Illustration of Wheel of fortune and World

rachelcat

That's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking, but the books (evangelists?) are on the Wheel, not on the World . . .

Maybe the World (with Christ enthroned?) is the fulfillment of the Gospels (just as the Gospels were the fulfillment of the law?).

Oh, wait, that will work if we say with Robert Place that the World dancer is the Anima Mundi, the Holy Spirit!

As the Age of the Father was superseded by the Age of the Son (the Gospels), the Age of the Son (Wheel with Gospels) is superseded by the Age of the Spirit (World with Living Creatures).

But I never related the Wheel to Christ/Savior/Son/Dying God themes before . . . Got to think about that some more. Dying and resurrecting = down and back up on the Wheel, maybe?
 

magpie9

BLFO said:
I mean they share the same zodiac that they both have the same zodiac symbolism on the corner of the cards. The human/angel, the eagle, the bull and a goat?
Those aren't zodiac symbols, I believe they're the 4 Apostles or 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse, from revelations in Christianity. There's a lot of Christian symbology in Golden Dawn based tarot cards.
 

frelkins

yuppers, magpie is correct: Waite was Catholic, as I've said before: he views the trumps as a progression to a mystical eschatology of cosmic union with Christ consciousness.

Waite seems to have used the GD as method of taking theosophy (all religions are the same "story," so we can integrate all the gods & symbols together!) to a Catholic end -- theosophy shows the unity of all old religions, and the GD proves their ultimate destiny in mystical Catholicism. Christ fulfills them all.

Not the usual view that Christ supersedes them all, or that non-Christian religions are of the devil, etc. -- but that the mystical Christ is the culmination of all human religious drives. Which I think is a unique statement for Waite's time.

This is also right down with rachelcat: It is Robert Place 101.