Wheel and Tens

Here is how du Bartas finishes his series of verses on the first ten numbers:

The Ten, which doth all Numbers force combine:
The Ten, which makes, as One the Point, the Line:
The Figure, th' Hundred, Thousand (solid corps)
Which, oft re-doubled, on th' Atlantic shores
Can sum the sand, and all the drops distilling
From weeping Auster, or the Ocean filling.

Auster is Latin for the South Wind. The number for the point is 1. The number for the line is 2 (a minimum of two points define a line) and for the figure 3 (a minimum of three points define a plane figure). How the Ten makes them as One I am not sure about: perhaps it is simply that in Arabic numerals, 10 has a 1 in it. It is likewise the magic of Arabic numerals that adding zeros turns Ten into a Hundred, a Thousand, and more, enough to sum up the grains of sand and the drops of water in the ocean.

The number 10, like the 1, is the number of God, but this time fully realized rather than existing in potential. It includes not just the material universe, as in the case of the 4, but the soul in all its microcosmic and macrocosmic manifestation--in the ten spheres of being as well as in the soul of humans. Here what Agrippa says about 10 is especially relevant:

This number also is as circular as unity, because being heaped together, returns into a unity, from whence it had its beginning, and is the end, and perfection of all numbers, and the beginning of tens. As the number ten flows back into a unity, from whence it proceeded, so everything that is flowing is returned back to that from which it had the beginning of its flux. (Book II, Ch. XIII, p. 287 of Tyson's edition.)

By "heaped together," Tyson explains, Agrippa means when when the numbers 1 to 10 are added together, they total 55, the numerals of which added together totals 10, which added together totals 1.

The Wheel of Fortune, from this perspective, shows an entire cycle, first rising in the world to reach the top, then a decline downward toward the beginning point again. Then the cycle repeats, just as the numbers repeat after 10. Eleven is the One over again, but on a higher level (we will have an example when we get to the Pages) and so on.

Etteilla's card here is his number 20, which presents life governed by this card as a kind of "rat race" dictated by the King of the Rats himself. The keywords are "Fortune" and "Augmentation," i.e. Increase (here I am continuing my practice of combining lists, putting words in d'Odoucet only (Science des Signes, vol. 2, 1806 or after, in archive.org) in bold and in de la Salette only (Dictionnaire Synonimique, ca. 1792, in archive.org) in italics. The translations are mine.

20. UPRIGHT: FORTUNE, Happiness, Felicity, Amelioration, Enhancement, Blessing, Prosperity. Goods, Riches, Advantages. Gifts, Favors. Fate, Destiny, Ventures, Good Fortune. REVERSED: INCREASE, Growth, Expansion, Abundance, Surplus. Development, Vegetation, Production.

Unlike the rather bleak image on the card, these words are all positive, both Uprights and Reverseds. I don't know whether the cartomantic tradition that Etteilla was drawing on did similarly, or if Etteilla just had the good business sense to know that positive fortunes are more popular than negative ones. The main difference is that the Reverseds are not as fully realized as the Uprights.

In Minchiate, as I said in the previous section, card number 10 is the Chariot, immediately following the Wheel. In this case, the Wheel's has resulted in a personal triumph, a fitting conclusion to the series. Number 11, in Minchiate as in the Lombard tarot, will be the Hermit.

The Tens: Sola-Busca, Etteilla, Waite.

From what the Theology of Arithmetic says about the Ennead, that it marks a turning around to the beginning, the source, one might expect that it would talk about the Decad as the Monad in another form. There is some of that, in that it refers to both as "God." But the Decad is not a new beginning; it is rather the fulfillment of what the Monad began: it is the actuality of that which the Monad was in potentiality. We can tell that by the epithets that it lists for the Decad:

Hence the Pythagoreans in their theology called it sometimes ‘universe,’ sometimes ‘heaven,’ sometimes ‘all,’ sometimes ‘Fate’ and ‘Eternity’, ‘power’ and ‘trust’ and ‘Necessity,’ ‘Atlas’ and ‘unwearying,’ and simply ‘God’ and ‘Phanes’ and ‘sun.’ (pp. 109-110)

Counting to ten on our fingers, when we complete the count we are still on our fingers. It is only at 11 that we start over, either on our toes or our other hand again. It is the same in the Greek way of writing numerals. One is alpha, Two is Beta, and so on up to Ten, which is Iota (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals). Then Eleven is not Kappa but rather Iota Alpha. The series starts over, on a new level. It is not until Twenty that the letter Kappa is used, and Twenty-one is Kappa Alpha, etc. Iota represents the entirety of what has come before, and that letter followed by Alpha is the new beginning. The Decad is thus the whole, of which the prior numbers are the parts, and after which is only a repetition of what came before.

In that spirit, I see the SB Tens as expressing different interpretations of life's wholes.

First, in Swords (near right), the man's bent head suggests sorrow. All ten swords are in his bag; the job is completed; what next? It is hard to let go of a project once it is done. You want to keep going over something you've written, for example, perfecting it, adding things you missed, etc. You realize its imperfections; it was not as grand as you had hoped. One might imagine the Creator-god feeling that way, surveying his creation in these latter days. It all works, but with such suffering, such antagonisms, such refusal to accept what He has wrought. The demiurge grieves. 

The Etteilla school's keywords and synonyms seem made to order for the SB card:

54. ETTEILLA 10 OF SWORDS: TEARS, Weeping, Sobs, Crying, Sobs, Groans, Sighs, Moans, Lamentations, Complaints, Ailments, Grief, Sadness, Distress, Jeremiad, Lay [Poetry], Desolation. REVERSED: ADVANTAGE. 3rd Cahier: Unfortunate event which turns to advantage. Lists: Gain, Profit, Success. Favor, Gift, Kind Deed. Influence, Ability, Empire, Authority, Power, Usurpation.

The Uprights very much capture the feeling of the SB card. The Reverseds suggest the other side of affliction when it occurs by virtue of force of arms. One man's sorrow is another's victory. The Reverseds draw on a tradition that the suit of Swords connoted the soldier and warfare. So the most of Swords would be the most of warfare, which results in the most of sorrow for one side and the most in victory, if not always happiness, for the other.

It is a peculiarity of the Theology's concept of Fate that it is an apprehension of the future perceived not by some sort of trance-state but by conscious rationality. In the Theology, one of the epithets of the Decad is Fate.

Again, they called it ‘Fate,’ because there is no attribute, either among numbers or among things which have been formed by numbers, which is not sown in the decad and the numbers within it, and does not also extend, in the remaining series, step by step, to what follows the decad, and Fate is as it were a connected and orderly result. [Translator’s note: Heimarmeneheirmos (series)]. (Fate) is here related to  (p. 110)

To the Pythagoreans, number is what makes possible a rational order in a universe with limitless possibilities. Number equals Fate, the law of God to which, like the man in Swords, all must bow down. What physicist today would disagree? The upside of Fate in this sense, according to the Theology, is trust: because God works by numbers, the future will be like the past. The sun will rise tomorrow not because it always has, in our experience, but because the numbers say it will. Again, this is something with which both Newton and Einstein would agree.

What is more, from the ten numbers of the Decad alone, the Theology declares, it is possible to know the laws of the whole universe, in microcosm. For example, if 6x6 results in a number ending in 6, the same will be true of all powers of 6 ad infinitum. A less intuitive example is that the sequence of squares is generated by the successive sums of odd numbers, i.e. 1+3=4, 1+3+5=9, 1+3+5+7=16, and so on. By reason, knowing that the universe is inherently comprehensible, we apprehend fate, with trust that the order will continue. This principle, that the macrocosm is like the microcosm, has served scientists well. The same numeric laws that govern the apple falling on Newton's head govern the movements of the planets.

How, then, can knowing our fate by reason bring sorrow and submission? A mundane example is when one's expenses habitually are more than one's income. One is fated to end up with debt. In classical literature, a non-quantitative example is Sophocles' Oedipus. He goes about intellectually solving the problem of why Thebes is suffering from plague. In the process, he learns his own origins, and thereby deduces by intellect that he is the problem with Thebes, that he must leave, and that he must atone for his hybris. In self-exiling and self-blinding, he submits to the powers of fate he had previously sought to avoid. Thus indeed, his intellectual task is finished, in great sorrow and all the other words in the Etteilla school's word list.

Waite, for his part, has again copied the Etteilla school's list.

A prostrate figure, pierced by all the swords belonging to the card. Divinatory Meanings: Whatsoever is intimated by the design; also pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation. It is not especially a card of violent death. Reversed: Advantage, profit, success, favour, but none of these are permanent; also power and authority.

 The image, however, is a bit much, and in fact no different, except for the gender of the victim, from his 9 of Swords. The SB's figure was at least left standing, perhaps to grieve in the midst of victory, like Tolstoy's Pierre at Borodino (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace), for all the suffering and all that has been left unachieved.

I will move on to Batons (at right). It is another view of a completed whole. I see it as the commemorative tomb of a man whose life was spent honorably and well. It is also the positive side of the creator's work: a world of beauty in which suffering is the ladder toward moral loftiness.

Here I like Di Vinzenzo's statement of the card's significance, which also points to the downside of honor, namely, going after honor too much, with too much self-pride.

Significance: Display one’s successes with pride. Successes in public life, professional rewards, fame, glory. Also, excessive self-love, ostentation of one’s status, narcissism, longing to distinguish oneself at all costs. (p. 119).

I would add that there is the danger of achieving the appearance of honor only, and not the real thing, Plato talked about the life of the man of honor, both positively and negatively, in Book VIII of his Republic (545ff).

The "Ettella" Uprights seem to pick up on just the negative side of the man of honor, i.e. the appearance of honor, not its realization. The Reverseds focus on another negative, the difficulties someone might achieve in the completion of one's goal.

26. ETTEILLA 10 OF BATONS: TREASON. 3rd Cahier: Betrayal. Lists: Perfidy, Trickery, Deception, Cunning, Surprise, Disguise, Dissimulation, Hypocrisy, Prevarication, Duplicity, Disloyalty, Darkness, Villainy, Falsity. Conspiracy, Imposture. REVERSED: OBSTACLE, Haste [Empressement], Impediment [Empechement]. Bar, Hindrance, Contrariety, Difficulty, Disadvantage, Toil, Adversity, Pain. Inconvenience, Abjectness, Chicanery, Complaint, Pitfall, Hate [or Hedge; Haie], Entrenchment, Redoubt, Fortification, Bad Luck, Misfortune, Calamity.

This does not seem to me one of the better efforts of the Etteilla school; the Reverseds should have been more positive.

Here Smith took for Wands what the SB had for Swords. Meanwhile, Waite struggles with the task of fitting the Etteilla school's word-list for Batons to this image from the SB Swords:

A man oppressed by the weight of the ten staves which he is carrying. Divinatory Meanings: A card of many significances, and some of the readings cannot be harmonized. I set aside that which connects it with honour and good faith. The chief meaning is oppression simply, but it is also fortune, gain, any kind of success, and then it is the oppression of these things. It is also a card of false-seeming, disguise, perfidy. The place which the figure is approaching may suffer from the rods that he carries. Success is stultified if the Nine of Swords follows, and if it is a question of a lawsuit, there will be certain loss. Reversed: Contrarieties, difficulties, intrigues, and their analogies.

 In general this account, except for the repeated word "oppression"--put in because of the image chosen--is a better fit for the SB image for Batons than Etteilla's list, especially if we do not set aside "honor". The SB's elaborate tomb shows the man of honor, earned or not, after his death.

In Coins, I think the SB shows us another response to the completion of a task, namely, to keep something undone, so as not to "close the lid," so to speak--or to keep something in reserve, so as not to put all one's eggs in one basket, to commit everything.

The "Etteilla" Uprights admittedly in this case do not fit a Pythagorean  interpretation of the card. However, it will if one ignores the discs themselves to focus just on their container, be it a house or a safe deposit box. 

68. ETTEILLA 10 OF COINS: HOUSE, Household, Economy, Savings. Dwelling, Domicile, Residence, Manor, Abode, Lodging, Hotel, Boutique Palace, Stall, Lodge, Shed, Building, Vessel, Vase. Archive, Castle, Cottage. Cabin, Tent, Pavilion, Hostel, Inn, Cabaret, Bistro, Tavern, Religious House, Monastery, Convent, Hermitage, Burial, Tomb, Sepulcher, Stable. Family, Extraction, Race, Line [c. 1838 only], Posterity. Den, Cavern, Lair, Retreat, House of the Zodiac. REVERSED: LOTTERY, Lot, Fortune, Gambling, Fortunate or Unfortunate Situation, Fate, Ignorance, Chance, Destiny, Destined, Inevitability. Fortunate or Unfortunate Occasion. Arrest, Decree, Decision, Dowry, Legitimate, Share, Division, Gift, Bonus, Pension, Occasion.

We are now in the area of life--for some, the main part--in which the goal is not honor but material things: money, possessions. The tradition that saw Swords as associated with warfare also saw Coins as associated with money an material wealth. De Mellet writes (in de Gebelin, Le Monde Primitif, vol. 8, p. 402, 1781, in Gallica):

Les Coupes en général annonçoient le bonheur, & les deniers la richesse.

(The Cups in general denote happiness, & the Coins riches.)

On the SB card, the box below the putto could be such a person's life savings, or also his house and grounds, all that he will pass on to his heirs. The dog scratching itself in front suggests to me the typical placement of a dog, in front of a house as its guardian--in this case, a rather preoccupied one.

To keep back one coin, which is what I see the putto doing, suggests to me a hedge against fate, which seems to pull him to have everything deposited in the one place. If all else is lost, the person will at least have something. Or if the one disc is lost, he will still have the rest.

The "Etteilla" Reverseds refer specifically to Fate. Let us recall the Neopythagorean concept of fate as spelled out in the Theology, which I discussed in relation to Swords. It is a rational apprehension, frequently too late, of what is in store for one. While our fate may be deducible from the numbers, the problem is that we never seem to have all the numbers we need. So perhaps the putto is wise to hesitate before throwing in the last disc. Let us not tempt fate with the illusion of security, i.e. the box guarded by the lazy dog. Perhaps we should gamble our last disc, or invest it riskily, or hold it close to ourselves instead of putting it someplace that appears safer. On the other hand, perhaps there is no place safer than the box.

Waite has borrowed some elements from the SB, but making it conform more literally to the Etteilla school's word-lists.

A man and woman beneath an archway which gives entrance to a house and domain. They are accompanied by a child, who looks curiously at two dogs accosting an ancient personage seated in the foreground. The child's hand is on one of them. Divinatory Meanings: Gain, riches; family matters, archives, extraction, the abode of a family. Reversed: Chance, fatality, loss, robbery, games of hazard; sometimes gift, dowry, pension.

So instead of a box we have the house. The SB's dog has become two dogs, more actively involved with the people, of whom three generations are represented: a full house, we might say. And we don't have to wonder about the one disc not yet there. Instead we have the array of the Kabbalists' "Tree of Life," although what it is doing there, in such a materialistic suit, is not clear.

Let us turn to the SB Ten of Cups (near right). This card is rather similar to the Nine of Cups, but with a mature man's face instead of the young sea-god. The cups seem to be dancing around him. We may perhaps get a clue to its meaning from the "Etteilla."

ETTEILLA 10 OF CUPS: TOWN (LA VILLE). 3rd Cahier: Town where one is. Lists: City, Homeland, Country, Market Town, Village, Place, Site, Dwelling Place, House, Residence.—Citizen, Citizenry, Town Resident. REVERSED: WRATH. 3rd Cahier: Prepared to lose. Lists: Indignation, Strife, Irritation, Rage, Anger, Violence.  Hate, Aversion, Blame, Animosity, Antipathy, Resentment, Vengeance, Danger, Risk, Peril, Injury, Affront, Outrage, Blasphemy, Thunderstorm, Tempest, Squall. Cruelty, Inhumanity, Atrocity, Enormity.

A traditional suit meaning for Cups was the town, in contrast to Batons, which was the countryside. This can be seen in the essay by de Mellet already quoted. First he explains that the French suit of Hearts (Coeurs, in French), corresponds to that of Cups in tarot, both signifying happiness (bonheur), while Diamonds (Carrreaux, in French) corresponds to Batons i, both signifying "indifference and the countryside" (p. 403) Then he adds (Ibid.):

Les coeurs & plus particulierement le dix, dévoilent les événemens qui doivent arriver à la ville. La coupe, symbole duc Sacerdoce, semble destinée à exprimer Memphis & le sejour des Pontifes.

The hearts & more particularly the Ten, reveal the events that must arrive at the city. The cups, symbol of the priesthood, seem intended to express Memphis & the stay of the Pontiffs.

So in this highest of Cup number cards, we have a townsman, perhaps a shopkeeper and his wares. The Reverseds perhaps indicate the hostility a shopkeeper can generate if his wares are deemed too expensive, or of poorer quality than is claimed for them. Or perhaps they turn against the merchant for some reason unrelated to his services; perhaps he is a Jew. I will expand on this point in a moment, but first I want to quote Di Vicenzo on this card (Sola-Busca Tarot, pp. 52-53). She is worth hearing at length:

The number Ten represents fulfillment, the manifestation of the original unity after working out the first nine numbers, the totality of the universe, but also of man. It is the famous Pythagorean Tetraktys, in which the source and the root of the whole of nature is found. The Tetraktys forms a shape with ten points arranged on four planes (1+2+3+4=10) . . .
Ten is also the number of the Sphiroth [sic] of the Tree of Qabbalah . . .
The face symbolizes the evolution of the human being from darkness to light, and represents the revelation, incomplete and fleeting, of the person . . .
The card symbolically represents the achievement of individuality during the last phases of pregnancy. At the same time, it describes the moment in which the individual, perfectly mature and aware, gets ready to resume the road back to the bosom of divinity.
Significance: A face surrounded by ewers—deep reflection is required. Maturity, completeness, end of a cycle, or doubts, perplexity, well-grounded fears, perspicacity.

I did not understand the point about pregnancy. It would make more sense if the word there were "life" instead of "pregnancy"; perhaps there was an error in translation. I liked very much that she noticed the man's look of apprehension and other emotions. It is indeed a wonderful face. There are indeed ten sefiroth; what follows in that paragraph is just more about the Tree; what it has to do with the card was not developed. Not every ten is relevant. Yet the layout on the card is not far out of line. And the comparison might have a special appropriateness, if the man in the middle might be a Jew. Since Jews were generally forbidden to own land, they were the quintessential town-dwellers. Cups is associated with the town.

To me the face itself suggests Jewishness. It invites comparison to that of King Solomon in a wedding chest painting by Marco Zoppo, late 15th century Ferrara. Solomon is conducting a test like that of the true and false mother; here the putative sons of a deceased man are commanded to shoot arrows at the body of their father. Only the true son, protesting at right in the detail below, refuses. It may only be the beards on the left-hand figures that make me think this, all rather like Solomon's. But Jews were not the only one to wear beards in Renaissance Italy; Alfonso d'Este the duke-apparent of Ferrara, wore one, and also the Doge of Venice,(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agostino_Barbarigo).

The conditions of Jews at that time may be relevant to the card. The numerous Jews in Ferrara had much the same rights as other citizens, and no forced labels on their clothing (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view. ... tter=F#288). Yet there were occasional indignities--and special taxes to be paid. There was also the ranting of preachers, which Leonelo and Pope Nicholas V had combined to suppress. Ercole lifted the special taxes, as the Jewish Encyclopedia relates:

in 1473 Duke Ercole I. declared, probably in answer to the pope's request for their expulsion, that in the interest of the duchy he could not spare them, and that he would therefore relieve them not only from all special burdens, but also from the payment of the sums formerly extorted as taxes by papal legates.

But the situation could change at any time--and probably did, after the Estensi lost power in 1598..

The situation in nearby Venice was much worse; there were occasional forced baptisms, and in 1480, the killing of three in a "blood libel" case (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... enice.html). They could not build synagogues and had to wear yellow badges, yellow considered the most demeaning color, as that associated with prostitutes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_ghettos_in_Europe).

The moral: those who welcomed one, and whom one benefited, could also turn against one.

Waite seems to understand this moral in his account of the card, even if the image, that of a family whose adults, at least, are admiring a rainbow of cups, has no hint of the negative side:

Divinatory Meanings: Contentment, repose of the entire heart; the perfection of that state; also perfection of human love and friendship; if with several picture-cards, a person who is taking charge of the Querent's interests; also the town, village or country inhabited by the Querent. Reversed: Repose of the false heart, indignation, violence.

"Repose of the false heart" and "repose of the entire heart" (in the original "repose of the true heart", come from a work attributed to Etteilla and published in 1801, Le Bohemien. The masterfulness of the SB painter in capturing the figure's apprehension in the midst of plenty is probably impossible to duplicate. But something like it would have been nice, to reflect both negative and positive. Such touches were especially appreciated during the Renaissance, as adding a sense of mystery and indeed transcendence to the image. The Waite-Smith too seldom takes advantages of the opportunities available to it.

CONCLUSION

 Here Smith has used only one of the SB designs, that of Swords (for her Batons), so 25%.

As far as the Etteilla list reflecting the SB designs, Swords' "affliction" does well, but "betrayal" in Batons doesn't fit the SB's tomb at all. The fit to Coins is strained. Cups fits perfectly. Overall perhaps there is a 70% correlation.

In Swords, Waite takes most of the Etteilla uprights but adds "not permanent" to the gains of the Reverseds. So around 90%. In Batons he adds a couple of things to the Uprights not in Etteilla, so around 85%.  In Coins he adds "riches" where Etteilla only has "savings," so 90%. In Cups he follows Etteilla closely, 100%. So overall 90%.

In the sense of returning to the whole of whatever the suit sign signifies, the SB does well: affliction in Swords, honor in Batons, the well to do city-dweller in Cups, the miser in Coins. Likewise for Eteilla. Waite, and Smith's card, even if for the latter two Batons is more oppression than honor. I rate them all at 90%.