XVIIII Le Soleil

Supletion said:

it does look like the right child guides the left one to the right, to the future. the right child also stands on a different land, on a little hill of his own, which shows more clearly in camoin's card since its painted white while the rest of the ground is bright blue.

in several old decks, the left character is blind, and in some marseilles cards he isnt clealy blind, but does look like he's searching his way with his hands, and the right child helps him.

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Synagogia, symbol of Israelites, is portrayed as blind, and usually on the left in relation to Ecclessia on the right. Is there a relation perhaps to the portrayal of blind and seeing brethren, on left and right?

1. Now the story which gave occasion to this prophecy may be easily recognised in the second book of Kings. (2 Samuel 15:34-37) For there Chusi, the friend of king David, went over to the side of Abessalon, his son, who was carrying on war against his father, for the purpose of discovering and reporting the designs which he was taking against his father, at the instigation of Achitophel, who had revolted from David's friendship, and was instructing by his counsel, to the best of his power, the son against the father. But since it is not the story itself which is to be the subject of consideration in this Psalm, from which the prophet has taken a veil of mysteries, if we have passed over to Christ, let the veil be taken away. (2 Corinthians 3:16) And first let us inquire into the signification of the very names, what it means. For there have not been wanting interpreters, who investigating these same words, not carnally according to the letter, but spiritually, declare to us that Chusi should be interpreted silence; and Gemini, right-handed; Achitophel, brother's ruin. Among which interpretations, Judas, that traitor, again meets us, that Abessalon should bear his image, according to that interpretation of it as a father's peace; in that his father was full of thoughts of peace toward him: although he in his guile had war in his heart, as was treated of in the third Psalm. Now as we find in the Gospels that the disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ are called sons, (Matthew 9:15) so in the same Gospels we find they are called brethren also. For the Lord on the resurrection says, Go and say to My brethren. (John 20:17) And the Apostle calls Him the first begotten among many brethren. The ruin then of that disciple, who betrayed Him, is rightly understood to be a brother's ruin, which we said is the interpretation of Achitophel. Now as to Chusi, from the interpretation of silence, it is rightly understood that our Lord contended against that guile in silence, that is, in that most deep secret, whereby blindness happened in part to Israel, (Romans 11:25) when they were persecuting the Lord, that the fullness of the Gentiles might enter in, and so all Israel might be saved. When the Apostle came to this profound secret and deep silence, he exclaimed, as if struck with a kind of awe of its very depth, O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who has known the wind of the Lord, or who has been His counsellor? (Romans 11:33-34) Thus that great silence he does not so much discover by explanation, as he sets forth its greatness in admiration. In this silence the Lord, hiding the sacrament of His adorable passion, turns the brother's voluntary ruin, that is, His betrayer's impious wickedness, into the order of His mercy and providence: that what he with perverse mind wrought for one Man's destruction, He might by providential overruling dispose for all men's salvation. The perfect soul then, which is already worthy to know the secret of God, sings a Psalm unto the Lord, she sings for the words of Chusi, because she has attained to know the words of that silence: for among unbelievers and persecutors there is that silence and secret. But among His own, to whom it is said, Now I call you no more servants; for the servant knows not what his lord does; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you: (John 15:15) among His friends, I say, there is not the silence, but the words of the silence, that is, the meaning of that silence set forth and manifested. Which silence, that is, Chusi, is called the son of Gemini, that is, righthanded. For what was done for the Saints was not to be hidden from them. And yet He says, Let not the left hand know what the right hand does. (Matthew 6:3) The perfect soul then, to which that secret has been made known, sings in prophecy for the words of Chusi, that is, for the knowledge of that same secret. Which secret God at her right hand, that is, favourable and propitious unto her, has wrought. Wherefore this silence is called the Son of the right hand, which is, Chusi, the son of Gemini.
Exposition on Ps.7 by Augustine.

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jmd said:

After all, what are the possible symbolic reasons for not only placing the Sun at such exalted sequential position, but also, why with the (perhaps unexpected) apparent depiction of Gemini, and why just before dealing with resurrection (or Judgement)?

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The Sun, the light of the world, was seen as a symbol of Christ. It was under the Roman Gemini* that the Light of the World was crucified.

Kwaw

* That is the twin consuls of Rome, Rubelius Geminus and Fusius Geminus.

According to Augustine:
"Christ died when the two Gemini were consuls..."

According to Tertulian:
"The Passion was finished when Rubelius Geminus and Fusius Geminus were Consuls."

According to Severus:
“Under this Herod, in the three and thirtieth of his reign, Christ was born, Sabinu and Rufinus being consuls. Herod, after the nativity of our Lord, reigned four years. After him Archelaus was tetrarch nine years, and Herod twentry-four years. In the eighteenth year of his reign the Lord was crucified when Rufius Geminus and Rubellius Geminus were consuls.”

According to the Chronography:
“When Tiberius Caesar was reigning our Lord Jesus Christ died the two twins being consul...”

According to Lactantius:
“in the latter days of the Emperor Tiberius, in the consulship of Ruberius Geminus and Fufius Geminus... Jesus Christ was crucified..."

According to the Gospel of Nicodemus:
“in the fifteenth year of the government of Tiberius Caesar, emperor of the Romans, and Herod being king of Galilee, in the nineteenth year of his rule, on the eighth day before the Calends of April, which is the twenty-fifth of March, in the consulship of Rufus and Rubellio, in the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, Joseph Caiaphas being high priest of the Jews."

(The Gospel of Nicodemus, also known as the Acts of Pilate, was a popular and well known apocryphal text, the primary source for the accounts of Christ's descent into Hades, the harrowing of hell so popular in the literature, theatre and mystery plays of the late middle ages.)

According to Tertullian:
“... under Tiberius Caesar, in the consulate of Rubellius Geminus and Fufius Geminus, in the month of March, at the times of the passover, on the eighth day before the calends of April, on the first day of unleavened bread, on which they slew the lamb at even, just as had been enjoined by Moses."

Xix

Triumphant Sun

The Sun card picturing Phaethon or Mars and Venus

jmd said:

... the Sun card appears to have had more variations in various details, as well as major variations in its Marseilles vs northern depictions (from which the Waite/Coleman-Smith derives).

In some (Marseilles) decks, the droplets head towards the Sun, on others, towards the ground. On some decks, the two people appear as children - or at least genderless - on others, clearly of specific genders.

The card also has a consistent representation of a low stone/brick wall, and the two persons are clearly in touch with each other.

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The Sun card in the Rider-Waite-Smith RWS deck pictures Phaethon, the son of the sun god Helios riding on one of the horses of the sun chariot. He is pictured as a child because he is young. The sun is in the background as are sunflowers.

The Cary Yale Visconti pictures Phaethon on one of the sun chariot's horses.
In the Fournier Sun card there are drops, which may represents rays of the sun, but remember that "Apollo anointed Phaeton's head with magic oil to keep the chariot from burning him"(Wikipedia), and these drops may have been incorporated into various versions of the Sun card.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaëton

But who are the young man and woman in early versions of the Sun card?
In the "Odyssey, Aphrodite, the consort of Hephaestus, secretly beds Ares, but all-seeing Helios spies on them and tells Hephaestus, who ensnares the two lovers in nets invisibly fine, to punish them"(Wikipedia). So, in early versions of the Sun card the man is Ares (the Roman Mars) and the woman is Aphrodite (the Roman Venus).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios

As for the wall, it may be a representation of the path of the Sun, or the road that the sun chariot traversed across the sky. Could it also be a portrayal of a net thrown by Hephaestus? The constellation Leo has a close connection with the sun and the Sun card. - Lance

Cartomancer said:

In the Fournier Sun card there are drops, which may represents rays of the sun, but remember that "Apollo anointed Phaeton's head with magic oil to keep the chariot from burning him"(Wikipedia), and these drops may have been incorporated into various versions of the Sun card.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaëton

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Interesting. I take the droplets to be drops of sweat careening off the wresting twins. Indeed it was one of the clues by which I was able to assign the Sefer Yetzirah listed function ‘smell’ to the simple letter yod (which represents the earth breath, hence earth’s sense), whose card this is (by bardic numeration, as mistletoe (in Greek ixias) is doubled I and I is numbered 3, pointing to Ii’s correct numeration, 19 or third-from-the-end).

But who are the young man and woman in early versions of the Sun card?

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The standard Marseilles deck—which is undoubtedly the original tarot (modern enthusiasm for an Italian origin notwithstanding), albeit having undergone a few very minor changes (such as probable addition of titles and ranking)—has twin sons (as children) wrestling, for the very simple reason that this trump stands for yod the mistletoe (or loranthus) at winter solstice, when the year is born and its twin spirits (waxing and waning of day-length) vie for the privilege of ruling first, so to speak. The twin motif increases on approach to winter solstice, to reflect the fear felt by the satiric antihero or waning year at the approach of the end of his reign, a sequence that culminates in XV The Devil (reysh or ruis the elder, last of the thirteen months) with its chained hominids, which in the case of that card do carry the ambiguity of being interpretable either as twins or as a couple (male and female), indeed an oblique reference to the myth you reference here:

In the "Odyssey, Aphrodite, the consort of Hephaestus, secretly beds Ares, but all-seeing Helios spies on them and tells Hephaestus, who ensnares the two lovers in nets invisibly fine, to punish them"(Wikipedia). So, in early versions of the Sun card the man is Ares (the Roman Mars) and the woman is Aphrodite (the Roman Venus).

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I dispute that the “early versions of the Sun card” have a man and woman. This myth, however, does relate directly to the planetary columns in the alchemical vessel, part of the Hermetic basis of tarot symbolism—according to my bardo-Kabbalistic theory of tarot origin, which is the only viable theory I know that doesn’t mistake early Italian paintings for predecessors of the block-printed cards themselves, which had to have originated north of the Alps for the simple reason that only there is the tradition of trump rankings fixed and unchangeable. For the columns adjacent to each other in the middle of the Egg or alchemical vessel are Mars and Venus (taking aries-libra as the vertical diameter, each sign’s rulership determined by the column just passed through upon arrival thereat), yet the center-post itself is also a column, namely the one corresponding to the year, and since the year is earth’s orbit about the sun (or vice versa, lol) and represents the aspect of water or form that acts on water or form while Venus represents the aspect of water or form that is acted on by water or form (demonstration of which I can give upon request), I take the center-post to stand for Venus’s true husband, Vulcan (Hephaestus). (The reason this myth is obliquely referenced by reysh aka XVIIII The Sun is that R’s original, more proper station is at libra, which R has deserted in search of a higher station, not content to be the servant... but that’s another story.)

As for the wall, it may be a representation of the path of the Sun, or the road that the sun chariot traversed across the sky. Could it also be a portrayal of a net thrown by Hephaestus?

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For the symbolism of the wall, one need only read Sefer Yetzirah:

10. . . . Third, Primitive Water. He also formed and designed from his Spirit, and from the void and formless made earth, even as a rampart, or standing wall, and varied its surface even as the crossing of beams.
( http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/yetzirah.htm ) ...or:

. . . He engraved it like a kind of garden bed; He raised it like a kind of wall, He surrounded it like a kind of ceiling.
( http://www.workofthechariot.com/PDF/SeferYetzirah.pdf )

XVIIII The Sun is third-from-the-end, and the Sefirot manifest through the trumps from both ends, so to speak. (To help confirm this, observe the iconography of IIII The Emperor and XVIII The Moon in relation to what SY says of the fourth emanation:

10. . . . Fourth, from the Water, He designed Fire, and from it formed for himself a throne of honor, with Auphanim, Seraphim, Holy Animals, and ministering Angels, and with these he formed his dwelling, as is written in the text "Who maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flaming fire." (Psalm civ. 4.)
( http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/yetzirah.htm )

The association with water for a card entitled ‘The Sun’ may seem strange: obviously there is the sweat careening off the twins, but the key point is that the sun relates to its being the point on the cycle of the year of the year’s (sun’s) rebirth, but yod-mistletoe as Ii the earth breath (whose placement at capricorn is a result of nature’s usurpation of the lower spine, capricorn being the midpoint of the spine in the closed or circular zodiac) is seen as an extension of the water breath, I, and indeed a longer version of SY incorporates the emanation of earth in the third emanation (snow that becomes dust).

I realize my perspective on tarot is considered heretical on this site, but frankly the ‘standard model’ of Italian origin explains none of the details of the iconography of the Marseilles deck, virtually all of which are explained without strain by my model, a more inclusive version of which can be found here:
http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Bardic_origin_of_Tarot