In Egyptian star lore Orion is the abode of the soul of mummified Osiris, God of the underworld and of the dead. Among his symbols were two red feathers worn in his white atef crown, to which we might see a reference in the red feather in the hat of the Waite/Smith fool card [feathers are also referenced in C.De Gebelin, and the Bolognese and Visconti-Sforza decks]...
Pamela's 3 of swords is based upon that of the Sola Busca, and the Sola Busca Matto too has the feathers in his hair; a string with three balls attached to his waist and also the black bird on his shoulder may allude to a connection with Orion: "Do you know that the Hare, Canis Major and Canis Minor have forty three stars in the Southern part of the heaven, and are so rewarded for only two or three trivial reasons not less unimportant than the reason that causes the Hydra, the Saucer, and the Raven to be next to Orion and to recieve forty-one stars to commemurate the occasion when the gods sent the Raven to obtain some drinking water?" [Bruno, 1584]
Due to having the gift of 'walking on water' bestowed upon him by his father Neptune, in the renaissance Orion was used as an allegory of Christ, and it was through such an allegorical use that Giordan Bruno was accused by the inquisition of attacking the divinity of Christ in his The expulsion of the triumphant beast:
"This is because he [Orion] knows how to perform miracles, and, as Neptune knows, can walk over the waves of the sea without sinking, without wetting his feet, and with this, consequently, will be able to perform many other fine acts of kindness. Let us send him among men, and let us see to it that he give them to understand all that I want and like them to understand: that white is black, that the human intellect, through which they seem to see best, is blindness, and that that which according to reason seems excellent, good and very good, is vile, criminal and extremely bad. I want them to understand that Nature is a whorish prostitute, that natural law is ribaldry, that Nature and Divinity cannot concur in one and the same good end, and that the justice of one is not subordinate to the justice of the other, but that they [Nature and Divinity] are contraries, as are shadows and light...
"I want him to go down to earth; and I shall command that he lose all power of performing bagatelles, impostures, acts of cunning, kind actions, and other miracles that are of no worth, because I do not want him together with the other to be in a position to destroy whatever excellence and dignity are found and exist in things necessary to the commonwealth of the world. I see how easy it is for it to be deceived, and consequently inclined towards acts of madness and prone to every corruption and indignity. I do not however, however, want out reputation to depend upon the discretion of him or similar to him. For if a king be mad who gives so much power and authority to one of his captains and generous leaders to make him superior to himself...how much more senseless and deserving of a disciplinarian and tutor will he be if he should put or leave in the same authority an abject, vile and ignorant man, by whom everything will be depreciated, slighted, confused and thrown into disorder, ignorance being placed by the latter where knowledge is customary, nobility where there is contempt, and villainy where there is reputation!" [Bruno]
Kwaw