The Sun's 'extra' ray - a suggested explanation

jmd

I thought I would wait until others had a chance to have a look at Jensen's book on The Story of the Waite-Smith Tarot before posting this, but at the same time, not wait toooo long, as I may otherwise plain forget all about it, given it is not a deck I use much at all.

On page 121, Frank Jensen shows two early images from different publications of the Sun card in outline (no colour), depicting with, I will suggest, different degrees of accuracy Pamela Colman Smith's actual picture.

It is indeed a pity that, thus far, the originals drawn have not been located. Personally, I suspect they have not been destroyed (though that too is possible, especially given the vast destruction that occured in both world wars, especially the second).

What is fascinating with the earlier image is a careful look at the numbering. For someone like myself that habitually uses a Marseille-type deck and its cognates, the numbering is not 'wrong' (as seen by Frank Jensen), but rather mistakenly re-rendered for the publication, the transposer incorrectly assuming that the fourth 'I' was part of a squiggly line.

If anything, it most likely shows that the original uses the additive Roman form (XVIIII) and that this was later changed to the subtractive form (XIX), with the already mis-read fourth 'I' as squiggle remaining as inexplicable line.

The image of the two renditions, the first from the Occult Review in 1909, and the second from Waite's 1910-1911 Pictorial Key to the Tarot, is attached below (and also uploaded on my fourhares.com site for those unable to see the attachment).
 

Attachments

  • WCS_Sun.jpg
    WCS_Sun.jpg
    32.1 KB · Views: 1,081

Fulgour

X X I I

If you count the "Rays" with the solitary squiggle,
there are 11 straight and 10 wavy~ plus one line.

Click on to view IMAGE.

That's 22 ~maybe Pam was just saying "Hello!" ;)
 

Fulgour

Red Feathers

OK... so you have "22" lines coming from The Sun
which suggests very clearly a link to The Fool...
and doesn't the child on The Sun have a feather?

The Fool and The Sun were shown to be linked
by Pamela Colman Smith ~ artist and designer.

The eternal traveller, eternally reborn...
 

atlantean

jmd said:
What is fascinating with the earlier image is a careful look at the numbering. For someone like myself that habitually uses a Marseille-type deck and its cognates, the numbering is not 'wrong' (as seen by Frank Jensen), but rather mistakenly re-rendered for the publication, the transposer incorrectly assuming that the fourth 'I' was part of a squiggly line.

If anything, it most likely shows that the original uses the additive Roman form (XVIIII) and that this was later changed to the subtractive form (XIX), with the already mis-read fourth 'I' as squiggle remaining as inexplicable line.

Very interesting observation. It seems a very plausible explanation to me. It may also be a scratch on the printing plate, though I don't know enough about printing processes to guess. It does look like a chance event of some sort, though.

I'm really not inclined to think it was something deliberate. Nevertheless, even if a product of chance, the end result is there, so any eventually possible intrinsic connections with other cards and interpretations are still valid IMHO, maybe even more :).

By the way, is this book already available somewhere?
 

Abrac

jmd-

This is an interesting observation. I am not sure I agree with your theory that the originals were in the additive form though, considering that all the other cards are in the subtractive. I can see how someone may have noticed the incorrect number and rather sloppily penned in a "l." But it seems a far stretch to imagine someone looking at what would obviously be the number XVllll and mistaking the last "l" for a squiggly line. Someone probably simply penned in the extra wavy line to round it out to 22 - 11 of each.

Of course we may never know, but I'm inclined to think that there were originally 21, the child on the horse being the 22nd, The Fool himself.
 

Rosanne

It is interesting that the spaces between the the rays- the squiggly line dividing the blue - make the spaces 22. I can imagine Pamela counting the blue sky spaces, seeing 21 - drew a squiggly line to make 22 blue sky spaces between the rays to one side of the letters. It probably was a forth I making it card 19, but was unclear so the new XIX was adopted. I prefer to see the 22 cards depicted as Sky rather than Rays and I love the Feather. ~Rosanne