Marseilles Pips meanings?

Fulgour

*

Bâtons The human soul, being and becoming

Coupes Love, eternal and yet so fragile

d'Épées Ideas and the choices we make

Deniers Bells to be rung, bells ringing now

Teheuti

EnriqueEnriquez said:
Physical bodies express their energy as an urge that becomes a thought, a thought that becomes a feeling, and a feeling that affects the body; so it has new urges which becomes new thoughts, and so on...

Enrique, it's great to hear from you again. I had a discussion a while back with someone who said that emotion always follows thought. From my research on emotions I had come to understand that primary (primal) emotion precedes thinking: for instance, primal fear which leads to flight, flight, or freeze. Whereas secondary or more complex emotions (sometimes called feelings) follow thought. I'm curious what you meant by the word "urge". For instance, Jung made a distinction between affect and feeling. Does this relate?

Could you relate the process you describe above to the numbers of the Minor Arcana and perhaps expand on them a little with some examples from the suits? I know you've been working deeply with the Marseilles deck for a long time.

Mary

Teheuti

Fulgour said:
Bâtons The human soul, being and becoming

Coupes Love, eternal and yet so fragile

d'Épées Ideas and the choices we make

Deniers Bells to be rung, bells ringing now

Could you explain how cudgels are the human soul? And how Coins are bells? I like the sentiments but am having trouble understanding how to apply these in a reading.

Mary

venicebard

(Take a deep breath)

thinbuddha said:
I think using numerology as a system for interpreting pips is superior to using the Major Arcana I to X for one big reason: what makes those 10 arcana so important that they need to be represented 5 times in a single deck?

Bear with me. Clubs/staves are the only burnable suit symbol. The other three are metal and withstand fire, which they need do in order to get past it, swords so that they can split the air, both literally and by din of battle, cups so they can hold water, and coins in order to be wealth’s earthly expression, symbolizing the tangible and the sensual.

But, based on the fact that the Marseilles trumps precisely express the alphabetical facts consistent with Kabbalah and Merkavah (though via the letter-numbering used by insular Keltic bards who used numbers as poetic symbols, this tradition no doubt reaching the Continent alongside Arthur and Tristan and company), ultimately the pips of the Marseilles signify the Kabbalists’ Sefirot manifesting throughout the four worlds that are the elements’ ultimate expression for man—albeit seen from a non-Jewish bardic or Gnostic point of view. [Other evidence is the Marseilles having one female to three male court cards in each suit, since this expresses the Name (yod-heh-vav-heh) more perfectly than two of each, by matching the original (bardic or calendrical) placement of vav forward (towards or at the breast pictured in Phoenician vav) and yod and heh behind (towards ‘backbone’ or having ‘a leg to stand on’) relative to the vertical axis, the diameter of the round that is the zodiac of the torso as well as year (where spring springs up, fall falls down, summer blossoms out, and so on) . . . but that’s another story.]

The Sefirot are the ten steps on the round that are the departure from, approach to, and presence at four cardinal directions up and forward or out and down and back or in, this last the Shekhinah itself, the presence or Immanence of the Totality in the individual: how far one has progressed about the great round of the Universe (i.e. to the point of being an individual conscious self). In the first world, the archetypal, they are simply these ten directions out from the crown of standing primordial (transcending-sex) Adam. In the second world, they are these ten directions on a 2nd wheel, centered atop Adam seated in meditation—the ‘Throne world’—determining five pairs of opposites: first-last, good-bad, up-down, east-west, south-north, in that order. In the third world, the wheel centered on the heart when seated (the zodiac proper or torso), they twist into the arcs leading on from these ten stations as the doer-Creator becomes caught up in the maelstrom of time and decay, and by the primordial logic of the tetrads (groups of four signs), wherein the balanced one is cardinal and the ones leaning forward and back male and female respectively, and identifying supernals 1-3 by where they emanate and the rest by where they end up, the ten become: a neutral or central 1 branching into male-female 2-3, which come together as 4-5 to produce agreed-upon offspring 6, which can degenerate (has degenerated) into 7-8 ‘joining’ to produce two distinct versions of offspring, 9 (what was held in the womb 9 moons) and 10 (what is held in the 10 fingers). These ten, then, form, in the fourth world—which is both the round of the womb and the present instant throughout matter (the womb of time)—the ten stages of descent from eternity to ‘today’: 1-eternity, 2-‘precession’ (actually, forward rotation of stellar heavens about zodiac of seasons), 3-Saturn, 4-Jupiter, 5-Mars, 6-year, 7-Venus, 8-Mercury, 9-month, and 10-day—‘today’. (Planets beyond Saturn are ‘mere’ counterweights, revolving retrograde relative to the solar system’s central frame.) One can see the poetic connexion quite clearly, in that the martial ideal, for instance, is a mother defending her young, while Venus and Mercury represent what male and female, respectively, lust after in this fourth ‘layer of the tetractys’, where the goal of intercourse is not agreed upon.

The natural order of elements is (as verified by the four particle-types being, in order of increasing minimum rest mass, photon-lepton-meson-baryon): 1-fire, 2-air, 3-water, and 4-earth. These pervade all number, by stamping (in digital summation, man being a ‘fingered’ being) plus-one through plus-four followed by minus-four through minus-zero as an endlessly repeated pattern therein. When squared, they mark the limits of the layers of the elements as manifested in physical reality, where things vie for balance—the four elements as they manifest in earth, which, being fourth, indicates by its presence the presence of all four (since it is nothing without what determines it).

Fire’s layer, then, is 1, the stars. The sun itself is 2-‘precession’, air’s passive receptor of (or lens focusing) electrical power from the stellar power grid (for which they require a great expanse) for earth’s local use. Then 3-Saturn is air acting on water (3rd element), while 4-Jupiter is air acting on earth (4th element). Then 5-Mars (numerological minus-4) is water acting on earth, while 6-year (numerological minus-3) is water acting on itself. Then 7-Venus (minus-3 valence) is water being acted on by itself, 8-Mercury (minus-2 valence) water being acted on by air, and 9-moon (minus-1 valence) water being acted on by fire, which is why silver (luna’s metal) shines almost like gold. Earth’s equator, then, is 10, acted on by the fire or oneness in all three of the other elements so to speak, fire being activity itself and air and water the mixtures of active and passive in which first the one and then the other predominate (earth being the purely passive). For purposes of readings, think of the elements here as fire-knower, air-thinker, water-doer, and earth-body, for this is how they relate to the psyche.

Hope this is of some help. By the way, the trumps relate to the 10 obviously by including them but also as 10 that are reflected in 1st- through 10th-from-the-end, through the mirror of 11 (which is 1 looking at itself). And if Lurianic Kabbalah be any guide, the 4th through 10th reflections have broken into 18-17, 17-16, 16-15, etc., where 10th being 12-11 shows Narcissus ‘diving in’ or losing himself in the mirror (as in the Gnostic myth, whose source I would have to look up).

venicebard

Teheuti said:
I had a discussion a while back with someone who said that emotion always follows thought. From my research on emotions I had come to understand that primary (primal) emotion precedes thinking: for instance, primal fear which leads to flight, flight, or freeze. Whereas secondary or more complex emotions (sometimes called feelings) follow thought.

Some quick thoughts on this. In man, feeling substitutes itself for thinking or reason, just as desire substitutes itself for knowledge or truth. The whole being (see Plato’s Republic, chapter 19) consists of knower, dealing with what is eternal, thinker, dealing with what is of finite duration, and doer, acting in the present instant, which, as it has no duration, therefore remains dark or unknown, only what has durations extending through it being comprehensible. The problem in the human doer is that it seeks its guidance from the senses rather than from its own thinker-knower (the rest of its being), from which it has become estranged. This is based on a Platonic or Gnostic view of reality (with which Jung himself was familiar and towards which he leaned).

Teheuti

venicebard said:
Some quick thoughts on this. In man, feeling substitutes itself for thinking or reason, just as desire substitutes itself for knowledge or truth.

I appreciate that this is a 'view' of humanity, however, why should feelings or desire be a 'substitute' for anything else? From a wholistic point of view all human experience should be taken into account and treated with respect for what it offers. The task then is to acknowledge thinking/reason, feelings, desire and knowledge, and take the wisdom of each into account. Desire leads us to knowledge. Feelings lead us to think and thinking to feeling. We learn things through our senses. It seems that the whole point of the four suits and their reminders in the Majors (on the Magician's table and in the four corners of the World card, for instance) is to integrate all of these things.

Fulgour

Sense & Sentiments

Teheuti said:
I like the sentiments but am having trouble
understanding how to apply these in a reading.

Bâtons The human soul, being and becoming The FIRE of Spirit

Coupes Love, eternal and yet so fragile The WATER of Emotion

d'Épées Ideas and the choices we make The AIR of Intellect

Deniers Bells to be rung, bells ringing now The EARTH of Events

stella01904

Fulgour said:
Bâtons The human soul, being and becoming The FIRE of Spirit

Coupes Love, eternal and yet so fragile The WATER of Emotion

d'Épées Ideas and the choices we make The AIR of Intellect

Deniers Bells to be rung, bells ringing now The EARTH of Events

Or:
Epee, intellect, energy center at the brow (think "frontal cortex" moseso than "psychism")

Coupe, emotion, energy center at the level of the heart

Deniers, material, energy center at the belly level

Baton, creative and sexual energy, energy center at the groin level

venicebard

Teheuti said:
I appreciate that this is a 'view' of humanity, however, why should feelings or desire be a 'substitute' for anything else?

That is the point, that it should not be and yet so acts.

From a wholistic point of view all human experience should be taken into account and treated with respect for what it offers. The task then is to acknowledge thinking/reason, feelings, desire and knowledge, and take the wisdom of each into account.

You have perhaps slightly misconstrued my meaning (my fault): the doer’s feeling and desire are part of one’s self, one’s total being, and therefore of utmost importance. The point is that the human doer (fallen Adam) lets its passive side, feeling, and its active side, desire, get in the way of reason and knowledge for the most part. It is prompted to do so by the darkness of its ‘field’, the present instant or instant of creation (space, creation’s womb, is dark by virtue of light’s finite velocity, which cannot reach another location within the present instant), which it has come to identify with rather than with its greater self that includes a thinker, whose realm is finite durations, and a knower, whose realm is the eternal. You say:

Desire leads us to knowledge. Feelings lead us to think and thinking to feeling.

Desire can lead to knowledge, but human desire more often leads to complications, rather than to truth’s simplicity. The very struggle that we are ‘here for’ is that between desire for objects of sensation, which is ego (encroachment of self onto other), and desire for self-knowledge, meaning knowledge of the Whole and of exactly what one is, which is gnosis. These two competing ‘powers’ in us are symbolized by the duality of there being both a broken-and-extended zodiac, going down the legs to the feet—leading to discontinuity—and a closed or circular one going up the spine to the head (raised serpent-power)—leading to continuity.

We learn things through our senses.

Sure, but the point is that sensation should be the servant, not the ruler. This is because the senses and their objects are distinct from self—as Buddha’s anatta doctrine originally pointed out, before it was warped into the Hindu-esque idea of there being no self at all, distinct from the Whole—and thus cannot take responsibility for what the self does.

stella01904 said:
Or:
Epee, intellect, energy center at the brow (think "frontal cortex" moseso than "psychism")

Coupe, emotion, energy center at the level of the heart

Deniers, material, energy center at the belly level

Baton, creative and sexual energy, energy center at the groin level

Interesting how you define these, Stella. Someone should point out, though, that the baton (this is true of polo sticks too, if one be any good at polo) is for directing the eye, fire’s sense, and fire’s proper station is the head, spirit’s seat in us. It is just that fire or energy is of course present throughout, and it is in the loins that it manifests most concretely—which is natural, since fire is the whole (everything is made of energy, even mass), and the loins, one’s contact with earth when seated meditating, is the level of earthiness or concreteness in the whole (which is man writ large, upright sentience being the door between inner and outer horizons necessary for their interaction, and I know inner horizons exist cuz I gots one).

There is a very clear correspondence, by the way, between the four elements and the four regions of the torso. For if you note the relation between body and horizon when seated meditating, fire’s sense, sight, is what links us to the horizon without, which is at eye level on the sphere of surroundings (centered atop the head and resting where one rests), whereas what approaches within earshot, air’s sense, represents the thirty-degree angle descending on down from that horizon to end at half its height: so far, fire is at the level of the head, air at the level of the thoracic cavity (descending to diaphragm). Thirty-degrees out from straight down, which is the next sign after what approaches within earshot, is where is placed that which is within reach, which can thus be tasted (provided we reach out to convey it to the lips), this being water’s sense (things must be in solution to be tasted), while straight down is our point of surface contact with earth. And earth’s sense is surface contact or touch, of which smell is simply the most focused aspect (sensing surfaces of individual molecules). Thus we can complete the picture by placing earth at the pelvis, and water just above this, at the abdomen, which means the elements descending from head to loins are in their natural order: fire-air-water-earth (brightness-thinness-and-motion, darkness-thinness-and-motion, darkness-thickness-and-motion, darkness-thickness-and-rest).

Just so, the baton or staff (or polo stick) directs the eye, the clash of swords the ear, the cup the tongue, and money the production of the solid and tangible. Knowledge, within, is at the same level as fire, without, a level usurped by desire in fallen Adam (us). Thinking, within, is at the same level as air, without, and follows the swing of breathing (and in the righteous, the dictates of conscience, which resides in the heart), this level being usurped by feeling in man. Emotion, the doer’s proper contribution to things, is like hunger or thirst, a belly-driven thing, while the sensual and tactile itself has its focus in or about the loins, the place of physical conjoining.

Are these things not so?

Teheuti

venicebard said:
You say: Desire can lead to knowledge, but human desire more often leads to complications, rather than to truth’s simplicity. The very struggle that we are ‘here for’ is that between desire for objects of sensation, which is ego (encroachment of self onto other), and desire for self-knowledge, meaning knowledge of the Whole and of exactly what one is, which is gnosis.

If I understand you correctly, its neither desire nor the senses that are at fault - but what our ego 'thinks' they mean. It seems that we can make an equally valid argument against thinking/reason and knowledge/information.

the point is that sensation should be the servant, not the ruler.

And neither should thinking be the ruler. It's not about one being inherently better or worse than another but how they function in particular circumstances.

According to Daniel Goleman, the Dalai Lama made the point at an Emotions Conference in Dharmsala that Tibetan Buddhists do not distinguish between thoughts and emotions in the way that Westerners do but rather between destructive and beneficial thoughts/feelings. He made a big point of this being a misconception about Buddhism on the part of Westerners (and translators).

This point is made beautifully by David Brazier in a book called _The Feeling Buddha_.

Mary