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!

Out of the strong came forth sweetness.

Briton Rivière, Una and the Lion (1880)

In my last post (qv), I hypothesized that the Strength card of the Tarot de Marseille originated when a depiction of Samson -- long-haired, beardless, and labeled with the grammatically feminine title La Fortezza or La Force -- was misinterpreted as being a woman. (Something similar seems to have happened to no less a personage than Jesus Christ in the World card.)

Visconti-Sforza Tarot, Tübinger Hausbuch, P. Madenié Tarot

As can be seen above, the earliest surviving Tarot cards (painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza family) used Hercules rather than Samson as a representation of the virtue of Fortitude. The hero's identity is made clear by his short hair and by the fact that he carries a club. (Hercules first stunned the Nemean lion with his club and then strangled it with his bare hands; when Samson killed his lion, though, "he had nothing in his hand.")

While depictions of Hercules and the Nemean lion typically show the hero using his club or else grappling with the beast after the fashion of a Greek wrestler, Samson is almost universally depicted holding the lion's jaws open. This may seem strange -- wouldn't you want to hold its jaws closed? -- but reflects the biblical language. While Hercules bludgeoned and strangled his adversary, Samson "rent him as he would have rent a kid" (Judges 14:6). Pictures like the one in the Tübinger Hausbuch show him preparing to tear the beast in two.

The woman in the Tarot de Marseille also holds the lion's jaws open with her hands -- a pose specific to Samson, for a specific biblical reason. For me, this is conclusive evidence confirming my earlier speculation. The Strength card of the TdM came into being as a corruption of what was originally a picture of Samson -- the mistake being facilitated by his long hair and by the strangely androgynous faces so common in medieval and Renaissance art.

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But when it comes to the development of the Tarot, the oldest cards are not always the truest, and a mistake is not always just a mistake. There is evolution at work here -- perhaps literal memetic evolution by natural selection (where only such mistakes as improve the card are preserved and copied), perhaps something more mysterious.

Hercules and the Nemean lion is just a standard hero-slays-monster story, with nothing particularly interesting about it. Vico, though, sees it is a symbolic representation of razing the forests of Nemea so that the land could be cultivated.

In the Samson story, this connection between killing the lion and providing food becomes more explicit, as Samson returns to the lion's carcass some time later and finds honey in it. This is the basis of his famous riddle:

Out of the eater came something to eat.
Out of the strong came something sweet.

I have quoted a version that rhymes -- it's a riddle, it has to rhyme! -- but the King James version says, "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness" (Judges 14:14). The answer, discovered by his enemies through the treachery of his Philistine girlfriend, is "What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?" (v. 18).

The woman in the TdM image cannot be identified as any particular historical or mythological person, but I have illustrated this post with Briton Rivière's Una and the Lion -- a scene from Spenser -- because that is who she (anachronistically) reminds me of. Waite apparently thought likewise; his Strength card includes the Spenserian detail of the lion's licking Una's hand.

It fortuned out of the thickest wood
   A ramping Lyon rushed suddainly,
   Hunting full greedie after saluage blood;
   Soone as the royall virgin he did spy,
   With gaping mouth at her ran greedily,
   To haue attonce deuour'd her tender corse:
   But to the pray when as he drew more ny,
   His bloudie rage asswaged with remorse,
And with the sight amazd, forgat his furious forse.

In stead thereof he kist her wearie feet,
   And lickt her lilly hands with fawning tong,
   As he her wronged innocence did weet.
   O how can beautie maister the most strong,
   And simple truth subdue auenging wrong?
   Whose yeelded pride and proud submission,
   Still dreading death, when she had marked long,
   Her hart gan melt in great compassion,
And drizling teares did shed for pure affection.

And what is this but Samson's riddle completed? Out of the strong came forth sweetness, and out of the sweet came forth strength.