2 "Missing" Majors from early Tarot Decks

Eclipsed Atouts

In a funny way there are two "missing" cards in the Majors,
and it's part of the mystic fabric of the Phoenician alphabet.

It goes like this:
3 for the Elements
7 for the Planets
12 for the Signs/Houses
=
22

But if you look, the 12 Sign/Houses don't "pair up"
with the 3+7=10 Elements/Planets. 2 are missing!

This is part of the Exaltation Paradigm, where each
of the 7 planets is exalted in a Sign/House, and the
3 Elements are "placed" in the 3 Signs/Houses that
have no exaltations:
Aleph (Air) Aquarius 11th
Mem (Water) Scorpio 8th
Shin (Fire) Leo 5th

That leaves two missing "Pairs" and that is because the
exaltation of the Nodes in Gemini and Sagittarius can't
be physically matched. The Nodes are shadow planets!

I'm open for questions, since this seems to be my theory.

Well do those "planets" include the Moon and the Sun? If taken from Kaballah than I assume yes.

The reason I ask is that we now know there are 9 planets instead of 7, two planets were unknown to the ancients or at least not easy to see. 9 planets and 3 elements would give you the 12 necessary??

I'm not that familiar with Houses, is Leo the 5th house, etc.?

In the ancient world of the Tarot there were only 7 heavenly bodies.
But even if you count the three "moderns" they are usually placed
where Aleph Mem and Shin would normally appear: it doesn't help!

Pluto is actually linked to Aries just to absurdly give it a pinch of Fire.
But we're OOL if you're unfamiliar with even the basic House system

Fulgour said:

That leaves two missing "Pairs" and that is because the
exaltation of the Nodes in Gemini and Sagittarius can't
be physically matched. The Nodes are shadow planets!

I'm open for questions, since this seems to be my theory.

Click to expand...

How about trying this from a different tack. What do *you* think are the two missing cards? What would be their numerals (XXII, XXIII)? Do Gemini and Sagittarius have any similar meaning to these two missing cards? How would they fit in the known Majors?

Lunar Nodes = Shadow Planets

augursWell said:

Do Gemini and Sagittarius have any similar meaning to these two missing cards? How would they fit in the known Majors?

Click to expand...

Points (in space) to Ponder

Eclipses are easily predictable, and they always have been,
but imagine the special educational skills needed for this.
Back in ancient times, there were schools, and that means
an alphabet ~ something to preserve and communicate the
special knowledge required. Learning about eclipses would
just by the process of studying that, teach you everything.

And what an event, there in the sky, an eclipse. Predicted by
your friendly neighbourhood, highly educated, Astrologers.

No, the Lunar Nodes are not planets. But try and beat them!

So one card is an eclipse of the Moon and the other an eclipse of the Sun?

Modern Astrology is about so many curious things,
and with the alphabet you'll always get Kabbalah,
but the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot are different.

The cards that aren't there don't exist, but the fact
of their reality is reflected in the structure anyway,
because the Phoenician alphabet is basically organic,
like we ourselves, our languages, the entire Universe.

The flaw that fixes the form is the fundamental idea,
since there can be no absolute unchanging perfection.
Where there would be 2 more letters, their is nothing,
and their absence is what reveals their existence.

What does all this mean when doing a reading? Zilch.

Perhaps I have a more precise view as to what characterises Tarot as opposed to other, and perhaps related, similar constructs, but would generally suggest that having precisely twenty-two Atouts is one of those characteristics.

As mentioned, other decks (including some early decks), which differ in various ways to Tarot, have differing number of cards.

In terms of the Greek alphabet (and Kieren Barry's Greek Qabalah is a wonderful book as suggested by fyreflye), I personally suspect that little and only quite indirect influence found its way into Tarot (exceptions may be, for example, specific allegories or images from, for example, Plato's three parts of the Soul and the Chariot).

Apart from other factors, it seems that Tarot reflects more a spiritual or transcendent alphabet (if any), and would thus have utilised Hebrew, rather than the Greek, which would have been considered and allocated more to the fields of learning. Ie, the Greek, as alphabet, would have been linked with philosophy - which included the sciences, rather than the spiritual-theological areas.

Perhaps one of the confusions which may also have arisen is implied by a number of factors already mentioned: that the Visconti-Sforza had two 'missing' cards (XV & XVI) may, in some people's minds, have expanded to there being (incorrectly, in my personal view) two missing cards in a full twenty-two Atouts set, with the Besançon versions of II and V (Juno & Jupiter) being considered as 'required additions'.

This is, of course, mixing a number of small factors together.

Some may indeed wish to add cards to the deck. The question that follows is whether the added card or cards form, 'properly', part of Tarot, or form part of those creators' preferred additions to Tarot.

originally twenty-two, but...

Having carefully correlated Graves's reconstructed (Irish-Welsh) bardic tree-alphabet of twenty-two trees (from the more commonly known twenty) WITH the Hebrew letters (mistletoe or doubled I, the only 'tree' that does not touch the ground, being yod, the only letter not touching the line on which one writes), and these with the trumps based on bardic rather than Greco-Hebraic numeration, I am convinced the original had twenty-two.
HOWEVER: runes are the inscripted form OF bardic letters (unbeknownst to most) and number twenty-four, having Ng AND its replacement amongst P-Kelts, P, and two G's or desires, selfish (year, 'harvest') and unselfish (gift, 'gift'). The trumps II and V renamed Juno and Jupiter, though, bear no relationship to this.
Greek letters CLASSICALLY number twenty-four. But omega is a late invention 'restoring' the U of the Logos, AUM (pronounced by us IAOM), and several other changes also call into question its authenticity AS TWENTY-FOUR.

MM ~ Mantegna has Graces, Muses, etc. and is called a Mantegna TAROT, though I don't personally think of it as such. (Oh, well, we drive in "parkways" and park in "driveways"...) Minchiate Tarot has Virtues, Elements, signs of the Zodiac - all the extra Trumps one could imagine. I guess it could be loosely defined as "Tarot". But anyone claiming that the "Ur" or "Proto" Tarot had 24 Trumps is most likely trying to separate us from our hard-earned frog skins...BB, Stella