After 10, we start again. Some say that we the numbers start again at 10, by adding up the digits in the previous cycle, so that 10 = 1, 11 = 2. and so on.. But that doesn't work in the Roman or Greek system of numbers. For one thing, there is no zero. So ten is simply X, Iota, or Yod, all ways of writing what in Greek is called the Decad. In Roman numerals, the I reappears in XI. In Greek, the same number is Iota Alpha, and in Hebrew, Yod Aleph (http://www.mathsisgoodforyou.com/numerals/greeknums.htm). So the numbers start again at eleven, XI on the card, at least in the Marseille and Waite decks. Etteilla's deck is different, using the Arabic notation. D'Odoucet treats each card above 9 as a composite of the two digits. Paul Foster Case's BOTA deck also uses the Arabic, and in his case he adds the two digits together to produce a digit from 1 to 9. These two are oddities.
In what follows, I have benefited in some cases from Jodorowsky's interpretations of the cards in his Way of Tarot (originally 1998 in French). In general I am following the interpretations of these cards that make the most sense to me, from a Neopythagorean perspective. Here I try to justify that perspective and in some cases give links to places where I have said more.
In number Eleven, the lady’s Fortitude (below, Noblet c. 1650, Conver 1760, Jodorowsky 1998, Waite 1909) is rewarded by the
lion’s willing submission. We immediately see a commonality with the Magician here, in the wide-brimmed hat, which the esotericists turned into an infinity sign. That is one sign of the monad, as containing an infinity of possibilities within itself, like the number one, which is both no number and all.
Strength, number 11, is the first card of the second decimal series. It is she who opens the path for unconscious energies... Whereas The Magician, her counterpart of the first series, works from the waist upward and exercises his intelligence, Strength works from the waist to the bottom, allowing the teachings of the depths to communicate with the spiritual authorities of her being.
I think that historically the Renaissance would have found in the lion's "spiritual authority" more than unconscious forces. The lion would have also been the “lion of Judah,” i.e. Christ, whose aid and comfort will be essential in the trials ahead in the tarot sequence. The Monad has reappeared in the lion; we require God's strength to see us through what is to come.The strength of the Christian was from God, and it was in trusting God, just as the lady trusts the lion, that this strength was shown. After a turn of the Wheel, whether up or down, moral strength is required--to withstand adversity, it the turn was for the worse, or to resist taking undue advantage of one's victory, if the turn was for the better.
While the possibilities of Strength may be infinite, a human being understands he or she is to use that Strength in ways pleasing to God. In the Tarot, as Thomas Aquinas taught, Strength is never to be in the service of injustice. Thus in the human world, strength is moral strength, as opposed to physical strength in the physical world, and inner rather than outer. In that way it makes sense to put Justice higher than Strength, as Waite does, and many early tarot orders did as well (Florence, Ferrara). The lion and the lady are in harmony, each expressing the same divine will. Waite pictures her closing the lion's mouth, while the rest have her opening it. What is important is that the lion willingly submits to the lady, and the lady is ready to utilize all its strength, with no gesture of closing it down.
In the Lombard tarot, Strength was at the 9th spot and the Hermit at the 11th. In that case it is strength from God that one must bring to the Wheel. Then the Hermit is there to initiate the new series. In Minchiate, too, the Hermit is card 11. He is the beginning of the new series, turning within.
In XII, the Hanged Man, we see a return to the passive receptivity of a being in matter, as the Dyad expresses, now internalized instead of being received from without from the Popess's book, or the divinity that impregnates her.
Jodorowsky observes,
The key word for understanding the Twos is the concept of passive and receptive accumulation" (p. 280)The figure is bound hand and foot and hung upside down, to be lowered into the darkness, like a corpse into a grave--or a seed into the soil. Jodorowsky says (p. 280):
The Hanged Man, degree 2 of the second decimal series, is bound with his hands behind him. He does not choose but dives into himself.
When this image entered the tarot in 15th century Italy, it signified someone judged a traitor. The card was even called "Il Traditor" in many places. He is thus in a state of isolation and shame, private or public, even if it results from courageous action (Strength) or the self-examination encouraged by the Hermit. Thereby a new being is slowly being engendered, like a fetus in the womb.
If we look at how the image changed over time, we might notice that in the earliest "Marseille" design, of c. 1650 Paris (Noblet, far left above), there were five notches on one pole and six on the other, suggesting the Hanged Man as 12th, a number associated with Judas. One early version even showed him with coins falling from his pockets, the "30 pieces of silver." But at some point one more notch was added on the left (second left above), making the figure in the middle 13th, i.e. Jesus. The card got the meaning of "sacrifice" and the figure a sacred being surrounded by light, as in Waite's card. His sacrifice is the condition for the rebirth of humanity
In the Death card, unnamed and unnumbered but in the XIII spot, we have again the emergence of a new being, a further step in rebirth. A man’s and a woman’s heads appear above the ground, the rest of their bodies unformed, or still below, like the beginnings of a new plant. Jodorowsky aptly comments.
The figure in Arcanum XIIII is using his scythe to cut down the bad growth so the new being can develop. (p. 284).
At
least that is what the card shows us, in most instances. Below, second from left, I use the Chosson, 1672, on which the Conver was based, because it has Death's
lower leg, missing in the Conver. We can see that the hand-shaped plants of the Noblet (far left) have become real hands and feet in the Conver. It seems to me that the flesh on the bones of the Noblet and Chosson is no accident. It is present even on the earliest cards, and is probably the result of the importation of mummies from Egypt. It is a sign of Death's undying nature. Waite's card, where Death is depicted as in a famous engraving by Durer, in armor and on horseback, is a more explicit rendition of the theme of rebirth.
With XIIII, Temperance, we are concerned with moderation in food, drink,
physical exercise, mental exertion, and everything else concerning our
physical body. Of the three parts of the Platonic soul, temperance has
to do with the material part, courage with the spirited part, and
justice with the rational part. The Neopythagorean Tetrad is the number of
fully realized material existence, of which the Emperor is the
guardian. In Fourteen, however, it is one’s own self that must stand
guard. As in the centers of the Conver Fours, there is a place in the
middle where something new is generating.
Jodorowsky says:
Just like The Emperor in the first decimal series, Temperance is a 4, the number of stability. The angel is anchored in the earth and does not fly, although its light blue wings give it that possibility.The Temperance angel offers us the water of life and of the soul: it is in seeking the middle way between extremes that we find the path to immortality. Jodorowsky's card seems to have borrowed from both the Dodal (far left) and the standard Marseille seen in Chosson (second left). Waite adds the pool below (the water of life?) to a shining crown, of which he says it is "the secret of Eternal Life." That seems an allusion to the mixing of water and wine in the Eucharist.
With XV, the Devil, as has often been said, we are in the realm of the infernal counterpart of the Pope. Below, one can see where Jodorowsky got his card, by putting some of the Dodal's features - the lower face, the eyes on the knees - on the design reflected in Chosson.
I like how Jodorowsky connects the Pope with the Devil, both of which share the letter V in their Roman number:
The Pope and The Devil are invitations to go further, to go beyond the limits of the material and the rational. The Pope, without abandoning his disciples who belong to this world, establishes a bridge, a communication with the other world: the divine or cosmic dimension. The Tempter, The Devil, offers a descent into darkness and the subconscious to reach the impersonal magma that is the source of all creativity. (p. 290)
The Pope is not all that he promises, in the eyes of many even in the 17th century, and certainly Jodorowsky. But the Pope, or what he symbolizes, definitely has something to do with the soul’s growth and even rebirth. He challenges the ego to go beyond itself toward other human beings (Christ's message, common to all religions: do onto others as one would be done unto) and what is beyond humanity.
The Devil likewise invites us to go beyond our ego-consciousness into the unconscious. In the first ten numbers, 5 is in the middle, between material life below it and soul life above it. Five is the number of the vegetative soul, that which grows, dies, and reproduces itself in the birth of a new organism. There is likewise the birth of spiritual consciousness, and also rebirth in the subterranean depths of the unconscious. Christ first descended to Hell before he resurrecting on earth. More meaningfully for our us, Jonah had to enter the belly of the whale before he could acknowledge his own darkness, his own fear of doing the Lord's bidding, before the whale could spit him out. In becoming whole human beings, similarly, we have to acknowledge our own darkness and evil, our shadow, which the Devil reveals with his torch; that is a necessary condition for further development of the personality.
With the third laying [division, in Etteilla's original], 11 came into each row, and 2 remained, that is the person who is denoted by this number. The former thus [i.e. the 1] and the latter [the 2] represents for us the Godhead in the centres of the person, the man and the woman; or the fire, the spirit, the soul of the universe in the middle of the white woman and the black man - and as you could see on the 14th card of the Book of Thoth which you must have before your eye.
This draws on alchemical language. Although Etteilla's wording is cryptic, he was knowledgeable about alchemy, even writing a book on the subject. My guess is that what he means is that the Devil represents the world-spirit buried in matter, with the "black man" as the nigredo, after which the white woman is the albedo, its purification, leading to the world-soul in purified form on the World card. It would seem that Levi understood Etteilla in this way, at least as regards the main figure, because he envisioned the Devil as a form of the ancient god Pan, the spirit of nature (his drawing at center above, adapted by Papus's illustrator Wirth and then Waite ), and said that Etteilla "understood this card perfectly." Paul Christian gave it the keyword "Fate." Papus called it "the mysterious astral force, the origin of which is revealed to us by the hieroglyphic of Samech." He had previously described Samech as an arrow circling back on itself. Perhaps he is thinking of what the Hindus call karma, and what corresponds to our expression "The chickens coming home to rest."
What could the Maison-Dieu, XVI, have to do with the Lover, VI? Here again I like Jodorowsky’s remarks:
In The Lover (VI), degree 6 in the first decimal series of the Major Arcana, the cherub is responsible for the descent of the beauty of love from the Heavens. In the Tower, Arcanum XVI, another manifestation of 6, the Earth is sending an explosion of elation and joyful energy from its center towards the heights that causes the two initiates to dance in ecstasy. It is also possible that the sky is responsible for sending this flaming manifestation down. The Tarot allows the same symbol to be interpreted in two different ways without forcing a choice between the two responses, both of which can be right at the same time. (p. 293)
In both VI and the XVI, the soul is in motion, choosing according to a pattern sent down from above. In VI is it Cupid's arrow; in XVI it is a lightning-bolt, also called "arrow" in the early cards, or smoke and flames rising to heaven. In the Noblet and Dodal, the smoke or flames goes mostly up; in the Conver, it seems to be going down. From below, according to Jodorowsky, it suggests an unconscious force bursting upwards like an explosion of sexual energy or the Kundalini of the Hindus, upending the center of consciousness altogether and sending the initiates flying. (For more on this analysis of the Tower, see my Tarot History Forum posts at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=399&start=10#p7240 and viewtopic.php?f=23&t=399&start=20#p7246.)
Eliphas Levi imagined the scene on the Marseille to be the Tower of Babel, an interpretation based on the the Golden Legend rather than the Bible itself. The description there is so close to what is on the card that it is hard to imagine otherwise. Levi's disciple Paul Christian declared that the card was about "ruin," the misfortunes of ambitious projects and intractable rivalries, which teach us not to put faith in material things. Jodorowsky, on the contrary, says that in the Bible, God's destruction of the tower was not to punish humanity for trying to attain to heaven but rather to scatter them to the ends of the earth, so as to repopulate it after the flood. In this re-imagining of the card, the figure in the air is not falling from the tower but dancing on his hands, charged with the outburst of energy: it is the rediscovery of divinity on the earthly plane.
What is relevant about the Seven continues to be that it is the number of the “critical time,” the kairos.
For XVII (Noblet and Chosson shown above), we are guided by a star,
just as Plato's Charioteer (card VII) in the Phaedrus is guided by his memory of
true Beauty. Yet the Charioteer is also led by his horses, whose minds are not
always the most rational. Which is to lead, the one led by lust or by the voice of his master, the rational mind?
The star-lady, on one interpretation, offers a similar choice, whether to drink from the waters of Lethe, forgetting, or go on to drink of the waters of Mnemosyne, remembering. The first sends the soul back to earth for another incarnation, the second to heaven. We
know from the end of Dante's Purgatorio (see my post at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... stcount=39)
that the lady is offering us the waters of forgetting and of
remembering, and that the critical time is none other than that of
admission to Paradise. Mnemosyne (the power to remember),
as the Orphic hymn to that goddess recommends, has the power to break the fetters of Lethe (the water of forgetfulness drunk by souls before entering again into incarnation).
In a related interpretation, the two jars contain the water to wash away sin and the oil of anointing for reception in God's house In a diatribe chastising Israel as a harlot, Ezekiel (16:9) counts
being washed and anointed as one of the blessings that God has given
his ungrateful people. Ezekiel has God say:
"And I washed thee with water, and cleansed away thy blood from thee and I anointed thee with oil." (Et lavi te aqua et emundavi sanguinem tuum ex te et unxi te oleo; at http://vulgate.org/ot/ezekiel_16.htm).Similarly, Moses has Aaron and his sons washed, and then Aaron, as high priest, anointed (Lev. 8:6-12). David, recognizing that he will not get a child by Bathsheba until he atones with God, first fasts, then washes himself, and finally anoints himself (II Sam. 12:20), Then Bathsheba becomes pregnant with Solomon. In the New Testament, John the Baptist washes Jesus in the Jordan, while the Holy Spirit anoints him (Acts 10:38). Then at the end of Jesus's life, Mary Magdalene washes his feet with her tears and anoints them with oil (John 13:2).
Jodorowsky uses different language to a similar point:
Symbolically, The Star is the spiritual guide we carry within who is connected to the most profound forces of the universe and to the sacred.And comparing the Chariot and the Star, he says:
But while the Chariot enters the world like a conqueror, a traveler, or an inseminating prince, The Star acts on the world by irrigating and nourishing it. The naked figure's breasts evoke lactation, and we can see an allusion to the Milky Way in the stars hanging overhead.Accepting all the star-lady's gifts results in a motion upwards, closer to Heaven.
The Eight, besides being Justice, is in the Theology also one of two numbers of Rhea (2 is the other). In XVIII, the Moon, we have Rhea as the dark passivity that is complicit in the dethroning and castration of her husband Saturn by her son Jupiter. The Ogdoad, the Theology tells us (p. 47), was identified with the Moon. It is another crisis point, as indeed the "Etteilla" word-list for the Eight of Swords proclaims. Both Eights, VIII Justice and XVIII The Moon, proclaim that “The only freedom is obedience to the Law,” as Jodorowsky imagines Justice saying (p. 299; but he doesn't actually find Justice and the Mooon comparable). With the first Eight, it is the external law that must be obeyed, that of society. Now, it seems to me, it is an internal law that matters, that of our divine being, which lies in the crayfish’s claws. Will we take the jewel that the crayfish holds?
Below top center is the detail in the Conver. A similar detail may be in the Noblet (detail center middle)--it is hard to say; at least claws are open, and wavy lines don't go through them. And even as early as the Cary Sheet Moon card, c. 1500, there appears to be something in the jaws of what I take to be a crocodile in the center of the card, next to the pool. See my post at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=401&start=30#p6931.)
In the Nines, we step into the unknown, the world beyond Kafka’s door, into the ocean that is beyond the cosmos. The Hermit has been there, in the world but not of it, shining his lantern that we may have him as a guide. The Sun, XVIIII, is a similar light, so bright that the darkness flees. What he asks of us is sacrifice, in emulation of Christ’s sacrifice, so that we, too, may not be of the world.
That twin, with the tail, it seems to me, is the tragos (goat, in Greek) of Greek tragedy, the goat-sacrifice, the sacrifice of the cult-animal of the god for the sake of union with the god. Whereas the Hermit demanded submission, of our lower nature to our spiritual, the Sun demands sacrifice, a torment of the spirit for the sake of the raising up the lower, as in Pollux's willing sacrifice--in the Conver version, which has the Gemini--for the sake of his brother Castor's immortality, or of Christ's sacrifice for the sake of humanity. (For a fuller account, see my post at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=402&start=20#p6671.) In Oedipus's case, he sacrificed his eyes, the organs by which he received the light, for atonement with the god, in his case Apollo. He received in return Apollo's gift of prophecy.
Hard-pressed to find indications of the Nine in the Sun card, Jodorowsky (p. 243) points to nine horizontal bands in the blue on the right side of his version of the Marseille-style card. They are not there in any historical card that I can find. However there are nine vertical ines on the Conver card in that place. They perhaps will do. Jodorowsky says, after discussing the numbers of other bands in the left and center (also not present in any historical cards, and not corresponding to the 10 lines on the left and 9 in the center, as I count):
...and finally the nine on the right-hand side of the card, which brings to mind the numerological value 9, crisis of the cycle's end and detachment... But what is involved here is an initiatory crossing over. The short red-and-yellw wall in the background indicates that already, aat the heart of this crisis, a new construction is in place. The two individuals, breaking from their past, are triggering a new life. (p. 243):Jodorowsky also compares the Hermit's lantern with the light of the Sun. But the sun is already present in the Hermit's robe.
In the Tens we are ending one cycle so that another may begin. The Judgment card is the end, and the World the new beginning. The Judgment is the release of the soul from the lower regions, that it may fly heavenward. As Jodorowsky says
And the World, the final trump, is the return home to the Monad, past the fourness of spiritualized matter, the four evangelists, into the Magician’s world again, who stands in the center holding his or her wand. And so we begin again on yet another level.The heavens are opening, the irresistible call is echoing, the new being is rising out of the depths of the Earth to move towards the celestial dimension. In this ending, the new beginning is already present. (p. 306)
In the Noblet World card, a red circle tops the two lower figures, and a yellow circle the upper figures. The red circles seem to me to be sunrise and sunset; the yellow ones are the sun overhead. The result is half of the sun’s circular journey; the other half we cannot see, as it is below the card. The sun has gone full circle, above the earth for 10 numbers, then setting and journeying below, then returning to the beginning.
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