Plato and Tarot

Cerulean

Cardinal Virtues in West and East

1. Cardinal Virtues:

http://www.thefourvirtues.com/

2. Out of the Mouth of Babes

Out of the Mouths of Babes

O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
-- Psalm 8: 1-2 (KJV)

"Out of the mouths of babes," we now say (slightly misquoting), come the darndest things. Children sometimes speak, in their simplicity, more wisely than their elders....(Grace Cathedral website)...

Jesus scolds them: "Yea, have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?" (Matthew 21: 16). Jesus' quote, or rather paraphrase, is the main reason "out of the mouths of babes" became a popular catchphrase. But it didn't ensure the phrase would be well employed.

http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/brush_excerpts/brush_20050816.shtml

Best wishes,

Cerulean
 

venicebard

kapoore said:
Hi Venicebard,
In my language when someone is "Jewish-pagan Gnostic." I think you are Jewish ethnically, believe in many gods and goddesses religiously, and like Gnostic literature philosophically.
In that case it was not a very good description on my part: I am essentially Gnostic in that I see man's problem as blindness towards the inner horizon or self, induced by our choice to trust sensation instead of intuition. I simply see (Jewish) Qabbalah as the most detailed map of the interface of self and sensation. I am not capable of being monotheistic: I do not worship gods but cannot deny their existence and am therefore thankful to some, including those monotheistic gods to whom we owe the Judeo-Christian tradition of kindness and generosity.
Maybe we could agree that the interesting part of Plato is not the answer to his questions but the questions themselves.
Certainly true of Socrates, but Plato did explain the world for us: it is only that his explanation suffers from poor translation at times (as in ch. 19 of The Republic, where 'what abides' is normally translated 'what exists').
For example, there is a question of "how the one become many?"
This question only arises if one excludes the many from the One to begin with. Yet without the many, that is, without number, the number one has no meaning (since it is itself a number).
There is the question about absolute versus relative.
I started to glibly say that if there's a question about it, it's not absolute; but then I remembered the difficulty of the problem of the Form or Ideal or Idea Beauty and realized you are right. Truth is absolute by definition. Goodness is situation oriented, but not situation-determined, in its specifics, but it is still absolute: however poor a grasp the conscious mind has of it, one's conscience has no problem discerning it (though man's mind is capable of ignoring conscience, his heart and physical features must bow to it in the end). Beauty would seem to be situation-determined, being 'in the eye of the beholder', yet this does not make it any less an Ideal, that is, an absolute. Any Ideal or Absolute, being eternal, can only influence the temporal (i.e. as goal); it cannot be defined by the temporal because it is not limited in (or by) time.
The Tarot is Platonic in that it has archetypes or absolutes--Justice, Temperance, Strength. It has a hierarchical structure that reflects a unity. I had an argument with an other individual on the forum because he said that the Tarot can have 14 cards--be missing the Devil, the Tower, the celestial element--and still be Tarot.
I'm on your side here.
I think the Tarot is not a random set of symbols but a carefully constructed set of symbols that are related on different levels. It reflects some relativity in the hierarchy but also absolutes.
If by this last you are referring to the differing order in which some decks place the trumps, then as I see it the relativity is all south of the Alps, whereas I see tarot as having been born north of them, where their proper order (based on bardic numeration of letters) was taken for granted. The order in the Tarot of Marseilles is very carefully constructed and yields many layers of meaning relating directly to how the human condition came to be (in other words, the same problem Plato was tackling).
 

venicebard

beanu said:
1,2 and 3 are all in the world of Atziluth, spirit.
...
4,5 and 6 are in Briah - mind
...
All [7 & 8] in the world of Yetzirah - emotions
...
10- Material world - What can be grasped in the 10 fingers.
I should perhaps point out that the Kabbalah has more than one way of spreading one Tree over four worlds.

1) The method you use: 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, & 10.

2) The method based on the Lurianic application of the Name to the Tree: 1-2, 3, 4-9, & 10.

3) The method based on the suits: a distinct configuration of Tree for each world.

It is this last that I subscribe to, for two reasons. One, I believe the worlds as they relate to the Name is not quite as simple as the current rabbinical tradition would make it seem.

Two, it is obvious to me that the book Bahir treats Sefirot as individual powers, Sefer Yetzirah treats them as pairs of opposites, the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah treat them as three triads plus a tenth, and the planetary metals adhere to this last according to a fourfold pattern in number (and chemical valence). Hence there already are four patterns of Tree, one for each world (the second world in pairs, the third in triads, etc.).
 

beanu

There is a fourth system, in which the four worlds consist of 10 spheres each, and are all nested like onion layers, giving 40 layers in all.

I'm just going on the assumption that the Zohar was the one that influenced the Tarot.
Do you have reason to believe one of the others fits better?
 

dai

Hi all...what a lively thread!

Re the Virtues,

blue_fusion says:

"I've always wanted to know how come it was the Platonic Virtues Strength, Temperance, and Justice that eventually were used in popular tarot, and why didn't it follow their supposed "progression" as in his "The Republic."

beanu says:

"Wikipedia says that the 4 cardinal virtues are
Wisdom
Courage
Moderation (Temperance) and
Justice

Could it be that the Hermit represents Wisdom?"

Here's what I say in my book about this:

"The Sun as agent of Zeus assists in constantly rejuvenating the cosmos. For Homer, to see the rays of the Sun was to be filled with Life. The equation between light and life was incorporated into the Sufi name for the Hermit’s station or attribute of Allah – the Living. When Diogenes, Greece’s ascetic Patriarch of Cynics, walked around naked in broad daylight with his lantern, he was testing who might see such rays, for only they would be on the path of Virtue and thereby deserving to be called truly alive.

Virtue as human excellence is represented by the Hermit as prudent guide and provider of life. Prudent comes from the word provide – pro-, “forward,” and videre, “to see.” The quality of a Hermit’s insight into how the Wheel of Fortune and Nature cycles forward can be intuited from important derivatives of weid-, the Indo-European root of videre: guide, wise, wisdom, guise, Hades, wit, view, visa, vision, advice, clairvoyance, evident, provide, review, supervise, survey, idea, history, story.

The virtues suggested by Plato (later to be deemed cardinal or pivotal) – Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, and Justice – are arranged hierarchically in the Tarot. According to Plato, the first three relate to one’s psyche: moderation or Temperance is the virtue that orders the lower appetites and physical desires of the psyche, including those of Lovers; courage or Fortitude is the soldiering, steadfast virtue of the morally upright psyche that is represented so well in the Chariot; wisdom or prudence is the yet higher virtue of the intellectual aspect of psyche as portrayed in the Wheel’s and Hermit’s insight of gnosis or Emptiness. These virtues culminate in a Unity of Justice, which links Psyche with all else, for the three hierarchical classes of virtue and psyche are not self-sufficient – they are surrounded by the all-inclusive Law of Justice."
 

beanu

Dai,

Thank you for that.
I would also like to add that in my investigations of astrology,
Jupiter/Zeus is regarded as the Law Giver, and MArs as the executor of the Law,
corresponding to Chesed and Geburah respectively.
- Hermit and Chariot
As a result, I must consider moving the Justice card from
Tiphareth to Chesed, via some form swap

And Chesed is higher up the Lightning strike (the sword) than are the other virtues.
 

beanu

I have started a new thread under Astrology,
to widen the discussion from Plato into "everything"
using astrology as the key, as recommended by Mike.

Please keep an eye on that thread also.