Interpreting Minors in Marseilles Decks

Myrrha

Rusty Neon said:
Lately, I have been trying to use correspondence to the Majors as the pip card numerology. As it turns out, this type of Major Arcana numerology seems coincidentally (or is it just coincidence?) to match (at least to some degree) the Pythagorean 1 to 10 numerology.

Ha! :) That is very interesting. I would like to think that this is not coincidence. I am not very familiar with Pythagorean numerology, but have come accross passing references to it, and the book for the Nigel Jackson tarot talks about it a bit. Well, this will be the next thing to look into! Thank you for bumping that other thread also, I spend so much time read this forum but still miss good threads.


Myrrha
 

jmd

It's wonderful to revisit this thread with the occasion of new posts.

When I mention that I know of no book which goes into the possible meanings of the details of the flowers and leaves, I included Marteau's book in this exclusion (a book very much worth having, by the way).

Just to add to that, on the other hand, let me add a few comments from Marteau's book on, for the sake of one example, the seven of Cups.

It is worth mentioning that Marteau tends to divide the cards into sections, so that the lower belongs to the physical world, etc.. He also looks at how the overall plant or animal pattern relates to the suit emblems and their relative positions.

So here is my translation of the first two paragraphs (p151):
  • The seven of Cups is characterised by the central cup, surrounded [enveloped] by a leafed 'ramification' [French word is here left - in the context, though it makes sense, I cannot find an adequate translation for the word], having its roots in the lower medial Cup and terminating with two leaves which envelop the upper medial Cup.

    It thus symbolises moral awareness [Fr. 'une prise de conscience' has ambiguous connotations] of the universal influx beginning in the inferior world, then developing in the realm of the animal level, in order to fix it in sight. In other words, it is a view of a Being which, stretching itself from Above towards the nadir, permits itself to be aware of the complexity of both individual and universal conscience [the word has both the sense of the English as well as implying its etymological sense of 'with knowledge', ie, awareness], and comparing them.
For those who can read through my botched translation (it's quite a skill which I am admiring in others all the more with the passage of time), what seems (at least partially) evident is the usage of the shape of the overall pattern to bring together or separate in peculiar ways various other aspects of the cards. Much earlier in the book, he had also (from memory, but I did not find it from glancing at the book as I write this) given particuliar sense-meanings to the various colours. Combined, these again add to the overall card meaning - which he does for this and other cards (on the following page for this card).

I suppose that in a sense, he does therefore give meaning to the leaves and stems - but not in a way in which I (maybe mis-)took the question to be posed.

A wonderful thread indeed.
 

Rusty Neon

Paul Marteau's book

Originally posted by jmd, speaking of Paul Marteau and Marteau's book


I suppose that in a sense, he does therefore give meaning to the leaves and stems - but not in a way in which I (maybe mis-)took the question to be posed.

LEAVES AND OTHER BOTANICAL DETAILS

For Marteau, leaves generally represent potential of forces, expansions of energy, or reservoirs of energy.

6 Batons p. 176
10 Batons p. 184
2 Coins pl. 192
7 Coins p. 204
8 Coins p. 206


A flower can symbolize fertility ('fecondité harmonique') or richness ('richesse animique').

6 Batons p. 177 (richness proportional to number of petals)
Ace of Coins p. 189
8 Coins p. 206


COLOURS

Marteau's interpretations of the cards include colour interpretations.

Below is something I posted a few months ago on another TdM thread:

These are some colour keyword correspondences that Mr. Marteau uses in his book:

This is a bit rough and ready and is incomplete. It doesn't capture everything. I've extrapolated from his card descriptions. He doesn't explicitly give a list of correspondences. Hopefully this gives you a flavour. Of course, Marteau views are the be all, end all of colour interpretation; however, they are of some interest since he did choose the colour schemes in the deck.

BLUE: the spiritual

RED: matter; the material

YELLOW: divine and human intelligence

FLESH: the vital; the animal; physical

BLACK: imperfections, obstacles; concentration of forces; inertia of matter

WHITE: luminosity; light; 'active richness'; flourishing; harmony; impersonalness

GREEN: vital energies
 

Baneemy

Re: Re: Site lessons in reading TDM

Myrrha said:
...but *why* would five be the number of struggles? Knowledge and understanding I can understand because of the Pope. Because the golden section is derived from the pentagram five was an important number to Pythagoreans, but the golden section is about harmony and the underlying structure of things so why struggle?....

This interpretation of the 5 comes from the fact that it is 4 + 1. The 4 is strongly associated with stability and stasis, and with the 5 something new enters the picture and disrupts that stability. A crisis of some kind.

If you're interested in learning to read pips by the numbers, I highly recommend John Opsopaus's pythagorean tarot site, which explains in great detail what the various numbers mean and why.

http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/OM/BA/PT/PT.html#minor

-Baneemy
 

Rusty Neon

The number Five

Baneemy said:
This interpretation of the 5 comes from the fact that it is 4 + 1. The 4 is strongly associated with stability and stasis, and with the 5 something new enters the picture and disrupts that stability. A crisis of some kind.

The above interpretation for the number Five would certainly make sense from a Pythagorean standpoint. Not to take anything away from that, it's still interesting to add, though, that Neo-Pythagorean Iamblichus notes a different Pyth interpretation for the Five:

"They called the pentad 'lack of strife', not only because aether, the fifth element, which is set apart on its own, remains unchanging, while there is strife and change among the things under it, from the moon to the Earth, but also because the primary two different and dissimilar kinds of number, even and odd, are as it were reconciled and knitted together by the pentad, which is the composite whole consisting of their conjunction, just as aether also remains reconciled to itself in shape and being and so on, and is found to provide such a property for everything else which displays all the different kinds of opposition the two sources involve."

- _Theology of Arithmetic_, p. 68 (Robin Waterfield's translation of pseudo Iamblichus).
 

Myrrha

Re: Re: Re: Site lessons in reading TDM

Baneemy said:
This interpretation of the 5 comes from the fact that it is 4 + 1. The 4 is strongly associated with stability and stasis, and with the 5 something new enters the picture and disrupts that stability. A crisis of some kind.

If you're interested in learning to read pips by the numbers, I highly recommend John Opsopaus's pythagorean tarot site, which explains in great detail what the various numbers mean and why.

http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/OM/BA/PT/PT.html#minor

-Baneemy

Great! Thank you for the link. I like the quote from pseudo Iamblichus as well, particularly the part about knitting together odd and even numbers, but this interpretation of five seems closer to the meanings I have seen in tarot systems.

Myrrha
 

Cerulean

An odd commentary on restored Marseilles

I was looking for Camoin and Convers links and this commentary on the colors used for reproductions of TdM printing by Alexandro Jordorowsky came up. It is a little hard to read, but as he decided the Camoin restored was the best version for himself, he gave up on Marteau meanings. It's only his opinion, but I thought it might be pertinent:

http://www.hotweird.com/jodorowsky/tarot.html
 

Rusty Neon

Re: An odd commentary on restored Marseilles

Mari_Hoshizaki said:
I was looking for Camoin and Convers links and this commentary on the colors used for reproductions of TdM printing by Alexandro Jordorowsky came up. It is a little hard to read, but as he decided the Camoin restored was the best version for himself, he gave up on Marteau meanings. It's only his opinion, but I thought it might be pertinent:

http://www.hotweird.com/jodorowsky/tarot.html

Actually, the article is suggesting that Jodo gave up on Marteau colours in favour of Conver traditional colours. Since a given feature or image in a card could be of a different colour with Marteau colours than with Conver traditional colours, this difference could result in different significances using colour symbolism.
 

Macavity

Perhaps we should revive the thread(s) about interpreting the Marseille minors? Only next time start with trying to differentiate the meanings of e.g. the seven and nine of wands/swords ;) Seriously though, I might be able to think up some plausible "meanings" of the images for the low value minors, but imo, it becomes much more difficult for the higher values (numerological methods aside) - And, I don't think we ever get as far as those? })

Macavity
 

Rusty Neon

I've been finding that, at least for me, the most meaningful way of analysing the TdM pips is to compare and distinguish the random details of, and to analyse, the ten pips of the same suit running from Ace up to Ten, rather than to analyse the same numbered cards (e.g., Eight) of each of the four suits.

** Edited for clarity