GD Temple Tarot

Richard

According to this review of the Golden Dawn Temple Tarot, "It is worth noting that the creators chose to depict the Kings in chariots as outlined in Book “T”, and assign them the divinatory meanings, decans and titles that match the Knights."

Book T is very clear in differentiating the Knights, who ride horses, from the Kings, who ride in chariots, and, as far as I can tell, there are no errors regarding attributions or divinatory meanings of the court cards. Is the reviewer confused? It seems rather unlikely that Nick Farrell would have missed any such errors that may have been committed by the artists.

Since it is an expensive deck, I certainly would not consider buying it if the attributions of the Kings and Knights were mixed up.
 

Zephyros

It's a strange sentence in itself. Does that mean that there are two Knights in each suit? Like you, I highly doubt Farrell would do something like that, especially seeing as I can't think of a reason why this would be done.

Oh, wait, I found a clue. Here you can see a large selection of the cards, and going a few pages into the slideshow you can see a few Courts. I think what the reviewer meant was that Knights are called Kings, but that the deck also has Princes. In a way this makes sense, and would cause far less confusion, although one could quibble about whether "King" is really the right name for him. Personally I see it as a concession to the RWS crowd. :)

When all's said and done, though, I find this deck only marginally more artistically proficient than the Wang. It isn't for me.
 

Richard

That's really weird. Apparently the Princes are horsemen, and the Kings are charioteers. I guess there are no cards called "Knights." Why in the world would they do such a thing? There is no cogent reason to propagate the common misconception about the Rider-Waite Kings. In Book T there are, for example, the King of Cups and the Knight of Cups, but there is no Prince of Cups. The proper GD title is Prince of the Chariot of the Waters (or something like that).

There are a lot of ramifications of this. It sort of screws up the natural association of the Kings with (primarily) the fixed signs, the Tetragrammaton Vau, and Sephirah 6 (Messiah/Christ = HGA).
 

Zephyros

That's really weird. Apparently the Princes are horsemen, and the Kings are charioteers. I guess there are no cards called "Knights." Why in the world would they do such a thing? There is no cogent reason to propagate the common misconception about the Rider-Waite Kings. In Book T there are, for example, the King of Cups and the Knight of Cups, but there is no Prince of Cups. The proper GD title is Prince of the Chariot of the Waters (or something like that).

There are a lot of ramifications of this. It sort of screws up the natural association of the Kings with (primarily) the fixed signs, the Tetragrammaton Vau, and Sephirah 6 (Messiah/Christ = HGA).

I hadn't noticed that this morning. Maybe there really is some explanation we don't know about, specific to Farrell's order. I can't come up with any configuration in which Fathers on chariots would work, though, unless the Princes actually are the fathers, while the old, bearded Kings are at Tiphareth. But something like that would give me nightmares and cold sweats.
 

Poor Wandering One

This link explains why Farrell put the Kings in chariots and the Princes on horses:

http://www.jwmt.org/v2n17/farrell.html

Here is his quote from Farrell's essay:

"Let us look at the problem of the horse and the chariot. To get the answer to this we have to look at the symbols involved. The use of the horse made the chariot in warfare obsolete. Chariots were too slow, difficult to turn, and had limited fighting power. However its use as a ceremonial ride of emperors continued until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1450AD. The Chariot is a symbol of the state with the King holding the reigns. It is a symbol which is repeated in the Tarot key the Chariot. So therefore the Kings have to be in Chariots and the Princes, as servants of the King, have to be on horses."

This isn't all he has to say about it, so it's worth exploring more of his essay.
 

Zephyros

I just read the essay and while I can kind of see where he's coming from, and why, I still disagree. That the Prince gets his power straight from Keter is obvious, but that this puts him in an equal place in the hierarchy not only makes no sense, it seems to mess up the mechanics of the whole thing.

While it is good and proper to have a monarch on a chariot, when we see the Knight on horseback he isn't a King yet, as he has yet to win his bride. The Prince on the Chariot isn't a Knight yet either, he hasn't proved himself yet. Plus, we never actually see the King as a king because, well... he dies, after a fashion. The Knights are powerful and quick, but have little staying power as evinced by their decans (and the fact that they're basically walking penises). The horse itself is an overwhelmingly sexual symbol, that fits the force and bluster of the Father, I just don't see it as the Son. Plus the Father on a chariot... where did he get it? Usually the Prince picks it up at Binah, which is where Atu VII gets it from. That connection between the Chariot and the Princes is very important, I'm surprised Farrell would do away with it.

Several times Farrell tells that things are too complicated, but I don't know if he's using typical occult jargon or really means it, since the whole "fairy tale" actually makes perfect sense and it works. So this leads me to wonder what I'm missing, if he says something is obscure and difficult when it isn't really.
 

Richard

Thanks for the very informative link, PWO! However, I sort of hate to see that Farrell diverges from the opinions of Mathers, Crowley, and Case.
 

Poor Wandering One

The impression I get is that Farrell says it's too complicated because he sees the more common attribution of putting the Knight on a horse at the head of the Court Cards and the Prince in the chariot as a rationalization for contradictions in Book T, rather than the simpler explanation that the ideas were revised over time but not completely corrected in Book T.

Does the horse/chariot switch really change things that much? I don't think the fairy tale breaks down with Farrell's reasoning. The basic story of the Prince awakening his sleeping Princess to marry her and become King still works, doesn't it? I'm a new student to all of this, so I may be missing something that I just don't see.

I'm familiar with the Wang deck and the Cicero deck, so I understand this change can be seen as jarring. However, it looks like a great deal of research was put into the decision, so it wasn't just an arbitrary change merely to make RWS users comfortable.
 

Zephyros

Thanks for the very informative link, PWO! However, I sort of hate to see that Farrell diverges from the opinions of Mathers, Crowley, and Case.

I actually like that there is something to talk about. So many decks these days are done with no plan or structure or thought. Although I disagree with Farrell, on this and other issues, at least his changes were done with some thought behind them. That, at least, is clear.

We wouldn't be having the same discussion about a Doreen Virtue deck.