The pip cards in the traditional Tarot of Marseille mostly depict a repetition of the traditional Italian suit symbols: coins, cups, swords, and staffs, with some decorative details, like flowers and vines, to fill in the spaces. These decks were primarily designed for playing card games. In 1909, when Pamela Colman Smith redesigned the deck to express occult philosophy and to be used primarily for divination, she modified the symbols to look like magical tools: pentacles, cups, swords, and wands, and added allegorical scenes to the pips, in which the figures interact with the suit symbols––scenes that were meant to provide a divinatory meaning. When I first became aware of the Tarot in the 1960s it was the common opinion that Waite and Smith were the source of this innovation; and that this unique innovation is what made the Waite Smith Tarot user-friendly and popular with Tarot readers.

The Three of Swords: the Tarot of Marseille, The Waite Smith Tarot, and the Sola Busca

While reading Kaplan’s Encyclopedia of Tarot, many years ago, I discovered that Smith’s pip designs were heavily influenced by The Sola Busca Tarot, a 15^th century Italian deck that made use of the same technique on the pips. This is especially obvious when we compare the three of swords from both decks. It is not clear, however, that the scenes on the Sola Busca pips were designed for divination.

My continued study of divination with cards has led me to explore decks in the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and the National Library in Paris, and to follow the discoveries and revelations of the community of scholars studying the history of cards. What I have learned is that before the modern association of the Tarot with divination ordinary playing cards were more commonly employed for this purpose. And as the pips in the minor suits in the Tarot are based on these playing card decks; the pip cards must have had divinatory meanings associated with them from an early date. 

In the late 1700s, decks of oracle cards were created that consisted of a set of meaningful images with a small rendering of a traditional playing card included at the top of the card. The most famous of these decks is the Lenormand, which is based on the Game of Hope, published in Nuremberg in 1799. It seems that these were the first decks designed primarily for divination, and they had imagery associated with the pips. But I am starting to see that decks with meaningful imagery on the pip cards may have an even older history.

Game of Hope Cards, 1799

The latest evidence indicates that the series of twenty-one trumps that are found in the Tarot of Marseille originated in Florence in the first half of the 15^th century. In fact, the oldest mention of the term trionfi, the original name of the deck, is found in an account written in Florence in 1440. By the end of the century, the name of the deck in most of Italy changed from carte da trionfi in Ferrara to Tarocchi, and when the cards made their way to France the name was shortened to Tarot. In Florence the name changed from naibi di trionfi to Minchiate, which means something like the Fool’s game. A new version of the deck with forty trumps, including cards for the twelve signs of the zodiac and the four elements, was created in Florence in the early 16^th century and the name Minchiate came to become associated with this 97-card version of the Tarot. By the 18^th century the Minchiate was more popular in Italy than the original twenty-one trump Tarot and even became popular in Paris. But in the 15^th century the original twenty-one trump version spread through northern Italy to Milan, and from Milan to France, when it became the model for the Tarot of Marseille. I find it interesting, however, that the 16^th century expanded Minchiate contained meaningful allegorical imagery on many of the pips, often illustrating stories from Aesop’s Fables.  

Three 19th century Minchiate pips

In the 15^th century, playing cards spread to Germany, and by 1460, Germans had developed their own set of suit symbols: hawk belles, hearts, leaves, and acorns. But what is interesting is that by the 16^th century most of the German decks included satirical and allegorical scenes on the pips. I have seen and read about early card decks that were intended for divination that had the divinatory meaning written on the cards in the form of short poems. Having the meaning written on the cards makes it clear that they were used for divination, and it seemed that this was the norm for divination decks until the 18^th century when divinatory pictures started to appear. But the allegorical scenes on the Minchiate and the German cards clearly tell stories that could be used for divination. As far as I know, however, no one has found evidence that they were used for anything other than games.

Recently Fortune Rebecca Buchholtz, a friend of mine in Germany, sent me PDF copies of several German Renaissance lot or fortune books that are in the national library in Germany. These are books designed for divination. They contain pages of divinatory answers, each accompanied by a picture––in one example they are pictures of playing cards. The answers are located by either spinning a wheel with the pictures or numbers on it or by picking a playing card and matching it to the picture in the book. The Mainz Lot Book from 1505 is the one that contains pictures of German playing cards next to the answers. This is a clear example of early divination making use of cards, but the pictures just depict the German suited cards, and the answers are written next to it in the form of a poem. This is not that different from having the meaning written on the card.  

A page from the Mainz Lot Book from 1505

The book that I found most fascinating is Jorg Wickram’s Das Weltlich Loszbuch (the secular fortune or lot book), from 1560. The book contains divinatory answers that are accessed by spinning a wheel and the written answers are accompanied by numerous bizarre comical illustrations. These illustrations are clearly intended for divination, and I was struck by how similar they are to the moralistic allegorical scenes found on the German pips from the same century.

In these illustrations from Das Weltlich Loszbuch we see Fortuna sifting fools, two fools carrying a bee infested heart, a bull playing a bagpipe, a fool riding a pile of feces, and a cat acting as bishop to adoring mice.

Now compare these illustrations to the scenes found at the bottom of the pips from the suit of bells in Hans Schaufeiein playing cards, from 1535. There is a lazy man swatting bees, a fox walking upright carrying hens in a basket, an alchemist examining feces in a flask, a woman trying to milk a bull, a woman blowing air up a dog’s anus, and a man playing a flute while a rabbit dances. They seem related.

  

The Tarot of Marseille is not the name of an individual deck of cards. The name refers to a style of Tarot decks that originated in France. The earliest existing example is The Jean Noblet Tarot. published in Paris, circa 1650. Tarot historian, Giordano Berti, tells us that the name was officially given to the deck in the 1930s, but we find that French occultists, Like Éliphas Lévi, were already using this title to refer to the French Tarot in the 19^th century. These decks have a Fool, twenty-one numbered trumps, with titles in French on each, and four minor suits, each consisting of ten pips and four royals, and featuring the Italian suit symbols. 

Il Bateleur from the Jean Noblet Tarot

Decks that are called the Tarot of Marseille are not necessarily from Marseille. They are not even always from France. Some are published in Switzerland or northern Italy, complete with French titles, and the Tarot of Marseille is not the only modern variation of the Tarot. The Tarot did not originate in France. It originated in northern Italy in the 15^th century and, was only introduced to France at the end of that century. Consequently let us look at how the Tarot first came to exist.  

In the 14^th century, playing cards were introduced to the European Christian culture through contact with the Islamic culture in Spain. The deck that was first introduced is known as the Mamluk deck. It had four suits: coins, cups, scimitars, and polo sticks, each with ten pips and three all-male royals. The first European decks were created in Spain and Italy. They were based on this model, but the suits became coins, cups, swords, and batons or staffs, and the royals became a knave, a knight, and a king. Cards were mainly designed to play card games, but from the beginning, there is evidence that they could also be used for divination. 

In northern Italy in the early 15^th century, a new deck was created with a fifth suit depicting enigmatic symbolic figures on each card. The cards in this fifth suit were called trionfi. Trionfi was the name of a type of parade in which each character in the procession was more important than the previous one. This Italian term is the origin of the English term trump, and we can see that in this parade each figure trumped the one that came before. This deck was designed to play a game that is the ancestor of bridge. A queen was also added to the royal cards. 

At first there seems to have been several variations of the trumps. The oldest known deck to have them was conceived in approximately 1420 by Marziano and created for the duke of Milan. It has sixteen trumps, each depicting a classical god. There were also decks that had only one trump, the Emperor. These were called imperatori. Some time between 1460 and 1494, Count Matteo Maria Boiardo of Ferrara created a deck called Triumph of the Vain World. This deck had a Fool and twenty-one trumps in the fifth suit, but most modern readers would not recognize the list of trumps, which included figures like: Leisure, Fatigue, Desire, Secret, Doubt, Danger, and others. Each card also included a three-line poem expressing a divinatory meaning. The Sola Busca Tarot, created during the same period had twenty-one trumps that consisted of mythical and historic heroes. Even The Cary Yale Visconti Tarot, created for the duke of Milan, circa 1445, and which contains many of the trumps that are now found in the Tarot of Marseille, also included the three Christian virtues, which are not found in the Tarot of Marseille..

Giove (Jupiter) from my recreation of the Marziano Tarot

The latest evidence indicates that the series of twenty-one trumps that are found in the Tarot of Marseille originated in Florence in the first half of the 15^th century. In fact the oldest mention of the term trionfi is found in an account written in Florence in 1440. By the end of the century, the name of the deck in most of Italy changed from carte da trionfi to Tarocchi. In Florence the name changed to Minchiate, which means something like the Fool’s game. A new version of the deck with forty trumps was created in Florence in the early 16^th century and the name Minchiate came to become associated with this version of the Tarot. By the 18^th century the Minchiate was more popular in Italy than the original twenty-one trump Tarot. 

Sagittarius from an 18th century Minchiate

In the 15^th century, however, the original Florentine deck spread to Rome in the south, and Bologna, Ferrara, and Milan in the north. There were no titles or numbers on the earliest cards, and three distinct orders for the twenty-one trumps developed (with some minor variations). The Florentine order was adopted in Bologna and Rome, another variation developed in Ferrara and influenced decks in Venice, and a third variation developed in Milan. In 1499 Louis XII of France invaded Milan and this region was part of France from 1499 to 1535. It is believed that the Tarot was introduced to France during this occupation, and it was the Milanese order of trumps that was adopted. We also find that the few remaining examples of early printed Tarot cards published in Milan are similar in design to the Tarot of Marseille trumps, particularly the Moon with the two dogs and the World with the four evangelists in the corners. The French added numbers and titles to the trumps and shortened the name of the deck to Tarot.    

An early World trump found in Sforza Castle in Milan

The modern association of the Tarot with the occult began with the French occultist, Court de Gebélin, who discovered the Tarot one day when he was visiting the Paris apartment of a German countess. Naturally the deck he saw was the Tarot of Marseille. Observing that the trumps in this deck seemed to express Hermetic philosophy, de Gebélin assumed that the deck, like this philosophy, must have originated in ancient Egypt. In 1781, he included an essay on the Tarot in the eighth volume of his occult encyclopedia, Monde Primitif. In this essay he was the first author to express many of the modern misconceptions about the Tarot, including that the Tarot of Marseilles, is actually an occult hieroglyphic text created in ancient Egypt. 

To support his theory, de Gebélin interpreted many of the trumps as having been derived from Egyptian figures. He said that the Papesse was originally a high Priestess, the Chariot stemmed from an image of the god Osiris, that the Devil was originally an image of Osiris’s evil brother Typhon, and the goddess Isis was depicted on the Star card. At that time it was also believed that the Hebrew alphabet was related to Egyptian hieroglyphs and de Gebélin speculated that the Tarot’s Fool and twenty-one trumps could be correlated with the twenty-two Hebrew letters. Because he believed that the trumps described the creation of the world in reverse order from the World card to the Fool, who represented its modern fallen state, he assigned the first letter aleph to the World and worked backwards through the cards, assigning the last letter, tau, to the Fool.  

After de Gebélin, numerous occultists became interested in the Tarot of Marseille, and speculated on its mysteries. In 1791 the French occultist, Etteilla, published the first intentionally occult reinterpretation of the deck. This was The Grande Etteilla, and it became the most popular Tarot deck used for divination in the 19^thcentury. The trumps in this deck were neoclassical engravings that Etteilla believed captured the original Egyptian style of the Tarot, and he totally reorganized the order of the trumps because he believed that this would better express a connection with the Hermetica, the ancient collection of books on Hermetic philosophy that were attributed to the mythical author and sage Hermes Trismegistus.    

In the 1850s another French occultist, Éliphas Lévi, became involved with the Tarot of Marseille and theorized that it was an ancient Kabbalistic text. Lévi developed a more detailed theory about the relationship between the Hebrew alphabet and the twenty-two cards in the fifth suit. He started by assigning aleph to the Magician and worked his way through the trumps in order, but he placed the Fool between Judgement and the World so that it became the next to last letter, shin, and the World became the last letter, tau. In the Kabbalah each letter is correlated with an element, a planet, or a zodiac constellation, and now the tarot cards would share these connections. The twenty-two cards could also be assigned to the twenty-two pathways on the Kabbalistic diagram representing mystical emanation, called the Tree of Life. 

Lévi’s illustration for the Chariot

Lévi’s ideas influenced other occultists including the members of the occult society founded in London in 1888, called the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn taught its members that the Tarot was an ancient mystical text. They adopted Lévi’s theory about the connection between Hebrew letters and the fifth suit, which they called the Major Arcana. However, they started by assigning aleph to the Fool and working forward from there. Therefore, the only card that retained the same association as it had in Lévi’s system was the World, which was still correlated with tau. To be able to assign Strength with its lion to the letter teth and the constellation Leo, and to have Justice with her scales assigned to the letter lamed and the constellation Libra, they had to switch the positions of these two cards from the way they are presented in the Tarot of Marseille, so that Strength became number eight and Justice number eleven. 

Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith were both members of the Golden Dawn. In 1909 Waite hired Smith, who was a talented artist, to design a modern version of the Tarot. This deck, which was published in December of 1909, is known as The Waite Smith Tarot or The Ryder Waite Tarot. The deck was based on the Tarot of Marseille, but Smith was attempting to illustrate Waite’s insights on the mystical nature of the Marseille trumps, insights that were heavily influenced by Lévi. She maintained the Golden Dawn’s order of the trumps, but did not follow the descriptions as they appear in the Golden Dawn’s teachings. On the pips in the minor suits in the Tarot of Marseille there is only a repetition of the suit symbol and some decorative details, but smith included allegorical images on all of the pips in which the figures interacted with the suit symbols. This device was heavily influenced by the 15^th century Sola Busca Tarot, mentioned above, which embraced the same approach. Over the course of the 20^th century, The Waite Smith Tarot became the most famous Tarot in the world and helped to reinforce the modern association of the Tarot with divination in the minds of the public.  

The Waite Smith Chariot from 1910

When I became involved with the Tarot in the 1980s, the first deck that I owned was the version of the Tarot of Marseille that was published in 1970 by Grimaud, The second deck was The Waite Smith Tarot. I soon began reading books on the Tarot, but because of my knowledge of art and art history I realized that most of the assertions made about the history of the Tarot in the majority of the available books at that time were false. There is no evidence to support the theory of the Egyptian origin of the Tarot. Cards themselves were first created in China in the 10^th century, long after the ancient Egyptian culture had been supplanted by Christian and Islamic culture, and they were only introduced to the West in the 14^th century. 

The earliest evidence indicates that artists living in the Italy in the 15^th century were the first to create Tarot cards. These artists would have been working for printers, who also published illustrated books and cards depicting saints. They were certainly Catholics, as there were no Protestants at that time and Jews living in Italy at that time were prohibited from making the type of imagery found in the Tarot, which was strongly influenced by Christian iconography. The idea that the trumps are a secret Kabbalistic text related to Hebrew letters and signs of the zodiac, planets, or elements only works if you deny the actual meaning of the pictures on the cards and think of them as a secret code. There is no evidence to support this theory, and the Minchiate deck created in Florence in the 16^th century increased the number of trumps by adding images for the twelve signs of the zodiac, as well as the four elements, indicating that Italian Renaissance artists had no need to hide these figures in a secret code. 

From the beginning of my involvement with the Tarot, I have wanted to know what the artists who first created these cards were thinking about their creation. Once we accept that the Tarot was created in 15^th century northern Italy, we can see that all of the images in the deck do relate to other works of art created in that same time and place, and I began to reconstruct the philosophy that is expressed in the actual pictures on the earliest cards. In August, 1987, I was studying an alchemical image that symbolized the Philosopher’s Stone, the mystical goal of the alchemical work, and, not unlike Court de Gebélin, I had a flash of insight. I saw how it was symbolically linked to the Tarot’s World trump. It seemed that this image had unlocked a secret door in my mind and in an instant I saw that the alchemical Great Work and the story told in the Tarot’s trumps were all interchangeable. I immediately picked up my copy of Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy and began to make notes in the margins next to the alchemical images comparing them to Tarot cards. This was the beginning of a process that would take several years. The fruit of this insight and labor was The Alchemical Tarot, which was first published by Thorsons, in 1995, and that now has five additional editions that I have published. 

Based on alchemical engravings, The Alchemical Tarot demonstrates that although the Tarot was not meant to be an alchemical text, the Fool and the trumps can relate to an alchemical material or process, which is part of the Magnum Opus (great work) of alchemy that leads to the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone, a mystical catalyst that transforms what it touches into its highest form. Composed of the mysterious 5^th element, it can cure any illness, turn lead into gold, and turn an ordinary person into an enlightened sage. In the latest editions of the deck I have added a symbol representing its alchemical process on each trump. The Philosopher’s Stone itself is represented by the World card and the four minor suits are related to the four alchemical elements: Earth to coins, Water to cups, Air to swords, and Fire to staffs. 

The High Priestess from The Alchemical Tarot: Renewed 5th Edition

As stated above, the mystical story told in the trumps can be correlated with the Opus, but it is not actually meant to be an alchemical text. I was able to correlate the Opus with the trumps because alchemy is an expression of Hermetic philosophy and the Tarot is based on Hermetic philosophy, a philosophy that stems from Alexandra Egypt in the first centuries after Christ, and was revived in 15^th century Italy, where it became a major influence on the arts at that time. As mentioned earlier, the central text of Hermeticism is the Hermetica, a set of books that originally included twenty texts. Although they were written by several unidentified authors, these authors attributed their work to the mythical sage Hermes Trismegistus. Hermes was said to be a man, who had lived centuries before, and through his wisdom he attained gnosis or enlightenment and became like a god. The Hermetica describes this process, and it may be considered a textbook on enlightenment.  

At this time, besides six versions of The Alchemical Tarot. (The latest being a distilled simplified version with gold edges, called The Tarot of the Alchemical Magnum Opus.) I have designed eight other Tarot decks. I was able to relate the Tarot to angels, saints and Jewish myths. I was able to correlate the story in the trumps with Buddha’s enlightenment and the novel Dracula. I have attempted to recreate the oldest known Tarot from Marziano’s descriptions, and to create a restored set of the 15^th century woodcut deck from Ferrara, a deck that I lecture on the Metropolitan Museum. And I worked for ten years on The Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery in which I attempted to bridge the mystical philosophy that I uncovered in the oldest decks with the occult revelations of modern decks. But from the beginning, my inspirations sprang from the Tarot of Marseille. 

Now I feel it is time to return to my roots, and I reinterpreting in my own style the Tarot of Marseille. I also want to show that these images are clearly related to Hermetic philosophy and can without being totally redesigned be correlated with the alchemical Opus. The trumps in this deck are based directly on the traditional French cards with the French titles. The original cards are examples of naive folk art, and I have redrawn the figures in a more sophisticated style but one that that is still influenced by Renaissance prints. Each trump displays the same alchemical symbol that I used for the latest editions of The Alchemical Tarot. But the major innovation is that each trump displays a quote from the ancient Hermetica (as translated by Walter Scott in 1924), and that these quotes clarify the meaning of the imagery on the card in a way that demonstrates the underlining Hermetic philosophy.

Although the pip cards in the Tarot of Marseille do not contain much imagery other than the repetition of the suit symbol, this was not the norm for all early decks. From the beginning German decks of playing cards often included scenes of people and animals on the pips along with the suit symbols. Also Minchiate decks made use of this same approach.  For this deck I will follow this example and include imagery on the trumps that is based on the divinatory meanings that I have worked out for The Alchemical Tarot. The deck will have gold edges and a two part cloth covered box, Like the one I have used for my other recent decks.

 The five of swords from an 1810 Florentine Minchiate that is in my collection.

Below are the twenty-two trump cards for

The Alchemical Tarot of Marseille

 

This is what I have finished so far.

I will set up a page and continue to post the cards as I finish them.

Please check in from time to time to see haw the deck is progressing.

These have just arrived:

Only $10 each plus $4 shipping in the US, $11 for Canada, and $20 international

. To order email me at:

alchemicaltarot@aol.com

follow this link

https://www.syncpodcast.com/episodes/robert-m-place

Since its creation in Germany in1846, the Lenormand oracle deck, originally known as the Petit Le Normand, has enjoyed continuous popularity in Europe, and recently the deck has drawn the attention of American card readers. By now, most people who work with the Lenormand cards are aware that it is based on an earlier deck, The Game of Hope. Here are the facts.

The Ship from the Game of Hope, 1799

 

The Game of Hope

In their history of the occult Tarot, A Wicked Pack of Cards, historians Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett wrote that in 1972 historian Detlef Hoffmann discovered that the German Petit Le Normand is based on a deck published in Nuremberg as a game in 1799, and authored by Johann Kaspar Hechtle. This deck was titled The Game of Hope. The numbering and subjects on the thirty-six cards in this deck are identical to the Petit Le Normand, but there are two miniature cards at the top of each card, one with French suit symbols and one with German, whereas the Petit Le Normand only has one with French suit symbols.

The Game of Hope was a race game and it came with the following instructions. The thirty-six cards were to be arranged in a square of six rows of six cards, in numerical order and two dice were thrown to see how many cards along the square a player may move his or her marker. There are lucky and unlucky cards, and landing on them brings rewards or penalties. The first player to land on the next-to-last card, which is the Anchor (called Hope in the booklet), wins. If you land on the last card, the Cross, you are stuck. There were also instructions on how to layout the cards for divination, and we can see that, as in the game, the Anchor card was considered a favorable omen and the Cross was not.

The Ship from my recreation of the New York Lenormand, 1882

Coffee Grounds Cards and Conversation Cards

More recently, Tarot scholar Mary Greer was doing research in the British Museum’s archives when she found a deck of cards accompanied by a 31-page book that is an earlier model for the Petit Le Normand. The deck, whose full title is Les Amusements des Allemands, or The Diversions of the Court of Vienna, in which the Mystery of Fortune-Telling from the Grounds of the Coffee-Cup is unravelled, and Three pleasant Games, viz.: 1. Fortune-telling from the Grounds of the Coffee-Cup. 2. Fortune-telling by laying out the cards. 3. The new Imperial Game of numbers are invented, (commonly referred to as the Coffee Grounds Cards) was published in England in 1796. The book states that these cards were based on an Austro-German set of cards published in Vienna in 1794. The cards consist of uncolored engravings with a full landscape on each card dominated by the singular subject. There are a few lines of text on the bottom of each card that are meant to be the divinatory meaning but also offer moral advice.

There are only 32 cards in this deck, like a Piquet deck, four less than the Lenormand, they are numbered differently, and some cards, like the vipers card, do not relate to any Lenormand cards. The majority of the cards, however, can easily be matched with Lenormand cards.  Beyond this, I have found that nearly all of these images and subjects, as well as the ones found in the Lenormand, can be traced to a deck created in England two decades earlier, in 1775, called Hooper’s Conversation Cards. Conversation cards are a game in which the cards are used to create a story. Each player picks a card and uses it as inspiration for their addition to the story. These decks also seem related to divination.

 

The Anchor from the Coffee Grounds Cards, 1796

 

Hope from Hooper’s Conversation Cards, 1775

 

I wrote about this in detail in my October 2015 blog, A History of Oracle Cards.  In case you want to see what I wrote, here is a link:

A History of Oracle Cards

At the conclusion of that article I stated that I believe that the Hooper Cards are one of the earliest, if not the earliest oracle deck. Oracle decks are not a variation on the Lenormand deck but the larger group to which Lenormand belongs. The Lenormand is an oracle deck and the earliest oracle cards contained moral allegories and references to divine figures. Since I wrote that, I have come across another conversation deck, Sketchley’s New Invented Conversation Cards. There is an advertisement for this deck from 1775, but this deck may be older. However, this still may not be the oldest source for oracle decks.

Oracle decks are based on earlier forms of divination that made use of regular playing cards. That is why each figure card in the standard Lenormand also has a smaller playing card depicted on the face. If we substitute Tarot pips for the equivalent playing card pips we find that there is no correlation between the Tarot’s divinatory meanings and the standard Lenormand meanings. This led me to believe that they are two separate independent systems, but now it seems to me that there is a connection between Oracle symbols and the Tarot. To illustrate this connection I will make use of the Anchor, the decisive symbol in The Game of Hope.

 

The Anchor, a Symbol of Hope

The anchor is a crucial part of a ship. It holds the ship securely in port and can be dropped during a storm to prevent the ship from being blown off course.  Because of this, early Christians used the anchor as a symbol of the Christian virtue hope. This connection can be traced to a quote in the New Testament:

“God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”

Hebrews 6:18. 19 

Because the anchor also forms a cross on its upper portion, it became a popular Christian symbol that we find carved in the catacombs, where the first Christians held their services in secret in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries.

 

 

Early Christian images of the anchor symbol

 

In the Middle Ages, Church leaders combined the three theological or Christian virtues that are praised in the New Testament: Faith, Hope, and Charity, with the four cardinal virtues that were praised in the works of Plato, and Aristotle: Temperance, Strength, Justice, and Prudence, to form a list of seven principle virtues.  By the 14^th century, we find examples of the seven virtues carved or painted on the walls of churches.  Here is a painting of Hope, labeled with her Latin name Spes, painted by the famous Renaissance artist Giotto on the wall of the Arena Chapel in Padua, in 1306. It depicts a winged figure reaching for a crown held aloft. Other images made at that time are similar, but the winged figure is shown  praying, as in this engraving of Hope from the 15^th century Tarocchi de Mantegna.

 

Giotto’s fresco of Hope, 1306

 

Hope from the 15th century Tarocchi de Mantegna

 

The standard set of 21 Tarot trumps contains three of the Cardinal virtues: Justice, Strength, and Temperance, but not the Christian virtues. However, this was not the case in the beginning. The oldest Tarot decks in existence are The Brambilla Tarot, created 1420 -1444, and The Cary-Yale Visconti Tarot, created circa1445. These were both created for the duke of Milan. The Brambilla only retains two of its trumps: the Emperor and the Wheel of Fortune, but the Cary-Yale retains eleven trumps. Most of these trumps are recognizably similar to modern ones, such as the Emperor, the Empress, the Wheel of Fortune, and the World, but the deck also contains the three Christian virtues as well as the cardinal virtue Strength. The Cary-Yale Strength card depicts a praying woman kneeling on, or triumphing over a male figure, representing the vice despair. Her crown is now on her head and she is focusing on a source of light above. But the biggest change is that we now find an anchor tied to her hands.

 

The Cary=Yale Visconti Hope card,  c1445

In the Visconti-Sforza Tarot and later Tarots created in Italy and France the Christian Virtues are no longer there, except for a variation of the Tarot that was created in Florence in the 16^th century.

 

The Minchiate’s Influence

In 16^th century Florence, an unusual variation of the Tarot was created that had 40 trumps and a Fool in the fifth suit. It was given a new name, the Minchiate. The name Minchiate is first found in a letter written in Florence by Luigi Pulci, but he was applying it to the standard Tarot deck with 78 cards. This deck is believed to have originated in Florence but was originally called Trionfi. The name Minchiate seems to be derived from a dialect word for “nonsense.” Perhaps he intended it to be a reference to the fact that the Tarot contains a Fool card. The name caught on in Florence.

By 1506, a new 97-card deck was created by dropping the Papesse and adding 20 new trumps, which included the four elements, the twelve signs of the zodiac, Prudence, and the three Christian virtues, including Hope. At first the deck was called the Germini, a reference to Gemini the last zodiac sign depicted in the deck.  By the 1540s the game became so popular that Florentine printers ceased production of the 78-card decks and the name Minchiate was applied to the new 97-card deck. In the 17^th century Minchiate spread throughout Italy and into France. By the 18^thcentury it was more popular in Italy than the Tarot.  After the 1930s, interest in the game died out.

Hope from a Minchiate published in Bolognas, 1763

The figure of Hope in the Italian Minchiate depicts a praying woman with a crown above. She does not have wings but she does have a halo. This figure is similar to the Cary-Yale Hope but the anchor is missing. Yet, in other 16^thcentury images of Hope we do find her holding an anchor.  In 1655 a French version of the Minchiate was published in which Hope’s anchor was restored to the deck.  This was the Francois de Poilly Minchiate, also called the Minchiate Francesi.  Besides the restoration of an anchor the deck differed from the Italian decks by substituting five Classical gods: Mercury, Cupid, Venus, and Bacchus for the first four cards, and Mamus, the god of folly, for the Fool.  The deck’s publisher also dropped other trumps to make room for the four ages of man and the five senses, but it kept the seven virtues, the four elements, the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the Star, Moon, Sun, World, and the Angel of Fame (the Minchiate version of the Judgement card).

16th century engravings depicting Hope with her anchor

The Minchiate Francesi has a distinct style that is different form the Italian decks. Later a version was created that reduced the number of trumps back to the original 21, but it still retained the gods and the virtues including Hope. What is important for our study, however, is that the gods, the virtues, and the ages of man all had an influence on later oracle decks, and Hope’s anchor found its way into the Lenormand decks.

The Minchiate Francesi Hope card, 1655

The Minchiate Francesi depicts hope as a beautiful woman stranded on an island with her anchor in the midst of a turbulent sea. Compare this image to the numerous images of lady Hope found in later oracle and Sibilla decks. In Hooper’s Conversation Cards, a shipwrecked sailor has been substituted for the woman. In Sketchley’s New Invented Conversation Cards the symbol of Hope has been distilled down to just her anchor.  This is the version that found its way into The Game of Hope and from there into numerous Lenormand deck.

Robert M Place

Hope from Das Oracle des Dames des Etteilla, 1897

 

Hope from a French Oracle Deck, 1890

 

Hope from an 19th century Austrian Oracle Deck

 

Hope from Jue de la Fortune Tres Fin, 1880

 

Hope from Sibilla Originally, 1890

 

The Anchor from the Old Gypsy Fortune Telling Cards, 1940

 

My recreations of Hooper’s Conversation Cards Hope card, 1775

 

Sketchley’s New Invented Conversation Cards, c1775

The Game of Hope Hope card, 1799

 

My recreation of the Anchor from the New York Lenormand, 1882

 

The Anchor from Wabrfagekarten Lenormand, 1875

 

The Anchor from my Burning Serpent Oracle, 2014

 

The Anchor from my An Ukiyo-e Lenormand, 2019

 

Four nines from my Hermes Playing Card Oracle, 2015

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Since writing this article, I was introduced to the Petit Oracle des Dames, an oracle deck published in France in the late 1790s. This deck combines images from an earlier French oracle, Jue Divinatory Revolutionnaire, 1791, with images from the first occult Tarot deck the Grand Etteilla. Thus forming a indisputable link between oracle decks and the Tarot. 

Petit Oracle des Dames, 1790s

 

The Buddha Weekly Interview

with Robert M Place

This is the Tower card from my Buddha Tarot

that is being republished by Schiffer Books

and will be out in the Spring of 2021

For the last year, I have been answering questions about art, the Tarot, and other subjects, on a question and answer website called Quora.  I have noticed that there have been numerous questions posted about the Tarot that are related, such as; “How Accurate is the Tarot?” “Do Tarot card readings accurately predict the future?” or “Why do so many intelligent people believe in Tarot readings?” For this post I have combined by answers to these and other common questions about the Tarot.

I find that the Tarot is accurate, but I may not use the Tarot in the way that you think.

I am a Tarot designer, an author, and besides reading for clients I have taught thousands of people throughout the US and in many parts of the globe how to read Tarot cards. And I have always found that the cards provide sound advice.The first thing that I tell my students is that I do not recommend using the Tarot to predict the future. From my experience with the Tarot and from observing how others use the cards I do not think that is what happens in a reading.

If we could use the cards to make true predictions they would be fated outcomes that we could not avoid. We find this type of prediction in numerous myths, like the myth of Oedipus in which the oracle tells Oedipus that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Of course, his father and mother are unknown to him and no matter how he tries to avoid his fate, because he does not know who they are, in the end he fulfills the prediction. Tarot card readers do not make fated predictions like this. Even when they say they are predicting the future they make it clear that if something unpleasant is on the horizon the reader intends to help the client to avoid the problem.

Oedipus solving the riddle of the sphynx

Tarot card readings are actually an intuitive examination of the present. In the present we can perceive events that are starting to unfold and we can make informed decisions about how to handle them. But we can also examine the past or look into relationships we are having right now. I feel that the best use of the Tarot is to use the cards to access inner wisdom, a wiser self that I call the Higher Self. If we use the Tarot to access this inner wisdom it will help up to make better decisions in the present. Instead of predicting the future, we can use the cards to help us to create a better future.

This process works because everyone has intuition and the Tarot is a tool for developing intuition. When we shuffle and lay out the cards, they provide a visual story that we can interpret like a dream and we find that the story that we see in the cards has meaning for us or for a client.

Still, we may ask, how do we get the right series of cards to create our story by simply shuffling the cards? I am not sure, but it seems to me that when we are shuffling we are unconsciously organizing the deck so that our story will emerge when we cut the cards. I have found that the unconscious mind is actually more in control of our behavior throughout the day than the conscious mind, and as we said, in the unconscious we know things that we may not be consciously aware of. The cards help bring this information into consciousness. I have also found that the mind is capable of bringing forth information in a way that defies time and space. Because of this, I do not believe that the mind is physical. The brain is only a transmitter for the mind and the mind exists on a nonphysical plane. This is why intuition can exist and why we can use the Tarot as a tool for intuition.

Fortuna from The Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery

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alchemicaltarot@aol.com

Issue 56 of the Restored Temple of Hermes was sent out on August 3, 2019. If you did not receive it you may need to send me an updated email address.

 

The pen and ink drawing by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), depicting a man fitting his body into a circle and a square by adjusting the position of his arms and legs, is undoubtedly the most famous drawing in the world. I base this statement on the observation that this drawing is ubiquitous in modern society, from movies and books, to advertisements and logos for holistic enterprises. Few people, however, know its name or the mystical philosophy that it symbolizes. It is called Vitruvian Man.

Leonardo’s drawing called Vitruvian Man

The title of the drawing refers to Vitruvius, an ancient Roman architect who wrote a series of ten books on architecture, which was one of the few collections of books of its type that survived into the Renaissance. In the third volume, which is on the proportions of temples, Vitruvius states that these sacred buildings should be based on the proportions of man because the human body is the model of perfection. He justifies this by stating that the human body with arms and legs extended fits into the perfect geometric forms, the circle and the square.

This fragment of Pythagorean philosophy added credibility to the Renaissance belief that “man is the measure of all things,” and it seized the imagination of Renaissance artists and philosophers. Many artists tried to illustrate this divine relationship, but with varying success. An illustration of Vitruvian man by Cesariano in his Cosmo Vitruvius of 1521 reeks of failure. Cesariano drew a perfect circle and square tangent to each other at the four points of the square; then he forced a figure of a man into the design so that his hands and feet touch the points. The result was one of the most disproportioned figures of the Renaissance, with arms too long, legs too short, and hands and feet too big. A system of relationships alone did not make beauty happen.

Cesariano’s version of Vitruvian Man

It took the genius of Leonardo da Vinci to solve the problem. Leonardo started by drawing a perfectly proportioned man and then found the circle and square in the figure. The circle and square are only tangent at one place, the base. The thing that he added was beauty. I keep a copy of his illustration on the wall over my drawing table and refer to it as a guide for my own figures. I believe that beauty in itself is a greater mystical revelation than any system of symbols or correspondences, and I think that Leonardo shared this belief.

I have lived with Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man for many years now and it has taught me many things. It has been like having Leonardo as a teacher. You may be asking yourself, why was it so important to Renaissance artists and philosophers that a human body could fit into a circle and a square? As stated above, the idea that Vitruvius was expressing can be traced back to one of the most influential of the early Greek philosophers, Pythagoras. Pythagoras lived in the Greek colony of Croton, in Southern Italy in the 6thcentury, BCE, the same time that Buddha lived. Like Buddha, Pythagoras taught his male and female disciples that after death we are reborn, we live through many lives, and we are on an endless wheel of reincarnations until we purify ourselves and return to our divine source.

Purification included a vegetarian diet, moral behavior, meditation, and contemplation of the numerical abstractions that underlie reality. Pythagoras was the first person to call himself a philosopher, which means to love Sophia(wisdom). We have no writing that can be attributed to Pythagoras. Everything we know about him comes from other authors, particularly the biographies written by Neoplatonic authors in the 3rdand 4thcenturies CE. Yet from what we know, we can credit him as being one of a handful of people that were instrumental in creating Western culture. Because of the similarities between Pythagoras’s philosophy and the Orphic Mysteries, some historians theorize that if he did write anything it would have been poetry and he would have signed it Orpheus.

Mosaic depicting Orpheus charming animals with his lyre

Orpheus, the mythical, semi-divine musician, was credited as the founder of the first mystery cult, a religion based on a secret redemptive ritual. And as implied above, this religion is believed to be a major source for the Pythagorean teachings. Many followers of Orpheus were poets and musicians who believed that their inspiration came directly from Orpheus; hence, they would sign his name to their work.

In the Orphic creation myth, the beautiful god, Dionysus, was born of the incestuous union of Zeus and his daughter Persephone. Zeus’s wife, Hera, was jealous and wished to destroy the child. To accomplish this she had her allies, the Titans, dismember and devour him. Of course, Zeus was heart-broken and in a fit of anger, he burned the Titans to ash with a volley of lightning bolts. Only Dionysus’s heart remained, and from this, Zeus created a new Dionysus. However, from the ash of the Titans mixed with the devoured Dionysus, the human race was born. Therefore, the human race is part divine and beautiful like Dionysus and part vicious and material like the Titans. The purpose of the Orphic mystery was to redeem the Dionystic soul and make it the dominant influence in the lives of the devotees. This, of course, is similar to most mystical teachings and can be related to Hindu, Buddhist, Gnostic, and Hermetic beliefs.

Roman Relief depicting Dionysus

The Orphics, like the Pythagoreans, saw a connection between music and numerical order. This type of reasoning led to sacred geometry. Expanding on this logic, Pythagoras taught that geometric figures were powerful magical symbols. The circle, being connected to the sky and the cosmos, with seven spherical planets believed to be circling the earth, was a symbol of the divine Dionystic soul. The square is the natural way that humans relate to the physical world. We have a front and a back, a left and a right. This is why there are four directions, four seasons, and four classical elements. It is why my house has four sides and I am sitting on a four-legged chair while I write this on my square keyboard and read it on my square screen. The square became a symbol of the Titanic physical aspect.

The first step to the liberation of the soul is to recognize that we are made of both aspects. In Pythagorean thinking, if a human can be shown to fit into both symbols this would be a geometric proof of our dual nature. This belief was incorporated into alchemy, and other ancient disciplines where it was called “the squaring of the circle.” In Medieval art the squaring of the circle was symbolized by a hexagon or the octagon, and that is why these shapes were used to depict the Grail and in the construction of baptismal fountains.

In this way, the teaching was passed on to the Renaissance. In Venice around the year 1500, Leonardo, once again making use of the circle and the square, demonstrated geometrically that humans are composed of physical bodies containing a divine soul.

Although this bit of history helps to explain the main theme of Vitruvian Man, we have not yet completed our exploration of its symbols. As we said in the beginning, Leonardo was able to solve this problem by drawing a beautifully proportioned figure and then finding these truths within the figure. To understand this statement fully we have to understand the significance of ratios.

Besides the symbolism of geometric forms, the Pythagoreans believed that whole numbers are symbols equated to specific qualities as well as quantities: one represents unity, two polarity, three the beginning of form, etc. the most powerful way that numbers were seen to impact on reality, however, was as ratios. Ratios are relationships between numbers. For example, the number four has a 1:2 ratio to the number eight, because two fours can fit into eight. Six and nine have a 2:3 ratio. In this example the unit of measurement would be the number three, because two threes can fit into six and three threes into nine. Similarly, nine and twelve have a 3:4 ratio.

The Pythagoreans found that music could also be expressed as ratios, and that these three ratios were essential to its creation. The ratio 1:2 described the whole note, 2:3 the perfect fifth, and 3:4 the perfect forth. It seems that these ratios underlie all musical harmony. Every culture has to find these same notes and create their musical scale around them in order to have music. Beauty has this objective aspect as well as a subjective aspect.

Pythagoras believed that the universe was ordered in this same way. The Pythagoreans believed that the earth was a sphere in the center of the universe and that there were seven planets that circled the earth on a series of ascending crystal spheres, one inside the other, like the layers of an onion. The seven ancient planets are the ones that can be seen with the naked eye: Luna, Mercury, Venus, Sol, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Notice that the moon and the sun were considered planets and the earth was not. Pythagoras called the universe a “cosmos,” which meant that it was a beautiful, musical harmony. He believed that the ratios described by the speed and orbits of the planets could be expressed as musical notes and he used these note to create our Western diatonic music scale with its seven notes. This cosmic music scale has been called “the music of the spheres.”

Classical artists used ratios to develop the perfect figure, and like other Renaissance artists, Leonardo also used ratios. To make use of ratios, Leonardo had to find a way of measuring the figure by making use of relationships within the figure, not by measuring it with an external scale such as inches or any other external system. His unit of choice was the head. Leonardo’s figure has a one 1:8 ratio with its own head. In other words, it is eight heads tall.

You will notice that Vitruvian Man has dividing lines drawn on his body. There is a line at the chin that indicates the limit of the one head unit, a line at the nipples that marks the length of two heads, a line at the groin that marks four heads, a line below the knees that marks six heads, and the base line the marks eight heads. The base line forms the bottom of the square and the top rests on his head. Therefore, the square is eight heads tall as well. Notice that the man’s lower set of extended arms, the ones that are at a right angle to his body, touch the square on both sides. Because the width of a square is equal to its height, the length of the arms has to be eight heads as well. In other words, our extended arms are the same length as our body from head to toe. Try measuring you friends; you will find that this is true with only slight variations.

The vertical lines on the shoulders of Leonardo’s figure measure the two-head width of the torso at the shoulders; the line at the joint of each arm measures an additional one head in each direction; and then we jump another two heads on each side to the fingers and the sides of the square. The dividing line between the hand and the forearm, however, stems from a different unit of measure. This is called the “golden proportion.”

To explain the significance of the golden proportion it will be helpful if we first study the most sacred of the Pythagorean symbols, the Tetractys. The Tetractys is an arrangement of ten dots in a pyramid with one dot at the top and four at the bottom. To the Pythagoreans, it symbolized how the divine unity of the number One, at the top, emanated or gave birth to the physical world, symbolized by the number Four at the bottom. One way of describing this emanation, from the top down, was that the unity of One gave birth to the duality of Two and the dimension length. Two gave birth to a third, which created three points, and with this added dimension the possibility of creating a two-dimensional plan, having height and width. Then with a fourth point, three-dimensional reality could be created, the world of form with length, width, and depth.

The Pythagorean Tetractys

Now we are ready to discuss proportion. To the Pythagoreans, proportion described a relationship between two ratios. They noticed that there are three different levels of complexity of proportion and they correlated them to the bottom three layers of the Tetractys. At the bottom, the most complex proportion described a relationship of four items: A is to B as C is to D; 1:2 = 4:8. This was called “discontinuous proportion.” For example, a dog (A) is smaller than a man (B) like a horse (C)is smaller than an elephant (D). The next three-dot layer related to “continuous proportion,” which involved three items: A is to B as B is to C; 1:3 = 3:9. For example our dog (A) is related in size to a man (B) as the man (B) is related to the horse (C).

But the most sacred proportion involved two items, thereby drawing us back toward primal unity at the top of the Tetractys. This was called the golden proportion: A is to B as B is to A+B. In Vitruvian Man, the length of his hand (A) relates in size to his forearm (B) in the same way that his forearm (B) relates in size to the length of the entire arm, with forearm and hand combined (A+B). This is the golden proportion, and it can also be found the relationship between the fingers the palm as related to the entire hand and in the divisions of the leg and foot.

Leonardo then related these measurements to other parts of the figure. Notice how he conveniently shows us the man’s left foot in profile. He even places the heel in front of the big toe of the right foot so that we can see the full length. The length of the foot is the same as the length of the forearm, and the length of the hand is the measurement of the face, from the chin to the hairline. The face in turn is divided into thirds, which coincide with the eyebrows and the tip of the nose and is echoed in the length of the ears. However, the most important illustration of the golden portion is the division of the body at the navel. If we divide the figure at the navel into its two unequal parts, we find that the height of the first shorter part, from the top of the head to the navel (A), relates to the longer distance from the navel to the feet (B) in the same way that this length, from the navel to the feet (B), relates to the entire height of the figure (A+B).

If we divide the square in half we will find that the middle falls right at the line drawn through the groin. At the level of sexuality, we are centered in the physical. To find the center of the circle, the spiritual center, we have to move up to the navel, which is the place where we were connected to our mothers at birth, and now we see that it is also the golden division. To Renaissance philosophers, these insights offered further proof that all humans contain a divine spark and that even out physical bodies are based on divine proportions.

Click on this link to read my article

on NFReads:

Why I wrote The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism

My Journey to the Alchemical Tarot

It was in the summer of 1987 when I first conceived of The Alchemical Tarot. I was studying an alchemical image that symbolized the Philosopher’s Stone. I had been studying alchemy for some time and I was well aware that the Stone was a mystical substance, whose creation was the central purpose of the alchemical quest, known as the Magnum Opus. Alchemists stipulated that the Stone is not actually a physical substance; it is “the stone that is not a stone. It is composed of a spiritual essence, known as the Anima Mundi. Although it is nonmaterial, the Stone has the power to transform any substance into its highest form. It can turn lead into gold; it can cure any illness; and it can transform an ordinary man or woman into an enlightened sage.

Because it is nonmaterial, alchemists created mystical diagrams, what we now call mandalas, to portray it. The image I was studying in 1987 depicted a heart, surrounded by a thorny wreath, and placed in the center of a cross. The cross framed images of the four elements, one to each corner. This type of mandala is called a quincunx.

Although I had seen images like this before, this time it was different. The image seemed to unlock a secret portal in my mind and in an instant I saw that it was symbolically interchangeable with the Tarot’s final trump, the World. In a flash, I realized that if the Tarot’s series of twenty-one trumps culminated in this image, which symbolized the Anima Mundi and could be linked to the final result of the Opus, then the whole series of cards could be correlated with this mystical quest. I then picked up my copy of Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy and began to make notes in the margins next to the alchemical images comparing them to Tarot cards.

This was the beginning of a process that would take several years. The fruit of this insight and labor was the The Alchemical Tarot, which was published by Thorsons in England, in 1995. The first edition of The Alchemical Tarot went out of print many years ago, but I regained the rights to publish the deck and I have published three newer editions. For each I made improvements in the drawings, the coloring, and the symbolism. The fourth edition, The Alchemical Tarot: Renewed, was published in 2015, it is still in print, and you can buy it through this website. I have now designed this fifth version. For this newer deck I have broken away from the initial drawings and redesigned the cards. Therefore, I have given it a new title.

 

My Newest Alchemical Deck

The Tarot of the Alchemical Magnum Opus began when I attempted to redesign The Alchemical Tarot in a simpler iconic form, something like the iconic images found in traditional oracle decks, such as the Lenormand oracle. I wanted to create simplified images that captured the essence of what each card was saying. While the original Alchemical Tarot images are strongly based on actual 17th century alchemical engravings, for this version I have created my own images expressing each of the alchemical processes in my own way.

I also waned to make a deck that could have been printed using wood blocks, like Renaissance cards. I used only four colors: black, white, blue, and red, each representing a separate wood block printed on a parchment background. (I found it necessary for the maintenance of alchemical symbolism to add yellow on three cards.) Because the colors each represent an area printed from a carved block, the colors are hard-edged without gradation. The black lines define the outlines and darkest areas and the blue and red areas act as medium tones that define the forms and textures. This simplified code for interpreting forms, like alchemy itself, can be traced back to ancient Greece. It is a cornerstone of Western art. What I also realized was that through this process I was distilling the symbols, paring them down to their essence. It was a work of alchemical art.

Just like my An Ukiyo-e Lenormand deck, these cards will be three inches by four inches with gold edges, and come with a small book. It will also have the same style two part cloth covered box, as in the photos below. These will be full 78 card Tarot decks.

The shipment of decks arrived on June 28

As of July 1st all preorders have been mailed out.

 go to this web page to order the deck:

The Tarot of the Alchemical Magnum Opus

The Fool and the trumps each relate to an alchemical material or process, which is part of the Opus. The alchemical name appears on each card. The four minor suits are related to the four mundane elements: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire.  To delve more deeply into the symbolism I recommend my book, The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism. The cards are pictured below.

The Magnum Opus Cards

The Unnamed Card (the Fool) – This image of a joker represents the alchemist at the beginning of the Work – His ignorance is necessary for him to begin to learn – He is a naive beginner

I. Materia Prima (the Magician) – Hermes, the god of alchemy is the Matter of the Work, containing all four elements – He is the raw material that will become the Stone – He is the spiritual essence found in the material world

II. Priestess of Water (the High Priestess) – She begins the separation of the elements, called Dissolution – She is Water, esoteric spiritually, intuition, a secret, or something that cannot be spoken

III. White Queen (the Empress) – She continues the Dissolution and represents the element Earth, sensation, attraction, fertility, and the feminine principle

IV. Red King (the Emperor) – He is Air, thinking, intelligence, authority, and the masculine principle

V. Priest of Fire (the Hierophant) – He completes the Dissolution representing Fire and exoteric spiritually – He is Hermes Trismegistus, balance, and morality

VI. Conjunction (the Lovers) – The elements are recombined in the Minor Conjunction – Sex, at- traction, coming together, and partnership

VII. Sublimation (the Chariot) – The child of the Conjunction rises impetuously toward the goal – The three glyphs are Mercury, Salt, and Sulphur (the alchemical essences: spirit, body, and mind, and the parts of the chariot) – He is also speed and travel

VIII. Disposition (Justice) – This is the process of weighing – Truth, balance, justice, and the law

IX. Exultation (the Hermit) – Exultation or Exaltation is an enhancement like meditation – The alchemist is contained in the ouroboros (the serpent of time) rep- resenting solitude, inner guidance, and being alone

X. Circulation (the Wheel of Fortune) – The Fixed unwinged dragon swallows the tail of the Volatile winged dragon and is in turn swallowed – They are centered in the wheel of the elements: clockwise from the upper right, Water, Fire, Earth, Air – Fate, transformation, change

XI. Fermentation (Strength) – Above the lion of strength, the Sun and Moon pour their essences into the flaming heart, representing control through love, self control, and discipline

XII. Crucified Serpent (the Hanged Man) – Represents the process of Calcination, in which the serpent, who is Mercury, becomes a willing sacrifice – Suffering, loss, discomfort, illness

XIII. Putrefaction (Death) – This is the depth of the Nigredo, the first black stage of the Opus, symbolized by the raven – The end of anything, decay

XIV. Distillation (Temperance) – Distillation im- itates the natural processes of evaporation and pre- cipitation and is used to nurture the perfection of the Stone – Health, beauty, balance, art, timing

XV. Coagulation (the Devil) – The culmination of the Nigredo, vice, enslavement, addiction, bad habits

XVI. Greater Dissolution (the Tower) – This is a greater separation of the red and the white opposites and the beginning of the Albedo, the second white stage of the Opus – Breaking, separation, sudden change, expulsion, divine intervention, or a sudden insight

XVII. Baptism (the Star) – The Siren of the Phil- osophers, giving forth blood (suffering) and milk (nurturing), with the ladder of the planets above, represents purification and the peace beyond blood red fear and milk white hope – Calm, understanding, and ascent

XVIII. Lapis Albus (the Moon) – The Feminine Moon represents the White Stone that will become the Philosopher’s Stone when it is reddened – Rest, retreat, anticipation, preparation, and dreams

XIX. Greater Conjunction (the Sun) – The joining of the yellow Sun and the white Moon brings us into the Citrinitas, the third yellow stage of the Opus – Spiritual love, soul mates, marriage, en- lightenment

XX. Resurrection (Judgement) – Wheat growing from the skull symbolizes life from death – Re- juvenation, healing, removing blocks, recalling the past, judgment

XXI. Lapis Philosophorum (the World) – This is the Phliosopher’s Stone, the Red Elixir of healing, and the essential fifth element composed of the Anima Mundi (the Soul of the World) – The Good, an inner guide, the attainment of our goals

 

The Cards of the Minor Suits