lemniscate
Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 21 Sep 2004, and now archived in the Forum Library.
| rosyelf |
21 Sep 2004 |
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I've just acquired a Universal Waite deck and am wondering what the symbol above the woman's head on the Strength card signifies ? I believe it's called a leminiscate.
Also, on a lighter note, why does this deck smell of liquorice ? Or am I hallucinating ?
thanks in advance for any help
rosyelf
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| Flavio |
21 Sep 2004 |
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Originally posted by rosyelf
Also, on a lighter note, why does this deck smell of liquorice ? Or am I hallucinating ?
Now there are 2 persons in the world hallucinating hehehe :D when I opened my deck I also got a strange smell... I thought it was caused by the ink, it also happened to me with the Bosch Deck.
As for the lemniscate, probably you have seen Marseilles deck where the characters have wide hats in the shape (at least in the drawing) of the lemniscate... so no one knows for sure if the symbol was inspired on the hat or backwards, look for more lemniscates in The Magician, and 2 of Pentacles.
You might want to take a look at the articles section at Tarotmoon.com it has a glossary of symbols.
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| floracove |
21 Sep 2004 |
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isn't that the 8 laying on it's side?
I've always heard that it meant infinaty...
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| Flavio |
21 Sep 2004 |
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Originally posted by floracove
isn't that the 8 laying on it's side?
I've always heard that it meant infinaty...
Yes, it is infinity, I undrestand rosyelf want to know more about the significance above head of the lady in The Force
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| Ace |
21 Sep 2004 |
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Originally posted by rosyelf
I've just acquired a Universal Waite deck and am wondering what the symbol above the woman's head on the Strength card signifies ? I believe it's called a leminiscate.
It is the sign for infinity and I always took it for a sign of blessing or power, like Flavio put it: the Force. The Magician has it too, in some decks like (if memory serves me right, the RWS) but it does go back to the Marseille deck, where the Magician is a montebank with a big hat. Or maybe the big hat was to hide a leminiscate!
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| ihcoyc |
22 Sep 2004 |
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Yes, the lemniscate is a math symbol for infinity or eternity. Waite decided that the hats worn by Le Bâteleur and La Force were lemniscates, following Wirth, who made their hats more closely resemble the symbol. Waite --- I'm pretty sure it wasn't PCS who chose this --- decided to have it float above their heads like a bent Renaissance halo. There's also one being juggled on the 2 of Coins/Pentacles; this one derives from the ribbon that appears on the card in traditional designs, and which was used by the manufacturers to put their mark on.
When I see Waite's lemniscates, I always think of the little story by Baudelaire in which an angel loses his halo, and starts wondering if it got dinged up in traffic, and who might pick it up and put it on. The Magician and Strength found haloes lying in the street and even if they were a bit bent out of shape, they decided to put them on anyways.
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| Flavio |
22 Sep 2004 |
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Originally posted by ihcoyc
The Magician and Strength found haloes lying in the street and even if they were a bit bent out of shape, they decided to put them on anyways.
I like more the lemniscate than the haloes over people heads, Magician and the lady in the Force look powerful and mysterious at the same time. :)
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| Fulgour |
22 Sep 2004 |
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A site, in French, but with animated drawings:
Lemniscate
with Google translator:
Leminscate
The most fun is to play with a flexible ring,
twisting and turning it, seeing all the ways
the Unity of a Circle interacts with itself...
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| rosyelf |
22 Sep 2004 |
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Thank you, everybody! This is fascinating. I love the story of the bent haloes in the streets of Paris-odd, and I like odd ! Thank you for the various suggestions for further reading and surfing.
love
rosyelf
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| Semiramis |
22 Sep 2004 |
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It's funny, whenever I saw that lemniscate I always thought of a Mobius strip - a ribbon that's connected to itself but with a twist in the middle so that it only has one side. Your post got me curious so I did some research and apparently the two symbols are connected - the lemniscate being a two dimensional representation of the three dimensional Mobius strip. This is interesting because I always associated a Mobius strip with infinity - you travel on the one side forever cause there is no other side...
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| Wisp Wings |
22 Sep 2004 |
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I have no additional info direct on the lemniscate or the mobius strip, but I wanted to share with reading this all and of knowing the three cards where it shows up a flash that I received. Although I logically later thought of other cards where I felt it should apply to, why these three not sure of.
When you think of a ribbon with the two sides and as it is shown in the diagrams of that site, joined one way you have two sides, with a twist you have the mobius strip. I see this as the mudane side of living and existence as one side and the Spirit/spiritual and Higher Self on the other side. The lemniscate shows us they both exist in tandem.
The Magican is a conduit of Spirit for manifesting that which is "as above" to be reality in becoming "as below".
The lady in Strength needs courage and perhap faith to master the beast, thus aided by Spirit. She shows no worry on her face, but a gentle, sweet smile...as if never an alarming thought of what the lion is capable of. Why is she so assured there is no danger to her?
The two of Pentacles shows a happy go luck man kicking up his heels while juggles his two coins, yet the sea rages behind him, boats being tossed about. He is at the very least having a risk. With two's being both unity and polarity and Pentacles about material matters and spirit too, we can see money issues and health issues being dealt with. I often think of the guy much like the Fool in his happiness and a look of no need for fretting. Maybe he too is relying much on the Higher Powers in his situation. Of course I know the up-right and inverted meanings of the card.
Summing these thought up, perhaps at some point in a reliance of faith and or a communication with Spirit, it isn't just when we (the mudane and the spiritual) each cross, intersecting in our paths, but as with the twist we having a continuous connection and we both blend as one. We are both the one. Fits with the we are all one, each connected in the Universe.
(Sorry for typos and I hope I am making a bit of sense here.)
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| Semiramis |
22 Sep 2004 |
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That was a great post, Wisp Wings! I will be looking at those cards in a new way now. Maybe with the Tarot we are trying to sense *through* the surface of the ribbon to the other side.
Just as a side note, the backs of my New Palladini deck have two snakes that are twisted into the lemniscate shape and have their tails in their mouths, like Ouroboros.
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| Wisp Wings |
22 Sep 2004 |
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Originally posted by Semiramis
That was a great post, Wisp Wings! I will be looking at those cards in a new way now. Maybe with the Tarot we are trying to sense *through* the surface of the ribbon to the other side.
Just as a side note, the backs of my New Palladini deck have two snakes that are twisted into the lemniscate shape and have their tails in their mouths, like Ouroboros.
Oh I love the backs of that! I have that deck too. Again, another sign of infinity. I know everyone has different beliefs, but I am one that does believe we exist in one form or another forever.
There is so many things in the tarot that we see and it works on us over time in learning of it in our own learning of using the cards and others things that begs us to search out its answers more quickly to be known of.
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| blackroseivy |
22 Sep 2004 |
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You can make one out of paper. If you draw a line around it, it will go all the way around as a single line. You take it apart, & there are *2* lines!! :cool:
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| jmd |
23 Sep 2004 |
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It may be worth recalling that there is a difference between the lemniscate and the Moebius strip.
Perhaps of interest is also an earlier thread (much shorter than this one) in which I also provide other links within Aeclectic:Mathematically, as has already been pointed out, the lemniscate also relates to the circle, and it is interesting that a STRAIGHT line extended diagonally to infinity may, in projective geometry, generate and infinite lemniscate - of course, a straight line also generates an infinite circle, the difference is that whereas the centre of the latter is infinitely positioned, the 'centre' of the infinite lemniscate is right there at its crossing.
The Finite and the Infinite meet.
In another thread, I think I may also have mentioned that the lemniscate was first used not to depict 'infinite', but rather tens of thousands (ie, very large amounts!).
Another interesting quality of the lemniscate is that both the curve and the straight are depicted, and that the implied circular form contains, within it, the cross - again, both the spiritual and the material are symbolically herein united.
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The lemniscate thread was originally posted on 21 Sep 2004 in the Using Tarot Cards board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Using Tarot Cards, or read more archived threads.
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