Between a dog and a wolf

In all Marseille-style decks of which I am aware, the Moon card feature two dogs or jackals: a light blue one on the left, and a pink or buff one on the right. (See "The red and blue jackals.") Aside from the color and a slight difference in size (with the larger, blue dog perhaps corresponding to Sirius in Canis Major), the two animals are the same.

This color scheme, universal among Marseille decks, was jettisoned by the early Marseille-influenced esoteric Tarots, beginning with Oswald Wirth's 1889 deck. Wirth's canines are black and white rather than red and blue, but they still both appear to be dogs.

The 1909 Rider-Waite deck uses yet another color scheme, but also introduces more significant differences between the two animals. One has the floppy ears of a domestic dog, while the other has the erect ears and bushy tail of a wolf. Waite confirms this in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, writing, "The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that place of exit, when there is only reflected light to guide it."

This dog and wolf theme is also used -- and rather more competently executed artistically -- in the 1929 Knapp-Hall deck. One animal is clearly a wolf, while the other is a domestic dog complete with a collar.

Mary K. Greer connects this dog-and-wolf theme with the French idiom entre chien et loup, meaning "at twilight." This is an expression of Latin origin (inter canem et lupum) -- with twilight being thought of as "between" the domain of the diurnal dog and that of the nocturnal wolf, or perhaps between the time when people put out their dogs to keep watch and the time the wolves begin to come out. French etymology dictionaries, though, give a different explanation: that it refers to the dim light in which it is difficult to distinguish a dog from a wolf ("l'heure où la lumière décline car on confond alors facilement entre chien et loup"), and it is apparently in this sense that most modern Francophones understand the idiom. (Inter canem et lupum is also sometimes used in the sense of "between a rock and a hard place," but the obvious contrast between man's best friend and his deadly enemy makes it hard to see this as anything but an ignorant corruption.)

Anyway, this Latin and French idiom never made it into English, so it is curious that the French and French-Swiss decks have two dogs, while the English and American decks introduce the entre chien et loup imagery. However, there are precursors in the French literature (with which Waite, having translated much of it, was quite familiar). Wirth's Le tarot des imagiers du moyen-âge (1927) describes the two animals as "the big black dog" and "the little white dog," with no hint that either of them might be a wolf. However, when the opening paragraph of his description of the Moon card is read with the idiom in mind, it is hard to deny its relevance.

In order to display the splendours of the sky, the Night plunges the earth into darkness, for the things above are not revealed to our sight except to the detriment of those below. However we aspire to relate the celestial to the terrestrial by a simultaneous contemplation, which is made possible when the Moon spreads her pale light. The body which is close to the stars without subduing their brightness completely, only half lights up the objects bathed in her uncertain and borrowed light. The Moon does not allow us to distinguish colours; everything her rays strike upon she tinges with a silvery grey or with vague bluish shades, leaving the opaque darkness of the shadows of night to continue.

Papus did not produce a deck of his own. In his Le Tarot des Bohémiens (1889), the section on each trump has two illustration: the 1889 Wirth card and the traditional Tarot de Marseille. Although both of these show two dogs, Papus refers in his commentary to a dog and a wolf.

In the middle, a dog and a wolf howl at the moon, a crayfish comes out of the water and crawls in the midst of these animals. The entry of the Spirit into Matter is a fall all the greater as everything conspires to increase it. The "servile spirits" (dog), the "ferocious larvae" (wolf) and the "crawling elementals" (crayfish) are there who watch for the fall of the soul into matter to try to oppress it even more.

Wirth hints at the idiomatic meaning of entre chien et loup but identifies both animals as dogs. Papus identifies them as a dog and a wolf, despite using cards that portray them both as dogs, and yet his commentary on the card says nothing about twilight of the difficulty of distinguishing things in half-light.

One suspects that the "missing link," or rather the "common ancestor," is Wirth's first Tarot book, Le Livre de Thot comprenant les 22 arcanes du Tarot (1889), but unfortunately I have not yet been able to track down a copy to check. My hypothesis is that this earlier book explicitly refers to the dog and the wolf; that his later book, with its emphasis on astrology, dropped the wolf references in favor of Canes Major and Minor; but that traces of the author's earlier emphasis remain in the introductory paragraph. If I ever do manage to get my hands on Le Livre de Thot, it will be interesting to see if this speculative reconstruction is borne out.

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.

Alchemical birds in the Tarot

There are several symbolic sets or schemata which the Tarot incorporates into its imagery, but incompletely. For example, a few of the signs of the zodiac are clearly alluded to, but only a few. There are trumps for three of the four classical virtues -- Justice, Fortitude (so in Italian; Force in French and Strength in English), and Temperance -- but none for Prudence. The three virtues are even regularly spaced -- 8, 11, 14 -- so that we would expect Prudence to be either 5 or 17, but neither fits the bill. (Those who insist that there must be a Prudence trump generally press the Hermit into service, breaking the pattern.)

"The Birds in Alchemy," a 1979 Hermetic Journal article by Adam McLean, discusses a sequence of five symbolic birds "which occurs in various sources: Black Crow - White Swan - Peacock - Pelican - Phoenix." I find that, like the set of four virtues, this sequence is implicitly present in the Tarot, and in a clear numerical pattern, but only incompletely so.

Trump 19 is the Sun. See "Red crows of the Sun" for a discussion of the Solar Crow and its links to the Tarot.

Trump 20 is the Judgment. As discussed in "The dragon and the subterranean swan," Oswald Wirth (and, independently, my sister Kat) associated the swan with this trump.

Trump 21 is the World. "The Throne and the World" details how this image ultimately derives from biblical visions of creatures that are "full of eyes" like Argus, or like the peacock into which Argus was transformed.

All the links are indirect and implicit -- no crows, swans, or peacocks are actually shown on the cards -- but they are non-arbitrary, and the sequence is exactly right. The Pelican and the Phoenix ought to come next, but of course there are no more trumps after 21.

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.

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.

⁂

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.

The banner of judgment

I've put together this little historical survey of the banner on the trumpet on the Judgment card of the Tarot.

What surprises me is how consistent the color scheme has been over the years, especially given how much color schemes tend to vary from deck to deck. The gold-on-gold cross is seen in the very earliest extant Tarot and remained almost invariable until the end of the 19th century.

This is particularly surprising considering how heraldically bizarre the standard color scheme -- a cross tenné on a field or -- is. Most decks in the larger Marseille tradition used an eight-color palette: black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, gray, and tan. It is very strange that tan -- a color never really used on flags, and associated in heraldry with a "stain" on ones honor -- should have been chosen for the angel's banner.

In 1889, Oswald Wirth broke with tradition and made the angel's banner resemble that of his native Switzerland, and this is perhaps what inspired A. E. Waite to use the colors of England on his own card 20 years later. It is interesting that in his 1927 deck, Wirth made a partial return to tradition, keeping the red field but putting the original flag, like St. Patrick's in the Union Jack, inside the cross itself.

Pre-Tarot iconography associates the Last Trump with no particular flag, and I would have expected this banner to be one of the most variable elements of the Tarot, since it would be so easy to modify the flag to make a political or patriotic statement (as Wirth and Waite appear to have done) or to honor one's aristocratic patrons. Instead, we see this remarkable insistence on a tan-on-gold color scheme corresponding (so far as I have been able to discover) to no flag or arms in the real world.

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.

Writing the Book of Thoth

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams

-- Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Ode

Let's step back and return to the earliest -- and, in some ways, the most mysterious -- Magician card: the one painted by Bonifacio Bembo c. 1450 for the Visconti-Sforza family.

As I have discussed elsewhere, Dr. Michael Pearce has demonstrated -- conclusively, in my judgment -- that this is a picture of a writer, not a conjurer. His "magic wand" is actually a reed pen; nibs are clearly visible at both ends, and he holds it as if he were writing with it. The knife is a pen knife for cutting nibs, and the cup is an inkwell. The white blob he is reaching for is a sponge, used for wiping away ink.

This interpretation raises some obvious questions, though:

• What are those two round things? (Pearce says, unconvincingly, they are additional receptacles for ink.)
• Why is there no ink on the pen or in any of the three purported inkwells?
• Why, given that he seems to be in the act of writing, is there no paper for him to write on?

Would it be going too far off the deep end to suggest that

• the ink is gold,
• he's writing -- or rather drawing -- directly on the table, and
• the two round things aren't solid objects at all but have been drawn on the table?

Take a closer look at the pen and the objects near it on the table.

First, look at the pen -- for that is clearly what it is. Notice that the main shaft is painted in two colors: lighter gold along the northwest edge, and darker along the southeast. The nib, though, is entirely the darker-gold color, as if it had been dipped in gold ink.

Now note that the two round objects, and the cup, are not painted as solid objects but as line drawings done in dark gold ink. The color between the lines is simply the background color of the table. This sort of thing is common enough in the Tarot de Marseille, which uses a limited palette of (usually) eight colors, but this is a hand-painted card. Every other solid object is painted in hues and gradations to suggest solidity. Notice how the tabletop itself shades from off-white on the left to yellow on the right, for example. But the interior of the cup is off-white where the table is off-white, yellow where the table is yellow; not a hint of shading has been added to suggest a three-dimensional object, and the same is true of the round things.

We are viewing the table from an angle, and the round things are drawn accordingly -- as circles lying flat on the table and seen from an angle. The cup, though is vertical from our point of view, even though "vertical" on the table should actually be an angle of 36 rather than 90 degrees. (Yes, the Visconti-Sforza Magician card incorporates the geometry of a pentagram.) Of course the Magician could in theory have deliberately drawn it that way, so that it would look vertical from out perspective -- like one of those trompe l'oeil trick-perspective paintings people like to take selfies with.

Or are the things the Magician draws, after the manner of Escher's Reptiles or Drawing Hands, actually transforming into three-dimensional objects? The coins (or whatever they are) are still just drawings, the knife and sponge are solid, and the cup is in between. The implied fact that the ink he is drawing with comes from the cup he has drawn adds another, even more Escherian, layer of paradox.

M. C. Escher, Reptiles (1943)

M. C. Escher, Drawing Hands (1948)

Am I really proposing that Bonifacio Bembo -- to all appearances a creator of straightforward representational art -- had some mind-bending postmodern paradox in mind when he painted this card? Well, probably not, though I wouldn't rule it out. Keep in mind that these cards were commissioned, and that they may reflect his patron's thinking more than his own, just as the cards created by Pamela Colman-Smith reflect the mystical philosophy of A. E. Waite. But are we to believe that anyone in the 15th-century was an Escherian avant la lettre? Well, I wouldn't go that far, but perhaps it should not be all that surprising to see something paradoxical and seemingly impossible on the Magician's table. The seemingly impossible is what magicians do; that's what magic is.

Was the Visconti-Sforza "Magician" a magician all along, then, and not (just) a writer who was misinterpreted as such by later generations of carmakers? I don't know the answer to that. He does not closely resemble typical depictions of conjurers. Cups and balls were a standard part of such depictions -- the 15th-century equivalent of a top hat with a rabbit in it -- but I know of no non-Tarot depictions of a conjurer with a knife and a sponge. His equipage is, with the exception of the two coins, that of a writer.

A typical conjurer, from the Tübinger Hausbuch

But if he's a writer, he's certainly an extremely strange one, since he has no book or paper but is writing directly on the table! No, not writing -- drawing. Once it's been pointed out, it's impossible to un-see the fact that he is drawing coins (or some other round objects) on the table; he's drawn two already and is preparing to draw a third. What on earth can that mean?

At this point I think we have to give up trying to guess what Bembo intended and instead look at the picture on its own terms, keeping in mind that even coincidences and mistakes can be inspired, and not shying away from anachronism.

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Although this was not made explicit until Oswald Wirth's "esoteric" redesign of the Trumps at the end of the 19th century, it is hard not to notice that the Magician's objects -- in both the Tarot de Marseille and the Visconti-Sforza -- appear to allude to the four suits of the Minor Arcana. There are coins, a cup or cups, a knife (suggesting the suit of Swords), and of course the Magician's magic wand.

This means that the Magician's table symbolically represents the Tarot itself. Notice that while conjurers are typically depicted at tables that are round (as in the Tübinger Hausbuch) or square (as in the Bosch painting), Bembo's Magician sits at a rectangular table approximately twice as long as it is wide -- the same dimensions as a Visconti-Sforza Tarot card. The table is gold, reflecting the gilded background of Bembo's trumps and court cards. The Magician, drawing the suit symbols on this golden card-shaped table, is creating the Tarot.

Recall that Oswald Wirth was the first to create a Tarot that explicitly featured a sword, a chalice, and the other suit symbols on the Magician's table. By one of those strange coincidences, Wirth's book Le Tarot des imagiers du Moyen Âge (properly The Tarot of the Medieval Image-makers) was mistranslated into English -- possibly through confusion of the French des imagiers with the German des Magiers -- as The Tarot of the Magicians. Thus, through some strange mistake or stranger paraphrase (Wirth's book has nothing to do with magic), were the image-makers who created the tarot dubbed magicians.

But the Magician of the Visconti-Sforza tarot, imagier though he may be, seems to have the equipment of a writer rather than an artist.  In particular, instead of an artist's paintbrush he has what is very clearly a reed pen -- a very long reed pen, much longer than the ones that were actually in use in the Middle Ages. What it most closely resembles, in fact, is the long reed pen used by the Egyptian god Thoth.

Thoth writing with a reed pen (Tomb of the Nobles, Thebes)

The Magician looks as if he ought to be writing a book, not drawing pictures -- but wait, hasn't the Tarot been called the Book of Thoth? People today probably associate that phrase with Aleister Crowley, but it actually dates back to Antoine Court de Gébelin -- and was prominently used by none other than Oswald Wirth, whose first Tarot book, predating Le Tarot des imagiers du Moyen Âge by 38 years, was called Le Livre de Thot comprenant les 22 arcanes du Tarot.

(As an additional coincidence, note that Thoth in the picture above, and in many other such pictures, has two circles on his writing tablet -- precisely what Bembo's Magician has drawn on his table.)

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The key to the Visconti-Sforza Magician card -- regardless of what Bembo or his patrons may or may not have consciously intended -- is that the objects the Magician is using represent, simultaneously, the tools of the writer who is creating the Tarot, and the Tarot itself -- Escher's Drawing Hands again. The pen is both a pen and the suit of Wands; the knife is both a pen knife and the suit of Swords; the cup is both an inkwell and the suit of Cups. The sponge, aside from its role as a writer's tool, represents the Tarot's capacity to absorb everything, to incorporate as many diverse influences as you care to think of into its symbolism. And what of the two circles, which have no obvious role as writing tools? They are not tools, but symbolize the result of the Magician's work: gold coins. Hermes Thrice Great is, after all, a bit of an alchemist.

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I am a Mormon by upbringing and inclination, and it is perhaps inevitable that this implied metaphor of using the Tarot to create the Tarot -- together with the image of writing with an Egyptian pen on a golden tablet -- brought to mind this passage from the Book of Mormon:

And upon these [golden plates] I write the things of my soul, and many of the scriptures which are engraven upon the plates of brass. For my soul delighteth in the scriptures, and my heart pondereth them, and writeth them for the learning and the profit of my children (2 Nephi 4:15).

When Nephi says that his heart writes the scriptures, he is probably referring to the fact that he is copying down on his own plates some of the things written on the plates of brass -- which latter plates contained Egyptian translations of parts of the Hebrew Bible. But an additional meaning, whether intended by Nephi or not, is that the "things of his soul" he is writing will themselves come to be considered scripture in their own right. He "pondereth them, and writeth them," and the two activities cannot in the end be entirely separated.

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Let this, then, serve as the first post for this new blog, to be called -- for reasons I trust the post itself has made clear -- The Magician's Table. (I eventually plan to copy my old Tarot-related posts from other blogs here, but that's boring, and you know how I am about boring things! In other words, don't hold your breath. In the meantime, see here.)

What's on the Magician's table?

1. The traditional Marseille layout

Tarot de Marseille decks stick very closely to the following layout for the Bateleur's table.

Based on Wilfried Houdouin's 2017 deck; color coding is my own

The details of each element below are taken from the Historical Tarots Gallery at the Tarot of Marseilles Heritage website. Upper row, from left to right: Pierre Madenié (1709), François Héri (1718), François Chosson (1736), Jean-Baptiste Madenié (1739), François Tourcaty (1745), and Rochus Schär (1750). Lower row: Claude Burdel (1751), Nicolas Conver (1760), Jacques Rochias (1782), Arnoux & Amphoux (1793), Suzanne Bernardin (1839), and Lequart (1890).

A: A cup with a round top, vertical sides, and a square bottom. There is very little variation in the shape. The main body of the cup is consistently yellow, and the mouth is most often red but sometimes other colors.

B: Another cup, with a different shape, wider at the top than at the bottom. It looks as if it may have a lid covering it. The color scheme is fairly consistent: yellow cup with a red mouth or lid.

C: It is not clear whether this object should be classified with the cups (A and B) or with the little round objects (D, E, and F). It is much smaller than the two cups but considerably larger than the little round things. While its basic shape is that of a circle divided into two parts, the concave curve of the dividing line suggests a very small, shallow cup, bowl, or dish. This object is most often the same color as the tabletop.

D: Three circular objects with the central one overlapping the one on the lower right (and sometimes the one on the left as well). So slavishly is this arrangement copied from deck to deck that when we see one with only two circles on this part of the table, it seems positively revolutionary! The objects are generally the color of the table. To me the layout suggests flat coins or discs rather than spherical objects. If they were balls, the lower right one (being in the foreground) would overlap the central one rather than vice versa. (On the other hand, the flat bottoms of cups A and B suggest an artist with little understanding of such things.) 

E: This element ranges from two circles side by side, to two overlapping circles, to a divided circle similar to C. The color is generally the same as the tabletop. The uncertainty as to whether this is one object or two suggests that the shapes were being copied blindly by cardmakers who did not know what they represented. My best guess is that the "original" form was a smaller circle in the northeast overlapping a larger one in the southwest, and that this was sometimes misunderstood as a single object due to the influence of the C object. As with the D objects, the direction of the overlap suggests flat rather than spherical objects.

F: Two more round items, vertically arranged. In most cases, they are touching so as to form a figure like an Arabic numeral 8, but in some decks there is a gap between them. Like the other round objects, they are generally the same color as the tabletop, but sometimes one of them is red.

G: A curved knife and its sheath, both generally the color of the table. The shape and orientation is consistent across decks. In one case the sheath has been transformed into a second knife. The knife has a very distinctive shape -- almost like a miniature scimitar with no cross-guard -- that makes me wonder what its purpose is. It certainly doesn't look much like a typical medieval pen knife, hunting knife, or dagger. The handle also seems much too small for the magician's hands, but perhaps that indicates nothing more than poor draftsmanship.

H: A bag, consistently light blue with a yellow mouth and strap. There are between one and three little round things at the mouth of the bag, which presumably represent some sort of latching mechanism. The bag is decorated with a tassel or something of that nature at the lower left corner. Sometimes one end of the strap appears to go behind the table rather than connecting to the bag.

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2. Marseille variants, new and old

We have been looking at some of the oldest and most traditional Marseille decks, mostly from the 18th century, but in modern times the most influential Tarot de Marseille by far has been the 1930 Grimaud deck designed by Paul Marteau. Marteau claimed to be restoring the Nicolas Conver deck (the canonical Tarot de Marseille) but in fact introduced many innovations. Most of these are changes in the color scheme, but some are more substantial. Here is what Marteau's Bateleur has on his table:

If we ignore the colors, this is in line with Conver and the other decks we have examined, with one exception: The F element, realized as two circles in every historical deck we have looked at, has become a pair of dice.

A more recent "restored" Tarot de Marseille, also claiming the mantle of Nicolas Conver, features dice as well. This is the Jodorowsky-Camoin deck of 1997.

Note that Jodorowsky and Camoin have added a third die between the knife and its sheath, and also that the sheath has been given a fantastic new shape in defiance of tradition.

Whence these dice? As far as I am aware, there is only one early deck that unambiguously features dice, but it is one of the earliest: Jean Noblet's deck of c. 1650. Noblet's Tarot is generally very close to the Tarot de Marseille in its iconography, but not so close as to be considered a full member of that tradition. Here is his Bateleur's table:

Notice that Noblet's C element -- realized in the standard Tarot de Marseille as a circle divided into two parts -- appears here as a third and smaller cup. This suggests that what was originally a small cup was distorted over time, by a process of repeated copying without understanding, into the indistinct round object that later became standard.

Isn't it highly probably that some of the other round things on the table in the traditional Tarot de Marseille are also distortions of what were originally distinct objects? Isn't it more likely that indistinctly printed dice would degenerate into circles than that circles would be misinterpreted as dice? Marteau, Jodorowsky, and Camoin seem to have thought so. Noblet has three horizontally arranged dice where the standard Tarot de Marseille has two vertically arranged circles (the F element). Marteau apparently split the difference, keeping just two elements vertically arranged but changing them to dice. Jodorowsky and Camoin put two dice in the same position as Marteau's and add a third between the knife and the sheath, as in Noblet.

Note also that Noblet's D element -- three circles -- is somewhat different. Rather than overlapping, the three circles are more spread out but are connected by two lines. It is not at all clear what sort of object this is intended to represent. The E element -- either two circles or a single divided circle -- is absent.

Also dating to around 1650 is Jacques Viéville's card. The detail below is shown in mirror image in order to facilitate comparison with the TdM.

Here, A is a square cup, B is a round one, and C is apparently a shallow bowl or dish. D is a single round object rather than three, and E is a sort of lozenge divided horizontally into two triangles. Where the F element would be (two circles in TdM, dice in Noblet), we have two rectangular objects, a large one divided in thirds, and a smaller one not so divided. What objects were intended by these abstract geometric shapes is anyone's guess. Despite the early date for this card, it had apparently already been through several generations of ignorant miscopying.

The lozenge shape in Viéville is perhaps historically related to the diagonal lines connecting the circles in Noblet.

A few other not-quite-standard representatives of the greater Marseille tradition also deserve our attention. The 1780 deck of Ignaz Krebs follows Noblet in some ways.

As in Noblet, the D element appears as three non-overlapping circles, and the E element is absent. Instead of Noblet's dice, though, we have between the knife and the sheath a single rectangle with six pip-marks on it. To me this is further confirmation that the "original" design featured dice, since one could imagine dice being incorrectly copied either as circles (as in the mainstream TdM) or as the domino-like object in Krebs.

Jean-Pierre Payen's 1713 deck (a TdM "Type I" deck, as opposed to the mainstream "Type II") has a fairly standard Bateleur (or, rather, "Branchus," that being the anomalous title given to this card) but is interesting because its D element (three round objects) looks more unambiguously like coins rather than balls.

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3. Magician's tables before the Tarot de Marseille

The earliest surviving Tarot cards are the Visconti-Sforza cards painted by Bonifacio Bembo. Bembo's magician has objects on his table similar to those in the TdM but not the same. There is a cup (only one), a knife (but no sheath), and two small round objects of uncertain identity.

The large white object which takes the place of the TdM Bateleur's bag has been variously interpreted, but, as I have explained elsewhere, I find Michael Pearce's case that it is a sea sponge to be completely convincing. Dr. Pearce found several pictures by Bembo depicting holy relics, among them the sponge on a stalk of hyssop which was used to give vinegar to the Crucified, and the sponge very closely resemble's the Magician's white object.

Three sponges (on hyssop stalks) by Bonifacio Bembo

This crucial discovery allows Pearce to reveal the true identity of Bembo's "magician": He is a scribe or writer. His "wand" is actually a reed pen (he holds it like a pen, and nibs are visible if you look closely), the knife is a pen knife, and the cup and other yellow objects are receptacles for ink. Sponges were used in the past for erasing and for cleaning pens; in support of this, Pearce shows an illustration from a 15th-century Decameron which depicts a writer with pen, pen knife, inkwell, and sponge.

The Cary sheet (c. 1550), a sheet of uncut Tarot cards from Milan, shows a broadly Marseille-like assortment of objects on the Magician's table, but the image is too unclear for them to be identified with any confidence. There are two long objects that may be a knife and a sheath, a total of six roundish things, and two cups on the table, with a third in the Magician's right hand. This syncs up pretty well with the Noblet card, which also has three cups, a knife and a sheath, and a total of six small objects (three dice and three round things).

While it is not a Tarot card, Hieronymus Bosch's 1502 painting The Conjurer should also be mentioned here, chiefly because of its similarity to the Cary sheet.

Bosch's Conjurer and the Cary sheet Magician wear similar headgear, and the Cary sheet may even show some sort of bag or basket dangling from the Magician's waist or wrist. In both depictions, the cups on the table are apparently inverted, narrow end up. Finally, and to me most evocatively, the roughly egg-shaped object at the northeast end of the table on the Cary sheet closely resembles the little frog at the west end of Bosch's table. (A second frog is emerging from the mouth of one of the spectators.)

See this post for more on echoes of Bosch in the Tarot.

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4. Wirth and Waite

No overview of the Magician's table would be complete without mentioning the modern, post-Marseille standard, which I believe originated with Oswald Wirth. Although I find it a bit gauche and uninteresting, I feel I ought to give it a few lines.

It's a pretty obvious move to associate the Magician's objects with the four suits of the Tarot. The Magician holds a wand, and on his table are cups, a knife suggesting the suit of Swords, and round objects that might be coins. Oswald Wirth made this explicit.

All the clutter has been eliminated, and there are now only three objects on the table: a cup (not the simple cups of the TdM Bateleur, but a chalice or goblet as in the suit of Cups), a full-size sword, and a giant "coin" the size of a Frisbee (clearly a symbolic representation of the suit of Coins, not an actual piece of currency). The wand in the Magician's hand has been enlarged considerably, too, making it more like the cudgels and scepters in the suit of Bastons than like an actual magician's wand.

A. E. Waite, in his hugely influential Rider-Waite deck, takes Wirth's idea a step further. Apparently wanting to include a large "wand" suggestive of the suit, but without making his Magician look like a baton-twirling drum major, he put two wands on his card: a small one in the Magician's hand, and a large cudgel on the table. (The giant coin is now a "pentacle," that being Waite's take on this suit.)

Waite lived before subways were common.

All in all, I greatly prefer the traditional Bateleur's evocative hodgepodge of gewgaws to the cut-and-dried symbolism of Wirth and Waite.