Helvetica said:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
Love is the Law, love under will.
Those two sentences course through that deck - words of love and responsibility.
And perhaps here he has brought to blossom what was always rooted in the design of the Tarot, or at least in the pattern and sequence of the TdM.
The lower rank of the 3x7 sequence, commencing with the wand bearer, also called a bagatelle, a 'trifle' or 'little thing' and ending with the vehicle of life, image of body and soul the Chariot, called in the Steele sermon 'parvus mundum' or 'little world', surely relates to the sphere of the microcosm, that is, the world of man.
The bateleur the player representing all men; why a trickster and deceiver, because in Augustinian theology all men as citizens of this world, like the Devil who is typologicaly related to the Bateleur in the higher rank, are fallen. Nonetheless, he has within him the capacity to be either a citizen of the City of God, which Augustine relates in an ideal way to the Church [Atout II: Popess] or the City of the Damned, which he relates to the Secular State [Atout III: Empress].
However he is talking allegorically of 'ideal' cities here and in the 'real' world a citizen of the City of the Damned or of the City of God is not defined by whether they are members or representatives of the State [Atout IV: Emperor] or of the Church [Atout V: Pope]; for clearly an Emperor can be good and a Pope depraved and corrupt. What defines a Citizen as being either of the City of God or of the Damned rests upon the individual dynamics of Love [Atout VI: Love or Lover] and Will [Atout VII: Chariot].
But it is especially a triumph of will [which Augustine attributed as a function of reason or the virtue of wisdom, the charioteer holding the reins in the tripartite soul over the appetite with the virtue of temperance and the passions with fortitude], as love comes from God and even the love of mundane, secular and temporal things, even though such desire for the mundane and temporal leads to sorrow, is ultimately the relfection in man of the power of Love that derives from God; it takes reason and wisdom for Man to see behind the visible beauty and pleasures of the mundane [Venus Natura, the woman with the flowers in her hair in the Lover card] to the invisible but true source of beauty and pleasure in the eternal and infinite [Venus Urania, the woman with crown of laurels in the Lover card]; but mere recognition of the invisible source is not in itself enough, it takes 'will' to act upon that knowledge and to direct our Love to the invisible, eternal and infinite source of the beauty and pleasures reflected in our mundane and temperal world we find ourselves in to the true source of Love, Beauty, and pleasure, that is to God. And such acts of will is not easily won, but is a constant battle and source of strife, and like minerva our soul find itself in a battle in the garden of virtue and vice.
The number one, which the bateleur, the player of common man holds, is attributed to eros, whose arrows cause not only love but also, when dipped in lead, enmity; and in this inner dynamic of the mundane world of man between love and strife, it is his 'will' in Augustinian terms that enable him to triumph as a citizen of the City of God; suitable then that the chariot, platonic vehicle of life, ends the triumphal sequence of the rank of man, the microcosm.
The psychological dynamics between Love and Will St. Augustine stated in the phrase, "Love God, and do what you will." Crowley's title of his autobiography, Confessions: An Hagiography [biography of a saint], is I think probably a reference to the Confessions of St. Augustine, an identification Crowley makes possibly in reference to his [admittedly individualistic] interpretation of the dynamics of Love and Will.
[historical question: could pattern C be connected to Pavia? Both St. Augustine and Boethius are buried there, though not sainted Boethius was treated as a saint by the residents of Pavia. This could possibly relate to the strong Augustinian and Boethian elements in the tarot sequence. Both Augustine and Boethius were important references for the Christian Platonists and Neo-platonists too of course, and Decembrio who worked in Milan and translated Plato's republic was born in Pavia. Decembrio the younger who also translated Plato also identified his ideal city with Augustine's City of God and the New Jerusalem, and used such identification in propoganda for the City of Milan and his patrons, which propaganda use could relate to the use of an ideal city as one of the cards in in the early painted decks?]
Kwaw