EPIPHANY! A New Take on the Major Arcana

dangerdork

Itika said:
I'm sorry, I'm late!

There are three ways (look at three bottom-colors in Isis-taro).

The way of Osiris (dark grey): 01 - 04 - 07 - 10 - 13 - 16 - 19 - 21 (- 00)

The way of Isis (blue): 02 - 05 - 08 - 11 - 14 - 17 - 20

The way of Horus (brown): 03 - 06 - 09 - 12 - 15 - 18 - 21

This sounds really interesting. Could you discuss more the themes of the "ways" of these deities, and the basic color symbolism?
 

dangerdork

northsea said:
I've seen 3x7 tarot templates by various tarot authors, but don't recall this specific layout that brings the virtues together on the central row, nor recall any other discussion of these three paths connected to 3x7 layout except in general terms of body/mind/spirit... so I think you're on to something here! My personal choice for Prudence is the High Priestess, so that fits right in with your template.

And Faith, Hope and Love/Charity could be represented by the Hierophant, the Star and Judgment, or the World (placed to Judgment's right), to have all 7 virtues on the middle row (laying them out left to right for each of three rows).
Wow! I had totally missed that! You're right... and this really reinforces my feeling that the original ordering of the Trumps may have involved the arrangement I'm examining. This correlation is also suggested in the discussion noted earlier by kwaw.


northsea said:
Regarding the associations though, it seems that Apollo (and the mind) was connected to the Ego and Dionysus (and the body) to the Id by various thinkers including Nietzche. Maybe Soldier/Priest/Rebel, Apollonian/Hermetic/Dionysian + Mind/Spirit/Body would align with traditional associations.
Yeah, I was kind of free associating at that point... I've kind of settled into three spheres of Body/Mind/Spirit for now, although I still have some other thoughts swirling around... for instance: Each of the Seven Stations could follow this pattern (with Path 1 = Outer, Path 2 = Inner, Path 3 = Hidden):

Your cannot know (Path 2) until you experience (Path 1). And then you must overcome (Path 3).

For instance, "Your Power": You cannot know Strength until you experience Focusing Your Energies. Then you must overcome your Desire for Knowledge.

Just playing around here.

Also, the Fool was traditionally placed between Judgment and the World, so if the Fool is placed in the 21 position as the ultimate Dionysian goal, the World may be placed off to the side, encompassing all three levels.

That's very cool. That placement of the Fool didn't come along til Levi or Etteila or one of those guys, did it? But it still totally works for me.
 

dangerdork

Sphinxmoth said:
Many thanks to you, dangerdork, for posting your epiphany and all of your
thoughts and inspirations, and to Rodney and everyone else for feeding
into the thread and expanding the explanation and perspective of all of it.
all the comments others made were most useful.
thank you thank you.

da moff
Thanks for the encouragement Sphinxmoth... and (just like Columbus "discovering" America), it looks like there are lots of people who have already been here all along. Maybe us newbies can ask a few naïve questions and stimulate fresh discussion. :)
 

dangerdork

rwcarter said:
The Outer Path contains 5 active elements and 2 passive elements. The Inner Path also contains 5 active elements and 2 passive elements. The Hidden path contains 6 passive elements and 1 active element. Both the Outer and Inner Paths end up being primarily Active, while the Hidden Path becomes overwhelming Passive.

In a way that makes sense to me. The Outer Path is what happens to you, while the Inner Path is how you react to what happens to you. It makes sense that both of those paths would be active. The Hidden Path is the spiritual path, which should be passive.
This is really interesting stuff and I keep meaning to get into further analysis of the Stations in these ways, but I keep ADD'ing off into other dimensions.

I wonder how the signs of the Zodiac correspond, for instance? At the origins of the tarot and on back into antiquity, we have the traditional Seven Planets. MMMMMMMM, seven. yum. Wonder how that works out?

And speaking of Sevens, I've been turning over in my head different patterns of sevens that may be applicable. Seven Planets, Seven Days of the Week, Seven Ages of Man (Shakespeare, so it postdates origins of Tarot... unless he GOT them from an earlier source.) Seven Virtues, Seven days of the Week, Seven Notes of the Musical Scale, Seven colors of the rainbow... I'm becoming a numerologist in spite of myself.

And so... Here's a good article on "The Number Seven" by Mme. Blavatsky. For those of you not familiar with the name, she was a founder of the school of Theosophy, of which the Golden Dawn was an offshoot. She had a profound influence on the thinking of its members.

At any rate, after searching through a number of references for symbolic groups of "sevens," I was delighted to discover that this was one of the more comprehensive and easy-to-read sources:

http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/NumberSeven.htm

rwcarter said:
It probably doesn't make sense to apply Elemental Dignities (the interactions of the elements to one another) to the Seven Stations LAYOUT, but it would make sense to apply them to the Seven Stations SPREAD. A given card in a given position in the SPREAD could be weakened by the cards surrounding it. But it doesn't make sense to make a position in the LAYOUT weak because the home card of the position is weakened by the home cards of surrounding positions.

Does that make sense?
Rodney
I think I'm going to have to make up a chart of that for it to make sense to me... I've got a lot of charts to make.

Speaking of the SPREAD, I think that needs some further tweaking and exploration now that I've proposed a way to include the Minors in the overall system. I have a few basic ideas, but again I need to take the time to illustrate them and organize my thoughts. I guess maybe that will give anyone who is following my "thinking out loud" process throughout this thread something to look forward to. Stay tuned.
 

Sar

I really enjoy this thread, but no I must sleep. Duty calls on tomorrow. Will take a closer look at things DD suggested later.
 

rwcarter

dangerdork,

I'm working on that spreadsheet I mentioned to you in PM. For the Minors, do the paths have the same meanings? For example, is the Outer Path for the Minors still Environment and Events and does it still represent the Material World? And is the Inner Path still Lessons and Reactions to the Outer Path and does it still represent the Psychological World?

I'm pretty sure the answer is "Yes" but thought I'd check.
 

dangerdork

rwcarter said:
dangerdork,

I'm working on that spreadsheet I mentioned to you in PM. For the Minors, do the paths have the same meanings? For example, is the Outer Path for the Minors still Environment and Events and does it still represent the Material World? And is the Inner Path still Lessons and Reactions to the Outer Path and does it still represent the Psychological World?

I'm pretty sure the answer is "Yes" but thought I'd check.
Well, Rodney, this is an interactive activity. I still think there's room for revision and improvement. SO, "Material World" seems to work for the "odd numbers" path and "Inner Path" or "Lessons" seems to work for the even numbers, but I have also considered:

Could they BOTH be "material world" paths; one for the "Masculine, Assertive, Type A" person and one for the "Feminine, Passive, Contemplative, Type B" person? It seems to work. One thing I've enjoyed doing (and not had time to document yet) is to take one of the Paths in the minors and (Disregarding the Stations for a moment) read it as a little plot of a story. Imagine those seven cards as the storyboard for a movie. Maybe make it in first person, and then just read the story across.

For example, in the Outer Path of Wands we would get something like:

"When I was young, I was always active, on the go, bursting with energy and involved in many ways with others around me. As I matured, I discovered a passion for My Thing, and it inspired me as a way to focus and channel my energies. I took steps and enjoyed early success with My Enterprise, which empowered me to pursue my passion. A Turning Point in my life was when I had expanded My Enterprise to the point where I could compete with all others in my field, and I made a commitment to be the best at My Thing. My commitment truly transformed me and soon I found that although I still had competitors, I was in a strong and unassailable position. Only then did I realize the burden of responsibility that comes from this commitment to excellence and lifelong pursuit of one's passions and dreams. I sit before you today having learned these lessons, a leader in my field. People admire and respect me, and pay attention when I speak. I have fulfilled my youthful dream."

I hope I've told this story in a way that you can easily trace the progression along the path described by the cards.

This is one practical application, I think, of this system. It's a little game anyone can play, novice or expert, to connect with different decks and put the stories told by the Minors in a perspective that may shine new light on your readings or meditations.

ANOTHER exercise I was playing with is to look at decks which give short descriptive labels to the cards and plug them into the formula. For instance, let's look at the Golden Dawn Magical deck in the Passive or Path 2 of Pentacles:

Your Origin - (Princess)
Your Inspiration - Harmonious Change
Your Power - Earthly Power
The Turning Point - Material Success
Your Transformation - Prudence
Your Epiphany - Wealth
Your Destiny - (Queen).

(note: I've changed the Seventh Stations label from "Your Goal" to "Your Destiny," as reflected in the handouts. Hopefully it's obvious that it just works better.)

Now, in some suits the Stations labels don't make all that good a correlation, and in the case of the Thoth deck they paint a pretty dark personality picture of most of the Courts - but as a description of the maturation of the "Baby Cards" in the Courts to their mature counterparts, every one of these series taken by itself seems to tell a not just a coherent story, but one relevant to the King or Queen with which it is associated.

Another idea that I'll eventually be toying with is this: we have eight Minor Paths (Inner and Outer for each of the four suits), each telling a certain story as described above. I think it will be tremendous fun to go and examine each of these with the MBPI system.

Another practical application would be to develop a spread where some significator is used (like the Fool in the spread described earlier for Majors Only) to determine where along a specific path the Querent is in their Journey. Even better, maybe if they have a Work question you could specifically look at the Wands paths, a Love question the Cups, etc. Still need to put some thought into this and work it out, but in the spirit of sharing all of this as I make it up and think through it, well, there you go.
 

rwcarter

dangerdork said:
Well, Rodney, this is an interactive activity. I still think there's room for revision and improvement.
I'm glad you said that. Cause having taken a more in depth look at this system, there's one little thing that bothers my sense of symmetry. The Majors and Pips are both laid UP in columns from left to right, and they seem to flow wonderfully. The Courts are laid DOWN in columns from left to right, which almost makes it seem like they were square pegs that were forced to fit in round holes.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, while many decks list the Court cards in the order Page, Knight, Queen and King, many other decks list them in just the opposite manner (King, Queen, Knight and Page). But having the King and Queen as the Origin and the Knight and Page/Princess as the Destiny doesn't make any sense either.

I guess I could look at it as the Courts ARE being laid UP in columns, but from right to left. But that still bothers my sense of symmetry since everything else is laid out left to right.

Just a small "complaint." Nothing major enough for me to not utilize this system.

dangerdork said:
One thing I've enjoyed doing (and not had time to document yet) is to take one of the Paths in the minors and (Disregarding the Stations for a moment) read it as a little plot of a story. Imagine those seven cards as the storyboard for a movie. Maybe make it in first person, and then just read the story across.

Sounds like a great idea, and it's one I'll have to try as soon as I get a chance.

dangerdork said:
ANOTHER exercise I was playing with is to look at decks which give short descriptive labels to the cards and plug them into the formula.

I have decks that have these keywords on the cards themselves (which I hate cause I never 100% agree with or understand how the author came up with the keywords) and decks that include the keywords in the LWB/BB. I'll also have to give that a try.

dangerdork said:
(note: I've changed the Seventh Stations label from "Your Goal" to "Your Destiny," as reflected in the handouts. Hopefully it's obvious that it just works better.)

Some people's children! :mad: (I say that a lot.) Good thing I noticed that change before I printed out my final copies of the spreadsheets I created that condense a lot of what you've written (and what I've added for Elemental Associations*). :thumbsup: Otherwise you would owe me for paper and ink! :joke:

* - Since I use Elemental Associations and Dignities, if the system doesn't make sense to me elementally, I'll just have to mess with it until it does. :D

dangerdork said:
Another idea that I'll eventually be toying with is this: we have eight Minor Paths (Inner and Outer for each of the four suits), each telling a certain story as described above. I think it will be tremendous fun to go and examine each of these with the MBPI system.
I'll let you run with that one.;) If there were 9 paths though, I'd take a stab at applying Enneagram types to them.

dangerdork said:
Another practical application would be to develop a spread where some significator is used (like the Fool in the spread described earlier for Majors Only) to determine where along a specific path the Querent is in their Journey. Even better, maybe if they have a Work question you could specifically look at the Wands paths, a Love question the Cups, etc. Still need to put some thought into this and work it out, but in the spirit of sharing all of this as I make it up and think through it, well, there you go.
I'll let that one percolate in the back of my brain for awhile too and see what comes out.

Rodney
 

dangerdork

rwcarter said:
I'm glad you said that. Cause having taken a more in depth look at this system, there's one little thing that bothers my sense of symmetry. The Majors and Pips are both laid UP in columns from left to right, and they seem to flow wonderfully. The Courts are laid DOWN in columns from left to right, which almost makes it seem like they were square pegs that were forced to fit in round holes.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, while many decks list the Court cards in the order Page, Knight, Queen and King, many other decks list them in just the opposite manner (King, Queen, Knight and Page). But having the King and Queen as the Origin and the Knight and Page/Princess as the Destiny doesn't make any sense either.

I guess I could look at it as the Courts ARE being laid UP in columns, but from right to left. But that still bothers my sense of symmetry since everything else is laid out left to right.

Just a small "complaint." Nothing major enough for me to not utilize this system.
I hear what you're saying, Rodney... and if you can find a better and more symmetrically satisfying method, please, persuade me.

I tried to outline my reasoning in post #27 of this thread: http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=1188144&postcount=27

and for now, I am going to stick to my guns. All along, I've tried to base my thinking around which cards made sense together in order to establish the pattern, and not the other way around. This arrangement just feels right to me in terms of what the cards seem to be saying. We could try associating the the Pages and Queens with the odd rows and Knights/Kings with the even, but that violates a different sense of belongingness to me. Those pesky Courts. If you stick the square peg in the round hole and then suddenly the stalled gears start turning, what are you supposed to do?

But please, Rodney (or anyone), PLEASE keep picking apart my system and shoot all the holes in it you can. These are ideas, and in my book ideas belong to everyone. Feel free to improvise and adapt or mock as you choose. If you have your own reasoning for alternatives to challenge the "rules" I'm proposing here, persuade me! I'll listen, I promise.