The impression I get is that Farrell says it's too complicated because he sees the more common attribution of putting the Knight on a horse at the head of the Court Cards and the Prince in the chariot as a rationalization for contradictions in Book T, rather than the simpler explanation that the ideas were revised over time but not completely corrected in Book T.].
I'm kind of at a loss as to this part of the essay. He says there are mistakes in Book T that haven't been corrected, but I don't know what mistakes he's referring to, especially in connection with the Courts. True, I've only skimmed the original, working mainly from the revised College of Thelema version, but still.
Does the horse/chariot switch really change things that much? I don't think the fairy tale breaks down with Farrell's reasoning. The basic story of the Prince awakening his sleeping Princess to marry her and become King still works, doesn't it? I'm a new student to all of this, so I may be missing something that I just don't see.
It really depends on how much of a stickler to detail one actually is. To me, this changes a lot of things that I went into a little in my post, but there's an entire hornets nest of things a simple change like that affects. In my opinion it affects the balance and structure of the thing, and simply raises too many questions that don't seem to have answers. There may very well
be answers, just that the essay doesn't seem to cover them adequately.
The story, such as it is, is the basis of, well, everything. The brash Knight wins the Princess, becomes ruler, mates with the Queen and of that union two children are born. He then goes to sleep (he "dies" like the sperm entering the egg, he is transformed into something else, he is lost in the Beloved). The Prince is the direct offspring of his parents, and shares their attributes. His chariot is the vessel of the mother while the Prince inside it is that phallus of the father. The Princess, on the other hand, is more of a "Princess and the Pea" type of person. She is very different from the rest of the family, and very removed from them. In fact, she is asleep, both physically and mentally. Only through the intervention of the Prince does she awake, but only after she is awake can the Prince, now become Knight, impress her by his deeds. And so on.
Having a horse as the Prince's steed is jarring not only because it is different, but because it doesn't work. If the Prince has attributes from both his parents, where are they? Certainly the horse could have come from his father, but what did he get from his mother? Nothing! And then he becomes unbalanced, lost and confused! It's madness I say, madness!
Besides, as the Holy Guardian Angel, he does not simply go forth, inseminates and is done with it, like the Knight. He
engages with the world, and so needs a chariot. The idea of duality is shown by the Lovers connecting Binah and Tiphareth. A chariot is something you sit in, that moves, and as the Lovers is the first card in which two figures are shown, we have the idea of force (Chochma) entering space (Binah), with their offspring being the Prince.
But seriously, there seems to be a missing link there that I'm just not getting.
I'm familiar with the Wang deck and the Cicero deck, so I understand this change can be seen as jarring. However, it looks like a great deal of research was put into the decision, so it wasn't just an arbitrary change merely to make RWS users comfortable.
Nick Farrell is a formidable scholar, and really knows his stuff. Like I said, I don't have to agree with him, but concede that there must have been a reason for what he did. Heck, I don't completely agree with Crowley on a few things, and that's nothing short of
blasphemy! Don't get me started on his Lovers! Still, this is the kind of innovation I love, because it is a
true innovation. It isn't "RWS with gnomes" that passes for occult innovation today.
I haven't read what Case wrote, but I have his deck that I colored decades ago. I pulled them out the other day and his deck is very RWS--he has Knights on horses and Kings on thrones--nobody's in a chariot.
It's the thrones, they fulfill the role of the chariot, albeit unsatisfactorily (in my opinion). This probably stems from the differences in Waite's view of the HGA in general, and the role of the initiate in achieving Knowledge and Conversation. In one instance, he seems to meet you halfway (with the chariot). In the other, you have to go to him (on the throne).