Mary El Tarot - Structure - Reading purposes

La Force

This the Structure of the Mary El Tarot by Marie White. I have taken the liberty to post it here. This is from her site. http://tarotsmyth.wordpress.com/page/3/

Structure

The main pattern or structure of the Mary-el tarot is based on the Tarot de Marseille. It has 22 Major Arcana, including the unnumbered Fool, and 56 Minor Arcana. The card order is that of the Tarot de Marseille (and the Crowley Thoth) with Justice 8 and Strength 11.

The Minor Arcana are completely illustrated and are based on the numerology as set forth in the Major Arcana. So, the Aces are based on the Magician, split within the 4 elements, the Two’s on the High Priestess, the Threes the Empress and so on. The Court Cards are fairly traditional; they are titled Page, Knight, Queen and King, and I also associate those with Major Arcana, so the Pages which follow the 10s get associated with Strength, 11. The Knights with 12 The Hanged Man, The Queens with 13 Death and the Kings with 14 Temperance.

The Suit symbols are Wands, Swords, Cups, and Disks. Wands are Fire, Swords are Air, Cups are Water, and Disks are Earth. I see the order those are in as being very subjective, and they can appear different depending on where you stand, but for the sake of keeping things in some sort of simple order I usually describe them in the order of Fire, Air, Water Earth because that is the elements from the lightest to the densest, and also if you can imagine moving down our bodies, Fire being somewhere up here, Air being in our heads, water being here in our hearts and earth being down here.

Below is a brief chart, and we will go further into the elemental correlations later because it is a very important part of this deck.

Element:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Fire~~~~~Air~~~~~~~~Water~~~~~~~Earth
Suit: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Wands~~~Swords~~~~~~~Cups~~~~~~~~~Disks
States of Matter (In order of density):~~Plasma~~~~Gas~~~~~~~~Liquid~~~~~~~~Solid
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Sun~~~Atmosphere~~~Bodies of Water~~Ground/Rock

So, even though the traditional structure of tarot is there, and something I highly value, this deck is not a clone of The Rider Waite, or the Thoth, or the Marseille, or all 3, or any other deck. Rather I wanted to learn where the underlying symbolism came from and illustrate that. I believe that all of these decks as well as any kind of symbolism humans tend to record, are based on a much older and basic truth, one that exists within us as archetypes.
 

La Force

A Great comment made by Marie, just gotta post it :D

Marie White said:
You can divide the tarot into 5 elements basically, the 4 elements of the minor arcana and then the 5th element of spirit in the major arcana. I think its interesting that the minor arcana are divided into 2 sets of 7 each, a duality, and the major arcana is 3 sets of 7, a trinity, which is how we often describe mystical things.

Not to make it more confusing, lol, but I can also see the major arcana as the first 3 elements, Fire, Air and Water, and the 4th element of earth as the minor arcana, which is 4-fold. Then you have a 4 fold earth/microcosm and a 3-fold spirit/macrocosm. the 3 and the 4 together are 7 the Chariot. It’s all about the 7s.

I absolutely see the court cards as a meeting place between here and there! I actually kind of think of people as angels, fallen, half physical, half spirit (just symbolic of course!)