Plato and Tarot

[beanu]

Strength and Chariot

It seems likely that these are attributed to Hot and Not Wet - Fire

DESCENT
The Strength card is also known as Fortitude. The clues in the card are insufficient, but the following alchemical image fills out the concept to the point where it is meaningful.

Here we see the white virgin - formerly the Empress card, has given birth to the Sun god, aka the Dying God, including Christ as one of his representations. Also Horus and Mithras.
The lion represents the father of the child - the Holy Spirit. .
So far, we have seen the male and female influences in the emperor and empress. Now we see the Child. Yod, Heh, Vau.

The title Christ comes from Krestos - Greek for Fire.

As for the name - Strength and Fortitude, these probably refer to the courage needed by the dying God - Christ - in order to face the torment of his coming ordeal.

I don't know of any links here to Plato. Does anyone see such a link?

ASCENT
The Chariot refers to Plato's description of the soul as a "good" horse and and a "bad" horse, both hitched to the same chariot. the charioteer must control the two. In more modern parlance, we have the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, both offering advice. The warrior in the chariot must have the strength of character - the "Courage" - to choose the path of good, despite impending death.
Thus this also seems to correspond to Plato's virtue of Courage for the military man, but also extending into everyday life as the ongoing need to choose the good path.

 

[beanu]

Hermit and Hanged Man

DESCENT
Hanged Man
Plato describes the soul in trapped in the material world as inverted.
The previous card related to Jesus - the soul in material form, but remembering its heritage, and able to master death and ascension.
The next card down is one step more material. The soul is now trapped in mortal form.

ASCENT
Hermit
The hermit is a student of Natural Philosophie.
He sacrifices the rest of his life in the pursuit of the divine knowledge.

 

[kapoore]

Hi Beanu,
I thought I would add some info to the World card as a reference to Platonic concepts. Here is my original post again on the website for the Vesica Piscis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesica_Piscis
And here is a picture of A.E.Waite's card that follows the Marseille pattern on the World http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_(Tarot_card)

I took this information from D.H. Fowler, The Mathematics of Plato's Academy: A New Reconstruction. Apparently the fraction that creates the Vesica Piscis, or 265/153 is a part of a formula taken from Archimede's measurement of the circle that was taught in the old Platonic Academy. It is the beginning part of what I guess is an extended ratio analysis, which I don't understand. "The first half of the calculation, which ...starts from an underestimate of the ratio of the diameter of the circle to the side of a circumscribing hexagon," Sort of kind of.. "square root of three is to one is greater than 265 is to 153."

Can this help at all in the tracing of the origin of the Tarot along its Platonic pathways? The Vesica Piscis appears on the last card in the series of Trumps. It could have a standard meaning of the square root of three as a symbol for the Christian Trinity and John 21:11; or it could also say something about the Tarot Trumps as a circle, or the approximation of a circle.
Just a thought..Kapoore

 

[beanu]

Hi Kapoore

Thanks for the references.
I' don't really agree with the interpretation for the world card given on wikipedia, but I can see the relevance of the image structure.

An obscure link for the Justice card gives the phrase "Thrice I lead from unity to unity".

My interpretation of this is that alchemy refers to the purification of body, soul and spirit, as represented by salt, sulphur and Mercury.
So this could be another reference to the number three.
And the three of them combine in the world card.

But I don't understand why they use the square rood of three, rather than three itself.
Could this be something to do with the square root of three somehow being the irrational number associated with three?

I came across the "Golden mean" in this form -
The golden mean is the proportions of a renctangle, in which the short side is 1 unit, and the diagonal is 2 units. This results in the long side being root-3 in length, This is considered to be the ideal proportion, in that other rectangles are either too long and skinny, or too short and fat to be aesthetically pleasing.
I think that this proportion also determines the spiral of various sea-shells, and other aspects of nature. (can't remember any other examples at the moment). However, the occurrence of the Golden Mean in nature would probably explain the use of that ratio as a symbol for nature - the soul of the world.

I also noticed that Manly P Hall in "Secret Teachings of All Ages" dedicates the book to "The Rational Soul of the World"

 

[beanu]

I have just started reading "Giordano Bruno the the Hermetic Tradition" by W.B. Yeats.

She points out that the seed Hermetic Documents are "fakes", made in the second Century AD, and purporting to be much older. Possibly written by Christian or Pagan Gnostics. The interesting aspect to their fakery is that they are written with a great deal of Platonic concepts, but made to appear as they are the precursor to Plato, rather than the other way around.
So, in a sense, the Hermetic Tradition is a subset of the Platonic tradition.

The Hermetic Tradition also has strong links to Alchemy.

Also, Yeats points out that this Hermetic Tradition was very popular in the renaissance period,
which puts it as contemporary with Tarot Cards.
The translation of the Corpus Hermeticum was done by Ficino around 1460, for Cosimo de Medici. Yeats points out that Cosimo insisted that the hermetic material be translated before Platonic material, as indication of the high regard in which the Italians held the Hermetic tradition.
Of course, they did not know that it was a fake. That information had only come to light in more recent times.

 

[beanu]

Justice and Wheel of Fortune

DESCENT
Justice, in the image shown in the previous posting (-1)
includes the Seal of Solomon, with its use of two triangles to represent the concept of "as above, so below". Solomon was considered the wisest of all kings, in his role as Judge and dispensing Justice.
Also As Above, So Below relates to our mundane lives following the divine plan. Just the Justice card seems to tie in well with Plato's concept of Justice, as a sort of fate or pre-ordained path.
It also seems indicative of the descent of justice from the divine into our world.

ASCENT
The Wheel of Fortune is an old emblem having also life outside of Tarot.

from Gregor Reisch, Margarite Philosophica (1503)

It also speaks of the natural fortunes assigned by Fate.

There is an aspect to it called "Rotation of the Elements"
- see http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/RE.html
in which the student in his ascent learns of the four elements in such a way as to produce a personality that expresses the four elements at once.
For this reason, I place the Wheel as the ascent card.

 

[beanu]

Tower and Devil

This one is too easy.

DESCENT
The Devil is the Fall of Lucifer. The soul trapped in the material world

ASCENT
The Tower represents the climb back up, from which one may again fall if not careful, or troubled by lightning bolts.

 

[beanu]

Star and Temperance

DESCENT
The Star is the Star Goddess Nuit, who is mother of all living, and pours out her love upon the earth.
Here we see the act of creation nearing completion.


ASCENT
Temperance = Moderation, and a time for maturing and developing as a person.

 

[beanu]

Sun and Moon

Sun and Moon relate to the outward and inward nature of the soul, as described by Kapoore earlier in the Hierophant card, which is Plato's Hierarch.

DESCENT
The sun is our outward nature, characterised by the Astrological Sun Sign.
It is the form given us by fate.

ASCENT
The Moon is our inner nature, characterised by the Astrological Moon Sign.
It is this that we must work with on our climb back,
and which we must learn to shine forth replacing the sun sign.

 

[beanu]

The World

The Rational Soul of the World, which is only one card, as it is the common point between DESCENT and ASCENT.