The "order" of the suits

[le pendu]

I was reading the rules for an electronic version of the game of Tarot, and it mentions that when drawing to see who will be Dealer:

"The lowest card designates the first Dealer. A Trump is higher than any suit card. If there is equality, the following priority order between the suits is applied: Spades - Hearts - Diamonds - Clubs. Therefore the Ace of Clubs always designates the first Dealer. The player who takes the Excuse must choose another card."

Does that translate to:
Swords>Cups>Coins>Batons?

Is this the generally agreed to "order" of the suits?

 

[Gayla]

I've always been under the impression it was Wands - Cups - Swords - Pentacles

 

[Bat Chicken]

I was reading the rules for an electronic version of the game of Tarot, and it mentions that when drawing to see who will be Dealer:


Does that translate to:
Swords>Cups>Coins>Batons?

Is this the generally agreed to "order" of the suits?

That's how I read it....
edited to add: I looked around quickly to see that the order varies quite a bit...

 

[bradford]

I've always been under the impression it was Wands - Cups - Swords - Pentacles

I thought that was how most Tarot authors viewed it,
at least those who tie the suits to the elements fire,
water, air and earth respectively. Anyone know the
history of that sequence?

 

[jmd]

I'm not sure if the order of "Wands", Cups, Swords and Coins antedates the Golden Dawn (I'd have to double check if Dummett's Game of Tarot notes this order for the game as well), and with them it is related in that order due to their preference for a specific elemental attribution (of batons with Fire, cups with Water, swords with Air and coins with Earth - an attribution not accepted by others in any case, as I point out in this ATS Newsletter), which is further correlated in that order due to their preferred correlation between those elements and their claimed elemental attributions to the letters of the name of God in Hebrew: IHVH. Quite a tenuous ordering at best, in my personal view.

I terms of gaming, I suspect there are various local variations that results from local conventions that do not, in the overall schema of the game except for 'who starts', makes much of a difference. For practical purposes, what is probably more important is to order the suits in a manner that they remain clean and distinct, and for that purpose some local variants have them in alternating pattern (red black red black).

When I was a child, the local tarot game 'had' to be ordered (or so I was told by my gambling father) as diamond, clubs, hearts, spades and trumps, in that order, with corresponding relative value for a random card picked to determine a dealer at the start (once a dealer starts, it moves not according to the next lowest card, but around the table of players).

 

[Yurikome]

I've always been under the impression it was Wands - Cups - Swords - Pentacles

I learned this not so long ago, actually. For me, it was always Cups, Pentacles, Wands, Swords, but that's only because that's the order I like my regular playing cards in. I'm also fond of the Earth-Air-Wire-Water order, following the North-East-South-West directions (but that's only for the tarot).

 

[Parzival]

The a "Order" of the Suits

The original Renaissance order (there could be prior influences from Persia or China) may be based upon class distinctions, thus : peasants (staffs), mechants (coins), clergy (cups), nobility (swords). It may have no intended esoteric or psychologic significance, but merely a social-order framework. The Golden Dawn,then, esoterically developed and transformed the Renaissance social suit arrangement into Grail and Kabbalistic associations, somewhat like I Ching poems/commentaries added over the centuries, developed upon a more simplistic/historic start. Historically regarded, the order of the suits is malleable, dynamic, not fixed, not a formula but a living unfolding, no end in sight.

 

[jmd]

The 'order of nobility' is, however, quite distinct to the 'GD' order.

Also, if there is an ancient Chinese order influence (as I personally think there may well be), then we should perhaps expect, in order, Coins, Batons, and Cups, with likely Swords last. In any case, a different ordering for different reasons (see, for example, the old thread the Chinese connection and the Polo stick).

 

[Melanchollic]

The original Renaissance order (there could be prior influences from Persia or China) may be based upon class distinctions, thus : peasants (staffs), mechants (coins), clergy (cups), nobility (swords). It may have no intended esoteric or psychologic significance, but merely a social-order framework.

As Mr. Hall points out, this original ordering probably had no esoteric intent. Then, on the other hand, the four elements, at that time, were not an "esoteric" idea, but a commonly held world-view.

The earliest known written connection between card suits and the four elements is in “La Signification de l’ancien jeu des chartes pythagorique" (1582) by Jean Gosselin.

Tiles ...............Batons..........Earth
Clover .............Coins.............Water
Hearts .............Cups.............Air
Pikes ...............Swords..........Fire


This is from Michael Hurst's website:

http://www.geocities.com/cartedatri.../1540-1739.html

Scroll down to 1582.



These are also the correlations used by J.C. Flornoy, as elaborated here:

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=72455



If you approach the suit/element problem from the consideration of the four temperaments, which is certainly the way a medieval or renaissance person would have understood the four elements, this is the only set of correspondences that actually work logically. It unfortunately does require one to 'let go' of most of the modern misconceptions about the nature of the four elements that have developed over the years. Such as Water being the sensitive, emotional element. Actually Earth is the sensitive emotional element, hence Earth being the cause of the melancholic temperament. Water gives rise to the Phlegmatic temperament; calm, tolerant, organized, dull, monotonous, conservative, and frugal. Air as representative of intellect is also a modern misinterpretation. Air is playful, pleasure seeking, sociable, flighty, restless, scatterbrained, quite accurately described in the modern term, "air-head". Fire and the choleric temperament are the quick thinkers, while the melancholic is the careful, deep thinking philosopher of the group.

This ordering, 1) Swords/Fire, 2) Cups/Air, 3) Coins/Water, 4) Batons/Earth, is also the correct order of the natural rotation of the elements. Interesting coincidences indeed!



M

 

[Parzival]

Order of the Suits

The temperaments may go into the 4-suit arrangement, as Choleric/fire/swords, Sanguine/air/staffs, Phlegmatic/water/cups, Melancholic/coins/earth. Certainly Shake-speare incorporates the 4 temperaments in his plays about 150 years after the Bembo Tarots. But does the Tarot art reflect temperaments through suit colors and forms, and through the courts? Is this a directly significant influence seen, for instrance, in the knight of swords as choleric and the knight of coins as melancholic? Let me look into it. Others, too. It's possible that classes and temperaments have a dual influence on Renaissance Tarots. Then new variations arise with the Golden Dawn and other modern esoteric approaches, even into recent Celtic and Buddhist metamorphoses of the suits (Matthews, Place.) Original associations change and transform. History is fluid.