The "why" of Cups, Swords, Batons and Coins

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 17 Aug 2003, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Diana	17 Aug 2003
Of course, I share some other people's idea on why Tarot decks use Cups, Swords, Batons and Coins (Wands and Pentacles are Golden Dawn "magic(k)" replacement symbols for Batons and Coins. They're not the "original" stuff). The theory I go along with is that they are the Cup, the Sword, the Lance and the Dish from the legend of the Holy Grail. But I would be curious to know what you all think of the choice of these four symbols for the four elements that we know.

jog1118	17 Aug 2003
cups - coz water can be held by one swords - coz when you swing one, the air goes *swish!* coins - coz your rich if you have plenty of this batons - coz you can set one on fire :smoker:

Umbrae	17 Aug 2003
Resurrection vs. Resuscitation Sangreal…Cup? Or Bloodline? Coins? Or a Seal, signet or sign? …and the ‘history’ which we have been fed is devoid of the practices of the Essene sect of which JC and his cohorts were members; for instance, catch his blood in a dish right before Passover? Not ‘bloody’ likely…Joseph of Arimathea would not have been able to partake in the Passover…he would not have even been able to re-enter the city. So Sword, Lance, Cup, and Dish are very post Christian. Perhaps the search should begin earlier…

blue_fusion	18 Aug 2003
i think it even predates the holy grail imagery, and may have eastern (arabic and such) origins. dunno, i read that from somewhere... :)

Ross G Caldwell	18 Aug 2003
One suggestion sees the first five letters of the alphabet ABCDE in the suits - French and Italian names have contemporary matches (I suggest English alphabetic equivalences for A, D and E in a playful way only) - Atutti, Atouts (Trumps - Atops?) Bastoni, Bâtons (Batons, Staves, Wands) Coppe, Coupes (Cups) Denari, Deniers (Coins - Dollars? (from "daler, taler", Dutch coin)) (E)spade, Epées (Spades, Swords - Espades? goofy, I know) This clever scheme seems to shed some light on the Mantegna series as well, maybe explaining the difference between the E and S series (i.e. one series goes ABCDE, the other ABCDS - The last, sword, could be written Espada or Spada. In modern Italian, it has become standardised as "spada", but, depending on the accent or region, variations such as this existed in the 15th century and earlier, and no doubt continue to exist in the spoken language, if not the written.) Another scheme, very old (John of Rheinfelden, 1377) suggests the social orders - Batons being royalty, Cups the clergy, Denari the merchants, and Swords the warriors. (IIRC). Thus the connection of Cups with the Graal isn't so far fetched, at least for the earliest tarot cards (i.e. not speaking of the Mamluk suits) - the Graal was a religious mystery, which the Chalice of the Mass reflects, and is therefore appropriate to the Clergy as a class. Not to mention that these "frivolous French tales" of Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin and the Graal were favourites in the Visconti court, for which the earliest extant tarots (with their gorgeous golden goblets in the cup suit) were produced. Ross

Kiama	18 Aug 2003
I think historically it is because the Mamluk cards had those suits, or similar (though I believe Batons were Polo Sticks in the Mamluk cards.) Kiama

Diana	18 Aug 2003
Kiama: if that is so, then my question remains: why?

Umbrae	18 Aug 2003
In many card games, player positions are designated by compass directions (modern Bridge for example). The four points are also represented by the four elements of fire, air, water, earth.. In Masonic lore, The Master of the lodge sits in the East, South is the Sun, and the West is the Moon. Decker et al in “A Wicked Pack of Cards” mention, (but do not elaborate), that every person that played a part in the esoteric development from 1760 to current was a Freemason. A curious fact ignored by many historians as meaningless.

Kiama	18 Aug 2003
Quote: Originally posted by Diana Kiama: if that is so, then my question remains: why? We can only speculate as to what was going on in the heads of the creators of the Mamluk cards. Maybe they just invented them because they were bored, and they got the suits by looking around at everyday objects. A cup, a coin, a polo stick and a sword are all very everyday items when you think about them out of the context of Tarot. Maybe they were chosen because they reflected different aspect of life at the time: the aspect of gaming and exercise (polo sticks), the aspect of fighting and war (swords), the aspect of work and keeping your family alive (coins), and the aspect of... Enjoyment? What does a cup symbolise to the creators of the Mamluk? Good times? I have no idea. Certainly the Holy Grail legends came after these predecessors of the Minor Arcana we know today, so personally I wouldn't root for that theory to describe a historical reason. (Though in the more modern aspect I would be more inclined to link the Grail legend with the Minor suits, because they have become linked through the years.) Another theory is that... Batons= peasants. Peasants have to work hard, so they need 'fire' within them to do so. Coins= Merchants, who sell and buy and generally allow people to feed their families, and so they are the 'earthy', material, bodily side. Swords= nobility or military, though in this aspect I can't see how Air links with this. Cups= Clergy, and therefore the spiritual, emotional side of life: the water side. Maybe. }) Kiama

Diana	18 Aug 2003
Oh my. Now I have to go to the library to get books on the Mamluks. Thank god for libraries. Wonderful post, Kiama.

Macavity	18 Aug 2003
I always felt it must be elementary (my dear Watson? }) ) I imagine the "ancients" must have thought of the most important things to them... (loosely) male : female : spiritual : material (and variants) and tried to depict them using everyday objects around? A male-female symbolism seems rather obvious! As does heaven/earth? There seem also to be parallels with ideas like I-Ching's heaven/earth creative/receptive etc., That said, however, and in common with others traditions, e.g. Northern, some folk seemed to need more "elements" than others? ;) It seems fairly intuitive... BUT, the feature that rather puzzled me at the start of my Tarot interest was the use of SWORDS as "Air" and the basic similarity (and confusion) between Wands and Swords. Clearly I am not alone in this. Perhaps they just ran out of symbols? But, since Kiama mentioned this, one cannot help but notice how alike Marseille and Mamaluk Swords are... and how unlike a practical weapon (ack, almost said of mass destruction!) they are? Yeah, scimitars, but why retain something rather alien to the average broad-sword toating medieval? A "trendy" idea or something more significant? Also, why are there (naively) "twice as many" of these curved "swords" depicted on Marseille pips? Doubtless irrelevant, but... :D Macavity - rambling again.

felicityk	18 Aug 2003
There are some good notes on Mamluk cards at Andy's Playing cards, along the lines of Kiama's discussion: http://www.geocities.com/a_pollett/cardsc.htm http://it.geocities.com/a_pollett/cards64.htm Felicity

catti	18 Aug 2003
Quote: Originally posted by Kiama Maybe they were chosen because they reflected different aspect of life at the time: the aspect of gaming and exercise (polo sticks), the aspect of fighting and war (swords), the aspect of work and keeping your family alive (coins), and the aspect of... Enjoyment? What does a cup symbolise to the creators of the Mamluk? food and drink , very important aspect of life even to mamluks(???) Quote: swords=air= thought /intelligence because the sounds of war, the drums of war , the pipes etc...travel through the air, as do arrows lances and cannons and bullets etc...the strategy in war, the intelligence one must collect in order to assess your enemy...just a guess also , although it has been said before, i will say it again the swords /air /east rods/fire/south cups/water/west disks/earth/north placements correspond to pagan altar so the tradition could very well predate christ

Kiama	18 Aug 2003
Quote: Originally posted by Macavity Yeah, scimitars, but why retain something rather alien to the average broad-sword toating medieval? A "trendy" idea or something more significant? Also, why are there (naively) "twice as many" of these curved "swords" depicted on Marseille pips? Doubtless irrelevant, but... :D Macavity - rambling again. WOW! I never thought of it like that before... I'm not up on my knowledge of weapons, so I would have totally missed that if you hadn't said something... But I must admit, it seems even more possible now that the Minors from the Tarot deck were based on the Mamluk playing cards, given the shape of the swords... Though, why did they keep the curved swords, yet ditch the polo sticks? I think sometimes we forget in all this speculation that the people back then were only human, and it just occurred to me that maybe they just didn't like the idea of polo sticks. Maybe the word for 'polo stick' was too big to fit onto a card or took too long to say, so it was turned into simply 'stick' or baton? One thing I've always wanted to know is what on earth was going on in the minds of those people, that caused us to have the Tarot deck we know today? It is obvious it has gone through so many changes, and it pains me that we can never know the true impetus behind those changes... Anyway, back to the subject. Can we assume the people back then knew about the elements? Did they have the same associations for them then as we do now? Today, we may associate water with spirituality, but back then it could have meant something entirely different. Catti: I don't think the pre-Christian Pagans knew about elements and their directions, and certainly there is nothing to suggest they did. I have a feeling the elements and their directions were added into the Tarot suits much later on, possibly by the early occultists like Levi et. al. Kiama

MeeWah	18 Aug 2003
I tend to think the pre-Christianity peoples did know more than is obvious. The structures of ancient times indicate a directional concept as well as an advanced knowledge in order to build immense ancient structures. Specifically, the pyramids in Egypt, South America & China; a temple in Palestine & Stonehenge in England. They feature mathematical calculations suggestive of tracking the path of the sun as well as serving as structures of spiritual activities. I thought the curved sword originated in the ancient Orient; used by warriors of Arabic, Islamic &/or Asiatic cultures. Its shape seems to have been preferred as a weapon because of its flexibility in combat. Have also equated the sword with the nobility & the warrior class, mainly because the warriors were oft culled from the nobility. Hence, the association with military strategy & intellect.

catti	19 Aug 2003
i cant find the book i want but i am certain somebody here will be able to correct me if i make a mistake: i have read a theory that the four suits are derived from the vedics that Vishnu (?) is often portrayed holding a sword , a stick/branch, a disk and a lotus ( cups). Kiama: I believe the term pagan was badly used in my part, and i should have thought through my reponse more. I agree with you that most of the neo-pagan traditions in Tarot were reintroduced by Levi et al..... but the Golden Dawn people were not inventing, they were building on existing hidden traditions. It was those traditions i was trying to refer too. I should have said pre -christians . No one can debate whether or not say the Greeks or Egyptians had knowlege of the directions or elements. What did you refer to when you said Pre-Christian Pagan?

Kiama	19 Aug 2003
catti: to tell you the truth, I've lost the train of thought I was going for in my last post... I think it was sleep that did it. Sleep derailed my train of thought and killed all the passengers. I think possibly I was thinking along the lines of... Whilst the pre-Christians had directional sense and understanding, did they associate each direction with an element in the same way we do? The Celts I think only used three elements: Earth, sea, and sky. The Egyptians I think associated their directions with different things, based on their year and its seasons (which are very different to ours)... For instance, to them, a river was 'flowing backwards' if it wasn't flowing in the same direction as the Nile. The Greeks I am not too sure on, but I have read the Greek Magical Papyri, which is a collection of Greek spells, charms, etc. Some of them are very strange, but most of them seem to have formed part of the basis for magic that many neo-Pagans and Hermetic magicians perform today. In those rituals and spells from the Greek Magical Papyri, there is no mention of the elements and their associations, which I would expect to find if they did have an understanding of them in such a way. So, I think I have found my train of thought again, and revived the passengers... What I think I'm saying is that pre-Christian understanding of the associations between directions and elements could have been totally different to ours, if they indeed had it at all. Kiama

The The "why" of Cups, Swords, Batons and Coins thread was originally posted on 17 Aug 2003 in the Talking Tarot board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Talking Tarot, or read more archived threads.