XVIII : Compass Imagery

On many La Lune cards, the Crayfish (freshwater) appears
to have compass-like antennae. This strikes me as very
significant if one considers the astrological correspondence
with Aquarius (letter 18: Tsade, 11th Month) and the fact
that since ancient times, the Moon in Aquarius was known
as "The Astrologer's Moon."

Do any decks seem to make this point more clearly than
others, and what might be the special significance?

some thoughts

I asked Mark Filipas if there was any alphabetical correspondence
between the ancient word for compass and Tsade.

He said he hadn't noticed the compass imagery before, but
thanked me for pointing it out.

Jean-Claude Flornoy's website often displays an old astrolger
holding a compass and hourglass, and the connection with
La Lune always comes to my mind, though it's XVII, Vieville.

Tom Tadfor Little's website has a really good example, though
as yet he hasn't referenced the compass-like antennae.


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from The Hermitage

The old Italian tarot designs, outside the influence of the Tarot de Marseille, show completely different scenes on the card. In the Tarocco Bolognese, we see two astronomers, apparently debating beneath a moonlit sky that also features several stars. One holds a compass and globe, the other a T-square. This theme is echoed in the Minchiate of Florence, where an astronomer with compass gazes upward, "moonstruck"; he sits with a massive disk bearing the Roman numerals I through XII, both a sundial or clock and a reference to the signs of the zodiac. In the Tarocco Siciliano, a woman stands gesturing toward a man lying sleeping beneath a tree, a discarded club by his side.

http://www.tarothermit.com/moon.htm

Art as Letterform (Part 2)
by Mark Filipas

Reminiscent of similar examples contemporaneous to it, the Marseilles designs appear to allude visually to the Hebrew letterforms themselves. In some cases the letterform seems to have inspired the overall design of the card; in other cases it seems to have been incorporated into the design in the form of a pictorial element. These letterform parallels would be irrelevant to a historical study of the Marseilles Tarot except for the fact that—as with the linguistic links—a similar body of parallels does not present itself when the letters and trumps are arbitrarily paired.

http://www.spiritone.com/~filipas/Masquerade/Essays/epsilon.html

Quark writes:

In 1563 there was a conjunction of the two bright planets,
Jupiter and Saturn. With only a pair of compasses, Tycho Brahe,
by pointing one arm at Jupiter and the other at Saturn, was able
to find the angular distance between them....
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It is the year 1571, when Tycho was 25, and the turning point
for Tycho's life. He noticed a bright new star in the constellation
of Cassiopeia. It blazed out in November. He described it in his
book, De Stella Novis (On the New Star):

"In the evening, after sunset, I noticed a new and unusual star,
surpassing all the others in brilliancy, shining almost directly
above my head. Since I had, from boyhood, known all the stars
in the heavens perfectly, it was quite evident to me that there
had never before been a star in that place, even the smallest,
to say nothing of a star so conspicuously bright as this.
But when I observed that others, too, could see it, I had no
further doubts. A miracle indeed, either the greatest that has
occurred in the whole range of nature since the beginning of the
world, or one certainly that is to be classed with those attested
by the Holy Oracles."

So what was so special about this new star? The fact that
according to Aristotle, the heavens are changeless. Yet this
star was more than intrusive; you could see it in daylight!
We now know it as Tycho's star.

This star turned out to be nothing more, nor less then a supernova.

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http://www.angelfire.com/ok/TheDeepSkies/TychoBrahe.html

you may visit Quark at:
http://www.angelfire.com/ok/TheDeepSkies/Me.html
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ASTARTE

I thought I'd bring up the compass-antennae imagery
once more, with an etymological addition:

astacura: astacus
[NL, fr. Latin, crab, fr. Greek astacos, ostakos lobster,
crayfish; akin to Greek osteon bone - more at [size=1.5]OSSEUS[/size]] :
a genus (the type of the family Astacidae) of crustaceans
containing the freshwater crayfishes of Europe and related
species of western No. America

astarte
[NL, fr. Latin Astarte, principal goddess of Tyre and Sidon
(often identified with Aphrodite by the Greeks), fr. Greek
Astarte, of Sem origin; akin to Hebrew Ashtoreth,
Phoenician and Canaanite goddess]
1 cap : a genus (type of family of Astartidae) comprising
marine bivalve mollusks (order Eulamellibranchia) with thick
equal-valved shells often concentrically ridged and with
well-developed hinge teeth
2 -s : any member of the genus Astarte

1. Freshwater Crayfish
2. Astarte, Goddess of Phoenicia
3. Concentrically-Ridged