Lover and Sixes

Continuing the poem from Du Bartas, late 16th century, that I have been beginning these posts with, here is the number Six:

The perfect Six, whose just proportions gather,
To make his Whole, his members altogether:
For Three's his half, his Sixth One, Two his Third;
And One Two Three make Six, in One conferred.

The same is said by Agrippa, in almost the same words (p. 265, Tyson ed., in archive.org). That sum, 6, fits the definition of a perfect number: one whose factors add up to the number itself. 6 is the first, the next is 28 (1+2+4+7+14), and after that there isn't another one until 496: "which perfection all other numbers want," Agrippa adds , meaning, one must assume, among those between 1 and 10. Its "perfection" is a dictum repeated in almost every Pythagorean text referring to these numbers. In the Theology of Arithmetic, it is in the first sentence of that chapter (Waterfield trans. p. 75, in archive.org).

Agrippa adds, without explanation, that "for the Pythagorean it is said to be altogether applied to generation, and marriage." Tyson in his note refers to Theon, who comments, "That is why it is called that of marriage, because the task of marriage produces children similar to their parents." The point is that any number ending in 6, multiplied by another number ending in 6, will also end in 6. It is the same as in the case of 5, which is another marriage number. In this case, 6 is produced by multiplication, 2x3=6, as opposed to addition, 2+3=5. 6, being even, is the feminine marriage number.

For the Theology of Arithmetic, 6 governs the animal soul, the soul of that which can move its body from place to place of its own volition (pp. 72-73) in any of the six directions: up, down, left, right, forward, back (p. 78). (Plants grow from a single spot, or are carried from place to place by the wind or by animals.) As such, the card corresponds to the sixth day of creation in Genesis, when God made the four-leggeds--although a Pythagorean account would probably hold that all animals would have been made on that day. Genesis also has God making humans on that day. But humans possess rational as well as animal souls, and to that extent correspond to the Pythagorean Seven.

In Pythagoreanism, for higher animals, moving means not just growing in whatever direction it can, like a plant, but making choices, a combination of instinct and reason. The Hexad is called "presider over crossroads" (p. 81). In human beings, reason is supposedly dominant, but instinct probably plays more of a role than we realize.

As bearing the number for choices, the interpretation of the Marseille Lover card in terms of the choice between Pleasure and Duty fits well. The choice was actually called "the Pythagorean Y," the Y being the crossroads of Hercules. That interpretation was first made explicitly by the Comte  de Mellet, but it surely would have been common before then, as Hercules at the Crossroads was a common subject of 16th-17th century art, as in the details of two paintings at right. However, the figure of Cupid was usually missing.

When Cupid was there, the subject was often love, as for example in the painting at near right, in which Bacchus appears to be putting a ring on Ariadne's finger, while a Bacchante is either officiating or witnessing. The number 6 is also a marriage number in Pythagorean theory, based on one way of combining 2 and 3, the first female and male numbers. Added, the result is 5, and since that is an odd number it was called the male number of marriage. Multiplied, the two numbers are 6, an even number and hence the female number of marriage, which is also an appropriate theme for the Lover card.

The Etteilla card that corresponds to the Marseille Lover is his number 13, sometimes erroneously called "The High Priest," but not by Etteilla  (center below). Perhaps his giving it that number was something of a joke, as the number 13 was by then associated with bad luck, and he refers often enough to his wife as "his Xantippe," the name of Socrates' proverbially practical and thus shrewish wife. Etteilla's "marriage" card shows a high church official, with the hat of a bishop, in the middle between a man and a woman, whose hands he is joining. He is clearly marrying them, as in one historical version of the Lover card, i.e. the Vieville of c. 1650 Paris (at right below) and the 1507 Schoen Horoscope (at left), one part of an engraving of the astrological houses of which all or most correspond to tarot cards.

It is also similar to scenes of the coiniunctio in alchemical emblems, for example the 6th key of Basil Valentine as illustrated in the Tripus aureus of Michael Maier, 1618 Frankifurt: "Marriage, , , , in which the Brother and Sister are Wed"

The keywords on Etteilla's card are appropriately "Mariage" and "Union." Here are the word-lists:

UPRIGHT: MARRIAGE.  Union, Junction, Assembly, Alliance, Meeting, Bond, Nuptials, Vow, Fervent, Intimacy, Liaison, Conjunction, Copulation, Coupling. Chain, Slavery, Confined, Captivity, Servitude. REVERSED: UNION,  Society, Acquaintance, Concubinage, Adultery, Incest. Alloy, Blending, Mixture, Amalgam. Peace, Concord, Accord, Harmony, Good Rapport [bonne intelligence]. Reconciliation, Patching up.

We see more than union in the Uprights: there is a  Bond or Vow , as in marriage or a political alliance. The Reverseds have terms that could apply to metals or chemicals as much as to people; moreover, there are terms there for relationships between humans outside of marriage. To me this suggests strongly that at least one way of seeing the Lover card before this time was as Marriage, or some other intimate relationship, with perhaps the suggestion of an alchemical analogy.

Harmony, one of the key concepts of the Reverseds, was for the Pythagoreans is especially related to the Hexad. Martianus writes (p. 281):

It has been demonstrated that the number six is the source and origin of the musical concords: the ratio of six to twelve represents the interval of the active; six to nine is the interval of the fifth; and six to eight the interval of the fourth. For this reason Venus [the deity Martianus identifies with the Hexad] is said to be the number of Harmony.

In mythology Harmony was the child of Venus and Mars. The Theology adds that the "the first portion in the generation of soul is reasonably held to be the hexad." I suspect that this is because it is soul that harmonizes the various parts of the body and enables them to function as a unit. 


THE SIXES

How can the Sola-Busca sixes be interpreted in relation to the Neopythagoreans? Here is one possibility. As though to express the animal's defining property of self-locomotion, the Sola-Busca Six of Swords (below far right) shows us a man walking, albeit laboriously, given the six swords he is carrying. That difficulty reflects a fact of life in those days, that travel was not that safe. It was also dangerous, and one needed all the protection one could get.

The Etteilla School's word-list shows a similar emphasis on self-movement, at least in the uprights.

No. 58. 6 OF SWORDS, UPRIGHTS: ROAD. 3rd Cahier: Envoy, Messenger. Lists: Path, Lane, Walk, Footpath, Route, Way, Trail, Course, Promenade, Trafficking, Gait, Consideration, Conduct, Means, Manner, Fashion, Expedient,  Example, Trace, Vestige, Envoy, Messenger. REVERSED: DECLARATION. 3rd Cahier: Declaration of Love, changed to just "Declaration" in 4th Cahier Supplement, p. 149. Lists: Declaratory Act, Development, Explication, Interpretation. Charter, Constitution, Diploma, Manifest Law, Ordinance. Publication, Proclamation, Conspicuousness, Public Notice, Publicity, Authenticity, Notoriety. Denunciation, Enumeration, Denotation, Designation. Knowledge, Discovery, Exposure, Vision, Revelation, Apparition, Appearance. Admission, Confession, Protestation, Approval, Authorization.

The keyword "Declaration," and the similar "Proclamation," etc., have something to do with the meaning of "Envoy" in the Uprights: it is what he communicates. "Vision, Revelation, Apparition" are declarations of sorts, but they also may be connected with another aspect of the Hexad, its connection with Hecate (p. 81), who in ancient Alexandria was the goddess of witches and curses, i.e. hexes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecate). In medieval Germany, hexagonal designs were painted on buildings as protection against hexes, perhaps because of the linguistic similarity; but I can find no evidence for an actual etymological connection between "hex" meaning "witch" and "hex" meaning "six."

D'Odoucet derives the meanings of the card from the numbers 5 and 8, 5 as the divine agent in his system, and 8 the circulation of generations. However, he does not explain how these yield the keywords reqiored.

Like Etteilla, Waite understood the Six of Swords in terms of traveling, which as I have said is a feature of the animal soul. For some reason Waite associated the card with travel by water, although such is not part of the Neopythagorean meaning, nor the Etteilla School's word-list:

Divinatory Meanings: journey by water, route, way, envoy, commissionary, expedient. Reversed: Declaration, confession, publicity; one account says that it is a proposal of love.

Smith's illustration shows a man on a raft, having a much easier time of it than the SB's man on foot. The woman and child are part of a narrative that Waite conceived for the Swords (Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot Vol. 1, p. 272), and have nothing to do with anything before him that I can find.

In the SB Cups (below far right), we see three childlike cherubs playing on a large cup in which five other cups are part of its design. The theme might be that of childhood, which for the users of the Sola-Busca would have been in the past. The Etteilla School's list, in the uprights, is all about the past. In the Reverseds, it is the opposite: the future.

No. 44. 6 OF CUPS: THE PAST. Past Tense, Withered, Faded, Dried Up. Formerly, Earlier, Previously, Long Ago, At One Time. Old Age, Decrepitude, Antiquity. REVERSED: FUTURE. After, Following, Subsequently, Later. Regeneration, Resurrection. Reproduction, Renewal, Reiteration.

What do childhood, the past, and the future have to do with the number six? The Theology speaks of six as divisible by three, and hence, like the Triad, pertaining to beginning, middle, and end (p. 78). But in the 6, it seems to me, these three are in the context of the animal soul, which unlike the plant remembers its past, has these memories available to it in the present, and can use them to anticipate the future: beginning, middle, and end have become past, present, and future. 

In the Theology, we do not find this point in so many words; all it says, obscurely, is that the Hexad is "measurer of time in twos," p. 81. However it would seem that the Renaissance linked time with the animal soul, as for example in Titian's famous Allegory of Prudence, which has a wolf and an old man for the past, a lion and a man in the prime of life for the present, and a dog and a youth for the future (see http://www.abcgallery.com/T/titian/titian76.html). In Cups, we see the past in the Etteilla school's Uprights and the future in the Reverseds. In the SB card, we see just the past: the play and exploration of childhood. On the other hand, there are three putti, which allegorically can be beginning, middle, and end of their exploration, or past, looking to the present, looking to the future.

The Neopythagorean texts relate the Hexad to childhood in three other ways. First, like the 5, multiplying  a 6 by itself always results in a number ending with 6: the child is like the parents: "it is the function of marriage to make offspring similar to parents" (p. 75).

Second, it says, the number of days, from conception, after which a human fetus is viable on its own (self-moving, in other words, outside of the womb) is 216, the cube of 6 (p. 83).

And third, from Pythagoras's account of his former lives--legend had it that he could remember previous incarnations--the author deduces from the historical facts Pythagoras mentioned that the time between incarnations was 216 years, again the cube of 6 (p. 84). Thus 216 is the number for regeneration or rebirth into childhood as well as generation in the womb resulting in a self-moving child.

D'Odoucet explains the card in terms of its constituents 4 and 4, with the number 4 representing, in his system, the universe, which now presents itself in two aspects. These, he says, are past and future.

The Waite/Smith seems to have turned the SB's putti into children, also making explicit the connection between childhood and the past.

Divinatory Meanings: A card of the past and of memories, looking back, as--for example--on childhood; happiness, enjoyment, but coming rather from the past; things that have vanished. Another reading reverses this, giving new relations, new knowledge, new environment, and then the children are disporting in an unfamiliar precinct. Reversed: The future, renewal, that which will come to pass presently.

 Like Etteilla, he saw the theme as the past, an adult's childhood, in the Uprights, and the future in the Reverseds. Presumably the tower in the background, and the coat of arms etched on the pedestal, are more specific references to the past.

The SB Six of Coins shows a man pounding out a pattern on a metal plate, while other metal plates, in the shape of discs, hang on the wall.

The arrangement of discs on the wall corresponds to a particular feature of the Six, that it is a "triangular" number, that is, its units can be laid out with equal spaces between them and forming an equilateral triangle. This concept was carefully explained in medieval and Renaissance arithmetic books, for example the passage below from the same 1570 Parisian book I showed in relation to the Tetrad. Three is the first triangular number. Correspondingly, the SB Three of Coins also has the discs laid out in the shape of an equilateral triangle. The next one will be ten.

Turning to the bottom of the card, we see a worker very much in the present. He is focused, attending, on-task, and careful not to make errors. It is, I think, the third part of time, not covered in Cups, which has past in the Uprights and future in the Reverseds. 

The "Etteilla" word list for Coins similarly speaks of the present time, and of attention and care for the present activity:

6 OF COINS, UPRIGHT: THE PRESENT. At the Moment, Presently, At Present, Now, Forthwith, Suddenly, Right Now, Immediately, At once, To Start With, At This Time, Today.  Assistant, Witness, Contemporary. Attentive, Careful, Vigilant. REVERSED: AMBITION. Desire, Wish, Searches. Eagerness, Ardor, Passion, Cupidity, Again. Jealousy, Illusion.

The reverseds, some of them, relate to the future, in the sphere of emotions, but it is an immediate future, so part of the present. The planetary god featured on the card, Jupiter, perhaps has some relation to the reversed meanings. He was both the highest of the Olympian gods and known for his passions for nymphs and mortal women, arousing much jealousy in his wife Juno.

Waite, in borrowing from this list, seems to have taken the keyword "present" in the sense of "gift." Homonyms are allowed, but usually as secondary meanings. We see both senses in his list of Upright meaning:

Divinatory Meanings: Presents, gifts, gratification; another account says attention, vigilance, now is the accepted time, present prosperity, etc. Reversed: Desire, cupidity, envy, jealousy, illusion.

 The Reverseds are simply copied from the Etteilla school. "Envy" is an addition in a c. 1838 book (by a certain "Julia Orsini," pseudonym of the publisher) whose word-lists are mostly based on de la Salette.

Corresponding to the homonym, Smith's design for Coins shows a man giving alms to beggars. This of course has nothing to do with the theme of purposeful movement that connects the various meanings together and with the animal soul. The Sola-Busca Six of Coins won't go to waste, however: Smith uses a version of it for her Eight of Pentacles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pents08.jpg), of which more later.

D'Odoucet derives the meanings of the card from the 2 and the 7 of the card's number: vegetation joined to life, which, he says, "indicates the present time, which may well be considered the father of ambition." This derivation is as arbitrary as most of his attempts.

Finally, the SB Batons shows a man carrying large arrows and holding a lantern. The ribbon divides the arrows into groups of three, two, and one. This division corresponds to a special feature of the Hexad as presented in the Theology of Arithmetic. The first sentence of the chapter reads:

The hexad is the first perfect number; for it is counted by its own parts, as containing a sixth, a third, and a half. (p. 75)

That is, its factors when added together yield the number itself.

I imagine the man in the SB as a servant forced to do labor past the time he would normally have stopped for the day. Or perhaps he has unexpectedly had to get up before dawn. (The man didn't even have time to put on his pants!) Here I am influenced by the "Etteilla" word-list, which again reads like a meditation upon the SB card.

No. 30. 6 OF BATONS, UPRIGHT: DOMESTIC WORKER. Servant, Valet, Lackey, Maid, Mercenary, Subordinate, Slave. Courier, Delivery Man, Messenger, Message, Announcement, Commission, Housework, Servitude. Interior of a House, Housekeeping, Family, All the Servants of the House. REVERSED: WAITING. Expectation, Hope, Rely on, Base Yourself On, Trust, Promise Yourself. Confidence, Foresight. Fear, Apprehension.

The uprights are consistent with the interpretation of the man as a servant. The reverseds convey what a person in that position would be feeling, in regard to the future: it is again about time, but now about emotional attitudes about the future from the perspective of the present: hope, fear, confidence, etc., all emotions that the higher animals might have as well. Since he is traveling, we again have locomotion in space; but the fourth dimension of time is there, too.

The themes that tie together all of these cards, including the Lover, are those of motion and time: past, present, future, traveling, and the choices we make.

D'Odoucet's derivation is from the 3 and the 0: "the world, symbol of our possessions that cooperate with our well-being, needs the support of generations." But there is nothing about the world, possessions, or the generations in the keywords or other meanings of the card, except perhaps "family" in the uprights.

Smith's design for  the Six of Batons seizes on the two words "Courier, Messenger" in just one of the Etteilla School's list, that of de la Salette. This card has the same 1, 2, 3, grouping of staves as the corresponding Sola-Busca card, as well as the sense that the figure is in motion, the hallmark of the animal soul. However the figure is by no means so lowly.

The servant has dropped out of Waite's list, replaced by a messenger of important news:

Divinatory Meanings: The card has been so designed that it can cover several significations; on the surface, it is a victor triumphing, but it is also great news, such as might be carried in state by the King's courier; it is expectation crowned with its own desire, the crown of hope, and so forth. Reversed: Apprehension, fear, as of a victorious enemy at the gate; treachery, disloyalty, as of gates being opened to the enemy; also indefinite delay.

The Reverseds seem unnecessarily negative, as opposed to being merely the receiving end of the message of the uprights. Wait is again fixated on winning or losing as positive and negative, as though active and receptive were not also possible for the two ends of the card.

CONCLUSION

Three of Smith's designs are in harmony with the Sola-Busca; only her Coins is out of step.

As far as Etteilla's lists fitting the Sola-Busca, it seems to me they all do, more or less, so 100%.

Waite's word-lists correspond to Etteilla's in the same three cases. Iin the fourth  Etteilla's list, at least in the Uprights, does not save him. In Batons "Fear" is only one of Etteilla's meanings. So maybe 85% correspondence.

As far as Pythagoreanism, if we allow the temporal aspect of journeys as well as the spatial, there is a close correspondence to the "animal soul" of the Pythagoreans, except for"domestic worker." So about 90% correspondence, I'd guess, for Etteilla. Waite avoids that pitfall but his "presents" is equally non-Pythagorean. So about the same for Waite. Smith makes the non-Pythagorean aspect of Coins principal, so that design brings the Pythagorean content down to 75%; charity is not part of the Pythagorean meaning of the Hexad.

The Sixes in the French Tradition after Etteilla

 Levi, following de Mellet's essay, takes the Lover card as about the choice between virtue and vice. He does not expound on the 6s specifically, except to say that they fall under Tiphereth, meaning divine beauty - masculine, feminine, both together, and the world.

Christian merely repeats Levi, although more dramatically.  The one wielding the bow is "the genius of Justice," who directs his arrow of punishment at Vice. In the divine world, it is the knowledge of Good and Evil. In the intellectual world, it is the balance between liberty and necessity, and in the physical world the antagonism of natural forces. Papus adds that for the man the two outcomes lead to becoming a Mage on the one hand or one of the unfortunates of the Tower card on the other. The card is about the struggle between conscience and the passions. It is a balance between Good and Evil in the divine world, met with Beauty (of the Holy Spirit), between freedom and necessity in the human world, met with Love, and between opposing forces in the physical world, met with Universal Attraction. 

Picard takes his interpretation of the Lover card in the four areas of life indicated by the four suits. In Scepters, it is a choice between idleness and work in one's enterprises (p. 80). In Cups, two groups of 3 cups each present themselves, and one hesitates to choose between them (p. 136). As in the Lover card, it is a matter of the heart. It connotes torments and scruples about a decision on the subject of marriage. In Swords, the picture shows rams on top and a crab on the bottom, Aries and Cancer. It is a choice between emancipation and servitude, freedom and necessity. In Coins, a the three theological virtues are engraved on the top discs, and the sign of Capricorn on the ones below. The issue is the good or bad use of one's fortune, a choice between generosity and greed. Given that Levi had identified the 5s with the sefira of Tifereth, which is in the middle between Severity and Mercy, one may wonder whether the choice between extremes might not really be a matter of finding a "middle way" between the two in each case.

 

Jodorowsky applies his ideas to the Marseille versions of the cards. The Lover card can take many interpretations, but in all of them it is a relational card with several individuals on the same level. It also involves "the descent of the beauty of love from the Heavens" (p. 293). So at the very least, it is about union in general and in particular doing what we love rather than just imagining it.

The 6 of Cups has two sets of 3 cups each facing each other, in the manner of kindred spirits who tend to seclude themselves and share only in private. In the ego-world relationship the ego finds itself at one with the world: "I am the world and the world is me." (Above second from left; I omit the Conver originals because they are essentially the same, differing only in that there is just one shade of blue, light blue, and one of yellow, halfway between yellow and orange.)

The 6 of Coins or Pentacles (far right above), with its four coins in the center, is grounded in a familiar reality yet opens itself to what is outside that reality in opposite ways: past and future, higher consciousness and subconsciousness, light and shadow, etc. It is a search both for what surpasses one and what is already in one. It is also a card that counsels generosity to oneself as well as a well-managed economy, valuing the beauty of the world that money opens one up to - for example, investing in art that one loves - rather than money itself or superficial appearances.

The 6 of Swords (third from left above) has a lone flower in the middle of an enclosure formed by the 6 swords, cut off from its plant and hence from the world. It is a representation of the joy of the solitary intellect, Jodorowsky says.

The 6 of Wands is also a card of joy: the joy of creating, joyful sexuality, work that is a joy to perform, that affirms one's unique personality, if only we do not cut ourselves off from experiencing that joy. Jodorowsky sees one of the plants as active and one as receptive, masculine and feminine.In that way it is the joy of the sexual encounter. It seems to me that both plants have aspects of both (the stem is phallic, the leaves more like the shape of a womb): it seems to me that sexuality involves both functions for both partners, nor is it limited to just masculine and feminine.