Using three dice to consult the entire Tarot deck

As has been discussed many times on this blog, there are 21 possible rolls of two dice and 56 possible rolls of three dice. Thus, if you have a mapping system (such as the Seven Eleven), you can consult the Trumps Major by rolling two dice or the Minor Arcana by rolling three.

The problem, of course, is that one normally wants to consult the entire deck rather than deciding in advance whether you want Trumps or Minors. Unless you want to resort to using D&D dice (there are 78 possible rolls of 2d12), it's not obvious how to do that with dice.

I think I've finally come up with a workable method. You have to take into account not only the numbers rolled but the relative position of the three dice. Two dice are considered to be "linked" if they are touching, or if the space between them is narrower than the width of a die; if they are separated by one die-width or more, they are considered to be "unlinked." This allows for four possible patterns of throws, taking their names from Morse code for lack of anything better to call them:

The four patterns are:

• O-pattern (three links): All three dice are very close together. Minor Arcana.
• M-pattern (two links): One die is close to each of the other two, but the other two are not close together. Minor Arcana.
• T-pattern (one link): Two dice are close together, and the third is isolated.The Trump corresponding to the two linked dice, ignoring the third.
• S-pattern (no links): Each die is far from the others. Minor Arcana.

As before, you get the Fool if something unexpected happens, like one of the dice falling out of the dish or something. (I considered making the S-pattern the Fool, but that pattern occurs too frequently to make that viable.)

Further details of the layout of the dice could be used to add interpretive nuance. If it's a Minor, the O-pattern might indicate a stronger or more concentrated influence, while the S-pattern is weaker and more diffuse. In an M-pattern, one of the three dice is "central" and thus more prominent than the other two. For a Trump (T-pattern), the number on the third, isolated die can be taken into account.

The Seven Eleven system of Tarot-dice mapping

This system came to me in a dream ("Rolling the bones"), with the decision to rank Wands as the high suit the result of further dream experiments ("Pumping iron into a sword" and "Cat Eye forum").

You roll two ordinary six-sided dice to consult the Trumps Major and three to consult the Minor Arcana. (You get the Fool if something goes wrong, like one of the dice landing on its edge or falling off the table or something.) Each face of the die has its face value except for four and six. Four is counted as 7, and six is counted as 11. (Think of how the pips on the six are arranged in two vertical lines, like 11.) To calculate the value of a roll, you multiply the respective values of each die rather than adding them up.

For example, suppose you roll three dice and get one, three, and four. Four represents 7, and the other two have their face value.  The value of the roll is then 1 × 3 × 7 = 21.

The Trumps Major are mapped to the rolls of two dice in rank order according to their face value (in the Rider-Waite sequence), as follows, with "root trumps" (squares) in bold:

{1, 1} = 1 = I. The Magician

{1, 2} = 2 = II. The High Priestess

{1, 3} = 3 = III. The Empress

{2, 2} = 4 = IV. The Emperor

{1, 5} = 5 = V. The Hierophant

{2, 3} = 6 = VI. The Lovers

{1, 4} = 7 = VII. The Chariot

{3, 3} = 9 = VIII. Strength

{2, 5} = 10 = IX. The Hermit

{1, 6} = 11 = X. The Wheel of Fortune

{2, 4} = 14 = XI. Justice

{3, 5} = 15 = XII. The Hanged Man

{3, 4} = 21 = XIII. Death

{2, 6} = 22 = XIV. Temperance

{5, 5} = 25 = XV. The Devil

{3, 6} = 33 = XVI. The Tower

{4, 5} = 35 = XVII. The Star

{4, 4} = 49 = XVIII. The Moon

{5, 6} = 55 = XIX. The Sun

{4, 6} = 77 = XX. Judgement

{6, 6} = 121 = XXI. The World

The Minor Arcana are ranked first by suit (with Wands high) and then by rank within that suit. In accordance with longstanding tradition, Aces are high for the round suits and low for the long suits. The cubes are bolded as equivalent to the root trumps. Rolls with no repeated numbers, which have the highest probability, are italicized.

{1, 1, 1} = 1 = Ten of Pentacles

{1, 1, 2} = 2 = Nine of Pentacles

{1, 1, 3} = 3 = Eight of Pentacles

{1, 2, 2} = 4 = Seven of Pentacles

{1, 1, 5} = 5 = Six of Pentacles

{1, 2, 3} = 6 = Five of Pentacles

{1, 1, 4} = 7 = Four of Pentacles

{2, 2, 2} = 8 = Three of Pentacles

{1, 3, 3} = 9 = Two of Pentacles

{1, 2, 5} = 10 = Ace of Pentacles

{1, 1, 6} = 11 = Page of Pentacles

{2, 2, 3} = 12 = Knight of Pentacles

{1, 2, 4} = 14 = Queen of Pentacles

{1, 3, 5} = 15 = King of Pentacles

{2, 3, 3} = 18 = Ace of Swords

{2, 2, 5} = 20 = Two of Swords

{1, 3, 4} = 21 = Three of Swords

{1, 2, 6} = 22 = Four of Swords

{1, 5, 5} = 25 = Five of Swords

{3, 3, 3} = 27 = Six of Swords

{2, 2, 4} = 28 = Seven of Swords

{2, 3, 5} = 30 = Eight of Swords

{1, 3, 6} = 33 = Nine of Swords

{1, 4, 5} = 35 = Ten of Swords

{2, 3, 4} = 42 = Page of Swords

{2, 2, 6} = 44 = Knight of Swords

{3, 3, 5} = 45 = Queen of Swords

{1, 4, 4} = 49 = King of Swords

{2, 5, 5} = 50 = Ten of Cups

{1, 5, 6} = 55 = Nine of Cups

{3, 3, 4} = 63 = Eight of Cups

{2, 3, 6} = 66 = Seven of Cups

{2, 4, 5} = 70 = Six of Cups

{3, 5, 5} = 75 = Five of Cups

{1, 4, 6} = 77 = Four of Cups

{2, 4, 4} = 98 = Three of Cups

{3, 3, 6} = 99 = Two of Cups

{3, 4, 5} = 105 = Ace of Cups

{2, 5, 6} = 110 = Page of Cups

{1, 6, 6} = 121 = Knight of Cups

{5, 5, 5} = 125 = Queen of Cups

{3, 4, 4} = 147 = King of Cups

{2, 4, 6} = 154 = Ace of Wands

{3, 5, 6} = 165 = Two of Wands

{4, 5, 5} = 175 = Three of Wands

{3, 4, 6} = 231 = Four of Wands

{2, 6, 6} = 242 = Five of Wands

{4, 4, 5} = 245 = Six of Wands

{5, 5, 6} = 275 = Seven of Wands

{4, 4, 4} = 343 = Eight of Wands

{3, 6, 6} = 363 = Nine of Wands

{4, 5, 6} = 385 = Ten of Wands

{4, 4, 6} = 539 = Page of Wands

{5, 6, 6} = 605 = Knight of Wands

{4, 6, 6} = 847 = Queen of Wands

{6, 6, 6} = 1331 = King of Wands

The three-by-seven grid and the Sephiroth

I have been working with this layout of the 21 numbered trumps of the Tarot de Marseille.

I arranged the cards in three rows and seven columns for practical reasons. The dimensions of the above image are roughly 3×4, making it convenient to display the whole thing on a computer screen, to print it out on a piece of A4 paper, or to lay the cards out that way on a table. Three columns and seven rows would be a much more awkward 1×4.

Nevertheless, three columns seems more correct conceptually, as it calls to mind the three columns of the Tree of the Sephiroth. Actually, the standard 10-sephirah Tree of Life (absent Da'ath, which presumably corresponds to the Fool) arranges the sephiroth in three columns and seven vertical levels. If we overlay that on our three-by-seven grid, ten of the trumps would be mapped to sephiroth. Ther are four logical ways this could be done: We could start at the Kether level and move down or start at the Malkuth level and move up; and within each level we could go from left to right or from right to left. The most promising mapping starts at the Malkuth level and goes from right to left.

A few of these mappings are obvious "hits." Netzach means "victory," and that is the traditional meaning of the Chariot -- called, in the first known listing of the trumps, Lo carro triumphale, "the chariot of triumph." Yesod, "foundation," is mapped to the Pope. The first pope is supposed to have been St. Peter, of whom Christ said, "upon this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18).

Most of the rest of the mappings are at least understandable and defensible. The first and highest sephirah, from which all the others emanate, is mapped to the Angel, called "Judgment," but representing the love of God. Chokmah, representing direct inspiration, fits well with the bolt from the sun; while Binah, representing reflective wisdom, is well symbolized by the reflected light of the Moon. Geburah, called the "left hand of God" meting out punishment, is the Devil. Tiphareth, "beauty," maps to the beautiful woman subduing a lion, and Hod, "glory," to the Hermit with his blazing lantern. At the gestalt level, the left and right columns correspond to yin/feminine and yang/masculine, as they should.

The only really jarring mapping is between Chesed, "mercy, kindness, benevolence," and Death.

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 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.

The pointed cubic stone and the Tarot

In an article on the tetraktys and the square of four, René Guénon points out that these two figures together comprise a total of 26 points, which is the value of the Tetragrammaton (yodh he vav he = 10 + 5 + 6 + 5). The 10 point of the tetraktys correspond to the letter yodh, and the 16 points of the square represent the rest of the Name. He illustrates this idea with the following figure.

It occurred to me that the figure looked a bit strange. We would normally think of the nine non-central points of the tetraktys not as being inside a triangle but as forming the edges of one; and the same is true of the 12 exterior points of the square of four. Since in the above diagram, the triangle and the square share an edge, that would be a total of 22 points, not 26, since 4 of the points belong both to the triangle and to the square. That's not the value of the Tetragrammaton, but it is a significant number in its own right, being the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet and the number of Major Arcana in the Tarot.

At the end of his article, Guénon briefly mentions the three-dimensional analogue of his figure.

Finally, if we consider the solid forms in three dimensional geometry that correspond to the plane figures in question here, the cube corresponds to the square, and the figure that corresponds to the triangle is the quadrangular pyramid with the upper face of the cube as its base. The whole forms what Masonic symbolism designates as the 'pointed cubic stone' and which, in the Hermetic interpretation, is considered to be a figure of the 'philosopher's stone'.

This is the Masonic symbol Guénon is referring to.

The fourth cubic number is 64, and the fourth square-pyramidal number is 30. If we combine these in the same way that Guénon combined the square and the triangle, the total value is 94, a number of no obvious significance. If we combine them my way, though, keeping in mind that the cube and the pyramid share between them a plane of 16 points, the number represented by the pointed ashlar is 94 - 16 = 78.

By my reckoning, then, the plane figure has 22 points, and its solid counterpart has 78. This corresponds perfectly to the Tarot deck, which has 22 Major Arcana and a total of 78 cards in all.

Oswald Wirth's "Astronomical Tarot" as a cosmic spread

Setting aside its specifically astrological content, Oswald Wirth's "Astronomical Tarot" can be considered a cosmic spread -- that is, a way of arranging all the Major Arcana into a coherent whole.

There is much to explore here, but what I particularly like is the pairing at the center: Death and the World. I had never thought of these two trumps as a natural pair before, but now it seems obvious. If the World represents everything -- the Cosmos and the life thereof -- then of course its opposite is nothingness, the trump with no name, commonly called Death.

Some years ago I drew a connection between the Homeric Shield of Achilles and the Tibetan Bhavacakra or wheel of life. -- particularly their use of the 2 + 6 + 12 schema. The Shield shows two scenes, of a city at peace and at war; the Bhavacakra has two scenes showing positive and negative karma. The Shield shows six scenes of country life; the Bhavacakra, the six realms of samsara. Where the Shield features the 12 signs of the zodiac, the Bhavacakra shows the "12 links of dependent origination."

At first glance, I thought that Wirth's Astronomical Tarot followed the same pattern, but of course its middle circle has eight section, not six. This put me in mind of something else, though: the sort of octagonal clock commonly used in Chinese culture.

This does have the same structure as Wirth's diagram. On the outside, the 12 hours; closer to the center, the Fu Xi arrangement of the eight trigrams (bagua); and in the center itself, yin and yang, corresponding to Death and the World.

An even closer analogue can be found in this Chinese diagram, which has the 12 Earthly Branches (corresponding to the signs of the Jupiter-based "Chinese zodiac") instead of the hours.

The Fool's Wheel

The Fool's Wheel, as discussed in an earlier post, is one of four plausible alternatives to a schema of Tarot interpretation created by Oswald Wirth and called (by me, not him) the Lover's Wheel. The idea is to arrange the 22 Major Arcana in a circle and contrast each card with those horizontally and vertically opposite it. Wirth put's the Lover card at the top of the wheel, while I put the Fool there -- hence the names.

This is what the Fool's Wheel looks like. The numbers represent the trumps in their standard Marseille order (Justice is 8, Strength is 11). The Fool is represented by the number 0 as a matter of convenience, though in fact it is unnumbered.

As the colored lines show, the Fool's Wheel organizes the cards into five groups of four (the colored rectangles) and a single pair (the central axis). Let's look at each of these groups in turn, starting from the center and working our way out.

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Group 1: Strength and Weakness

These two cards both show a person interacting with a potentially dangerous animal. The Fool is being attacked by a dog (or, as some commentators would have it, a lynx), while the woman on the Strength card is holding open the jaws of a lion. While the Fool, being equipped with a stout walking stick, should be able to defend himself from a dog quite easily, it has apparently not occurred to him to do so. The woman on the Strength card, in contrast, effortlessly subdues a lion despite being entirely unarmed. The fact that she is holding its jaws open (not closed, as an alligator wrestler would do) shows that her power over the beast is more psychological than physical.

While the names Strength and La Force have become conventional in English and French, the original name of the 11th arcanum is La Fortezza -- that is, the classical virtue of Fortitude or courage. (Justice and Temperance are also among the Major Arcana; the apparent absence of the fourth virtue, Prudence, has been the subject of endless speculation among Tarot commentators.) Our Fool seems also to be displaying a courage of sorts -- or, rather, the vice-of-excess corresponding to that virtue in the Aristotelian system. He does not appear to be at all afraid of the dog, after all, but walks on with a smile on his face, as if unaware that he is being attacked.

The Fool, for his part, is called Il Matto or Le Mat -- as in the chess term échec et mat (Italian scacco matto) -- a word ultimately derived from Persian, where (despite the widespread, Arabic-influenced misconception that checkmate means "the king is dead") it means "stymied, stupefied, helpless." The Fool, then, represents the opposite of Strength, and his fearlessness is that of the dodo bird, not of the lion. "'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fear relieved": The woman of Strength enjoys both of these graces; the Fool, neither.

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Group 2: Chance and Destiny

Looking at the vertical oppositions first, it would be hard to find one more perfect than the Hanged Man and the World. Several old French decks write the Hanged Man's number as "IIX," suggesting that the card ought to be turned upside down. Doing so transforms the Hanged Man into a dancer in almost exactly the same posture as the one featured on the World Card. The Hanged Man's gallows,with its 12 lopped branches, is a stylized representation of the zodiac, as are the wreath and Four Living Creatures on the World card.

The Magician holding his wand over his table of gewgaws (including, in some decks, two or three dice) corresponds to the sword-wielding sphinx that presides over the Wheel of Fortune -- or perhaps to Fortuna (not portrayed in the Marseille version of the image), who controls the wheel. Images suggestive of both the Magician and the Wheel of Fortune appear together in Hiernoymus Bosch's painting The Conjurer. The Magician represents control, while those on the Wheel are at the mercy of events beyond their control.

Horizontally, the Magician and the World, as the first and last numbered trumps, make a natural contrast. Both figures hold a wand in the left hand. The Magician's infinity-sign hat is echoed in the similarly shaped ribbon that binds the wreath in (many versions of) the World.

Traditional representations of the Wheel of Fortune generally put four figures on the wheel, but the Tarot de Marseille follows Albrecht Dürer in bringing that number down to three, perhaps as much to avoid a too-cluttered composition as for any other reason. We can perhaps see in the upside-down Hanged Man the missing figure at the bottom of the wheel; he certainly seems to have suffered a "reversal" of fortune!

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Group 3: Last Things

Though it is called "The Judgement," the 20th trump actually depicts the resurrection of the dead. "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. . . . then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory" (1 Corinthians 15: 51-52, 54). What trump could with greater appropriateness be placed opposite Death? But there is affinity as well as opposition. The 13th trump, too, proclaims that "we shall all be changed," and Death's character as the Grim Reaper brings to mind the line "the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels" (Matthew 13:39).

The other vertical pair, the Priestess and the Hermit, are both solitary, mystical characters, each bearing a sign of enlightenment (a book, a lantern). A curtain behind the Priestess makes her face visible only from certain angles; likewise, the Hermit's lantern is partially concealed by his mantle.

The open book on the Priestess's lap connects her to the idea of the Last Judgment: "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works" (Revelation 20:12).

The 9th and 13th arcana probably share a common origin, as I have discussed in my post on "The Reaper of Marseille." The name given to the Hermit in the oldest Italian decks is usually the Old Man, the Hunchback, or simply Time, and his lantern was originally an hourglass. This is the familiar figure of Father Time, whose other main attribute (thanks to the conflation of Chronos, or Time, with the harvest god Kronos, or Saturn) is the sickle or scythe, and to whom the Grim Reaper can perhaps also trace his lineage.

Starting with the Hermit and going clockwise, we find that these four trumps lay out in order Four Last Things (not entirely the same as the Four Last Things of tradition): old age, death, resurrection, and judgment (the last being represented by the Priestess and her book, rather than by the trump that bears that name).

I consider this to be the strongest foursome in this schema.

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Group 4: The Queens

The iconographic unity of three of these four cards is immediately apparent. Both the Empress and Justice depict a crowned woman seated on a throne, and the shapes of both thrones suggest the wings of the angel of Temperance. (In some decks, the Empress actually has wings.) The two ewers of Temperance echo the two pans of the scales of Justice.

The Sun, which is personified as male in most cultures, and which shines on the male twins Castor and Pollux, seems out of place in this group. However, sun goddesses are not unknown, nor is it uncommon to apply solar imagery to women ("Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon"). The Empress bears an eagle, a solar bird, and some post-Marseille decks portray her as the "woman clothed with the sun" of Revelation 12:1. The Sun, because it sees all and shines on all impartially, is often associated with justice; think, for example, of Utu/Shamash, or of Malachi's "sun of righteousness." The twins depicted on the Sun card also link it to the balanced duality of Temperance and Justice.

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Group 5: The Kings

The Moon and the Devil make a natural pair, both emphasizing illusion, unreality, and animality. The relationship of the Emperor to the Chariot, which also features a crowned man holding a scepter in his right hand, is similarly obvious.

The horizontal pairings are perhaps less obvious. Just as the Fool's Wheel matches the Empress with the Sun, it matches the Emperor with the Moon, reversing what are the more common associations in most cultures. (Thoth is a male moon good, but the Tarot Emperor is hardly a Thothly figure!). In Whitley Strieber's Tarot book, The Path, he sees the Emperor as ruling the path the left-hand path that leads to the Moon, representing "outer life" and a reduction of freedom, but acknowledges that this is a symbolically unusual choice ("Almost universally, the left hand path has been associated with women, darkness and the moon, while the right has been connected to men, light and the sun"). In this Strieber is presumably influenced by Gurdjieff and his idea that those human "slugs" who fail to develop proper souls are destined to become "food for the moon." Notice also the moon-like spaulders of the charioteer.

In the Devil we may see a caricature of the charioteer. His two captives are harnessed to the globe on which he stands, just as the two horses are harnessed to the Chariot, and he stands over them brandishing a cat o' nine tails.

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Group 6: The Transcendent

The two ewers being emptied in the Star correspond to the two people falling from the Tower; both the stars and the lightning bolt that destroys the Tower represent the ineluctable forces of the cosmos.

The Pope represents infallible authority, and the tonsured monks represent unquestioning obedience. In contrast, the Marseille version of Lover represents a free choice to be made (the Choice of Hercules) and the possibility of making the wrong choice. The Pope and Cupid represent, respectively, Roma and Amor -- each word being the reverse of the other.

The Star and the Pope both express the idea of humble submission -- whether to cosmic destiny or to papal authority.

The lightning bolt that destroys the Tower corresponds to the bolt of Cupid -- and in fact, the earliest name of the 16th trump is Sagitta -- the arrow.

All four trumps in this group represent something -- the "starry heavens above and the moral law within" (Kant), and the bolts of Zeus and Eros -- which transcends the personal and which enters our lives will we nill we and must be reckoned with.

The Lover's Wheel of Oswald Wirth, and four alternatives

In a previous post (qv) I have mentioned Oswald Wirth's schema in which the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot are arranged at regular intervals around the circumference of a wheel, and each card is considered to have a special relationship with those horizontally and vertically opposite it on the wheel.

Since the oppositions being considered are rectilinear rather than diametric, which cards are opposite which depends entirely on which card is placed at 12 o'clock. Wirth puts the 6th trump, called the Lover, in that position, so I have found it convenient to dub his schema the Lover's Wheel. When the 6th trump is at 12 o'clock, the 17th (the Star) is at 6 o'clock. Obviously, rotating everything 180 degrees, so that the Star was at 12 o'clock, would yield the same set of oppositions, so putting the (n + 11)th trump at 12 o'clock is equivalent to putting the nth trump there. That means there are 11 distinct ways of arranging the trumps around the wheel, of which Wirth's Lover's Wheel is just one possibility.

In practice, though, most of those possible arrangements are too arbitrary to be worth considering. We might naturally expect the first (or perhaps the last) trump to be located at 12 o'clock (or at 6 o'clock, which is functionally equivalent). Nine o'clock (or 3 o'clock) would also be a natural place to put the first or last trump -- but because 22 is not divisible by 4, a wheel that has a trump at 12 o'clock will not have one at exactly 9 o'clock; instead, one is at (to make our clock-face terminology a bit more precise than is customary) 8:27, and another is at 9:33. All in all, I think there are three tolerably natural arrangements:

1. first trump at 12 o'clock
2. last trump at 12 o'clock
3. first and last trumps at 9:33 and 8:27

Of course, any of these three arrangements can be rotated 90, 180, or 270 degrees, or mirrored, without affecting the card-to-card relationships.

Things are further complicated by uncertainty as to which trump should count as the first. Because the Fool is traditionally unnumbered (often numbered 0 in modern decks, generally treated by Wirth as if numbered 22), it can be considered either the first trump (in which case the World is the last) or the last trump (in which case the Magician is first).

Taking all this into consideration, the bottom line is that there are only five plausible candidates for the 12 o'clock position: the Lover (Wirth's choice), the Fool (my own hunch after seeing Wirth's version), the Magician, the Pope (seen in a "coʀʀecᴛed veʀsioɴ" of Wirth modified by an unknown hand), and the World. (Again, I am only saying "12 o'clock" for the sake of simplicity; 3, 6, or 9 o'clock would be functionally equivalent.)

The way to evaluate the relative merits of these five schemata is to look at the card-to-card relationships each creates and decide which seem the most meaningful. That means looking at 105 different links (21 for each wheel, with no overlap). My original plan was to discuss all 105 of these in this post, but it was starting to turn into one of those dissertation-length mega-posts that I'm not supposed to be writing anymore, so I'll stop this post here and discuss the individual wheels in detail in future posts.

Oswald Wirth's version of ROTA

(For context, see my past posts on the Wheel of Fortune Tarot card.)

I found this diagram near the beginning of Oswald Wirth's Le Tarot, des Imagiers du Moyen Age.

Éliphas Lévi, who was the first to introduce into Tarot iconography a wheel marked with letters ambiguously reading either ROTA or TARO, always put T at the top of the wheel. Wirth's diagram is the first example I have found of someone adopting Lévi's idea but changing the orientation of the letters. (In my post on the orientation of ROTA, I spoke favorably of this orientation, with A at the top, because it corresponds with the orientation of the Tarot suits used by both Lévi and Strieber, but still consider R at the top to be the correct orientation.)

Arranging the 22 Major Arcana, rather than the four Minor suits, around the wheel is a little strange, 22 not being divisible by four, but it is central to Wirth's system. Each card is considered to be related to those horizontally and vertically (not diametrically) opposite it on the wheel, as shown in this diagram, also from Wirth.

I haven't yet read and assimilated Wirth's commentary on these proposed mappings, but at first glance the system seems just slightly off. My initial reaction is that I would rotate the cards clockwise 8.18 degrees, so that the horizontal axis lined up perfectly with 0 and 11.

My proposed modification of Wirth's schema

The resulting mappings seem much more intuitively correct -- although, as I say, I have not yet looked in any detail either at Wirth's system or at my proposed alternative.

Dice and the Tarot trumps: another approach

Having read my earlier posts on the subject (here and here), Kevin McCall has the following thoughts on mapping the Tarot trumps to rolls of the dice.

As far as the association of cards of the Major Arcana with dice rolls, it seems like another way into the system rather than an ordering of die rolls could be by considering the symbolism of the numbers 1 – 6 and then trying to associate each number and each pair with a card.  After reading about Pythagorean number symbolism and tarot symbolism, here are some of my thoughts (highly speculative):

I think the Air Hexactys is the best of the four, but perhaps with some modification:

We know the Magician is (1,1), Priestess is (1,2), World is (6,6) and Judgment is (5,6).  I think that 1 must mean magic or beginning, 2 female or passivity, 3 male or activity, 4 terrestrial but in a negative sense, 5 combining 2 and 3 as representing balance, and I think Opsopaus is right that 6 represents finality and the celestial.

In that case, the Magician (1,1) would be pure beginning
The Empress (2,2) would be pure feminine, and the Emperor (3,3) pure masculine.
Then, it makes sense that the Priestess is (1,2) for magic, feminine and then the Hierophant “should be” (1,3) for magic, masculine.  Then, the Lovers “should be” (2,3) for masculine and feminine coming together.

Justice “should be” (5,5) as complete balance.  The Chariot (3,5) combining activity, victory with balance and self-control.  The Hanged Man (1,6) at the apex of the pyramid makes sense because I think this card represents the midpoint and beginning (1) and ending (6) coming together.   Temperance should be (1,5) for wisdom combined with balance, i.e., good judgement.  Fortitude should be (2,5) for passive balance, resistance rather than the activity represented by the Chariot.

The Devil, Death, and the Tower should all have 4, since these are all cards with a negative connotation, i.e., “terrestrial” cards, with terrestrial in a pejorative sense.  Death as (4,4) as given in the Air Hexactys makes sense because if 4 represents change, time, corruption, then Death is of all the cards, most representative of this archetype.  I’m not as sure about the Devil and the Tower, but these could be (2,4) and (3,4) respectively, with the Devil being passive corruption, sin (in a “Luciferian” sense, as Steiner would put it) and the Tower combining a dramatic change (with 3 as activity) and 4 as change but in a destructive, harmful sense.  The Hermit as (1,4) can also make sense, in particular if Opsopaus’s version of the Hermit as Time is correct, in either case representing either beginning in an earthly sense, caused by time or a lonely search for wisdom in the world.

I think Opsopaus is right that the World, Sun, Moon, Star, Judgement, and Hanged Man are all celestial cards, so they should all have a six somewhere.  (3,6) for Sun makes sense because this would be masculine/celestial.  (2,6) for Star gives contemplative/celestial.  (4,6) for Moon would mean the moon is bridge between earthly and celestial.  And, the idea of the sublunary realm, with the sphere of the moon being the lowest heaven, the boundary between nature and the Heavens makes sense for this correspondence. 

We can view Judgement and Wheel of Fortune as a pair.  Judgement representing is perfectly fair and final judgement, while the Wheel of Fortune is arbitrary and fickle.  Fortune metes out rewards and punishments on earth, while Judgement does in Heaven.  Then, Fortune should be (4,5) corresponding to Judgement as (5,6).

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My comments:

McCall's approach here is similar to what I did in my post on the Tarot-astrology correspondences worked out by the Golden Dawn, which resulted in reordering the Justice and Strength cards. Before considering the accepted (Marseille) ordering of the Arcana and how to align it with the accepted (Sepher Yetzirah) ordering of the planets, signs, and elements, I looked at each card and considered what astrological correspondences, if any, seemed to make sense for it, irrespective of traditional ordering schemata. I could then evaluate the Golden Dawn mappings against these "natural" correspondences. Dice-Tarot mappings like those given by McCall here, based on qualitative considerations without taking into account the order of the trumps or the ranking of rolls, could play a similar role vis-à-vis the various systems I have been examining, helping to choose among the four Hexactyses (and, for that matter, among the various historical orderings of the trumps, of which the now-standard Marseille sequence is just one; Opsopaus's original Fire and Water Hexactyses were in fact applied to a variant of the Ferrara sequence).

Regarding the specific mappings proposed by McCall, I am in broad agreement with him as to the basic symbolic meaning of 1, 2, 3, and 6. However, the traditional meaning of 4 is rest, stability, stasis -- quite far from McCall's "change, time, corruption." (Interestingly, despite our near-opposite understandings of 4, we are agreed that it is appropriately mapped to Death -- which can be seen either as the ultimate change or as final rest.) I also have trouble accepting 5 as "complete balance"; For an odd number to represent balance is, well, odd. Five more often represents disruption, breakdown, crisis -- but also creativity, novelty, transcendence. Basically, it's something completely different being added to the stable arrangement represented by 4 and shaking things up.

By the way, while McCall thinks the symbolism of 2 and 3 as feminine and masculine means that 3-3 "should be" the Emperor, but I find the Triumphal Chariot even more appropriate. The charioteer is just as much a man as the emperor is, and I find the achieved status of the conquering hero to be far more archetypically masculine than the ascribed status of a passive throne-sitter.

I'll probably revisit this idea later and consider what numerical associations seem, irrespective of "ordering" considerations, most natural and appropriate to me.

The root trumps of the Air Hexactys

In the previous post, I discuss the idea that each of the 21 Tarot trumps originally corresponded to a particular roll of two dice and look at four possible systems of trump-dice mappings. Since John Opsopaus has already discovered two of them and dubbed them the Fire Hexactys and the Water Hexactys, I have used the other two classical elements to give corresponding names to the remaining two systems. Here I want to look in more detail at the system that seems to me to be both the most natural one: the Air Hexactys -- illustrated below using the Jodorowsky-Camoin version of the classical Tarot de Marseille trumps.

In the diagram above, the cards are laid out in 11 columns corresponding to the 11 possible values of a roll of two dice (from 2 to 12). Where two or more rolls have the same value, they are ranked according to the higher of the two numbers rolled. (Thus, for example, in the third column, the roll 1-3 outranks 2-2 and is placed above it in the diagram.)

The cards in the bottom row of the diagram correspond to the six doubles, from "snake eyes" on the left to double sixes on the right. These six trumps, then, indicate the basic meaning or character to be associated with each of the six faces of the dice; and the 15 remaining trumps represent combinations of these six basic elements.

For any trump in the diagram, following the two diagonal paths down to the bottom row will lead us to the two "root trumps" whose meanings it combines. Take, for example, the 8th trump, called Justice, corresponding to the roll 2-4. Following the diagonal path down and to the left leads us to 2-2, the Empress; following the other diagonal down and to the right leads us to 4-4, the trump with no name ("Death"). Justice, corresponding to a roll that combines 2 and 4, should represent some combination of the symbols and ideas found on the Empress and Death cards -- and such proves to be the case. Like the Empress, Justice depicts a woman seated on a high-backed throne, the shape of which is suggestive of a pair of wings; unlike the Empress, though, this woman is armed with a sword -- a deadly weapon corresponding to the Grim Reaper's scythe. In fact, it turns out that all three of the trumps that depict deadly weapons (the other two being the Lover and the Wheel of Fortune) are arranged in a diagonal line leading to Death. Likewise, all the trumps featuring crowned males are connected to the Chariot.

Many other such connections are evident.

The Hermit card depicts an old man carrying a lantern, and the dice connect it to the Magician and the Moon. The hermit is a wizardly figure -- another type of "magician" -- and his lantern indicates that he is traveling by night. The only person who ever carried a lantern by day was Diogenes the Cynic, known as "the Dog." Either way, the Moon card, with its night scene featuring dogs, is indicated.

The Wheel of Fortune is connected to the Chariot and Death. A chariot of course has wheels, and the charioteer wears a crown like the sphinx on the wheel. The sphinx's sword matches the Reaper's scythe, and in a broader sense both the Wheel and Death represent the ultimate futility of everything, and how people rise only to fall in the end.

The Tower -- which depicts a tower being destroyed and people falling to their deaths -- connects to Death and the Moon. The Moon card features towers.

Strength (a woman controlling a wild animal) connects to the Empress (a woman in control) and the Moon (wild animals).

The Pope has a crown and scepter (ferula) like the charioteer, and the two monks in front of him are in the same positions as the charioteer's horses. Like the empress (but unlike the charioteer and the emperor), he holds his scepter in his left hand.

The Hanged Man occupies a special position, at the apex of the triangle, and is linked to its two other corners, the Magician and the World. He is dressed in motley, as is the magician. His legs are in the same position as those of the dancer of the World, and like her he is surrounded by a stylized representation of the zodiac.

The ease with which these and other connections jump out at me from the diagram, suggests that the Air Hexactys constitutes a meaningful arrangement of the trumps and will repay further contemplation.

Dice and the Tarot Trumps

In my post on the Magician, I mentioned that the number of cards in the Tarot deck (56 suit cards, 21 trumps, and the Fool) likely has something to do with dice, there being 56 possible rolls of three dice and 21 possible rolls of two. (This was drawn to my attention by John Opsopaus, who got it from Gertrude Moakley, according to whom it was first discovered by Maurice G. Kendall.) Although we can probably assume from the numbers that each card originally corresponded to a particular roll of the dice, no record of those correspondences exists, leaving them a matter of inference and guesswork.

Matching the Minor Arcana to dice rolls is complicated by the latter's being divided into four suits, with no obvious way of so dividing the 56 possible rolls of three six-sided dice. The Trumps are somewhat more straightforward, though, since they represent a simple sequence from 1 to 21. All that is required is to rank the 21 possible rolls of two dice from lowest to highest. These possible rolls can be represented schematically in a triangular arrangement, as below, and our task is to convert that triangle into a one-dimensional sequence. (Opsopaus calls this representation of the sixth triangular number a hexactys, by analogy with the Pythagorean tetractys.)

Obviously, "snake eyes" (two aces, 1-1) is the lowest possible roll, followed by 1-2, and these will correspond to trumps 1 and 2 (the Magician and Papess in the Marseille ordering), respectively; at the other end, the highest two trumps (the Judgment and the World) answer to 5-6 and 6-6.

Beyond that, though, several systems are possible. When two dice are rolled, there are three numbers to consider: the number of the higher die, the number of the lower die, and the total. For convenience, I will call these the High, the Low, and the Sum. The ranking of the rolls will depend on which of these three numbers takes precedence over which. Take the third trump, for instance. Should it be 2-2 or 1-3? Both rolls have a Sum of 4, but 1-3 has a higher High, and 2-2 has a higher Low. Logically, there are four possible rules we could follow:

1. Rank rolls according to the High. Among rolls with the same High, rank them according to the Low or the Sum. (The ranking will be the same either way.)
2. Rank rolls according to the Low. Among rolls with the same Low, rank them according to the High or the Sum. (The ranking will be the same either way.)
3. Rank rolls according to the Sum. Among rolls with the same Sum, rank them according to the High.
4. Rank rolls according to the Sum. Among rolls with the same Sum, rank them according to the Low.

Opsopaus considers only the first two systems, saying that they both have their merits and that he is unable to choose between them. He calls the first the Fire Hexactys because he represents it as an upright triangle (like the alchemical symbol for fire) with 1-1 at the top and the sixes at the bottom. The second is the Water Hexactys because he represents it as an inverted triangle (like the alchemical sign for water) with the aces at the top and 6-6 at the bottom. In keeping with the elemental theme, I have dubbed the third system the Air Hexactys (because, as I have diagrammed it, vertically higher rolls outrank lower ones) and the fourth, the Earth Hexactys (for the converse reason).

The diagram below gives the mappings for all four hexactyses. The numerals are the numbers of the Tarot trumps, while the dice rolls are represented by the color scheme introduced above (where red is 1, orange is 2, etc.)

How to decide which of the four systems is the best? I consider the Air Hexactys the most intuitively natural mapping. When rolling dice, it's natural to focus on the Sum first. We think "I rolled seven" first; distinguishing the various "seven" rolls (1-6, 2-5, 3-4) is secondary. I also think it's most natural to consider the High before the Low -- just as in poker, if two players both have Two Pair, we look at the value of each player's higher pair first to determine who wins.

Another thing to consider is that the bottom row of each diagram consists of "doubles," which will be rolled only half as frequently as the other rolls. It makes sense that these less-frequent trumps should be "special" in some way -- as the Magician (1-1) and World (6-6) obviously are. The unnamed 13th Arcanum ("Death") is another obviously special trump, and the Air Hexactys (uniquely) assigns it to a double, 4-4. Appropriately, 4 is the number of death in East Asian cultures, just as 13 is in the West.

Other possible considerations include the trump at the apex of the triangle (another "special" position), and which trumps are adjacent to which others in the diagram. We might also consider whether the six rolls including a given number have anything in common. I will look at these points in detail later, to see whether or not my initial preference for the Air Hexactys is confirmed.

Why Waite switched Justice and Strength

I was recently browsing in a second-hand bookstore and happened upon Seventy-eight Degrees of Wisdom, Part I: The Major Arcana -- a commentary on the symbolism of tarot cards by "Rachel" Pollack.

The book deals primarily with the popular Rider-Waite deck but makes frequent references to other versions of the tarot. One of Waite's major innovations (which was also followed by other Golden Dawn-influenced tarotists) was to make Strength the 8th card and Justice the 11th, reversing the traditional Marseilles numbering of those two trumps. Mr. Pollack devotes some space to a discussion of Waite's reasons for making the change, and of the relative merits of the two numbering systems -- but never mentions what I feel quite sure was Waite's real motive for switching Justice and Strength. Since it seems not many people know about this, I thought I might as well post on it.

*

One of the most basic assumptions most occultists make is that, given any two sufficiently interesting sets of the same cardinality, there must be a one-to-one correspondence between their respective members. There are four suits of tarot cards, for example, so these must correspond to the four classical elements, the four cardinal directions, the four seasons of the year, and any other interesting foursomes you care to think of. "Tables of correspondences" were a huge thing among Golden Dawn types.

Well, if the Fool card is lumped together with the 21 trumps, that makes a total of 22 "major arcana." Since there also happen to be 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet (and since that alphabet has been given great mystical significance by the Kabbalists), a one-to-one correspondence between the cards and the letters can be assumed.

Since there are not too many sets of 22, and since correspondences are the heart of the occult, the Kabbalists broke up their 22-letter alphabet into three smaller and more "significant" numbers: 3 + 7 + 12. Seven of the Hebrew letters are considered "doubles" because each has two sounds (aspirated and unaspirated); of the remaining 15, three (aleph, mem, and shin) are designated "mothers" for reasons which are not clear to me, and the remaining 12 are "singles."

An appendix to the Sepher Yetzirah lays out astrological correspondences for each of these subsets of the Hebrew alphabet. The three "mothers" correspond to the earth, made from water; the firmament or air; and the heavens, made from fire. (We think of "firmament" and "heavens" as synonyms now; in the past, the latter was a solid vault, and the former was the empty expanse between it and earth.) The seven astrological "planets" (i.e., those planets visible with the naked eye, excluding Earth, plus the Sun and the Moon) are assigned to the seven "doubles," though which is assigned to which seems arbitrary. Finally, the 12 "singles" are mapped in a straightforward way to the 12 signs of the zodiac: he, the first of the doubles, corresponds to Aries, the first sign of the zodiac; vau, the second double, is Taurus; and so on.

The Golden Dawn attempted to add the tarot trumps (plus the Fool) to this schema, assigning each card astrological correspondences by way of the Hebrew alphabet.

*

Before looking at the actual mappings decided on by the Golden Dawn, it might be instructive to look at the traditional Marseilles-style tarot trumps (on which Waite's were based) and see which astrological correspondences would make the most intuitive sense.

Major Arcana from the Jodorowsky-Camoin Tarot de Marseille

Starting with the seven astrological planets, obviously the Sun maps to the Sun, and the Moon to the Moon. Venus should be the Lovers, and Mars should be the Chariot (called "Victory" in older Italian decks). The Hermit was originally called the "Old Man" or "Time" and so of course maps to Saturn. Mercury, patron of tricksters and thieves, fits well with the Magician (clearly depicted here as a juggler or mountebank, not a genuine wizard; however, Hermes was later associated with "real" magic as well). The Emperor, with his throne and eagle, suggests Jupiter.

As for the twelve signs of the zodiac, only a few have obvious matches. The Star card clearly depicts Aquarius, the water bearer; and the Moon (if not mapped to, well, the Moon) is obviously Cancer. (The crayfish on the card doesn't look like a "crab" to us moderns but is consistent with traditional depictions of Cancer. Historically, it is probably intended to represent Cancer, which is ruled by the Moon.) Likewise, if the Sun were not the Sun, it would obviously be Gemini. The lion of Leo appears on the Strength card, and the scales of Libra on Justice. Although the traditional tarot Devil is not goat-like, tradition nevertheless associates the devil with that animal and thus with Capricorn. The Lovers card is already taken by Venus, but it also features an archer -- Sagittarius. The House of God could also be Sagittarius, since one of its oldest names is the "Arrow" (a reference to the lightning bolt). The remaining signs suggest no obvious mappings. Neither do the three "mothers," which are too vague and abstract to find any clear echoes in tarot symbolism.

*

So, what mappings did the Golden Dawn actually make? Well, the Hebrew letters had an established sequence, as did the tarot trumps (though there was some historical variation in the latter), so that didn't give them too much leeway. Aleph and the Magician map to the number 1, beth and the Papess to 2, etc., giving the following correspondences:

• 1. Magician = Aleph = Firmament / Air
• 2. Papess = Beth = Moon
• 3. Empress = Gimel = Mars
• 4. Emperor = Daleth = Sun
• 5. Pope = He = Aries
• 6. Lovers = Vau = Taurus
• 7. Chariot = Zayin = Gemini
• 8. Justice = Heth = Cancer
• 9. Hermit = Teth = Leo
• 10. Wheel of Fortune = Yodh = Virgo
• 11. Strength = Kaph = Venus
• 12. Hanged Man = Lamedh = Libra
• 13. Death = Mem = Earth / Water
• 14. Temperance = Nun = Scorpio
• 15. Devil = Samekh = Sagittarius
• 16. House of God = Ayin = Capricorn
• 17. Star = Pe = Mercury
• 18. Moon = Tsade = Aquarius
• 19. Sun = Qoph = Pisces
• 20. Judgment = Resh = Saturn
• 21. World = Shin = Heavens / Fire
• 0. Fool = Tau = Jupiter

As you can see, this schema doesn't work very well. It features none of the intuitive matches discussed in the previous section, though a handful of the mappings -- shown in bold above -- do at least make some kind of sense. The Sun has always been associated with kingship and so matches the Emperor. The Pope, with his shepherd's staff, makes sense as the ram -- the leader of a flock of sheep. The Taurus-Lovers match is a bit of a stretch, but at least Taurus is ruled by the planet Venus. Probably the most satisfying aspect of this admittedly unsatisfying schema is that the three "mothers" map to three obviously "special" trumps -- the Magician, Death, and the World.

Overall, though, the above schema was not accepted by the Golden Dawn. Instead they opted to jettison the strongest Tarot-Kabbalah link -- namely numerology -- and to associate the first trump with the second letter, the second trump with the third letter, and so on, as follows:

• 0. Fool = Aleph = Firmament / Air
• 1. Magician = Beth = Moon
• 2. Papess (renamed "High Priestess") = Gimel = Mars
• 3. Empress = Daleth = Sun
• 4. Emperor = He = Aries
• 5. Pope (renamed "Hierophant") = Vau = Taurus
• 6. Lovers = Zayin = Gemini
• 7. Chariot = Heth = Cancer
• 8. Justice = Teth = Leo
• 9. Hermit = Yodh = Virgo
• 10. Wheel of Fortune = Kaph = Venus
• 11. Strength = Lamedh = Libra
• 12. Hanged Man = Mem = Earth / Water
• 13. Death = Nun = Scorpio
• 14. Temperance = Samekh = Sagittarius
• 15. Devil = Ayin = Capricorn*
• 16. House of God (renamed "Tower") = Pe = Mercury
• 17. Star = Tsade = Aquarius*
• 18. Moon = Qoph = Pisces
• 19. Sun = Resh = Saturn
• 20. Judgment = Shin = Heavens / Fire
• 21. World = Tau = Jupiter

This yields somewhat better matches. Two of the trumps -- the Devil and the Star -- even have the intuitive matches we discussed, and the others in bold above are at least somewhat intelligible. The nothing-card of the Fool (not even a proper trump) makes sense as aleph and air. The Moon, as Hecate, is patroness of sorcery. Scorpio, the most sinister sign, fits well with Death. The angel of Judgment comes from the heavens. (One might also consider Pope-Taurus a hit, if the pun on "papal bull" counts for anything.)

Notice that not a single one of the "doubles," with the possible exception of Magician-Moon, is a good fit. But fortunately, as I mentioned above, the order of the seven planets as given in the Sepher Yetzirah seems entirely arbitrary, and so can be safely modified without doing any obvious violence to the system. The Golden Dawn reordered the planets as follows:

• 1. Magician = Beth = Moon Mercury
• 2. Papess (renamed "High Priestess") = Gimel = Mars Moon
• 3. Empress = Daleth = Sun Venus
• 10. Wheel of Fortune = Kaph = Venus Jupiter
• 16. House of God (renamed "Tower") = Pe = Mercury Mars
• 19. Sun = Resh = Saturn Sun
• 21. World = Tau = Jupiter Saturn

Virtually all of these mappings are defensible. The Magician is Mercury -- i.e. Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus. The two female figures are mapped to the two female planets -- the virginal Papess to Diana, and the married Empress to Venus. The House of God, depicting a lightning bolt, might more appropriately have been mapped to Jupiter, but Mars works as well because of the martial connotations of a tower. The Sun of course is the Sun. The Jupiter and Saturn mappings are not exactly obvious, but neither do they seem obviously wrong.

With the above changes made, all the "mothers" and "doubles" are acceptable. That leaves the "singles" -- the 12 signs of the zodiac. These unfortunately have a well-established non-arbitrary order and cannot be rearranged at will as the planets were. The order of the trumps themselves is slightly more flexible, though; the Marseilles ordering, though standard now (or before Waite, anyway), is only one of several ordering schemes which were used in the early days of  tarot. The order of the cards representing the cardinal virtues of Fortitude (Strength), Temperance, and Justice was particularly variable; the earliest known ordering (given in Sermones de ludo cum aliis), has Temperance as VI, Fortitude as IX, and Justice as XX, which is entirely different from the Marseilles sequence. Therefore, when Waite decided to switch Strength and Justice so that the Lion and Scales would map to their corresponding zodiac signs, he was not entirely without precedent.

It would have been nice if the Moon could somehow have been mapped to Cancer, which the card so explicitly illustrates, but breaking up the established sequence of Star, Moon, Sun -- which is invariable in all known historical orderings of the cards -- would have represented a much more serious and disruptive break with tradition. Also, the Pisces-Chariot mapping which would result from such a change has no obvious merits. Therefore, Waite made no changes other than swapping Justice and Strength.

*

Having come up with this reasonably-good mapping, Waite reinforced it by tweaking the iconography of the tarot to illustrate the new correspondences.

Major Arcana from the Rider-Waite deck

Notice in particular the following changes:

• The "High Priestess" (Papess) is now depicted as Isis, with a lunar headdress, and with the Moon under her feet.
• The Empress's shield, which formerly bore the imperial eagle, is now (it pains me to say) heart-shaped and bears the astrological sign for Venus.
• The Emperor has also lost his eagle and now sits on a throne decorated with rams' heads (for Aries). (Surprisingly, the Marseilles tradition of having the Emperor's body form the alchemical sign for Sulfur has also been abandoned. Junking such a neat "correspondence" seems out of character for Waite and the GD.)
• The Lovers has been totally redone. Instead of one man choosing between two women, it now shows Adam and Eve -- a twosome suggesting Gemini.
• Temperance now features iris flowers -- suggesting the rainbow goddess Iris and thus Sagittarius.
• The Devil is now portrayed as more goat-like, so as to suggest Capricorn.
• The Gemini imagery has been removed from the Sun card. (Oddly, no corresponding change was made to Moon card, which still shouts "Cancer!" despite officially representing Pisces.)

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All in all, I can think of very little good to say about Waite's innovations, nearly all of which stem from this ham-handed attempt to force "correspondences" between two systems that were never meant to correspond, rather than from the internal logic of the tarot. If he really wanted a deck of cards depicting astrological concepts, he could have just made one, instead of messing up the tarot in this ultimately unsuccessful attempt to turn it into an astrological cipher. (His even more innovative handling of the pip cards is likewise a disappointment, but that is perhaps a subject for another post.)