4 suites arrangement(coins, wands,swords, cups?

Kether__

What do you think about the most orthodox ordering of the four suites?
 

Rusty Neon

Hi kether ...

(1) I'm interested in knowing the link, if any, between this new thread of yours and your earlier thread about suited/suitless Egyptian tarot decks.

(2) I don't see Coins, Wands, Swords and Cups as being the conventional suit order.

- The historically conventional order is possibly that in the Etteilla decks: Batons, Cups, Swords, Coins. Anybody have other ideas?

- Similarily, the Order of the Golden Dawn's order in its manuscript _Tarot Divination_ is Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles.

- However, I recall observing that the order that U.S. Games packages its decks in is different, i.e., Wands, Swords, Cups, Coins (if I recall correctly, but luckily it's been a long time since I've bought my flurry of decks) -- or is it Swords before Wands?

(3) In terms of people's views on what the correct logical cosmological order of suits is, that's an individuall thing; no right answers for that; I'm sure that for any given permutation of suit orders, there would be some people in support.
 

Huck

Kether__ said:
What do you think about the most orthodox ordering of the four suites?

What do you mean with "orthodox"? Oldest?
 

Kether__

When I say orthodox, I mean various posibilities:

oldest arrangements, or, better, logycal arrangements according the symbols the suits feature.

For example, I see that we could order the suites based on the density of elemnts they resemble.
 

Kether__

Rusty Neon said:
Hi kether ...

(1) I'm interested in knowing the link, if any, between this new thread of yours and your earlier thread about suited/suitless Egyptian tarot decks.

(2) I don't see Coins, Wands, Swords and Cups as being the conventional suit order.

- The historically conventional order is possibly that in the Etteilla decks: Batons, Cups, Swords, Coins. Anybody have other ideas?

- Similarily, the Order of the Golden Dawn's order in its manuscript _Tarot Divination_ is Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles.

- However, I recall observing that the order that U.S. Games packages its decks in is different, i.e., Wands, Swords, Cups, Coins (if I recall correctly, but luckily it's been a long time since I've bought my flurry of decks) -- or is it Swords before Wands?

(3) In terms of people's views on what the correct logical cosmological order of suits is, that's an individuall thing; no right answers for that; I'm sure that for any given permutation of suit orders, there would be some people in support.


Rusty:

I think Golden Dawn pentacles are similar to older coins, since they resemble, for me the same element.
 

Rusty Neon

Kether__ said:
Rusty:

I think Golden Dawn pentacles are similar to older coins, since they resemble, for me the same element.

That's what my post implied.

Whether the particular deck calls the suit Coins, Disks, Pentacles, Loaves, etc., etc. -- they're all names for the same suit. In OGD lore, that suit relates to the element of Earth.
 

Ross G Caldwell

A clever suggestion has been the alphabet, ABCDE -

Atutti - Atouts (trumps)
Bastoni - Batons (Wands)
Coppe - Coupes (Cups)
Denari - Deniers (Coins)
Espade/Spade - Epées (Swords)

Ross
 

DesertHowler

suite arrangements

in the book "Tarot for Beginners" P. Scott Hollander uses the order based on the medivel hierarchy system:

Swords=nobility
Cups=clergy
Pentacles/Coins=merchants
Wands=serfs/peasants

This makes as much sense to me as any...

DH
 

Huck

Ross G Caldwell said:
A clever suggestion has been the alphabet, ABCDE -

Atutti - Atouts (trumps)
Bastoni - Batons (Wands)
Coppe - Coupes (Cups)
Denari - Deniers (Coins)
Espade/Spade - Epées (Swords)

Ross

Autorbis has suggested,

http://www.geocities.com/autorbis/suitscourts.html
(article under construction)

that the suits refer to number ideas.

It's clear, that some of the older chinese cards follow this idea, in a similar way as the Hebrew builded their Alphabet = Number - System (1-9, 10 - 90, 100 - 900). The chinese probably intended to have a hierarchy between the suits.

The Italian suits, which derived from the Mamluk cards, might have contained the numbers:

3 = swords (has three ends, when a hand covers the fourth)
2= bastoni, batons ( has two ends)
1 = cups (presents unity = 1)
0 = coins ( = is round like a zero)

The French suits, which came later, also seemed to have a number idea:

4 = diamonds (have 4 edges)
3 = clubs (3 ends)
2 = pique, spades (= wands = 2)
1 = hearts (= unity= 1)

Card research developed the opinion, that staves (wands) corresponds to clubs-pique, and swords to spades. Autorbis contradicts this opinion and relates staves to spades-pique and swords to clubs.
His argument is, that swords optically suggest a correspondence to swords, and that there is an old German word "Pike) for a special weapon (similar to a wand, the head is special and looks a little bit like the sign of spades), and this word was also in use in French language: Pikenier as spear-carrier. Other German word derived from this: "pieken".
By this interpretation both rows are identical, with the difference, that the French suits counts 4-3-2-1 and the French suits 3-2-1-0, just using for diamonds-coins either 4 or 0.

Some card-games have a hierarchy between the suits. In Germany, a traditional card-playing country (here was the highest production rate in the first years), this is usually:

clubs - spades - hearts - carreaux or diamonds

which in the above system just 3-2-1-0, or following the French system, 3-2-1-4.

The Mantegna suggestion (above shown by Ross) again is different, but counts in the same "number-wheel" (as autorbis named it).

Mantegna: 2 - 1 - 0(4) - 3

Number-Wheel (there are 24 possibilities to arrange 1-2-3-4 hierarchically - this possibilities could be sorted in 6 wheels; commonly used is by card-players only one wheel with 4 possibilities (0=4, according to the system):

3-2-1-0 German games (Skat-Doppelkopf) Italian suits
2-1-0-3 Bridge (Mantegna)
1-0-3-2
0-3-2-1 French suit-system

Well, it's only a speculation, but ... it's a logical playing idea to indicate by the suits-system a hierarchical idea (even if this is not used in some games), and the easiest idea is to do this by numbers. Numbers are also in use inside the suits (in variants, 1-10, 1-9, 2-9, 2-10), so it is logical, that this technique is also used for the suits.

But: art is "freedom", and that means, surely not all card designers followed this idea or knew the idea. Most just followed traditions.
 

catboxer

The orthodox order? No particular order.

The signs of the elements/evangelists/suits are arranged around the edges of the world card in the four corners. Their order would depend on which corner you start with, and which direction you go.

This is like asking, "where's the starting point of a circle?"

If I had to arbitrarily choose an order, I guess I'd pick the order in which the evangelists/elements/suit signs appear in the New Testament: Mark (fire/lion/sticks), Matthew (air/man/swords), Luke (earth/ox/coins), and John (water/eagle/cups).