kwaw said:
Place the cards so:
21 20 19
18 17 16
15 14 13
12 11 10
09 08 07
06 05 04
03 02 01
Consider the central cards as the rungs on a ladder of virtues. It is debatable of course as to which card one should attribute which virtue. But to make a start I make the speculative suggestion, commencing with 02 at the bottom rung with prudence/wisdom, 05 faith, 08 justice, 11 fortitude, 14 temperance, 17 hope and 20 charity/love.
Kwaw
It is perhaps also an interesting exercise to consider whether there is any apparent theme to the septenary triads produced. Such would indicate the intended division into a group of 3x7.
In the more common pattern of 3 rows of 7 for example we may note:
Bateleur - devil = both tricksters;
Popesse as church [congreation of the faithfull] and House of God [struck by lightening, 'faith under fire'];
The earthly and celestial Venus [empress and star];
The chariot as 'parvus mundum' or 'little world' [as called in the steele sermon], that is the microcosmos, and the 'mundo' as the 'macrocosmos',
with tempernance in between pouring from from one vessel [macrocosmos,
] to another [microcosmos].
A few, IMHO, pertinent quotes relating to the 6th triad of:
Love - Death - Judgement
Love and death
Eros and Thanatos, are a common thematic pairing:
quote from Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance by Edgar Wind:
"....why was it an amorous adventure of Jupiter was chosen to decorate a tomb. He could not fail to notice that the loves of the gods appeared on sarcophagi with remarkable frequency. The love of Bacchus for Ariadne, of Mars for Rhea, of Zeus for Ganymede, of Diana for Endymion - all these variations of the same theme; the love of a god for a mortal. To die was to be loved by a god, and partake through him of eternal bliss. 'As there are many kinds of death,' a Renaissance humanist writes*, 'this one is the most highly approved and commended both by the sages of antiquity and by the authority of the Bible: when those... yearning for God and desiring to be conjoined with him (which cannot be achieved in this prison of flesh) are carried away to heaven and freed from the body by a death which is the profoundest sleep; in which manner Paul desired to die when he said: I long to be dissolved and be with Christ. This kind of death was named the kiss by the symbolic theologians [the mors osculi of the Cabbalists...], of which Solomon also appears to have spoken when he said in the Song of Songs: Osculetur me osculo oris sui."
"Pico in a long excursus on the morte di bacio in his Commento III,viii: 'Through the first death, which is only a detachment of the soul from the body... the lover may see the beloved celestial Venus...and by reflecting on her divine image, nourish his purified eyes with joy; but if he would possess her more closely...he must die the second death by which he is completely severed from the body...and observe that the most perfect and intimate union the lover can have with the celestial beloved is called the union of the kiss...and because the learned Cabbalists declare that many of the ancient fathers died in such a spiritual rapture, you will find that, according to them, the died... the death of the kiss: which they say of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Elijah, and several others..."
*Valeriano: Hieroglyphica.
Death and Judgement
Another common thematic pairing, but we may note also connected with the number 6 [as in this our 6th triad]:
Quote from the Zohar, Vol 2 of I. Tishby translation:
"This snake will in the future give birth to these bodies before its time. This is the meaning of 'Before it travailed it gave birth'. The period of gestation for a snake is seven years, and in this case it is six - which is not its usual time. And at the same time it gives birth to them it will die - from the act of giving birth, as it is written 'He will swallow up death for ever' (Isaiah 25:8) and it is written 'Your dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise (Isaiah 26:19" (Zohar II, 219b-220a).
Of which Tishby's note of commentary and explanation state:
153 When a man dies, the Shekinah takes the soul, and the 'other side', ie death, takes the body.
154 When the dead are resurrected they are taken out of the snake's (ie death's) jurisdiction. This is depicted here as a snake giving birth, which will happen during the sixth millenium. This is an 'untimely' birth, because the snake usually gives birth seven years after conception.
155 'the other side' will perish at the end of days, and its death will occur as a result of giving birth to the bodies of the dead at the resurrection.
p.740 Vol. II of Zohar by Tishby & Lachower, tr. David Goldstein.
Kwaw