(Take a deep breath)
thinbuddha said:
I think using numerology as a system for interpreting pips is superior to using the Major Arcana I to X for one big reason: what makes those 10 arcana so important that they need to be represented 5 times in a single deck?
Bear with me. Clubs/staves are the only burnable suit symbol. The other three are metal and
withstand fire, which they need do in order to get
past it, swords so that they can split the air, both literally and by din of battle, cups so they can hold water, and coins in order to be wealth’s earthly expression, symbolizing the tangible and the sensual.
But, based on the fact that the Marseilles trumps precisely express the
alphabetical facts consistent with Kabbalah and Merkavah (though via the letter-numbering used by insular Keltic bards who used numbers as poetic
symbols, this tradition no doubt reaching the Continent alongside Arthur and Tristan and company), ultimately the pips of the Marseilles signify the Kabbalists’
Sefirot manifesting throughout the four worlds that are the elements’ ultimate expression for man—albeit seen from a non-Jewish bardic or Gnostic point of view.
[Other evidence is the Marseilles having one female to three male court cards in each suit, since this expresses the Name (yod-heh-vav-heh) more perfectly than two of each, by matching the original (bardic or calendrical) placement of vav
forward (towards or at the breast pictured in Phoenician vav) and yod and heh
behind (towards ‘backbone’ or having ‘a leg to stand on’) relative to the vertical axis, the diameter of the round that is the zodiac of the torso as well as year (where spring springs up, fall falls down, summer blossoms out, and so on) . . . but that’s another story.
]
The Sefirot are the ten steps on the round that are the departure from, approach to, and presence at four cardinal directions
up and
forward or out and
down and
back or in, this last the Shekhinah itself, the presence or Immanence of the Totality in the individual: how far one has progressed about the great round of the Universe (i.e. to the point of being an individual conscious self). In the
first world, the archetypal, they are simply these ten directions out from the crown of standing primordial (transcending-sex) Adam. In the
second world, they are these ten directions on a 2nd wheel, centered atop Adam seated in meditation—the ‘Throne world’—determining five pairs of opposites: first-last, good-bad, up-down, east-west, south-north, in that order. In the
third world, the wheel centered on the heart when seated (the zodiac proper or torso), they twist into the arcs leading on from these ten stations as the doer-Creator becomes caught up in the maelstrom of time and decay, and by the primordial logic of the tetrads (groups of four signs), wherein the balanced one is cardinal and the ones leaning forward and back male and female respectively, and identifying supernals
1-3 by where they emanate and the rest by where they end up, the ten become: a neutral or central
1 branching into male-female
2-3, which come together as
4-5 to produce
agreed-upon offspring
6, which can degenerate (has degenerated) into
7-8 ‘joining’ to produce two distinct
versions of offspring,
9 (what was held in the womb 9 moons) and
10 (what is held in the 10 fingers). These ten, then, form, in the
fourth world—which is both the round of the womb and the present instant throughout matter (the womb of time)—the ten stages of descent from eternity to ‘today’: 1-eternity, 2-‘precession’ (actually, forward rotation of stellar heavens about zodiac of seasons), 3-Saturn, 4-Jupiter, 5-Mars, 6-year, 7-Venus, 8-Mercury, 9-month, and 10-day—‘today’. (Planets beyond Saturn are ‘mere’ counterweights, revolving retrograde
relative to the solar system’s central frame.) One can see the poetic connexion quite clearly, in that the martial ideal, for instance, is a mother defending her young, while Venus and Mercury represent what male and female, respectively, lust after in this fourth ‘layer of the tetractys’, where the goal of intercourse is
not agreed upon.
The natural order of elements is (as verified by the four particle-types being, in order of increasing minimum rest mass, photon-lepton-meson-baryon): 1-fire, 2-air, 3-water, and 4-earth. These pervade all number, by stamping (in digital summation, man being a ‘fingered’ being)
plus-one through
plus-four followed by
minus-four through
minus-zero as an endlessly repeated pattern therein. When squared, they mark the limits of the layers of the elements as manifested in physical reality, where things vie for balance—the four elements as they manifest in earth, which, being fourth, indicates by
its presence the presence of all four (since it is nothing without what determines it).
Fire’s layer, then, is 1, the stars. The sun itself is 2-‘precession’, air’s passive receptor of (or lens focusing) electrical power from the stellar power grid (for which they require a great expanse) for earth’s local use. Then 3-Saturn is air acting on water (3rd element), while 4-Jupiter is air acting on earth (4th element). Then 5-Mars (numerological minus-4) is water acting on earth, while 6-year (numerological minus-3) is water acting on itself. Then 7-Venus (minus-3 valence) is water being acted on
by itself, 8-Mercury (minus-2 valence) water being acted on by air, and 9-moon (minus-1 valence) water being acted on by fire, which is why silver (luna’s metal) shines almost like gold. Earth’s equator, then, is 10, acted on by the fire or oneness in all three of the other elements so to speak, fire being activity itself and air and water the mixtures of active and passive in which first the one and then the other predominate (earth being the purely passive). For purposes of readings, think of the elements here as fire-knower, air-thinker, water-doer, and earth-body, for this is how they relate to the psyche.
Hope this is of some help. By the way, the trumps relate to the 10 obviously by
including them but also as 10 that are
reflected in 1st- through 10th-from-the-end, through the mirror of 11 (which is 1 looking at itself). And if Lurianic Kabbalah be any guide, the 4th through 10th
reflections have broken into 18-17, 17-16, 16-15, etc., where 10th being 12-11 shows Narcissus ‘diving in’ or losing himself in the mirror (as in the Gnostic myth, whose source I would have to look up).