Tag: alchemy

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Seeing with Divine Mind – The Justice Card of Ancient Tarot

I prayed to Her, taking a flower in my hands:
“Mother, here is Thy knowledge and here is Thy ignorance.
Take them both, and give me only pure love.
Here is Thy holiness and here is Thy unholiness.
Take them both, Mother, and give me pure love.
Here is Thy righteousness and here is Thy unrighteousness.
Take them both, Mother, and give me pure love.”
I spoke of all these, but I could not say: “Mother,
here is Thy truth and here is Thy falsehood, take them both.”
I gave up everything at Her feet but could not bring myself to give up truth.

~ from the Prayer of Ramakrishna (translated by A. Mookerjee)

Tarot’s Lady Justice, with her direct gaze and formidable countenance, doesn’t just represent an institution, but is the embodiment of truth, and the natural sense of order and harmony that permeates the cosmos. For this reason, she has is often been equated with the Egyptian Goddess Maat.

Anubis weighing a heart against a little figure of Maat

We’ve all seen images of the Weighing of the Heart ceremony, wherein the deceased person’s heart (seat of the mind, to the Egyptians) is weighed against her feather in the ‘Hall of Two Maats’ (two truths), but Maat was also a set of principals for the living:

“The ancient Egyptians deeply believed in the inherent grace and unity of the entire universe. They understood that cosmic harmony could be achieved through the most righteous ritual and public life, and any kind of disruption in this divine harmony would have many severe consequences, such as earthquakes or famine, which are caused by an impious king…”
[Egypt Tours Portal, Ancient Egyptian Principals of Maat]

“Tarocchi of Mantegna,” Anon Ferrara 1465

Similarly, to Renaissance humanists, Justice as Cardinal Virtue was a guiding principal to live by – particularly for princes – in order to maintain personal and collective, moral standards. In the ‘Mantegna Tarocchi‘, which depicts the hierarchy of stations from the lowly beggar ‘Misero’ all the way to ‘First Cause,’ Heavenly Virtues are exceeded only by the gods themselves. Note how the stork familiar of Justice harkens back to Thoth, Maat’s Ibis-headed scribe consort – perhaps indicating that virtues need to be taught and developed (the stork was also a symbol for rhetoric).

Tarot de Marseille’s Lady Justice, seated upon her throne, sword and scale in hand, seems straightforwardly emblematic. But, as with all TdM cards, might the particulars of her design reveal a more layered persona? Let’s investigate, beginning at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance…
[As always, please click on images to enlarge and for more details.]

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Justice (detail), Allegory of Good and Bad Government, 1338-39

The Allegory

Justice, still a figurehead of courthouses today, is the longest-surviving Cardinal Virtue. Her blindfold, supposed to indicate impartiality, makes her seem a bit benign, like she can’t actually witness what we’ve been up to. But prior to the 16th century, this was not the case, as we see in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s exquisite, mid 14th c fresco, ‘Allegory of Good and Bad Government’ in the Palazzo Pubblico (town hall) of Sienna. Painted at a time when city states of Italy were becoming more secular, allegorical artworks like this in civic buildings were an attempt to incorporate the ancient virtues; to “legitimate and elevate secular activities by suggesting an association with the sacred.” By placing Justice and Judgement scenes in public places, “city states in Italy sought spiritual affirmation that their urban way of life was just as god-annointed as the old, feudal vision of society.” [Images of Justice, Curtis and Resnik, Yale Law Journal] 

Justice appears in the mural a few times, in different forms; most prominently she’s seated on a throne (‘Distributive’ and ‘Commutative’ Justice), a hand resting on either scale, whereupon two angels dish out punishment or reward. She looks upward toward the higher power, Wisdom, who looks up to God. A cord runs from each scale (one is worn away) to the hand of Concordia, symbolizing a balanced state of society. Everything is connected in perfect equilibrium, everyone knows their place and responsibility as citizens.

Ambrogio, Allegory of Bad Government (detail)

On the adjacent wall to her right/our left, the Satanic figure of ‘Bad Government’ is seated on a throne, the scales of Justice lie on the ground broken, and she sits in despair beneath him, possibly with hands bound. The relationship between the Supreme Court Justice and the Devil is established.

Watch this video for a more intricate tour of the mural. For our purposes, let it serve as an introduction to how the Virtue of Justice was “propagandized” at the time, and to some of the details that will carry over into the Tarot card.

Examples of Type I (Dodal) and Type II (Conver) Tarot de Marsielle, 18th c.

The Pillared Throne

Type II TdM differs from type I, in that Justice’s ‘wings’ are absorbed into her throne’s concave and cylindrical shape. It features two, gold-coloured columns, one which is being ‘split’ by her sword. Emblemata books tell us that, unblindfolded, with sword held erect, she is ‘Divine Justice’. This is further indicated by her crown – more on that a bit later.

It’s important to compare decks for clues, and sometimes they’re found in unlikely places. In this earliest French Tarot, below, the Empress’ hand on the covered arm of her throne could also be seen as lifting her robe to reveal a leonine leg. Though it’s likely a skin she’s seated on, the gesture evokes a legend of the Queen of Sheba, where she lifts her skirt to step over water, revealing a hairy (sometimes exaggerated as bestial) leg.

If this connection was the artist’s intention, might the Emperor then show some hint of Solomon? I think yes – he is seated in columned throne, exactly like the one in TdM Justice, and holds not a sceptre, but a sword erect. “Remember, after all, the tale of Solomon, who offered to use the sword to cut the child in half, to give each claimant her share.” Ouch.

Empress and Emperor, Catelin Geofroy 1557 [photos: Alexandra Miron, click for details]
The Justice card of Catelin Geofroy no longer exists, alas. But, following this visual lead, the columns of TdM Justice’s throne might also be suggestive of Solomon’s brass pillars; on her right, the column of Boaz and on her left, Jachin.

“The earliest Jewish post-biblical account is of Romano-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Antiquities 8:165-9), who reframes the Queen of Sheba’s story for a Greek and Roman audience. He speaks of a philosopher Queen of Ethiopia and Egypt who, much like in the Hebrew Bible, travels to meet Solomon to subject him to a trial of wisdom. Josephus’ legend wasn’t picked up further in medieval Jewish and Islamic legends, but had a great influence on the further development of Christian tradition.” [The Collector]

Solomon’s temple pillars [note it reads ‘bronze’, which is the modern interpretation]
Each pillar was envisioned as having a bulge at the top, with a garland of pomegranates and a crown of lilies. The temple was also decorated with pomegranates. Described as symbols of ‘fertility and abundance’, ‘the promised land’, etc, it seems rather obvious from the Song of Songs that they have everything to do with Sheba’s divine (feminine) wisdom. So much so, that Smith and Waite (who was a Freemason) would put pomegranates and Solomonic pillars in the ‘High Priestess’ card, rather than Justice. (However, while the open pomegranates are saying one thing, her look is less than inviting, contrary to the traditional Popesse).

RWS High Priestess (detail)

In Greco-Roman tradition, the pomegranate is associated with fertility, death, changing seasons and immortality, its seeds resembling jewel-like blood droplets (often the blood of Dionysus). Persephone, by breaching the conditions of her spouse and eating six pomegranate seeds in Hades, is destined to remain underground for half the year and only return (be reborn) for the other half.

What is the little red dot on the pillar (right)?

In a similar and related tale, Eurydice is destined to remain in Hades after her beloved Orpheus breaks the one condition, that he mustn’t turn to look at her, en route back to the world of the living. “The story of Eurydice may be a late addition to the Orpheus myths. In particular, the name Eurudike (‘she whose justice extends widely’) recalls cult-titles attached to Persephone. ” [wikipedia]

“Eurydice’s name means wide ruling Justice. She is the prototype of Dike, one of the Horea, born to Themis and Zeus. Dike stood for the All Way, The Way, The Truth, and The Light. As Dike’s prototype, Eurydice is a mythical goddess and archetype present in the underworld before the cloaking of the myth in the traditional romantic versions during the creation of the Classics by male authors.” [intro to Emily Miller, ‘Euridice’s Bones’]

(Similarly, Persephone was the ‘Iron Queen’ of the Underworld, prior to the Pluto abduction myth).

Horai (seasons) with pomegranates for Summer

Coptic greek cross with pomegranates/”tree of life” from a recently discovered monastery in Egypt [Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities Egypt]
The fruit of the biblical tree of knowledge (of sex, death and immortality) was most likely a pom, not a pomme. The Lily, also a death and rebirth symbol is associated with Lilith, Isis and the Virgin Mary. Red and white are blood and milk, the colours of alchemical Rebis.

Brass signifies God’s judgement, ie, these are not merely ‘functional’ pillars. Passing between the two brass pillars represents entry into another world, eternity or another sphere. The card is divided not just vertically, but horizontally, by the bar of her scales; there is equilibrium between Heaven above and Earth below, just like in the Sienna mural. The curved back of Justice’s throne serves a dual design purpose, suggesting wings as well as heavenly spheres. Her sword traverses both realms and we notice the ball in its handle is threefold; the trinity of philosophical elements.

Temple of Apollo, Delphi

Wisdom Pillars

The two pillars of wisdom also can be likened to the two maxims inscribed at the entrance (possibly on columns) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. According to Pliney the Elder, these were written in letters of gold:

Know thyself
and
Nothing in excess

The famed ‘Know Thyself’ Roman mosaic (ca 30 BC-14 CE), Naples Museum

Know Thyself  [sword] 
The first application of the phrase to self-knowledge in the modern sense occurs in Plato’s Phaedrus, in which Socrates says that he has no leisure to investigate the truth behind common mythological beliefs while he has not yet discovered the truth about his own nature.

Wenceslas Hollar, The Golden Mean 1641-1644 (circa)

Nothing in Excess/Nothing too much  [scales]
The maxim has been said to have received its ‘ultimate expression’ in  Aristotle’s theory of ethics, according to which every classical virtue occupies  a middle place between the two extremes of excess and deficiency.

Concordia detail, Sienna mural

There was also a third maxim inscribed:

Give a pledge and trouble is at hand
The Greek word ἐγγύα, here translated “pledge”, can mean either (a) surety given for a loan; (b) a binding oath given during a marriage ceremony; or (c) a strong affirmation of any kind. Accordingly, the maxim may be a warning against any one of these things.
In Plutarch’s Septem sapientium convivium, the ambiguity of the phrase is said to have “kept many from marrying, and many from trusting, and some even from speaking.” [Wikipedia]

Among other things, which I’ll get to, the cord around Justice’s neck may indeed have to do with being bound to one’s word – or to one’s silence – especially in monetary and matrimonial matters (Libra).

Mercy Seat, The Holman Bible, 1890 (note the curved angel wings are like bull horns).

Lady Have Mercy

Inside Solomon’s temple was something called a ‘Mercy Seat (hilasterion, “that which makes expiation” or “propitiation” for the removal of sin), which, according to the Hebrew Bible, was “the gold lid placed on the Ark of the Covenant with two cherubim at the ends to cover and create the space where Yahweh appeared and dwelled. This was connected with the rituals of the Day of Atonement.” (Yom Kippur, occurring in Libra season).

Oh my heart which I had from my mother! O heart of my different ages! Do not stand up as a witness against me, do not be opposed to me in the tribunal, do not be hostile to me in the presence of the Keeper of the Balance!

~ Egyptian Heart Prayer

Here the lines between Justice and Judgement start to blur, and the two often get conjoined when deciphering the meaning of this card, as was the intent of Italian civic hall murals. The difference is that Judgement (or Last Judgement) is a final verdict, whether it’s pronounced in a court of law or standing before a supreme being. Justice is about honing an inner sense of self-regulating equilibrium, guided by the understanding that we will ultimately face some kind of ‘judgement’ by the god(s) of our higher conscience – maybe not hellfire or pearly gates but ‘damned’ or ‘blessed’ to live in the kind of world we helped create. They are closely intertwined, but differing concepts.

Sienna mural and Pierre Madenié details

In the ancient Greco-Roman world, supplication – begging for the sparing of one’s life, on the battlefield, for example – involved a specific set of gestures; the supplicant, on their knees (submissive stance), would clasp the dominant’s knees (they can’t walk away), reach up to clasp their chin (they can’t look away) and beg for mercy.

It’s been suggested that the scales rest on Lady Justice’s knee and are being tipped slightly. As well, the collar of her wimple, which again harkens back to our Sienna mural, has started to look a bit like hands. These are the type of details people often write off as ‘printing mistakes’, but might they have had a mnemonic function? In fact, during the Renaissance, Justice was sometimes depicted in a more gruesome way – as judges with severed hands.

Visconti-Sforza Justice,  c 1450

We can back up this notion of ‘having mercy’ with another Justice card, the Visconti-Sforza. It’s an anomaly in the deck (unless the original other two Virtues were also illustrated thus), in that the gold background does not go all the way up, but instead creates a throne back or triptych shape, while over her head leaps a knight on a white horse. Likely this figure represents the chivalric code of the Arthurian knights, who, while charged with enforcing justice, were also required to ‘be just,’ ie, to act from their higher consciousness and show mercy whenever possible, rather than give in to brutish impulses. This is in keeping with the idea of Temperance, also. We know that the Arthurian legends were extremely popular in Italy (some having been illustrated by Bonafacio Bembo, who painted the cards).

That this ‘hero rider’ – the solar hero – is situated above the Virtue’s head brings to mind Athena (wisdom and strategy, with violence only as last resort) who was conceived in and born from  Zeus’ head (intellect). The virtuous knight here takes the role of divine wisdom, by which lady Justice is guided, as in the Sienna mural.

Recumbent bull with man’s head. Mesopotamia, c. 2350–2000 BC. Louvre

The Bull of Heaven

Let’s turn now to TdM Justice’s turbaned crown, up above the spheres. Although upside down, there is no mistaking the symbol for Taurus the bull, its horns cleverly formed by the interruption of her hair. The bull is a vehicle and/or attribute of any god or goddess worth their salt, particularly when they are acting as supreme judge. The two horns of the bull serve the same function as two pillars, maintaining stability and equilibrium.

Mycenaean rhyton 1300-1200 BC, with sigil for Aldebaran (Agrippa)

Central and level with the ‘sun and moon’ pillar bulges is the all-seeing, monadic eye in Justice’s bull crown. We are reminded of the ‘Bull’s Eye’ (aka ‘God’s Eye’) in the constellation of Taurus, Aldebaran, the watcher in the East. This royal star was once connected to the Spring Equinox (opposite Autumnal Antares, Heart of the Scorpion) and rises with the Pleiades aka ‘Seven Sisters.’ Aldebaran is associated with St. Michael, whose name is the rhetorical question he posed to Satan: ‘Who is like unto God?’ Might this be what Justice is asking? Could the rider of the V-S card also be a stand-in for St. George, chivalric incarnation of Michael the dragon-slayer?

St. Michael weighing souls during the Last Judgement, 15th c

After 7 steps (or stages, or planetary spheres) we arrive at Justice, and 7 steps from Justice is the Devil. “If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like.” If Justice is to be impartial in her judgement, she’s going to need that third eye.

The following is an excerpt from a fictitious 1490 dialogue by Italian doctor and humanist, Battista Fiera, between the painter Mantegna and the allegorical figure ‘Momus,’ on how to depict Justice. Mantegna, having heard conflicting accounts, has ‘consulted a series of philosophers’:

Mantegna: I began with Saxus Hippolytus. He said Justice should be represented with one eye; the eye being rather large and in the middle of the forehead; the eyeball, for sharper discernment, deep-set under a raised eyelid.

Momus: Suppose something happened behind her back? Might she not be taken in the rear? Will she be safe enough with only one eye in front?
. . . If she had an eye at the back as well, she’d be still more queenly and majestic.

Mantegna: Erasmus the Stoic [said] . . . that she ought to be shown seated, and holding scales in her hand.
“But . . . make her one-handed.”
“So that she couldn’t throw in a makeweight, of course.”
[Marianus] instructed me to depict her standing, and with eyes all over her as Argus was of old. . .  And brandishing a sword in her hand to ward off robbers, and to protect the innocent and the unfortunate . . . 
Astallius said she should be depicted sitting on a square marble chair with a slightly curved back, such as there was once at Lesbos, and measuring with a leaden rule.

Momus: To be sure, his was a milder image of Justice, since he left out the menacing sword; and he had good reason to fear she might have a fall. But why the leaden rule? Did he mean that Justice is sometimes twisted? For is not the common herd, remembering her waxen nose, loud in proclaiming that she is?

Mantegna: No, he didn’t mean that she is twisted; but he said she was to govern with equity – now and then to slacken the reins.

Momus: What did Fiera say?

Mantegna: [H]e enjoined me to depict her covered with ears as well.

Momus: Why? Was he afraid that she might become deaf?

Mantegna: He was . . . [and Astallius and Fiera also said] that Justice was to put on the habit of a penitent . . .

Momus: So, they want her to be mortified! But didn’t it occur to them to give her wings?

Mantegna: No one thought of that.

[excerpted with from ‘Images of Justice’ by Dennis E. Curtis and Judith Resnik, Yale Law Journal]

Pierre Madenié 1709 and Giovanni Antonio da Brescia 1475-1520  (note her foot shape).

The dividing line created by the bar of her scales can also be viewed as the horizon itself, where the cusp of Libra begins the Sun’s descent. The Pierre Madenié card provides another interesting detail; the handle of the scales is shaped like a divider compass (see Star post).

In the  Bolognese card, below, Justice’s scales hang from a globus she’s holding, similar to the Empress. This detail is consistent with emblems of Divine Justice, where her foot rests upon a globe. Like the TdM version, her lower half is weighty, grounded on Terra Firma, but in this case, she is Nature, ie, natural law, natural order, as above, so below. If we zoom in closely, there is what appears to be a little, bull head shape on her collar. Remember that Taurus is the sign of FIXED EARTH.

Alla Torre Justice card and Cesare Ripa Divine Justice

In the Rosicrucian image below, we can identify some similar components to the TdM Justice card, such as the two pillars of Wisdom (solar/father/fire/air and lunar/mother/water/earth). The above is as below, and the heavenly bodies shine onto a (directional) compass. In its centre is a globus cruciger, symbol for antimony (see Empress card) which is used in the purification of gold and silver, a material and spiritual process. At the very top is the symbol for Taurus, with Aries on the left, Gemini on the right. May, high Taurus season, when the Earth is most fecund, is when alchemists collect their dew, (again, Empress/Nature).

‘The Compass of the Wise’ frontispiece for a rare book on Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism by German author Adam Michael Birkholz, 1779

Mithras 

There is also a connection of these three Spring signs (Aries, Taurus, Gemini) to the Mithras Mystery Cult. Personally, I’ve never really jived with the brutal Tauroctony image – symbolic though it may be – central to every mithraeum in this exclusively male cult of Ancient Rome (2nd-3rd c). However, it is relevant to our topic. Originally, the Iranian god, Mithra was not associated with bull-slaying. Mithra is initially ‘an ancient Iranian deity of covenants, light, oaths, justice, the Sun, contracts, and friendship. In addition to being the divinity of contracts, Mithra is also a judicial figure, an all-seeing protector of Truth…’As the god of contract, Mithra is indeceivable, infallible, eternally watchful, and never-resting.’ [Wikipedia]

Tauroctony fresco from a Mithras cave

Mithras is always accompanied by a pair of torch-bearing attendants, the Dadophori, a pair of ‘mini Mithras’ resembling the Dioscuri (Gemini). One holds his torch upwards, the other downwards, interpreted as the rising and setting Sun (life and death), creating a triad with the central solar god at the height of his power (noon) in the middle. They may also have symbolized the equinoxes. The slaying of the bull has been interpreted as the procession of Spring Equinox from Taurus to Aries (ca 2000 BC).

V-S detail

Interestingly, if we zoom in on the Visconti-Sforza Justice card, we can see the solar knight is also situated between two luminaries or suns. [Corner ‘suns’ were often just decorative, for example in the Bolognese tradition, but that was more than a couple of centuries later, and as noted, the background of this card is an anomaly.] And while we’re on the subject, does the TdM Justice’s hair not resemble torch flames?

“Within the Christianised zodiac, Taurus the bull was seen as an image of Christ in his role as the incarnating god, sacrificed in the redemptive act. Having rulership over the throat and vocals, Taurus was used in the secret zodiacal symbolism of Christianity as a symbol of the incarnate word ‘the Logos.” [Fred Gettings, The Secret Zodiac: The Hidden Art in Mediaeval Astrology]

Taurus was the word descending into matter/flesh, Pisces the ascent of the spirit back to the heavens.

“Thus the death of the bull was the birth of life, and for this reason took its high place in the ceremony and art of the Mithraic cultus.” [ccel.org]

Lascaux Cave Bulls/Taurus constellation: ”Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

Some say that the Roman cult of Mithras, a ‘cult of the Sun that began as a personal  process in the darkness of a sacred cave’ was assimilated into Masonic traditions of the Middle Ages, or at least influenced them (he was born from a stone, after all). This purification ritual involved traversing 7 steps of his mystical staircase (possibly while on bended knee and blindfolded), corresponding to the 7 planetary spheres, in order to reach the Phrygian cap, a sword and a crown. Mithras, in the 8th sphere, represented cosmic order. 

Remnants of the olde religion?

Curiously, Ripa later includes the dog and snake in his emblem of ‘Inviolable Justice,’ to symbolize how friendship and hatred can both corrupt good judgement. 

Masonry’s knotted cord

The Cord that Binds and Measures

Lastly we come to the golden rope or chain around TdM Justice’s neck. There are a few possible meanings for it. The most obvious explanation is that it’s to gently remind would-be criminals with, lest they should end up swinging like Le Pendu. However…

The English word ‘noose’ comes from the Old French ‘no(u)s’, from the Latin word ‘nodus’, meaning knot. But ‘nous’ was also the Ancient Greek concept for the higher, divine intellect, the mind’s eye that is the God’s eye. According to Aristotle, nous is the intelligence ‘which apprehends fundamental truths (such as definitions, self-evident principles).’ 

‘Each intellectual virtue is a mental skill or habit by which the mind arrives at truth, affirming what is or denying what is not.’

[The cord connecting the two, Pisces fishes is called a ‘Nodus’, or ’Nodus Coelestis’, the Heavenly thread.]

Soprafino Justice with bleeding eye

Returning to the ‘Allegory of Good Government’, recall it is also the cord (or a portion of it) that binds Justice to Concordia.

There is an unseen cord that binds
The whole wide world together;
Through every human life it winds,
This one mysterious tether.
There are no separate lives; the chain
Too subtle for our seeing,
Unites us all upon the plane of universal being.

~ Small Talks on Freemasonry, Joseph Fort Newton, Masonic Service Association of the United States, 1928

If it’s the golden chain she wears round her neck (no reason it can’t represent both), it is probably the one by which Heaven and Earth are connected. To alchemists, this chain represented a series of transformations ‘from elemental chaos to quintessence’:

“Since all things follow one another in continuous succession, descending in order to the lowest, it will be found, by one who observes closely, that from the highest God to the lowest, all are bound together by mutual links, and the connection is nowhere broken. This is Homer’s golden chain, which he says God commanded to hang from heaven to earth.” – Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio.

Integrae Naturae Speculum, Artisque Imago (Mirror of the whole of nature and the image of art), created by Robert Fludd, 1617. [click to enlarge]
You can kind of see a resemblance with the Anima Mundi here to a large, mediating figure of Justice, situated between heaven and earth, overlapping the planetary spheres. In place of sword and scales are two sections of the chain. Although she embodies both solar/masc and lunar/fem, the ‘world soul’ (like any soul) is considered feminine, and of this we are assured by the second lunar crescent in her pubis. Note also that the ape (reminiscent of Thoth?) uses a divider/compass.

Jacobello del Fiore, Justice, part of triptych, 1421 (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice).

Finale (finally!)

Perhaps my favourite Justice painting is another very fine Italian Renaissance depiction, where her divine and civic forms meet:

“Justice is the primary virtue claimed by the Venetian state, and the lions allude to the justice and wisdom of Solomon. The female figure of Justice had even come to represent the personification of Venice herself. This identity is confirmed by the presence of Saint Michael in the left panel, minister of justice at the Last Judgment, who is shown in the act of unsheathing his sword to strike the final blow to the dragon beneath his feet and asks the enthroned Justice to “reward and punish according to merit and to commend the purged souls to the benign scales.

Jacobello, St. Michael

The Archangel Gabriel, bringer of peace, is depicted in the right panel, holding a lily in his left hand as he raises his right hand toward Justice in a gesture of benediction. Venetian legend professes that on the feast day of the Annunciation, when Christ was conceived for the spiritual salvation of humanity, God decreed the foundation of the city that was to offer political salvation to the Christian world following the fall of the pagan Roman Empire. In the allusive complexity of its self-representation Venice came to celebrate itself as a virgin city, never having been conquered, never violated. Jacobello’s figure thus acquires a complex persona, at once Justice, Venice, and the Virgin Mary.” [savevenice.org]

Jacobello, Gabriel

For a Tarot analogy, we could say she is at once Justice, the World and the Empress (and throw in Strength, too). As with many paintings of the time, it can also be interpreted in alchemical terms; Michael on Justice’s right, sword in his right hand, slays a black dragon, ‘fixing’ the volatile Mercury or breaking down prima materia, while a feminine Gabriel on Justice’s left wears a white cape and holds the white lily of purification in his/her left, the ‘white queen.’ The inside of his/her wings are even lined with peacock feathers.

All the colours of the alchemical stages are represented; black, white, [peacock], gold and red (see Michael’s wings, also). The complete and balanced Virtue wears a five-pointed crown (quintessence), the gold sun of wisdom and enlightenment on her chest (echoes of Athena’s aegis), and a red cape to match Gabriel’s white, signifying the union of opposites, integration of the soul, marriage of heaven and earth; the perfected work. ~rb

Jacobello del Fiore, Justice between the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, 1421 (full)

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The Bees Knees ~ The Lover of Tarot de Marseille

O Crown of Light, O Darkened One,
I never thought we’d meet.
You kiss my lips, and then it’s done:
I’m back on Boogie Street.

The Lover/L’Amoureux has typically been interpreted as Hercules (Herakles) at the Crossroads, or an emblematic representation of the choice between vice and virtue. Other theories abound – that the young man is choosing between an older and younger woman, or the older woman is bequeathing her daughter. It’s been debated, also, whether the word is singular or plural. [Answer: singular, although it can also be used as plural.] Here it most likely refers to the central character; ‘the loving one’, ‘the amorous one’, ‘the lover’. But the triad is also important.

While these explanations are adequate, if we want to know what lies beneath the surface, we must, as always, pay attention to the details in this version of the card, which are ‘hidden in plain sight.’

Visconti-Sforza Love ca 1450 and Charles VI Lovers ca 1475-1500.
Love (fragment) Cary Sheet, ca 1500.

First, let’s look at the Visconti-Sforza and Charles VI cards, which offer few, but relevant clues. The V-S depicts the actual people for whom the deck was commissioned, Bianca Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza, who were married in 1441 to unite the Visconti and Sforza families. This has nothing to do with the eventual TdM theme, except that it may have been inspired by Tristan and Isolde (very popular in Italy at the time), also likely the subject of the Cary fragment. In the legend, Tristan is delivering Isolde to a king to be married, but the two of them drink a love potion en route and tragic, ‘courtly love’, ensues.

Death of Tristan and Isolt, Rogelio de Egusquiza, 1910

In the Charles VI card, a pair of very determined cupids shoot at three pairs of courtly lovers below. Two of the men on either side clasp their hearts, while the one in the middle can’t contain his passion for his lady. That’s what it was all about – Eros had 0 to do with marriage.

The claw-footed Love, from Documenti d’Amore by Francesco da Barberino, ca 1315.

The Charles VI card recalls the imaginings of the early Renaissance poet and Giotto contemporary, Francesco da Barberino, who “deliberately inverted” love’s personification, emphasizing Cupid as the son of Mars and changed his image from “a personification of Divine Love to a personification of illicit Sensuality” by removing his blindfold.*
The connection to erotic love (Eros) and death is becoming established, and the card becomes less about marital love in the general sense. Much too dull for theatre, darling.

The Lovers, Anon. Tarot of Paris, ca 1650.

The Anonymous Tarot of Paris (ca 1650) gives us our first clue as to the French tradition. The amorous man holding in his arms a resigned, but not altogether unwilling woman might be modelled on Pluto and Persephone. The engraver has managed to convey much in her downward gaze, as if the man’s saying, ‘Come live with me, reign as my Underworld Queen!’ and she’s having an inner conflict, ‘Do I really want to go live down there…forever??’ Think of all the young women who must have felt this way through the centuries, marrying men they hardly knew, often far from home. The story of Bluebeard takes this very rational fear to its extreme. 

Winslow Homer, ‘What she sees there’ from Bluebeard.

In ancient Greco-Roman times, love was rarely, if ever, the basis for marriage. A bride would effectively ‘die’ to her own family, transferred as property from father to husband, and would from here on have to worship at the altar of his family ancestors. Because it would be insulting to her own ancestral gods if she abandoned them willingly, a ‘faux’ kidnapping a la Pluto and Persephone had to be enacted, which is where the tradition of ‘carrying the bride over the threshold’ comes from. She has to pretend it’s not her own choice, that she was stolen!

Pompeii fresco featuring the abduction of Persephone.

In actual fact, Persephone (‘bringer of destruction’, ‘bringer of death’, aka the ‘Iron Queen’) was already an Underworld ruler for a long time before the classical myth, and the TdM card is perhaps faithful to this. Before Persephone’s abduction and while she’s above ground, she is called ‘Kore’ (‘maiden’), and as part of the Underworld Goddess triad with Demeter and Hecate, she’s also the ‘maiden’ to mother and crone. Her priestesses were called ‘kores’ (masc. ‘kouros’) and it’s possible that initiation involved ritual marriage with one, ie, ‘marrying death’, so that later, ‘death’ in the form of a beautiful, young, underworld partner awaited the initiate when the time came to cross that threshold. Or, was she or he doomed to die with the deceased?
Nobody knows for sure.

Sculpture of a Kore

The connection to Persephone in Tarot of Paris becomes more honed and specific in the TdM card. Here, it is the man who some would assume is having to make a choice. He looks toward the woman wearing a crown of leaves or fronds, while his arms point toward the woman wearing a crown of flowers. The Pierre Madenié 1709 version makes it perfectly clear what kind: Narcissus, the flower Persephone was said to have been picking when she was snatched by Pluto. Further, if we look carefully at the halo around Eros above, in the Conver (type 2) versions, it is visibly skull-shaped. This can hardly be a printing mistake.

Pierre Madenié [type 2] 1709 (Yves Renaud) and orig. Jean Dodal [type 1] c 1701-15.
Not convinced? Alright, let’s turn to Dodal (type 1). It is difficult to make out the details of this somewhat ‘cubist’ Eros, but we if we examine closely, we see that his bow is also the handle of a jagged scythe or sickle (maybe a mix of both), which is an attribute of Demeter, as well as Kronos-Saturn, sixth planet-god from the Sun (ancient ‘end of the line’). So we can deduce that, in the esoteric sense of this card, the young man stands between Demeter and Persephone. He could be an initiate, who, after having undergone the ritual would have been referred to as one of the ‘olbioi’, meaning ‘blessed’ ‘blissful’ or ‘fortunate’ – ie, no longer fearing death. He looks kind of blissful…

Reconstructed fragment of ‘The Great Eleusinian Relief’ 27 BC-14 AD (MET) and sarcophagus detail from 2nd c (Louvre) depicting Triptolemus with Demeter and Persephone. [please click image for more details]
Central to the Eleusinian Mysteries was the hero Triptolemus, frequently depicted in the same setting, standing between Demeter and Persephone. He was the first initiate, who received from Demeter the knowledge of the grain; ie, the art of agriculture, the cycles of which also held the secrets of death and rebirth (metempsychosis). The Demeter cult was first and foremost an agricultural one.

(Syracuse in Italy, that is).

An ear of golden grain [barley, sometimes referred to as ‘corn’, though actual maize would not reach Europe until 1492] can be seen in the very first card. The Fool also has a similar shape dangling from his belt, though in this case I think it’s his passport – a leaf-shaped, gold, Orphic tablet. But anything gold, especially if flame-shaped, generally has to do with fire and the eternal, ever-resplendent spirit.

How to begin agrain…

The movie still below is from a modern, rock-n-roll kitsch interpretation. Recognize it?  Extra points if you are old enough!

[click pic for more details]
Honey, the liquid gold of nature’s tiny agriculturalists has been used to anoint and in libations since ancient times. (‘Christos’ means ‘anointed one’). This is, after all, the 6th card, and the hexagram of the apis has 6 sides. Astute TdM lovers will recall that the type 2 Queen of Money (Reyne de Denier) has a bee/beehive staff and her crown resembles a honey comb. This raises the question, are the ‘coins’ actually coins? Or are they phailes (libation dishes)? 

Conver (type 2) and Dodal (type 1) Queen of Coins (Are those pine cones on her crown?)
‘Spolia’ featuring ritual objects from temple of Demeter at Eleusis, repurposed on ‘Little Metropolis’ church in Athens: torches with poppies (baton), libation phaile (coin), incense burner (cup) and bucranium of sacrificed ox (sword). The crosses above are meant to ‘baptize’ and thereby neutralize the pagan imagery.

We should not be too rigid about naming precisely which mystery cult the cards might be pointing to, as the imagery seems to draw from several traditions as well as being mytho-alchemical. But the Eleusinian and Bacchic cults were inter-related, and one needn’t throw a stick far in ancient Greek myth to find some hero or heroine transgressing death in search of a loved one or sacred object and returning twice born and wiser or crazier for it. Dionysus, the Greek Osiris, was closely associated with alchemy, because his crop of expertise was the grape, and wine-making involved the essential fermentation process, from the blackened soil to the distillation of spirit. The long-haired Lover is certainly Dionysian, as his popularity with the ladies shows. To me it looks like they might be undressing him.

Isis and Nephthys preparing their beloved Osiris for his Underworld travels, Conver Lover card, fresco of an initiate from Tigran Tomb, Alexandria (note the Orphic eggs).

Worth a mention here is the similarity between the woman on the left of the Conver card with the Valet of Batons. Might this suggest a link to the Dionysian ritual phallus, or, to the club of Hercules, weighted/pulled toward the Underworld, while the young man looks ahead? Is he drawing up some chthonic energy, or, like the Juggler (prototype of the Valets), is he too young and inexperienced to recognize its ritual significance? Instead, maybe he’s using it to measure true, astronomical and visible horizons, with the intention of building a temple to his god…a Herculean task, surely.

Valet of Batons and detail from Lover card
Ruins of Dionysus temple at Delos, Greece

Hercules had to become an initiate in order to go kidnap Cerberus, the three headed hound of Hades, as his final labour. So if this card does relate to him, he’s likely not at the crossroads choosing between two women, but at the crossroads of the upper and lower realms, receiving initiation from two goddesses. In the next card, the newly-anointed, golden-crowned hero is in a liminal state, his lower half having descended into a square-shaped (matter/earth/Saturn) Chariot that is at least partly fixed to the ground (in type 2), resembling something funerary.

Don’t strain yourself thinking to hard, Herc!   Engraving by Giulio Romano, 16th c

Eros, son of Aphrodite, was said to be able to overpower all the heroes, for love really does wipe out fear of death (Thanatos) and the loss of a love is akin to dying. I’ll be entertaining/tackling this topic further, from a different horizon, in an upcoming post about the Sun card. Stay tuned!  ~rb

So come, my friends, be not afraid.
We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made;
In love we disappear.

***

Credits:

*Shelly MacLaren, “Or guarda tu …desta donna la forma”: Francesco da Barberino’s Poetic and Pictorial Invention (Dissertation).

Lyrics from ‘Boogie Street’ by Sharon Robertson/Leonard Cohen

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Uranus in Gemini – Trickster from Another Dimension?

On July 7, 2025, the planet Uranus will enter Gemini for approximately 7 years. Since Gemini is an air sign, this will be a noticeably different Uranian energy than has been expressed in Taurus. Although Uranus, the ‘higher octave’ of Mercury is said to be the planet of change, rebellion, discovery and so on, in Taurus, this was often felt more as rumbling urges and irritation. (We did see a significant amount of volcanic activity and earthquakes). Think of how mutable earth sign Virgo experiences ruler Mercury’s flighty, buzzing frequency in her earth body as stress. Now imagine Mercury on steroids (Uranus) stuck in in fixed earth (Taurus). So it’s going to be quite a release for Uranus in the Mercury-ruled, intellect-driven, mutable air sign of Gemini.

Traditionally, Saturn – who, like Mercury is a god of alchemy – rules the signs of Capricorn and Aquarius*, and sits in opposition to Cancer (Moon/Silver) and Leo (Sun/gold). The most dense and toxic on one side, the most pure and luminous on the other.

In medieval medical manuscripts, Capricorn was sometimes depicted as a unicorn. The unicorn’s horn was thought to purify any body of water it touched. Powdered, it was a supposed cure-all. Vikings would sell narwhal horns to Europeans, who valued them more than gold for their mythical properties.
A spiralling, calcified growth emerging from the third eye – what a very Saturnine embodiment of awareness, spiritual awakening …. or upgrade/refinement of the caduceus. Commerce and fast talking Vikings.

“We caught the beast called the Unicorn
That knows and loves a maiden best
And falls asleep upon her breast:
We took from underneath it’s horn
The splendid male carbuncle stone
Sparkling against the white skull bone.”

The unicorn is a  beloved mythical beast, but it’s also a monster, in the literal sense. And Uranus can, with its touch, create monsters – bombs, deformities, disasters, etc. Astrologers have been pointing out that the US, with its Uranus and Mars in Gemini, was involved in major wars (WW2 and Civil) during the last two Uranus returns. (Mind you, when has it not been at war, directly or by proxy?). ’47’ has Uranus in Gemini conjunct his Sun and North Node, conjunct the US’s Mars. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Uranus and Mars in Gemini were conjunct the midheaven (MC).

Uranus can be the ‘terror of the scientific sun’ but it can also be freaks, weirdoes, and, in Gemini, a very odd twin. Alice Cooper has Uranus in Gemini sextile Pluto/Saturn and opposite Jupiter/Moon (47 also Uranus opp Moon). He was able to profit from his goth, nightmarish ‘other self’, but like Jekyll and Hyde, he said it began to destroy him, requiring drugs and booze to keep the stage persona alive.

In a radio interview, Alice Cooper told of how, at the premier performance of “Welcome To My Nightmare”, he was greeted backstage by Groucho Marx, who shook his hand and congratulated him for bringing back Vaudeville. “He got it. He knew what we were up to,” said Cooper.

Happy Birthday Vincent Price! Watch the two Vincents (Price and Fournier) perform ‘The Black Widow’ here.

Mercury and Gemini have a special relationship with theatre and acting (taking on personas/fakery/camp, etc). So with higher-tech Uranus here, the whole issue of AI in the film industry will likely be amped up. Aquarius and Gemini have to do with ‘friends’ and already we see there’s a whole new trend of inventing chatbot AI friends and other relationships. But we could be talking something more along the lines of alternate/mirror universe, with Gemini being doubles. Or a hidden universe that is like a ‘vanishing twin‘ to ours.

Twin flames? Aurora consurgens, St. Gallen 15th century

Uranus in Gemini will make a trine to Pluto in Aquarius and sextile to Neptune and Saturn in Aries. So two air and two fire planets all in cahoots. This is a completely new, volatile, un-formed energy which these planets will now be giving form to or being formed by (or de-formed by, as the case may be). Major ‘upping of frequencies’ going on. Some will find it difficult to handle the new air/fire vibration, and we are already seeing evidence of this, with things like plane crashes (Pluto in Aquarius, but also a metaphor for how our brains are having to cope with increased ‘air traffic’), and this disturbing new trend of cars being driven into crowds of people. Yes, the transit hadn’t officially started, but the apprehension felt at the last critical degrees of the previous sign is enough. There will be adaption, eventually.

Another already visible manifestation of Pluto in Aquarius and Uranus in Gemini is of course crypt-o currency. Pluto is god of the dead and of riches beneath the earth. The amount of minerals/mining required for bitcoin is monstrous and it is why 47 is so keen to have Greenland and Canada. 47’s pimply-faced bazillionare crypto-bromancing dinner (yes, the Banana Duct Tape kid was there) was a prelude. His Gemini stellium slid right into the crypto like well-fitting shoes. Leo is polarity of Aquarius, though, so I don’t imagine gold will lose its value, no matter how many kitschy objets were made from melted down Fort Knox bull-lion. [Look to Ancient Egypt, in the Age of Taurus, as an example of how strongly the polarity sign comes into play (Scorpio). Now we’re at the beginning of the Aquarian Age, which squares Taurus-Scorpio, the two signs governing ‘resources.’]

The Uranus/Gemini combination is very intellect-driven and can even be ‘out-of-body’. In fact, we can expect angels and aliens, ‘friends’ from other realms. There is already much more opening of awareness and communication to the spirit realm, judging by all the YouTube videos. Mediums abound. Gemini, when not grounded (and Uranus is anything but grounded, rotating on its side like a wheel), can also attract unwelcome entities.

So look to where Gemini is in your own chart, this area is going to become lit up and Uranus will demand you up the frequency, upgrade the equipment, open your mind, think different, sky’s the limit. ~rb

Mortal and immortal Gemini twins.

*Personally I’m not completely convinced we should be handing off Uranus, Neptune and Pluto [‘the alchemists’] to individual signs, since they have such long transits and powerful, generational effects. Astrological Uranus is by definition less like the sky god and more like Prometheus, who stole fire and gave it to humans, causing Jupiter to chain him to a rock with an eagle pecking out his (continually regrown) liver every day. Stealing fire to give to humans sounds like something Aries would do! So I do acknowledge the ‘modern’ rulership, but am still informed by the ‘traditional’. (There’s my Uranus/Saturn opposition talking, heh).

* * * * * * *
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Divine Measure – Traversing the Star Card of Ancient Tarot

In Greek mythology, while transformation into a rock is usually a barren fate, a pattern emerges in which the heroines who were transformed into islands are lovers of the gods; just as islands, like cities, were usually personified as minor goddesses or heroes. [Wikipedia]

This is precisely what happened to Asteria [not to be confused with Astraea], Titan Goddess of falling stars, oneiromancy (divination by dreams) and astrology (by stars), and mother of Hecate. She transforms herself into the Island of Delos, where her sister Leto at last gave birth to the lunar Artemis and solar Apollo, after an exhaustive search for refuge. The usual suspects were to blame; Zeus for making Leto pregnant, then pursuing Asteria, and jealous Hera’s subsequent curse, that Leto not be able to find solid ground on which to give birth, forbidding all places on earth to accept her. Hera also kidnapped the goddess of childbirth to ensure that Leto’s labour would be ultra painful. Asteria (‘star’) defied Hera’s orders, but as she had not succumb to Zeus’ advances, Hera, though angry, did not punish her.

Artemis was an easy delivery, but Apollo took 9 days and nights to come out (luckily, Artemis was able to assist). There are a few variations on the myth, as is typical. Delos means ‘to manifest or reveal’. It had been a floating island, ’emerged’ for Leto by helpful Zeus (the least he could do since he can’t seem to keep his Tower in his robe). Either it was uninhabited or it was and the people didn’t want her giving birth there, so Leto gifted the island with 4 anchors to keep it stable, which pleased them. Are these ‘anchors’ the 4 Royal Stars (Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares, Fomalhaut)?

‘Cary Sheet’ Star, ca 1500

“Hail. O heaven-built isle [Delos], most lovely scion of the children of bright-haired Leto, O daughter of the sea, thou unmoved marvel of the spacious earth, by mortal men called Delos, but by the blessed gods of Olympos (Olympus) known as the far-seen star (astra) of the dark-blue earth . . . For aforetime, that isle was tossed on the waves by all manner of whirling winds; but, when Leto, the daughter of Koios (Coeus), in the frenzy of her imminent pangs of travail, set foot on her, then it was that four lofty pillars rose from the roots of earth, and on their capitals held up the rock with their adamantine bases. There it was that she gave birth to, and beheld, her blessed offspring.”  ~ Pindar, Processional Song on Delos (Greek lyric ca 5th B.C.)  [Theoi.com]

Ancient Greek coin (date?)

Both Delos and Delphi, site of Apollo’s famous oracle and omphalos (navel), share the root word ‘del’ with ‘delphini,’ which means dolphin in Greek. Dolphins are sacred to Apollo, Dionysus and Poseidon. The Cary sheet hints at location with a fish-tail shape in the shoreline. Dolphins were considered by mariners to be a very good omen indeed, guiding and protective. They are also known to protect whales giving birth. So saviour-like are dolphins, that in the 14th century, French heirs began calling themselves ‘dauphin.’ It is beyond shameful and utterly reprehensible how modern humans have abused these sacred beings (the marine mammals, not the French kings).

Louise of Savoy instructing her son, Dauphin Francis I, ca 1505

Apollo wore his golden hair long and his sacred number is 7, associated with the traditional planets, stringed lyre and the Pleaides (starry rain-makers).
The cards do not give us absolutes, but evoke in a mnemonic, riddling fashion, so don’t be too confused by the lack of breasts on the Cary water-bearer.

After her transformation into Delos, several stars, deeply moved by her tale, aligned themselves in her honor. This formation, known as an asterism, served as a protective shield and a tribute to the goddess. For sailors navigating the vast seas and stargazers looking up in wonder, this celestial pattern became a symbol of Asteria’s indomitable spirit. [Olympioi.com]

Greek jug (both sides), 3rd-2nd c BC

It’s obvious that the birthing waters have broken, which explains why the card is somewhat incorrectly interpreted as illustrating the zodiac sign of Aquarius. Aquarius signifies a similar idea (and the constellation once included the Southern Fish, with Royal Star Fomalhaut in its mouth) – albeit in the dead of Winter we are talking more about inward, spiritual rebirth, ultimately necessary for a more evolved, physical return (Saturn).
The androgynous figure pours one jug onto the earth and one into the water, as she will do in the classic Tarot de Marseille card. We get the sense of purification by libation – libation of feminine fluids – as well as the cyclical nature of water, aka life, connecting with her arms in a continuum. In alchemy the liquid purification of spirit is considered Lunar and feminine, inner.

A sea of blood and milk…
‘Eternitas’ 1640 emblemata, after Francesco da Barberino (early 14th c)

Now it’s also possible that her two pitchers contain waters of Mnemosyne and Lethe – some Orphic lamellae (gold tablets) instruct the deceased to only drink from Mnemosyne’s streams, not Lethe’s, in order to avoid another, terrestrial birth or an eternity in gloomy Hades:

“You will find a spring on the left of the halls of Hades, and beside it a white cypress growing. Do not even go near this spring. And you will find another, from the Lake of Memory, flowing forth with cold water. In front of it are guards. You must say, ‘I am the child of Ge and starry Ouranos; this you yourselves also know. I am dry with thirst and am perishing. Come, give me at once cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory.’ And they themselves will give you to drink from the divine spring, and then thereafter you will reign with the other heroes.” ~ from Petelia, 4-3 BC

Other sources seem to indicate we’re to drink a bit of each. Hmm.

Chosson TdM, 1736, feat. one of many misspellings

The little black bird, which could represent the soul or ‘Ba bird‘, in the background is also a mytho-alchemical clue, for the crow in alchemy is symbolic of Saturn and the blackening (the first stage of the work, now fading in the distance, but not entirely forgotten).
In another, Apollo myth, he sends his originally white bird to keep watch (spy) on his lover, Coronis (‘crow’).  Unfortunately for everyone involved, the bird reports she’s been cheating with a mortal. Seething, Apollo scorches the messenger for his efforts, then shoots his woman down. Naturally, he regrets it, tries to revive her, but it’s too late, because Greek tragedy. In the opener image kylix detail, we see the blackened crow or raven as Apollo’s bird of prophecy. Are bird and lover one and the same? Only the shadow knows.

Apollo kills Coronis, 1590 engraving by Hendrick Goltzius

During the alchemical opus, there is something called the ‘impregnation stage’ wherein:

The star rises to the surface and thus connects both the upper spiritual part of the vessel and the lower substance. The bird flies upwards, the soul of the process also seeks union with the spirit. The Impregnation is the turning point of this phase, and indeed it marks the point in the whole process where we are no longer dealing with mere material substances, but the seed of the spiritualization of substance has here been sown, and from now on we will see, through the many following stages, just how this seed grows, metamorphoses, and develops.  ~ Adam McLean, The Alchemy Website

The blackening of Apollo’s bird and the rising of the 7-pointed star

It’s been pointed out that in the Cary, there is an emphasis on 4 stars surrounding the main one, creating a starry quintessence, but problematic is the 5th ‘extra’ star in the figure’s right shoulder. In keeping with with the theme, however, this evokes the constellation of Orion, aka Osiris, with red star Betelgeuse placed thusly. Osiris was the god of death and regeneration par excellence, whose reappearance signified the annual rising of the Nile and the land becoming fertile again with birthing waters. (Hapi, who was male but had breasts, was the god of the actual flooding of the Nile, that became Aquarius).
Interestingly, one of the reasons Pythagoreans were superstitious about the number 17 was that Osiris was killed on the 17th day of the month of Athyr.

Eridanus, the cosmic River of Night, has a bright, fixed star at either end; in the north, Rigel, situated in the foot of Orion/Osiris, and in the south, Achernar, the ‘end of the river.’ The god-king has one foot in the water at the serpentine river’s mouth, as if being born out of it. (Article with more on this here).

Eridanus, John Bayer

If we count the number of little plants sprouting from the earth in the Cary card, they equal the number of small stars. As above, so below. Inner quintessence = outer/cosmic. This unification can only happen after the Tower – the structures we build around our minds from the outer, ego, etc – has been transformed. The star not only depicts ‘outer space’ but ‘inner space.’

Marriage stela of Tjanetiset feat. red and white Nut, ca. 825–712 BC (MET)

The ancient Egyptians saw earth as the mirror of the heavens. The sky goddess Nut is depicted, like Hapi of the Nile, holding two jugs that flow with the waters of creation/fertility.

Nut was the goddess of the sky and all heavenly bodies, a symbol of protecting the dead when they enter the afterlife. According to the Egyptians, during the day, the Egyptian decans would make their way across her body. Then, at dusk, they would be swallowed, pass through her belly during the night, and be reborn at dawn. She was often painted on the inside lid of the sarcophagus, protecting the deceased. The vaults of tombs were often painted dark blue with many stars as a representation of Nut. [Wikipedia]

Rosenwald sheet 15th c (National Gallery of Art)

In astrology the ‘big three’ of a natal (birth) chart are our Sun, Moon and Ascendant. The Sun indicates the time of year we’re born, energizing the present lifetime and our natural, outward expression of what we aspire to be this time around. The Moon shows time of the month (phase, day) and is indicative of the past and of our inner or nighttime realms – memory, dreams, soul lineage – what we bring with us, unconsciously. The Ascendant completes the picture with our precise moment of arrival/first breath. There is something very fated and acutely personal about this moment.

To the ancients, it was not so much the moment itself or even the rising sign, necessarily, but the star heralding or accompanying the Sun, as it rose on the day of birth (they didn’t have clocks) that was of prime importance. Stars on any angle or conjunct a luminary or planet are also significant, coming into play at different times during the course of a life. We could muse that this first star on the horizon is our navigational star, guiding us back to the ‘berth’.

Compass rose, France 1543 and sounding lead (for measuring depths), Marseille, 1st c

The TdM Star card is also interpreted as Venus, since she is symbolized with 8 points, but of course she can also have 5 (evening and morning star symbols). In the Tarocchi of ‘Mantegna’ print below, we find Venus in her river toilette (note the anagram, there), with her entourage of Eros and the Graces, looking suspiciously like the Star card figure. Meanwhile, in the unique, Leber-Rouen card, a witchy ‘Stella Maris’ looks like the wild twin of Botticelli’s serene goddess. (Might the cross/ankh around her neck have been an add-on?). 

‘Mantegna’ Venus and Leber-Roen Venusian, mid 15th c

Lodovico Lazzarelli, in his De Gentilium Deorum Imaginibus (trans. William O’Neal) described the first one:

Nude Venus swims forth from the midst of the natal wave of the sea, and the fair one holds a sea-shell in her right hand. For she divests lovers from extraordinary cares and affairs. Nude Venus calls nude bodies to herself Indeed the sea shell engages itself in sexual union within its own body. Passionate love is ship-wrecked by a sea of troubles.

The victor stands with his quiver of arrows, and he is swift on his wings. The nude boy Cupid stands with eyes covered. At one time he hurls down golden arrowheads from his bow and at another time lead ones, and each strikes the hearts of men with a different wound. The lead-tipped arrows drive love away but the golden-tipped bring it about. As hatred is strong so also love is dear. The nude boy loves the defenseless. Love with eyes covered does not know at whom he aims. He drags his prisoners through hard places. And those ignorant of every road wander off through lonely places The boy calls young men to his camp. Love marks out their unstable souls for his swift wings. He causes wounds hastened along by his quivers.

The Idalian nymphs, the fair and pleasing crowd of three, stand together with their bodies unclothed. They hold their arms together bound by interchanging bonds as often interchanging Love ties the bonds. The first holds the light of her countenance and her eyes toward us. The rest of her group sees us in her gentle eyes. First, Pasithea enraptures us in her gentle fires. Aglaia revives those taken in with her flattery. Euphrosyne entangles them in fetters and strong chains, and she does not permit her captives to go back. Then, Venus, pitying those mangled in such sorrows encourages them with her sweet enticements and flattery. Poets have treated these many things from the star of Venus which lovingly presides over the triple place of heaven. This constellation stands in the highest part of heaven with a triple name. Of course, it has always been said to be Venus.

Sounds a bit like alchemy-speak, no? Lead and gold-tipped arrows? I’m still pondering the arrangement of her four doves. Anyone?

In the Leber-Rouen card, our Stella Maris is of course Venus-Fortuna, for she holds in one hand a large arrow-cum-spindle, its quiver wound (with hair?). In the other, she grasps a lock of her windswept tresses. It bears a similarity to Lazzarelli’s description – she lures or navigates ships through shifting weather in the same, fated manner as Cupid sends forth his arrows.

Dame Fortune wielding a large arrow, French, 1403

Sailors were a superstitious lot. They believed women, being ‘wetter’ (ie, more lunar) than men had a special power over the sea. Medical writers like Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (77 AD) declared, “For, in the first place, hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightening even, will be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon her. The same, too, with all kinds of tempestuous weather; and out at sea, a storm may be lulled by a woman uncovering her body.”
Hence ancient goddesses, Isis in particular, but also the Stella Maris (‘Star of the Sea’, which could be Venus or any navigational star) became protector of ships at sea, and female figureheads were often bare-breasted.

The power of the jugs

Now, obviously I’ve focused only on the more cryptic Star cards, as mystery is what I find interesting, but there are just a few more worth an honourable mention, before wrapping up this essay. Their imagery, at first, may not seem to relate to our running theme, but let’s take a closer look…

Tarot of Paris early 1600s, Jacques Vieville 1650, ‘Mantegna Tarocchi’ Geometria 1460s

The third image is not a Star card but depicts one of the Liberal Arts inspiring these learned men: Geometry (‘to measure the earth’). Of all the Liberal Arts personified in the ‘Mantegna’, she is the only one floating in the sky above.
In the first card, the man sits at a drafting or reading table with books on it and holds the compass to his head, in thought. It’s hard to say whether he’s aware of the Star or whether it’s symbolic only, but divine, mathematical inspiration is being transmitted. I like to think of him as either an astrologer or an explorer creating maps.

Checkered floor of the alchemy lab

In the second card, the central Star and four little stars form a ‘quintessential’ arrangement. An astronomer/astrologer or mason (or alchemist) sits in contemplation or meditation before a cathedral-like building that has a clock or rose window in its bell tower. The division of the cosmos has now become a precision science, thanks to the sacred gadget. He appears to be measuring the heavens, but as in the Paris card, the compass almost seems to be a conduit and, held this way, it resembles the numeral V (5). The ground has a checkered pattern typical of masonry tiles and alchemists’ labs, but also resembling meridian lines of the earthly plain. Vieville or whoever created the the images for this deck was likely of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. It’s just barely possible find a rose hidden under that red circle behind the figure’s head.

Like the Cary, in Vieville we find a 5th small star, this time in the clock/window face, connecting the above and the below. The Vieville Star card with its theme of enlightenment is in contrast to his Moon card, wherein an old woman sits spinning yard (and fate) under a tree, in the realm of night.

Geometry’s sacred tool.

The compass (actually called a divider) was specifically created in order to measure the heavens (hence time), while the much older square was used for earthly structures. These were the two essential tools of the stone masons and still form the well-known, Freemason logo. Because it allowed for the concept of eternity/divinity (the monad) to be perfectly drawn, the compass became a symbol of man’s spirituality and higher nature.

“It is said that the compasses’ two points represent spirit and matter, life and form; from these all the complexities of the fleeting, ever-changing mantle of the one-life are produced within the circle, self-imposed by the Being who has decreed the bounds of His Universe or His System.” ~ Harold Bayley, The Lost Language of Symbolism

Thus in these two variations, another aspect of the Star is emphasized: human intellect (Mercury/Aquarius) or indeed wisdom as the vehicle for uniting Heaven and Earth.

God/Christ the Geometer creating the world soul, 13th c

The sacred tool bears a notable resemblance to a stork or crane, birds associated with birth/immortality (like crow and raven, they are interchangeable, symbolically). We all know the greeting card baby delivery propaganda, but it was once the belief in Ancient Greece that they actually stole infants, like Harpies. [Fun fact: vultures evolved from storks.] Hera’s wrath again – this time at some haughty Pygmy queen who’d just given birth to a son:

The other Pygmies brought many gifts for the newborn infant, but Hera, enraged that Gerana would not worship her, elongated her neck and turned her into a crane. Wishing to keep close to her child, Gerana as a crane would fly from roof to roof, but the people armed themselves and chased her away, and thus arose the rivalry between the Pygmies and cranes. [Wikipedia]

“I’m crushing your head!”

Nevertheless, the nesting of cranes/storks on one’s rooftop is generally considered auspicious. People sometimes placed old cartwheels on the roof, to help initiate nesting. (Interesting we have named the mechanical monsters of construction after them, due to the resemblance).
Indeed,  if we zoom in on the ‘Mantegna’ Geometria print, we find one of these very birds hunting in the river below….and it has caught a snake!

Master of the e-series, Ferrara, 1460s (MET)

From compass to compass, star to star, this concludes our sojourn of the 17th Triumph. Thank you for reading. To explore more articles on the Tarot de Marseille, simply type ‘TdM’ into the search, or scroll the Home page, where I list recent articles. ~rb

Related, excellent talk,  if you wish to go deeper:
How the Alchemists Meditated by alchemist Dennis William Hauck

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Strange Fish – Reflecting On the Hanged Man/Le Pendu of Tarot de Marseille

The Hanged Man/Le Pendu

The Hanged Man/Le Pendu is surely among the most disturbing and evocative of the Tarot triumphs. He’s undergoing torture, but seems unwilling to reveal anything about his inner experience (I almost titled this piece, “We have ways of making you talk,” but this is now the title of some TV series). As it turns out he’s got a LOT to communicate to those who have crossed the threshold (XI) of Tarot’s ‘greater mysteries.’ Think of him as the babbling head of Orpheus. So let’s dive in, head first and dissect this frightful, human pendu-lum from toe to head; his mytho-alchemy, number symbolism, religious/cult connotations and more!

Charles VI Tarot (15th c) Note the 3 and 4 pegs beside his bags.


HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Formerly called ‘The Traitor,’ the figure initially held a sack in each hand, presumably containing money he either stole or acquired in a dubious exchange (such as bribery). In the Charles VI card (above), he almost looks like he ran into a trap, baited with the dough. The image is thought to be modelled on pittura infamante (‘shame portraits’) of the Italian Renaissance – horrifically, this punishment was actually inflicted on criminals and Jews. We could also imagine these ‘hermetically sealed’ bags as containing something secret (like the Fool’s bindle) that he won’t release, even under duress – alembics, if you will. In some Minchiate decks (cousin of Tarot), he is simply holding two roundels and is cleaned up to like an acrobat/jongleur.

Although he wasn’t hung thusly, it is also perhaps a reference to Judas Escariot, who was paid 30 pieces of silver for betraying Jesus to the Romans. Silver is the Moon’s metal, gold is the Sun’s, and Christ, the other twin, is characterized as solar/gold – similar in the nocturnal/diurnal sense to Dionysus and Apollo, who both ‘possess’ Orpheus at different times.

Here is a fantastic article explaining Orphism , by Judith Eleanor Bernstock, APE, History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University

Visconti Sforza 16th c, Jacques Vieville 17th c, Nicholas Conver TdM 18th c

In the Visconti Sforza card (left, above), the calm, golden-haired rendition, similar to our TdM figure emerges. We see no money bags (did he even commit a crime?) and his hands are now hidden (tied?) behind his back. If we zoom in, we can see red ‘flames’, ie, life force, dripping from his clothing. Obviously fire doesn’t drip, blood does, but it’s shaped like flames, similar to the red plume escaping from the Charles VI figure’s leg. These flaming blood drips are transferred to the cut branches of his gibbet in TdM.

Beneath his head, just touching his hair is a pool of blue water – again, we are reminded of the head of Orpheus, thrown into the River Hebron, by the maenads. His leggings are green, the colour of new life, yet to ripen, and his very prominent gibbet now resembles a golden doorway. Because of how his leggings seem to be ‘chomping’ him, this card always reminds me of the alchemical Green Lion devouring the Sun image (below), said to represent vitriol (sulphuric acid) dissolving gold.

V.I.T.R.I.O.L. or V.I.T.R.I.O.L.U.M.  (‘visita interiora terrae, rectificandoque, invenies occultum lapidem’, or ‘visit the interior of the earth, and purifying it, you will find the hidden stone.’ This is another way of saying, ‘look within yourself for the truth’). This phrase must be present in all Masonic chambers of reflection directly facing the candidate. 

Visonti-Sforza hanged Man and Alchemical Green Lion devouring the Sun

In the Vieville version (middle) the number is printed/situated so that we must turn him ‘right-side up’ to read it correctly, thus also bringing the Lunar and Solar mounds either side of his large-ish head into view. Note the Solar mound also contains the planetary spheres. His fingers seem to sprout like angelic wings from his shoulders, symbolic of Mercury elevating the spirit to the realm of the gods (we see this detail in Noblet, Dodal, and Chausson, also). As with the Marseille card, his gibbet now shows 6 cut branches on each side, only here the middle piece upon which he lands or dances has 4.

The Hanged Man dangles by his foot, not unlike a bunch of grapes clinging to a vine, and his wild hair in the TdM version does seem to evoke Dionysus. (Christ purportedly claimed to be ‘the true vine’, unlike that Pagan weirdo).

Grape flavoured Gods: The Wine Press by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope and Pompeii fresco Dionysus (both details)


ALCHEMICAL SCAPEGOAT

Ascending while or following descent is often expressed in myth by the ordeal of a [solar] god – Odin obviously comes to mind in relation to this card, but so do a few other resurrected or ‘twice-born’ gods. The Bacchic-Orphic mysteries also elude to a kind of simultaneous ascent-descent described as ‘rushing into milk’ (‘a bull, you rushed into milk’) or ‘falling into milk’ (‘a kid, I fell into milk’), found on a few of the gold tablets buried with initiates.

Alma Nungarrayi Granites, Seven Sisters MilkyWay Dreaming

Too involved to go into here (please check out the Orphic link posted above the three Pendu cards, if you want to know more), but ‘milk’ is thought to refer to the Milky Way and/or Paradise. Initiates would descend to the Underworld after death, where they were to tell the guardians they are ‘a child of the starry heavens, as you yourselves know,’ have been purified and wish to now return to their rightful place in the stars with their family of gods and heroes.

The Vieville card seems to elude to this concept, with its addition of heavenly spheres. He’s done or doing time here in human form, but will return. You decide which deity.

Ascend and descend: Franchises Gaffurius, Practica Musicae frontspiece, 1496

Aside: I asked musician friends for an example of ascending and descending notes being played/sung simultaneously, in order to possibly better comprehend the card on an emotional level, and was directed to JS Bach’s Chorale Harmonizations. These are just snippets, but have a listen.

In the classic Conver ‘type II’ version (right, above, next to Vieville), the mounds are just slightly differentiated and there is only one cut branch in the middle bough which has been reinterpreted as a little spoon, making 13.

For stirring up? Or making libations of wine on sacrificial victims?

Addendum: I only recently noticed in the Charles Cheminade deck (middle detail, above), one of the oldest existing type 1 TdM examples, the rope our Pendu hangs by is shaped like a spoon, so it must be a reference to the Fool and the ‘ultimate transformation’ process at hand. 

His mane is firey like the Sun and his blue leggings are watery, so either things are upside down or the Sun has essentially sunk. A fallen angel? Or a drowned person with hair flowing in the water?

The Death of Orpheus by Jean Delville 1893

In alchemy, oftentimes what is meant by fire is sulphur and by water, mercury. These are the two prime materials or principals which, along with salt were the three ‘heavenly substances,’ or tria prima – philosophical elements, which, combined with the four classical elements, were thought to be the basis of everything. (3 + 4 pegs in Charles VI card, Empress + Emperor). It’s a bit confusing, because philosophical Mercury is spirit, even though it’s equated with water, and sulphur is soul, although it is fiery. Salt is the physical body. Think of the salt in an hourglass, Le Pendu being like a human version.

XII Le Pendu/The Hanged Man is the middle ‘3’ card (1+2=3);  the first being III The Empress (3) and third being XXI The World (2+1=3). Previously, I speculated that The Empress represents the beginning of ‘the work’ and the alembic itself. (All the ‘3’ placement cards – III, VI, VIIII, XII, XV, XVIII, XXI – have this ‘combining’ theme).

‘From Me Life’ from a 1717 treatise

In this wonderful illustration, God/Yahweh shines above the slogan A ME VITA (‘from me life’). Messenger/psychopomp Mercury floats just beneath, in spiritual/philosophical form, delivering the life force with his caduceus (pointing it heads downward), waking and overseeing the transformation of the vulgar metals below – each corresponding to a planet/luminary.  (On the far left is his own metal ore). The solar and lunar trees have 7 ‘fruits’ in each (a set of parents for every metal?). The space between them forms an alembic shape. From each metal mountain, a stream leads to the fire in an egg-shaped, earthy furnace (watery and fiery purification). In the flames is an orb containing two opposite triangles of water and fire together in perfect union, with a monad (gold/divinity/totality, etc) in the middle. 

Compare with Le Pendu, hanging between solar and lunar trees (best example being the Vieville), his firey hair ‘becoming gold’ in a bizarre, purification torture ritual. He ascends as he descends, like two triangles meeting.

Payen (type I) Empress and Emperor cards-early 18th c

The two imperial eagles are akin to the two triangles, yet to meet, eagle being emblematic of ‘the work’ and the process of transformation [Scorpio] that is yet to occur. 3 x 4 = 12.  ‘Lovers don’t meet/they are in each other all along.’ [Rumi].

Article about European heraldic and hermetic emblems.

Vieville Temperance (c 1650) and Flamel Mercury (c 1330)

It is Mercury’s passive feminine divine nature, that allows the alchemist to transform one’s life and live more in harmony with the laws of nature. Mercury to the alchemist of today, is a symbol of the sexual waters of creation and the spinal fluid, that brings the carnal desires into submission of the divine mind. Once the alchemist understands the principles of Mercury (mind) and finds balance between its feminine passive force, and sulfur’s (soul) active masculine force, within his or her salt (fixed matter/body), he or she will become the philosopher’s stone, able to turn lead into gold at will.   ~  The Wandering Alchemist

Watery Hanged Man from Dali Tarot


TOE-DIP INTO THE OCCULT

The Dali Hanged Man (above) is based on the Waite-Smith Tarot, but gives him the Hebrew letter lamed, in accordance with the French occult school, even though the Golden Dawn assigned mem to this card. Mem means ‘water’ and has to do with (self) reflection.
There are at least five different arrangements of Hebrew letters to Tarot triumphs, which to me makes the whole concept a bit wobbly-legged. Based on the accommodating nature of TdM and what I have read so far on the Hebrew letters, if there is anything to see here, it is likely much more fluid and nuanced than simply ‘this card = that letter.’

Nevertheless, to my limited understanding, the Golden Dawn (and Crowley) choice of mem rather than lamed for the Hanged Man is kind of fitting, considering the wateriness, although in terms of self-reflection, it also works with the Unnamed/Death card.

‘Know Thyself’ Roman mosaic, 1st c AD

Most of these schools agree that The Empress = gimmel, the third letter of the Aleph-bet. Although gimmel is never assigned to XII or XXI, it bears a phonetic similarity the word ‘gibbet’ (13th c French). The earliest pictograph for gimmel was a foot. Here are some meanings associated with the letter gimmel. Does it describe the Empress?

– Foot, Pride, Camel 
– Lift up (above god = pride)
– The benefactor or the giver of charity; ‘A rich person running to give charity to a poor person.’
– ‘According to Kabbalah, the design of the gimmel is com­posed of two letters. The first is a vav, represents a person who stands upright. To the person’s left side is a yud, which signifies both the foot and the act of giving.’
– ‘He descended to die for us, he ascends to resurrect us. He is Jacob’s Ladder.’

That last one immediately reminded me of  Philippe Camoin’s theory. Jacob’s Ladder was the original ‘Stairway to Heaven’, a hypothetical set of steps by which angels (and thereby souls) ascend and descend.

Philippe Camoin’s ladder insight

The ladder is also a Hermetic symbol of initiation into esoteric wisdom, via exoteric knowledge, the first step. This fits with the position of the card, directly following XI, the threshold of the ‘greater mysteries,’ and X, wherein a small portion of of a ladder (two rungs) forms the base of the Wheel. Camoin also points out a little ladder in the Fool’s bindle.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, How They Met Themselves (1851-60)


THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

Esoteric (from Greek ‘within’) is a kind of knowledge that is only realized by ‘meeting it half-way.’ This is different from occult (from a Latin word meaning ‘hidden’), which suggests something outwardly revealed. The difference is subtle, and the two words are often used interchangeably (pet peeve!), but I think the TdM Hanged Man/Pendu exemplifies the esoteric. Each will come to know him on their own, personal terms, by their own projections and reflections.

Since ancient times, mirrors of some material or other have served the function of water (reflecting self/lunar) and fire (reflecting sun/solar). An example of the latter is the concave mirror with which the solar, Olympic flame was lit.
Bacchic-Orphic mystery initiation was thought to involve a simulated death experience wherein one essentially ‘met themselves’. This transformative and purifying ritual, of which little is actually known, was to prepare initiates for the real afterlife ordeal. The fresco detail below depicts the use of reflection in a metal bowl (spiked wine all drank), combined with the comedic death mask. It could be actual or a metaphor.
Consider also how the TdM Pendu’s face also bears a resemblance to the snake-haired gorgoneion – the mask concealing the greatest mystery of all – and how the six, ‘bloody’ branch cuts on each side evoke Medusa’s severed jugular veins; one that flowed with the elixir of rebirth, the other, of death. The Hanged Man hovers in the threshold between the two.

A scary revelation, Villa of Mysteries, Pompeii

Excerpt snagged from an alchemy group thread:

“The purpose of the mirror was not to allow a person to contemplate himself physically, because scarcely was the mirror put down, when the person lost memory of his own image. The Mirror represents the Divine Spirit. When the soul sees itself in it, it observes the shameful things in itself and rejects them. … Once purified, it imitates and takes as model the Holy Ghost; it becomes spirit itself; calm possesses it and it turns continuously to this superior state in which it knows (the divine] and is known [by it]. Then having become without shadow, it divests itself of the chains that are its own and those it has in common with the body. And what is the word of the philosophers? Know thyself.  –  from Julius Evola’s interpretation of ‘La Chimie au Moyen Age’ and has been translated into English by E. E. Rehmus

The Hanged Man may not appear to be suffering in physical pain for the simple reason that he isn’t undergoing any or it’s not really the point of this exercise. Rather, the appearance of an unbearable situation is for those of us on the outside to see, that we might grasp the nature of his/our inner process.
Always, the first truth revealed in darkness is…the darkest one; the face of that which we are ashamed or afraid of, hidden from or kept hidden from view, like whatever Le Pendu hides behind his back, while staring squarely at us. Always, the first stage in an alchemical opus is ‘the blackening.’

Uh oh…

Possibly the equal Sun and Moon of Vieville indicate an eclipse, ie, a temporary but significant darkening. Only after the shadow is brought into the light of our awareness can the light of the divine self be freely revealed as the complete being (ie, the ‘philosopher’s stone’) in the mandorla/vesica piscis of the World card. The shape is yonic as well as an opened eye; it represents rebirth through renewed vision, an awakening or ‘apocalypse’ which literally means ‘lifting of the veil’. Talk about words that become twisted beyond recognition!

Who hasn’t seen the reflection of their worst and best selves in the eyes of another, or God in the eyes of a beloved or a newborn? The ‘enlightened’ being reflects back to everyone their own, divine nature. 12 is 21, in the mirror.

Pierre Madenie World card 1709 and Leonhardt Thurneisser’s Anima Mercury 1570


SACRIFICIAL TO SACRED

Is this the ‘religious experience’ our Hanged Man, traitor to his divine ‘Christ’ self, has yet to experience? In making a sacrifice of his ‘sins’ or lesser being, the gods receive them as sacred gifts. Indeed, it was common practice to tear bits of clothing (or even body parts) from the sacrificed person, now magically imbued. The satyr Marsyas, while being flayed for his hubris at Apollo’s command, cries, ‘Why do you tear me from myself?!’  It’s to reveal the Apollonian within [Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance].

Some literally do put themselves through ordeals and physical extremes in the name of ritual purification or sacrifice, similar to cooking/torturing the stone. Others, in the name of martyrdom. Jupiter is the traditional ruler of Pisces, 12th (last) sign of the zodiac, associated with self-sacrifice, self-undoing, martyrdom, and the whole Piscean Age we are currently birthing out of, into Aquarius.

Shiva devotee doing his daily practice. The Netherlands, 1727-1738

“The festival at which the king of Calicut staked his crown and his life on the issue of battle was known as the “Great Sacrifice.” It fell every twelfth year, when the planet Jupiter was in retrograde motion in the sign of the Crab, and it lasted twenty-eight days, culminating at the time of the eighth lunar asterism in the month of Makaram. As the date of the festival was determined by the position of Jupiter in the sky, and the interval between two festivals was twelve years, which is roughly Jupiter’s period of revolution round the sun, we may conjecture that the splendid planet was supposed to be in a special sense the king’s star and to rule his destiny, the period of its revolution in heaven corresponding to the period of his reign on earth.”
– ‘The Golden Bough’, by James George Frazer (on the Killing of Divine Kings)

“At the end of their reigns, some Irish Kings were sacrificed or slain by having their palaces burned about them while they were either stabbed or drowned in a butt of wine or beer. That is to say, they were sacrificed by the two chief elements controlled by the druids, Fire and Water, the sacrificial draught and the funeral pyre. Their fate was perhaps ritual purification before natural death.” – The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrandt, trans. John Buchanan Brown 

God-King Kurtz’s bedtime stories in ‘Apocalypse Now’

Since the Solar cycle is a mini Jupiter cycle (12 months vs 12 years), the Sun is Jupiter’s (God’s) son, planetarily speaking. At the end of his 12 year reign, the king would have to die, preferably by suicide. Similarly, the 13th Lunar month in a Solar year ‘kills’ the Sun. “He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!”
Frazer suggests that in some places, this led to the practice of a false king – a substitute victim. Robert Graves writes about similar in Ancient Greece in ‘The Greek Myths,’ and an alternate Gospel from the late Middle Ages declares Christ himself had such a substitute, namely Judas.

Moon and Sun trees (detail), Rosarium Philosophorum, 19th c

The Hanged Man might be seeing his reflection upside down in water, outer and inner worlds reflecting each other, so that 13 branch cuts doubled become 26, the number of YHVH (Yahweh, aka God, Jupiter, Odin, etc). We too might be seeing only a reflection, or someone beneath the water. He does appear bloated, like a drowned body (or perhaps holding his breath). Yet, this is where life begins – in water, in utero, in a bath of mercury…

Liquid Mercury mirror telescope [NASA pic]

TO CONCLUDE

In its metal form, the surface of ‘quicksilver’ or ‘water-silver’ (Greek hydrargyros) is essentially a mirror. Mercury never shows its own face, only reflections – masks, as it were. Another fact is that our eyes see everything upside down, our brain turns what we see right side up. Hanging upside down for long periods of time will actually result in reversing this!

The Hanged Man/Le Pendu reveals that there are many different perspectives from which we can view things (Tarot, for one) and sometimes a new outlook can change the course of our lives. When turned ‘right-side up’, as many have noted, he appears to be doing the maenad jig, like the Hermetic-Bacchic-Orphic-Christ-Androgyne in the mandorla, thereby assuring us it’s all necessary, that we all turn upside down in water before undergoing birth trauma and finally re-emerging as a complete being in a state of grace. But at this point, 21 is still a long way off. The ‘dark night of the soul’ has only just begun. ~rb


poem b Efrem K. Weitzman, student at Cooper Union, 1943
(courtesy of Bill Wolf)

 

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A Book by it’s Cover – ‘New’ Insight on The Popess of Tarot de Marseille

Prudence/Wisdom, 17th c needlework book cover, British (Met Museum, NY)

Theory has it that the 4th Cardinal Virtue, Prudence, is ‘missing’ from Tarot de Marseille. Many have tried to figure out which, if any, of the other trumps could possibly be her (Star, Popess, Hanged Man, Hermit and World have been proposed). My own speculation is that, if she is indeed present and hiding, a conglomerate of Popess and Pope could share the role of Prudence, on account of the Janus face, as well as making sense numerically – each Virtue falls into the ‘2’ placement, as do the Pope and Popess. Prudence was said to be the ‘mother of all Virtues’, without which one could not master the others. However, the World card does suggest wisdom attained (the Stone), as opposed to wisdom being received or sought.

Janus-faced Prudence with serpent and book, ca 1480-1520

In a previous article, ‘Disrobing the Papal Couple – Tarot de Marseille’s Pope and Popess,‘ I used an image (sculpture) of a Janus-faced Prudence as the opener. But because I’m more attracted to exploring the cryptic, esoteric principals at work in TdM, and the Cardinal Virtue identities of Justice, Strength and Temperance are exoteric, I didn’t venture down that road. There’s enough existing literature on this. Instead, I explored the Popess as an initiator, oracle and portal to the mysteries, noting that her book was wide open because her ‘greater’ mystery was hidden inside. Also that the strap going across her chest went from the book’s spine to her heart, suggesting a pathway of ascent.

BUT there was one thing I had neglected to notice, another piece of the puzzle. It just amazes me how Tarot de Marseille keeps offering up new bits n pieces, like treasures washing up on the beach. Maybe I’m late to the game, but I’ve never encountered mention of it anywhere, so, for what it’s worth…

Allegory of Alchemy, Notre Dame Cathedral (central portal) Paris, 1220

Above is a relief from the gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. It’s entitled ‘Allegory of Alchemy’ but has also been called ‘Philosophia’ or ‘Sophia Wisdom’. (The two aren’t mutually exclusive, to alchemists). The important detail is that the figure is holding two books; one is held open, symbolizing the exoteric, the other is hidden behind, closed, symbolizing the esoteric. The 9-runged ladder – the scala philosophorum – is an alchemical emblem of the mystical ascension “that raises man through the transformation towards the Divine and the understanding of art.”  In his definitive book, The Mystery of the Cathedrals, Fulcanelli describes it as “glyph of the patience the faithful must possess in the course of the nine successive operations of the hermetic labour.”  In other words, the hidden book’s content – esoteric knowledge – is revealed only by way of ascension.

Now, please look tres carefully at these ‘type 2’ versions of the TdM Popess, below. Do you see it?

Three Conver versions, ca 1760

…How about in these ones?

Burdell 1751, Madenié 1709, Héri 1718.

That’s right…TWO BOOKS. One open on top, the other closed, hidden behind/under it.

The serpent held by Prudence is said to represent Wisdom (‘be ye wise as serpents’), but when she also holds a book, the serpent might represent esoteric wisdom in particular, ie, mysteries. “Look like th’ innocent flower but be the serpent under’t” ?  (MacBeth is rife with alchemical symbolism, read about that here). The Popess, by her number is the first expression of duality. Thus, she is the gateway to and source of two wisdom paths; outer and inner, solar and lunar. On one level, she represents the orthodox teachings of the faith (church) and/or (if you like) the Cardinal Virtue Prudence/classical Wisdom. Simultaneously, on another level, Gnostic Wisdom and/or secret knowledge, aka ‘for initiates’.

The Juggler laid out the tools and the Popess provides the instruction manuals, two ways of understanding the Tarot de Marseille. But perhaps it is first necessary, as with the ‘lesser mysteries’, to start with the book that is open, before venturing  into the ‘greater mysteries,’ which ultimately lie within.  ~rb

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– Ladder quote from ‘Isis in Paris: Notes on the hermetic Symbolism of Notre Dame Cathedral’, Axis Mundi
– Full text of Fulcanelli’s Mystery of the Cathedrals ( English translation).
– Audio of same, for those who like to be read to.
– Great image of the  alchemical ladder in this scholarly paper on alchemy in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar’.
– Another site detailing the alchemical symbolism at Notre Dame.

Here’s another example of Notre Dame’s Hermetic/alchemical content.
These  figures represent the different stages of the work. 

Alchemical reliefs on Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris

 

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The Empress, the Alembic and the Secret Fire

From joy springs all creation, by joy it is sustained,
towards joy it proceeds, and to joy it returns. – Mundaka Upanishad

Tarot de Marseille is a funny creature. Just when you think you’ve ‘figured it all out’, like a chimera it changes into something else. Fortunately I en-joy a mystery and seeking that which has no end. If I’ve learned one thing from TdM, it’s that the same pattern exists in whatever particular wisdom path you choose to follow. “All roads lead to Alexandria.” (wink)
The enigma is perhaps most apparent in the triad sequence, beginning with the Empress. To re-cap TdM’s inherent principal:

One becomes two, two becomes three and
out of three comes the one as the fourth.

Each 3 place card completes a triad from which the next cycle of three will be born, with 21 also completing the entire 3 x 7 cycle. Unlike the 1s with their solar crowns (monadic) and 2s with their lunar vessels (dyadic), there’s no  obvious, recurring object in every 3 place card (triadic), other than a predominance of wateriness (and darkness, in the case of 9, 12, 15 and 18). The Mercurial spirit of creation requires a container – a body of some kind – for transformation to take place, AND it is also that container, like caterpillar and pupa. They are not separate, but form each other. The 3 place cards allude to this secret, inner and outer process. Magic is afoot, is all we really know.
[Please click on any images to enlarge]

3 place cards, Camoin-Jodorowsky TdM

3
Let’s look at the three cards in the 3 place with the numeric sum of 3. The first, The Empress (3) shows us what we need to know. Atop her sceptre is the globus cruciger or sovereign’s orb – nothing unusual about that….except maybe the size? In reality, a globus this big would be hand held, with a smaller one atop the accompanying sceptre. Masculine sceptre and feminine orb (and the 4 and 3 of the orb’s parts) are being combined, and we can see that the base of her sceptre points to precisely where it’s all going to happen.

Emblem 2, the feminine qualities of the stone, from Michael Maier’s, Atalanta fugiens

In alchemy, one of the symbols for antimony, the ‘wild spirit of man’ (sometimes represented by a wolf) is the reversed Venus/copper symbol – a circle with cross on top. “Pliny the Elder (ca 77 AD) made a distinction between the “male” and “female” forms of antimony; the male form is probably the sulfide, while the female form, which is superior, heavier, and less friable, has been suspected to be native metallic antimony.” [Wikipedia]

cinnabar with mercury droplets, antimony rendered in antimony

But most (?) likely, it is the symbol for cinnabar, the ‘parent’ mineral from which Mercury is born. Note the orb which the philosopher’s child, hermaphroditic Mercury holds as he wades through the alchemical bathwater, below. Is it the cinnabar womb water, or the antimony purification bath, which eats away everything but gold? Or maybe both, considering the two parent luminaries lovingly at hand?

‘Our Son’ Mercury, Baro Urbigerus 1705

‘The watery matrix holdeth the fire captive.’  – Jacob Boehme

Like the eagle on her shield, the Empress has ‘wings.’ Beside her left hip is a scallop or scalloped bowl/baptismal fount, an old symbol of the Christian pilgrim. The scalloped basin was also a type of alchemical vessel and symbol of the Hermetic pilgrim, according to Fulcanelli. Either way, it has to do with the purification process.

According to 4th century gnosis mystic and alchemist,  Zosimos of Panopolis:

‘The ancient and divine writings say that the angels became enamoured of women; and, descending, taught them all the works of nature. From them, therefore, is the first tradition, chema, concerning these arts; for they called this book chema and hence the science of chemistry takes its name.’

For Zosimos, the alchemical vessel was imagined as a baptismal font, and the tincturing vapours of mercury and sulphur were likened to the purifying waters of baptism, which perfected and redeemed the Gnostic initiate. Zosimos drew upon the Hermetic image of the krater or mixing bowl, a symbol of the divine mind in which the Hermetic initiate was “baptized” and purified in the course of a visionary ascent through the heavens and into the transcendent realms.
[Wikipedia]

Hellenistic Greek Glass Shell 2nd-1st century B.C.

In both type 1 and type 2 Empress cards (covered by a block of colour in Conver), there is what resembles a triple flag under the basin, likely representing the main 3 stages/colours of the work (black, white, red), as in this relief (detail) on Notre Dame Cathedral depicting all the stages of alchemy (please see this new article on the Popess for more on Notre Dame alchemical reference). It might also represent the three philosophical elements; salt/body, sulphur/soul and mercury/spirit.

Threefold alchemy ‘flag’ from Notre Dame, Noblet and Payen Empress details.

All these raw, heavy materials, still in their ‘vulgar’ state almost appear to weigh her down. Mythically speaking, if the Emperor evokes Pluto (aka Dionysus, aka Osiris), his partner must also evoke Persephone, Queen of the Dead and personification of Spring regeneration. The ‘M’ shape of her blue skirt is the age-old symbol for water. Maya or Maia is mother ocean/womb, and Maria is literally ‘Maia with fire (R/Ur) in her belly’ (covered by red vest). The perennial fountain? Or an alembic?  I like to think of her eagle shield as the ultrasound screen, and her sceptre as the transducer.  But again, M might just stand for MERCURY, here in female form (remember, with 3s, the process, container and its contents are as one).

Noblet, Dodal and two versions of Conver Empress card

Another honourable Maria, namely Maria the Prophetess, was the first [non-mythical] alchemist of the western world. Written about by the great Zosimos of Panopolis, she lived sometime between the 1st and 3rd centuries in Alexandria, Egypt (of course). Maria also had a favourite axiom:

One becomes two, two becomes three and
out of three comes the one as the fourth.

Wait, haven’t we heard that before? Did she get it from Pythagoras (who lived several centuries prior) or is it just a case of universal truth? Both geniuses stood faithfully by these words. Pythagoras was not an alchemist, but nevertheless, he understood this fundamental equation to be the basis of all creative cycles.

mathematical and alchemical tetractys
Empress crown detail from Schaer Tarot

‘Maria the Jewess,’ as she’s also known, “incorporated life-like attributes into her descriptions of metal such as bodies, souls, and spirits. She believed that metals had two different genders, and by joining the two genders together a new entity could be made.” [Wikipedia]
She is accredited with many firsts, particularly her invention of the balneum Mariae (bain-Marie), progenator of the modern-day double-boiler. Of her written works surviving in Arabic we find two most curious titles; The Book of Maria and the Wise Men and The Epistle of the Crown and the Creation of the Newborn Baby. 

Leonora Carrington, The Chrysopeia of Mary the Jewess, 1964

Maria excelled in both mystical and scientific approaches and it’s thought she may have originated the idea of 4 colour stages in alchemy. Indeed she herself was an alembic, which is the whole point of this exercise, the teachings of the 3s. Hermes Trismegistus (‘thrice great’) was another such person, albeit more mythical. In Pythagorean numerology, 3 is the number of creativity, joy, artistic expression. In astrology, the trine is considered the most harmonious aspect, connecting planets or points of the same element. (However, it is fiery and energy can flow with lightening speed for better or worse).

Maria Prophetissima and Hermes Trismegistus from Michael Maier’s Symbola Aurea Mensae Duodecim Nationum (1617)
Maria’s bath, 1528.

So, the Empress, similar to the Juggler, has all four elements (or stages) about her, in physical form; earth (ground below + snake/globus + barely visible horns), fire (crown + hair), air (wings + human features) and water (blue robe/shell). The eagle represents the work as well as the water element, and, if we look closely, we can see one of its wings is shaped like a wave, the other more like feathers/flames. This can be interpreted as inherent polarities, or perhaps the ‘moist’ and ‘dry’ paths of the work.

Comparison of Empress’ and Emperor’s shields.

The difference between Juggler and Empress is that 1 alone can’t yet do anything with all the separate, single parts, other than superficially (ie, practical magic), like performing tricks or perhaps trading with Jack for his cow.
The Empress and Emperor will complete each other (he too has orbed sceptre and eagle, and faces toward her), but they have not yet come together, they are still 3 and 4, neither added nor multiplied.

Conver Empress and World cards. Note the shield eagle’s amphibious wing.

In this older version (below), that she has attributes of the four ‘elemental beasts’ of the World card are more obvious; longer ‘horns’ (in crown and necklace), wings/human, eagle/phoenix and even a lion’s paw/mane.

Guilaume Dubesset-Claude Valentin, ca 1680

12
I’ve already written on some of the 3 place cards – the Hanged Man, the Hermit, the Devil and the Moon – so will just touch on the Hanged Man (12) here, as he’s part of this 3 x 3 sequence.
His flaming hair and his number might suggest solar connotations, although he’s still situated in-between the Sun and Moon ‘parents’. The Sun represents the gold, and thus the process of purifying the ‘inner’ (philosophical) gold is in progress. But it is not the literal Sun, physical fire or material gold. Rather, it is a different fire altogether.

Visconti Sforza 16th c, Jacques Vieville 17th c, Nicholas Conver TdM 18th c

In the middle example, the number is placed so that he is flipped, indicating that as his body descends, his spirit ascends (note the lunar and solar ‘mounds’ on each side of his head, the solar one containing all the heavenly spheres), with emphasis on the spiritual. Not an accident, but likely an Orphic reference. In the third card, the descent of the ‘Sun’ (his head) into matter is emphasized. High noon and midnight, apex and nadir, bipolar. It really is like the separation that goes on inside the alchemist’s glass egg. The main thing is that we can’t observe his inner process. Typically, the Hanged Man’s expression is placid, as if he’s either in acceptance or ‘somewhere else.’ His gibbet is like a (golden) doorway or threshold. All of this suggests he is experiencing what’s known in alchemy as the secret fire:

Search, therefore, this fire with all strength of your mind, and you shall reach the goal you have set yourself; for it is this that brings to completion all the stages of the Work, and is the key of all the Philosophers, which they have never revealed in their books. If you think well and deep upon this above-mentioned fire, you will know it. Not otherwise.
– Potanus, The Secret Fire

To me, the Visconti-Sforza version looks very alchemical, its colours alluding strongly to the (philosophical) Green Lion devouring the Sun. I love how well the following description of the symbolism relates to the card, albeit it seems to be more from a Jungian perspective than traditional alchemy (and granted, the solar ‘ego’ looks anything but terrified):

The image corresponds to the releasing of primordial essence. That is why the lion is green, which is a primordial, unripe color. It also connotates fecundity. Eating the sun symbolizes the dominance of the Ego by instinctual forces. It is the beginning of a return to a more natural psychological state in which human beings flourish.
The ego perceives the encounter as terrifying because all transformational processes appear to be a kind of death to the ego. However, this process is the catalyst for an encounter with the Self. The instincts are amoral relative to human society and culture. Social conditioning aims to keep the instincts in check until the Higher Self is adequately present. Once present, our attitudes and feelings will be conditioned and directed by the Self. Otherwise, we experience a regression to the animalistic nature.
~ Tony Laguia, ‘The Green Lion Devouring the Sun‘ [Medium]

Visconti-Sforza hanged Man and Alchemical Green Lion devouring the Sun

21
The World (21) card, signifies the completion of the opus, the central figure representing ‘quintessence.’ Like an awakened eye, it is the revelation of that which embodies the essence of all past forms and potential for that shall be. In other words, what has been purified through many transformations becomes a catalyst for transformation; the Holy Grail or Philosopher’s Stone. Perhaps you’ve met someone who is a human tuning fork, or experienced a work of art, poetry, music, etc. that in its perfection had the effect of putting you ‘right side up’ again. Perhaps Tarot itself. ‘A light cannot help shedding its light. A flower cannot help giving off its fragrance.’ [Upanishads, ibid] When the young man in arcanum 6 was being initiated into the school of Venus/Eros, it was with the ultimate purpose of becoming just such a universal lover. ‘Everybody loves a lover.’

Ascend above any height, descend further than any depth; receive all sensory impressions of the created: water, fire, dryness and wetness. Think that you are present everywhere: in the sea, on earth and in heaven; think that you were never born and that you are still in the embryonic state: young and old, dead and in the hereafter. Understand everything at the same time: time, place, things: quality and quantity.
~ Corpus Hermeticum, 1460

The four creatures in the corners are assumed to be the four evangelists, the fixed signs of the zodiac, the seasons and/or the 4 elements. However…the bull is also lunar (2), the lion solar (1), and as we can see, they are now conjoined (3). The eagle previously represented the alchemical work, so then who might the winged human be when they’re at home? What of the Empress’ wings? Hmm.

Incidentally, Egyptian initiates were  called ‘scarabs’ because they ‘pushed along the egg of their regeneration’ – the container and the work?

Below, left, is the oldest of all known TdM type World cards (found in the Sforza castle cistern). Though it is badly damaged, some curious details remain. The androgyne or hermaphroditic Christ/Dionysus figure appears to have one breast only, on their right side, which is our left (mirroring). Their other, male side has the thicker leg. On their breasted/female side, the partially-obscured bull (or cow) has perfect, lunar crescent horns and on their male side, the lion has distinct, solar rays in its mane. Unique to this card, the angel in the top left (Aquarius/Matthew/air) has a ‘flame of inspiration’ in his forehead – ‘fire in the belly’ raised to crown level?

Oldest TdM ca mid-late 16th c (photo courtesy Ross Caldwell), Jacques Vieville ca 1650

The Vieville version, right, mixes things up a bit – bull and lion are switched around and have no wings. Since this card depicts a sexless figure facing straight forward, I ventured to see what one might look like as two. (Admittedly, it felt taboo, but…for science).
The male twin has a red cloak, denoting fire and his life force energy is directing upwards, expressed poignantly by what’s left of the sceptre. His body, arms open, creates an M for Mars. The female twin has a dark blue cloak, denoting water and her large V for Venus directs life force energy downward to her vulva, which she covers with her hands. Two opposite triangles, converging as one. Recall the Empress’ eagle shield. Also, that her eagle’s wings point upward, his downward, similar to the yin-yang idea of ‘opposite but interconnecting, mutually perpetuating forces.’ [wiki]

Vieville twins

In medieval alchemy, ‘philosophical Mercury’ is what remains when earth, air, fire and water are removed from a substance. It is associated with ‘prima materia’ (‘first matter’), from which all other matter is composed.

Philosophical Mercury, composed of sulphur and quicksilver (distinguished from their ordinary or ‘vulgar’ forms),  ca 1400

When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female, and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand and a foot in the place of a foot, and a likeness in the place of a likeness: then will you enter [the kingdom].
~ From the Gospel of Didymos Judas Thomas (‘the Twin’), Nag Hammadi Library

ANAHATA the heart (fourth) chakra

Whatever wisdom path you choose to follow, the same patterns are found,  and this is because patterns are ultimately geometrical/mathematical. But wisdom is not just an intellectual exercise. It must be applied, to thrive.

In Sanskrit, ‘anahata’ means ‘unstruck.’ (Funny, considering arcanum 6). The anahata or heart chakra, illustrated by two, interlocking triangles, is associated with unconditional love, compassion, and joy. This rose window of our personal cathedral serves to balance the upper (spiritual) and lower (material) chakras, so that we may experience pure love for both self and others, without attachment and expectation.

On March 21 (3/3), Venus (Ptolemaic 3rd sphere) will conjunct Saturn in Pisces. Saturn is the cold karma lord and task master of our consciousness, who has a way of shackling the heart with guilt, pain and sorrow. In Pisces, Saturn can feel like the weight of the whole, wretched world (as we collectively witness the shadow expression of yet another ancient symbol). Venus, on the other hand, exalts in Pisces, bringing potential for a moment of healing, amnesty and grace to weary hearts. Like the Empress conducting Venus into her belly, if we channel the energy of this transit, perhaps whatever beauty we create from it will serve as a tuning fork for someone, somewhere, sometime down the road.  ~ rb

“I’ll be back…”

Thanks for reading!

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Death and the Moon in Tarot de Marseille

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.’ [Clarification: although there are 13 moons within a solar year, there are not 13 full, synodic cycles of the moon in every solar year, but roughly every 2.5 solar years (when we get a ‘blue moon’). 2.5 solar years is one Saturn transit through a zodiac sign.] 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 crayfish
Hekate 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 Mysteries New 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

PART II explores a more likely reference for the two guardian beasties.


Who will reach the Moon first?

*Happy Sun and Pluto into Aquarius!*

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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (in three parts, with intermissions)

Nicholas Conver, 1760

PART ONE:  NOT-SO-HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

The Devil is a conceptual chameleon that has evolved alongside us every step of the way, and on which the literature is exhaustive. This article focuses on the ‘classic’ Tarot de Marseille Devil (above), an image which alone contains enough riddles for a whole book; What’s that he standing on? Is that water in the background? Why does he take that pose? What is on his head? Why is he wearing a blue wetsuit? It turns out these are not simple questions to answer and the mystery is sure to remain after this honourable attempt to scratch the surface of his enigma. Tarot de Marseille (TdM) is unique, in that the images are not always what they seem, yet clues are often hiding in plain sight. All is speculative. Resistance is futile. So, ready to dive in?

[Please click on any images to zoom and for more info.]

Holkham Bible 14th c, Histoire de Merlin, 15th c, Cary Devil, 16th c

The last image in the row above is a fragment of the earliest (supposedly) TdM type Tarot we know of, the Cary Sheet, ca 1500s. Although the Cary is thought to be a prototype for the classic format, its Devil does not provide us with one. Rather, this ‘puppy-face’ demon is spearing souls to collect in his basket. Krampus comes to mind, but he wasn’t really incorporated into the christian tradition until much later. He may have older, pagan roots, but his back-pack for souls is based on medieval Devil imagery, not the other way around.

The first, true TdM type Devils we have examples of (Noblet and Dodal, below), are from quite a bit later, so it’s not clear whether they are the actual prototypes. Nevertheless, it’s what we’ve got. One can’t help but notice a resemblance to the Minoan double axe/butterfly goddess, with those wings. Or maybe Psyche, again eluding to ‘soul.’ Perhaps the Cary Devil’s basket was a cocoon for his next incarnation, and that of his larval captives.

Mycenaean butterfly goddess 1500 bc and Psyche from a relief 2 bc
Early TdM Devils, Jean Noblet (1650) and Jean Dodal (1701)

In the early Middle Ages, when the Devil we know was just getting his mojo on, he was depicted as a somewhat comical character – lusty, bestial, mischievous – but not yet overtly sinister. Sometimes he’s the butt, getting clobbered by the Virgin Mary. Often he mimics or tempts holy men. Similarly, in TdM he stands in a power pose, lolling, as if mimicking a deity or preacher.  A relationship between the TdM Pope (5) and Devil (15) is suggested by the number they share (5), that of the bodily senses.

The image below, though 15th c, is a good example of Devil as a kind of pope’s ‘Fool’. We can still see remnants of Pan, even though he now has acquired demonic characteristics courtesy of various feminine entities; bird talons (harpies, lilitu), belly face (Baubo and/or the ‘belly-speaking’ Pythia of Delphi). Additionally, the number 15 was sacred to Ishtar, and represents the height of Lunar power (‘full’ phase), while 5 belongs to Venus (same planetary goddess).

old illustration of devil mimicking pope
Donkey-eared anti-pope, Master of Girart de Roussillon-ca. 1455

A closer look at the TdM Devil’s ‘antlers’ shows they do not grow from his own skull, but are stuck through/attached to the red brim, which might be the hide of some animal. Perhaps the skin of his former (Cary) self or yet another accoutrement  borrowed from a pagan goddess?

Juno Sospita (‘the saviour’), Etruscan, ca 500-480 bc

Dante is accredited with ascribing Satan’s ‘bat-like’ wings, emphasizing his dragon lineage. In the Middle Ages, thanks in part to the widespread popularity of Arthurian legends, apocalyptic visions, St. George and alchemical symbolism, dragons + every other kind of monster were at large in the collective imagination. And to the western, christian mind, dragon = Devil. (Hence Dracula, ‘son of Dracul’, the Dragon). Bacchus was often depicted riding one, as a symbol of drunkenness. But ‘dragon’ comes to us from the Greek word ‘drakos’, meaning ‘eye’ or ‘I see’, pertaining to an ever-watchful guardian of some treasure or mystery.

Dante’s triadic, alchemy-faced Lucifero 1450-75, and Medieval Dragon consumption
Drunken Bacchus 14th c, François Toucarty 2 of Cups 17th c, Bacchic eyes 520-500 BC

Meanwhile, the importation of demon imagery from the Middle East is also influential, and the christian Devil, as mentioned, adopts various features from them. The TdM Devil’s stance is apparent in the two examples below, especially with Pazuzu. (It’s not known whether Tarot artists ever saw these pieces, though, and for the record, the Burney Relief wasn’t discovered until the 20th century, so that’s off the list).

Clay tablet with Ereshkigal /Ishtar c 300 bc, bronze Pazuzu Demon c 800-600 bc

Witch hunts were what really made the Devil into a force for creating suspicion and fear. As persecutors projected their own darkness and depravity onto their scapegoats, the Devil’s terrible character grew into itself. The ‘Nature’ personification (below, right), created during the time of the 16th century witch trials is clearly based on head witch, Artemis Ephesus and bears a resemblance to our TdM Devil. At opposite ends, the men of science and religion, who would divide the spoils, agreed on one thing; that nature and her beasties didn’t possess anything even close to a human ‘soul’.
And that’s because they were idiots.

Personification of the Deadly Sins (15th c) and ‘Nature’ (16th c)

END OF PART ONE

 

 

PART TWO:  LORD OF GHOSTS

So far, we’ve addressed possible, historical influences for the TdM Devil’s look; the pose, mimicry, belly face, bat/moth wings and bird talons as well as his resemblance to pagan deities and Mesopotamian demons. Though not common in TdM, Tarot Devils may also sport serpents from their groin and head, similar to Gorgons or Furies. I include this fave, TdM exception (below, left) holding a delightful bouquet of pit vipers; it’s the thought that counts.

Now, let us venture deeper into the blue…

Blue Devils: Jacques Rochelais (1782), Besancon (1784), Giuseppe Mitelli (ca 1665)

Ok, I know what some of you are thinking: The Devil is not always BLUE! True, but he is blue enough of the time to warrant an investigation. Barring that colour was on sale, let’s look at some other, plausible reasons.

Giotto’s blue Satan, from The Last Judgement (detail), 1306

Giotto’s choice of colour is thought to have been based on the Etruscan ‘blue demons’ such as those in the ‘Tomb of the Blue Demons‘ (discovered in 1985, however) or the Greek Eurynomos:

Eurynomos was a flesh-devouring daimon (spirit) of the underworld who stripped the flesh from the rotting corpses of the dead. He was depicted as a man with black-blue skin seated on a vulture’s skin. Eurynomos was associated with carrion-feeders such as vultures and meat-flies. His name means “Wide-Ruling” from the Greek words eury- and nomos. 

Etruscan daimon  (looking rather ‘eastern’) from the Tomb of the Blue Demons, Italy

So naturally, blue palor is associated with the dead, who have ‘turned blue.’ Giotto’s Satan has simply replaced pagan Hades/Pluto. Platonists (TdM is reputed to have neo-platonic leanings) believed the physical body was as a corpse in which the soul (psyche) was imprisoned. With this philosophy in mind, the blue Devil and his willing, sacrificial victims represent attachment to the corporeal.

Two customers approach a statuary, one wishing to place the sculptor’s  work [a statue of young Hermes or a Herm] in the tomb of his son, one proposing to use it for private worship. Deciding to sleep on the matter, the sculptor is visited by Hermes in a dream and is told that he has in his hands the decision to make him either a dead man or a divinity. The 2nd century physician and philosopher, Galen gave the light-hearted fable a more serious turn by applying the story to human potentiality:
“You have a choice between honouring your soul by making it like the gods and treating it contemptuously by making it like the brute beasts.”

Herm of Hermes-Mercury as dedicated portrait, ca 150-170

In other words, when we only live within the realm of the bodily senses and appetites, the soul ‘dies’. Losing our senses in any of the Devil’s vices – including magic and the occult – might run us adrift and rudderless. The water (another symbol of soul) behind the Devil is still or frozen. His podium also kind of resembles a ship’s capstan, but without the levers in place with which to haul the anchor up (or down).

capstans

Another way to turn blue, or even die, is to be in frigid water too long. The TdM Devil is usually only blue from the neck down, excluding arms and head. His cup-like hat and blue ‘antlers’ seem to echo the fishes in the Two of Cups, once bonded in sacred union, now turned away from each other. (In black magic, everything is reversed). The shape of his tripartite, blue body also suggests something fishy or amphibious, like conjoined lamprey (from Latin lampetra, ‘stone licker’) or frog legs/ears. Something is being drawn out of the murky unconscious or indeed from the two, willing minions, heads previously filled with Pope’s pape.

Cup hat and fish shapes, two of cups fish and fishy wet suit

Amphibiously speaking (ribbit ribbit), the toad is a symbol of alchemy par excellence. It is a ‘living crucible.’ 

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.

– Shakespeare, ‘As You Like it’ 

‘Lord of the Flies’

Of course Lucifer also once had a precious, emerald stone in his forehead, aka the philosopher’s stone, aka the Grail. The TdM Devils’ crossed eyes direct us to where a third one should be, but at the same time are disquieting and repel us. Do they, and his grotesque, ever-watchful, nipple eyes serve to distract from what he’s standing on and guardian of? And don’t the minions’ ropes create a perfect crucible shape? A basket’s no good for cooking souls in, this is better.

They have compared the “prima materia” to everything, to male and female, to the hermaphroditic monster, to heaven and earth, to body and spirit, chaos, microcosm, and the confused mass; it contains in itself all colors and potentially all metals; there is nothing more wonderful in the world, for it begets itself, conceives itself, and gives birth to itself.

– Theatrum Chemicum (‘The Chemical Theatre’)

Conver Diable and Roman crucible for metal, found in England.

The distillation stage is when all of the impurities are removed, and there is nothing left but the essence. In Chemistry, distillation involves boiling and condensation to separate components and is commonly used in desalination. A liquid is boiled until it evaporates, and as the steam condenses, the essence is liberated from the matter. It marks the point at which our essence becomes spiritualized. In others words, in spiritual alchemy, distillation is a metaphor for the actualization of one’s spirit.

Although TdM is never quite this=that, it’s worth noting distillation is the 6th stage (1+5). It seems Temperance (14) has turned Temptress and now these Dionysians are hitting the hard stuff. Because, in seeking to separate the quintessence (purest and most concentrated form or ‘spirit’ of a substance) from the dross, alchemists also created…gin! The root of ‘alcohol’ (Arabic) is ‘kohl‘, pertaining to powdered antimony, which,  in alchemy, symbolizes ‘the wild spirit of man and nature.’ At this delicate stage, there are various ‘pure spirits’ that might be drawn out.

Alchemical Distillery, 1512

Here we must briefly retrograde back to Dante. His Lucifer was not shackled in flames, but perma-frozen in ice. Dante and Virgil climb up the shaggy legs, ‘until gravity is reversed and they fall through the earth into the southern hemisphere’. The omphalos has become the omicron phallus (omicron being the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet). It’s been pointed out that the Tarot Devil’s genitals are situated at the centre of the image. In keeping with this subject explored by Renaissance artists, if you draw an ‘X’  from corner to corner, the lines cross right at the ‘Centrum Mundi.’

Lucifer in Ice, Centrum Mundi, 9th ring of Hell

The gravitational reversal described sounds a lot like distillation, and what with Lucifer hermetically sealed and his 3 faces of black, red and white…
Alchemy, like witchcraft, was considered a form of ‘black magic’ and Dante even punishes alchemists – deemed ‘falsifiers’ – with leprosy. Unfortunately, ‘puffers’ (fraudsters who took peoples’ money, promising to turn lead into gold) were lumped in with true, spiritual alchemists and the sullied reputation persists to this day. Perhaps the TdM Devil stands upon the gold as both a temptation and warning to spiritual materialists who’d use Tarot for such nefarious purposes.

A ‘puffer’ from the Ship of Fools, Sebastian Brant, 1494

END OF PART TWO

 

 

Typhon, Willem Goeree, 1700

PART THREE:   MYTHICAL CHAMELEON

Believe it or not, the above, most impressive depiction of Typhon and its resemblance to the TdM Devil is what ‘spawned’ this whole inquiry. In Greek myth, Typhon was the monstrous, serpentine Titan son of Gaia (Earth). When he fought against Zeus (one of many male gods who wrangle with serpent beings) for rule of the cosmos and lost, Zeus threw him down into Tartarus and plugged the hole with a mountain (Mt. Etna), so he couldn’t escape. The similarity to Satan cast down into Hell and shackled in chains or ice is obvious. Volatile Typhon rattling his chains and blowing his top caused earthquakes, volcanos, tornados (typhoons), plagues (typhoid) and other natural disasters:

In size and strength he surpassed all the offspring of Earth. As far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, and his head often brushed the stars. One of his hands reached out to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons’ heads. From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged: unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; and fire flashed from his eyes.

And furthermore…

Typhon was a “poison-spitting viper whose “every hair belched viper-poison.” He “spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperish bristles of his high head” and “the water-snakes of the monster’s viperish feet crawl into the caverns underground, spitting poison!”
He also has many other animal heads, including leopards, lions, bulls, boars, bears, cattle, wolves, and dogs, which combine to make ‘the cries of all wild beasts together’ and a “babel of screaming sounds.”

Typhonic Devil waiting at the edge of the earth

Typhon makes medieval dragons look like newts. Again, it’s interesting to note the parallel between Hades, which later became Hell proper, and the watery abyss. Typhon’s spitting similarity to Satan did not escape medieval christian philosophers, either. They recognized him as one and the same.
[The title phrase, ‘between the Devil and the deep blue sea’ means having to chose the lesser of two evils, the way Odysseus had to chose ‘between Scylla (a man-eating sea siren), and Charybdis (a deadly whirlpool)’, ie, ‘a rock and a hard place’.] 

Hungry sea monsters surrounding a ship.

Typhon was conflated with Set, Egyptian god of chaos, storms and all strange and terrifying natural events from eclipses to earthquakes. Like Typhon and the Devil, Set is an elemental beast of many guises, very ancient (pre-dynastic) and attributed with major, occult powers. Sometimes he takes a recognizable form – hippo, pig, fish or crocodile – but mostly he’s the magical and alluring ‘Set animal’, with rectangular ears, downward curved snout and a stiff, straight  tail. His face reminds me a bit of a duck-billed dinosaur and one theory is that  he was based on an extinct creature, which is why we don’t recognize it.

Set

Typhon was said to have chased the Greek gods into Egypt, where they transformed themselves into animals. Among them, Pan jumped into the Nile, and became the half-goat/half-fish, otherwise known as Capricorn. On one hand, a neat way to explain their conflation, but on the other, it made Typhon the very agent of the gods’ transmutation, including his own. To hermetic thinkers of the 16th century, Typhon-Set seems to have been understood as a kind of extreme Mercurius.

Typhon as Scorpio, Athanasius Kircher, 1652-54

In his ‘Egyptian Zodiac’, Taurean Athanasius Kircher depicts Typhon-Set as the ‘hieroglyphic’ Scorpio, which makes sense, at least intuitively, as it’s the (sometimes serpent) sign of death and regeneration – both Osiris and Dionysus are dismembered by Set and Titans, consecutively, and are reborn with the dedicated magic of goddesses Isis and Athena. Kircher was not an alchemist by any means, but he was a master of syncretization and made an honest attempt to crack Egyptian code, long before the Dendera Zodiac and Rosetta Stone had been discovered.

On another level, ‘true’ alchemist, Michael Maier‘s allegorical Typhon-Set (below), just like the TdM Devil, is an androgyne with enlarged breasts. He/she holds the tools of dismemberment and transformation. Osiris-Dionysus is all cut up and Isis brings a cauldron/crucible and presumably her magic.

Puppy-faced, Ziphius-bellied Typhon-Set from Michael Maier’s Mythoalchemy (detail)

Three centuries before Dr. Jung, Maier (1568-1622) told of “chymical secrets behind the myths.” He said, therefore, that they should not be taken as merely historical, but as allegory or hieroglyph, “concealing some deeper meaning, philosophical or moral, which must be withheld from those persons too ignorant or too impious to use it aright” and “the truest interpretation is that it all concerns the Philosophical Medicine.” He called Typhon-Set “the burning spirit” and indeed, “the alchemical vessel itself.” Ta-da! 

I did not die, and I was not alive;
think for yourself, if you have any wit,
what I became, deprived of life and death.

– Inferno, 34.25-7

The mosaic below depicts a scene from the Last Judgement, wherein the goats (on Christ’s left) are being separated from the sheep (on his right). The blue angel is believed to be the earliest known depiction of Satan.  ~rb

6th c mosaic, Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna


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All blue/bold bits herein are quotations. 
Eurynomos quote from Theoi.com
Distillation and Inferno quote from  thecollector.com
All other quotes from Wikipedia (some edited for length)
Quotation pages and any other pages of interest are linked within the article. More information on images/sources can be found in their descriptions by clicking on them. 

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Double Double Toil and Trouble

What does this famous line, chanted by the three Weird Sisters in Shakespeare’s MacBeth actually refer to? It’s Gemini season, so let’s deep dive into doubling.

The Tragedy of MacBeth

The Weird Sisters are basically the Fates (Moirai) or the Graeaes. We’ve spoken about three being the magic number of Hermes, but of course it is also the magic number of the Lunar Goddess, that maiden-mother-crone of past-present-future who spins the cycles of earthly existence. Hence three witches, fates, etc. The allegory of lunar Fortuna as black and white illustrates that ‘Some are born to sweet delight/Some are born to endless Night’ (William Blake, Auguries of Innocence) and the changeability of fortune in general.

Fortuna with black and white Moon face

As the Sisters chant ’round the cauldron, they concoct  and prophecy General MacBeth’s destiny – that he will become Thane of Cawdor and King of Scotland. Hurray, but unfortunately MacBeth is not qualified to achieve the spiritual gold, because he lets his own demons run amok and, well, not to get too far into it, an unholy bloodbath ensues. According to my teacher mum, the tragedy demonstrates a perversion of the alchemical stages, which occur in backwards/out of order, from gold to black. ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair.’

Poster for Polanski’s MacBeth film – note the reverse Ace of Swords

So ‘Double Double’ refers to the two sides of fate and of human duality. With ascension to power, fame, wealth, there are pitfalls, if the destructive/shadow side of a man’s nature is not kept in check. This poster for the Polanski film depicts the reverse of an emblem we recognize as the Tarot Ace of Swords. In the card, the sword of Truth, pointing up,  is both penetrating and girdled by the yonic crown of Wisdom (Sophia); the olive branch (lunar) of peace and palm frond (solar) of victory are held in equilibrium. I believe the symbol might possibly come from the Isis lotus flanked by two serpents, below.

Water canister (detail) Pompeii Isis temple, Ace of Swords (negative for comparison )

‘Toil and Trouble‘ is a forewarning that might refer to ‘the work’ and its inherent dangers. Be careful what you wish for. They famously tell him ‘none of woman born‘ shall be able to harm him, but neglect to mention the fine print, that C-sections don’t count. There are ‘doubles’ all through the play – specifically MacBeth and his wife, Lady MacBeth (she has no first name, for starters), who, in absorbent, lunar fashion disappears further into madness as her husband commits crimes. In reverse process, they start out unified, but become separate, Lady MacBeth eventually committing suicide.

The Sacred Marriage

2 Twos of Cups

A more joyous union, or at least the beginning of one, is beautifully illustrated in the 2 of Cups. Typically in Tarot de Marseille, the two dolphin-fish are slightly different in appearance. This twin fish theme, besides being Piscean, can also be traced back to the ancient, pagan world. In the sanctuary of  Didyma (“twins”, thought to refer to twin temples of Apollo and Artemis), Greece, for example, we find a figure not unlike the split-tailed melusine (aka the Starbucks mermaid), who grasps her two tails, or sometimes two fish, much like the ones in the Cups card.

Didyma figure
Two versions of Mesuline

The 2 of Cups was one of the minor arcana cards with a space where a  printer could put their name or an emblem. In these two examples, the emblem beneath the cups is not unrelated, heralding love and peace (the heart and olive branches). This card had come up in a discussion, recently, regarding the two ‘trumpets’ therein. Are they in fact trumpets? If so, what kind? Though they resemble telescopes, it’s probably something like a buisine or the North African import, below, played at processions, celebrations funerals and especially weddings.

Medieval double trumpet from North Africa

The Myth of Marsyas

What my little eye spied, however, was the Greek Aulos, a double flute that long ago served the same function, and is associated with the myth of Marsyas and Apollo. (Perhaps the lyre shape behind them was a clue).

The Aulos was said to have been created by Athena, who, upon catching a glimpse in the water of her puff-cheeked reflection playing it, threw the instrument away. It was then found by the satyr Marsyas, who was so elevated by it’s music, he had the crazy idea to invite Apollo and his lyre to a contest – winner ‘have his way’ with the loser. As judges, Apollo chose the Muses and Marsyas chose King Midas. Marsyas won the first round and was pretty excited at the prospect of sex, but for round two, Apollo demanded they play their instruments upside down, putting the satyr at an obvious disadvantage. Apollo was declared the winner, whereby he promptly had Marsyas strung from a tree and flayed alive for his hubris (divine insult against a god), then gave Midas donkey ears. Like MacBeth, Marsyas’ ambition blinded him and didn’t read the fine print of prophecy (Apollo).

Apollo, Marsyas and a Scythian waiting to flay him (relief, middle of the 4th century BC).

The myth is symbolic of the continual battle between the Apollonian reason and the Dionysian madness that make up man’s nature – as viewed by the Athenians. (Presumably women are better versed in this particular polarity, due to our physiological ties to the inconstant Moon…unless they have a partner like MacBeth).

Athena’s horror at her own reflection might have been too much of a reminder of her Medusa side (PMS – a most irrational affliction!). The aulos itself, being a double, wind instrument, can be viewed as expressing two winds or two spirits that ‘make beautiful music together’.

Roman Medusa cameo, 2nd-3rd c – what Athena saw?

As such, there is a deeper meaning to the flaying of Marsyas than the dangers of hubris. In his essential book, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, Edgar Wind explains:

‘The musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas was therefore concerned with the relative powers of Dionysian darkness and Apollonian clarity; and if the contest ended with the flaying of Marsyas, it was because flaying itself was a Dionysian rite, a tragic ordeal of purification by which the ugliness of the outward man was thrown off and the beauty of his inward self revealed.’

and:

‘The cry [of Marsyas]: ‘Why do you tear me from myself?’ expresses then an agonized ecstasy and could be turned, as it was by Dante, into a prayer addressed to Apollo: ‘Enter my breast, and so infuse me with your spirit as you did Marsyas when you tore him from the cover of his limbs.’
To obtain the ‘beloved laurel’ of Apollo, the poet must pass through the agony of Marsyas…The torture of the mortal by the god who inspires him was a central theme in the revival of ancient mysteries, its illustration in Apollo and Marsyas being only one of many variations’.

Chariot and Hanged Man of Jean Dodal, 17th c

In traditional TdM, the golden-haired Charioteer at first appears to be a solar-heroic, Roman emperor type. But his stance says Dionysus and, indeed, the  very word ‘triumph’ comes down to us not from Roman victory processions, but from hymns to Dionysus sung in processions in his honour.  So rather, the Charioteer is a conglomerate – albeit, like MacBeth, he is more Apollonian on the outside.

His epaulettes are indicative of his solar-lunar natures, facing opposite ways, while the two horses also want to go off in either direction. There definitely is a sense of hubris about him. The three stems growing underfoot in the black soil, here, foreshadow his reversal from hero to scapegoat; The Hanged Man, strung up between two boughs, not unlike Marsyas, and the dismemberment/decomposition that follows in arcanum 13.

Jacques Vieville 2 of Cups and Hanged Man duality details
Chariot detail showing solar and lunar horses (anonymous, 15th c Milan)

As with the fish and horses, the two tree bases in arcanum 12 are usually different, sometimes even containing sun and moon in them, as in the Vieville example. The figure can be flipped vertically and viewed two ways; hanging or dancing. His golden, solar hair is a clue to what’s going on – ‘the beauty of his inward self’ is slowly being revealed as he undergoes ‘living death’. At least three of the oldest TdM examples (Vieville, Dodal, Madenié) require flipping the card to read the number correctly – printer mistake?

The strange placement of his epaulette-ish hands might represent wings (sprouting or  hidden), most apparent in this 17th c Jean Noblet card. Also of note, his reddish hair, a basis of discrimination and choosing sacrificial victims, especially Jews. But looking at it alchemically, ‘red gold’ was ‘pure gold’:

‘The oftener gold is subjected to the action of fire, the more refined in quality it becomes; indeed, fire is one test of its goodness, as, when submitted to intense heat, gold ought to assume a similar colour, and turn red and igneous in appearance; a mode of testing which is known as “obrussa.” [Pliny, “Natural History,” 33.19]’

Noblet Pendu, 17th c – note his elongated ears

The Hanged Man (Le Pendu/Pandu) was once called ‘The Traitor’ and the figure held two money bags, a reference to Judas, aka Didymus, ‘the Twin’ (also a supposed redhead). We know the two cards are related, because 7 is 3 + 4 and 12 is 3 x 4. (3 and 4 began separately as Empress and Emperor).

Alchemical fountain

Summation

Obviously we are complex creatures, made up of many polarities, but the most basic one is that we live consciously, outer or by day (solar) and unconsciously, inner or by night (lunar). This was expressed in Egypt as the two eyes of Horus. Right now, you are reading this and having both an outer and inner experience.

The alchemical equivalent of Marsyas and Apollo is the torture of base metals, such as lead, in order to extract the precious, pure one – namely gold, but also its ‘mate’, silver, and others.  Lead is the metal of Saturn, who, strangely enough, ruled the Golden Age and is associated with Pan, satyrs, nature, etc.  Apollo is of course the solar gold.

Devil and Sun cards, Nicholas Conver TdM, 18th c

Seeking material gold (symbolized by the physical crown, in MacBeth) is the ‘lower mystery’. But, as the alchemists discovered, this corporeal quest is often how initiation to the ‘higher mystery’ begins. In the end, after all our ‘toil and trouble‘, we might be fortunate enough to attain spiritual gold.

Self-knowledge (gnosis) is not just about understanding one’s own personality (another ‘lesser mystery’), but rather, understanding the entire workings of the universe as being within oneself, and vice versa; ‘As within, so without’. But this must be done in stages and is not something that can merely be understood as some intellectual concept.

I leave you with the last lines from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence ‘ which, though we love to quote the first verse (‘To see the world in a grain of sand…’), in it’s entirety, puts it all in a nutshell.  ~rb

‘Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born 
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight 
Some are Born to sweet delight 
Some are Born to Endless Night 
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night 
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day‘

 

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