I'm not sure as to how respond in this thread... there are so many interesting directions.
As a first point of note, let me first bring to mind a thread started by smleite:
Tarot, number four, and some random thoughts on the Kabala. What is fascinating there is also that this base number four highlights many aspects of the Tarot.
I don't recall if I mentioned it there or elsewhere (I didn't check when I got the url for the thread), but, as also something which smleite mentions, the number four seems to unperpin many aspects.
For example, there are 'obviously' four 'colours' or suits (though the Atouts may be considered a fifth).
Each of the suits has 10 pips, ten being a
triangular number of base 4.
There are 16 courts, 16 being a
square number of base 4.
...and there are 22 Atouts, 22 being a
pentagonal number of base 4.
Additionally, if the pips are placed as tetractys (triangle), and the four triangles are joined, they form a tetrahedron (with twenty 'points', each face a tetractys).
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Returning to considerations of the Golden Mean, I will have to dig out some of my older references for the earlier rendition of the Fibonacci sequence which does not make use of '0'. Irrespective, it is implied if not named, as a sequence beginning with '1', but needing two numbers to be added, adds nothing in the first instance - and hence adds zero.
Both kwaw and I are probably using the same key reference when discussing the planetary associations to the double letters: A. Kaplan's
Sefer Yetzirah. As mentioned, the association to
Tau is through the association of Saturday to Saturn, not the direct attributions made.
With regards to the allocation of
Tau to that day of the week, various versions do indeed make that allocation. There is no need to maintain all aspects of earlier allocations, especially if there were apparent contradictions.
If there was indeed a letter-to-card-to-planetary consideration at the time of Tarot's development, then the
possibility of reflecting on the pre-12th century connections of
Tau with Saturday, and of Saturday with Saturn, already existed.
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With regards to whether the Fool is 'part of the equation' - to refer to Filipas's reply - part of what swung me over to Mark's preferred order (out of the
three main ones: Filipas, Levi, and GD), was precisely the positioning of the Fool in such a way that its Kabalistic possible historical connections remained.
What I mean by this is that
if there was a Hebrew letter association which played in the development of the Atouts, then, to cast oneself back to earlier times, though there may be numerous 'hidden' (until an unveiling key is found) aspects, there needs to also have been some quite 'obvious' ones.
The most obvious of these is the beginning numerical sequence and value of 1 with 1, 2 with 2, &c. Of course, after a time this breaks down
if one assumes the value of Kaph
to be 20 (there may have been another system which continued number value according to ordinal value - as there was in late antiquity Alexandria for the Greek alphabet). Even if we assume that the cardinal value as correlated with its ordinal value stops at ten, the sequence makes more sense.
Also, there are twenty-two letters, with the three mothers at those key Fibonacci locations. That, whether or not we wish to argue about Tarot, is unmistakable. If there
is a Tarot-Hebrew letter association, however, then how does one differentiate also the Golden-Meaned position card? a lack of name certainly aids.
By not numbering the last card, a number of other significant attributes
also emerge. For one, there occurs in an obvious way that important number made mention of in the
Sefer Yetzirah: 231. This being, as mentioned earlier, and in addition to the possible combinations of 22 letters taken two at a time, also the sum of the numbered cards (1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 21).
As well as this, and as mentioned elsewhere here and in other places, the different letters used to form the tetragrammaton (YHV) add to twenty-one. But its fulness requires another letter (another 'H'). Similarly, the full sequence of the Atouts requires an additional card to the twenty-one numbered ones. Interestingly, assuming it is allocated to
Tau, there is also a striking similarity (in Hebrew) of form between these two which need to complete the respective terms ('H' & 'T').
Tarot bears, however, also an unmistakable Christian flavour (of what peculiar kind is questionable). How one may relate the World to
Shin appears 'obvious'
if the sequence is accepted (though I also mentioned this elsewhere, I'll re-encapsulate it here): within the tetragrammaton (the four elements/ YHVH / the four living creatures) appears Christ. This, even in reflections and exegesis of those early times, meant inserting a
Shin within the four-lettered name: YHVH became YHShVH - 'Jesus'.
It may be, by the way, that those considerations may even have been made by Christian Jews of the 12th century. As at its beginning, and as also now, there are some who consider Christ to have been the Messiah within a quite otherwise orthodox Judaic framework.
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To my way of thinking, there need not be a statistically significant correlation between the Hebrew alef-beit and the Atouts, but rather a likely and
meaningful one. If I were to design a deck which reflects the Roman alphabet, I would not go about trying to find words which have, as a series, statistical significance - though it may end up having such. Rather, I would choose from amongst possibly existing and significant imagery a sequence which also reflects what I was attempting to illustrate.
This to me is the brilliance of Filipas's work.
It provides a framework which makes sense of not only a pattern which has ordinal value, but also even
explains their order - an order which otherwise may best be altered to have, for example, representatives of the (depicted) cardinal virtues placed together.
As another interesting aside, and continuing from the wonderful post by Namadev, that addition of the total number of depicted pips (ie, if one adds the one cup to the two cups to the three cups, &c, for all four suits), the number 220 has also been used (mathematically incorrectly) in considerations of Hebrew letter permutations... again I refer to A. Kaplan here, though I do not have his books with me at the moment...