Correlating the Courts

Marie-Bernard

LRichard said:
Anyhow, I didn't draw The Drowned Phonecian Sailor :D...

Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, The Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

- T. S. Eliot​
Click to expand...

Hey, who's doing this reading, bub, you or me? And when I misquote an author, it's an improvement on their work. Shakespeare wishes he'd written, "blood of thine is too much on my soul already". :p
 

Richard

Marie-Bernard said:
Hey, who's doing this reading, bub, you or me? And when I misquote an author, it's an improvement on their work. Shakespeare wishes he'd written, "blood of thine is too much on my soul already". :p
Click to expand...
Actually, I think that does express more clearly what Macbeth is trying to convey. Sometimes misquotes are more familiar than the correct ones. Most everybody thinks that "Play it again, Sam" is spoken by the Humphrey Bogart character in Casablanca.
 

Marie-Bernard

LRichard said:
Actually, I think that does express more clearly what Macbeth is trying to convey. Sometimes misquotes are more familiar than the correct ones. Most everybody thinks that "Play it again, Sam" is spoken by the Humphrey Bogart character in Casablanca.
Click to expand...

Batches? We don't need no stinkin' batches.

*n.b., for the uninitiated: The above exchange is filled with highly complex, metaphorical references to the correlation of the court cards. If you don't understand all of it's significance, you need to delve more deeply into the esoteric meanings behind the tarot's exoteric symbolism. - MB
 

kwaw

Batches are bread roll sandwiches in the midlands. In relation to food the Spanish court cards were called a 'stew' (the three courts, king, knight and sota = buillon, veg & meat). In terms of the tavern the kings were the cock in the hen house, knights the b***s, the sota the 'flesh in one's stew'; not so much noble ladies of courtly love, but 'ladies of the night' (public ladies - mujeres públicas) more valued for their dishonesty (ie., lack of virtue, or easy virtues) than beauty (sota of wands = foolishness; sota of cups = drunkenness; sota of coins = insatiable greed; sota of swords = anger/fighting/rivalry).

For fortune telling purposes, such somatic imagery is possibly easier to remember and interpret than fire of air, earth of water, et al.

Unlike Italian decks the Kings of the Spanish are usually portrayed standing, according to one Spanish author on the cards it goes against the collective nature of Spaniards to express royalty in such a way as the Italians, the Kings of their middle ages didn't have time to sit on thrones! Moreover, he syas, in contrast to the dolled up portraits of royalty by foreigners in their luxurious laces and furs, Hispanic royal iconography tends to be more sober :)
 

Richard

I'm not sure how to correlate the Badger courts. (Of course, Badgers themselves, not being the friendliest of animals, are used for the Swords suit.)
 

Marie-Bernard

LRichard said:
I'm not sure how to correlate the Badger courts. (Of course, Badgers themselves, not being the friendliest of animals, are used for the Swords suit.)
Click to expand...

Since I like to stick to a GD system, I feel more comfortable with Badgers as pentacles, talismans, or batches. I don't think it makes for a coherent system to force them in as swords, nasty disposition or not.

The Arthurian Tarot, for all it's faults, at least has Badger as the correct Page. Although it's not made clear that Arthur as a human = Gwydion as a god, if you understand the Badger Page as Percival's inner animal (anima?) then that card becomes the key to all the other courts and it's still possible to understand the nature of the Grail Quest, albeit in a limited way.
 

Richard

Marie-Bernard said:
Since I like to stick to a GD system, I feel more comfortable with Badgers as pentacles, talismans, or batches. I don't think it makes for a coherent system to force them in as swords, nasty disposition or not.

The Arthurian Tarot, for all it's faults, at least has Badger as the correct Page. Although it's not made clear that Arthur as a human = Gwydion as a god, if you understand the Badger Page as Percival's inner animal (anima?) then that card becomes the key to all the other courts and it's still possible to understand the nature of the Grail Quest, albeit in a limited way.
Click to expand...
Badger as Earth of Earth would make sense. Don't know anything about the Arthurian themed decks.
 
AGM & Koenigsfurt-Urania Thoth decks Best Books/Techniques to Better Understand the Thoth?