and allegories the Italian suited emblems had to those who added the tarot trumps to them.

The four suits of the deck were also open to allegorical readings prior to the allegorical figures of the tarot being added to them, so perhaps the idea of adding the trumps to them was not just as an extension to the game, but to an allegory suggested or 'read into' the existing (pip & court) cards.
 

beanu

Ihcoyc

Hi ihcoyc,
your system seems to be largely the reverse (top-to-bottom)
of the one posted by Cerulean earlier in this thread,
the relevant bit of which I have quoted here -

Cerulean said:
68 - Ten of Coins = Part of Fortune

69 - Nine of Coins = South Node

70 - Eight of Coins = North Node

71 - Seven of Coins = Saturn

72 - Six of Coins = Jupiter

73 - Five of Coins = Mars

74 - Four of Coins = Moon

75 - Three of Coins = Venus

76 - Two of Coins = Mercury

77 - Ace of Coins = Sun

I also notice that Cerulean's quaote is sun-centric, without the earth present,
so presumably it would be a simple enough matter to generate a matching earth-centric view - another possibility.

The question is - how do we tell which way up these systems should go - 1-10 or 10-1 ?

My system goes bottom to top, because it is derived from Waite cards. But they are not the entire Tarot by a long shot.

Kwaw's system works both directions, i different suits.

All of these seem perfectly valid when working simply with numbers.
The big question is waht do we measure our theories against for quality of fit.

As Bernice might put it - what are the correspondences that give meaning to the cards? About the only hint of correspoindences I can find in this thread is the Decans. Certainly, there is always apossibility that various astrological sequences may be mapped onto numerical card sequences, but how do we tell if we are right.

Bernice has indicated that there are other earlier decks which provided illustrated pips, mentioned in another thread, but my searches and reading attempts got bogged down in gifts of apple pie. (Although the Melanchooly theory of rotating the elemental assignments is interesing. Definitely worth a read.) And then there remains the question of whether an earlier deck's attempts at assigning meaning to pips are based in anything more concrete than RWS or Thoth.

And let me just qualify this by saying that I agree that any system you choose can work with reading, so I'm not really debating meanings for reading. I am debating "what is the original meaning of the cards" - in this case the pips.

So ladies and gentlemen, what is our criteria for "correctness" of any pips system?
 

kwaw

beanu said:
Hi ihcoyc,
your system seems to be largely the reverse (top-to-bottom)
of the one posted by Cerulean earlier in this thread,
the relevant bit of which I have quoted here -

Cerulean is quoting Ettiella's heliocentric system of correspondences with the 10 coin pips. Ihcoyc's is Ptolemaic, like mine, only in the one direction (the numbering of which is associated with the magical squares of the planets, such as described in Agrippa, ie, Saturn the 3rd sphere has a 3x3 square, Jupiter the 4th a 4x4... the moon 9th 9x9)

The question is - how do we tell which way up these systems should go - 1-10 or 10-1 ?

Why one or other? The cards historically are ranked in both ascending and descending orders, the planets are numbered in both ascending and descending orders. To use both would be historically appropriate, but to use one thereagain is simpler; this is probably why the rule in game play also by and large came to be dropped, the reasoning behind such a rule being lost, it is an unneccesary complication for a game, and probably for fortune telling too (but thereagain may offer a rich vein for allegorisation from which to derive a range of meanings).
 

beanu

Kwaw

Hi Kwaw,

Why one or other?
well, if we use two astrological systems (and there are more available), and two possible orderings, we can come up with 4 different associations between planets and cards. It doesn't lead to "one" answer.

I recognise that your system is a numerical solution purely within the numbers of 10 and 22, with no need for planets.
But again, I am left with the question of "how do I tell if it is corect or not".
I can easily see a number of very small variations to your system that will also result in different interpretations for the cards.
i.e. any variation in majors sequence,
flipping various triangle pairs, either veritically, or horizontally.

I'm not showing preference for any system here.

One way we might find a "measure" for the quality of the various systems would be to compare it with the traditional meanings of playing card divination (I'll bet there's a swag of them to choose between also.)
 

kwaw

beanu said:
Hi Kwaw,

Why one or other?
well, if we use two astrological systems (and there are more available), and two possible orderings, we can come up with 4 different associations between planets and cards. It doesn't lead to "one" answer.

When asking why one or the other I was responding in particular to the question of ordering 1-10 and 10-1 only; the planets may be read both ways, the suits are read in both; and both can read in the one system of four suits as I have tabulated, two in one direction and two in the other, in keeping with their historical ordering.

In terms of planetary systems, given the age of the pips I would give more probably to the geocentric than the heliocentric, and to the Ptolemaic as the most commonly known and represented for the time.

But again, I am left with the question of "how do I tell if it is corect or not".

You are making a big assumption that there is a 'correct' (and thus one and true) version or system of what are after all somewhat arbitrary conventions.

We can come up with period appropriate systems but no matter how elegant or appropriate they can not stand in and of themselves as proof of original intent.


I can easily see a number of very small variations to your system that will also result in different interpretations for the cards.
i.e. any variation in majors sequence, flipping various triangle pairs, either veritically, or horizontally.

Of course, as I said, arrange the ordering of the trumps and the 'triangles of suits' to your own preferences - I was suggesting horizontally rather than vertically if you wish to keep to the historical rankings. I have reasons for prefering the arrangement I tabulated, from association between the fool and swords for example in relation to neoplatonic concepts of dismemberment to the obvious visual parallel between the TdM World card and the suit of coins - none of these I proclaim as evidence of original intent, or as holding any greater argument than others might come up with for their own preferences. They are an example of a method, a process; not of a fixed, correct one and only true set of correspondences.

One way we might find a "measure" for the quality of the various systems would be to compare it with the traditional meanings of playing card divination (I'll bet there's a swag of them to choose between also.)

None that really can be confirmed much prior to the 18th century, thus not really of great value of ascertaining any meanings that may have been attached to the pip cards, if any, in the 14th or 15th centuries. We do have a number of allegorisations of the pips, but again, post-hoc allegorisation of playing cards provides us with examples of how meaning may be read into the cards, but is not evidence of such being 'written' (that is intended) in the cards.
 

kwaw

Bernice said:
...the Suit & Pip cards preceeded the Trumps and were probably not related to the Qabalah at all.

Number symolism relates them if nothing else, if one doesn't like the Tree of Life reference one could change them for one's personal preferences; Kapoore for example might wish to replace them with the 10 orders of the blessed according to Dionysius:

Seraphim.
Cherubim.
Thrones.
Dominions.*
Powers.*
Virtues.*
Principalities.
Archangels.
Angels.
Blessed souls (lovers of G-d).

22x10BLESSED.jpg


Or anything else that can be related to the scale of 10, such as in Agrippa for example:

http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp2b.htm#chap13

Kwaw
*sic This is the order as given in Agrippa.
 

Bernice

I'm having to pop in and out like a yo-yo, new anti-virus keeps alarming off...

Kwaw: Number symolism relates them if nothing else, if one doesn't like the Tree of Life reference one could change them for one's personal preferences; Kapoore for example might wish to replace them with the 10 orders of the blessed according to Dionysius:
Bernice: Post #27: There is no evidence that the 78 card deck was originally based on anything in particular. However, there are many ancient and modern sources to draw from if one wants to create a sytem. It seems that you have done this, and the method works for you. :)
Kapoore had stated that the tarot was based on a geometric shape that contained the elemental sciences, as understood by Kapore. I have no problem with that because it's Kapoore's system - and it obviously works.

Bernice: Post #43: Yes indeed, any associations can be used for divination purposes (and any medium/tool...). As I said before, I love the at-a-glance diagrams, sums all the 78 cards up beautifully.


Bee :)