Tarot de Marseille is a Bardic Artifact

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THE TREE-LETTER BASIS OF THE TRUMPS (1)

Preface

A note on the term bardic: this does not mean just any poet’s notions, but rather a corpus of systematized understanding of the human condition and human psychology—mainly systematized according to human speech-sounds—passed down through certain currents of tradition from deep antiquity. It has at times been an oral tradition, since speech sounds are speech sounds whether one writes them down for the common people or not. Large vestiges of it can be found not only in Irish and Welsh bardic tradition but also in Jewish Gnosticism (Merkavah and Qabbalah), for Jewish prophetic tradition was evidently originally much the same thing. Yet its ‘glow’ can be felt (once one knows the landmarks) in Orphism, in Aesop’s fables, in most ancient alphabets (some of which appear to predate Phoenician), in short in many a scrap bequeathed us by disintegrating remnants of a previous civilization we barely glimpse in monumental stone architecture and in the advanced scientific knowledge contained in the number-symbolism of the Irish-Welsh bardic alphabet when organized according to what has survived of Qabbalah, which content I have outlined in depth on this site (in the last post of page 6 and first post of page 7 of the thread Tarot and Holy Grail). I shall mention this aspect of things only once herein (in connexion with straight up or oxygen), in order to spare the feelings of those who are disturbed by it.

What reconstruction of this ancient corpus I have managed was only possible by bringing together these two currents and letting them fill each other’s holes, which is what I claim happened in the 12th century to produce that flowering we call Qabbalah: it can only have been based on a combination of Merkavah (Jewish Gnosticism proper) and the British bardic current transferred to the Continent along with the Arthurian cycle and the Tristram legend and so on. Qabbalah (and its severely truncated modern remnant, which I call Kabbalah to distinguish it from its lost core) was the result on the Jewish side, while on the side of the Bardic school we have the Tarot de Marseille. One cannot imagine this would have preceded playing cards themselves, to which the bardic initiates—very likely connected in some way to Templars or at least to cathedral-builders (specifically ‘freemasons’)—added the letter-trumps, and cards evidently did not appear in Europe till the 1370s, at least in any numbers. But they certainly, in my estimation, appeared long before the earliest extant trionfi, since these last are clearly the distorted offshoot of the basic Tarot de Marseille pattern, whose manner of organization and detailed content had to have been the original—no other view makes sense once the coherent pattern is grasped. They would of course have been earlier renditions than any now extant. The logical point of origin would be Provence-Languedoc (where Jew met bard and Qabbalah sprang up), so the label ‘Marseille’ may actually be correct.

Here I shall keep Qabbalistic implications to a minimum, though Ezekiel’s wheels are relevant and Hebrew letters are brought in to show that it is not just a Keltic but a widespread ancient tradition. But in the main, we concentrate on tree symbolism. The tree-letter calendar itself, and many poetic considerations, are based on Graves’s The White Goddess, and information about pagan customs for weaning of girl-child or boy-child (relevant to vowels) is from Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology (in 4 vols.), page number upon request (I’d have to go find it).

Since I reference them below, here, briefly, are Ezekiel’s wheels (rabbis do not teach this, evidently because they do not know it). The 1st is centered atop the head of the standing Adam Qadmon or Anthropos (man writ large, prior to division of the sexes): this is the Atzilut world of archetype or emanation (all-encompassing Monad), meaning the eternal (realm of actual knowledge or the knower, by Plato’s analysis). The 2nd (half the height of the 1st) is centered atop the head of this being when seated in meditation (hence its being called ‘Throne world’): this is the B’riah world of creation (prototype, in thought, of the surroundings), containing all that has finite duration (realm of thought or the thinker). The 3rd (half the height of the 2nd) is centered at the heart of this torso seated in meditation: this is the Yetzirah world of formation (human form), being the closed or circular zodiac of the body (its prototype, that is). This represents the one who acts, the thing it acts on being the 4th wheel (half the height of the 3rd), which is centered in the womb and represents the womb of time, the fleeting present instant in which we act. It is the 4th wheel that represents the physical universe or present instant, for it is the womb of birth thereinto. The womb is dark—since (as Plato explains) we remain ever ignorant of that which has no duration (it vanisheth ere one can contemplate it)—and it bestows this quality upon the night sky (the stellar reaches of the physical universe).

Finally, the numbering of tree-letters is given by Graves only up through 16, so briefly, here is how the other five were determined. Bardic U is the same as Latin V, which is Roman numeral 5, hence U naturally falls fifth-to-last. Bardic I is 3, so Ii naturally falls third-to-last. Bardic A is 1, so Aa naturally falls first-counting-from-the-end. K is 9, so Kk (Q) naturally falls at twice 9 or 18. This leaves Ss at 20, which makes eminent sense since its poetic meaning is strife and 20 symbolizes the two 10-fingereds or humans ‘twixt which that strife occurs.

(Continued in the following 3 posts)

 

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Tarot de Marseille is a Bardic Artifact (cont.)

THE TREE-LETTER BASIS OF THE TRUMPS (2)

First, the Consonants

B-beth-birch symbolizes childhood or offspring (as does Hebrew beth-, ‘house of’) by its diminutive size—source of shape of Italic and Runic B, a pregnant torso in profile—and blessing or cleansing (‘clean slate’) by its white bark—source of its old-Semitic shape, the mitre of the high priest (or pointy helmet, its number relating it to Mars). This is the month starting at winter solstice, the only moment of the year when the twin gods of the year—waxing or heroic (winter-spring), and waning or satiric (summer-fall)—meet, since by summer solstice the hero (‘in flower’) has sacrificed himself for the greater good. Hence V LePape shows children—the twins—being brought before the Pope (old-Semitic beyt) by their mother (Italic, Runic B) whose arm enters from the right, the scene of which is the temple, which the Zohar clearly equates with beth, ‘house’ (reference on request). Since its sign, capricorn, is directly opposite the horizon without—meaning cancer the breasts or straight ahead (the direction they face)—it also symbolizes what is ‘pure’ (unsullied by materiality, by external reality, which it is the direction away from). How it also thereby stands for Boaz, the broken (to permit childbirth) female or front column of the body (whence the mother’s arm), is somewhat involved, so I will leave it for another time.

L-luis-rowan whips were used to tame bewitched horses (Heb. mal’medh means ‘goad’ and old-Semitic lamedh could represent one), linking it to learning (Heb. lemedh), and the tree itself shelters young of other species (its rune pictures the part of a roof extending beyond the wall of a house), which eventually displace it. Since capricorn—straight back from cancer or straight ahead (towards ‘other’)—symbolizes self or not other, this next month or sign, L, represents what progresses on from or ‘expands on’ self (where one is at), namely learning. This next sign being aquarius the water-pourer, it is represented by XIIII Temperance, who pours from one vessel to another and also represents the learning or tempering process. And in the closed, circular zodiac (where scorpio through pisces do not extend down the legs to the feet but rather up the spine to the head, aries), this is the spine opposite the shoulders, linked therefore to square-Hebrew lamedh, which shows arms swinging while walking seen from above, as happens when a child is learning to walk in front of us. (Back of the shoulders is where the strapped-on wings are in the trump, you’ll notice.)

N-nion-ash is the world-tree in Norse myth because it is the wood of handles, spear-shafts, and oars, meaning that whereby man grasps the world, which pivots on man (according to Gnostic and shaman alike). Ash is used for these things because of its property of lightness-combined-with-strength, which is epitomized by the skeleton of man: Arcanum XIII, who happens to also grasp his scythe-handle much as one would an oar (the ‘ash’ of the raider was an oar-pulled warship bringing fire and sword). The sound n signifies newness but also negation in Indo-European, epitomized by the grim reeper. (‘To waste away, deteriorate’ is spelt the same as the letter nun in Hebrew.) Its position on the wheel-of-the-year is approaching straight up, as befits skeletal lightness-combined-with-strength: this is pisces, whose position one sign back from the start (aries) explains its being the consonant of negation (as in ‘wrong way’). And being the last sign of the zodiac, its old Semitic form (you will find) is an arm raised waiving goodbye. Square-Hebrew has it represent the back-of-the-neck (pisces of closed zodiac) as the spinal connexion between two nodes (shoulders and head): its trump is the only one in which this part of the body is visible, by the way.

F-fearn-alder signifies the vegetative spirit, Bran or Vron (cognate with Nordic Fro or Frey). This is the British Kelt’s version of Kronos—a name that is evidently Krshna but with transposition of s and n, Krshna and fearn both being associated with the number 8 and the flute. This letter represents that which sprouts up out of the seed or round (wheel of the year), of which it is the top: aries the head (or sprout). But as the round also represents the tongue within the greater half-round or mouth (Cauldron of 7 doubles, the bottom half of the surroundings), the sound f can be seen as that which sprouts out beyond the tongue or round. For this reason, the more sober (non-pagan) Hebrew system has samekh here (which square-Hebrew pictures as the head), since s is on the tongue’s tip, not beyond it. How F replaced it, which I won’t go into here (it involves peh’s two forms), relates to the anomaly of samekh’s old Semitic form being the same as ogam-consaine* Ng, which in that calendar system happens to be at sagittary, where it is replaced by P in the bethluisnion or Irish tree-alphabet. It is easiest to see fearn’s connexion to its trump if we take into account that 8 is the atomic number of oxygen (our gift from the vegetative spirit), the one atom-type without which one cannot keep one’s balance: VIII LaJustice. This is the wielder of the scales, not the scales (libra or straight down) themselves. But this trump also relates to Bran as law-giver or prophesying head (‘singing head of Bran’, also of Orpheus): he is the chief (pagan) spirit of the round, its source or beginning aries (the solstices only giving rise to its two halves, upper-heroic and lower-satiric). And samekh’s Hebrew meaning of ‘to support, lean; to ordain’ fits its place as here described.

S-saille-willow in one sense represents the supple or pliable or flexible that withstands force by bending rather than breaking: XVI LaMaisonDieu (still standing). But we see from its rune, a vertical zig-zag or lightning bolt, that it is more than this. Graves links it to the moon, since it has connotations of witchery, its boughs woven into baskets as one ‘weaves’ a spell—and yet its runic name is *sowela, cognate with sol, the sun, so it is not strictly lunar. Extrapolating from the idea of ‘enchantment’, we find its meaning to be inspiration, which one can see the trump expresses perfectly: a fire strikes us in the head and overcomes duality or indecision in the form of the two ejected figures. It is perhaps seen as the poet ‘bending rather than breaking’ at the onset of the fire of the spirit. Even the old Semitic shape, a tooth or molar, is related via poetic association of inspiration with ‘biting one’s thumb’, as when Finn mac Cumhal “went to learn poetry of Finneces and obtained the thumb of knowledge; aquired [sic] by sucking his thumb when the salmon of knowledge was roasting for Finneces to consume. In following years, he had only to chew his thumb to have foreknowledge of events.” (from the entry FINN MAC CUMHAL in The Encyclopaedia of the Celts, compiled and edited by Knud Mariboe, 1994). It is a special letter in that it is one of the three ‘mother letters’ in Hebrew: Graves makes it the next month after F, though ogham shifts things to place it at aries, where it coincides with the center of the 2nd wheel (whose bottom half is dedicated to the 7 doubles).

S’s month, at taurus, therefore reverts to its doubled form Ss-straif-blackthorn, called la mere du bois because where it goes the forest follows (allegedly). Our word strife may come from straif, as this is its poetic meaning (the vanguard): XX LeJugement (Armageddon). Since taurus is the throat, it is gratifying to note that in Grimaud the trumpet is held up to the angel’s throat, separated from the mouth by a white crescent, more or less. And we clearly see the smoke or cloud of battle, with bristling spikes emanating therefrom—the Dodal, I believe, even adding to this an indication of musketry! The old Semitic character is a banner waving in battle in its more rounded form, a tilted chair in its more squared-off form (square-Hebrew tzaddi and tzaddi-sofit evidently the throat in breathing and in swallowing, respectively). Compare Hebrew tz’diyah, ‘lying in wait, malice’, and tzad, ‘hunt’.

H-huath-hawthorn, or no-number, is a flowering hedge one of whose bardic epithets is ‘guardian of boundaries’ (see Graves, the chapter ‘Hercules on the Lotus’): it stands for separation, its month that of abstention (which survives, somewhat displaced, in Lent?). Another name for it is may (as in Mayflower), May being the month encompassing gemini, the shoulders, as in “put your shoulder into it”, relating to LeMat as a simple laborer perhaps, and to square-Hebrew cheyt, which pictures the shoulders-and-arms. The trump’s relevance here becomes obvious once we realize that as ‘separation’ and no-number, it represents the space between things—the no-thing separating them—and space is what LeMat is traversing in his stroll between cities (and also what the arms, rooted in the shoulders, reach out into).


* Ogam consaine is the older, consonants-only form of ogham, an ‘alphabet’ of one to five tally marks above, below, or across a line (15 consonants). When vowels began to be included (in Britain mainly), the tally marks across the line became slanted, so that vowels could be the ones straight across: Ng was originally 3 tally marks straight across, but became slanted later. Two secret vowels (one of which was a consonant in all other alphabets) were not included in the ogham scheme, but Graves shows their relevance and one of them—mistletoe—is the reason square-Hebrew yod does not extend down to the line on which one writes.

(Continued in following 2 posts)

 

[venicebard]

Tarot de Marseille is a Bardic Artifact (cont.)

THE TREE-LETTER BASIS OF THE TRUMPS (3)

D-duir-oak represents compass, spread, domain—the horizon before (our limit or compass). As limit, it is the self-sacrifice (it attracts lightning) of the hero or waxing year, which ends here, in the sign cancer: XII LePendu, which also represents the inverted image on the back of the eye in seeing the horizon before. Many connexions here point to ‘things that swing’ (like LePendu): oak’s lateral branches from which men are hung, its ‘compass’, the horizon itself, whose ‘swing’ marks off our cognitive limit like a compass, dalet in Hebrew meaning ‘door’ or ‘page’, and the sling with which David brought down Goliath—D’s ogham or Boibel Loth name being Daibhaith (David), who like Donar or Thor (whose rune this is) was a giant-slayer (the rune’s name being ‘thirster’, meaning giant), the girth of the giant being pictured in our D and in the rune before it got warped into ‘thorn’. Oak is the quintessential wood of doors, ‘door’ not only being dalet’s meaning but also the origin of its shape in both tifinag** and Libyan scripts: indeed our LePendu appears to be hanging in a sort of doorway, n’est ce pas?

T-tinne-holly is the parable of the (tribal) phalanx, the strength of cohesion in battle: many little points together making one big hurt (to any who stumble into it). Its rune is an arrow or spear pointing up, named tyr, ‘divine honor’, Tyr being the Germanic god of discipline or fortitude in war. This is trump XI LaForce (which pictures the binding of oaths). But its meaning runs deeper than this. Its old Semitic form, a crossroads, suggests its connexion with the tuatha or ‘people’, the teu in Teutonic: Tiw is the god of the Thing or gathering of all freemen in open council. Therefore tav, leo the heart, is the seat of conscience, which we access through shame (as when an oath is broken). Now leo is the sign 30-degrees below the horizon or cancer, meaning what approaches within earshot, which is why she is manipulating the jaws (read roar) of the lion.

K-coll-hazel represents concentrated wisdom (‘in a nutshell’). The nuts that fall from nine hazels feed the salmon cooked in the cauldron (see above): VIIII L’Hermite—whose lamp carries light into Plato’s cave?—is wisdom gathered up in its cloak. This meaning is obviously related to Hebrew kaf’s meaning ‘palm of the hand’. The Hermit’s staff is therefore a hazel staff: a spell of invisibility specifies the carrying of a hazel rod two fathoms long, and hazel is the wood of the divining or ‘dousing’ rod, which relates this symbol to water, since this sign, virgo, 30-degrees out from straight down (in relation to one seated in meditation), represents that which is set within reach, to be tasted. Taste is the watery sense (things must be in solution to be tasted), and this sign, in between leo or air (hearing) and libra or earth (contact therewith, the sense that includes touch and smell, the latter simply touch at its most focused), stands for water or form, form being that which concentrates matter. The hermit is a hermit, after all, so he can concentrate.

These last three are on the Cauldron, which consists of the seven signs from straight out (cancer) through straight down (libra) to straight back or in (capricorn) in the surroundings. Kk(Q)-quert-apple is K’s counterpart on the Egg or round (zodiac of the torso), meaning virgo the womb (a meaning lost, evidently, in exoteric astrology), or that which immediately precedes straight down or physicality (earthly life). For it is the fruit (of womb or quest). To understand the fit of this trump, we note that in the poetry of the British Kelt, the apple symbolizes refuge from the hunt (as Graves makes clear). Myrddin, for example, sings of his apple-tree refuge. Knowing this, we look at XVIII LaLune and we see an aspect some may miss but which is obvious now that we know to look for it: the fellow in the moon’s orb has taken refuge from the dogs, who howl at him as if they have ‘treed’ him. Pretty straightforward, really. And since it represents the womb (haven of the unborn child), we can even surmise that one interpretation of the two towers is the gate of birth between the ‘towers’ that are the mothers legs. But of course on another level, they simply stand for the duality or strife from which refuge is sought. The physiological correlation ‘womb’ is clear from the shape of square-Hebrew qof: it shows the lower extremities and the two openings related to the womb (navel and birth canal). Old Semitic qof, then, pictures the fruit on the branch.

M-muin-vine represents interconnectedness (‘heard it through the grapevine’): VI L’Amoureux. It is the wine of love, a universal symbol in the love poetry of the Sufi, and that of Moorish Spain which inspired Troubadours. Its place in the calendar is after K, hence libra, the harvest festival, straight down being where the grapes are placed beneath the feet in making wine. Yet M’s meaning goes much deeper than just its month in the calendar, for it is also the grape that is aloft, out of reach of Aesop’s fox: the center of the 1st of Ezekiel’s wheels atop the head of standing Adam Qadmon. How it becomes the month of libra is this. Guttural R was originally (in Adam Qadmon) libra, between K and G (virgo and scorpio), its natural phonetic place in the mouth (bottom or gullet, where tongue or Egg is rooted). But being physicality, the senses, it represents the Demiurgos, the upstart-creator who attempts to rise up—as the R rolled on the tip of the tongue—to the top (tip) of the Egg or tongue, seeking to rule: we humans are ruled by sensation, rather than reason or intuition. Its place is therefore taken by M, because M is omnipresent: the Monad or ultimate sweetness, Mmm, is the sound of the closed mouth and thus the only fully self-contained sound. The Monad, of course, is the ultimate interconnectedness: Unity. The square-Hebrew meym is its calendar position libra, meym-sofit (its final form) the Monad itself (evidently).

G-gort-ivy symbolizes wandering, seeking: desire. It is X LaRoue deFortune, whose handle, towards us, beckons us to turn it. In runic this divides into ‘year, harvest’ (Heb. gamel means ‘reward’) and ‘gift’ (Heb. gamal means ‘camel’, bearer of gifts), which are the y sound and the g sound respectively: desire that acquires and desire that bestows. Perhaps these are the descending and ascending beasts on the wheel. (The crowned creature probably represents R the demiurge, which in its guttural form is the growl of the hell-hound but when rolled on tip of tongue needs combining with G to imitate its old self—try it!)

P-peith-water-or dwarf-elder is something of a mystery. So is its rune, *pairthra (its meaning unknown). But the rune’s shape is that of a runic dice-cup on its side (meaning it has disgorged its dice), symbol of divination or revelation—and of the runes on said dice. And dwarf elder may mean dwarf cranberry, relating it thus to the crane, in a bag of whose skin the alphabet was carried (see Graves). And as if these clues aren’t enough, square-Hebrew peh is in the form of a mouth speaking (the peh spelt peh-heh means ‘mouth’) and old Semitic peh that of an ear hearing: this is the letter standing for the poetic/prophetic mysteries themselves (hence the mysterious names). Its trump, VII LeChariot, shows the Merkavah, the throne-chariot symbolizing Judaic prophetic tradition, driven by Thespis (wearing the masks of tragedy and comedy as epaulettes), who symbolizes the Greek bardic tradition, which survived in the form of the Dionysian festival in which plays were presented. This shows, quite clearly, that the makers of these trumps were aware of Jewish ‘mystical’ tradition yet were not limited to it. The sign contained in this month is sagittary, the centaur-archer, and indeed this is the closest to a centaur the trumps get, his ‘arrows’ being the power of speech in the mouth of the poet (note poet begins with p).

Now the previous trump and this one show the beginnings of formation of the twins that will appear full-fledged at winter solstice (in LePape and LeSoleil), first as beasts on the wheel and now as horses harnessed to the chariot: these show what distinguishes the satiric antihero or waning year from the heroic waxing year, namely fear of his impending doom or dethronement (the hero feels no such fear but faces his doom squarely). This leads us to the 13th month, the one lacking a sign of its own that represents rather the antihero’s madness in a sense (caused by his fear) and also the upstart demiurge R risen up to the level of the tip-of-the-tongue (aries), for we are in the Cauldron (bottom half of 2nd wheel) where antihero’s ‘goose is cooked’, where the months of the waning year are, and here the 13th month (approaching B, the solstice) is up even with the aries of the round or Egg (3rd wheel): once perched there, its weight eventually will pull it down to its original station libra or guttural r, where it must end up in perfected man (the 2nd Adam or rebuilt Temple).

R’s trump is XV LeDiable (no surprise), the Gnostic demiurge or upstart-creator, who thinks he is boss yet is ruled by his passions. Here, at the last month before the solstice (at which twins will be reunited and antihero deposed), the twin aspect has taken on quasi-human form in anticipation of the meeting: they are the antihero’s terror-of-being-deposed at its most vivid (the actual approach of doom), for the two are still not completely human. R-ruis-elder is a tree jealously guarded by the ‘elder mother’, who brings doom upon those who desecrate it, and a British superstition has it that to burn elder ‘brings the devil into the house’ (see Graves). It has medicinal properties, though, leading to a related complex of meanings. For the rune is called ‘ride’ or ‘journey’ and represents the shamanic journey: its shape (it took me a while to figure this out) is that of the shaman-priest in animal costume. The Greek/Phoenician letter is a stick horse (representing the shaman’s drum or ‘steed’). And the tifinag** letter is the round itself, indicating that here we have come full circle (from the birth of the twin spirits-of-the-year). For elder is also symbolic of death (as the last or 13th month): the method of the shaman is to trick the guardians of the otherworld into thinking he (or she) has died, in order to wrest secrets from them ordinarily reserved for the dead.


** A Nordic alphabet surviving today only in N.Africa, brought there by the Nordic contingent of the Peoples of the Sea (defeated by the Egyptians).

(Completed in the following post)

 

[venicebard]

Tarot de Marseille is a Bardic Artifact (cont.)

THE TREE-LETTER BASIS OF THE TRUMPS (4)

Now, the Vowels

A-ailm-silverfir (which its rune pictures) grows to great height by limiting its lateral growth to redirect that energy upward: it symbolizes focus. The eagle-like Egyptian-vulture (its hieroglyph), who rides thermals upwards soaring to great height, also represents focus (eagle-eyed to spot prey). And the old Semitic ox alef provides the power of irrigation, the powering of the pump lifting water from the water table so it can be focused on the arid surface. Just so, I LeBateleur causes us to lift our eyes: he gets our attention, as does the imposing fir. And central to his repertoire (of stage magic) is levitation. The place of the fir is at the center of the 3rd wheel, which is even with (but the deeper aspect of, being the center) yuletide, winter solstice (hence its use as Xmas tree). It also stands for that focus which we call measurement, since it symbolizes what one measures (extent or height)—hence the measuring rod in the mountebank’s left hand. And since it is the first vowel—the one after whom the vowel-stave in ogham is named—it is what levitates the table-corner whose leg is missing, the missing 4th leg representing the vowel-stave missing from ogam consaine, vowels evidently having once been taboo. Ailm also represents the first appearance of the new moon, seemingly (the reason it is a male figure—see below).

O-onn-furze is the vowel of spring and of its furze fires (to make new shoots accessible to sheep, as I recall): Heb. ayin even means ‘source, spring’. To fully understand its trump, IIII L’Empereur (who is campaigning in spring, being a conqueror), requires some consideration of the calendar’s alchemical overtones. The year is the closed alchemical vessel (druidic ‘serpent’s egg’?), and the columns in it marked off by its verticals (gemini-leo, taurus-virgo, aries-libra, pisces-scorpio, and aquarius-sagittary) belong to the planetary metals: each sign is astrologically ruled by the column through which the round just passed to arrive there (the columns determined by the number system itself, in a subtle yet clear way). The mercury column rests on the month beginning at leo, which is the hottest month and thus represents application of fire or heat to the vessel, while its top is the month starting at taurus, which is the middle of spring. But the upper half of the mercury column, to symbolize the volatility of mercury upon application of heat, expands to include the entire upper half of the outer vessel, meaning the entire season of spring, by virtue of aries being bardic 8 and gemini Hebrew 8 (cheyt), 8 being Mercury’s number. (Planetary numbers are determined by increasing planetary periods assigned to numbers 10 through 2: 10 is day, earth’s spin, 9 the moon or month, 8 Mercury, and so on.) This represents mercury’s poisonous vapors rushing up to fill the outer upper half, requiring it be hermetically sealed (Heb. ayin also means ‘ring’, its old Semitic shape). So the vowel of spring rules spring from its ‘seat’ in leo: it represents secular power, ruling the outer vessel. (Remember, the horizon before, cancer, is all about us, so each side of the vessel is a complete sphere, the zodiac running from up, to around us without, to down, to around us within, to up.) And the reason it is the male secular power is that O is also the waxing lunar phase (vowels being the seasons in all things), and waxing moons are for weaning of boys, in hopes they grow into stout warriors. Since waxing moon stands for youth and initiation into the traditions of the tribe, its rune is called ‘inheritance’ and pictures the hood of one’s teacher.

U-ura-heather—the ‘bed’ of the tryst, under the stars—is the vowel of full moon and of summer: love’s consummation (the letter vav means ‘and’ in Hebrew). XVII L’Etoile thus pictures a ‘mixing of fluids’ under the stars. The reason its figure is female is that (as Grimm tells us) the full goes with the waning phase (and new with waxing), waning phase being reserved for weaning girls, so they will grow up slender and beautiful. Its rune, *uruz, ‘aurochs’, pictures the horn of this beast upturned as if drinking from it, symbolizing a warrior’s coming of age. Since its place on the round is summer’s beginning, cancer the breasts, we should not be surprised to discover its shape in old Semitic is a breast pouring forth milk. (It is ironic that the rune evolved into an upside-down V, for V came from a breast giving milk and *uruz from the upturned horn, both pouring their fluids down, not one down and one up! don’t know how you pour up.)

Aa-ailm-palm symbolizes far-off reaches, or physical location (‘location, location, location’): XXI LeMonde. Its place on the Egg, libra (straight down, one’s location), is determined by its being the fire breath (palm’s phoenix being born in flame): the cancer or breath (connexion to other) of a (fire unit’s) movable wheel with aries or head in cancer (fire) points here, to libra. This is apparent from the four ‘Living Creatures’—bull-lion-eagle-man or taurus-leo-scorpio-aquarius—being oriented as a wheel with aries towards cancer (to our left). This is the way the astrologers orient the houses. Its Hebrew equivalent (by process of elimination) is teyt, the crossed circle (symbol used to mark a heliport), which stands for the earth (one’s location). The rune, therefore, is *dagaz, ‘day’, shaped like an hourglass on its side to represent the present instant in which one turns it over, since libra is the point all four wheels have in common (the present). Being the midpoint of the zodiac, it appears to stand for luna’s turning from waxing to waning, hence it shares ura’s femaleness, this determining the sex of the dancer.

E-eadhe-aspen is the vowel of autumn’s repose, its leaves fluttering at the slightest breeze (hence its nickname, ‘quivering’). As it is also the waning phase of the moon, the figure representing this repose and sensitivity (the cloister?) is female: II LaPapesse. Its station on the round is mid-autumn, scorpio, meaning one’s ‘privates’—male organ and clitoris, to be precise, since the sign departing from libra represents desire, departure from what physically is. As it follows teyt on the round, it is the air breath (cancer of movable zodiac with aries in leo or air), which is why it is a comb, or tamer of winds so to speak, in old Semitic, the comb also being an Eleusinian symbol for the female organ. The sexual overtones here are palpable (circumcised member across her chest, drapings of loins of the lovers in the canopy about her head), yet she is oblivious to them: she represents restraint—the Covenant (circumcision)—since she is the 8th sign (circumcision occurring on the 8th day) and also the heh added to Abram to make Abraham. (Even her version of the papal crown is a little more rounded and thus phallic.)

I-idho-yew conveys onset-of-winter—the old moon—and also death-rebirth (and longevity), from its habit of driving branches into the ground to generate new roots thus extending life almost indefinitely. Being the limit of physical existence, it is secular power, and being of the waning phase, female: III L’Imperatrice. This stands for the threefold goddess of life-in-death and death-in-life (as I believe Graves liked to put it): for this is the third phase of life when divided into youth, adulthood, and old age. In Hebrew, it is zayin, which is deducible from the fact that its Greek equivalent zeta is the initial of Zeus by virtue of i’s erosion of the d in dyaus (cf. our j). As zayin’s meaning is connected with arming oneself, it is saying, “Arm yourself for old age,” so to speak, and thus she is being embraced by the tail feathers of the eagle on the shield. This last is mainly because although the central figure is female, this letter—one of two, I and B, that retain their tree names in runic—represents the male or spinal column of the body (backbone). The two pillars Boaz and Jachin are thus represented by figures opposite their gender, yet Boaz has the mother’s arm and Jachin the eagle’s embrace to show their deeper meaning, for these were the doorposts of the entrance to Solomon’s Temple through which one must pass to rebuild it, the front column having been broken off at the sternum to permit childbirth. (One can see that without mother’s arm and eagle’s embrace, these two trumps no-longer convey this deeper meaning.) Yew is the wood of longbows, and indeed its place on the Egg (determined by the vowels arranging themselves in phonetic order on the lower half of the Egg except with Q in place of A at virgo) turns out to be sagittary, the archer.

Finally, Ii-(L. viscum, Gr. ixus?)-mistletoe is the one Hebrew letter that does not extend down to the line on which one writes, since it is rooted in a tree. It is Virgil’s ‘Golden Bough’ and thus the trump XVIIII LeSoleil, gold being the metal of the sun. One significance of this trump, we note, is that here we have the twins again. Why? Because mistletoe is associated with yuletide (winter solstice), the one point in the year where they are both present: it is the sign on the Egg (3rd wheel) that LePape with its twins is on the Cauldron (2nd wheel’s bottom half). Here they are at play, whereas in LePape they have been properly attired and brought before their ‘father’. The wall in the picture in one sense recalls how careful the druids were to ‘wall off’ mistletoe from being soiled by contact with the earth by suspending white sheets under it before harvesting it with a golden sickle. Its old Semitic form is two arms grasping a stick with which a line is being drawn in the dirt: this symbolizes the secrecy with which Kelts (whom Phoenicians were allied with in both New World explorations and Punic Wars against Rome) surrounded their letter-tradition, etching letters in the dirt for students to visualize, then rubbing them out with the feet, I surmise.

I have not begun to exhaust the evidence underpinning the above, for reasons of space and not wishing eyes to ‘glaze over’. But I will be glad to elaborate further on specific points thought questionable (or thought-provoking) by any who deign to show an interest. I am interested in demonstrating the truth of the above not so as to receive credit but because I do not want this knowledge to die with me! not that this prospect is all that close.

( F I N I )

 

[Cerulean]

I would enjoy seeing this as an illuminated manuscript

because physically, one can absorb the richness and soak up the poetic interweavings letter-by-letter.

I can only bookmark this for further enjoyment and return again to the sweetness of the ideals.

Regards,

Cerulean

 

[Rosanne]

MY printer has run out of ink now !!!
That was fourteen pages of script!!!!
Anyways thank you for the thread -I will attempt to put 22 trumps into your order and see what I think- I had thought to construct New Ancient Deck- but as I once told Major Tom- that may be a case of reinventing the Wheel/s.
As a little aside; I was once told that the Cary-Yale sheets were precisley that. Labels/logos for different quality bed linen. 13- a winding sheet, 0 a Paupers winding sheet, 6- a marriage bed proof sheet 7- a tarpaulin for ones chariot etcetc I guess there is a lighter side to everything? ~Rosanne

 

[Sophie]

soup

Venicebard, not for the first time, I'd like to see you reference this (interesting) text with links to letters/image (TdM)- i.e. give us something visual, since this is a visual/oral connection you are trying to prove (link between poetry and a visual artefact). Do it card by card, letter by letter, symbol by symbol. Then come back.

Huck gave you one excellent piece of advice on another thread: create a website on which you can do all that. Put it out in the world in simple form, and for G-d/dess's sake, use visual tools as well!

I would also like you to rush less in your explanations. I've read you umpteen times. I'm not a stupid woman. Yet I understand less than 20% of what you write because you don't take your time, you use complicated sentence structures and heavy language, and you skip necessary exposition in your rush to say what you have to say. You've been working on this for 30 years, remember the rest of humanity hasn't. Some people don't even know what "bardic language" means to you, or why this zodiac sign correlates to that in the way you so casually toss into the soup. You try and create a link between 8th century Ireland and 12th Century Provence - different times, different places, different languages, different origin of the language - but skate over the time/space/culture gaps (maybe you need Einstein after all? ) and just ask your reader to accept that they belong to a single unbroken tradition.

L-luis-rowan whips were used to tame bewitched horses (Heb. mal’medh means ‘goad’ and old-Semitic lamedh could represent one), linking it to learning (Heb. lemedh), and the tree itself shelters young of other species (its rune pictures the part of a roof extending beyond the wall of a house), which eventually displace it. Since capricorn—straight back from cancer or straight ahead (towards ‘other’)—symbolizes self or not other, this next month or sign, L, represents what progresses on from or ‘expands on’ self (where one is at), namely learning. This next sign being aquarius the water-pourer, it is represented by XIIII Temperance, who pours from one vessel to another and also represents the learning or tempering process. And in the closed, circular zodiac (where scorpio through pisces do not extend down the legs to the feet but rather up the spine to the head, aries), this is the spine opposite the shoulders, linked therefore to square-Hebrew lamedh, which shows arms swinging while walking seen from above, as happens when a child is learning to walk in front of us. (Back of the shoulders is where the strapped-on wings are in the trump, you’ll notice.)

You see what I mean? Why is Capricorn straight back from cancer? why does it symbolise self or not other? You are assuming knowledge in your readers, and also assuming that those who have some knowledge agree with you - and skipping any kind of exposition.

Take a leaf out of the book of your (much vaunted) ancestor Guilhem de Poitiers: keep to vigorous simple language to show universal ideas.

Once you can direct me to visual/oral links, then I'll reread this text with interest & hope by then you will have filled the huge gaps you have left.

 

[mythos]

Dear Venicebard,

I have a feeling that there is much in what you have to say that is very meaningful. I would like very much to undertsand it. However, for one such as I, it is like learning to read at prep grade level by being given Shakespeare and being told 'go for it', instead of being taught the basic letters, how they go together to form words, and then starting with John and jump, Betty can jump.

I need more explanation at each level. I need for you to write 'as though' your audience has absolutely no knowledge of the subject.... I have some knowledge, but little .... way too little to understand where you are coming from ... how information is linked together, why, and so on.

I hate to think that you have put such work in to only have your readers throw up their hands in confusion because there is a need to develop from the simple to the complex, and you have dived in at the complex. By all means treat your readers like kindergarten children, and take them through the grades, building on each level.

I feel that there is so much here to be understood, sorted through, discussed, wondered and pondered over, learned ... and it seems a pity to me that I am missing it because you are writing at a level, and in sentences too complex to be understood by a beginner such as myself.

And trust me, I did try ... hard.
mythos

 

[venicebard]

shish kebab

...i.e. give us something visual, since this is a visual/oral connection you are trying to prove (link between poetry and a visual artefact). Do it card by card, letter by letter, symbol by symbol. Then come back.

(Thanks, o noble mountain Gaul, for being one of the few so far who care.) Card by card, letter by letter is a little beyond my time/skill capabilities at the moment, more’s the pity. My resources and time (and understanding of the internet) are extremely limited (a situation I do not intend shall last forever), making it problematic whether I can follow your very-much appreciated advice any time soon. [In a couple of days I’m outta here once again to live in my van, where at least there are no little gnats keeping me awake half the night with their buzzing—and I don’t mean Huck—for I’m afraid cab-driving in L.A. is not lucrative enough to support a roof and sufficient storage for my library, for which I do not seek sympathy (I’m better off than most, my ‘meagre means’ being mostly on the outside) but rather understanding.]

For the immediate future I’m afraid the ‘world’ (half a dozen people?) will have to be content with what is (plus what I am about to add). I have been trying to post enough clues so that any who are truly interested in how tarot originated and not simply in how the earliest extant cards did (which is interesting, but not the same thing) will have sufficient basis so that if I died tomorrow my next time around would not find the job completely to do over again. (I used to joke that had I known this stuff at twenty, by thirty, countries would have been making treaties with me!)

All kidding aside, the other consideration I had was to compress enough information into small space to illustrate the structure of the whole, as mere individual ‘hits’ don’t prove much. A well-illustrated tome is really the only way to present the subject properly, a website being useful as an enticement to read it (it is not a subject for an afternoon). This is a science of man-and-cosmos superior to the disjointed mess taught at university, and people spend years having that poured down their throats (hope you forgive bluntness).

Anyway, to continue...

You've been working on this for 30 years...

33 to be exact.

...in the way you so casually toss into the soup.

I would characterize it not as ‘soup’ (all mixed together) but as shish kebab, each set of ingredients (symbols) skewered on its individual spoke (or writ? sorry, my father was a notorious punster)

You try and create a link between 8th century Ireland...

...don’t you mean B.C.E. through 12th-century Ireland and Wales (and north Britain)? at least bardic tradition appears to have lasted till then, albeit somewhat ‘underground’, the 12th century being the age of ‘little Gwion’, as Graves calls the later Taliesin (the first having been a 6th-century contemporary of Myrddin and Aneirin)

...and 12th Century Provence - different times, different places, different languages, different origin of the language - but skate over the time/space/culture gaps (maybe you need Einstein after all? ) and just ask your reader to accept that they belong to a single unbroken tradition.

Mostly I am pointing to apparent common strands between various times and places and cannot necessarily fill in all gaps with historical data, much as I would like, since a great deal goes on behind the scenes (history is a movie with more crew than actors)

Why is Capricorn straight back from cancer? why does it symbolise self or not other?

Be seated, as if to meditate: head (aries) up, breast forward, loins down, and back (yod or mid-spine capricorn) back. Now: before you is a horizon (D). But when you turn to look at the horizon behind (B), it is no longer ‘behind’ but rather ‘before’ (you’re looking at it). Now, instead of looking behind with your eyes, look with your mind. Before is the horizon (360-degrees, with one spot picked out on it at any given moment). And straight back from that is you. Whatever you do to ‘other’ or the world, the responsibility for it goes directly back along this line to the source of the action: is this source physical, or is it internal? To a pagan, probably physical (or rather spirit, the ‘voiced’ side being thought of as the Otherworld). But to the sage (Qabbalist or Buddha or Iesus) or would-be sage (us), it is within: it is the conscious one who acts (‘spirit’ being the act itself). Thus straight back, in addition to being the wind in the charioteer’s (self’s, Krshna’s) face—air, thought, karma—is one’s conscious self.

Ezekiel’s 2nd wheel, then, goes from up, to without, to down, to within, to up, essentially carving out two whole spheres, the first outer, the second inner. And the inner horizons of the three ‘mothers’ or first three wheels are the three parts of a whole self (knower-thinker-doer), of which we are but fallen doers, estranged from the guidance of our thinker-knowers because we do not notice the horizon within, following the senses (horizon without to straight down) instead. This is the only reason the true Gnostic sees the outer as a snare: nature-matter is not in itself evil, merely indifferent, and yet the one-who-acts is distracted and hypnotized by it into losing sight of what truly matters to it, which is to be found within.

Hope this helps.

 

[venicebard]

Dear Venicebard,

I have a feeling that there is much in what you have to say that is very meaningful. I would like very much to undertsand it...

I need more explanation at each level. I need for you to write 'as though' your audience has absolutely no knowledge of the subject...

I hate to think that you have put such work in to only have your readers throw up their hands in confusion...

I feel that there is so much here to be understood, sorted through, discussed, wondered and pondered over, learned ...

And trust me, I did try ... hard.
mythos

(You are not alone in your reaction.) I am gratified (to see interest sparked in another), chagrined (at being unable to be clearer), and appreciative (of your effort in spite of this fact). There follows my response to you, and also to...

Once you can direct me to visual/oral links, then I'll reread this text with interest & hope by then you will have filled the huge gaps you have left.

If it will help (as a stopgap), here are some links I have been able to dredge up:

square-Hebrew

old Semitic The gimel there is slightly tilted and when properly inscribed looks like a pyramid-in-the-sand (baseless Gr.delta w/ right side descending farther than left)—a camel’s hump perhaps—while a properly inscribed dalet will have its right edge vertical (mast to which jib is attached).

(a few letters of) tifinag/Libyan (more complete listings have evidently been removed from the web, as I can no-longer find them, but at least here you can see D is a door)

runes of the elder futhark

[For the adventurous among you, Meroitic shows alef as seated-human-form, dalet as eyes-on-the-horizon (w/ half of Cauldron plus support), kaf as the bird that makes the bird track it oft resembles in Phoenician, yod as two-flowering-reeds—from whose hieratic form 19th-century scholars and I claim old-Semitic yod originated—ditto owl meym, ditto recumbent-lion lamedh, ditto lotus-pool shin, ditto hill-slope qof, ditto surface-of-water nun (here doubled). And tav is a very interesting form, a priest-with-bird-headdress seen from above either with arms reaching out to our left or with lines emanating from its ears in that direction, the former relating to ‘tongs’ (see below), the latter to its being that which approaches within earshot. (Some of the other forms still hold mystery for me, and any insights would be appreciated.)]

In the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet, you can see that the outer Cauldron, d-t-k-r, is all flat signs: hand-tongs-basket-mouth (fire-air-water-earth). Also the Logos: AUM (3, w, and m) are the three bird signs, while the ‘I’ that needs tacking onto its beginning for us humans that have bodies can be either one or two ‘flowering reeds’ (what Gardiner calls them), which certainly look like feathers. B as foot-with-ankle refers to its being on a level with the pisces month of the Egg, which is the feet in the broken-and-extended zodiac, and P as reed-stool (according to Gardiner) relates to this state of affairs also.

[Arranged as I believe ancient sages arranged them (see bardo-Qabbalistic layout below), they make a geodetic ‘glyph’ resting on the fulcrum Giza—with B-birch (Siberian shamans’ world-tree) south of the Urals (birth-place of Indo-Europeans?), D-oak the Alps’ north slope (where Donar feeds sources of Rhine and Danube), T (runic tyr) the Tyrrhenian Sea, K(C) at Kyrene(Cyrene), A-fir in the mountainous center of Anatolia, and F-alder (corn spirit) on the steppes (in the great bend of the Dnepr, which Egyptians mapped thinking it a reflection of the Nile)—and all the main letters used in (Egyptian) names for Egypt are in Egypt: M (in its calendar position), R, and t-loaf (aa), the latter (semicircle on its base) geodetically representing Lower Egypt (bread basket or Nile delta) and R-mouth that which consumes it (Upper Egypt). I would give these names, but my Gardiner’s Egyptian Grammar is not with me: one is MR, which may stand for restoring R to libra via the Great Work, alchemy in its best-known form being essentially Egyptian (though founded, perhaps, by ‘Maria the Jewess’?).]

Below is the Hebrew-and-bardic phonetic structure, the ‘doubles’ (on the 2nd wheel’s lower half) forming the bowl—or hollow of the mouth—the ‘simples’ (on the 3rd wheel) forming the round—torso facing left, or tongue rooted at base (gullet)—in whose bottom half the ‘womb of time’ (physical universe or present instant) rests (symbolically, meaning in reality). Outer horizon and nature-matter (Sanscrit prakriti) are to the left, inner horizon and self-knowledge (the bhagavad of Bhagavad Gita?) to the right. By the Sefer Yetzirah or Merkavah classification, the 3 mothers (centers standing for first 3 wheels) are in bold caps, the 7 doubles in caps, and the 12 simples in lower case, listed as their bardic-vowel equivalents where applicable: for “u” read vav, for “o” ayin, for “aa” teyth/theta (the earth), for “e” heh, for “i” zayin, and for “ii” yod.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - M

-

-

-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Sh
P - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - s - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - B
- - - - - - - - - - - - - tz- - - - - - - - n - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - h - - - - - - - - - - - - - l - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - T - - - - - -u- - - - - - - A - - - - - - - ii - - - - - - D - -
- - - - - - - - - - - o - - - - - - - - - - - - - i - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - q - - - - - - - - e - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - K - - - - - - aa - - - - - - G - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -R- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Points Sh and s (samekh, but F-alder in bardic) coincide, as do aa and R. The phonetic pattern in Hebrew creates a kind of symmetry for the fire and water triads (these point up and down respectively, the latter called ‘air’ in astrology but traditionally identified as water in the Jewish hexagram). Fire triad: its right side emanates from i, zayin, its left from s, samekh, and its base from o: its two sides are thus the equivalent sibilants z and s, voiced within (z) and unvoiced without (s). Water triad: the side to our left (outer) descends to R, the side to our right ascends to l (only other non-nasal liquid), while its horizontal ends up in h: R and l represent right and left as if the round were a person seated facing us (sorry, Robert, I misrepresented rolled R earlier as having ‘unvoiced gaps’, but I was simply not thinking).

In trumps—after D and P trade places, a shift related to calendar order, the human state, and the Masonic Lodge (all of which I won’t go into here)—they are:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -VI

-

-

-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - XVI
XII - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -viii- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - V
- - - - - - - - - - - - -xx - - - - - - -xiv - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - -(0)- - - - - - - - - - -xiii - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - XI - - - - -xvii- - - - - - I - - - - - - xix- - - - - - - VII - -
- - - - - - - - - - - iv- - - - - - - - - - - iii - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - -xviii- - - - - - -ii- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -IX- - - - - - xxi - - - - - - X - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -XV- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The great polarity on the Cauldron is between X LaRoue deFortune (G, desire-mind) and IX L’Hermite (K, feeling-mind). On the Egg, it is between their ‘surrogates’ (sounds straight up from them), xix (yod) and xvii (vav), whence comes the power of the Name (yod-heh-vav-heh or ‘Yahweh’). This polarity bridges the divide between intelligent matter (‘mind’) and nature matter (‘matter’) posed by Cartesian dualism. [G(10)-neon, numerically +1, is 0 (inert) in valence. K(9)-fluorine, numerically 0, is -1 in valence (has ‘space’ for one valence electron in its neon ‘shell’). So the fundamental polarity between positive number—desire as inner reality’s form—and negative valence—feeling as outer reality’s form—acts through their surrogates yod(19)-potassium and vav(17)-chlorine, which are +1 and -1 (respectively) in both number and valence.]

Bardic numbering is highly symbolic—cardinal obviously, not ordinal. Spring is the sudden explosion 4-8-16 (O-F-S, with O taken as vowel of spring), and no-number is associated with the sign gemini immediately preceding the horizon before (cancer or straight ahead) to signify space, the thing that makes it a horizon (by extending down to it). Autumn’s vowel is E, 2, standing for ‘second thoughts’. Onset of winter is I, 3, the threefold death, or threefold self into which one recoileth once the body gets recycled. The waxing-year spirit D-oak (LePendu, self-sacrifice) ‘has 12 merry men’: in other words, he is whole, incorporates all 12 signs. Thence, the waning-year sequence goes 12-11-9-6-10-7-5, if we follow the calendar but skip R, the 13th or ‘extra’ month. This yields differences 1-2-3-4-3-2, pinning fire-air-water-earth (elements 1-2-3-4) to signs cancer through libra (straight ahead to straight down on the Cauldron) and also suggesting their ‘levels’ or horizontals remain of those elements as they extend within. Finally (whew), 1-2-3-4 represent the elements they do because this is their natural order, and because the entire structure of number is such that, with respect to digital summation, 5-6-7-8 are -4, -3, -2, and -1, while 9 is -0 (leaves digital sum’s reduction to 1-digit number unchanged).