French translation of Major Arcana

Nico2a

Few days ago, a member of this forum said that it would be interesting to have the translation of the RWS major Arcanas in french.
Well, this may interest french speaking people, and maybe some others as the RWS was inspired by the "tarot de Marseille"

I'm a beginner, so in this post I only relay what I've read from different source (2 of which are at the end of the post).

On the left, the RWS names, on the right the french translation and between parenthesis the numbers and the name in the TDM (tarot de Marseille) when it differs.

I - The Magician => I. Le Magicien (ou le Bateleur)
II - The High Priestess=> II. La Grande Prêtresse (ou la Papesse)
III - The Empress => III. L'Impératrice
IV - The Emperor => IV. L'Empereur (IIII. L'Empereur)
V - The Hierophant => V. Le Hiérophante (ou le Pape)
VI - The Lovers => VI. Les Amoureux (ou L'Amoureux)
VII - The Chariot => VII. Le Chariot
VIII - Strength => VIII. La Force (XI. La Force)
IX - The Hermit => IX. L'Ermite (VIIII. L'Ermite)
X - Wheel of Fortune => X. La Roue de Fortune
XI - Justice => XI. La Justice (VIII. La Justice)
XII - The Hanged Man => XII. Le Pendu
XIII - Death => XIII. La Mort ("L'Arcane sans nom")
XIV - Temperance => XIV. Tempérance (XIIII. Tempérance)
XV - The Devil => XV. Le Diable
XVI - The Tower => XVI. La Tour (ou la Maison Dieu)
XVII - The Star => XVII. L'Étoile
XVIII - The Moon => XVIII. La Lune
XIX - The Sun => XIX. Le Soleil (XVIIII. Le Soleil)
XX - Judgement => XX. Le Jugement
XXI - The World => XXI. Le Monde
0 - The Fool => (XXII). Le Fou (ou le Mat)

Some details:

- in the RWS the order/numbers of Strengh and Justice are interverted (VIII and XI) in comparaison with the TDM. It is considered an aberration by TDM's readers (obviously!) - I think this part needs to be developped... may be in a future post if the answer is not already in the forum.
- In the TDM the roman numbers never "go back", they don't substract. For example 4 is written IIII (and not IV , not 5-1=4), the TDM always add number to show progression (which gives an indication on how to read the cards). ***to be developped***
- The fool has no number in the TDM (many theories about that, not the subject of this post), and I think I've seen it once with the number XXII (and another time XXI, the world being XXII)
- Death is the "Arcane sans nom" (arcana with no name), in the TDM, nothing except the number XIII is written on the card.

That's it for now, I hope it helps.

some references
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot_divinatoire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divinatory,_esoteric_and_occult_tarot

AraLuck

Nico2a said:
Few days ago, a member of this forum said that it would be interesting to have the translation of the RWS major Arcanas in french.
Well, this may interest french speaking people, and maybe some others as the RWS was inspired by the "tarot de Marseille"

I'm a beginner, so in this post I only relay what I've read from different source (2 of which are at the end of the post).

On the left, the RWS names, on the right the french translation and between parenthesis the numbers and the name in the TDM (tarot de Marseille) when it differs.

I - The Magician => I. Le Magicien (ou le Bateleur)
II - The High Priestess=> II. La Grande Prêtresse (ou la Papesse)
III - The Empress => III. L'Impératrice
IV - The Emperor => IV. L'Empereur (IIII. L'Empereur)
V - The Hierophant => V. Le Hiérophante (ou le Pape)
VI - The Lovers => VI. Les Amoureux (ou L'Amoureux)
VII - The Chariot => VII. Le Chariot
VIII - Strength => VIII. La Force (XI. La Force)
IX - The Hermit => IX. L'Ermite (VIIII. L'Ermite)
X - Wheel of Fortune => X. La Roue de Fortune
XI - Justice => XI. La Justice (VIII. La Justice)
XII - The Hanged Man => XII. Le Pendu
XIII - Death => XIII. La Mort ("L'Arcane sans nom")
XIV - Temperance => XIV. Tempérance (XIIII. Tempérance)
XV - The Devil => XV. Le Diable
XVI - The Tower => XVI. La Tour (ou la Maison Dieu)
XVII - The Star => XVII. L'Étoile
XVIII - The Moon => XVIII. La Lune
XIX - The Sun => XIX. Le Soleil (XVIIII. Le Soleil)
XX - Judgement => XX. Le Jugement
XXI - The World => XXI. Le Monde
0 - The Fool => (XXII). Le Fou (ou le Mat)

Some details:

- in the RWS the order/numbers of Strengh and Justice are interverted (VIII and XI) in comparaison with the TDM. It is considered an aberration by TDM's readers (obviously!) - I think this part needs to be developped... may be in a future post if the answer is not already in the forum.
- In the TDM the roman numbers never "go back", they don't substract. For example 4 is written IIII (and not IV , not 5-1=4), the TDM always add number to show progression (which gives an indication on how to read the cards). ***to be developped***
- The fool has no number in the TDM (many theories about that, not the subject of this post), and I think I've seen it once with the number XXII (and another time XXI, the world being XXII)
- Death is the "Arcane sans nom" (arcana with no name), in the TDM, nothing except the number XIII is written on the card.

That's it for now, I hope it helps.

some references
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot_divinatoire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divinatory,_esoteric_and_occult_tarot

very interesting with the numbers! I have a TDM deck in my home country .. I have to root it out so I can compare (thankfully going there next week). I guess the Minors will be there too. I can actually just google and find out. I haven't met anyone who reads in French yet and even the Francophones around here am not sure if their cards are in English or in French. Would be interesting to know how they are also read in France - with the preference for the TDM or RWS format? Or is that a silly question:

Nico2a

AraLuck said:
very interesting with the numbers! I have a TDM deck in my home country .. I have to root it out so I can compare (thankfully going there next week). I guess the Minors will be there too. I can actually just google and find out. I haven't met anyone who reads in French yet and even the Francophones around here am not sure if their cards are in English or in French. Would be interesting to know how they are also read in France - with the preference for the TDM or RWS format? Or is that a silly question:

Well, in France, the Tarot de Marseille is THE Tarot. Everyone knows it or has heard of it, even if they do not read or are not interested in tarots. When you want want to learn how to read the tarot you almost can find nothing else than the TDM.

Only few have heard about the RWS (usually people who knows about it are tarot and Oracle aficionados). Yet when you go into an esoteric library, you can find everykind of tarots and Oracle (some are really well stocked!)

May be, like for the wine (sacred topic in France!

), people reseach what seems "more authentic" for them, and the TDM is the oldest and the inpiration for the RWS... the original before the copy. But that's just my opinion, I may be mistaken.

So readings you can have in France are mainly from the TDM.
However you can find on youtube some channels in french that are not stuck on TDM and use other Tarots or Oracles. If you're interested, I'll give you some links.

Richard

Nico2a said:
......in the RWS the order/numbers of Strengh and Justice are interverted (VIII and XI) in comparaison with the TDM. It is considered an aberration by TDM's readers (obviously!) - I think this part needs to be developped... may be in a future post if the answer is not already in the forum.....

It is a technical matter having to do with the assignment of Hebrew letters to the Major Arcana and the Qabalistic attributions of those letters to the Zodiac Unless one is interested in the esoteric significance of Tarot, it is really not worth discussing.

Nico2a

Thank you for the precision Richard, that's helpful!

From what I read it can go further than that. The problem is that I'm not advanced enough to understand it fully but I understand the general spirit of it. I would post you a link of a discussion in another forum but it is in french.

What I kind of understand :
The permutatious of these arcanas comes from the adaptation from the Golden Dawn, and as new tarots are largely inpired by the RWS, this permutation is in every new deck. The effect of this change (among others) tends to distantiate from the religious meanings of the TDM. When you make this change, I understand that the meaning of the sequence of the major arcanas change also, especially when you consider that there is a logical order, an evolution from one arcana to the other (the fool's journey, may be).

I'm not sure I'm making sense... I'm not even sure I would if I was writing ine french!

As I said I'm just peeking into this.

But what is certain is that TDM and RWS have different approaches, and are not read the same way. From what I see TDM is studied almost scientifically, much more than RWS. People seems to rely more on intuition, on what they feel where the RWS is concerned. Anyway, that's what I perceive from what I read...

Both approaches are interesting and valid, it is personal preferences.