The Exaltation Tarot

The Exaltation Tarot
by Fulgour Prentice

Click on to VIEW NEW IMAGE (Feb 06)
May also be viewed as an 'attachment'
at the bottom of this post (see below).

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Is this the be all and end all...? No, just a starting point.
This is how I envision the inner structure of the Arcana.

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"Taurus ~ Leo ~ Scorpio ~ Aquarius"

1st mo. He: exaltation of the Sun
2nd mo. Waw: exaltation of the Moon
3rd mo. Zayin: exaltation of North Node

4th mo. Heth: exaltation of Jupiter
5th mo. Teth: (no exaltation) ~Shin
6th mo. Yod: exaltation of Mercury

7th mo. Lamedh: exaltation of Saturn
8th mo. Nun: (no exaltation) ~Mem
9th mo. Samekh: exaltation of South Node

10th mo. Ayin: exaltation of Mars
11th mo. Tsade: (no exaltation) ~Aleph
12th mo. Qoph: exaltation of Venus

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Here are the 12 Months from the Phoenician and Hebrew
calendars, with their corresponding Major Arcana cards:

THIS IS REAL INFORMATION. IT'S NOT MADE UP.

Nisanu (Nissan) Aries : Letter 5 (He): V The Hierophant
Ayaru (Iyar) Taurus : Letter 6 (Waw): VI The Lovers
Simanu (Sivan) Gemini : Letter 7 (Zayin): VII The Chariot

Du'uzu (Tammuz) Cancer : Letter 8 (Heth): VIII Justice
Abu (Av) Leo : Letter 9 (Teth): IX The Hermit
Ululu (Elul) Virgo : Letter 10 (Yod): X The Wheel of Fortune

Tashritu (Tishri) Libra : Letter 12 (Lamedh): XII The Hanged Man
Arach-Samna (Cheshvan) Scorpio : Letter 14 (Nun): XIV Temperance
Kislimu (Kislev) Sagittarius : Letter 15 (Samekh): XV The Devil

Shabatu (Shevat) Capricorn : Letter 16 (Ayin): XVI The Tower
Tebetu (Tevet) Aquarius : Letter 18 (Tsade): XVIII The Moon
Adaru (Adar) Pisces : Letter 19 (Qoph): XIX The Sun

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I think the planets appear in the order of their distance from
the Earth (looking out the window, or over the garden fence):
Letters 2, 3, 4, 11, 17, 20, 22:

2 Beth: Moon
3 Gimmel: Venus
4 Daleth: Mars
11 Kaph: Mercury (as always, with Virgo)
17 Pe: Sun (upon the arrival of Capricorn, like Christmas)
20 Res: Jupiter
22 Taw: Saturn

Letters 1 - 13 - 21
Aleph, Mem, Shin:
Air, Water, Fire.

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Best Wishes!
Fulgour

Click on 'attachment' to view Diagram.

Last night I watched at sunset as the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter
twinkled into view and graced the evening sky. That's astrology!

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Planets According to Distance from the Earth
in Kilometres

Moon
384,404

Venus
38,050,900 minimum (261,039,880 maximum)

Mars
54,510,620 minimum (401,355,980 maximum)

Mercury
77,269,900 minimum (221,920,880 maximum)

Sun
147,085,800 minimum (152,104,980 maximum)

Jupiter
588,404,520 minimum (968,460,580 maximum)

Saturn
1,195,772,020 minimum (1,658,854,940 maximum)

An interesting study of the relationships may be undertaken by
laying out the Major Arcana in a row of six, each row from top:

XVII The Star (Sun)
V The Hierophant (Aries)
XII The Hanged Man (Libra)
__ The Fool (Saturn)

II The High Priestess (Moon)
VI The Lovers (Taurus)
XIV Temperance (Scorpio)
XIII _____ (Mem: Water)

[no card above]
VII The Chariot (Gemini & North Lunar Node)
XV The Devil (Sagittarius & South Lunar Node)
[no card below]

XX Judgement (Jupiter)
VIII Justice (Cancer)
XVI The Tower (Capricorn)
IV The Emperor (Mars)

XXI The World (Shin: Fire)
IX The Hermit (Leo)
XVIII The Moon (Aquarius)
I The Magician (Aleph: Air)

XI Strength (Mercury)
X The Wheel of Fortune (Virgo)
XIX The Sun (Pisces)
III The Empress (Venus)

The cards may be laid out, usually beginning with Aries,
in any order of positioning you see the Zodiac structure.
A circular layout is also a lot of fun, but I can't type one!
This is a lot of fun ~ and I hope you enjoy playing cards.

Questions and Comments will be honoured and welcome.
Please feel free to express your views in any manner.

I did your Exaltation Tarot layouts with my Ancient Egyptian Tarot Deck.
(Closest feeling to Phoenician I had ) Every relationship looked and felt right in opposition and exaltations except for the second set:- The HP-Moon, Lovers-Taurus,Temperance-Scorpio, and Mem. I cannot explain exactly what I mean, but this set looks amiss. I do not know whether it is the Cards I used or what. Can you give me the sacred relationships between these cards as you see them? Maybe you can briefly show me the "why" of their placement. The High Priestess and the Moon seems totally right. I thought your wheel an excellent way of seeing things and I had fun looking at it as cards. What a wonderful self teaching approach that is- thank you. ~Rosanne

Rosanne said:

I did your Exaltation Tarot layouts with my Ancient Egyptian Tarot Deck. (Closest feeling to Phoenician I had ) Every relationship looked and felt right in opposition and exaltations except for the second set:- The HP-Moon, Lovers-Taurus,Temperance-Scorpio, and Mem.

Click to expand...

The Ancient Egyptian Tarot by Clive Barrett follows
the 'Golden Dawn' arrangement (see page 129) and
so there may be a rather lot of difficulty using them.

Le Tarot de Marseille works without causing a strain,
or The Pamela Colman Smith Tarot of 1909, which is
not a 'Golden Dawn' deck in any way, shape, or form.

Attributes can only give one a sense of balance, where
you are then free to walk the tightrope ~without a net.

Of the four fixed signs only Taurus has an exaltation,
the Moon. It took a long time for this to be resolved
in my mind as an absolutely, irrefutable proof that it
was the Moon that was the central figure of worship.

Try looking at all the fixed signs as a big central cross,
with the Moon radiating out into all of them at once...
forget about Astrology as taught and just ~ Let it Be.

Majors only?

Curious if decanates and minors/courts apply.

Best regards,

Cerulean

Cerulean said:

Curious if decanates and minors/courts apply.

Click to expand...

Without meaning to I've actually memorized the Decanates,
using a simple memory aid. Anything like this is personal to
a reader or student, needing only imagination, and wings.

Crosswind

Fulgour, as flamboyant as you have sounded to me at times (or was that just ‘style’), you strike me as quite rational. I want to thank you, profusely, (and when I italicize the comma, I mean it) for getting me started on the track of both exaltations and planetary assignments-for-doubles: I think I may have solved the latter, at least a coherent pattern appears to be generated, one that utilizes exaltation and rulership (but is based on more solid considerations). It differs radically from yours (I’m sorry?), but here is my solution, the signs those the letters occupy on the Cauldron-of-doubles once R-the-Devil is chained fast to libra (man in chaste meditation):


B-Mars – exaltation: capricorn.

G-Mercury – internal counterpart of rulership: scorpio (straight in from virgo) [scorpio’s ruler Mars being already ‘spoken for’].

D-Jupiter – exaltation: as cancer (fire’s station in manifested nature).


K-moon – manifested equivalent of exaltation: virgo, straight down from taurus [luna’s manifested sign cancer and virgo’s ruler Mercury being already ‘spoken for’] (virgo is water’s station in manifested nature, meaning cancer-through-libra as elements).


P-Saturn – manifested equivalent of rulership: sagittary, straight down from aquarius [ruler Jupiter being already ‘spoken for’].

R-Venus – rulership: (chained to) libra.

T-sun – rulership: leo (air’s station in manifested nature).


The two ‘straight down froms’ are because doubles occupy the bottom half of the round, while the ‘straight in from’ is what guarded the secret till now. This solution may help explain D-and-P’s reversal in the Cauldron (in converting from phonetics to calendar-order): thinker’s (air’s) power-over-earth (dalet) was there from the beginning (or included with its power-over-water), but its power-over-water (the doer) must be ‘separated out’ once doer loses sight of its thinker-and-knower (to follow sensation instead)... therefore, the knower’s ability to receive the Light of the Intelligence (of the one who passed this way on the ladder before us) has become hidden in nature from having had to withdraw within (the active side) to distinguish or differentiate Saturn from Jupiter, thus dividing air’s active aspect in two. Furthermore, the doer’s ‘truancy’ makes it necessary for the thinker’s power-over-earth (Jupiter) to act directly on nature by ‘trickery’ (as Prunikos the whore?) by controlling cancer, nature’s doorway into manifestation, this because the doer no-longer ‘listens’ to it directly.

I am intrigued and my interest renewed by having stumbled on this possible solution (am I alone?) and would be happy to post my arguments for it here as well as wherever it was I posted them before, if anyone is interested. It is based on considerations native to each letter (though I will admit to the mysterious nature of gimel till now, which blocked solution). Most arrangements (with all due respect, having tried them myself) are “let’s string ’em up in this order or that and see what works” (like I said, I’ve tried this too). The above solution may turn out to be wrong, in part or in whole (I doubt the latter). But it carries more weight, intellectually, than ‘strings of beads’ methinks. (And it gives grist for my ‘mill’ of trying to pin down, once and for all, the source of alef-bet order in its entirety, not just in part.)

Evidence from old-Semitic letter-shapes

Beyt is the mitre of the high priest but is equally at home as the pointy helmet of the warrior.

Gimel is a camel’s hump or pyramid-in-the-sand (I don’t quite buy ‘throwing stick’) but descends from the hieratic form of Egyptian g (according to 19th-century scholars and me), which Gardiner calls ‘stand with jar’ but which is more likely an alchemical oven, since it contains the symbol for fire (triangle pointing up).

Dalet is the oaken door in Hebrew, ogham, and tifinag, while in runes it is (like our D) the giant that has to fit through the door (but still stands for giant-killer Thor alias oak alias Daibhaith/David the giant-killer, in Irish-Welsh tradition), in Egyptian the hand extended (indicating the horizon?), and in Meroitic the eye-on-the-horizon or Cauldron’s rim (yes, it shows the outer quarter-circle of it), related to its being lightning, manifested fire.

Kaf is often called ‘cupped hand’ and is descended (say 19th-century scholars and I) from the hieratic form of basket-with-handle: both evoke a semicircle or crescent moon (meaning basket doubles as bowl-containing-water).

Peh is an ear (in square-Hebrew, a mouth speaking), which is air’s ability to act on water (blood) or form (the doer): it stands for poetic or Merkabhic ‘mysteries’ (initiation), whose ‘aficionado’ is little Gwion, who imbibes the drop from Keridwen’s cauldron off his burnt thumb, Gwion’s name being Welsh counterpart of Irish Fionn, F being Saturn’s tree (fearn, alder). (This sounds more far-fetched than it actually is.)

Resh the hobby-horse is (according to 19th-century scholars and me) from the hieratic of the horizontally-pictured mouth, standing for consumption of what basket kaf contains – but also, surely, for kisses!

Tav is a crossroads, which symbolizes center (heart, sun) and the ‘airing’ of something, bringing it out into the sunlight (of public scrutiny).

Oh I see what might be happening. The Mercury-ruled form or virgo is internalized (to scorpio), which draws down into virgo the vivifying effect of taurus’s exaltation of luna: this evokes an answer from within, the descent of Saturn’s rulership of aquarius (next sign on from self, i.e. what remains to be learned) into sagittary (thought). (This last echoes the ‘descent’ which defines the divine throne as a throne, which suggestion causes me even greater hope for this model’s efficacy.)

[Edited to add:] The three shifts happen to be the first three of the four stages of alchemy, lead-mercury-silver-gold: lead is Saturn's manifestation of what remains to be learned into man's thinking, mercury is Mercury's internalization therefore of the forms of nature, and silver is the manifestation of what vivifies those forms. Gold, the final goal, meanwhile remains imperturbable, as leo-the-heart or conscience.

[Further edited to add:] With regard to silver, I am reminded of the myth of the slaying of the Medusa, which required beholding her only by mirror.