Minors, pips, elements, social order

[Bernice]

Splungeman:

....To the mamluks all of these were basic necessities of life. Your sword, your horse, wealth, and nourishment! This is my favorite way of interpreting the meanings...down to their basic meanings as they were in the beginning, stripped of mystical stuff. To me it is actually more flexible that way and more down to earth, as I believe the pips should be. The Majors are for all the bigger, more transcendent, mystical themes of life. The pips and court cards are for the basic things in life...the nitty gritty, as it were.

Splungeman, I believe you are (historically) correct. And also believe that the 'batons' were polo-sticks - but as you say, 'riding crop' is near enough.

For those who are feeling confused about this, pop over to the History threads, there's plenty of posts written in easy to grasp 'lay-mans' terms.

Bee

 

[The crowned one]

This Visual image is a stylized Polo stick but what it represented was something quite different, I think, by the time of the deck. It represented a class of people (magi/priests/law makers) as it was a Heraldry image by the time it made it onto a playing card surface. A badge of office or a symbol of it.

Just my theory based on my study of others work

 

[ethan_greer]

But this is with decks that don't have previously assigned meanings. For example, it is difficult for me to not associate the RWS cup with water.

That's a point. My first deck was a Robin Wood, which has strong elemental associations in the illustrations, the courts especially. This undoubtedly influenced my personal suit associations.

 

[bluecaffeine]

meanings

Well, for me nature is important, I find solutions in the nature.
I use the SacredCircleTarot and I work with the elements. For me it is the only way to read the cards.

 

[elvenstar]

So...does anyone here have their own way of making sense of all this? Do you choose the on you like best? Do you toss out the elemental associations? The social order associations? Do you make your own associations? DO the pip symbols matter less to you than the scene depicted on the card if it had characters?

[...]

SO...let us discuss pips and minors. What do you do? How do you see the pips? Why do you choose to see them that way?

Just to clarify, are you talking about TdM, or people-free minors in general, or ...? For me it depends on the deck.

I'm not experienced with TdM style decks. But when I do read them, I've noticed I tend to first pay a lot of attention to the implements themselves, the shape they make etc., taking the flowery stuff into account at the same time. I tend to think in metaphors using the things literally, so 'swords cut' and so on and then it's mostly numerology. So I guess the pip symbols don't matter less than scenes. They are there on the card, so I use them.

The social order thing is never part of the picture for me. I've heard of it, but it's not something that I ever think of.

Elemental associations don't seem to come into it all that much if they're not explicit in the deck. But since I started with a deck that had prominent elemental associations (Mythic), I think they're always there lurking in the background.

The Pythagorean for example is also 'scene-free', more so than TdM probably, but there it would be elements and numbers mainly, because that's how it was made.

So I guess how I see them depends a lot on what I see on them and it's not so much of a conscious choice.

 

[Splungeman]

Just to clarify, are you talking about TdM, or people-free minors in general, or ...? For me it depends on the deck.

I'm not experienced with TdM style decks. But when I do read them, I've noticed I tend to first pay a lot of attention to the implements themselves, the shape they make etc., taking the flowery stuff into account at the same time. I tend to think in metaphors using the things literally, so 'swords cut' and so on and then it's mostly numerology. So I guess the pip symbols don't matter less than scenes. They are there on the card, so I use them.

The social order thing is never part of the picture for me. I've heard of it, but it's not something that I ever think of.

Elemental associations don't seem to come into it all that much if they're not explicit in the deck. But since I started with a deck that had prominent elemental associations (Mythic), I think they're always there lurking in the background.

The Pythagorean for example is also 'scene-free', more so than TdM probably, but there it would be elements and numbers mainly, because that's how it was made.

So I guess how I see them depends a lot on what I see on them and it's not so much of a conscious choice.

All minors really. Not just TdM. The suit symbols themselves. I understand that the deck itself might influence the association. If the deck had torches instead of wands it's a pretty obvious "fire" association. I guess though I'm looking at the more traditional pip symbols. I like your methods...very flexible...I like flexible.

Anybody see the minors as less important than the majors? I have seena lot of people when they see the ten or nine of swords freak out and think someone is going to die. I just don't see it that way i guess. I think that the card for that would be "Death", as I view the majors as having more "oomph" to them than the pip cards. It's almost like I see the pips as a kind of punctuation in the statement or an indicator of things in the mix. If pips appear with trumps, the pips are providing detail about the meaning of the trump itself. For example if the Tower is present with the ten of coins I might see that someone's whole life is about to be abruptly changed due to coming into a large amount of money. The abrupt life change was the main point...the pip card provided the detail.

How do you (by YOU I mean everyone reading) see the pips vs the majors in value? Do you see them as peripheral, just as weighty as the majors, or...?

 

[The crowned one]

How do you (by YOU I mean everyone reading) see the pips vs the majors in value? Do you see them as peripheral, just as weighty as the majors, or...?

I see majors as events out of our control. These are the currents of life that just happen. Its more how we react to them then what we can do to change them.

I see minors as things we can control or influence, its not so much how we react to them it is our pro-active stance that makes or breaks these cards.

Majors are out of our hands..it has or will happen...so now what.... minors are in our hands, so what are you going to do about it?

This is pretty general but it is a base I work from. Every reading is different.

I have been answering this thread from two aspects of how I see tarot. Historically and to be studied, and cartomancy. This time it is cartomancy.

 

[Kircher Tree]

>>So...does anyone here have their own way of making sense of all this?<<

Well, since you asked...

I look at this from a Post Modern Islamic point of view. Many years ago I regarded the cards with pictures as as abomination, and I threw them away, leaving nothing but pip cards. I don't really feel that way anymore, but I still think that the pip cards are the "True Tarot" as much as it is possible for it to exist. The picture cards were added later by the Europeans.

So, I believe that what the Europeans call "Mamluk" would be the closest thing to the actual tarot, except that they have been mostly lost, and the ones that remain are probably fakes. The closest thing to real tarot that remains now, is probably the minors of the earlier TdM decks.

I'm not sure I believe in the "social" interpretation. I think the "true tarot" now lost did not contain any images at all, but powerful abstract mental symbols. I believe it existed (not as cards but in a mental form) for thousands of years and inspired Indian Tattwas and Chinese IChing and Greek geometry and numerology, and also gave rise to Alchemy and Kaballa when it reached Europe.

So to come back around to the original question, I think my interpretation might be (in European Language) Elemental-Geometrical-Numerological Alchemy.

 

[The crowned one]

Kircher Tree what makes you think the Mamluk cards in the Topkapi Sarayi Museum are fake?

I think the symbols on the Mamluk cards are there because Islamic prohibition of the human figure so court cards had calligraphics and the rest of the cards had no reason for images as they were heraldic images ( I think I mentioned that earlier but I do not recall).

I see Mamluk as the father of all cards and card games(yes it might have come out of China before Mamluk but who knows)
including tarot but I see tarot as a later invention both as a game and as cartography.
I can not think of a card game that does not involve ascending levels of power between cards and suits. It just makes sense to attach these levels of power to class, status,legends of hero's or anything that has a culturally recognizable hierarchy. It helps with memorization. We still do it today with all our card games, computer games (levels) and many other styles of games that do not involve strictly random luck..

Just my thoughts..

"Elemental-Geometrical-Numerological Alchemy." Not too bad I think I go Numerology, elemental, archetypal, status.

 

[Kircher Tree]

"Fake" was probably the wrong word to use. They might be genuine for what they are, but I think what they are is some sort of artistic recreation that only loosely based their ultimate model. I don't mean they were re-created recently. I think maybe they are genuine cards of the period, but the period had already lost it's connection with the real thing.

Still, they are much closer to the true lost arcane than the Tantric Celtic Witches Gummi Bear Deck in my humble opinion.