Thanks for the link to your "Four Hares" site JMD.
The TABLE OF ELEMENTS AND SUITS is a great idea. I'd love to see it grow. The idea of Cups as Fire is interesting.
I'd also like to be the first person to "pre-order" your Dodal restoration deck when complete. Your Le Pape is fantastic.
I agree with JMD's statement that the elements, "are not intrinsic to the suit, but rather suggestive by other considerations..." However, of the various "esoteric" overlays we put on Tarot today (Kabbala, Astrology, etc.) the four elements would have been something the philosophically minded card player would have surely pondered in the 15th and 16th centuries, most likely in the guise of the humours/temperaments. The frequent mention of the temperaments in Shakespeare gives us a good indication that the idea was commonly known to both aristocrat and commoner.
Whatever the meanings the original creators of the Tarot did or didn't hide in the cards, if we choose to use the cards for divination, philosophical contemplation, meditation, or magic I think the best results would come from having our "overlay" have an internal logic and congruence that matches the structure and, as much as possible, the original symbolism of the images.
And to address Venicebard's concerns,
"And if Cups are air, they must remain forever empty, n'est ce pas?"
In all the different Marseille type cards, including the Vieville, the cups are all full of red wine ("The Sanguine game-some is, and nothing nice,
Love, Wine Women, and all recreation"), or by extention, the blood of Christ. Blood is of course being the Sanguine bodily fluid, the transporter of air. The blood of Christ and the chalice bring us back to Mr. Flornoy's idea of the cups representing the Pope, and he being the model for those who teach and cure: priests and healers.
Many folks associate Cups with the cardinal virtue of Temperance. In THREE BOOKS OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY, Agrippa makes the following connections:
Justice................FIRE
Temperance.........AIR
Prudence.............WATER
Fortitude.............EARTH
If you consider Garth Knight's and Robert Place's theory that XXI Le Monde represents Prudence, you can have some interesting Numerological fun;
Flornoy's
Suit........Virtue...........................Personifications........Element
Baton.....Fortitude 11......(1+1=2)......2 La Papess..........EARTH
Coin.......Prudence 21.....(2+1=3)......3 L'Imperatrice......WATER
Cup........Temperance 14 (1+4=5)......5 Le Pape..............AIR
Sword.... XIII (Switched to accomodate 13's popular image as
Death, and 8's Pythagorean meaning of Justice. Death is
associated with 8 by way of the 8th house of the zodiac
being Death.)
(1+3=4).....4 L'Empereur........FIRE
Okay. The last one is a stretch, but three out of four ain't bad!
Poor Justice! Everyone keeps shuffling her around.
Sources:
Agrippa, Henry Cornelius. THREE BOOKS OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY. Antwerp, 1531; Hastings, England: Chthonios Books, 1986; St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1993.
Knight, Gareth. THE MAGICAL WORLD OF THE TAROT. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1991.
Place, Robert M.. THE TAROT: HISTORY, SYMBOLISM, AND DIVINATION. New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2005.
Ayumi