Introduction

THIS BLOG IS DESIGNED TO BE READ LIKE A BOOK, FROM THE TOP TO THE BOTTOM. SO WHEN YOU GET TO THE BOTTOM, CLICK " OLDER POST" FOR THE NEXT SECTION. THE SECTIONS ARE ALSO AT THE SIDE HERE, AGAIN GOING FROM THE TOP DOWN.

THE ESSAY WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AS A SERIES OF POSTS ON TAROT HISTORY FORUM IN 2010 (http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=160976). IT WAS REVISED FOR THIS BLOG IN JUNE 2012. 

IT WAS AGAIN EXTENSIVELY REVISED IN APRIL 2017, WITH MUCH NEW MATERIAL ADDED FROM ANCIENT SOURCES, AND AGAIN IN FEBRUARY 2022, THIS TIME ADDING MORE ON THE TAROT OF MARSEILLE.

(Added 2017: Here are links to other blog-essays of mine relating to Etteilla:
http://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/, transcribing and translate Etteilla's comments on the trump cards of his deck in his 2nd Cahier and its Supplement.  

http://thirdcahier.blogspot.com/, transcribing and translate Etteilla's list in his 3rd Cahier of his upright and reversed meanings for all 78 cards, including also others' translations and keywords in various editions his cards, plus his corrections in the 3rd Cahier and 4th Cahier Supplements.

 http://templeinmemphis.blogspot.com/ discussing a diagram that is the frontispiece to Etteilla's Leçons Théoreque et Pratique du Livre de Thot in terms of an essay by his follower Hugand, of which I translate the relevant portion. 

 http://etteillasangelology.blogspot.com/ translating and discussing the portion of Etteilla's book Philosophie des Hautes Sciences dealing with the "72 angels of God".)


In this essay I am going to look at the historical tarot in terms of Pythagorean and Neopythagorean philosophy from ancient Greece and Rome as known during the Renaissance.

 

 The decks I of my main focus are the Sola-Busca of c. 1491, the Tarot of Marseille in various versions, Etteilla's  of 1789 together with the Etteilla School's word-lists associated with the cards, and the Waite-Smith of 1909.

Waite and Smith had seen an exhibition of the Sola-Busca in London just before she painted her cards, and the influence is noticeable throughout her number cards, which are the first since the early 16th century to use scenes from life, as opposed to having the suit-objects arranged in various ways with flowers and vines filling up the spaces in between (as we see in the Marseille cards). I don't think it is realized how much Smith got from the Sola-Busca. To show how extensive the borrowing was, I will be making comparisons between the two decks, the Waite-Smith and the Sola-Busca.

Waite, in his lists of divinatory meanings in Pictorial Key to the Tarot, (http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/index.htm), borrowed heavily from the Etteilla School's word lists in his interpretations of the cards. That he did so is not new: James Revak demonstrate it many years ago, even if his arguments, on the Web in 2010, are no longer there. How such disparate works, separated by 300 years (1491 for the SB, 1785 for Etteilla), match up so well can be explained if they all have a common source, namely ancient Neopythagoreaniam. If there are no documents before Etteilla relating the cards to occult number theory, its absence needs no explanation, because such numerology was omnipresent in the literary world of the medieval and early modern period. It does not have to have been invented by Etteilla himself, because of the pervasiveness of that thinking.  

Etteilla and his followers did have an explicit numerology, first seen in two of Etteilla's works published around 1786, developed further in 1790 and in more detail by d'Odoucet in his Science of Signs. All of this comes after his presentation of his system in 1785 in his Third Cahier (published before either the first or Second Cahier).  To what extent this numerology explains Etteilla's choices will be examined later; it is quite different from anything that came before it.

After Etteilla others presented numerology-based systems, at first just for the 22 "major arcana."  Their main principle seems to be to provide a narrative of sorts for the unfolding of a process in various aspects of life, and then assigning numbers to the distinct parts. What connection they have to traditional meanings relevant to the tarot is a topic for examination, which I will attempt a little later.

Applied to the four regular suits, the general idea is to combine numerology with a theory about what the four suits represented. By that I mean a classification of suits according to some generic quality capable of having many species. The most popular today is to assign thinking to Swords, emotion and feeling to Cups, material concerns to Coins (sometimes called Pentacles), and either intuition or desire to Batons. There is also the assignment of one of the four elements to each: air to Swords, water to Cups, earth to Coins, and fire to Batons. Then it is a matter of interpreting each of the number and court cards in terms of the characteristics of the number as applied to each of the four qualities or groups of qualities associated with the suit. A well-known and explicitly numerological approach in these terms is that by Alejandro Jodorowsky in 1998.

While I am open to such developments, I will try to proceed historically, both in relation to the how the suits were characterized in general and in relation to how the cards in each suit were actually interpreted, that is, proceeding inductively, going from the interpretations of the individual cards to the suit as a whole.

Pythagoreanism and Neopythagoreanism

Fragments of Pythagorean philosophy found in Aristotle and many other ancient writers had exerted an influence on Christian writers since Clement of Alexandria. In the section on the Aces, we will see one example from the School of Chartres. 13th century.

There were two sorts of ancient Pythagoreans. First, those referred to by Plato and Aristotle, followers of Pythagoras who according to legend founded a school in Italy in the 6th century, b.c.e.. Then there was a revival of Pythagoreanism called Neopythagoreanism, starting in the first century b.c. and continuing through the Neoplatonists Macrobius, Porphyry, and Iamblicus, also popularized in Latin by Martianus Capella and others.

Neopythagorean number theory focused on the numbers one through ten.  Its chief representative was a mathematician named Nichomachus. Some of his mathematical works were preserved, but none of his philosophical ones, as such. He is known through quotes, most extensively from a work called the Theologumena Arithmeticae written in Greek and now lost. But this book became the basis for a later Theologumena Arithmeticae which contains, scholar say, many selections from Nichomachus's work. It was not translated into any foreign language from the original Greek until the 1988 English version

The Theologumena came to the West from Constantinople in the middle of the 15th century as part of the collection of Bessarion, the Greek prelate turned Roman Catholic Cardinal. After Bessarion's 1469 death, his collection became the nucleus of the Biblioteca Marciana of the Republic of Venice, available for borrowing by qualified citizens. Copies of Bessarion's manuscript found their way to Florence and Naples. The one in Florence reportedly contains marginal notations in the handwriting of the Florentine scholar Poliziano. It may have been he who introduced Neopythagoreanism into the tarot, perhaps with with his friend Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Poliziano and Pico traveled together to the various libraries of Italy in the late 1480s. They both had homoerotic leanings--a tendency quite noticeable in the Sola-Busca deck--and were killed together in 1494 Florence, by arsenic poisoning; whether this was intentional or the result of their taking it as medicine is unknown..

The Theologumena then reappeared in Paris through being reprinted there in 1547. It wasn't reprinted again until the early 19th century. After that, other editions appeared and a critical edition, still in Greek only, in 1922. It is from the introduction to that edition that I get my information about preceding versions.

During the Renaissance, there were also extant writings in Latin that presented Neopythagorean number philosophy, notably Macrobius's Commentary on the Dream of Scipio and Martinus Capella's Marriage between Mercury and Philology, both continuously available in manuscript and in print starting in the late 15th century. There were also Pythagorean-inspired  passages in Augustine, Origen, and their medieval followers, such as Robert Grosseteste. In the 16th century, there was a section on the mystical properties of the first ten numbers in Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, 1533. In that century and the next there was a vast outpouring of applications of the theory in literature and elsewhere (see in this regard the Christopher Butler, Number Symbolism, 1970, and S. K. Heninger, Touches of Sweet Harmony, both in archive.org).

Briefly, Neopythagoreanism is a way of philosophizing in terms of number. With number as its organizing principle, it introduces not only the tenets attributed to Pythagoras but also a philosophical analysis of myths about the gods and medical beliefs about humanity, presented in a developmental way of ten steps. Centered first in Greater Greece (including its colonies), then Egypt and the Near East, it no doubt influenced Kabbalah as well as other religious and philosophical systems of the day. 

In the Renaissance, there was Pythagorean architecture, Pythagorean music theory, and so-called "Pythagorean" fortune-telling. While the tarot had 22 trump cards, called triumphs, they can easily be seen as two sets of 10 flanked with two special cards at the beginning and end, plus four sets of 10 number cards, plus a number of court cards, as few as one (only kings are mentioned in an account of a "game of the gods" of ca. 1420 Milan) or as many as six (in the case of the Cary-Yale Tarot of c. 1445 Milan). 

Pythagoreanism applied to the cards: the 16th century

Not much was written in Pythagorean terms about the tarot, or even the regular suits that the triumphs were added to, before Etteilla in the 1780s. Yet such theorizing was not non-existent. Piscina in c. 1565 used the idea, from Plato's Timaeus, that there were distinct spheres for the four elements because of the need for two means between earth, the lowest, and the celestial bodies, the highest. One mean is air

Another Pythagorean notion in Piscina is that the suits are four because that number is "more perfect than all the others," referring again to the Timaeus. For Piscina the suits divide into two groups of two: Swords and Batons are for war, while Cups and Coins are for enjoying the peace. In this regard Swords are the weapons of defense of the realm, while Batons (Italian bastoni, sticks) are for lighter punishments. For enjoying the peace, Cups are for wine, "which makes men merry", while Coins are for the fulfillment of all our desires and so a symbol of contentment.

In 1582 a French writer named Jean Gosselin wrote a treatise applying Pythagoreanism to ordinary playing cards. Gosselin observes (pp. 33-34, 35) that no card, including the court cards, exceeds in points the number 10, which is 1+2+3+4. This relationship between 4, the number of suits, and 10 is the famous Pythagorean Tetratkys. 

There is also his reasoning regarding the symbolism of the four suits, in terms of the four elements (p. 31). That there are four elements is an assumption of Pythagorean and most other ancient philosophies. As for how these elements could be seen in the French suit-symbols, it is an application of the Pythagorean methodology of looking for relationships and commonalities between the members of different natural groups. An oft-repeated story about Pythagoras was that in listening to blacksmiths’ hammers, he noted that the tones varied according to the weights of hammers producing them, and that the same tones produced by strings varied according to the same ratios in weights applying tension to those strings (Nichomachus, Manual of Harmonics, Ch. 6; Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, Ch. 26; Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, II.1.8-12). Accordingly, Pythagoras was depicted listening to hammers, e.g. by Luca della Robbia, 1437-1439, on the campanile of Florence cathedral (author’s photo above right, taken at the Museo del Duomo, with the museum’s placard). Identifying which ratios were harmonious was part of Pythagorean musical theory. In general, Pythagoreans saw number as the key to understanding numerous phenomena.

So between the French suit of Tiles (Carreaux, Diamonds in English) and Earth there is the commonality of supporting heavy things. Between Pikes (Piques, Spades in English) and Fire there is the commonality of penetrating and being the most penetrating of its group. Hearts (Coeurs), in our bodies are in a relationship of dependence on Air. Clover (Trèfle, Clubs in English) is in a relationship of dependence on much Water. (pp. 31-32.) (This is a process of analogy between one thing and another familiar in medieval allegory. For example, snakes were a sign of Prudence because Jesus said, as the Vulgate rendered Matthew 10:16, “estote ergo prudentes sicut serpentes (“therefore be as prudent as serpents”). The analogy is facilitated by the commonality of “four” between suits and elements. Moreover, the four suits in card games play a similar role to the four elements in ancient physics: just as particular things were combinations of elements in different proportions, so the hands dealt the players contained the suits in different proportions, as Gosselin explains on pp. 38-40.

Other applications of Pythagoreanism by Gosselin have to do with a specific game called "Trene et un," i.e. 31.  He observes that this number corresponds to the sum of four octaves in music, each of which is in the relation of 1 to 2 to the one below. So we get 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 = 31. "Four" is the number of the elements and the suits.  This is a type of reasoning that Etteilla later applied  to the tarot, most notably, pointing out that 78 is a "pyramidal" number of base 12, meaning it is the sum of the first 12 numbers (Cours Theorique et Pratique, p. 21, at https://archive.org/details/1790courstheoriqueetpratique/page/n19/mode/2up). 

That the number of triumphs in tarot might also have had a numerological basis, although from the Judeo-Christian basis. Andrea Vitali has pointed out that

 From around the same time as Gosselin is another writer, Guillaume D'Oncieu, who looks at the tarot deck in terms that echo Pythagoreanism, now with regard to the groups that make up the deck: a quaternity of suits plus a triplicity of heptads (sevens), constituting finally another triplicity of suits + triumphs + the Fool, which in turn is a triplicity of three equal parts of 26 cards each. So far this is just arithmetic in Greek. However, as Andrea Vitali points out in his essay on this passage (http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=293&lng=ENG), these numbers that make up the tarot are loaded with higher significance by association: the four of the elements, three of the Holy Trinity, seven of the seven sacraments, etc. There is even a "quintessence," D'Oncieu points out: in the deal, the cards are distributed five at a time.

Although not said in so many words, some illustrations of the four temperaments seem to relate them not only to the the four elements but also to the four suit-objects. Such assignments are suggested in a 15th century illustration of the four (on top), but another set of assignments in a 16th century one (on the bottom). In the top set, coins are associated with earth and a melancholic, fearful of not having enough; on the bottom coins are with water and a phlegmatic who will presumably spend them frivolously. In the top set, the wooden stick is in the hand of the sanguine; on the bottom, there is a small one in the hand of the sanguine, but a larger one held by the melancholic. Probably the sanguine is meant as air, as in the top set, but now with no clear suit association. In both sets, there is no depiction of any cups. In the top set, what is left is the figure with the rosary beads; as such, he is readily associated with a communion cup. Likewise in the bottom set, cups are readily associated with the good cheer of the sanguine type, even if not depicted. Fire in both is associated with a sword.

In French writings of the late 18th century onwards, suits are associated (by de Mellet, Etteilla, and others, with classes of society: military for swords, clerics for cups, agriculture for batons (often having green in them), and merchants, bankers, and artists for coins. These might correlate roughly to thinking (strategy as opposed to emotion), feeling (clerics, for God and against the Devil), desire (agriculture seen in sexual terms), and material concerns (merchants and artists, providing wares). We will see this way of interpreting the suits in Jodorowsky, who also associates a specific element with each of these modes of activity. Picard has yet another way of interpreting the four suits in terms of the four elements and four characteristic activities.

Early tarot decks and Pythagoreanism

 The decks I of my main focus are the Sola-Busca of c. 1491, the Tarot of Marseille in various versions, Etteilla's  of 1789 together with the Etteilla School's word-lists associated with the cards, the Waite-Smith of 1909, and another deck of that same year that has not gotten much attention until recently, at least in the English-speaking world, that of Eules Picard.

There is a direct connection between the Sola-Busca (SB) and the Waite-Smith. Waite and Smith had seen an exhibition of the Sola-Busca in London just before she painted her cards, and the influence is noticeable throughout her number cards, which are the first since the early 16th century to use scenes from life, as opposed to having the suit-objects arranged in various ways with flowers and vines filling up the spaces in between (as we see in the Marseille cards). I don't think it is realized how much Smith got from the Sola-Busca. To show how extensive the borrowing was, I will be making comparisons between the two decks, the Waite-Smith and the Sola-Busca.

Waite, in his lists of divinatory meanings in Pictorial Key to the Tarot, (http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/index.htm), borrowed heavily from the Etteilla School's word lists in his interpretations of the cards. That he did so is not new: James Revak demonstrate it many years ago, even if his arguments, on the Web in 2010, are no longer there. How such disparate works, separated by 300 years (1491 for the SB, 1785 for Etteilla), match up so well can be explained if they all have a common source, namely ancient Neopythagoreaniam. If there are no documents before Etteilla relating the cards to occult number theory, its absence needs no explanation, because such numerology was omnipresent in the literary world of the medieval and early modern period. It does not have to have been invented by Etteilla himself, because of the pervasiveness of that thinking.  

Etteilla and his followers did have an explicit numerology, first seen in two of Etteilla's works published around 1786, developed further in 1790 and in more detail by d'Odoucet in his Science of Signs. All of this is later than his presentation of his system in 1785 in his Third Cahier (published before either the first or Second Cahier). To what extent this numerology explains Etteilla's choices will be examined later; it is somewhat different from anything that came before it.

After Etteilla, others presented numerology-based systems, at first just for the 22 "major arcana."  Their main principle seems to be to provide a narrative of sorts for the unfolding of a process in various aspects of life, and then assigning numbers to the distinct parts. This is something hinted at in Eliphas Levi, done in a limited way by Papus, and more extensively by Picard and finally Jodorowsky.

Like the Waite and the Golden Dawn of which he was an early member, Picard associated fire with Wands/Batons and earth to Pentacles/Coins. But he assigned water to Swords and air to Cups, probably thinking of Swords as weapons of assault that produced tears. And after all, we drink from Cups in the air, not underwater, under ground, or in a fire. (the original is online at https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/32466484). The Golden Dawn had the reverse for this pair.

I am going to use the Neopythagorean writings on the numbers one to ten to develop an explanation for the illustrations used for the Sola-Busca number cards and then see to what extent they fit the interpretations given by Etteilla and his followers for these cards, allowing for the intervention in the meantime of the "Marseille" order and images for the 22 "majors." 

My running idea is that Pythagorean interpretations, as reflected in the Sola-Busca images, somehow in many cases got attached even to standard decks of cards in fortune-telling, because the words associated with the Etteilla number cards are susceptible to the same Neopythagorean interpretations as the visual imagery on the Sola-Busca cards - not always, but in a clear majority of cases. With such correlations, that both should be similar, in their own medium (words for Etteilla, pictures for the SB), to the Waite-Smith is not surprising. How a tradition could have been maintained without any known documents recording them is unclear. I am just reporting what I see. 

Since Greek and Roman numbering did not have a zero, except late in the Roman period for astronomical observations, I will have not have a separate Neopythagorean analysis of the Fool card (which in the Sola-Busca had the number zero). I begin with the Magician, which at the time of the Sola-Busca was called the Bagatella, and in Etteilla's time the Bateleur, and together with that card, the Aces. But it will turn out, from investigating the Bateleur, that there is in fact a Neopythagorean analysis of the Fool, as that which was before the Creation.