esoteric Tarot Archives - ROXANNA BIKADOROFF

October 13, 2025October 14, 2025

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.

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 Hellenized 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. Nobody knows for sure.

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, lord of the 6th sphere (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.

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.

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 (wand), 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 Wands. 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 Wands 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

All written content except quotations and meme is copyright ©Roxanna Bikadoroff and may not be re-used or reprinted without my permission. You are welcome to share the article via LINK and with a short pull quote/credit.
Thank you for being respectful.

January 20, 2024July 1, 2025

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.

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.

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…

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.

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

Who will reach the Moon first?

*Happy Sun and Pluto into Aquarius!*

All written content (except in blue quotations) is original, researched and composed by and copyright ©Roxanna Bikadoroff. It may not be reprinted anywhere without permission. Please share via LINK only (a short pull quote/paragraph is ok, with a link/credit). Thank you.