Isis assists with the embalming of a mummy, Kom El Shokafa, Alexandria, 2nd c
‘One becomes Two, Two becomes Three, and out of the Third
comes the One as the Fourth.’ ~ Pythagoras
In a previous post , we saw how this Cosmology of Pythagoras applies to Tarot. It is but one of the initial or initiatory, key concepts conveyed to us as a visual clue by our Master of Ceremonies, The Juggler/Le Bateleur. Do you see it? Hint: It’s ‘dessous la table’, in every Marseille-type deck.
Vieville, Conver and Noblet cards
Of course, I am referring to the legs. People tend to write off his three-legged table as simply being of the portable sort that Bagatelles used. It’s true, three legs provide the most stable table for any surface. (Especially if it happens to be a tripod with a Pythia sitting on it). But his table in fact has four. Because one of his legs is behind or combined with one of the table legs, his other leg becomes the 4th leg; ‘the One as the Fourth.’ Another consistent feature is that the rectangular table top always extends beyond the picture border… just how long might it be?
Below are two images of Anubis, god of funerary rites and underworld guide, preparing the dead. His uncovered, lower legs are always visible beneath the embalming bed, and knees about level. This ritual table traditionally had a lion head(s) and legs, which we will return to in a moment.
Legs of AnubisEgyptian embalmer’s bed, 664-332 BC (Met Museum, NY)
The Juggler is often equated with Hermes/Thoth, initiator into the mysteries or the ‘in-between’ state itself who oversees the alchemical process. But he’s also seen as an initiate, who maybe doesn’t yet know what all these objects he’s selling are for. As others familiar with Osirian-Orphic mystery content in TdM imagery have noted, they likely allude to dismemberment or sacrifice. They also bear a resemblance to the tools used in the Egyptian ‘Opening of the Mouth’ ceremony, which according to belief, enabled the deceased to eat, breathe, drink and use their senses in the afterlife.
Religious equipment for ‘Opening of the Mouth’ ceremony, 6th dyn. (British Museum)
Naturally, the Juggler’s objects also symbolize the four Hermetic elements (ie, the suits of the minor arcana) and the four ways a body is returned to them in traditional funerary rites. The four ‘parts’ of us that are returned to their sources – body to earth, spirit to fire, soul to water, mind or breath to air – will again be drawn from them and remixed, for another round.
Four ways a body is returned to the elements
Now, let’s just for fun assume the Juggler’s table should have another wooden leg, that it is indeed modelled on an embalming table with leonine features and that it displays tools related to the ‘opening of the mouth.’
Where would we then look for the missing leg? Only the Conver-type decks give us a proper clue [addendum: Dodal also] – the Strength lion’s single leg having a distinctly wooden look and no paw. (Always thought it a rather canine-looking lion). In other TdM decks, it has normal, lion forepaws, which, nevertheless is a hieroglyphic feature, based on Horapollo.
The missing leg and the opening of the mouth
The Pythagorean rule informs us that every 4th card is also a first. 1 was considered masculine/solar and 2, feminine/lunar. 3, while odd, fiery and therefor technically ‘masculine,’ creates the first enclosed space (triangle/womb), so it is actually a combination of masc/fem (the Mercurial, creative magic of the trinity need not be re-explained here). 11 is two 1s or 1+1=2, the lunar partner to the solar Juggler.
I’ll discuss the 2s in my next post, but let the image below, from the Catacombs of Kom El Shokafa, where Egyptian and Greco-Roman mysteries meet, serve as a preview.
Where did you get that hat? Gorgoneion as ‘death face’ of the Sun
The crown/corona worn by royals represents the Sun’s rays. To be coronated means to be crowned with the Sun and become a god-like, solar figure. In alchemy, the Sun symbolizes both the material gold and the hidden, spiritual gold, which is only achieved after a long process. The Juggler holds a little yellow coin or roundel (material gold) and there is a small, yellow flame [aka ear of golden grain] beneath the table, in the distance (spiritual gold). They are separate, at this point in the game.
One/Four cards (Camoin-Jodo deck)
Notice that every card in the 1/4 place between Juggler and Sun depicts a crown, in various phases of transmutation, as well as solar wheels (Chariot, Fortune) and phallic symbols (all seven do, but in the last card it is a horizontal wall). The Sun is its own corona (unified, risen spirit), but what about the Juggler? He is only a 1, not a 1/4, and wears not a crown but a floppy hat with a spherical, red middle. Could this too be symbolic of the Sun?
Floppy discs
Answer is yes. The question of his hat had admittedly irked me a long time, until I saw these beautiful, French prints of Egyptian deities in the NYPL collections.
Winged solar disk, emblems of Thoth/Hermes Trismegistus (NYPL)
So the red sphere of the Juggler’s hat represents the solar disk, its brim being vaguely reminiscent of wings – or – perhaps symbolic of the funerary boat in which the Sun god Ra, and thereby Kings and Pharaohs traversed the Duat, when the sun set. The red sphere appears to sink into the brim, ie, setting below the horizon, corona faded. Meanwhile, on the distant horizon flickers that tiny, golden flame of spirit, which will become a bright Sun once again. Pythagoreans believed in reincarnation, Pythagoras himself was said to have remembered several of his past lives.
New take on retro fashion or just comparing scars?
On that note, I leave you with a vivid, childhood memory…
My father was a psychiatrist with a sense of humour (and with whom I often played cards). Hanging on our bathroom wall was a small, framed photo of Sigmund Freud, with a quote by Groucho Marx taped beneath:
“This may be a phallus, but gentlemen, let us remember, it is also a cigar.”
Previously, we looked at the influence of hieroglyphica and emblemata in the Renaissance and its connection to Tarot de Marseille, how TdM’s ‘mytho-alchemical’ imagery is hieroglyphic in nature, playfully imbedded with visual hints of esoteric meaning hidden in plain sight. The cards relate to each other in a variety of ways, too, be it by numeric pattern or other similarities. (Perhaps why they naturally lend themselves to being ‘read’, a different narrative following every shuffle).
Do read my post on Horapollo and the Hieroglyphic Mysteries of TdM , if you haven’t, as an introduction. And as always, click images for details.
Fool and Death (Camoin-Jodorowsky deck)
The Unnamed Card – Death
The Unnamed card (‘Death/La Mort’) is a prime example. Most Tarotists are aware of its relationship with The Fool/Le Mat, and how they strike the very same pose. By design alone, it is immediately apparent that the two figures are related or even one and the same; the first being unnumbered, the second, unnamed. Suddenly it all makes sense, right?
Original Tragicomedy act: the Greek Muses Melpomene (T) and Thalia (C)
Let’s take a closer look at the Unnamed card and its relationship to another major, The Moon, that we might find the visual clues needed for a better understanding of their mystery teachings.
The first consistent features we notice in the TdM skeleton, are its colour-emphasized spine and hip bones, and the skin pulled back around his skull, creating a crescent shape. Also, his spine appears to be made of grain. Typically, it matches the grain in the Emperor’s necklace (which his chicken-basilisk surely must covet!). The Emperor wears the golden seeds of his own, cyclic renewal. 1 + 3 = 4 and in number order, both cards are in the 1/4 place.
grain storage?Skull face (featuring pyramid and new Moon) and Moon face of TdM
It’s obvious, too, that the Reaper’s face is a mirror image of the Moon. Makes sense, the Solar year has 13 moons, the last one being the ‘killing Moon.’ It’s ultimately why Sun worshippers suffer from triskaidekaphobia. Try as they might, the Greeks could not make 13 – or death – be rational and fit in. They felt the same way about 0, rejecting it outright (ie, no number?). The “inconstant Moon” has long been considered a kind of depository for souls coming and going between incarnations. It is not the light of wakefulness.
Of course Horapollo is talking about the djed bone of Osiris and we can see how the card must be a reference to the Osirian myth. While the djed bone has obvious phallic implications, it is actually symbolic of the grain god’s spine, by which his ‘kundalini energy’ or ‘life force’ climbs:
“The djed was an important part of the ceremony called “raising the djed“, which was a part of the celebrations of the Sed festival, the Egyptian jubilee celebration. The act of raising the djed has been explained as representing Osiris’s triumph over Seth. Ceremonies in Memphis are described where the pharaoh, with the help of the priests, raised a wooden djed column using ropes. The ceremony took place during the period when fields were sown and the year’s agricultural season would begin, corresponding to the month of Koiak, the fourth month of the Season of the Inundation. This ceremony was a part of one of the more popular holidays and celebrations of the time, a larger festival dedicated to Osiris conducted from the 13th to 30th day of the Koiak. Celebrated as it was at that time of the year when the soil and climate were most suitable for agriculture, the festival and its ceremonies can be seen as an appeal to Osiris, who was the God of vegetation, to favor the growth of the seeds sown, paralleling his own resurrection and renewal after his murder by Seth.”[wikipedia]
Seth and his hungry familiar, the Oxyrhynchus
As for his phallus, remember that when Isis collected her dismembered beloved’s pieces to put them back together, she could not find this last bit, which had been eaten by a fish, so the resourceful Goddess had to make a new one, using magic. Might we even see a fishbone shape in the reaper’s frame, its head being the hips and tail being the crescent? Peut-être.
Claude Burrell 1751 (Yves Renaud repro 2015) and a bass
Dismemberment is the beginning of the transformation process. This card alludes to that which Osiris/Osiris-Dionysus presided over, the natural cycles of death and resurrection/rebirth. He was also called ‘god of the living’ and ‘lord of silence’ (ie, no name?). The black soil [of Kemet (‘kmt‘), the ‘black land’ from whence comes ‘alchemy’] pertains to fertility – new growth from rich putrefaction and loam. The Egyptians took their cues from nature, the great alchemist.
“In some rare instances, Osiris was depicted wearing a crown that included a rendering of the moon. This has led some researchers to surmise he was associated with the moon or the night.” [Ancient Egypt Online]
Thoth (Thoth-Hermes), Ibis-headed god of the Moon, who oversees the whole transmutation, might also be at hand…
Ibis beak and scythe
The Moon – Rebirth
Now that we’re experts on the Lunar associations in the Unnamed card…what about the Moon card’s association with Death?
That the crayfish may literally represent the astrological sign of Cancer in TdM is, as the detective novels say, a ‘red herring’. But the association reminds us that in ancient Egypt, Cancer was a scarab – symbol of birth, life, death, resurrection and immortality.
Osiris Canopus with ‘scrab’ (detail) Roman-Egyptian 100-200 AD
Crabs and other sea creatures (and worms) become active, lay eggs, spawn or hatch with lunar cycles/tides, just as we came into the world through our mother’s watery womb at the end of 9 (1+8) lunations. Cancer also rules the breasts and Momma’s milk. Interestingly, in Arab astronomy, the four stars of Cancer were seen as a crib or manger, while in Chinese, as ghosts or spirits of the deceased. [Tip: Stick with stars, planets and constellations, rather than ‘signs’ if/when applying to TdM.]
Cary and Dodal Moon cards – 200 year difference in crayfish design
The Great Mother’s milk is of course the Milky Way, by which the stalwart scarab navigates. Surely this did not escape the Egyptians, whose sky was the Goddess Nut, and readers familiar with Pythagorean and Orphic beliefs will see the significance. Note how the position of the crayfish mimics the upward facing scarab in Egyptian art. Scarab amulets carved with magical hieroglyphs were buried with the dead to protect the heart (seat of the mind) and ensure a safe transition. But the full Moon’s bright light can actually make the scarab’s journey longer and more difficult.
Nutrient-rich dung is my gold: Winged scarab, Greek Period (304-330 BC)
It’s tempting to assume that TdM printers were unfamiliar with the number of legs on a crayfish. But might there be a better explanation for its having only 6?
Greco-Romans and Gnostics, incorporating Egyptian culture/religion also used amuletic, carved scarabs and gems – which, as mentioned previously, were collected and studied during the Italian Renaissance:
“The leading families of Renaissance Italy, the Visconti and the Sforza dukes in Milan, the Estes and Gonzagas in Ferrara and Mantua, or the Medicis in Florence, were certainly willing to pay huge sums of money for authenticated ancient gems: Piero de’ Medici is reported to have remarked that an engraved gemstone was ‘worth more than gold itself.’ They became treasured family heirlooms.” [John Mack, The Art of Small Things]
Like hieroglyphica and coinage, this art form influenced emblemata and likely Tarot as well.
[addendum: the crayfish was used on Greek coins as a symbol for ‘city.’ Marseilles, a port city, was originally founded and colonized by the Greeks.]
Roman carved gems with triplicate Hekate and Moon card crayfishHekate with Anubis (gem and impression), 2nd century
The Moon card, being 18, falls into the ‘3’ position and contains the three dominions of the Goddess Hekate; sky, earth and sea.Hekate (pronounced Hekaté) was portrayed in antiquity as three figures around a central column; forming the Lunar Goddess triad with Selene and Diana, or Underworld Goddess triad with Demeter and Persephone (mysteries). Goddess of crossroads, the saffron-robed, torch-bearing Hekate was invoked to guide souls in the afterlife (some sources say Hermes was her consort) – note the crayfish’s torch-like claws.
Green Conver Moon card and Hecate lamp (Roman, 1st-4th c)Selene with ‘claws’ and torch (Roman, 1st c)
But she had many other roles besides psychopomp, including Goddess of childbirth. Let’s not ignore the crayfish’s uterine shape, either.
The two fortresses in the distance are thought by some to be her temple towers, which is not unreasonable. As well, the Lunar Nodes – ecliptic points where paths of Sun and Moon cross (hence eclipses), connected to reincarnation – have an approximately 18.5 year cycle. Hmm. The visual clue, however, is that these structures are the only elements here, besides the Moon and ‘spirit-dew’, that are above the horizon (the dogs look as if sinking beneath it). There are few cards that make use of depth perspective, so this should alert our attention.
Addendum: Tarot expert Andrea Vitali points out something so hidden in plain sight, even I didn’t spot it (!), which is that the entire lunar cycle is depicted in the card; the two towers representing waxing and waning phases, the middle obviously being the full phase, and the water/crayfish being the dark Moon, when it is not visible. This adds to the idea of Hekate residing here, in the underworld/between world or unconscious realm, so to speak. As mentioned, the claws resemble the guiding torches she bears during this passage.
Pompeii fresco (detail)
The horizon is where the stars rise and set, ie, are born and die. Circumpolar stars never sink beneath the horizon, thus represent the eternal. Two such stars were known to the Egyptians, therefor, as the Indestructibles; Kochab, in Ursa Minor and Mizar, in Ursa Major, which flanked the Pole Star (then Thuban, constellation of Draco). Pharaohs’ pyramids were built in exact alignment with these stars so they could be directly ‘beamed up, Scotty.’
For those without custom-built pyramids, the in-between state might be less streamlined and more perilous. The Moon here appears to occult the Northernmost star, just as she obscures the Milky Way for our scarab. A wandering soul without a visible sky map might find themselves reborn down here, rather than as a god in eternity. I say we invoke the crayfish.
And look, it’s those 4 stars! A bit of a stretch, perhaps…but how curious that the tip of the right dog’s tail in the Conver Moon card is clipped by the border. Accidental or intended clue?
The little croc-headed beastie pasted in the lower right is Ammit, the composite Goddess (I think also part leopard and hippo) who gobbles scale-tipping hearts. Actually, she is more like a composter of the heart-mind:
“Two ways are offered to our soul after death: either a final liberation or a return into incarnation in order to continue the experience of becoming conscious. Many are the texts alluding to reincarnation, either overtly or implicitly through such locutions as ‘renewal of life’ or ‘repetition of births’. The Judgment of the Dead takes place in the ‘Hall of the Double Maât’. This judgment is made in the presence of the dead person’s consciousness, Maât, while the other Maât, cosmic consciousness, presides at the weighing of his heart. Placed on one of the pans of the scale, and weighed against the feather of Maât, the heart expresses the feelings and passions which, if too heavy, risk drawing the soul back again towards earth.” [Lucie Lamie, Egyptian MysteriesNew Light on Ancient Knowledge]
Thus we return to the first lesson, that of the Fool (Le Mat, as if that wasn’t obvious enough) and the Unnamed being as one. An important, first lesson to get us through life, death and all the in-betweens. ~rb
It is a tradition in esoteric history that whenever a new culture is embryonic in the womb of an older one, or when an esoteric school recognizes that a culture has served it’s purposes and is coming to an end, then a major work of art is created in dedication, as an outer sign for future ages. The work of art may be a remarkable piece of music, a poem, a garden or a building — but whatever its external artistic form, it encapsulates, in entirely esoteric principals, a summary of what has gone before, and what is to come. All great esoteric artists from Dante to Shakespeare, from Milton to Blake, have recognized this primal function of their art. The interesting thing is that all too often it is the exoteric aspects of their products which attract attention of those who follow, and the esoteric contents remain hidden, save perhaps for the seeing few, who are themselves alive to the esoteric background to human history.
– Fred Gettings, The Secret Zodiac
Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn, Emblemata, 1635
At the height of Renaissance in the 15th century, a fresh, Humanistic view of the world was flourishing. Scholarly and creative minds, it seems, had been opened through a revised symbolic and syncretic way of thinking. Revised, because a pre-existing, Medieval tradition of visuals serving as a window to higher concepts was already well-established, as were heraldic devices and emblems, but a big part of the collective re-awakening came by way of a new, parabolic language in the arts, born or copied from an older one shrouded in mystery. Renaissance literally means rebirth. But who and what was being reborn? A civilization, perhaps, that had planned for just such an everlasting afterlife?
[please click images to enlarge and read]
In Italy, especially in Florence, there was great interest in learning from the distant past. Greco-Roman revivalism in poetry and philosophy, art and architecture thrived, as the nobles competed for legacy and church fathers, for a time, actively encouraged and commissioned works. Pagan gods and goddesses frequently appeared alongside Christian ones, albeit not as subjects of worship (except for Isis, under guise as the Virgin). Ex-pats had returned from exile with personal libraries including medical, alchemical and astronomical manuscripts from the Middle East. Arthurian legends of courtly love from England and France were extremely popular. The printing press now meant more people could have access to literature – although nobles considered printed works to be gauche and still preferred to commission hand-crafted books. Among these, of course, was the first, Latin translation of The Corpus Hermeticum. The ‘alchemization’ of Europe had begun.
(More here. Pre-Conver Emperors do not show the Basilisk throne).
Egyptian artifacts, housed in Italy since Roman times, were a major part of this resurgence in all things ancient, esoteric and therefor exemplary. (To give you an idea, Pope Alexander VI aka Rodrigo Borgia even had his genealogy ‘traced’ back to Osiris thus establishing a link between the Egyptian gods and the church). Renaissance Humanists, fascinated by hieroglyphs, began a race to unlock them that would continue for the next 3 centuries.One main source of reference was a manuscript called ‘The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo Nilous.’ Horapollo (Horus Apollo) was a 5th century Egyptian scribe and one of the last remaining priests of Isis, who had also made a partially successful effort at decipherment (hieroglyphs were already thousands of years old, by his time). A translation of his work had turned up in Florence, in 1422 and was first printed in 1505. Another, slightly later reference source was the ‘Mensa Isiaca‘ or Table of Isis, which Athanasius Kircher in particular took as a model.
Egyptian winged Uraeus and Hieroglyphica by Valeriani, 1556
‘Hieroglyphica’, as it became known, inspired a tidal wave of emblematic art (‘emblemata’), as neo-Platonists and others sought to emulate these cryptic little pictures, resulting in an imaginative, western European hybrid. Hermetic and alchemical art in particular would employ this method of concealed meaning ‘for initiates only’ (namely other alchemists).
This genre of the symbolic rereading of the hieroglyphs – “enigmatic hieroglyphs” as Rigoni and Zanco (1996) call them – was very popular in the late Hellenistic period. It should not surprise us, then, that so many Renaissance Humanists – for whom this was all quite familiar through Lucan, Apuleius, Plutarch, Clement of Alexandria and, especially, Ennead V by Plotinus – should see in the Hieroglyphica a genuine connection with the highest sphere of wisdom.
– Studiolum
Other antiquities being scoured for emblematic images were things like Roman coins, medallions and gem charms, which the ruling class loved to collect. Roman carved gems in particular were highly sought after, and became family heirlooms, often set in jewelry [see ‘Death and the Moon’ post].
It was out of this tradition that Tarot de Marseille emerged, presumably in Italy, during the mid 16th century. [No known prior examples of the classic TdM format exist and the oldest known example is a single, World card – the oldest complete decks known are 17th century.] Its images are not just allegorical, but ‘hieroglyphic’ in nature – though obviously not actual Egyptian hieroglyphs. The apparent (I would even say obvious) application of Horapollo’s descriptions alone leaves little doubt, though, that they were purposefully designed with visual clues that provided a context for imbedded messages. What that purpose was and why it was imbedded in playing cards, we can’t know for certain, but as Counter-Reformation loomed on the horizon, maybe it was time to encapsulate esoteric principals for future ages?
I will dive more deeply into some of the ‘glyphs in the other cards (not included herein), in upcoming blogposts, but wanted to provide this overview, first.
QUOTATIONS: ~ Fred Gettings opener from ‘The Secret Zodiac – The Hidden Art in Mediaeval Astrology’ [Routeledge & Kegan Paul, 1987] ~ ‘Enigmatic hieroglyphics’ quote from studiolum.com
~ Horapollo text translations (Alexander T. Cory, 1840) from sacred texts.com
REFS/OTHER LINKS: ~ The Egyptian Renaissance – The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy, Brian Curran, Penn State University (pdf) ~ Hieroglyphs and Meaning, Lucia Morra, Carla Bazzanella (pdf)
~ Pinturicchio’s Frescoes in the Sala dei Santi in the Vatican Palace, Roger Gill, Birmingham City University (pdf)
~ The Art of Small Things by John Mack [Harvard University Press] ~ Horapollo Hieroglyphica via Jason Colavito
~ Giovanni Pierio VALERIANO BOLZANI Hieroglyphica, Google Books
