Tarot as Pi - Mankind's search for divine perfection.

Starshower

Hello, Mary Greer & other philosophers. There is simply sooo much written on the Tarot that I'm not sure where to look for info or discussion on this, & hope you could kindly point me in a few directions.
22/7 is the 'sacred' / 'magical' ratio of pi, that can never be resolved. It struck me ages ago that this reflects the tarot trumps - with the addition of the un-numbered wild-card Fool leaping around them, searching for power & Ultimate Knowledge / Individuation/Eternal Life with all the energy, 'divine fool'-ishness & wisdom of the Joker (aka Everyman.) The Pilgrim on his Journey. Us, on our Quest - as portrayed in myriad legends & Myths from most cultures.

What does Pi mean? It's the ratio of a square to a circle ... 'squaring the circle' has long been a mathematical Mystery (in the true, mystical sense of numerology)- technically impossible in a literal sense.
Squaring the Circle means bringing into physical manifestation (4 = stability, solidity, the 4 directions / seasons / elements etc) the Wholeness of Divine Unity, perfection & oneness, eternity etc, which is represented in all cultures by the Circle.
So to square the Circle (a feat impossible to resolve - we only describe it as endlessly ongoing in logic & geometry) represents our desire for perfection, expressed in the famous western esoteric phrases: "As Above - so below" and "Thy Will be done / on earth as it is in heaven."
22/7, the formula of Pi, describes this, even if we can't resolve it rationally. Pi is known as an irrational, or transcendental number.

Please direct me to any discussions on this fundamental meaning of the Tarot as pictorial & intuitive attempts to portray this ultimate aspiration of mankind on our spiritual 'Fool's journey'. What cannot be achieved by technical logic requires initiation into use of what has been variously called Intuition, Magic, second-sight, inner-vision & Gnosis.
Thanks for 'listening'!
Love - Starshower /Anya. /l\
 

Mabuse

That's irrational!

It's close to PI but not really. As an irrational number PI cannot be expressed as a ratio. The value of PI, an infinite series of digits which does NOT repeat 3.14159...

22/7=3.142857142857142857.....Notice the sequence "142857" repeats.

An interesting thing about irrational numbers like PI or the square root of 2 is that when written into binary form instead of the conventional decimal, they would have to contain ALL the possible information in the universe since the patterns of binary digits would not repeat. To be sure there would be a lot of noise in this information but somewhere in the infinite series of ones and zeroes would be the binary code of blu ray discs of every motion picture ever made as well as motion pictures yet to be made! Theoretically, irrational numbers may violate copyright laws but in practice however, one would have to wade through perhaps an astronomical amount of noise to get to any good stuff so we may not live long enough to see the pirated movies embedded in these numbers.
 

le_charior

An interesting thing about irrational numbers like PI or the square root of 2 is that when written into binary form instead of the conventional decimal, they would have to contain ALL the possible information in the universe since the patterns of binary digits would not repeat. To be sure there would be a lot of noise in this information but somewhere in the infinite series of ones and zeroes would be the binary code of blu ray discs of every motion picture ever made as well as motion pictures yet to be made! Theoretically, irrational numbers may violate copyright laws but in practice however, one would have to wade through perhaps an astronomical amount of noise to get to any good stuff so we may not live long enough to see the pirated movies embedded in these numbers.

Fascinating stuff, Mabuse! Reminds me of Borges' story "The Library of Babel", where the universe is a library containing books with all possible combinations of letters possible - and the humans living in it go crazy looking for the story of their live, that is written down already in one of the books, to the last letter.
 

le_charior

Even if i don't really get what Starshower means in the first post, I think the idea that Tarot, with its 22 Major Arcana and the whole system of 7s (3x7 trumps without the unnumbered fool, 2x7 cards for each suit etc) is an instrument to get at least close to the entire knowledge of the universe, represented in pi. As close as 22/7 gets to pi.
 

Starshower

Many thanks for the replies - much appreciated!

I shall check out your link, EdgarAllnPwn.

Mabuse - thanks so much for putting me right about the maths. I hadn't quite got it, had I? lol. Anyway, I do see a difference between an endless string of digits & an ever-repeating loop ... though I'm not sure what that difference means in non-mathematical-language or could symbolise philosophically.

Le_charior - that story sounds fun: an interesting idea wrapped up in a tale.

So 22/7 is an attempt to point to a way of potentially gaining access to all the knowledge in the universe, "had we but space enough, and time"?! Fascinating! A magical glyph ... yet only accessible from infinity (if I understand you rightly)!

I was speculating that in trying to square the circle (even though it's impossible, just as it's impossible to resolve pi) we were perhaps trying to achieve (unattainable) perfection, "on (square) Earth, as it is in (the perfect circle of) heaven".

Thanks, friends! :)
 

Dain

This is one of those topics that gave me a big "a-ha!" moment! Thanks, people! :)
 

Richard

Starshower, you might enjoy the 1998 indie suspense film Pi, then again you might not. :)