Richard1
One Last Word in My Defense
I'm trying not fight a lost battle or flog a dead horse here, but I can't resist adding one more thing in my defense.
In the Pictorial Key, Waite shows the suits starting with Kings, but I don't buy this; he also places the Fool in between Judgment and the World, saying all the while that that's not where it belongs.
Closer to the real order, I think, is his section on choosing a significator (p. 299), where he says, "A Knight should be chosen as the Significator if the subject of inquiry is a man of forty years old and upward; a King should be chosen for any male who is under that age."
Rachel Pollack, though, says this in 78 Degrees, p. 277: "People who have read Waite's Pictorial Key will remember his confusing assignation of Knights to men above forty, and Kings to younger men. The system comes from the Golden Dawn Kabbalistic Tarot. In that deck the Knights represent Fire, and Fire, as we might expect from an order of magicians, stands at the head of the suits. Therefore the Golden Dawn Knights represent mature men. But the Golden Dawn deck (and Crowley's Thoth Tarot) does not contain Kings, or for that matter, Pages, at all; it uses Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess. It makes sense for a Prince to represent a male younger than a Knight. It does not make sense for a King to do so, and most readers do not follow Waite's intstructions on this point, even when using his deck."
I suppose I can buy that, as well.
OK, I'll shut up about it now.
I'm trying not fight a lost battle or flog a dead horse here, but I can't resist adding one more thing in my defense.
In the Pictorial Key, Waite shows the suits starting with Kings, but I don't buy this; he also places the Fool in between Judgment and the World, saying all the while that that's not where it belongs.
Closer to the real order, I think, is his section on choosing a significator (p. 299), where he says, "A Knight should be chosen as the Significator if the subject of inquiry is a man of forty years old and upward; a King should be chosen for any male who is under that age."
Rachel Pollack, though, says this in 78 Degrees, p. 277: "People who have read Waite's Pictorial Key will remember his confusing assignation of Knights to men above forty, and Kings to younger men. The system comes from the Golden Dawn Kabbalistic Tarot. In that deck the Knights represent Fire, and Fire, as we might expect from an order of magicians, stands at the head of the suits. Therefore the Golden Dawn Knights represent mature men. But the Golden Dawn deck (and Crowley's Thoth Tarot) does not contain Kings, or for that matter, Pages, at all; it uses Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess. It makes sense for a Prince to represent a male younger than a Knight. It does not make sense for a King to do so, and most readers do not follow Waite's intstructions on this point, even when using his deck."
I suppose I can buy that, as well.
OK, I'll shut up about it now.