Geometric Shapes on Sword Minors.

Bat Chicken

ravenest said:
I'm not sure, once again, LMDuquette knows what he is talking about?


He was the one that suggested projective geometry too! He said in his book that Harris actually studied under two of Steiner's students and applied it to her canvases.
 

thinbuddha

Well DuQuette certainly doesn't get everything right- He seems insistant that the wings on the knight aren't on his helm at all "they are on his back"..... uh- Lon- get some glasses. Not only are they clearly on his helm, but he missed the fact that each one is marked with a cardinal direction (north, south, east, west). This sort of makes me wonder.... but I'm not sure where that thought is going.


back to the pips & courts: I think that we can agree that this design motif is present on every court card:

Princess - clearly the design on her back fits this design
Prince- look at how those wings are connected. You can see it on the smaller figures wing "connecting tissue"
Queen- the design behind her head is lifted straignt off the 10S
Knight- to me, if one can argue that this design motif is on the 3S, then the knight's propeller helm is a slam dunk.

Until someone comes up with something that makes more sense, I'm going with the stylized wing theory.
 

ravenest

Hi TB, Ive been off-line a few days - just for the sake of (my) clarity:

thinbuddha said:
Princess - clearly the design on her back fits this design
Prince- look at how those wings are connected. You can see it on the smaller figures wing "connecting tissue"
Queen- the design behind her head is lifted straignt off the 10S
Knight- to me, if one can argue that this design motif is on the 3S, then the knight's propeller helm is a slam dunk.

Until someone comes up with something that makes more sense, I'm going with the stylized wing theory.

Are you saying that the shapes on the courts are stylized wings (with the designs on them representing ... something)? If so I agree but would add that the designs seem to be taken from the minor swords.

Are you saying that the designs on the minors also represent stylized wings because those designs are similar or the same as the designs on the wings on the courts?

I think I am on a lead ... I've found something similar in a very tecno-complex book on magic squares, but the closest shapes are generated by magic cubes... magic cubes! OH NO! its been really twisting my brain (plus with a headcolb coming on) ... more research needed.
 

AbstractConcept

I don't buy the synth projective geometry bit. It just doesn't fit the pattern/definiton of the style. Possibly inspired by it, but there are much better examples of SPG in the deck (the Priestess for example).

I'd love to see what Harris would have done had she lived long enough to see the advent of fractal art programs. :)
 

Bat Chicken

I don't know if I would discount it entirely... what if there are missing lines? Or rather, lines that are omitted to make the design, yet still fundametally follow the formulae. Am I making sense?
 

ravenest

Not really.

what 'missing lines'?
 

Bat Chicken

Draw a grid with diagonal elements, then start erasing some of the lines.... you get left with another abstract design... that make more sense? Struggling today.....:)
 

thinbuddha

ravenest said:
Are you saying that the shapes on the courts are stylized wings (with the designs on them representing ... something)?
<snip>
Are you saying that the designs on the minors also represent stylized wings because those designs are similar or the same as the designs on the wings on the courts?
<snip>

Well- I'm very strongly, quite definitively saying something that it sort of wishy washy.

I guess that I think that the designs are "stylized wings" - which for the sake of conversation means anything that is related to the movement of air (so the knight's compas/propeller would count). And I am also saying that because the designs on the pips are closely related that they also fit into the "stylized wing" category......

But I'm open to suggestions- I really don't have solid convictions that "wings" are what we are looking at... I do have to admit that the Queen's "wings" seem to be more of a halo than a set of wings.....

The thing about the magic square theory that bothers me is that FH didn't really know all that much about magic, and she made some mistakes ("abracadraba" rather than "abrahadraba" comes to mind) so I find it difficult to picture them comming to terms with something that seems so delicate when they weren't really working together *as she painted*. Shure, she shared paintings with him, and revised them- but without him standing there as she laid out the designs, I'm having a hard time picturing this working.

Also, If there is magic squares in the swords.... why aren't there any magic squares anywhere else? What is it about swords that requires this (or what is it about the squares that fits the swords, but not other cards). I find it really hard to believe that there is somethign about the swords that requires a special treatment that no other cards (not even any of the trumps) requires.

-tb
 

ravenest

thinbuddha said:
I guess that I think that the designs are "stylized wings" - which for the sake of conversation means anything that is related to the movement of air (so the knight's compas/propeller would count). And I am also saying that because the designs on the pips are closely related that they also fit into the "stylized wing" category......

That seems reverse reasoning to me but .... each to their own.
thinbuddha said:
Shure, she shared paintings with him, and revised them- but without him standing there as she laid out the designs, I'm having a hard time picturing this working.
Errr ... it is AC's philosophy and system, I'm sure he often dictated to Frieda what was to be on the cards. Read the front piece to the Book of Thoth again where AC says he got Frieda to draw and redraw some of the pics over and over again
thinbuddha said:
Also, If there is magic squares in the swords.... why aren't there any magic squares anywhere else? What is it about swords that requires this (or what is it about the squares that fits the swords, but not other cards). I find it really hard to believe that there is somethign about the swords that requires a special treatment that no other cards (not even any of the trumps) requires.

-tb

Well then try calculating some magic squares yourself, draw them up and work on the designs. Its a REAL mental head trip man! Try visualising a square of numbers that rolls into a cylinder up and down and left and right to turn in on itself and lay out flat again (one method of constructing some magic squares) thats not an emotional process, its more than a physical process, it could be seen as an inspirational process with people like ben Franklin who could work them out as quick as he could fill the squares in with numbers, yet I've just figured out how he did it and its a computational mental trick, not inspiration. By learning to do this you make your mind work in a different way, to me they are VERY much on the mental plane and fit with swords perfectly.
 

ravenest

ravenest said:
I think I am on a lead ... I've found something similar in a very tecno-complex book on magic squares, but the closest shapes are generated by magic cubes... magic cubes! OH NO! its been really twisting my brain (plus with a headcolb coming on) ... more research needed.

Damn! Its just too hard to work out!

The pattern on the 2 of swords appears to be on a 15 x 15 grid, I drew the grid up and got a very accurate copy of the shape. But there are too many unknown factors to figure out how it was drawn. If it is a magic square of 15 (and you can imagine the fun I had just drawing up the 225 pointgrid) its hard to say which magic square of 15 it is (as there are many). Even if the square could be identified there is no obvious correleation to all the points, which suggests the shape represents a formula or progression of numbers and not every number in the sequence. Perhaps its squares or counting by 5's or 15's?

However, I know from expereince and experimentation that the shape on the 2 is very similar to patterns drawn up on magic squares that link sequential numbers: the long lines suddenly bending, the "jumps" specifically in 'knights moves', the angles turning back on themselves to link up with other shapes, an 'oddness' that in the end becomes a harmony.

I tried some of Ben Franklins magick squares and tried linking the odd numbers only and numbers 5 apart etc, and ended up with shapes like those on the 10 of swords. I've never done this before so have never seen these shapes before, they seem more random and chaotic counting by 5's and 7's.

I still dont think it is projective geometry, but the shapes on 7 swords is a possibility one could say it is a type of projective geometry if the shapes are cubes. Then the 'spikey fins' coming out from the cube could be an extension of the linking diagonals that are 'rubbed out' ( the ones that suggest the cube is in 3d).

I guess the only other alternative is to go thru records of correspondence with AC and FH. Is there a record of this anywhere? I think it was refered to before ... (Aeon goes to his bookshelf, 3rd row down at the left hand side ... "Ah, here they are!")

The only other solution is for me to resort to my channeling skills (in light of recent New Age comments :) )

[For those unfamiliar with my posts, I have this uncanny abaility to not only channel but to channel from the past, via my imagination ;) ]