Triangular Tarot Sequence

Melanchollic

kwaw said:
...but you haven't put 21 trumps in a triangle, you have put 20 trumps and the excuse, and discarded one of the trumps.

...you have fudged it, by excluding XXI and claiming that 6-9-6 is the same somehow as 6-9-7, and ignoring the distinction between the fool as excuse and the 21 trumps.


I'm not sure the function of 'the excuse' in game play necessarily extends to the role he plays in an allegorical context. He certainly seems to belong with the other five "ranks of man" cards, as he is just as subject to Love, Time, Fate, and Death as the others.

On a different level of interpretation, his inclusion gives us another insight; he can play the foil to the Pope - Folly vs. Wisdom. (See attachment.)


ClashoftheTitans.jpg
 

kwaw

Melanchollic said:

Well I agree with you at least the the popesse and empress seem much likely to be allegories of church and state than as figures in a ranks of man; at least that would seem more conventional to me.

I am not sure of pope as wisdom - in this world through which our pilgrim must pass on his way to becoming a citizen of the city of God, attachment to the transitory such as position and rank is also a vanity and folly.

Our Ephesian Juggler I tend to see as 'old adam' (unregenerate Man) himself: and as for orbs and crowns and mitres, they are but the vanities of Old Adam in new apparel in the town of deceit, the tools of a cup and ball game for our Ephesian juggler playing the crowd of vanities fair:

fools-cheats-murders.jpg


As he passes through this town of deceit on his way to the celestial city, he must beware of being seduced by these vanities: choosing the love of the eternal over the love of the mutable, the little Man, this bagatelle, old Adam, becomes the new Man, the purvus mundum, microcosmic Man, worthy prince, groom and citizen of the bride and celestial city, the macrocosm, the world; whose sacred marriage is symbolised the winged angel that intermediates between them, in reference to Christs first miracle at the marriage of Cana.

As lover of Worldy Vanities, old Adam (unregenerate Man) remains a citizen of the city of Rome; as a lover in the communion of Christ, he becomes a new Man and citizen of the New Jerusalem that will ultimately triumph.
 

kwaw

kwaw said:
Our Ephesian Juggler I tend to see as 'old adam' (unregenerate Man) himself:

Ephesian, Ephesus
Boon companion and roisterer but used less generously by Shakespeare, whom the apostle Paul warned to beware the ‘sleight [1596, jugglery] of men’, not to fall back into ‘lasciviousness’ and ‘lusts’ but to ‘put on the new man’ (Eph 4).
Ephesus, setting for this bawdy play (comedy of errors), much resembles Epidamnus, scene fo Plautus’s The Twin Menaechmi, one of the sources of the sources of CE: there live the worst devotees of sensual pleasure and drunkards; flatterers, tricksters; harlots. All who come get damned or damaged (damno devortitur). In Ephesus too there ‘jugglers...Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind, / soul killing witches that deform the body ... prating mountebanks / And many such like libertines of sin...
Jugglers are fornicators; (dar) whorehouse working sorcerers...witches are bawds and hermaphrodites that deform, usually castrate, the body...
... Unaware he is being mistaken for his dissolute twin, Antipholus describes Ephesus as a place of wanton sexualty... to conclude’Lapland sorcerers inhabit here’...Dropio then asks, ‘What, have you got the picture of Old Adam new apparelled?’ Has he become the Old Adam (unregenerate human nature – OED) new apparelled? Has he, as the apostle Paul said ‘put on the new Man’?
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...waTIBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3

Ephesians 4:14 That we be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

In Greek:
Ephesians 4:14 ινα μηκετι ωμεν νηπιοι κλυδωνιζομενοι και περιφερομενοι παντι ανεμω της διδασκαλιας εν τη κυβεια των ανθρωπων εν πανουργια προς την μεθοδειαν της πλανης

The Greek word translated as ‘sleight’ in KJ is κυβεια ~ kubeia from kubos, a cube, ie a die for playing; gambling, used figuratively for artifice, fraud, to sleight (juggle). The 21 points of a die, steps of a ladder, to heaven or to hell.

Thus 'Old Adam' ~ 'Ephesian Juggler'; thus our juggler represents not the lowest estate of man in a ranks of man, but an everyman, all man as damned man, fallen man; our pilgrim must beware the jugglery of men, shake of the old Adam and 'put on the new man' (charioteer), shake of the man of vice (juggler) and become a man of Virtue and a worthy citizen of the city of God.

Ephesians 4:15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, Christ:
Ephesians 4:16 From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

Understanding the nature of the two loves (VI), the wise man becomes the New Man, the triumphal prince,(VII) worthy citizen and groom of the celestial city, the bride (XXI) - thus through the tarot is woven the theme of the hierogamos, the sacred marriage, a tale of two loves, cupiditas and caritas; of two venuses, or two cities.

It is a tale of fall (XV) and restoration (XXI), of the beginning of judgment - exile and death (XVI) and final judgement - resurrection into eternal life through God's caritas (xx). It is salvation through love, a procession from Old Adam to New Adam - from a worthless man (bagatelle) to a worthy citizen (parvus mundum).
 

RLG

kwaw said:
A quite significant number I would think, especially in respect of this being the kabbalah forum.



I agree, but you haven't put 21 trumps in a triangle, you have put 20 trumps and the excuse, and discarded one of the trumps.



But you have fudged it, by excluding XXI and claiming that 6-9-6 is the same somehow as 6-9-7, and ignoring the distinction between the fool as excuse and the 21 trumps.


The number 231 is significant in qabalah, precisely because it involves 22 letters, but I'm not claiming anything about Hebrew with this exercise, only geometry.

If you want to be technical and call the Fool the 'excuse' and not a Trump, then yes, *technically* I am putting 20 trumps and the excuse in the triangle. Which means nothing to my point, which is that the ranks of man are all on the lowest level. Excuse me for dragging the Fool into the set of Trumps, but I was under the impression that this was a common way to refer to the Fool. Hopefully a digression on the semantics will not obscure the obvious simplicity of putting this excuse for a fool at the very beginning of the series.

At no point did I claim that 6-9-6-1 is the same as 6-9-7. I said specifically how they are different, and gave two very good mathematical and geometric reasons why this would make sense to someone from a maths perspective. This triangle is so close in content to that theory that it seems pretty obvious that the similarities far outweigh the differences.

I assure you that I can count up to 22, and I am well aware that there are only 21 cards in this triangle. A triangle as you suggested, with the Fool left out, simply doesn't have the same symmetry as one with the World left out.
 

kwaw

RLG said:
If you want to be technical and call the Fool the 'excuse' and not a Trump, then yes, *technically* I am putting 20 trumps and the excuse in the triangle. Which means nothing to my point, which is that the ranks of man are all on the lowest level.

Well I am not convinced that the popesse and empress do fall into the category of a ranks of man, and putting the six lowest cards on the base of triangle does not 'prove' in any manner that they are, however 'elegant' it may appear.
 

RLG

kwaw said:
Well I am not convinced that the popesse and empress do fall into the category of a ranks of man, and putting the six lowest cards on the base of triangle does not 'prove' in any manner that they are, however 'elegant' it may appear.

So you don't think the nobility and the clergy were two of the ranks of man?

And BTW, I never said the triangle 'proved' anything. Those are your words. What I said was that the arrangement seems to be good evidence for the 6-9-7 theory.
 

kwaw

RLG said:
So you don't think the nobility and the clergy were two of the ranks of man?

Of course they were, but it would be very uncoventional to portray the ranks of man in this way; I think Mel has more the right of it seeing them (popesse and empress) as allegories of Church and State. Church of course is a congregation of the faithfull in which all are equal before God - ranks of man and other vanities of the world aside.

BTW: a 6-9-6-1 pattern is not good evidence of a 6-9-7 pattern; it a fudge that only appears elegant in light of apparently 'verifiying' one's own preconceptions.


However, I do find the principle of triangulation significant, as I wrote above:

kwaw said:
Ephesians 4:14 That we be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

In Greek:
Ephesians 4:14 ινα μηκετι ωμεν νηπιοι κλυδωνιζομενοι και περιφερομενοι παντι ανεμω της διδασκαλιας εν τη κυβεια των ανθρωπων εν πανουργια προς την μεθοδειαν της πλανης

The Greek word translated as ‘sleight’ in KJ is κυβεια ~ kubeia from kubos, a cube, ie a die for playing; gambling, used figuratively for artifice, fraud, to sleight (juggle). The 21 points of a die, steps of a ladder, to heaven or to hell.
 

RLG

well, I just see the first six cards as portraying people who represent specific parts of society. and these people are all subject to the allegories of life that follow after them.
technically the hermit is also a person, as is the hanged man, so we might exclude them from the group of allegories of life, etc.

Meanwhile, melancholic has an interesting approach that certainly has merit. I see no reason why it can't coexist with the notion that the first six cards are also the estates of man. and if you like that approach, I'm surprised you haven't pointed out that technically the Fool is an excuse, not a trump, and probably hasn't the right to be paired with the Pope, or any other card, for that matter. Or perhaps he can pair with any card he likes? And in his wandering, can join the ranks of the trumps if he so pleases?
 

RLG

kwaw said:
BTW: a 6-9-6-1 pattern is not good evidence of a 6-9-7 pattern; it a fudge that only appears elegant in light of apparently 'verifiying' one's own preconceptions.

There is no fudging about it. You are the only one insisting that they be identical. I've said from the beginning that they are different. Obviously you can't put 22 cards in a triangle.
of course, you ignore all the other symmetries, but I suppose none of them would support your argument against this triangle.

So anyway, I'll say for the third or fourth time, a 6-9-6-1 scheme is not identical to a 6-9-7 scheme. But the similarities are so close as to warrant some study.
Obviously, this triangle does not *exactly* fit Dummett's theory. but it comes very close, and offers a supplement to that theory, in this specific geometric context.

BTW, the theory is someone else's not mine. I don't have an axe to grind or a theory to prove. I merely put 21 cards in a triangle and noted how close this is to someone else's theory. If you put the fool aside and put the 21 trumps in a triangle, it's not close to anyone's theory, and has very little to make it noteworthy at all.
 

kwaw

RLG said:
Meanwhile, melancholic has an interesting approach that certainly has merit. I see no reason why it can't coexist with the notion that the first six cards are also the estates of man. and if you like that approach, I'm surprised you haven't pointed out that technically the Fool is an excuse, not a trump, and probably hasn't the right to be paired with the Pope, or any other card, for that matter. Or perhaps he can pair with any card he likes? And in his wandering, can join the ranks of the trumps if he so pleases?

I did not say I agree with Mel's conclusions (though I like his approach), only that I agree with his treatment of the Popesse and Empress as allegories of Church and State: I specifically stated I did not particularly agree with his pairing of the fool with pope as folly v. wisdom (though as a pair I see how they can be read that way, I just don't think it was a structuring principle). And also as I have stated above, the principle of triangulation may be significant, especially in relationship the juggler/dice connection.