Greater Arcana Study Group—The Fool

Teheuti

duplicate - am having trouble with posts not showing up at this site.
 

Abrac

I believe Quaero Lucem = I seek light is correct.

This Wikipedia article gives Quaestor Lucis = Seeker of light. It also lists it under the Stella Matutina heading which seems to make some sense of it. She probably adopted the new motto for the SM. The Wikipedia translation seems right to me from the research I did at Wiktionary and with my Latin dictionary. There's a subtle but definite difference between the two.
 

Abrac

Interesting pictures. Thanks for posting them.
 

Teheuti

I checked with someone who taught Latin at a prestigous private high school:

Quaero lucem means 'I seek light.' Quaestor lucis means 'Seeker of light.' They are both proper grammar.

Added: Sorry to repeat, Abrac. I've been getting some messages but others are taking an hour or more to appear on my computer.
 

Abrac

In the lower right corner of the Fool’s vestment, one of the wheels is overlaid with what seems to be a Hebrew letter Shin. This could indicate a few things.

1. It associates the Fool with the 21st position (Shin), a place which corresponds with Levi’s placement and also Waite’s in the PKT.

2. Shin added to the Tetragrammaton transforms YHVH into YHSVH (Yeheshua, the Christ).

3. The wheels on the Fool's vestment have eight radii. This becomes interesting in light of what Waite says here . . .In the Adeptus Minor ritual of his Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, he describes one of the symbols: “At the meeting point of the arms—in the middle of the Cosmic Cross—is placed the Wheel or Circle of the Spirit, having eight radii, proceeding from the sacred letter SHIN. The doctrine of the Rosy Cross in the Grade of Adeptus Minor is here formulated and symbolised, with intimations of mysteries which lie beyond the Grade. It is a doctrine based upon experience, the experience of Christ realised in the four parts of our personality . . ."

This being said, would anyone have any ideas why Waite would have the Fool in the 21st place? And what would a connection of the Christ with the Fool mean? Waite appears to also associate the Magician with Christhood by virtue of the horizontal 8 symbol.
 

Richard

I was hoping that we would not get into this controversy.

Waite did not think that the Fool necessarily belonged to the 21st place in the ordering of the Trumps. On P. 70 of my edition of PKT, he writes,

That which hereinafter follows should be taken, for purposes of comparison, in connexion with the general description of the old Tarot Trumps in the first part. There it will be seen that the zero card of the Fool is allocated, as it always is, to the place which makes it equivalent to the number twenty-one. The arrangement is ridiculous on the surface, which does not much signify, but it is also wrong on the symbolism, nor does this fare better when it is made to replace the twenty-second point of the sequence.​

The letter Shin properly belongs to Trump 20 (Judgment) when the Fool is in its proper numerical order as the first Trump. As regards the 5=6 degree, Sephirah 6 is traditionally associated with the Son (third letter of the Tetragrammaton), i.e., Christ.
 

Yelell

LRichard said:
There it will be seen that the zero card of the Fool is allocated, as it always is, to the place which makes it equivalent to the number twenty-one.
Click to expand...
So he did not place the fool at the beginning or switch the Knights and Kings (in order to maintain the secret?) but he did flip Justice/Strength.
 

Richard

Yelell said:
So he did not place the fool at the beginning or switch the Knights and Kings (in order to maintain the secret?) but he did flip Justice/Strength.
Click to expand...

Yes, indeed! If he had intended to use the Levi ordering, he surely would have left Justice at 8 and Strength at 11, as in the historical deck that Levi used.

The only conceivable reason for interchanging Justice and Strength would be to associate Teth with Strength and Lamed with Justice so that they would correspond to Leo and Libra as in the Sepher Yetzirah, but this would not line up unless the Fool were in the first position.

Waite sort of lied, but not overtly. He used the traditional orderings (slightly modified) in order not to reveal stuff which he had sworn not to reveal.
 

Abrac

Yelell, it's an intersting point you raised before. What exactly did you mean by ". . . the text is a bit different . . ."? Different from what? Thanks in advance.
 
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