A Feather in Your Cap...

BodhiSeed

The RWS Fool has a red feather in his cap,
http://www.learntarot.com/bigjpgs/maj00.jpg

as well as the knight of Death on his helmet,
http://www.learntarot.com/bigjpgs/maj13.jpg

and as does the child in his crown of flowers in the Sun card.
http://www.learntarot.com/bigjpgs/maj19.jpg

The feather is one thing that seems to connect all three of these cards. It's almost like the naive child (Fool) has passed through/been transformed by Death, and has now become the wise child (Sun). The Sun child has lost his armor (Death) as has his horse.
Does anyone see any other symbols that connect these three cards?

Bodhran
 

poivre

They each have the Sun, an animal
and something in their hands.

ros
:)
 

BodhiSeed

ros said:
They each have the Sun and an animal!

ros
:)
Egads! How could I have missed those! :rolleyes: :laugh:
Thanks ros!

Bodhran
 

Tiro DvD

I would say the the feather is a symbol of innocence, a trait good for both the Fool and the Sun.

I'd say that Death doesn't have a feather but Wings. If you notice Death is dressed up as a knight and if you look at the other knight cards, they either have Wings or big Plumes rather than feathers of the Fool and Sun.
 

caridwen

The idiom feather in your cap is derived from the hunter placing a feather from their prey in their hat band. In Scotland and Wales it is still customary for the first person to kill a woodcock, to pull out a feather and place it in their cap. It's taken to mean a success or honour.

It's also common for Robin Hood to be seen with a pheasant feather in his cap.

Ma'ats' symbol, an ostrich feather is used to stand for order and truth and is often depicted with an ostrich feather in her headband.

Other characters have plumes with I think the Death Card has, not a feather. It's actually bound so it looks smaller than it is. However there are other similarities between the Fool and Death such as the rose symbolism which Waite says in the Pictorial Key represents Mystic Life.

I love what Waite says about the Sun card:

The card signifies, therefore, the transit from the manifest light of this world, represented by the glorious sun of earth, to the light of the world to come, which goes before aspiration and is typified by the heart of a child.

He says of the Fool:

He is a prince of the other world on his travels through this one-all amidst the morning glory, in the keen air. The sun, which shines behind him, knows whence he came, whither he is going, and how he will return by another path after many days. He is the spirit in search of experience.

and he says of Death:

The natural transit of man to the next stage of his being either is or may be one form of his progress, but the exotic and almost unknown entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness and the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor gate.
 

BodhiSeed

caridwen said:
The idiom feather in your cap is derived from the hunter placing a feather from their prey in their hat band. In Scotland and Wales it is still customary for the first person to kill a woodcock, to pull out a feather and place it in their cap. It's taken to mean a success or honour.

It's also common for Robin Hood to be seen with a pheasant feather in his cap.

Ma'ats' symbol, an ostrich feather is used to stand for order and truth and is often depicted with an ostrich feather in her headband.

Other characters have plumes with I think the Death Card has, not a feather. It's actually bound so it looks smaller than it is. However there are other similarities between the Fool and Death such as the rose symbolism which Waite says in the Pictorial Key represents Mystic Life.

I love what Waite says about the Sun card:



He says of the Fool:



and he says of Death:
Thank you for all of this wonderful information! :D

Bodhran
 

caridwen

bodhran said:
Thank your for all of this wonderful information! :D

Bodhran

No problem! Thanks for saying thanks:D
 

willowfox

Perhaps the feather has to do with spiritual flight and being able to change shape, in this case into a bird, as it relates to flying. The feather is also related to power and high aspirations.
 

kwaw

In Egyptian star lore Orion is the abode of the soul of mummified Osiris, God of the underworld and of the dead. Among his symbols were two red feathers worn in his white atef crown, to which we might see a reference in the red feather in the hat of the Waite/Smith fool card [feathers are also referenced in C.De Gebelin, and the Bolognese and Visconti-Sforza decks]...

Pamela's 3 of swords is based upon that of the Sola Busca, and the Sola Busca Matto too has the feathers in his hair; a string with three balls attached to his waist and also the black bird on his shoulder may allude to a connection with Orion: "Do you know that the Hare, Canis Major and Canis Minor have forty three stars in the Southern part of the heaven, and are so rewarded for only two or three trivial reasons not less unimportant than the reason that causes the Hydra, the Saucer, and the Raven to be next to Orion and to recieve forty-one stars to commemurate the occasion when the gods sent the Raven to obtain some drinking water?" [Bruno, 1584]

Due to having the gift of 'walking on water' bestowed upon him by his father Neptune, in the renaissance Orion was used as an allegory of Christ, and it was through such an allegorical use that Giordan Bruno was accused by the inquisition of attacking the divinity of Christ in his The expulsion of the triumphant beast:

"This is because he [Orion] knows how to perform miracles, and, as Neptune knows, can walk over the waves of the sea without sinking, without wetting his feet, and with this, consequently, will be able to perform many other fine acts of kindness. Let us send him among men, and let us see to it that he give them to understand all that I want and like them to understand: that white is black, that the human intellect, through which they seem to see best, is blindness, and that that which according to reason seems excellent, good and very good, is vile, criminal and extremely bad. I want them to understand that Nature is a whorish prostitute, that natural law is ribaldry, that Nature and Divinity cannot concur in one and the same good end, and that the justice of one is not subordinate to the justice of the other, but that they [Nature and Divinity] are contraries, as are shadows and light...

"I want him to go down to earth; and I shall command that he lose all power of performing bagatelles, impostures, acts of cunning, kind actions, and other miracles that are of no worth, because I do not want him together with the other to be in a position to destroy whatever excellence and dignity are found and exist in things necessary to the commonwealth of the world. I see how easy it is for it to be deceived, and consequently inclined towards acts of madness and prone to every corruption and indignity. I do not however, however, want out reputation to depend upon the discretion of him or similar to him. For if a king be mad who gives so much power and authority to one of his captains and generous leaders to make him superior to himself...how much more senseless and deserving of a disciplinarian and tutor will he be if he should put or leave in the same authority an abject, vile and ignorant man, by whom everything will be depreciated, slighted, confused and thrown into disorder, ignorance being placed by the latter where knowledge is customary, nobility where there is contempt, and villainy where there is reputation!" [Bruno]

Kwaw
 

BodhiSeed

Kwaw,
Thank you for posting this! Bruno sure had balls to write this during this particular time period!

Bodhran