Alpha-bits
Sailor Girl said:
Why is Strength 8 and Justice 11 in the RWS deck when this is opposite in the Marseille deck?
This tends to muck up the numerology for the cards, as 8 is stated in the Hermetic and Platonic Number Systems "as above, so below" yet this is what we hold for Justice in position 11 of the RWS deck.
Any thoughts or enlightenments?
Of the ancient letters there are
3 Mother Letters (1, 13, 21) Air, Water, Fire
7 Double Letters (2, 3, 4, 11, 17, 20, 22) The 7 'traditional' planets
12 Simple Letters (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19) The Signs of the Zodiac
Match these up to the 'Marseille' Tarot card numbers (with The Fool/Le Mat as 22) and you have the basic "pre-golden-dawn" letter/card correspondences.
When the-golden-dawn wanted to have Mercury for their Magus card, they moved the Fool to letter 1 and so were able to attribute letter 2 to their Magus, and since letter 2 is a Double Letter the 'problem' was solved. Unfortunately (imho) by so doing, the-golden-dawn also changed the entire set of attributions for all the Tarot cards as well.
This created a further problem for the-golden-dawn because now:
8 Justice was letter 9 Leo
11 Strength was letter 12 Libra
Focusing on the imagery only (scales and lion) the-golden-dawn switched the card numbers to achieve less embarrassing letter attributions for cards 8 and 11. The main point here is that the-golden-dawn was not working with Tarot, but a form of Kabbalah (magic numbers, etc.).
Hope that Helps
KariRoad