The love of God in the Tarot

If the 21 numbered trumps of the Tarot de Marseille are laid out as below, in seven columns of three, meaningful patterns emerge.

The first thing to notice is that the three virtue cards -- Justice, Strength (originally called Fortitude), and Temperance -- are together in the center of the diagram. Many commentators have pointed out that only three of the four Cardinal Virtues are explicitly included in the Tarot and have tried to associate one of the other trumps (usually the Hermit) with the fourth, Prudence. The Tarot was designed by medieval Christians, though, not by ancient Greeks, and for them there were seven virtues: the four Cardinal Virtues plus the Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity. In our table above, the three explicitly named virtues are at the center of a row of seven cards, where they are flanked by the Pope (an obvious symbol of Faith) and the Star (a conventional symbol of Hope). That leaves the Papess and Judgment for the remaining two virtues, Prudence and Charity. The Papess is a good fit for Prudence, since that virtue has sometimes been personified as a crowned woman with a book.

That leaves the Judgment to represent Charity, which is admittedly not an obvious match. Charity, often described as unconditional love, seems the very opposite of judgment; and indeed Din ("judgment") is placed opposite Chesed ("lovingkindess") on the Tree of Life. In fact, though, Judgment is not the trump's original name, and the last judgment is not what it portrays. The earliest name of the 10th trump is The Angel, and the scene it depicts is the resurrection of the dead at the last trump, as described by St. Paul in two of his epistles. Neither passage makes any reference to a judgment.

Here is 1 Corinthians 15:51-57.

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is not a judgment at all. On the contrary, Paul implies that resurrection is possible because the Law, which makes us guilty sinners worthy of death, has been superseded.

The second "trump" passage is 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.

But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

Again, nothing about judgment -- just a comforting promise that we will be reunited with our dead and with the Lord.

The resurrection of the dead is actually the perfect expression of "charity," or the love of God -- the noun form, in the original Greek, of the verb used in John 3:16-17.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

Resurrection is love. "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death" (1 Jn. 3:14). What we do not love, we are content to let perish. The resurrection is the love of God finding even in such corrupt and imperfect being as ourselves something worthy of being raised to immortality. Those who trust in the love of God can say with David, "my flesh also shall rest in hope, for thou wilt not [i.e. art unwilling to] leave my soul in hell" (Ps. 16:9-10).

St. Paul's discussion of the resurrection in 1 Cor. 15:41-42 also contains something potentially relevant to the part of the Tarot deck we are discussing:

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.

The sequence Star, Moon, Sun is invariant in all known historical orderings of the trumps, from Ferrara to Bologna to Marseille -- a fact that has puzzled commentators because it seems at odds with Medieval cosmology. The lowest of the heavenly spheres was that of the Moon, followed by the Inferior Planets, the Sun, the Superior Planets, and finally the Fixed Stars. Placing the Moon between the Stars and the Sun makes no sense -- and yet that is what we find in 1 Corinthians, apparently because Paul is ordering the heavenly bodies not by their location in the cosmos but by their brightness or "glory" as seen from Earth.

Star, Moon, Sun, Judgment, World. If we assume this is a continuation of Paul's scheme, then the Judgment and the World should represent two even higher degrees of glory, brighter than the Sun. The card called the World evolved from representations of the Throne of God, so that checks out. The Judgment, then, is a luminary brighter than the Sun and nigh unto the Throne of God. Astronomically, this would be Kolob, but its deeper meaning can only be "the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; . . . the most desirable above all things" (1 Ne. 11:22). Some old decks make it the highest trump of all, higher even than the World.

If this identification of the seven virtues is correct, their order in the Tarot is: Prudence, Faith, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, Hope, Charity. This is consistent with Cicero's ordering of the four cardinal virtues in De Inventione and Paul's ordering of the theological virtues in 1 Cor. 13.