The first row of the three-by-seven grid

In my last post, I discussed this layout of the 21 numbered trumps of the Tarot de Marseille.

In that post, I focused on the second row and suggested that is seven cards represent the Seven Heavenly Virtues: Prudence (the Papess), Faith (the Pope), Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, Hope (the Star), and Charity (the Angel).

The first row also seems to make sense as an orderly progression. The Magician with his wand becomes the Emperor with his scepter. We see this man with crown and scepter again the Chariot, where he directs a wheeled vehicle drawn by two animals -- horses in the classic Tarot de Marseille, but sphinxes (human-animal chimerae) in the deck of Jacques Viéville and those influenced by him. On the next card, the Wheel of Fortune, we see all the same elements: the wheel, the crowned ruler (now a sphinx himself), and the two animals or hybrid creatures -- but the ruler is no longer in control, and his position at the top is no longer stable. The wheel will turn -- there will be a revolution -- and he will fall. The next card, l'Arcane sans nom, shows the aftermath of this: a severed head on the ground, still wearing his crown. After the fall of the individual ruler, the fall of the institution itself: On the next card, a blast from the sun "decapitates" a tower, the top of which resembles a crown, and two young men fall to the ground. The final card in the series seems to show the aftermath of this: the Sun, which destroyed the tower, dominates the scene, and we see the two young men, naked, and behind them a low wall suggesting the ruins of the tower.

The Visconti-Sforza Emperor cards

The earliest extant Tarot cards are those commissioned by Filippo Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza, Dukes of Milan, in the mid-15th century, and most likely painted by Bonifacio Bembo. From these "Visconti-Sforza" Tarot decks, three Emperor cards survive -- making it the most represented of the Visconti-Sforza trumps.

Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo (c. 1451), Brera-Brambilla (1463), Cary-Yale (c. 1466)

Some notable features of these cards:

Eagle headdress: All three of these cards show the emperor wearing a distinctive fan-shaped headdress marked with the black (or, on the BB card, blue) Reichsadler that was the emblem of the Holy Roman Emperors (and which also featured on the flag of the Duchy of Milan). The strange shape almost reminds one of a "pirate hat" or of the traverse crest of a Roman centurion. Despite considerable searching, I have not been able to find any other examples of such headgear, either in the Tarot or in images of historical Holy Roman Emperors. Bernhard Strigel's portrait of Maximilian I (r. 1486-1519) and his family does show hats with a roughly similar shape, but the differences from the Tarot card are still considerable.

It seems strange that the emperor would be depicted sitting on his throne, holding his orb and scepter, and yet not wearing his crown. The crown does appear as a motif on the PMB emperor's clothing, and in the hands of one of the CY emperor's attendants, but in no case is the monarch actually wearing it. Instead, he has this extraordinary ginkgo-leaf contraption with an eagle on it.

Minimalist scepter: On all three cards, the emperor's scepters is just a simple rod, with no finial. As with the hat, I have been unable to find any parallels in the Tarot or in the regalia of historical Holy Roman Emperors.

Cracked orb: A typical orb has a circular belt around the equator, a semicircular perpendicular band passing through the north pole, and a cross at the apex. Where these bands of jeweled material should be, the PMB and BB cards have zigzag lines instead, like cracks in an egg that is about to hatch, or like the sutures of a human skull. The egg/skull effect is reinforced on the BB card by the fact that the orb is white.

This "cracked orb" design appears to be unique to the Visconti-Sforza cards. On the CY card, there is no conventional orb at all. Instead, the emperor appears to be resting his left elbow on a golden disc etched with concentric circles.

Borromean rings: The PMB emperor's robe is decorated with a repeating motif of crowns and Borromean rings -- that is, three interlocking rings, like a Venn diagram, called "Borromean" because they appear on the coat of arms of the House of Borromeo, a prominent family in Milan which intermarried with the Viscontis.

Vegetation: A bit of leafy vegetation is visible near the PMB emperor's left foot. This was perpetuated in the Tarot de Marseille, further developed by the Swiss cardmakers, and finally turned into a tulip by Oswald Wirth. Why the emperor should be sitting on a throne out of doors, rather than in his palace, is another question.

Crossed legs: The CY card is the first to show the emperor with crossed legs. This, too, was picked up by the Tarot de Marseille, and much was later made of it by the French (and, later, English) occultists, who saw in the emperor's posture a hidden allusion to the alchemical symbol for sulfur.

Armor: It's not obvious, but if you look closely you can see that the CY emperor is wearing a suit of armor, including a breastplate with a second imperial eagle on it. This feature was lost in the Tarot de Marseille but was later reintroduced by Oswald Wirth, from whom it was copied by A. E. Waite.

Attendants: The smaller figures attending the CY emperor have their counterparts in a few other early Italian decks but were never picked up by the Marseille/occult mainstream. On the CY card they appear to be children, but this is more likely an Egyptian-style convention of portraying less important figures as physically smaller. The Emperor from the Rothschild-Bassano deck -- from Florence, and possibly a few decades older than the Visconti-Sforza cards themselves, though not unambiguously a Tarot -- features positively tiny attendants who nevertheless have beards and are thus clearly not children.

Note also that the Rothschild-Bassano figure is holding an oversized florin rather than a globus cruciger, so perhaps he is meant to be the King of Coins rather than the Emperor. In any case, it is an interesting parallel with the golden disc seen on the CY card.

Pondering his orb

It has just come to my attention that my November 21, 2021, post "The Emperor's orb" coincided with the rise of "pondering my orb" memes, though I was not aware of these memes until a month or so later. In draft, the post had been called "The Emperor's globus cruciger," but I later changed it because the Rider-Waite Emperor's orb doesn't have a cross on it.

I just wanted to add a few orb-related thoughts.

In Le Tarot des imagiers du moyen-âge, Oswald Wirth says that the constellation that corresponds most closely to the Emperor is Hercules, and he includes a drawing of Hercules holding a club in one hand and in the other a branch bearing the golden apples of the Hesperides.

In the text, Wirth explicitly connects the Emperor's scepter with the club of Hercules but does not make the corresponding connection between the orb and the golden apples. He calls the apples "the fruit of initiating knowledge" but sees the orb as a symbol of "universal domination."

The globe of the world which the Emperor holds in his left hand is a sign of universal domination. This globe, moreover, is the symbol, not of the physical universe, but of the Soul of the World, the entity thanks to which all the miracles of Nature and Art are performed. In his right hand the Emperor clasps a mssive sceptre which is not without analogy to the club of Hercules. However, we must not see in this a brutal weapon, but the emblem of the highest initiation, or magical, power.

Although Wirth portrays Herucles holding a branch bearing apples, it was also common in ancient iconography (as in the Hercules of the Forum Boarium, below) to represent him holding the apples themselves in the palm of his left hand, just as the Emperor holds his orb.

Hercules holds three apples, and the Emperor holds a single orb, but this is no very great objection to connecting the two, especially if we follow Vico in interpreting "three" in myths as being primarily an intensifier (as in "Thrice-Great Hermes" or "once, twice, three times a lady"). Vico argued that Neptune's trident and Cerberus's three maws were meant to convey the idea of a great spear and an enormous gullet, respectively, and he would doubtless have taken a similar approach to the three golden apples taken from the three Hesperides. (Vico would also of course have interpreted the apples, like all things golden, as representing corn, but this is too reductive.)

I had forgotten all about Wirth's mention of the golden apples when I ended "The Emperor's orb" with a mention of the golden apple of Eris. In fact, I had not realized until just now that Eris's "apple of discord" was also supposed to have come from the garden of the Hesperides.

In the myth, Paris had to choose to which of three goddesses to give the apple, and each offered a different reward if she was chosen. Paris, being weak and effeminate, rejected Hera's and Athena's offers of greatness and wisdom and awarded the apple to Aphrodite, who promised him another man's wife. When, centuries later, Prodicus wanted to create a parallel story in which the hero made a better choice, he decided to cast Hercules in the role of a more virtuous Paris. Classicists have expressed puzzlement over this choice, since Hercules was hardly a byword for sound moral judgment, but could he have been chosen because of his association with the golden apples? We know Prodicus's parable of the Choice of Hercules only via Xenophon, but even in Xenophon's brief summary the parallels to the story of the Judgment of Paris are obvious. Is it possible that the parallels were closer still in Prodicus's original, even featuring the golden apples?

Although Wirth calls the golden apples "the fruit of initiating knowledge," its function in myth seems to be closer to the biblical tree of life than to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Norse goddess Iðunn (coincidentally similar to Eden) kept similar apples of immortality, which the gods had to eat from tiem to time to keep from growing old. Gilgamesh brought a plant with this same effect up from the bottom of the sea -- and Gilgamesh was the original, Sumerian name of the constellation later called Hercules. In "The Emperor's orb," I connected the golden apple with the golden ball brought up from the bottom of the pond by the frog in the fairy tale -- a clear echo of Gilgamesh once the golden apple is established as the missing link between the golden ball and the plant of immortality. Just as Hercules went to all the trouble of retrieving the golden apples, only to have Athena return them to the garden in the end, so Gilgamesh brought up the plant of immortality, only to have it eaten by a snake.

In "The Emperor's orb," I connected the Iron Rod and the Liahona -- both associated with the Book of Mormon figure Lehi -- with the Emperor's scepter and orb. (The name Lehi is associated with Samson, the "Hebrew Hercules.") The Iron Rod comes from Lehi's dream of the Tree of Life, bearing fruit which, though white rather than golden, is clearly analogous to the golden apples of immortality.

(I found this by searching for pondering orb liahona,
figuring someone else must have made the connection.)

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Really weird synchronicity: After writing everything above this paragraph, but before finishing the post (I had planned to write some other things, but they ended up not making the final draft), I had to take a break to teach a children's English class. When I went up to the classroom, I found that one of the students had drawn this on the board:

A person wearing a crown and holding a scepter in one hand an an apple in the other! I had been working on this post on the computer in my office, where I'm sure this student could not have seen it. (Even if she had, she's a very young girl who can hardly read any English, and none of the illustrations shows anything recognizable as an apple, scepter, or crown.) So this is either a bit of subconscious telepathy or else just a really bizarre coincidence. It wouldn't be the first time!

Four rams' heads

One of A. E. Waite's many innovations on his Emperor card was to decorate the Emperor's throne with four rams' heads. While I am not a big fan of the forced system of astrological correspondences that motivated this addition, in this case I think Waite's choice may have been an inspired one.

I have noted in my post "The Emperor and the number 4" that the Emperor is closely associated with the god Zeus, or Jupiter -- beginning with the number of the trump. The Arabic numeral 4 suggests the astrological symbol for Jupiter. The Greek numeral Δ is the initial letter of Διεύς, "Zeus." The Roman name Jupiter (IVPITER) begins with the Roman numeral IV. In fact, the piter element simply means "father," so the divine name proper is simply the number four. In the statue of Jupiter now on display at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, we see all the essential elements of the Emperor card: a beared man seated on a throne, a scepter in one hand and an orb in the other, with an eagle on his left. (The eagle is absent on the Rider-Waite card, but most decks have it.)

Well another attribute of Zeus, in his character as Zeus Ammon, was a pair of ram's horns. This came from a syncretistic identification of Zeus with the Egyptian god Amun, whose statue at Megalopolis had the head of a ram. Alexander the Great, a prototype of the "emperor" figure, was supposed to be the son of Zeus Ammon, and ancient coins depict him with ram's horns. (The personage called the "two-horned man" in the Quran is generally believed to be Alexander.)

So a ram's head suggests Zeus and Alexander and is thus appropriate for the Emperor -- but the Emperor's throne features four rams' heads. There is an Egyptian god that is usually depicted with four rams' heads: the Ram of Mendes. This figure typically appears at the center of an Egyptian hypocephalus -- a circular amulet placed under the head of the deceased.

The most famous hypocephalus is of course the fragmentary Joseph Smith hypocephalus, restored by him and "translated" as the Second Facsimile from the Book of Abraham. The Facsimile does not show four rams' heads on the central figure because that part of the hypocephalus was missing and was (Egyptologists would say) incorrectly restored by Smith. Smith identifies this figure -- originally a god with four rams' heads -- as Kolob.

In Egyptian, the words for "soul" and "ram" are both pronounced ba (plural baw). The ba of a god was often conceived of, and personified, as being distinct from the god itself. The Ram of Mendes is said to represent Amun in his aspect as a cosmic god, and the heads of the four rams (baw) signify that he incorporates the souls (baw) of the four gods Ra, Shu, Geb, and Osiris (corresponding respectively to fire, air, earth, and water).

It is this same Amun that was later combined with Zeus into the ram-horned god Zeus Ammon and said to be the father of proto-emperor Alexander the Great.

I have said that the ba, or soul, though more often represented as a human-headed bird, can also be represented by the ram because "ram" is pronounced ba in Egyptian. A third such homophone is the Egyptian for "leopard," also ba. It is interesting to note that a four-headed leopard appears in the Bible.

After this I beheld, and lo another [beast], like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it (Daniel 7:6).

It is even more interesting to note that in the standard interpretation of this symbolic vision, the four-headed leopard represents none other than Alexander the Great -- ram-horned son of Zeus Ammon -- and his empire.

The Emperor's orb

Visconti-Sforza (c. 1451, restored), Pierre Madenié (1709),
Oswald Wirth (1889, revised 1926), Rider-Waite (1910)

Emperor cards typically feature the Reichsadler, the scepter, and the globus cruciger. How exactly these are incorporated into the card varies widely from deck to deck.

The Reichsadler -- a black eagle displayed on a gold field -- was the emblem of the Holy Roman Emperors prior to the 15th century, when it was replaced by the double-headed eagle. Bembo's Visconti-Sforza card puts this emblem on a vaguely shield-shaped headdress which does not, so far as I know, resemble anything worn by any historical emperor, and which almost looks more like a mitre than a crown. The Marseille tradition (as typified by Madenié, even though his cards were actually made in Dijon), puts it on a shield -- the traditional "coat of arms." Wirth combines this shield and the throne into a cubic stone marked with the Reichsadler. Waite eliminates the eagle entirely, replacing it with the Aries imagery demanded by his astrological schema.

Bembo's scepter is a simple rod with no ornament at the top. The Marseille tradition tops it with the globus cruciger; Wirth, with a stylized fleur-de-lis. Waite makes the scepter resemble both the Egyptian ankh and the Mesopotamian rod-and-ring.

The emblem I want to focus on here, though, is the globus cruciger, or orb.

Looking at this close-up of the original Visconti-Sforza card (top left), we can see that the "restored" version I used above (because it is clearer) has been restored incorrectly. The orb is topped with a cross pattée atop a short, narrow pedestal, and the orb itself is marked with zigzag ("indented") lines, suggestive of a cracking egg. These form a circle around the equator and a semicircle connected the equator to the north pole, where the cross is.

Where Bembo had put the orb in the Emperor's left hand, the Marseille tradition (top right) puts it at the end of his scepter, thus strengthening the axis mundi symbolism of the latter by making the axis of an actual globe. Having no orb to hold, the Emperor's left hand appears to be holding his own belt. The orb has the same general form as Bembo's, but instead of indented lines, we have have bands of a different color. In many Marseille cards, including Pierre Madenié's, there is also a second, much smaller globus cruciger at the top of the Emperor's crown.

Wirth puts the orb back in the Emperor's hand and gives it the same general form as the Marseille version, but it is idiosyncratic in two ways. First, the orb itself is green, in contrast to the otherwise universal use of gold, both for Tarot cards and for real-world crown jewels. The second oddity is the diminutive size of the cross, also something that has no analogue of which I am aware either in pre-Wirth Tarot or in the real world. The whole point of the globus cruciger symbolism is Christ's dominion over the world, and so the cross is typically about as large as the orb itself.

Orbs with a much smaller cross, though rare to nonexistent among crown jewels, do sometimes appear in paintings of Christ himself in his role as salvator mundi. In such paintings, the orb is also a direct representation of the world rather than of a royal accoutrement, and as such it is often transparent or blue in color rather than gold. The closest parallel I can find in art to Wirth's orb is this Brazilian icon of Christ as a child. Perhaps a bit more digging (this one is straight off Wikipedia) would turn up some similar image from Wirth's neck of the woods.

Another significant feature of Wirth's orb is where it is held relative to the Emperor's body, so that the center of the globe -- the omphalos -- coincides with the presumed location of the Emperor's own navel. Mormons may make of this, and of the Emperor's protruding right knee, what they will.

Waite returns the orb to its traditional gold color but eliminates the cross entirely. While some salvator mundi images (such as Leonardo's) do omit the cross and feature a simple globe, Waite's is not a simple globe, either. Where the cross should be, there is a little nub, almost as if it were the pedestal for a cross without the cross itself. What it really reminds me of, actually, is a gold version of a stereotypical cartoon bomb, the little nub being where the fuse would be attached.

The other thing it reminds me of is the Liahona, described as "a round ball of curious workmanship; and it was of fine brass. And within the ball were two spindles; and the one pointed the way whither we should go into the wilderness." (1 Nephi 16:10). Despite the clear statement that there were two spindles within the ball, artists' depictions of the Liahona invariably show a single protrusion extending out from the top of the ball.

Here is a detail Arnold Friberg's classic Liahona painting, painted in the 1950s and included in many editions of the Book of Mormon since then.

And here is a modern version of the same subject, which has appeared before on this blog. Although the style is very different from Friberg's, the basic design of the Liahona -- a gold-colored ball with a little protrusion at the top -- remains invariable.

It has become common among Mormon intellectuals to contrast the Liahona with another Book of Mormon image, the Iron Rod, a metaphor first used by Richard D. Poll in his 1967 Dialogue article "What the Church Means to People Like Me" (pdf). "Iron Rod" Mormons are more dogmatic and emphasize the authority of the Scriptures and Church leaders, while "Liahona" Mormons are more questing/questioning and emphasize personal inspiration and the guidance of the Holy Ghost. In practice, Liahona and Iron Rod connote "liberal" and "conserative," respectively.

The term Iron Rod comes from Lehi's dream in 1 Nephi 8, where the "rod of iron" is a sort of handrail to which people hold in order not to stray from the path as they pass through the mists of darkness. In Revelation, though, the "rod of iron" seems to be Christ's scepter: "to rule all nations with a rod of iron" (12:15). This imagery, in turn, comes from Psalm 2, where the rod of iron is a weapon with which to smash the heathen to bits, but in Revelation it is consistently used "to rule" (2:27, 12:5, 19:15).

If the iron rod is a scepter, then the Emperor (in most non-Marseille decks) can be seen as holding the Liahona in his left hand and the Iron Rod in his right. This fits with the symbolism just discussed, where the Liahona and Iron Rod symbolize the Mormon "left" and "right." It should also be understood in connection with my earlier discussion of the Emperor's Urim and Thummim, in which the Emperor's right side is associated with the square and his left with the compass. In Mormon use, the square symbolized exactness and honor in keeping covenenats -- clearly an "Iron Rod" concept -- while the compass reminds us of the "Liahona" principle that all truth (not only "official Church doctrine") may be circumscribed into one great whole.

Another thing the gold orb on the Rider-Waite card resembles is a Christmas-tree ornament -- and Waite's Emperor, with his red robes and long, white beard, bears more than a passing resemblance to Father Christmas.

Finally, no discussion of a monarch holding a golden ball would be complete without a nod to the Frog King from the Brothers Grimm. (Irrelevant coincidence: Will Smith's first Golden Globe nomination was for "The Froschprinz of Bel-Air.")

This is clearly an image of Kek, the ancient Egyptian god of chaos whose cult enjoyed such a surprising revival a few years back. (See "The Truth About Pepe The Frog And The Cult of Kek." Apparently Kek has not been entirely forgotten; just after the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, Anonymous Conservative posted a reminded that "A giant frog statue stands in Rittenhouse Square.") Like many Egyptian deities, Kek is often depicted with a was-scepter and ankh; on the Waite card, the scepter and ankh are combined.

The golden ball also suggests the golden apple of Eris -- Kek's predecessor as deity of a chaos-based parody religion.

The Emperor's Urim and Thummim

Further thoughts on Oswald Wirth's Emperor card (shown below in its 1889, 1926, and 1966 versions):

One of Wirth's innovations was to give the Emperor a breastplate marked with figures of the Sun and the Moon. In my first post on this card, I tentatively connected these with the biblical Urim and Thummim, which were worn on Aaron's "breastplate of judgment."

In his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, Éliphas Lévi identified the Urim and Thummim with various pairs of polar opposites -- "the above and beneath, the East and West, the yes and no" -- and also with "the two crescents of the moon." I speculated that Wirth, who was deeply influenced by Lévi, had combined these two ideas and represented the Urim and Thummim as the crescent Moon and its polar opposite, the Sun. Further evidence that the Emperor's breastplate is Aaron's can be seen in the braided gold chain he wears (already present in the Tarot de Marseille), which corresponds to the "wreathen chains of gold" described in Exodus 28. Wirth's Besançon-influenced version of the Emperor's scepter also calls to mind Aaron's rod that budded and blossomed and brought forth almonds (Number 17:8).

(We might more naturally associate Aaron, the high priest, with the fifth trump, the Pope or Hierophant, but perhaps that position should be reserved for Moses.)

As I explain in my 2013 post "Lux et Veritas: A hypothesis," there is strong evidence that Mormon temple ritual identifies the square and compass of Freemasonry with the Urim and Thummim. A Masonic initiation involves pressing the angle of a square to the initiate's right breast and the point of a compass to his left. Mormon ritual echoes this by clothing the initiate in a garment marked with the figure of a square on the left breast and that of a compass on the right. The right angle of the square is represented by a shape like the letter L, and the acute angle of the compass by one like V. Given that this is not a very natural orientation for the compass, I concluded that the resemblance to L and V must be intentional and meaningful and that the marks, in addition to representing the square and compass, also stood for Lux et Veritas -- one possible Latin translation of Urim and Thummim, as seen for example on the coat of arms of Yale University.

The Hebrew writing on the book reads "Urim" on the right and "and Thummim" on the left. Note that Urim begins with aleph and Thummim with tav. These are the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, corresponding to alpha and omega. (The letters L and V correspond to the second letters of the letter-names aleph and tav.)

Combining this with the symbolism of Wirth's Emperor, then, we have the following correspondences:

• right breast -- square -- lux (light) -- Urim -- aleph/alpha (beginning) -- Sun
• left breast -- compass -- veritas (truth) -- Thummim -- tav/omega (end) -- Moon

Can we organize all of this into a coherent symbolism? Consider this universal symbol, found in virtually all ancient cultures (and alluded to by the Emperor's globus cruciger): the cross inscribed in a circle.

We have three basic components here: the point at the center, the circumference, and the four radii that connect the former to the latter. The center is God, the Creator, the Source. The radii are God's activity, his creative Word, radiating out from him. The circumference is the phenomenal world, conceptualized as a passive creation of God's. That which acts, the action, and that which is acted-upon.

The square is used to draw the radii; the compass, to draw the circumference. The Sun is always shown with rays of light radiating from it, and it therefore corresponds to the center and the radii. The Moon is stereotypically drawn in crescent form -- as an arc, part of the circumference of a circle -- and therefore corresponds to the circumference.

In the Tarot, the Moon is given the number 18, and the Sun is 19. The Sun and the Moon together, then, represent 18 + 19 = 37. This is a hexagonal number, and can be represented as a (lunar) perimeter of 18 units surrounding a (solar) center of 19.

This is another link to Aaron's breastplate of judgment. Besides containing the Urim and Thummim, it was also set with 12 stones arranged in a 3-by-4 grid, engraved with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. As detailed by Vernon Jenkins here, each of those names has a gematria value, and the total of all those values is 3,700. Furthermore, the breastplate can be divided into seven sections, each of which has a gematria value that is a multiple of 37.

The Sun, Moon, and 12 tribes of Israel also appear together in one of Joseph's dreams, in which the Sun (Jacob), Moon (Rachel), and 11 stars (the patriarchs of the tribes) bow down to Joseph. Coincidentally, this is recorded in Genesis 37.

The exact meaning of the Hebrew words Urim and Thummim is disputed, but "Lights and Perfections" is a traditional translation. The Vulgate has Doctrina et Veritas, and Yale's motto may be seen as a compromise between these two translations: Lux et Veritas, "Light and Truth." Light obviously corresponds to the Sun and, being the first creation, to aleph. Truth, conceptualized as passive knowing as opposed to active creation, corresponds to the Moon. The Moon reflects the light of the Sun, just as true ideas "reflect" an external reality.

Oswald Wirth, the fleur-de-lis, and Aries

I have unfortunately been unable to get my hands on the original French version of Oswald Wirth's seminal Le Tarot des imagiers du Moyen Âge, and the English translation (available online here) is full of obvious errors -- beginning with the title, in which imagiers ("image-makers") is mistranslated (perhaps under the influence of the German Magiers) as magicians.

On p. 47 of the English version, this "Astronomical Tarot" map or diagram is presented.

As throughout the English text, the errors are numerous and obvious. The Herdsman has been mislabeled as a "Headsman," for example, giving the sickle he carries a rather new and unintended meaning! More confusingly, three different constellations have been labeled with the number 12 (the Hanged Man), when in fact Cancer and Gemini should be 18 and 19 (the Moon and the Sun), respectively. This is made clear in the main text of the book, and in the table that accompanies the diagram.

Note that even this table, even as it corrects the errors in the diagram, contains new errors of its own, such as the misplacement of the astrological symbol for Virgo and the use (repeated throughout the book) of the double-plural arcanas.

I assume that most of these errors are those of the translator, not of Wirth himself. The diagram itself seems to be taken directly from Wirth, though, and his monogram is visible beneath the feet of the Virgin. I assume that the names of the constellations are the only element to have been altered by the translator, and that the numerals (which are not in the same font as the names, and which would do not need translation anyway) are Wirth's own. The thrice-repeated 12, then, may be Wirth's own error.

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My reason for dwelling on these errors or anomalies, and who is responsible for them, is that one particular anomaly -- which I judge to be deliberate, and to be the work of Wirth himself -- caught the eye of one of my readers when I posted a partially corrected version of this diagram on my main blog. (I changed Gemini's number to 19 but hadn't noticed the other errors.) The reader, who goes by Mr. Andrew, wrote, "Is the Ram in 5 holding a fleur-de-lis (Joan of Arc) - or is it a different symbol?"

The flag borne by the Ram is not part of the traditional iconography of Aries (which is supposed to represent Chrysomallus, the winged ram from whom the Golden Fleece was taken), but comes from the Christian symbol known as the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) or the Paschal (Passover) Lamb. This Lamb is usually depicted with a flag or vexillum. Occasionally the banner is blank or has writing on it -- either Agnus Dei or else a longer quotation from the Latin text of John 1:36 -- but much more often it bears the sign of the cross. More often than not, this is a red "St. George" cross on a white field.

This scan from a heraldry book I read many times as a child shows that Wirth's drawing is not a traditional Ram or Fleece but incorporates the symbolism of the Paschal Lamb.

Having looked online at many different instances of Paschal Lamb or Agnus Dei iconography, I cannot find a single example in which the banner bears a fleur-de-lis or any other heraldic charge than the cross.

Wirth must have known this, and the change to a fleur-de-lis must have been deliberate -- but why? If he didn't want to use explicitly Christian symbolism, he could have just portrayed Aries in the conventional way, as an ordinary ram. Instead, he chose to Christianize this pre-Christian symbol by giving it a banner suggestive of the Lamb of God -- only to de-Christianize it again by replacing the cross with another charge.

(I think that Wirth's identification of Aries with the Passover Lamb is obviously correct. According to the information I have been able to find online, the earliest possible Gregorian date for Passover is March 21, and the latest is April 20. This coincides almost perfectly with the portion of the year assigned to Aries in tropical astrology.)

I have already discussed another instance of Wirth's replacing a cross with a fleur-de-lis: his Emperor card. In the Tarot de Marseille, the Emperor's scepter is topped with a globus cruciger (an orb surmounted by a cross), but Wirth replaces this with a fleur-de-lis. This is obviously not because he has anything against the sign of the cross, since he places a globus cruciger in the Emperor's other hand.

Three versions of Oswald Wirth's Emperor card (1889, 1926, 1966)

It is interesting to note that, while Wirth himself associates Aries with the Pope card, and the Emperor with Hercules, A. E. Waite (whose Emperor was clearly influenced by Wirth's) identified the Emperor with Aries -- a link Wirth had indirectly made by connecting both with the fleur-de-lis.

Wirth explains the meaning of the fleur-de-lis in his article on the Emperor in Le Tarot (pp. 76-77). He uses a somewhat unconventional, stylized version of that symbol.

This emblem is based on the upturned triangle, which represents Water or Soul. A simple cross surmounting this triangle would form the sign of the Great Work (Supreme Glorification of the Soul), but in the fleur-de-lys this cross shape is made more complicated with two foliated scrolls which lead into the horizontal line, while the vertical line is thrust up towards the sky like a plant shoot.

The whole design alludes to a force which comes from the soul both to rise and spread at the same time, as the scrolls show. At work are the highest aspirations which open to give the flower of idealism, to assure it of an irresistible power in the high spheres of human thought.

The Emperor is not a despot who imposes his will in an arbitrary way; there is nothing brutal about his reign: for it is inspired by a great deal of kindness which is symbolized by the Hermetic ideogram from which the connoisseurs of heraldry have taken their fleur-de-lys. It is regrettable that this emblem has not remained the emblem of the French nation . . . . No other sign expresses better nobility of soul, and true generosity which forms the basis of our national character. Removed as we are from all coarse imperialism, it falls to us to rule through the intelligence and with the heart. Let us be the first to understand everything and to be the most sincere in our affection towards others; in this way we will have the right to set up the fleur-de-lys.

Wirth saw the fleur-de-lis as a symbol based on the cross -- an elaboration of the cross, showing its tendency "to rise and spread at the same time."

And what does Wirth say about his identification of Aries (and thus the Lamb of God and the fleur-de-lis) with the Pope? I have considered the connection before, writing, "The Pope, with his shepherd's staff, makes sense as the ram -- the leader of a flock of sheep" -- but Wirth's rationale is entirely different.

No symbol in the sky could be directly linked to the Hierophant, but he makes you think of the high priest of Jupiter-Ammon, the god with the ram's head. We think therefore that we can make arcana 5 correspond to the Aries of the Zodiac which marks the spring equinox, the sign of Fire and the exaltation of the Sun. The fire with which we are concerned here is the fire of life and intelligence, the ancient Agni which came down from heaven to burn in the centre of the vedic cross, called the Swastika, when the rites are being performed. 'Agni' became 'Agnis' and it is thus that the 'agneau pascal', the Pascal Lamb, brings us to the mysteries of a prodigious antiquity.

We would more naturally associate Jupiter with the Emperor, but Wirth was Swiss and was influenced by the Swiss Tarot, which (presumably as a concession to the differing religious sensitivities of its users) replaces the Papess and Pope with Juno and Jupiter, and shows Jupiter with a thunderbolt in each hand. Wirth explicitly acknowledges this influence: "The Jupiter which the Tarot of Besançon puts in the place of the Pope is the master of the celestial Fire . . . . The character of this god is therefore in harmony with arcana 5."

Connecting Aries with the Paschal Lamb and Agnus Dei is clever. Connecting Agnus (and French agneau) with Agni, the Hindu god of fire, is doubly clever (Aries being a fire sign), though it is of course without etymological foundation. I am a bit surprised that the connection was not made by Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre in his Mission des juifs, given the mileage this latter writer gets out of various equally spurious ovine etymologies. Saint-Yves postulates the existence of an ancient ruler called the Ram and identifies him with Ram or Rama, the seventh avatar of Vishnu; some of the Ram's enemies derisively nicknamed him the Lamb, and this is said to be the origin of the Tibetan title lama. Abraham's name -- originally Ab-ram, "father of Ram" -- is given a similar etymology. (Interestingly, in the story of the binding of Isaac, a ram actually takes the place of Abraham's son!) Saint-Yves also maintains that the Indo-Iranian demonym Aryan is derived from Aries and is a reference to this same Ram. Given all these links, most of them derived from English words, it is a wonder that Saint-Yves did not make the connection between the agneau of his native language and the god Agni.

Oswald Wirth's Emperor

The Emperor card in all three versions of Oswald Wirth's Tarot is essentially the same.

Three versions of Oswald Wirth's Emperor card (1889, 1926, 1966)

For comparison, here is Nicolas Conver's 1760 Emperor card, representing the mainstream Tarot de Marseille tradition.

Wirth differs from the standard Marseille design on the following points:

• There are four points at the top of the crown and no points along the brim.
• The scepter bears a fleur-de-lis rather than a globus cruciger.
• The emperor holds a large globus cruciger in his right hand instead of holding his belt.
• The emperor wears a breastplate with a sun and moon on it.
• Instead of having a shield with an eagle leaning against his throne, the emperor sits on a large cube with an eagle on it.
• The emperor's right leg is crossed under his left rather than over it.
• The plant at the left side of the card is a red flower rather than grass.

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Influence of Geneva and Besançon Tarots

Wirth was Swiss, born in the Canton of Bern in 1860, and his Emperor's scepter shows the influence of decks from that country. One thinks of the fleur-de-lis as a French symbol, but in fact the only pre-Wirth Tarot I have been able to find with anything like a fleur-de-lis on the Emperor's scepter is the one printed in the Canton of Geneva in 1840 by François Gassmann.

Gassmann's eagle appears to have influenced Wirth's as well. It is distinctive because of the stylized shape of its wings, suggesting German rather than French heraldic conventions, and because of the escutcheon on its chest. Wirth adopted the stylized wings for his 1926 and 1966 cards, and the 1889 version has what appears to be a lyre on the eagle's chest where the escutcheon would be.

Also relevant is the Tarot de Besançon which, despite taking its name from the French town to which production of the cards was moved in the 19th century, actually originated in Switzerland.

Johan Jerger (Besançon, 1801)

Jerger puts the traditional globus cruciger at the end of his Emperor's scepter, but the strange shape of the shaft itself clearly influenced the 1926 and 1966 Wirth cards. This is also the only pre-Wirth Emperor card I know of that features a flower. (Gassmann has an oak leaf; traditional TdM has only a patch of grass.) The 1926 and 1966 Wirth cards also follow the Tarot de Besançon in giving the Emperor a braided golden necklace but omitting the pendant.

Notice that on Jerger's card, the Emperor's legs are not crossed, and the left leg covers the right one. Jerger also gives the Emperor red hose, as does Wirth, whereas blue and green are the standard TdM colors. The Emperor's skirt is made up of separate tongues of material, like Greek armor, as in Wirth.

We can also see Besançon influence in the shape of the Emperor's beard, hair, and headgear.

Wirth (1889), Jerger (1801), Conver (1760)

There are no points along the brim, and the brim protrudes in the front. The central rib of the crown is divided into three parts. The small gold circles are perhaps influenced by the studs or rivets seen in the Besançon card.

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Other innovations

Of the distinctive features of Wirth's Emperor, it appears that only three -- the globus cruciger, the cubic stone, and the breastplate -- cannot be traced to earlier Swiss cards.

The globus cruciger is easy enough to explain. Since it no longer appears at the end of the Emperor's scepter, Wirth places it in his hand instead. Bonifacio Bembo's Emperor card painted for the Visconti-Sforza family also shows the Emperor holding a scepter in his right hand and a globus cruciger in his left.

The association of the Emperor with the cubic stone of the Freemasons seems to originate with Éliphas Lévi, whose influence on Wirth is indisputable (see his Wheel of Fortune card, for instance). Here is Lévi's description of the Emperor card in Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie:

ד The porte or government of the easterns, initiation, power, the Tetragram, the quaternary, the cubic stone, or its base.

Hieroglyph, THE EMPEROR, a sovereign whose body represents a right-angled triangle and his legs a cross -- image of the Athanor of the philosophers.

The Athanor is an alchemical furnace; the triangle and cross is a symbol of alchemical Sulfur. Elsewhere in the Dogme et Rituel, Lévi refers to the cubic stone as a symbol of alchemical Salt, and also includes the prayer, "Angels of Netsah and Hod, establish me upon the cubic stone of Yesod!" (These are the 7th, 8th, and 9th sephiroth of the Tree of Life, with names meaning "eternity," "splendor," and "foundation," respectively.)

As for the breastplate with a sun on the right breast and a moon on the left, my hunch is that it must have reference to the Urim and Thummim, but I have not been able to find any specific source for this. In Dogme et Rituel, Lévi identifies the shoulder ornaments of the Charioteer as "the URIM and THUMMIM of the sovereign sacrificer, represented by the two crescents of the moon in GEDULAH and GEBURAH" (cf. the two "moon blocks" used in Chinese divination). Elsewhere in the same book, Lévi writes that "the URIM and THUMMIM were the above and beneath, the East and West, the yes and no." Wirth may have combined these two ideas -- the Urim and Thummim as crescent moons, and as polar opposites -- to arrive at his representation of them as sun and moon.

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Influence on the Rider-Waite

The Rider-Waite Tarot was published in 1909 -- after the first version of Wirth's deck but before the two later versions -- and it shows the influence of that particular version of the card.

Here are the points the Rider-Waite Emperor shares with the 1889 Wirth.

• The Emperor wears red clothing and armor. While the breastplate is not visible on the Rider-Waite card, the armored knees and feet are otherwise unique to the 1889 Wirth.
• The Emperor's beard is long as in Wirth, rather than short and pointed as in the Tarot de Marseille.
• The Emperor's legs are uncrossed -- closer to the posture in Wirth than in the TdM.
• The throne, while not cubic, is made of gray stone as in the 1889 Wirth. (The ram decorations are due to Waite's ill-starred schema of astrological correspondences.)
• The Emperor holds an orb in his left hand.

Can the deck itself be prophetic?

When people talk about the Tarot predicting the future, they're generally talking about a Tarot reading. Cards are selected at random, and the fact of those particular cards' being chosen, rather than others in the deck, is what the divination is based on. But can there be, as it were, "standing prophecies" in the deck itself -- specific future events coded into the cards themselves, independent of any given spread or reading?

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Richard Arrowsmith, the once and (perhaps?) future king of synchromysticism, has recently resurfaced after a seven-year silence and posted on the birdemic. It is, in true Arrowsmith fashion, a very long, sprawling, profusely illustrated post that touches on dozens of different things, but one of the things it does is to tie the birdemic -- the official name of which prominently features the number 19 -- to the 19th Tarot trump, the Sun (especially the Rider-Waite version).

The sun as depicted on the card somewhat resembles the birdemic virus -- a round object with numerous protrusions -- and of course the word corona refers to the outer atmosphere of the sun. The brick wall depicted on the card suggests the lockdowns implemented around the world. But most specifically, and most impressively, the card clearly alludes to the flag of China -- a red flag with one large star and four smaller ones.

One could go further. The sunflowers, as mini-suns, represent the replication of the virus, and they peep over the wall, showing the ineffectiveness of all the lockdown nonsense. The child, with a crown (corona) of mini-mini-suns, goes forth on a white horse, like the first horseman of the Apocalypse, "conquering, and to conquer" -- spreading the birdemic and the subsequent totalitarian coup all over the world.

I find this very impressive, and once pointed out it cannot be un-seen. From here on out, the birdemic is part of the meaning of this card.

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Wondering what other "standing prophecies" might be hidden in the deck, I suddenly had this thought: I'll bet all the trumps whose numbers correspond to U.S. presidential election years -- that is, '00, '04, '08, '12, '16, and '20 -- accurately predict the winners of those elections. So, let's see. Since Mr. Arrowsmith got such impressive results from the Rider-Waite, let's stick with that deck.

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2000: Bush defeats Gore

We're off to a good start. George W. Bush was consistently portrayed as an idiot, but Al Gore was not. He became known for his "Bushims," including the most famous of all: "There's an old saying in Tennessee . . . I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says, 'Fool me once, shame on . . . shame on you. Fool me . . . You can't get fooled again!'" (If you type george w bush f into Google, the second search suggestion, after father, is fool me once.)

The Fool card depicts a man walking. Bush was commonly referred to by his middle initial: W, or “Dubya.” His full name is George Walker Bush.

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2004: Bush defeats Kerry

This is an easy one: The sitting president wins reelection. (So much for not getting fooled again!)

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2008: Obama defeats McCain

The most distinctive thing about Obama is that his father was from Kenya, making him (sort of) the "first black president." The lion is predominantly an African animal, and Kenya has one of the highest lion populations in the world. Taking this a step further, the two figures on the card -- one male and from Africa, the other a white woman -- could symbolize Obama's parents. (I know it's totally racist for the white woman to be represented by a person and the black man by an animal, but that's how it is. There are no black people in the Rider-Waite Tarot, so African-ness has to be represented in some other way.)

When it was first decided that Obama was going to be a "rising star," and nobody really knew who he was yet, I remember that NPR ran a "funny" piece about this poor politician who had the misfortune to have a name so similar to Osama. Osama, of course, means "lion" in Arabic.

It was also in 2008 that the slogan "diversity is our strength" began to gain currency (see evidence here).

(Note added: At the time I posted this, Google Trends showed no hits for "diversity is our strength" until 2008. Clicking the link again now, later the same day, I see that this is no longer true! I'm not sure why data for 2004-2007 would have changed in just a few hours' time. Google Ngrams shows the phrase's popularity peaking in 1997.)

Note added: It turns out that Obama is even a Leo (born August 4, 1961).

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2012: Obama defeats Romney

This one's not as obvious as the others have been so far, but wasn't it around 2012 that the noose began to be promoted as a symbol of anti-black racism and to be used in hate hoaxes (at the University of Wisconsin, for instance)? Implicit in the assumption that nooses are racist is the equation hanged man = black man. Notice also the hanged man's O-shaped halo.

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2016: Trump defeats Clinton

The simplest analysis: a trump called "The Tower" = Trump Tower = Donald Trump.

But doesn't it show the tower being destroyed? It seems that neither the tower itself nor either of the two persons falling from it can represent the winning candidate.

The lightning represents Trump -- a "bolt from the blue" whose win surprised nearly everyone. The woman dressed in Democratic blue is obviously Hillary Clinton, and the man -- whose red outer garment hides the fact that he is blue underneath -- represents the fake-conservative Republican establishment.

The imagery of this card also suggests 9/11, which was a major symbolic undercurrent in the 2016 election. Clinton's campaign logo showed two towers, both blue, being cut through by a big red arrow (cf. the arrow-shaped lightning bolt destroying the tower on the card). Clinton later physically fell down on September 11 at a 9/11 memorial event, and in the early hours of the other 9/11, 9 November, Trump was declared the winner.

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2020: Trump vs. Biden

Not exactly subtle. Which candidate has blond/orange hair and is literally named Trump?

The Emperor and the number 4

Jean-Pierre Payen, 1713

One of the distinctive characteristics of so-called Tarot de Marseille "Type I" decks ("Type II" being the standard Tarot) is that the fourth trump, the Emperor, has, in addition to the Roman numerals at the top of the card, an Arabic numeral 4 floating in front of his face. Only the Emperor has this; every other trump has only the standard Roman-numeral label at the top. The question is, why?

It is customary for Tarot commentators to see in the Emperor's crossed legs and the rough triangle formed by his head and arms, an allusion to the alchemical symbol for Sulfur, which is a cross surmounted by a triangle. However, one could just as easily see the Emperor's legs as forming an Arabic numeral 4 -- and this numeral is also very close to the astrological symbol for Jupiter.

The resemblance of the Emperor to the god Jupiter -- who also sits on a throne, holding a scepter, with an eagle at his side -- should be obvious.

1st-century Roman statue of Jupiter

Other representations of the number 4 can also be connected to Jupiter. Although the Tarot de Marseille consistently uses strictly additive Roman numerals (IIII, VIIII, XIIII, XVIIII), the standard Roman numeral for 4 is IV -- the first two letters of the name Jupiter (IVPPITER). It was to avoid taking the name of Jupiter in vain that many Roman sundials, although they used the subtractive IX for 9, opted for IIII instead of IV. (The Tarot de Marseille uses "IV" only in the names of the trumps Justice and Judgment, with which it would not be disrespectful to associate Jupiter.)

The Greek numeral for 4 is the letter Δ (cf. the triangle formed by the Emperor's upper body). This is also the initial of Διεύς, the ancient form of the name Zeus and cognate with the Latin deus (which, besides its primary meaning of "god," was used as an imperial title).

Finally, I note -- although it is almost certainly a meaningless coincidence -- that Nicolas Conver's 1760 deck, often considered to be the canonical Tarot de Marseille, gives this trump the anomalous name L'empereup. If IV suggests Jupiter, surely UP does as well. If UP represents Jupiter, then the full title of the Conver trump is nothing less than le M. Père Jupiter.

All in all, I find the links to Jupiter to be much stronger than the more traditional ones to alchemical Sulfur.