The Prodigal Sun

[chiscotheque]

To start things off, I asked myself the question: Are you ethically obliged to improve yourself?

I chose to pull from the TdM and use the RWS as comparison. The card I pulled was The Sun:

The answer I offered myself as I pulled the card was Yes, I am ethically obliged, and the Sun card seemed to corroborate that opinion. The sun is life-giving, it causes things to grow, it provides light that illuminates, it keeps the earth in its structured orbit, it burns as with ambition. The smiling boy on the white horse of the RWS Sun appeared to point to all the bright shiny aspects of betterment.

As it happens, however, I have a view of The Sun card which differs from most people. That is, as essential to life on earth as the Sun is and as wonderful its many attributes, too much of a good thing is a bad thing - too much light blinds, too much heat incinerates, too much structure incarcerates. In many ways, the Sun card represents for me the successful aspects of Western materialism which have benefitted so many people in so many ways, but also destroyed so many people, cultures, creatures, and even the earth itself in order to succeed. The imperative to improve oneself, then, as wonderful and positive as it sounds, may indeed come at a price - a price that is unethical. The one child on the TdM looks to be trying to help the other, but the other may not want his help; that help may be a hindrance or even destructive, the kind that results in the desert behind them and the brick wall.

Underscoring this reversed interpretation of the card and the question is the RWS Sun card. Waite, with his Christian symbolism and unreserved embrace of the pollyanna aspect of the 19th card, thought he was "improving" on the TdM Sun. This misguided belief suggests I was misguided when I chose to believe in the ethical obligation of improvement.

When it comes right down to it, aside from the question's flirtation with ethical systems, the nub of the question resides in the definition of improvement. As the day needs night, so too improvement needs to be tempered with neglect - as counterintuitive as that may seem - and perhaps even outright diminishment. Ironically, through failure we learn the meaning of improvement and what it is about improvement that has real value. Deeper, through injury we learn humility and empathy for others. These qualifications suggest an improved notion of ethics and a more ethical definition of improvement.

In the end, strictly speaking, one has an ethical obligation to improve oneself if one's ethics so oblige them. As it happens, I do possess those ethics (or they possess me) and so I do feel obliged. The Sun cards suggest this ethic is the result of my cultural conditioning and Christian schooling and, instead of being a wholly valorous pursuit, may have deleterious effects on my inner self and the outside world. As if allegorically, today was overcast and rainy. A man came to take my malfunctioning computer away so I couldn't work the way I'd planned. I felt at loose ends. But instead of compelling myself to complete the hundred little obligations which eat up my day or feel disquietude for being "unproductive", I allowed myself to just do nothing. Perhaps pulling the Sun card today was less about an abstract idea and more about my actual day. With this ethical obligation to improve, what am I trying to prove?

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[Diana]

The one child on the TdM looks to be trying to help the other, but the other may not want his help; that help may be a hindrance or even destructive, the kind that results in the desert behind them and the brick wall.

Underscoring this reversed interpretation of the card and the question is the RWS Sun card. Waite, with his Christian symbolism and unreserved embrace of the pollyanna aspect of the 19th card, thought he was "improving" on the TdM Sun. This misguided belief suggests I was misguided when I chose to believe in the ethical obligation of improvement.

em - and perhaps even outright diminishment. Ironically, through failure we learn the meaning of improvement and what it is about improvement that has real value. Deeper, through injury we learn humility and empathy for others. These qualifications suggest an improved notion of ethics and a more ethical definition of improvement.

I think the two children in the Tarot of Marseilles are mutually helping each other. We overlook much too often the fact that the children, most likely brothers, are touching each other on two very important places of the body. The Heart (or Solar Plexus) and the Neck. The heart, well we all can figure out what that symbolises and we often talk about the heart, but the neck is often neglected. (The neck is also relevant in the TdM Hanged Man and maybe Strength but I'm on the fence about the latter).

The neck is where the "higher things in man, which are of the head, communicate through the intervening neck with the lower things which are of his body hence it is both influx and communication". Sort of. That's one author's take on it. It's not very poetic, but it's quite well formulated all the same. His breath as an overflowing stream will divide even unto the neck (Isa. 30:28).

It's a mutual support that they're giving to each other. Sort of a kind of a Temperance thing - a flow of energies. They remind me of those healers who heal with their hands. Or acupuncture points and meridians. And maybe even an added bonus of synchronicity regarding the chakras (I doubt the creators of the tarot thought of chakras when making the cards).

A friend of mine who practices the Russian martial art "Systema" (the origins of which are very old) told me once of his teacher who demonstrated how to paralyse someone for a while and also to blind them for a minute or so by touching certain points (the blindness due to the fact that the optic nerve is affected). He said it was very impressive to watch. Actually, I don't think they were taught how to do this. It was just a demonstration of these pressure points. I reckon this must be very advanced training. Systema was for a long time during the Stalin era reserved only for the Russian special forces and top military training. It was only after the Iron Curtain fell that it started to be introduced again in the public and then brought over a bit to the West.

In one of my favourite Japanese animes, Hokuto No Ken, there are these pressure points used in his particular martial art and they are very powerful indeed. When used in a certain manner, the opponent usually ends up by exploding (lol - there are some very funny scenes like this). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3artaQd15LA

Maybe it's better to improve oneself ethically together instead of in our own individual corners where the Sun blazes way too hot and the heart needs to quench its thirst with the mind and the mind with the heart, because one can get thirsty in that hot sun. So I think if we are to read this card in light of the question being posed, maybe the message also is that no man is an island. And that if we improve ourselves because we are ethically obliged to do so, then it should be a community thing - something undertaken with our fellows. There has to be some kind of solidarity. That's what I'm getting also from your reading.

I've also never reached a conclusion or had any eureka moments as to what those two stones are on the ground are. They can also be found in the Maison Dieu (Tower). I know they're important. I feel it in my bones - and in my heart and in my neck. And why are there two ????? I think there are connections between these two cards which have been very little, if ever, spoken about.

I'd love us also to discuss that wall one day in the Sun card. I have a thing with walls... I dislike them intensely. But I've already mentioned that a couple of times elsewhere. But there are a surprising amount of walls being built these days. It's hard not to notice them.

[chiscotheque]

solidarity as allegorical meaning on the Sol card - that's great.

the Sol card can also be seen as a symbol of the soul. a soul is one part of the whole, hence man is a duo - material and spiritual, earthling and god.

i like the TdM decks where the one twin looks damaged, possibly blinded. maybe he looked directly at the sun and it burned out his eyes. maybe he is the Self's shadow which evanesces in the light, and in enlightenment.

it's hard to say if the one child's arm touches the neck or the head or what, since it's obscured. the head-heart circuit might make as much or more sense here. and not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing.

walls keep things in or out. does this suggest the need for borders, the delineation between right and wrong? or, if man is recognized as the duality noted above, are walls irrelevant? in some ways it's less a wall than a parapet or a foundation - all that's left of the tower after it petered-out? maybe the stones are the ones the masons threw away? the 2 masons de dieu.


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[Diana]

I'll get back to the two boys and what chiscotheque says about them in his previous post. Also the stones. And also more on the wall.

But for now, just one specific point about the wall in the Sun arcanum.

In the Noblet TdM the two people are a man and a woman (the man’s blue leg is curious). Maybe there is an underlying theme of the Garden of Eden in the TdM Sun. The etymology of “paradise” means “a wall enclosing a garden or orchard.” A walled garden then. During the slow evolution of the TdM, until it reached what we recognise today as "the tradition", it did shapeshift somewhat. I don't think any of the ideas (perhaps a handful only), or underlying themes, were lost, even though the depictions may have changed. There is always some kind of golden thread that links them all. The water that they are on could be one of the four rivers associated with the Garden of Eden.

The old Iranian language Avestan had a noun pairidaēza-, "a wall enclosing a garden or orchard," which is composed of pairi-, "around," and daēza- "wall." The adverb and preposition pairi is related to the equivalent Greek form peri, as in perimeter. Daēza- comes from the Indo-European root *dheigh-, "to mold, form, shape." Zoroastrian religion encouraged maintaining arbors, orchards, and gardens, and even the kings of austere Sparta were edified by seeing the Great King of Persia planting and maintaining his own trees in his own garden. Xenophon, a Greek mercenary soldier who spent some time in the Persian army and later wrote histories, recorded he pairidaēza- surrounding the orchard as paradeisos, using it not to refer to the wall itself but to the huge parks that Persian nobles loved to build and hunt in. This Greek word was used in the Septuagint translation of Genesis to refer to the Garden of Eden, whence Old English eventually borrowed it around 1200.

The Jacques Vieville version has a naked man or woman astride a horse, which I assume is the inspiration for Waite’s card. I suppose it’s a man. I don’t think they would have depicted a naked woman on a horse seated in such a fashion but maybe….the breasts are quite noticeable but that doesn't mean anything. The Vieville deck is almost a class of its own. It’s a TdM but at the same time, it’s not a TdM. Sort of the black or white sheep of the family. Lovely though.

Someone somewhere in cyberspace mentioned how sad and/or angry the Sun in the TdM looks. Not the happy smiling one that kids love to draw.

[Diana]

solidarity as allegorical meaning on the Sol card - that's great.

the Sol card can also be seen as a symbol of the soul. a soul is one part of the whole, hence man is a duo - material and spiritual, earthling and god.

i like the TdM decks where the one twin looks damaged, possibly blinded. maybe he looked directly at the sun and it burned out his eyes. maybe he is the Self's shadow which evanesces in the light, and in enlightenment.

The theory I adhere to the most is that these two boys are symbols of Castor and Pollux. The following is just a copy/paste from this website : https://www.deseret.com/1997/1/12/19289 ... twin-stars

The oldest ideas we can identify for Gemini seem to come out of India, where the two stars were called "Aswins," twin horsemen of the dawn. This idea probably goes back some 6,000 years or so to the time when the pair of stars would have appeared just as the sky began to brighten on spring equinox mornings. Thus, the Aswin horsemen were thought of as the forerunners of spring dawn. The concept of these stars representing twins apparently spread from India and Persia into Greece, Rome and then throughout Europe. In classical Greece the stars were named Castor and Pollux, legendary twins born of immortal Zeus and the mortal Leda, wife of the king of Sparta. Thus, Pollux was immortal and Castor mortal.

Romans called the stars the "Twin Brethren" and associated them with the principle of brotherhood, which was considered to lie at the foundation of their empire. In Egypt they became Horus the Elder and Horus the Younger. In Babylon they were the "Great Twins," and they were viewed as twins in Arabia as well. In China they were yin and yang, representing eternal dualism, the two halves of a circle and contrasting principles of existence.

Statues and temples have been erected to Castor and Pollux, and they have been carved as figureheads of ships. Indeed, the Apostle Paul sailed on such a ship from the Isle of Melita on his journey to Rome. In Acts 28:11 we read: "And after three months we departed in a ship of Alexandria which had wintered in the isle, whose sign was Castor and Pollux." Images representing these stars were placed on Greek and Roman coins and Babylonian boundary stones as well as on charts of the sky.

Most of the concepts that have been culturally associated with these Twins in the sky focus on the principle of love that binds people into families and communities whose members care for and protect one another, leading to great accomplishments.

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Now, onto Crispin and Crispinian, also a copy paste from this website : http://abmcg.blogspot.com/2011/10/every ... ut-st.html

It starts out with a passage from Shakespeare’s Henry V. Which was evoked in another post in Plato’s Cave. How things come together !!

And what follows fits in also very well, just as the above, with my idea that this card is about solidarity and fraternity. Crispin and Crispinian are two Catholic saints - probably twin brothers.

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Another feature of this and similar stories of martyr-brothers is the similarity between these and the Dioscuri or Divine Twins, Castor and Pollux. That pagan pair was enthusiastically venerated in the ancient Mediterranean world, and the Church found it hard to displace or suppress them. They are even depicted, on horses with their distinctive caps and an accompanying star, on (otherwise) unquestionably Christian art works of the late ancient world.

The Christian response to the popularity of the Dioscuri was to co-opt them, and present various pairs of twins, brothers or friends, whose heroic faith could be used to take over the artistic traditions and intuitive spiritual appeal of a pair of closely-connected heroes; Shakespeare himself alludes to a similar idea in his famous “band of brothers”, and with “he to-day that sheds his blood with me/ Shall be my brother”.

Whatever their historicity, Crispin and Crispinian evoked powerful ideas, before Shakespeare as well as in Henry V. Like the bard's speech, their cultus had also inherited and reused ideas which people before them had found powerful, about solidarity and courage.

[chiscotheque]

very interesting, Diana. and much to digest. there are of course many twins in myth, many with similar sounding names, such as Balan and Balin in the Holy Grail. i know we touched on this in talk of the hanged man card, and you weren't so happy with suggested associations with judas, but one twin idea i foster is jesus and judas. i could argue it a number of ways, such as god & man, similarity of names, Mark/Matthew/&Jude's allusion to Jesus' brother Jude, the gospel of barnabas which claims judas was crucified in jesus' place, etc., but i think the proof of the pudding is its mythological truth.

if the other child/person on the TdM sun is a woman, mightn't she be Artemis, twin of the sun god apollo? (whose mother Leto's name recalls Castor & Pollux's mother, Leda). C&P's horsemanship recalls Apollo's role (associated as he is with Helios) as daily driver of the sun chariot.

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[dodalisque]

I'll get back to the two boys and what chiscotheque says about them in his previous post. Also the stones. And also more on the wall.

Thanks, Diana, very thought-provoking. Those two stones on the Tower card have me intrigued. I think I might have once assumed they were the shoes of one of the acrobats, but they are too small. Footprints? Maybe their only significance is that they are not plants. Rocks suggest dryness and hardship, maybe. The TdM sun is always cruel or indifferent. The heat creates a dry bleached landscape. Too much masculine consciousness ios dry, whereas the Moon card is wet. The two dogs on the Moon seem to echo the two children on the Sun. The Rider-Waite happy Sun card doesn't have much in common with the TdM tradition.

The lowness of the wall always fascinates me. What could such a puny wall keep in or out? Unless the two children are meant to be babies. They seem to be wearing diapers" Loin cloths? What are those useless garments? There is a sort of modesty about the low wall that does not repeat the mistake of the Tower of climbing too high. The low wall can run indefinitely along the horizontal but high vertical towers have a limit to their growth. Tall towers challenge heaven but the two children are being compassionate to each other. So the presumption of the arrogant ego we see on the Tower is contrasted to the selfless smallness of the Sun card. Humans embrace a more modest domestic role on the Sun card. No crown could ever fit on the wall, or want to since there is no glory in smallness. Perhaps the smallness of the wall is to reinforce the weakness of Man compared to the huge glory of the Sun itself. The only compassion we should expect is from each other not from God/Sun.

And multi-colored bricks, in the wall and the Tower. What is that all about? Or is it merely to amuse the eye like the multi-colored balls in the air in the Tower and the indicators of energy on the Aces, etc. In the RWS those shapes are definitely "yods" from the Jewish alphabet and the four-letters of God's name, but they seem more like life-giving droplets of energy in the TdM. Rather than touching the boy's neck, isn't the other boy putting his hand on or around his shoulder as support? There are lots of pairs of men and women throughout the deck but, since the sun is always connected with specifically masculine energy, I suppose it would be surprising to see a woman on the card. I like the Noblet images a lot but when I work with the deck I always feel as though the guy who made the cards wasn't in touch with a lot of the mysticism of the tradition. The Dodal, which was made around the same time, seems much more high-powered and metaphorically suggestive. So I don't always trust the details on the Noblet to be concealing profundity. I might be wrong of course.

We talked before about getting a section going in the TdM discussion group about tarot folklore. I suppose we could approach it one card at a time. There must be a tremendous amount of this sort of speculation in books written in French. Can you think of any large books that have collected a lot of these theories together in one place? My French is so poor that I can't do the research myself. Maybe this kind of conversation belongs in the TdM discussion group, but any discussion about this kind of thing roams everywhere, so perhaps it's better for it to come up spontaneously wherever it happens. I don't know.

[Diana]

very interesting, Diana. and much to digest. there are of course many twins in myth, many with similar sounding names, such as Balan and Balin in the Holy Grail. i know we touched on this in talk of the hanged man card, and you weren't so happy with suggested associations with judas, but one twin idea i foster is jesus and judas. i could argue it a number of ways, such as god & man, similarity of names, Mark/Matthew/&Jude's allusion to Jesus' brother Jude, the gospel of barnabas which claims judas was crucified in jesus' place, etc., but i think the proof of the pudding is its mythological truth.

if the other child/person on the TdM sun is a woman, mightn't she be Artemis, twin of the sun god apollo? (whose mother Leto's name recalls Castor & Pollux's mother, Leda). C&P's horsemanship recalls Apollo's role (associated as he is with Helios) as daily driver of the sun chariot.

Jesus and Judas ? I don't think that this fits in with the rest of the Tarot story. There's not much of Jesus in these cards. He's not very apparent. If he were depicted as a person, then I think his mother would be too, and the Papesse is not the Virgin Mary. A virgin something, yes, but not Mary. Edited much later to add: That being said, I recall now somewhere an author proposing that they are Jesus and John the Baptist. This could make some sense. They knew each other when they were children I think ?

I didn't know about the Gospel of Barnabas. It looks very interesting as it seems to be more of the Islamic view of Jesus and the Islamic story of Jesus is worth knowing about. They believe for instance that Jesus will return to lead the final battle against the false prophet. He's a hugely important prophet for them. But the crucifixion and resurrection are not part of their beliefs. They revere Mary. She's hugely respected.

Artemis is a lunar figure. So then if we take up your idea, this would make us think of the alchemical marriage between the Sun and the Moon. It's a nice idea. I've never studied the Vieville Tarot - but I think it deserves to be studied better. I have no better suggestion or idea to make at the present than yours. But why is this person naked ? That must be a clue. Can't be Lady Godiva which is the first figure that appears in my mind when I think of naked woman on a horse.

I am ashamed to say that I know scant little of the Arthurian legend. It is a very big hole in my culture.

Now Alain Bocher has about three pages in his book "Le Tarot, Mode d'Emploi" where he expounds on that the two figures in this card represent the two Johns. I will have to take some time soon in the next few days to make a resume of these pages. It's very interesting.

[Diana]

I won't be responding to all the points you brought up in your very rich post. I prefer I think to make separate posts. For clarity's sake mostly I think. And they are separate subjects. Also otherwise this post will be too long.

Thanks, Diana, very thought-provoking. Those two stones on the Tower card have me intrigued. I think I might have once assumed they were the shoes of one of the acrobats, but they are too small. Footprints? Maybe their only significance is that they are not plants. Rocks suggest dryness and hardship, maybe. The TdM sun is always cruel or indifferent. The heat creates a dry bleached landscape. Too much masculine consciousness ios dry, whereas the Moon card is wet. The two dogs on the Moon seem to echo the two children on the Sun. The Rider-Waite happy Sun card doesn't have much in common with the TdM tradition.

Thank you for the complement which I return. I think that Jodorowsky, in his book La Voie du Tarot, also thinks they are footprints. I don't have his book and can't seem to find a decent downloadable pdf. I'm sure my local library must have his book. I'll check and as soon as I can I'll get back to report. I've never thought about this. Why would they be footprints I wonder ? It's an intriguing idea. Sounds very Jodorowsky indeed to say something like this. If he says this, then I suspect Camoin may have slipped this idea into his head. Camoin also put eggs in his deck so I'm a wee bit wary of anything that comes from that area.

It's funny that you call these two characters "acrobats". Could you elaborate ? Or is there nothing more behind this than just a charming way of describing their soft and gentle and managed fall to the ground ?

I thought once that the stones (I really really believe they are stones) may have something to do with the Stone of Jacob, but there are two of them, so this doesn't make sense so I dismissed that. But what I think is that they may be referring to is the "cornerstone" of Solomon's Temple. I know that there's only one cornerstone, but this may not be a problem. I have to do some more research on this.

The Temple of Solomon is a hugely important edifice after all. And of course, what it represents even huger.

So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who relies on it will never be stricken with panic. (Isiah 28:16)

The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone.
This was the LORD’s doing;
It is marvelous in our eyes.
Psalm 118:22-23

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:
‘The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone.
This was the LORD’s doing,
And it is marvelous in our eyes’? “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it. And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.”
Matthew 21:42-44

I found a very nice recounting of this story. It's from a book called The Desire of Ages by Ellen White.

In quoting the prophecy of the rejected stone, Christ referred to an actual occurrence in the history of Israel. The incident was connected with the building of the first temple. While it had a special application at the time of Christ's first advent, and should have appealed with special force to the Jews, it has also a lesson for us. When the temple of Solomon was erected, the immense stones for the walls and the foundation were entirely prepared at the quarry; after they were brought to the place of building, not an instrument was to be used upon them; the workmen had only to place them in position. For use in the foundation, one stone of unusual size and peculiar shape had been brought; but the workmen could find no place for it, and would not accept it. It was an annoyance to them, as it lay unused in their way. Long it remained a rejected stone. But when the builders came to the laying of the corner, they searched for a long time to find a stone of sufficient size and strength, and of the proper shape, to take that particular place, and bear the great weight which would rest upon it. Should they make an unwise choice for this important place, the safety of the entire building would be endangered. They must find a stone capable of resisting the influence of the sun, of frost, and of tempest. Several stones had at different times been chosen, but under the pressure of immense weights they had crumbled to pieces. Others could not bear the test of the sudden atmospheric changes. But at last attention was called to the stone so long rejected. It had been exposed to the air, to sun and storm, without revealing the slightest crack. The builders examined this stone. It had borne every test but one. If it could bear the test of severe pressure, they decided to accept it for the cornerstone. The trial was made. The stone was accepted, brought to its assigned position, and found to be an exact fit. In prophetic vision, Isaiah was shown that this stone was a symbol of Christ.

I love your evoking of the dry and the wet, when referring to the Sun and the Moon. It gives a whole different texture to the two cards. Which must I believe be read in conjunction - also with the Star. But Sun and Moon together have far too much symbolism to not see them as a pair. (Concerning the Moon, I just learned that there is what is called a Wet Moon and a Dry Moon. A wet and dry moon are both crescent moons but with different angles to the horizon.)

Ah, the cruelty and indifference of the Sun. That is so true. And chiscotheque is so right to remind us also of this whenever the opportunity arises. The RWS Sun, as he says, is of a Pollyanna nature (I must admit though that I loved the book Pollyanna growing up. I must have read it about ten times - I was an avid reader as a child. I re-read it about two years ago and still found it most pleasing.)

I don't see how the two dogs in the Moon card seem to echo the two children in the Sun card. I think that's pushing things a bit far. But I'm always happy to change my mind if you have a persuasive argument !

[Diana]

And multi-colored bricks, in the wall and the Tower. What is that all about? Or is it merely to amuse the eye like the multi-colored balls in the air in the Tower and the indicators of energy on the Aces, etc. In the RWS those shapes are definitely "yods" from the Jewish alphabet and the four-letters of God's name, but they seem more like life-giving droplets of energy in the TdM.

I'm wanting to address in this post the little multi-coloured balls.

My view of these things falling from the sky has always been that it is manna. I’ve never budged an inch on this view point. I think it’s the only one that makes sense. And I was thrilled to see this morning that I've got a good back up to support me. The rest of my post is a translation (it’s mine – google translate would have been more of a hindrance here) of what Gérard van Rijnberk has to say in his “Le Tarot - histoire, iconographie, ésotérisme”. It’s a book I’m rediscovering and it’s really nice because Van Rijnberk doesn’t just work with hypotheses. What he talks about he’s researched thoroughly. What he hasn’t researched or if he’s found nothing, he says it “I found nothing on this subject” he’ll say. I’m not adding any commentaries – I give the floor to Mr Van Rijnberk.

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On this card XVI, the influx from above is represented by little coloured balls! On the two following cards, that of the moon and the sun, this influx is very ingeniously depicted by enormous pointed ellipsoidal flakes that seem to be falling from the sky. It is a way of representing all that falls from above: in the miniatures of old illumined manuscripts that most certainly predate the Tarot, we find these objects that represent the fall of the manna from heaven onto the desert, just like the sparks that lit the fire of Elijah’s altar. On a miniature of the Biblia Pauperum dated 1350, one can see the fire of an altar lit by a rain of fire, exactly in the manner of the cards XI, XVII et XVIII. The legend says:

Celita flamma venit
Et plelbis pectora lenit.
“The heavenly flame descends and calms the people’s breast”. This is a paraphrase of what can be read in the third book of Kings, Chap. XVIII, vs. 38, of the Vulgate : cecidit autem ignis Domini et voravit holocaustum et ligna et lapides pulverem quoque et aquam quae erat in aquaeductu lambens quod cum vidisset omnis populus cecidit in faciem suam et ait Dominus ipse est Deus Dominus ipse est Deus. “Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the holocaust, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw this, they fell on their faces, and they said: The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.”

This manner of representing fire falling from the heavens is formulated in an inimitable fashion by Dante (Inferno, XIV, 28-30:

Sovra tutto ‘I sabbion d’un cader lento
Piovean di fuoco dilalate falde
Come di neve in alpe senza vento.
“O'er all the sand-waste, with a gradual fall, Were raining down dilated flakes of fire, As of the snow on Alp without a wind.”

When Renaissance art rendered similar episodes, the image of fire falling from Heaven is very different, it is more like a ball of closely-knit flames rather than separate sparks.

[Diana]

We talked before about getting a section going in the TdM discussion group about tarot folklore. I suppose we could approach it one card at a time. There must be a tremendous amount of this sort of speculation in books written in French. Can you think of any large books that have collected a lot of these theories together in one place? My French is so poor that I can't do the research myself. Maybe this kind of conversation belongs in the TdM discussion group, but any discussion about this kind of thing roams everywhere, so perhaps it's better for it to come up spontaneously wherever it happens. I don't know.

Yes, it would be nice to have the majority of TdM posts all in one place. Ideal in fact. Practically though, it doesn't always work like this - this thread is an example - there are so often meta discussions that occur in a thread. But if posts such as the ones made here regarding the TdM land up in Plato's Cave, in a thread called The Prodigal Sun (or a shaggy dog wags his tail) they are very likely to get read only by a very small amount of people - those who are interested in Plato's Cave and shaggy dogs ! No-one can guess that there's a discussion on the TdM taking place. And also, does it have it's place in Plato's Cave ? Probably not the ideal place anyway.

I think it's high time that the TdM section on CoT starts getting used. It's pretty empty and it's very sad. Especially with all the interest in the TdM these days in the tarotsphere. I for one am just DYING to discuss it and debate it. It is my main interest after all, no - passion is a better term, when it comes to the Tarot. Recently someone asked me if I was planning on opening a Tarot of Marseilles forum like the one I co-run and co-founded at one time. I said no because I don't have the technical savvy nor time at the moment and also CoT is a wonderful place and there is this space here which is just waiting to be filled.

I think I will copy/paste my translation that I made above on the little round balls, and maybe another one, and put them in the TdM forum. Double posting is not very advisable on forums as it gets a bit confusing, but if it's not done too often I think it's okay. And then if the TdM forum starts becoming active, things should grow naturally from there.

[dodalisque]

Thank you for the complement which I return. I think that Jodorowsky, in his book La Voie du Tarot, also thinks they are footprints. I don't have his book and can't seem to find a decent downloadable pdf. I'm sure my local library must have his book. I'll check and as soon as I can I'll get back to report. I've never thought about this. Why would they be footprints I wonder ? It's an intriguing idea. Sounds very Jodorowsky indeed to say something like this. If he says this, then I suspect Camoin may have slipped this idea into his head. Camoin also put eggs in his deck so I'm a wee bit wary of anything that comes from that area.

It's funny that you call these two characters "acrobats". Could you elaborate ? Or is there nothing more behind this than just a charming way of describing their soft and gentle and managed fall to the ground ?

Oh yes, those eggs in the Jodorowsky. It's such a pity about some of the eccentricities and imported Hinduism of that deck, because the draftsmanship, the colours, the facial expressions, and the cardstock make it one of the most attractive decks of all. But I find I never use it because of the eggs and Jodorowksy's symbolic rigidity in his ideas about some of the details. I have the English translation of La Voie du Tarot, which appeared here about 15 years ago at about the same time Enrique Enriquez made his appearance on the scene. Those two events seem to have been responsible for the widespread discovery of the TdM for the very first time by the English-speaking culture. EE said that Jodorowsky "blew the dust off the cards".

I hadn't realised that my theory about the two shoes was from Jodo, but I do remember that calling the two people on La Maison Dieu "acrobats" is straight from his book. He prefers to think of the energy as bursting upwards through the tower like a male ejaculation, and that the two people on the card are ecstatically celebrating the destruction of the fixed structure - the destruction of the ego - rather than falling from the tower or shaken (upended like Le Pendu) by the earthquake caused by the explosion. The biblical rejected cornerstone is singular and surely quite large and powerful, so I have a hard time associating these two little pebbles on the card with that idea. But I'll look into it some more. When there's something I don't understand on the cards I protect myself from my own ignorance by convincing myself there must have been a carving flaw on the printer's blocks. Yes, I'm that lazy.

I was in a car accident once and the state of shock I felt immediately afterwards, a sort of deafening, a sort of frozen stillness through which I moved, felt exactly the way the coloured balls look on this card. It's an abstract rendering of the immediate aftermath of an explosion. I'm afraid I'm not very well-read and my reactions to the images are always simpler and more visceral than intellectual, so unlike chiscotheque I don't have much to add to your fascinating ideas about the cards, but I'm really enjoying what you tell me.

[chiscotheque]

i take the manna from heaven as symbolic, akin to the miracle of the fish and loaves, representing god's bounty and generosity. in a sense then, the "balls" on the tower are for me like bindi - the essential points of energy within everything and which flow through a human via the chakras. some might call these balls chi. in this way, the tower to me - akin to a phallus as Dodalisque points out, but i would call it a lingham - is the flow of energy through the chakras known as the kundalini. the top chakra is the crown, literally being knocked off of the tower. in babylon, towers were temples - maison dieus - and the human body is itself a temple to god. if and when the kundalini energy moves beyond the crown, it connects the human spirit with god - hence the florid feather on the Tdm Tower and the lightning bolt on the RWS - the conduit of zeus, and fyi: lightning goes up more often than down. like the lingham - where milk is poured over it simulating ejaculation, and then drips down into the horizontal aspect of the lingham, the yoni - bindi or spiritual energy returns from god to the earth and is pulled up through the root chakra, to create a circular spiritual flow. this phenomenon we may call ecstasy, epiphany, enlightenment, nirvana, etc.and it can be either terrifying or wonderful, or both at once, hence the dual aspect of the tower, where the ego dies and disaster results and/or the two falling people are "acrobats" rejoicing. speaking of falling, we can also look at the Fall as either a terrible thing or part of the human ascent to divine wisdom. this ascent, after all, is the essential trajectory of the major arcana.


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[Diana]

Oh yes, those eggs in the Jodorowsky. It's such a pity about some of the eccentricities and imported Hinduism of that deck, because the draftsmanship, the colours, the facial expressions, and the cardstock make it one of the most attractive decks of all. But I find I never use it because of the eggs and Jodorowksy's symbolic rigidity in his ideas about some of the details. I have the English translation of La Voie du Tarot, which appeared here about 15 years ago at about the same time Enrique Enriquez made his appearance on the scene. Those two events seem to have been responsible for the widespread discovery of the TdM for the very first time by the English-speaking culture. EE said that Jodorowsky "blew the dust off the cards".

Why do you talk of the imported Hinduism of the Camoin TdM? Please tell me more - I haven't an inkling what you're referring to. Yes, it's a pity that there are too many eccentricities. It would have made a really fine deck otherwise. And that's a great quote from Enriquez. Yes, I think Jodorowsky did indeed blow the dust off the cards and not only for the English speaking world. The French one too. So I'm hugely grateful and also to Philip Camoin. It was difficult for him not to put the eggs there as he believes so strongly that the Papesse is Mary Magdalene. He and/or Jodorowsky say that when they did a careful examination of all the cards and plates, they saw eggs on one or more or faint traces of them. Something like that anyway. Trouble is Camoin and Jodorowsky (particularly the former) always say these things without giving any proof. As far as I know anyway.

I hadn't realised that my theory about the two shoes was from Jodo, but I do remember that calling the two people on La Maison Dieu "acrobats" is straight from his book. He prefers to think of the energy as bursting upwards through the tower like a male ejaculation, and that the two people on the card are ecstatically celebrating the destruction of the fixed structure - the destruction of the ego - rather than falling from the tower or shaken (upended like Le Pendu) by the earthquake caused by the explosion. The biblical rejected cornerstone is singular and surely quite large and powerful, so I have a hard time associating these two little pebbles on the card with that idea. But I'll look into it some more. When there's something I don't understand on the cards I protect myself from my own ignorance by convincing myself there must have been a carving flaw on the printer's blocks. Yes, I'm that lazy.

One tends to forget indeed due to the strong influence of the RWS deck and its striking cataclysmic imagery that have such a strong effect on us, that the Maison Dieu is a card of liberation and freedom. It's almost as if the RWS Tower has crept into the TdM without our noticing. It's not a Tower. If it were a Tower, it would be called a "Tour". There's a perfectly good word for tower in French. But it's called La Maison Dieu. It's hard to translate into English, so it's become the Tower and through this, it's lost its original meaning.

Those little coloured balls could also be confetti raining down in a celebration of some sort. Even I, who am TdM to the very tip of my toenails, have become influenced by the RWS deck I realise. When I get la Maison Dieu my first reaction is "oups" not "youpie - let's open the champagne - but wait, are those champagne bubbles falling already from the sky?" What you posted is a strong reminder that this card is indeed the destruction of the ego and after follows the Star. And then we've nearly reached the end of the journey and the rest of the journey is sweet so we don't need to struggle so much anymore.

I'm going to find out what those pebbles/marks/traces are. At least, I'm going to look and look until I find an answer that seems sound. Even if it takes me a lifetime! I agree that the cornerstone sounds far fetched. I'm thinking maybe the rebuilding of the Wall of Jerusalem.
Then I said to them, "You see the bad situation we are in, that Jerusalem is desolate and its gates burned by fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so that we will no longer be a reproach." Nehemiah 2:17. The rebuilding of the Wall of Jerusalem was a huge affair in bible history. Fascinating story.

Actually, when Donald Trump was inaugurated, he went to listen to a sermon given by Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the First Baptist Church. Jefress is a right piece of scum by the way. Anyway, in his sermon he used this bible story of Nehemiah to compare Trump's wall with the story of Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the city and wall of Jerusalem. He said "you see, God is not against building walls." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act ... uguration/

I was in a car accident once and the state of shock I felt immediately afterwards, a sort of deafening, a sort of frozen stillness through which I moved, felt exactly the way the coloured balls look on this card. It's an abstract rendering of the immediate aftermath of an explosion. I'm afraid I'm not very well-read and my reactions to the images are always simpler and more visceral than intellectual, so unlike chiscotheque I don't have much to add to your fascinating ideas about the cards, but I'm really enjoying what you tell me.

Oh gosh, I've always thought that the state of shock after an accident must be terrific. Thanks for sharing this analogy. I hope you weren't too hurt in the accident nor the other occupants.

Oh and I too so enjoy reading what you tell me.

[chiscotheque]

It was difficult for him not to put the eggs there as he believes so strongly that the Papesse is Mary Magdalene.

I am personally quite sympathetic to this understanding, given it's seen somewhat symbolically, that is: Mary Magdalene as one-third of the triple goddess (with the other 2 Marys) in a Christian sense, representing Sophia as the syzygy or consort of Christ as Logos in the Gnostic sense. there are many reasons for this, including Mary Magdalene in certain traditions (gnostic) being the first evangelist and hence a kind of rival pope to Peter, exemplified by Mary being the first to see the risen Christ and going to tell the disciples, most of whom didn't believe her, most notably Peter (who was an infamous misogynist).

I have a number of problems with many of the visual choices on the Jodo TdM, but I especially dislike the colour scheme.



.

[Diana]

I am personally quite sympathetic to this understanding, given it's seen somewhat symbolically, that is: Mary Magdalene as one-third of the triple goddess (with the other 2 Marys) in a Christian sense, representing Sophia as the syzygy or consort of Christ as Logos in the Gnostic sense. there are many reasons for this, including Mary Magdalene in certain traditions (gnostic) being the first evangelist and hence a kind of rival pope to Peter, exemplified by Mary being the first to see the risen Christ and going to tell the disciples, most of whom didn't believe her, most notably Peter (who was an infamous misogynist).

That makes sense about the triple Goddess. So many of these in history. I wonder why... do you know ? I didn't find any article of any great interest on the internet. Most are about neopagans.

Of course, in Dodal's deck, La Papesse is called "La Pances" which is assumed to mean "the belly" or "womb". This would imply more the Virgin Mary in his deck anyway, but it's a unique name so maybe this was just his take on it. I remember Jean-Michel David at one time speculating on whether this card wasn't symbolic of the Annunciation. But this was I think just speculation.

There are also some historians who think that Mary Magdalene was actually the head of the Church and not Peter. I need to find some references on this - it's info I remember from about 15 years ago and it's very vague now in my head.

The general consensus these days seems to be that she represents a multitude of these kinds of symbols : Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Black Virgin, Sophia, and probably many others (one of my pet ones is Miriam, sister of Moses and first recorded Prophetess in the Bible. She apparently taught the Torah to the women). Regardless of whether at first she represented a real historical figure like Pope Joan or Manfreda. Sophia does very well.

Apparently Camoin's book in French is at LAST ready. Maybe he will reveal something. I'll most likely go over to his website and see how to get hold of it. And find out whether the English version will soon be available soon. I wonder if he has a translator ... I'd love to translate a Tarot book.

[Diana]

i take the manna from heaven as symbolic, akin to the miracle of the fish and loaves, representing god's bounty and generosity. in a sense then, the "balls" on the tower are for me like bindi - the essential points of energy within everything and which flow through a human via the chakras. some might call these balls chi. in this way, the tower to me - akin to a phallus as Dodalisque points out, but i would call it a lingham - is the flow of energy through the chakras known as the kundalini. the top chakra is the crown, literally being knocked off of the tower. in babylon, towers were temples - maison dieus - and the human body is itself a temple to god. if and when the kundalini energy moves beyond the crown, it connects the human spirit with god - hence the florid feather on the Tdm Tower and the lightning bolt on the RWS - the conduit of zeus, and fyi: lightning goes up more often than down. like the lingham - where milk is poured over it simulating ejaculation, and then drips down into the horizontal aspect of the lingham, the yoni - bindi or spiritual energy returns from god to the earth and is pulled up through the root chakra, to create a circular spiritual flow. this phenomenon we may call ecstasy, epiphany, enlightenment, nirvana, etc.and it can be either terrifying or wonderful, or both at once, hence the dual aspect of the tower, where the ego dies and disaster results and/or the two falling people are "acrobats" rejoicing. speaking of falling, we can also look at the Fall as either a terrible thing or part of the human ascent to divine wisdom. this ascent, after all, is the essential trajectory of the major arcana.

Just a simple "thank you" with the button for this post does not suffice. A real life thank you is required. Yes, the manna is of course symbolic as you say. It's a post that deserves a book in itself. I can't add to it - anything added would be just a confirmation of what you say. Am so glad you brought this up.

[chiscotheque]

That makes sense about the triple Goddess. So many of these in history. I wonder why... do you know ?

no, i don't know. but if i were a rationalist, or psychologist, or a lacanian, i might suggest it's because our idea of the triple goddess was concocted by men, and therefore it represents what Jung called the Anima - the male's projection of the feminine within him. according to Jung, a man's anima derives from the imago of the mother, but subdivides into 3 (sometimes 4). this would account for why the mother goddesses in many myth religions are also the bride or lover of the son (ie - Ashtarte, and Christ's mother and lover Mary). The 3 or 4 are sometimes aligned with Aphrodite, Selene (Helen), Persephone, and Hecate. in short, it's plain to see that these female paradigms are projections of a man's fear and desire - the innocent girl who needs protection, which morphs into the lover and mother of the man's children, then morphs into the mother figure who nurses the man and the family but can also become a censoring authority. it's no wonder that these goddesses are so often aligned with the moon, which is constantly morphing, and which is actually reflecting back the light of the sun - the man's own reflection.

while it could be argued the male gods were also invented by men, the plethora of male gods nonetheless reflects the more complex animus in women. that said, they can be reduced to 3 or 4 as well: man as hero, man as lothario, man as mentor, man as guru. Jung further claims that the anima and animus are not merely one's own subjective experience of the parent, but they are rooted in the collective unconscious. The 3 aspects of the anima and animus have a transcendent aspect (Hecate in man, or the chthonic mother, and the guru son father in women) and these transcendent aspects can not be directly altered or affected much by an individual since they are archetypal. Together, these dual quaternities constitute a marriage archetype Jung calls the Marriage Quarternio. again, although developed in another quarter as it were, under different circumstances, the Marriage Quarternio can be seen as a variation of the Alchemical Wedding.

Pances as a name for the Popess is interesting. certain people might say everything went to hell in a handbasket when women started wearing the pance. the abdomen locale calls to mind Paul's girdle of Truth. But surely if it is belly that is meant it refers to a matrix of ideas - matrix itself means womb and mat cognates with maternal. the womb and the belly button connect all humans to their mother, hence the first mother, Eve. some Asians call this locus Hara. silly humans, standing so erect, expose this vulnerable area. and of course, as a metaphor, the belly is not only the center of the body, but along with the womb is a metaphor of the Soul - where both physical and metaphysical life begins.


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[dodalisque]

I have a number of problems with many of the visual choices on the Jodo TdM, but I especially dislike the colour scheme.

Too sunny and life-enhancing for you?

[Diana]

Too sunny and life-enhancing for you?

You are very funny. Got any more time traveller jokes ?

[dodalisque]

Why do you talk of the imported Hinduism of the Camoin TdM? Please tell me more - I haven't an inkling what you're referring to.

Those little coloured balls could also be confetti raining down in a celebration of some sort.

I suppose by Hinduism I mean the same sort of thing that chiscotheque is talking about when he discusses chakras in connection with La Maison Dieu. In Jodo's book, called in English "The Way of Tarot", even the little blue animal on the Fool card is described as stimulating the Fool's root chakra. And then in Jodo's commentary every button and frill and nail is counted and given a precise numerological interpretation that I doubt was on the minds of the people who made the deck.

But who knows, perhaps the subconscious of those early creators had penetrated to a level of cosmic organisation that eastern religions have a vocabulary for but Christianity generally doesn't. And some theories I have read about the origins of the deck discuss places and times when numerous religions seemed to live in harmony, so that Christian card-makers rubbed shoulders with devotees of the Jewish mysticism of the kabbalah and with Islamic mystics. My anti-intellectual bias tends to prefer to explain the creation of the cards as being more haphazard and accidental, determined perhaps rather by artistic than spiritual considerations. But I'm always ready to be persuaded that I'm wrong. I certainly believe in, even tinker with, chakras and all the rest of it, but I never came across any recognition of their existence in Christian teachings. Maybe that's exactly why Christianity needs the tarot, to establish a respectable tradition of western mysticism.

The coloured confetti on La Maison Dieu could be coins from the treasure chest kept in a tax haven in the store-room at the top of the tower.

[dodalisque]

Why do you talk of the imported Hinduism of the Camoin TdM? Please tell me more - I haven't an inkling what you're referring to.

I certainly believe in, even tinker with, chakras and all the rest of it, but I never came across any recognition of their existence in Christian teachings. Maybe that's exactly why Christianity needs the tarot, to establish a respectable tradition of western mysticism.

Of course I'm forgetting "Meditations on the Tarot" by Anonymous (viz. Valentin Tomberg), that great, but for me largely unreadable, interpretation of the major arcana in terms of Christian hermeticism, which is exactly the sort of "respectable tradition of Christian mysticism" I'm talking about. But however monumental and brilliant it is, I still think that book is ONE way of interpreting the cards, a sort of gigantic single reading on the theme of spiritual discipline using the whole major arcana.

The tarot itself is actually a lot bigger than that. I'm afraid I've been hypnotised by Enrique Enriquez into thinking of the deck as primarily a work of art before it is anything else. We can see in it whatever idea the imagery supports. I'm speaking as a reader of cards here, but I suppose in this section of the site I should be behaving more like a historian, speculating on what these mysterious images might have meant to a French Catholic of the 17th/18th century.

[dodalisque]

Yes, it would be nice to have the majority of TdM posts all in one place.

Absolutely. This current thread is the perfect example. It's fascinating but is in the wrong place. I'll start checking more often in the TdM discussion group. If we start to stack up a bunch of entries on there we might pull some others into the debate - hopefully some of the experts who contributed to the Aeclectic TdM group.

[chiscotheque]

Too sunny and life-enhancing for you?

ha ha - you could say that and you would say that and you did. someone else might say pollyannaish. i have to watch my step here, since it was you who gifted me the jodo deck! but my major beef with the colours is they're gauche, hard, unsubtle. it's similar to (one of) the problems i have with Renoir - the palette is grotesque. it jars, like jar-jar binks or the music of Heart.


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[dodalisque]

That makes sense about the triple Goddess. So many of these in history. I wonder why... do you know ?

The Triple Goddess - maiden, mother and crone - the female equivalent of the Christian trinity, but greater. Robert Graves' "The White Goddess", which posits a feminist theology belonging to ancient matriarchal cultures from the distant pre-Christian, pre-Platonic past, a religion for poets as worshipers of the Muse, and became a sort of holy book during the 70s in the US. (Another immensely difficult, unreadable book to place next to "Meditations on the Tarot" on my bottom shelf.) In his novel "King Jesus" Graves rewrites the story of Christ's death as a revenge of the Triple Goddess in payment for centuries of neglect by the patriarchal religious structure. He wrote widely about the subject of mythology, and scathingly about Christian and Jewish biblical scholarship, translated many Latin and Greek texts, and also published "The Greek Myths" which has become a sort of textbook on the subject. But he was predominantly a poet with leanings toward Sufism and the occult. Check out his poem "To Juan at Winter Solstice". written for his newborn son. He lived most of his life in exile in Deja, Majorca but was half Irish-half German, so a rather strange mix. My favourite writer, and I have to take every opportunity I can to shamelessly wrench the discussion in the direction of something I know about.