Empress and Threes

Du Bartas continues his account in verse of the numbers from one to ten:

Here now observe the Three, 
Th' eldest of Odds, God's number properly,
Wherein both Number and no-number enter:
Heav'n's dearest Number, whose enclosed Center
Doth equally from both extremes extend:
The first that hath beginning, midst, and end.

Three is God's number because of the Trinity, which is also Unitary and the "no number" that combines with "number," i.e. the Two, to make the Three. Agrippa adds that even for the ancient pagans, three was a holy number, "because of which prayers and sacrifices are thrice repeated" (Three Books of Occult Philosophy, ed. Tyson, p. 249, in archive.org). He also confirms that three is about "beginning, middle, and end." He seems to be repeating the Theology of Arithmetic in both instances. It says, "Those who are requesting that their prayers be answered by God pour libations three times and perform sacrifices three times" (Waterfield trans., p. 52, in archive.org), as well as "it is also the very first which admits of end, middle and beginning" (p. 51).

Macrobius does not have much to say about the number three, merely that "three is the first number to have a mean between two extremes to bind it together" (I.VI.23, Stahl trans. p. 104). There is thus an attraction between the two extremes. He illustrates the point by noting that earth and water have an affinity (producing mud, I think he means. So do water and air (producing humidity), and air and fire (air feeds fire).

Thus he [the creator] wove air and water into fire and earth, and thus a mutual attraction ran through the universe, linking together unlike elements by the similarities underlying their differences.

Martianus Capella is similar (Stahl and Johnson trans. p. 178):

It associates a central mean with the initial and final extremes, with equal intervals of separation.

Examples of Threeness are the three Fates (one for birth, one for the length of days, one for death, presumably) and "a certain Virgin who, as they say, 'is the ruler of heaven and hell.'" This would be triformed Hecate, whose mean, Diana the huntress, is between Selene, the Moon-goddess, and Persephone, the goddess of the underworld. This is repeated by Agrippa, who cites "the Pythagoreans" that "Three fold is Hecate, three mouths Diana / The virgin hath...". The number "is dedicated to this virgin whom they say to be powerful in heaven and in hell" (Agrippa, p. 315).  There are of course many other examples of famous threesomes. As far as having means between extremes, the three parts of the Platonic soul might count, with the heart (emotion), a mean between the head (intellect) and the lower organs (appetite).

Ancient Pythagoreanism also suggests another approach, in which it is possible to see du Bartas's paradoxical "wherein number and no-number enter":

The monad is like a seed in containing in itself the unformed and also unarticulated principle of every number; the dyad is a small advance towards number, but is not number outright because it is like a source, but the triad causes the potential of the monad to advance into actuality and extension. (Theology of Arithmetic, trans. Waterfield, p. 50; originally in Greek 5th c., ms. brought to Rome c, 1460, and then Venice, 1470s, print ed., Paris 1543.)

The monad is no-number, now become number. For more on how the Unitary is also Trine, see my post on the Aces, in relation to the Sola-Busca. In the Theology, exactly what these "tertiary things" are, between the unformed and matter, is not clear. In a Renaissance source (1517), I think Reuchlin completes the thought. First he cites Timaeus Locri, “a distinguished Pythagorean”:

Form has the nature of a male and a father, matter that of a female and a mother. Tertiary things are the offspring of these.” (The Kabbalah p. 209).

The first principles, he says, citing Plato, are three: “God, Idea, matter” (p. 208). For Pythagoras, these same principles were “infinity, one, and two.” Infinity lay in the “supersupreme” world, one in the intellectual world, and two, or otherness, in the sensible world, “for matter is the mother of otherness.” Then came the joining together of matter and form by means of nature’s law. How that happens, Reuchlin finds expressed in the Orphic hymns:

...after Jupiter, that is, form, whom he calls “the beginning of all,” and after Juno, that is, matter, whom he calls “Jupiter’s bedfellow, mother of all,” saying, as he calls matter “Juno” as well, “without you has nothing known what life is; you share in all, intermingled so chastely”—after Jupiter-form and Juno-matter, then, Orpheus added, as the third basis of nature, law, that is, distribution, and called it “what strengthens nature.” ...the law of nature with one form impresses its seal on matter many times, as a notary stamps many wax discs with one seal. Particular sealed areas of matter are no longer called Ideas meaning “species,” but Ideas meaning forms “impressed in the wax, as it were; inseparable from matter” (Ammonius).

The Law of Nature “gives to each thing what it has a right to.” It is the means by which form becomes materialized. I am not sure that this explains anything, but it certainly provides vivid images for what happens, first involving Jupiter and Juno and then with the seal and the wax. The identification of the monad with Jupiter and the dyad with Juno was stated, as we have seen in my post on the Twos, by Martianus Capella.

In Christianity, what corresponds to the impression of a seal onto wax is the birth and maturation of Jesus, God's heavenly form incarnated in our world. This is illustrated by Plutarch's version of the Isis myth: Isis and Osiris are said to have produced Horus while still in the womb of their own mother the Moon. But Horus remains in the heavens until Isis gave birth to him. Thereby Horus is a prefiguration of Jesus. On the Lombard and Marseille cards, the shield on the Empress's lap is a kind of equivalent, shown comically flexing its wing as though it were a young man's bicep.

In Genesis, what corresponds is the third day of creation. In On the Creation, Philo of Alexandria says that on the third day God took the primal mud and separated it into the sea and the dry land. He also created the whole variety of plants. These are instances of forms becoming materially realized out of formless mud, he says. In the Pythagorean schema of the Theology, however, plants are associated with the number five. So they would not have been created on the third day. If the Pythagoreans of the Theology had elaborated a creation myth, they probably would have associated the creation of all manner of minerals and other non-living things with the third day.

The Empress in Etteilla

Etteilla in his 2nd Cahier tells us that the card of his deck that corresponds to the Empress is no. 6:

No. 7, or the seventh sheet of the Book of Thoth, is also an Emperor, badly figured to the purpose, which was preceded by an Empress.

If the 7th is the Emperor, then the 6th is for the Empress, a card which Etteilla said represented the 4th day of creation. That is when "God made two great lights." There is a Moon and a Sun on the card, and a light half and a dark half.

God also created the stars on that day, and so on the card there is "a third number," as Etteilla calls it, a single bright star shining through the sunlight. Actually, the card maker also put 5 smaller stars on the card, to represent five lights that are lesser still, as can be seen in the detail of a black and white version on the right above.. There were six known planets (besides the earth) in 1789, the date of this deck, including Uranus, whose status as a planet was formally agreed upon by scientists in 1783. There are also two astrological signs, Aries and Libra, each standing in for half the zodiac, of summer and winter. The keywords on the card were Night, upright, and Day, reversed.

But what is of chief interest here are the word-lists that the Etteilla School attached to the card. Below are Etteilla's keywords again plus the "synonyms and alternative significations" of de la Salette and D'Odoucet, those of the first alone in Italics, and of the second alone in bold:

No. 6. UPRIGHT: NIGHT. 3rd Cahier: "From something bad comes good, or, what has damaged us will become useful to us." Lists: Darkness, Obscurity, Lack of Light, Nocturnal, Mystery, Secret, Mask, Hidden, Unknown, Clandestine, Occult. Eclipse.—Veil, Symbol, Figure, Image, Parable, Allegory, Mystic Fire. Veiled Purpose, Mystical Meaning, Mysterious Words, Obscure Discourse, Occult Science.—Hidden Machinations, Mysterious Intervention, Clandestine Actions, In secret, Clandestinely, Derision.—Blindness, Confused, Entangle, Cover, Wrap, Forget, Forgotten, Difficulty, Doubt, Error, Ignorance. REVERSED, DAY. Clarity, Light, Brilliance, Splendor, Illumination, Manifestation, Evidence, Truth. Clear, Visible, Luminous, Give Birth [or Light, Donner le jour, lit. "give the day"], Bring to Light [Mettre au jour, lit. "Put to the day"], Print, Hatch.—Pierce, Emerge [Se faire jour; lit., “make oneself day"], Clarify, Enlighten, Acquire Knowledge.—Public Joys, Fireworks.—Expedient, Ease.—Opening, Window, Gap (or Empty Space), Zodiac.

Now I will make a leap: The two lists correspond to two sides of the Marseille-style Empress in an unknown cartomantic tradition. There is her public side, full of splendor, and her private side, hidden from public view. These two sides correspond very much to "Veiled Nature" and "Nature Unveiled" as contrasted in the 17th century, nature before and after human understanding has succeeded in wresting from it some of its secrets.  The occultists later would assign the hidden side to the Popess, as "Isis Veiled", and the visible to the Empress, "Isis Unveiled". The Etteilla school has applied both to the same figure, that of the Empress. This analysis does not quite fit Etteilla in the 3rd Cahier: there the sense is that God or nature acts in mysterious ways, "Night" being the mystery and "Day" when we understand the hidden purpose.

The Threes

For both the Etteilla School word-lists and the Sola-Busca Threes, I think that the designer of the cards has seized on the main principle of the Triad as presented in the Theology of Arithmetic, that if the Monad is form, and the Dyad is matter, then the Triad is matter that has been given form. In particular, the theme is the life of Jesus; as the imprint of God’s form into matter, he is the highest instantiation of the Triad. However the point has been generalized and secularized so as to apply to the life of an ordinary human being.

At right are Etteilla's card in Batons, as well as the Sola-Busca's. The design at the bottom of Etteilla's is from an early alphabet Etteilla imagined. The card does not convey a lot, but there are also the word lists:

No. 33. 3 OF BATONS: ENTERPRISES, Undertake, Begin. Usurp, Seize. Daring, Brashness, Boldness, Carelessness, Adventurous, Impudence, Audacity, Audacious, Temerity, Bold, Foolhardy, Rash.-- Enterprising. Undertaken, Embarrassed, Disconcerted.--[Crippled or] Paralyzed, Effort, Test, Attempt. REVERSED: PAINS AT THEIR END (D'Odoucet: INTERRUPTION). Interruption in: Misfortunes, Troubles, Pain, and Toil. End, Cessation, Discontinuation, Respite, Rest, Suspension, Intermission, Intermittence.

D'Odoucet (https://archive.org/details/b22018529_0002/page/76/mode/2up) sees this card, Etteilla's number 33, as 3, the number of generation, done twice. The resulting abundance provides ample incentive for starting new enterprises, he says. The reverseds remind us that even then, nothing valuable is attained without some trouble, however temporary.

Compare here Waite: for the Uprights "established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery" and Reverseds "The end of troubles, suspension or cessation of adversity, toil and disappointment." It is the same as Etteilla. On the card, it seems to be a merchant watching for his caravan (or ship, if the expanse were bluer)  to arrive safely.

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, however, Three connotes first and foremost the Trinity. The Sola-Busca shows a child with wings impaled by batons. What we have, I think, is Christ--representing the Trinity--from the perspective of the beginning of his mission, full of daring, also Satan’s temptations and his own misgivings.  The child's being pierced with arrows is reminiscent of the numerous Saint Sebastians that graced Renaissance churches. It is Christ’s crucifixion superimposed on an infancy scene. Such scenes actually were common in the Renaissance, not with arrows but with sad expressions, as though the people in them already knew how Christ would die. Examples are at http://www.canvaz.com/gallery/15113.htm (Mantegna Madonna and Child) and http://www.earlham.edu/~vanbma/20th%20c ... rtytwo.htm (Bellini altarpiece).

Coins, on the contrary, has the sanguine optimism of the Christ-child taking on the most important of burdens with every prospect of success. On the Sola-Busca, notice the ox-skull between the two lower coins, a symbol of the child's labor, as we have seen from its use, deriving from Horapollo, in the Hypnerotomachia. Etteilla has assigned the planet and goddess Venus to this card; whether he had any interpretive purpose is not clear in the word-lists; probably it is simply because Venus is the third celestial body from the center of the solar system, after the sun and Mercury. 

No. 75. 3 OF COINS: NOBLE. Important, Consequential, Celebrated, Big, Great, Extensive, Enormous, Magnificent, Renowned, Famous, Powerful, Lofty, Illustrious.--Illustration, Esteem, Grandeur of Soul, Nobility of Conduct, Acts of Generosity, Magnificently, Splendidly. REVERSED: CHILD. Puerility, Childhood, Childishness, Frivolity, Weakening, Debasing, Reduction, Politeness, Pettiness, Of Little Importance, Mediocrity, Insignificant, Trifle, Baseness, Cowardice, Timidity, Offspring, Little One [petite], Puerile, Puny, Low, Crawling, Vile, Abject, Humble.--Abjection, Humility, Humiliation.

For Etteilla it is the theme of success and nobility in the Uprights (the completion of his task, in the language of the Theology of Arithmetic), and that of the child and  its associated weakness in the Reverseds. They are also the two aspects of the child Jesus: both Magnificent and Humble.

For d'Odoucet (https://archive.org/details/b22018529_0002/page/160/mode/2up), it is 5, the universal spirit, united to 7, life, resulting in new generation, the 3 of the card, of the most flattering sort, and a child who will respond with nobility to the riches that will be distributed to him.

Again, the word lists are similar to Waite's: "Métier, trade, skilled labour; usually, however, regarded as a card of nobility, aristocracy, renown, glory," and Reverseds, "Mediocrity, in work and otherwise, puerility, pettiness, weakness." Waite's idea for the card was to depict a sculptor carving a relief on a great cathedral, a task likewise both humble and magnificent and not far from SB's unskilled laborer doing the work of redemption. This theme is not so evident in Pamela Smith's rendition, in which the sculptor seems to be showing the couple an empty cup; but it is a hammer. Likewise, we might wonder if the two other figures were a married couple, the wife holding their baby. But it is actually two people supervising the work, holding the plans. It is the beginning of the actualization of these plans in reality. In that regard, Etteilla's "enfant" is the beginning of the actualization of a human being, as noble in origin as the sculptor's, and with the same weakness that can be exhibited by a craftsman, hence the need for supervision.

The 3 of Cups celebrates the happy outcome of God's love, not only the successful mission of the Son but the continued presence of the Holy Spirit,

the Paraclete, after Christ's Ascension. The mood in these "Etteilla" interpretations is sanguine rather than phlegmatic; the SB card, I think, is calmer and more phlegmatic.

No. 47. 3 OF CUPS: SUCCESS (REUSSITE), Science, Happy Outcome, Happy Issue, Victory.--Healing, Cure, Relief.--Perfection, Accomplishment, Perfection. REVERSED: EXPEDITION (EXPEDITION) [c. 1838 and 3rd Cahier: EXPEDITION D'AFFAIRES, i.e. EXPEDITION OF MATTERS]. Dispatch, Execution, Achievement, End. Conclusion, Termination, Accomplishment.

D'Odoucet (https://archive.org/details/b22018529_0002/page/104/mode/2up) relates this card to 7, the number of life in his system, and 4, signifying the universe. Life is action, he says, expanding through all parts of the universe by means of the activity signified by 3, that of generation. The result can only be success.

Compare Waite: "The conclusion of any matter in plenty, perfection and merriment; happy issue, victory, fulfillment, solace, healing, Reversed: Expedition, dispatch, achievement, end." 

 In the Trinity, God is perfected. Something like that is expressed in the Sola-Busca 3 of Cups (near right). Two cups extend from one larger cup, like the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father; or perhaps the reverse: the achievement of the Son coming from the Father and the Holy Spirit--or simply, embodied form from the union of form with matter.

Etteilla's 3 of Swords (far right below) does not say much, except for its keywords. In the Etteilla word-lists it is a negative card of alienation and scorn, very much reflecting the mood of Christ's persecutors, at least in the Uprights, and also some of the feelings of the disciples during the Crucifixion. The Reverseds perhaps reflects A then-common delusion in the mentally ill of being Christ.

No. 61. 3 OF SWORDS: REMOTENESS, Departure, Absence, Distance (écart), Dispersion, Remote, Delay. Disdain, Repugnance, Aversion, Hate, Disgust, Horror. Incompatibility, Annoyance, Opposition, Unsociableness, Misanthropy, Rudeness. Separation, Division, Rupture, Antipathy. Section, Break. REVERSED: GETTING LOST, Insanity, Delirium, Alienation of Spirit (Derangement), Distraction, Crazy Behavior. Error, Miscalculation, Loss, Detour, Swerve (écart), Dispersion.

D'Odoucet (https://archive.org/details/b22018529_0002/page/132/mode/2up) relates the card to the number Etteilla gives it, 6 + 1. Man, signified by 1, must search the globe, signified by 6 (which is also movement), in search of the means of his subsistence. Will he got lost in this pursuit? It is a life and death battle to escape slavery.

Waite is much like Etteilla: "Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dispersion, and all that the design signifies naturally, being too simple and obvious to call for specific enumeration. Reversed: Mental alienation, error, loss, distraction, disorder, confusion."  Pamela Smith's design is the famous one of a heart pierced by three swords, far right, obviously inspired by the Sola-Busca.

That image (the SB), near left, is both similar and different. What is different, of course, is the Sola-Busca's victory wreath underneath: it is the overcoming of pain in its most intense form, the crucifixion. Here it seems to me that Smith has lost some of the rich complexity that is in the SB. All Smith gives us is gloom and despair, without the "silver lining" to the storm card; the Sola-Busca is a "unity of opposites", to use Cusa's (and Jung's) phrase: pain and joy.

In feeling-tone, these sword-stabs are like the wounds of Christ. But in the crucifixion Christ was not wounded in the heart, and he had five wounds, not three. I believe that the image may have been inspired by a genre of religious painting sponsored by the Augustinian monks of northern Italy, although it is not exactly like any of them. One example is a Filippo Lippi painting, 1437-1438 Florence, showing St. Augustine being pierced in the heart by the Trinity.
In the Franciscan tradition, such rays were shown extending from a crucified Jesus to the corresponding parts on St. Francis's body, his "stigmata." Here, however, it comes from the Trinity into the heart. It is thought likely to be based on Augustine's Confessions, IX, 2:3, "Thou hadst pierced our heart with thy love, and we carried thy words, as it were, thrust through our vitals"; the word translated "pierced" is sagittaveras, either "you shot arrows" or "you shot an arrow." (https://www.christianiconography.info/Florence/Uffizi%20Gallery/augustineVisionTrinityLippi.html).

Another painting has Augustine contemplating the Crucifixion: Francesco di Vannuccio, Crucifixion with Virgin, St. John the Evangelist, St. Augustine and an Augustinian donor, Siena 1380. Blood spurts from Jesus's heart along with something like rays extending down to the saint. At the crucifixion, Jesus was pierced by nails and stabbed by the spear of Longinus. A pictorial analogy to the stigmatization of St. Francis is evident.

All four of these cards thus amplify, in four different ways, the theme of the incarnation, which is also one theme of the Empress, as that by which form becomes embodied in the world. Etteilla, and after him Waite, have merely secularized the feelings involved. 

Conclusion

I have already discussed the 3 of Swords, where Smith's borrowing from the SB is obvious. I don't see that Smith used much from the Sola-Busca for her other Threes. There is the motif of one on top, two below, in Coins and Cups; but that much is in the Marseille's arrangement. There is a religious theme in Coins, as I saw in the SB's card, but the sense of victory after hard work, so evident there, is hardly apparent in Smith's design (although it might have been in Waite's instructions). So on the whole I give only a 25% correlation between the SB and Smith (namely, the pierced heart cards that I showed together above).

In using Etteilla to interpret the SB, the procedure works for three of them well; Swords is a little off, so perhaps 50% for it, so overall 87% As far as the correlation between Waite and Etteilla, in Batons the two are quite similar. In Coins, Waite has added "skilled labor", but otherwise they are similar, so 90%.  In Cups and Swords it is again 100%. In other words, at least 95% correspondence overall.

In relation to Pythagoreanism, we have the Sola-Busca and Etteilla specifically in relation to the life and goals of Jesus descending into our world, like form, Logos, into matter. Then both make 100% sense in terms of Pythagorean teachings. I find very little of this in Smith's designs, perhaps only in Swords, but without the happy ending of Christ's crucifixion, and indirectly through Waite's interpretations. I might give Smith a 30% rating for Pythagoreanism; even that I have no doubt is quite accidental on her part. However, Waite's lists fit better, the same 95% correspondence as to Etteilla's list. 

It is perhaps worth looking at the Marseille abstract designs to see whether the interpretations so far given fit any of them.  Below are those of the famous 1760 Conver of Marseille.

The flowering red swords to me fits the image of Christ's suffering for the redemption of humanity: the red, for his suffering, the flowers, for the redemption. The straightness of the sword indicates that a direction has been or will be chosen. In Batons, it is the same criss-crossing of the batons as in the SB 2 of Batons, to a similar effect: the two in front block the one in back; so the development is on the sides, and then up and down, as in the four evangelists in the corners of the World card - or the orientation both to heaven and to the world of Christ.  Cups, with its flowers on both sides of the upper cup, suggests the loving parents or guardians of a newborn, whether of a child or a divine, idealistic love. Those closest to the upper cup seem to be talking to it. The three coins are similar, in this case the top one perhaps representing the return on an investment. The upper tendrils seem to bow to the one on top, in a worshipful manner. That the tendrils go beneath the two lower coins is an indication of the need for a firm foundation for the investment to yield its dividend. (In what follows, I will present two other interpretations of the Marseille images.)

NEOPYTHAGOREANISM IN THE TAROT AFTER ETTEILLA AND D'ODOUCET

It is again Levi who suggests the design for the Empress card favored by later occultists, that of the woman of Revelation 12:1 with the moon at her feet and twelve stars around her head, as well as the Venus Urania of the Greeks and the Queen of Heaven, with the eagle as a sign of "the soul and of life." She is also fecundity, nature, and generation in the three worlds. This idea of generation follows the Etteilla school's conception of the 3. He does not elaborate on what the three worlds are.

Christian says that in the divine world she is "the supreme Power balanced by the eternally active Mind and absolute Wisdom." These latter two are presumably the Bateleur and the High Priestess. He adds that "in the intellectual world she is the universal fecundity of the supreme Being." And in the physical world she is "nature in labor" as well as "the germination of the acts that spring from the Will." His keyword is "action." It is the strength of the will acting upon matter, symbolized by the woman's domination over the crescent moon.

For Papus the card, besides being all that Levi maintained, is "the equilibrium of the Father and of the Son" - that is, the two cards before it - "or, God the Holy Ghost, Horus, the universal vivifying force." Likewise, in the human world it is the "equilibrium of Adam-Eve," or Humanity, and the equilibrium of Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata, that is to say, "the World conceived as a being." After the creative principle and the receptive principle, it is the transforming principle. 

It seems to me that this idea of synthesis could apply to some of the Marseille threes. To the extent that Swords is associated with thinking, the middle sword could represent a synthesis brought about from the combining of the previous two, where the second opposes the first and the third resolves the conflict on a higher level. If Cups represent feeling, then a new project  based both on an earlier one and its critique. Or of course a fertilized egg that can grow into a new living being. In Coins, a new renumerative endeavor can result from the merger of two competitors.

In Picard we can see yet another set of interpretations of the Threes, all outgrowths of what came before in the French tradition.

Scepters is again filled with vegetation, now proliferating in all directions. Picard also includes symbols of Mercury - the caduceus is obvious. One might wonder about the dog, but he insists that it is another symbol of that god. All I can think of is Cerberus, the dog that guarded the underworld. As the god of commerce, Mercury could just as well have appeared in Coins. The signification, he says, is the beginning of the success of enterprises. That of course fits Etteilla and Waite precisely.

Cups continues the theme of love begun in the twos, now very much following Etteilla's and d'Odoucet's meaning of "generation," or love on a physiological level: the forecast is "pregnancy." Accordingly, there is an egg within the enclosure made by the three cups, and flowers proliferate. Symbols connected with the air signs of the zodiac are woven into the cups.

 In Coins, roots are coming up from underground; they, along with the coins in that ground, seem to be pushing up but also protecting and supporting the coin that is above ground, too. Picard says, "The larva on the point of leaving the ground presages the transformation of matter into a determinate production. On the soil, the roots move so as to disengage the third disc from the terrestrial embrace."  It is as though the roots and coins were the parents of a new life now urging it toward its own life. Symbols of the earth signs of the zodiac are inside the three coins.

In Swords, an upturned fish, therefore dead, floats on the surface of a body of water, with lotus leaves descending toward the bottom, apparently cut from their stems by the swords. Picard has a negative view of this suit. However, the word he uses for "upturned" is rétourné, which also means "returned." Perhaps it has returned to the place of its birth so as to spawn and therefore generate many from the death of one, thereby not only continuing the theme of the other 3s but also connecting with the theme of Augustine's vision of the Trinity, including the death of the Son.

Jodorowsky calls the 3s "a bursting apart and creative explosion without experience or any specific purpose" (p. 60). He finds many of the images in later versions of the Empress already present in the Marseille. After noting that she holds the shaft of her scepter "upon the area of her genitals," he observes that "beneath her hand a tiny green leaf can be seen sprouting" (p. 139). With her legs apart, "she could be viewed as in the position of giving birth" (Ibid.). He even sees a crescent moon in the folds of her robe. "It reminds us that we are not the original source of our sexual and creative power but that it is a divine or cosmic power that travels through us" (p. 140).

 In Batons, "the three wands intersect, forming a center expressing their desire to invade the world, represented by the leaves growing out of them" (p. 285). It "explodes toward the outside like a conquerer."

In Swords, the red sword in the middle "symbolizes active, enthusiastic, boundless, and idealistic intellect" (p. 284) which in its idealism and lack of experience loses the distinction between knowing and believing. As for the flour flowers outside the curved swords, they "give security to this impulse," as though situating it in a defined space: "all thought is supported by a clearly oriented space."

In Cups, it is ideal romantic love. He says that the base of the top cup "is resting on the inside of a heart" (p. 286); and below that, a red spindle "divided by three black lines with three orange petals as its base represents the androgynous deity. This ideal love is a projection of divine love." Finally, the two lower cups are "the male animus and female anima that join to create this dream." This is presumably a reference to Jung's concept of a woman's unconscious masculine image projected on to her lover, and to the man's unconscious feminine image projected likewise. The general movement, here as in Swords, is upwards toward the ideal.

In Coins, contrastingly, he says that the movement is downward: "internalization, submersion in matter, and the obscurity of gestation. It is the assertion of a treasure buried in the world that we need to take possession of" (p. 286). The Golden Fleece is his symbol of that treasure, which could be either material wealth or cosmic consciousness. In any case, it is another "enthusiastic beginning" with "an uncertain investment."

So while Picard sees movement downward only in Swords (the leaves), the rest being generative of new life, Jodorowsky sees movement downward only in Coins, the rest moving toward an ideal. At the same time, Picard puts the newness in Cups on a physical basis, whereas for Jodorowsky it is on the level of the ideal.