Interpreting Minors in Marseilles Decks

Modern Numerology

I thought I'd mention another numerology of potential application to the TdM is Modern Numerology (the movement started in the 20th century by Mrs. Dow Balliet). There are some linkages to Pythagorean numerology.

Here's a list of keywords from Matthew Oliver Goodwin:

1 - Individuation, Independence, Attainment
2 - Relation, Cooperation
3 - Expression, Joy of Living
4 - Limitation, Order, Service
5 - Constructive Freedom
6 - Balance, Responsibility, Love
7 - Analysis, Understanding
8 - Material Satisfaction
9 - Selflessness, Humanitarianism

Edited to add link to thread discussing the number 10 of modern numerology:

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23999&highlight=nonscenic

Fairfield's numerology

Originally posted by Lee regarding Fairfield's _Choice-Centered Tarot
This is true, however she doesn't go on to account for the differences in specific numbers across suits that RWS has. For Fairfield, it's strictly number-plus-suit, and the number always means the same thing regardless of suit. So, for example, the 3 of Swords for Fairfield would mean something like planning a communication or thinking of a plan, rather than sorrow or heartbreak.

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Yes, that's true. The irony of Fairfield's method in that book is that she derives a numerology for each of the numbers One to Ten ostensibly based on general trends for that number in the RWS images but the final results of that method are not consistent with and often at odds with the various RWS images. Thus, in effect, her method is usable only with non-illustrated pip cards. Her method in her longer tarot book is even more confusing to me.

edited for typos

I found Fairfield's approach strange, because in the first chapters of Choice Centered Tarot she discusses different trends in decks, and although she doesn't name any decks, her preferences would certainly point to illustrated decks (the Motherpeace in particular). But her interpretation system seems to preclude any illustrations, because she's so strict with the suit-plus-number stuff. Her second tarot book is the same way.

Fairfield has an on-line newsletter in which she solicits questions, so I wrote and asked her if she actually uses illustrated decks, and if so, how does she reconcile the pictures on the cards with the meanings laid out in her books. She published my question in the newsletter, and her response was that when she uses illustrated decks, then she relies more on the picture than on a straight numerological approach. I appreciated her response but I can't help feeling that she could have avoided a great deal of puzzlement among her readers if she had said this in her books, instead of pretending that she reads all decks solely numerologically.

-- Lee

Lee said:

I don't agree with the analogy of Tarot decks with languages. A method of interpreting a deck does not have the same relation to the deck itself as a language's grammar has to the language. To say that it does is to make an unsupported assumption, which is that one's own method of interpretation has been specifically designed for that deck by the deck's creator, and that it is inextricably linked to that deck the same way a language's grammar is linked to the language, and that it is the single correct linkage, and that any other method of interpretation is false.

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Lee, but don't all deck creators have a specific interpretation in mind when they create a deck? (At least all the modern deck creators seem to have - that's why they write books and LWB's to explain their deck.) If a deck creator has decided that the Six of Cups means that someone will be travelling (physically or mentally) somewhere, going on a journey, and have designed a picture especially to depict this, but the reader has learnt that the Six of Cups means nostalgia, can the reader just say "to hell with the journey, this means nostalgia to me, whatever the deck creator says". (This is a hypothetical example, of course).

To me it is obvious that Tarot is a language with a code that must be respected. You need to define your code, otherwise you will not express yourself properly. Of course, one can mix up languages if one wants to, but it doesn't make for great communication. Because if I conjugate a word in German, but I'm using the Latin word, I can change the meaning completely and that can lead to great misunderstandings.

I suppose if one pushes my logic right to the end, this would mean that one would actually need a code for each and every deck (and its clones).

There is no way I can read a Marseilles deck with RW meanings, and vice-versa. It doesn't make sense. For instance, when I go to the Fun and Games Forum, I sometimes have to go and consult Joan Bunning's book to figure out what people are talking about when they have chosen a card because I know they're using a specific code that I don't know very well.

Now I still don't understand why one would want to transpose the Rider Waite meanings onto a Marseilles deck, considering that the approaches are obviously so different. The Rider Waite deck has "negative" cards - that bleeding Three of Swords, or that Sneaky thief stealing the swords (Five or Seven of Swords, can't remember now.) It also has "positive" cards - that Six of Wands (the one with the guy with a laurel leaf on his head on a horse). The Marseilles minors obviously don't have negative or positive connotations per se.... so by transposing RW meanings, for example, onto them, you are taking away the particular magic and uniqueness of the Marseilles deck. You're kind of dressing it up in RW clothes and hiding what it really is. And again, vice versa if you dress up the RW in Marseilles clothes.

I wouldn't transpose my Marseilles code onto the RW deck. If I had to use a RW deck because I didn't have another one available, well I'd just go along with what the deck asks me to do - i.e. read the cards as they were designed to be read.

I don't express myself as well as you do, but I hope I have got my message across all the same. I could go on for a few more paragraphs on numerology, but I'll stop now otherwise I'll tie myself in knots. Maybe I'll post on the numerology side tomorrow.

RWS retrofit keywords

Lee, thanks for sharing the story about your response from Gail Fairfield. That's hilarious that she confesses that she wouldn't use her system with the RWS which is the deck family that inspired such system, while not mentioning this in her book. Whenever RWS-based tarot authors give One to Ten keywords for the RWS (or RWS-type) cards, they generally couch things by saying that the keywords are _general guidelines only_ and that not all the pip cards in the deck can be explained by those keywords. Such lists of keywords can still be useful for RWS study and can still in principle, just like any other general list of One to Ten keywords, be used with the TdM.

I don't think that any One to Ten keyword system can in each case describe all the pip cards of the RWS of a given suit. The Golden Dawn meanings (and thus generally the RWS images) simply can't be explained by number and suit alone. The astrological assignments sometimes skew the meanings. For instance, the 3 of Swords has the GD astrological attribution of Saturn in Libra. Wang, in the _Qabalistic Tarot_ ends up explaining the divinatory meaning Sorrow by the astrology:

"Saturn is a very powerful planet, sometimes called the "Great Destroyer" and sometimes called the "Great Initiator". Its presence usually means pain and hardship but shis should not be taken as evil. It is through suffering, and through encounter with the Dark Sterile Mother that we learn life's most important lessons. Saturn throws the scales of Libra off balance in order that they may be rebalanced in a better way."

Query, in the case of the 3 of Swords, the extent to which the Etteilla upright meaning for the card may have had a role in the GD's meaning Sorrow. The Etteilla upright card name is Isolation and the Eteilla synonyms for the upright 3 of Swords include "separation, division, rupture, cutting off".

Diana, I think you express yourself very well.

I respect what you're saying and I sympathize with much of it. From your post, I think you agree (please correct me if I'm wrong) that while modern decks have been specifically designed to convey divinatory meanings, classical decks have not (at least, not the pip cards). So, it seems to me that any DMs that we assign to the pip cards will be in some sense foreign to them. The only way we could work with the cards so as to truly respect Nicholas Conver (if that's who we decide to consider as the creator of the first Marseilles) is by playing games with them.

I could understand your position better if you used only the pictorial details on the pips to interpret them. But you also use the corresponding Major cards to interpret the pips, and by doing so you're introducing an element which is foreign to the pip cards themselves. Since they weren't designed to convey DMs, then any assignment of DMs to them will introduce something foreign. However, I do think that if someone used only the pictorial details, it would be a valid argument for that person to say that using RWS/GD meanings wouldn't make sense. My argument is that using RWS/GD meanings doesn't make any more or less sense than using numerological associations derived from the Majors.

Personally, I believe that a hypothetical Rennaissance person who was hypothetically going to sit down with a set of Marseilles pips and give them divinatory meanings would be just as likely to use number meanings derived from astrology, say, or the Bible, which Rusty Neon has suggested as a possibility, as to derive them from the Majors.

I think it's also worth mentioning that while there are huge amounts of evidence that several systems of esoteric number symbolism were in effect at the time of the Conver Marseilles' creation (for example, Kaballah and astrology), there's no evidence that the Majors were considered esoterically. Or even if we assume they were considered esoterically, we have no evidence that the numbers of the Majors were considered an important element of their significance, in contrast to the voluminous evidence of other systems of numerology at the time.

So, one might say that if one is going to assign meanings to the pips, it might be preferable to use systems which we know were current at the time rather than using a system based on our own interpretations of the Majors, which we can only speculate about whether such a system would have been used at that time.

As to the question of why one would want to do all this, the answer is I want to be able to read with both RWS-type decks and classic decks, and I don't want to have to work with two totally different sets of meanings. I feel that if I did that, I might as well be working with two different oracle decks and not tarot. But that's just how I feel; I respect and sympathize with those who feel differently, and it's not my intent to argue that my approach is right and anyone else's is wrong. And who knows, I may change my mind tomorrow!

-- Lee

Edited to reduce tiresome redundancy (a bad literary habit of mine).

Re: RWS retrofit keywords

Rusty Neon said:

Query, in the case of the 3 of Swords, the extent to which the Etteilla upright meaning for the card may have had a role in the GD's meaning Sorrow. The Etteilla upright card name is Isolation and the Eteilla synonyms for the upright 3 of Swords include "separation, division, rupture, cutting off".

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I think the question of how exactly the GD DM's were arrived at is a very interesting one. The structure of the astrological associations is very precise, and it does seem awfully coincidental or awfully skillful that Saturn comes out on the 3 of Swords, which had already been established by Etteilla as a negative card. We do know, thanks to James Revak's site, that MacGregor Mathers was influenced by Etteilla's DMs.

It seems to me likely that when the GD DMs were created, they took into account Qabalistic, astrological and Etteilla meanings. Then when Waite developed his deck, he chose images which conveyed some of the GD meanings, and also himself referred back to Etteilla and added in those cartomantic elements. (This is clear from Revak's site.) In a way I suppose one could say that the RWS itself is an ungainly hybrid.

By the way, if I were going to use astrology for DMs, I would much prefer Wang's to the GD's, because Wang's system is much easier to remember, whereas one would be hard-pressed to memorize all of the GD astrological assignments (unless one were using the Thoth or similar deck where they're written on the cards).

-- Lee

From my observations and confirmed by Revak's site, Etteilla meanings don't always correspond to the RWS or GD meanings, but it may well in the case of the 3 of Swords. I think that the astrological attributions by Mathers came out the way they did, and then he worked out the DMs from there, sometimes taking Eteilla or other traditional meanings (and then stretching the astrological explanation to make it fit, e.g. like Wang did for the 3 of Swords), and other times creating his own DMs.

This thread is blowing me away!

So much information, and this is just what I've been looking for.

Thank you!

Nevada

I just looked in my copy of "History of the Occult Tarot" by Decker and Dummett, and I find I was mistaken about Mathers's use of Etteilla meanings. According to this book, he did indeed rely heavily on Etteilla meanings, but only for the Tarot book he wrote in 1888, pre-Golden Dawn. When he later created the Golden Dawn tarot system, according to Decker/Dummett he only used the cabalistic and astrological elements, and they don't mention any Etteilla influence. Is it possible that the GD system doesn't rely at all on Etteilla, and that Etteilla only came back into the mix when Waite created his own deck? When I had seen Mathers's name on Revak's site I had assumed it was the GD system being referred to, but now I think it was Mathers's previous book instead.

-- Lee