The (Cube's-Base) Four; a full and perfect sum,How Four relates to God's name is explained in Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy (ed. Tyson, in archive.org):
Whose added parts just unto Ten do come;
Number of God's great Name, Seasons, Complexions,
Winds, Elements, and Cardinal Perfections.
Hence that superexcellent and great name of the divine trinity of God is written with four letters, viz Yod, He, and Vau; ... for He being duplicate, terminates both syllables, and the whole name . . .This is in the course of Agrippa's attempt to deduce the fourness of God's name from the threeness of the Trinity, which may skip.
The Church Father Irenaeus used a Pythagorean argument
when he said, objecting to the many writings that were called
"gospels," that there could not be more than four gospels. (For the
relevant passage in Irenaeus, see "Irenaeus and the Four Gospels" at http://www.ntcanon.org/Irenaeus.shtml.)
The point is made in the Theology of Arithmetic, still in Greek up to our own day. After saying all of the above, it adds that four is the number of the full extent of a thing:
Everything in the universe turns out to be completed in the natural progression up to the tetrad, in general and in particular, as does everything numerical--in short, everything whatever its nature. . . . The fact that the decad. . . is consummated by the tetrad along with the numbers which precede it, is special and particularly important for the harmony which completion brings; so is the fact that it provides the limit of corporeality and three-dimensionality.
That is what Agrippa was thinking when he said that "the number four makes up all knowledge" and "also doth contain the whole of mathematics."
The other aspect of the number 4 is that it is the number that corresponds to the material universe. three dimensional objects,
as opposed to lines or two dimensional figures. Macrobius says (p. 106f):
To continue, all bodies are either mathematical, the creatures of geometry, or such as are perceptible to sight or touch. The former possess three stages of development: the line grows out of the point, the surface out of the line, and the solid out of the surface.
It takes two points to
specify a line, three to specify a triangle, the simplest two
dimensional figure, and four to specify the simplest in three
dimensions, the tetrahedron or triangular-based pyramid. This point is
shown in the pages of an arithmetic textbook (in Heninger, Sweet Harmonies, p. 72f, originally Joannes Martinus, Arithmetica,
Paris 1526). In turn these diagrams come ultimately from Nichomachus,
who intended them as a foundation for such philosophizing as we see in
the Theology of Arithmetic.)
And after three dimensions, there were no more. Three dimensions were the maximum, the whole.
Thus
the number 4 is concerned with wholes, especially in three dimensions,
in other words the whole material universe, which itself is made of the
four elements, which, because of their "adhesive qualities,...
harmoniously grow together into firm bodily substances". Just as the
Emperor rules over the material lives of
people in all lands, as opposed to a particular kingdom, so does the
Tetrad rule over all the material universe.
We see that principle also
expressed in the fourth day of creation. It is the day when God, having
finished creating a vast variety of things on earth, created the Sun,
the Moon, and the Stars. Thus Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 1489, in his Heptaplus, 7th Exposition, 4th Chapter (Jessie Brewer McGaw, translator, p. 98), says, speaking of the days of Creation:
And to the fullness of time! For if the number four is the fullness of numbers, in the world of numbers, will the fourth day not be the fullness of days?
See then what the fourth day brings us. On the second day the heavens were created, namely, the law, without sun and moon and stars, certainly capable of future light, but for the moment still dark and not illuminated by any remarkable light.
Then came the fourth day on which the sun, lord of the firmament, namely, Christ--Lord of the laws, and the lunar Church, Christ's consort and wife, similar to the moon, and the apostolic doctors, who would educate many to justice, as stars in the firmament--began to shine for eternity, calling the world to eternal life. The sun did not destroy the firmament, but fulfilled it, and Christ came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.
After 10, in the Greek way of writing numbers (as in ours), the numbers repeat in the next column. The first ten numerals are the first ten numbers of the Greek alphabet, e.g. 1 is Alpha and 10 is Kappa. For 11, the Greeks wrote the letter Kappa and next to it the letter Alpha. 12 was Kappa Beta and so on, up through 19. Then 20 was written with the letter Lambda, 21 with Lamba plus Alpha, and so on. So the numbers were cyclical around a base of 10. The Theology says:
as regards 1, 2, 3, 4, the decad . . . is a measure and a complete boundary of every number, and there is no longer any natural number after it, but all subsequent numbers are produced by participation in the decad, when the cycle is started a second time, and then again and again on to infinity. (p. 55)
So 10
represents the whole in actuality, very much correlating to 1, which
represents the whole in potentiality. Potentiality becomes actuality by
a slow process, and then actuality returns to potentiality quickly. But already in the Tetrad the whole is achieved, by means of addition.
In Etteilla's sequence, the Emperor corresponds to the 7th card, as specified in the quote from his Third Cahier that I gave in connection with the Empress; it "corrects" the Marseille order of trumps.
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.A few years later he had his own "corrected" version of the card. The scene is of the 5th day of creation, when God made the birds and the aquatic creatures. I see no particular correlation between that image and the Emperor: it merely represents the Day of Creation following that of the Empres, which was the fourth. However, the keywords on Etteilla's card, as well as the word lists that were developed by his immediate disciples in the year or two afterwards, are more relevant (and less so to what Etteilla actually has on the card!). Appui and Protection mean "Support" and "Protection." These are both attributes of a ruler's traditional role in relation to his people. And here are the other words. As in previous posts, I put the words that appear in d'Odoucet's list alone (Science des Signes, vol. 2, ca. 1806) in bold and those in de la Salette's alone (Dictionaire Synonymique,1791, both in archive.org) in italics.
SUPPORT. Aid, Prop, Flying Buttress, Column, Base, Basis, Foundation.—Principle, Reason, Cause, Subject. Fixity. Assurance, Persuasion, Conviction, Surety, Security, Confidence, Certainty.—Help, Assistance, Protection. Relief, Consolation. REVERSED: PROTECTION. Defense, Assistance, Aid, Help, Influence, Benevolence, Kindness, Charity, Humanity, Goodness, Commiseration, Pity, Compassion, Credit. Authorization.
The Emperor is the Foundation of the realm, the Security of its stability, provider of its defense, ruling with Compassion and Goodness. These words are further confirmation of an existing meaning for the card pointing in a particular direction, similar to that in the Marseille tradition.
D'Odoucet, in contrast, attempts to deduce the meaning of the card from its number, 7, signifying life in general. Life is the support of every animal species, he says (https://archive.org/details/b22018529_0002/page/24/mode/2up).
Etteilla's own fourth card corresponds to the Tarot of Marseille's Star, and like that one has the lady pouring from two vases. The only innovation is that instead of seven stars surrounding one big one he has seven symbols for the seven traditional "planets" plus a five-pointed star in the upper right corner. Otherwise it concerns the 3rd element, air, and the 2nd day of creation, that in which the firmament was created, dividing the waters below from the waters above. D'Odoucet relates that card to the number 4 in its signification of Universe (even though "the heavens and the earth" were created on the 1st day).
The Fours
Below are the "synonyms" and related meanings taken from the two lists for the 4 of Coins left by Etteilla's disciples. Next to them are Etteilla's card and that of the Sola-Busca:
4 OF COINS: A PRESENT (d'Odoucet: Bien Fait, i.e. WELL DONE). Charity, Gift, Generosity, Good Deed, Donation, Liberality, Holiday Gift, Favor, Offering, Donation, Bonus, Assistance.—The Color White, Lunar Medicine, White Stone. REVERSED: FENCE or CLOSURE Enclosure, Circuit, Convallation [a steep, narrow valley?], Circumscription, Circumference, Circle, Circulation.—Intercept, Obstruction, Blocking, Monopolizing. Cloister, Monastery, Convent. Incarceration, Imprisonment, Arrest. Immobilized, Fixed, Determined, Definitive. Extremity, Borders, Limits, Bounds, End, Barrier, Partition, High Wall, Hedge, Interior Wall.—Obstacles, Hindrances, Difficulty, Suspension, Delay, Opposition.
The first set of Upright meanings suggests the idea of abundance, i.e. material fullness, so much that there is extra. To that extent it correlates with the material universe in three dimensions: even its empty spaces are defined by the bodies bounding it. The Reversed meanings fit the idea of fullness by indicating the boundaries defining particular spaces within the whole; like many Reverseds, they are the negation of the Uprights, which are about going beyond the limits that have been set up.
D'Odoucet relates the card to the numbers 4 and 7: the universe 4, under the auspices of life, 7, dispenses its gifts. Also, 4 is the number of the cube: from the stability of that form, preventing movement, comes closure, or enclosure, and hence repose (https://archive.org/details/b22018529_0002/page/158/mode/2up).
It seems to me that
the Sola-Busca 4 of Coins can be taken in much the same sense as in the Etteilla word-list. A
very rotund woman, the image of Plenty, has a disc in her hand as
though offering it to the viewer, while the other three are enclosed in a basket.
Etteilla's association of the card with Luna, the moon, is, in light of his other astrological identifications in Coins, simply because it is the fourth "planet" out from the center of the solar system, after the sun, Mercury, and Venus. Yet its capacity for fullness and its association with childbirth (the 28 day menstrual cycle and the goddess Diana, ruling over childbirth) also makes it appropriate.
Divinatory Meanings: The surety of possessions, cleaving to that which one has, gift, legacy, inheritance. Reversed: Suspense, delay, opposition.Smith's illustration borrows from the Sola-Busca while giving it Waite's twist: it shows a man clutching a large coin, with the New York skyline in the background: the Wall Street investor with his hands guarding his prize. Unlike the Etteilla School, Waite emphasizes the downside of wealth, that is, the tendency not to be generous. Instead of investing in their place in heaven through charity, as the Renaissance bankers did, the modern financier invests in more of the same; charity is irrelevant, at least until he has made all that he cares to make.
Now let us look at Batons.
4 OF BATONS, UPRIGHT: SOCIETY, Association, Assembly, Connection, Federation, Alliance, Church, Assemblage, Meeting, Circle, Community, Gathering, Crowd, Multitude, Mob, Throng, Group, Band, Company, Cohort, Army.— Convocation, Accompaniment, Blending, Mixing, Alloy, Amalgam.—Contract, Convention, Pact, Treaty. REVERSED: PROSPERITY. 3rd Cahier: Flowering (Fleurissement). Lists: Increase, Growth, Advancement, Success, Attainment, Happiness, Flourishing, Felicity. Beauty, Embellishment.
Here the Reverseds convey the idea of growing abundance. In the Uprights, take the words: "Federation, Union, Group, Company, Cohort, Army." The sense I get, combining the two into one idea, is that people in groups, to prosper, need to be well ordered in themselves and in relation to others, so that different classes blend together, agreements are made that are binding on all, and an armed force ("army") is provided to secure compliance as well as to protect it from outside enemies. The Reverseds then indicate the attainment, to a significant degree, of that goal.
For D'Odoucet (https://archive.org/details/b22018529_0002/page/74/mode/2up) this card combines 2, the number of vegatation, with 3, the number of generation, to produce abundance sufficient for the needs of the society involved. The "cubique" number 4 also suggests the stability and repose resulting from such satisfaction of needs.
In the SB 4 of Batons, what
I see is a member of the armed force entrusted with keeping the peace and protecting the nation.
His four weapons stand for the whole that he is protecting in all four directions of the compass. The
soldier does not act impulsively, because, with his shield, his helmet,
and his weapons, he and his society are well protected. The fanciful helmet perhaps suggests a snail with its protective shell. The Waite-Smith illustrates both ideas. In the foreground is the theme of the Etteilla school's Reverseds, namely Prosperity, with the addition, appropriate in Batons (and also "Wands"), the suit-sign made from trees, of de Mellet's "the countryside." In the background, the castle is an appropriate medieval symbol of protection, even if Waite does not call attention to that aspect of the image.
Divinatory Meanings: They are for once almost on the surface--country life, haven of refuge, a species of domestic harvest-home, repose, concord, harmony, prosperity, peace, and the perfected work of these. Reversed: The meaning remains unaltered; it is prosperity, increase, felicity, beauty, embellishment.I turn now to the Etteilla School’s lists for Swords.
4 of SWORDS, ETTEILLA, UPRIGHT: SOLITUDE, Desert, Retreat, Hermitage. Exile, Banishment, Ostracism. Uninhabited, Remote, Abandoned, Given Up. Tomb, Sepulcher, Coffin. REVERSED: ECONOMY, Good Conduct, Wise Administration. Foresight, Discretion, Household Management, Savings, Avarice, Stinginess. Order, Arrangement, Rapport, Propriety, Agreement, Concert, Accord, Concordance, Harmony, Music. Disposition, Testament. Reserve, Restriction, Exception. Circumspection, Electoral District, Restraint, Wisdom, Symphony, Moderation, Precaution.
Here we seem to have conditions in austere conditions. The Uprights are about lacks: lack of people, lack of nourishment,
lack of support, lack of life, as a result of misfortune and a need to retreat into oneself. The Reverseds suggest how to live in such times: with economy, restraint, moderation, also stinginess and avarice.
For d'Odoucet (https://archive.org/details/b22018529_0002/page/74/mode/2up), the card is a product of 0 and 6, i.e. the globe and "animating spirit" (although elsewhere he says 6 is "movement"), thus (somehow) a withering away of our globe as expressed in its deserts and moors, in solitude, and with the need for economy due to scarce resources. 4 represents the universe; thus this is true universally, reducing man to defense, to secure his existence.
Before that, there was the Hypnerotomachia of 1499, where again the ox-skull represents labor (below right). The motto deciphering the "hieroglyphs" reads, in English, "From your labor to the god of Nature sacrifice freely." (The last word is "liberaliter". It continues, "Gradually you will make your soul subject to God. He will hold the firm guidance of your life, mercifully governing you, and will preserve you unharmed.") From the perspective of Neopythagoreanism, we might say for the SB image: abundance is won by hard and useful work. That actually would be a good motto for the Waite Four of
Wands
(Batons), which has something like the wreath and two side poles of the
ox-skull emblem. The ox-skull also suggests how deserts and death might have come to be part of the Upright meaning of the card. A skull typically means death; an ox-skull then means death of the ox. But why would an ox, which lives on grass, come to die? Primarily if there were a drought, and the land became a desert. So the skull can mean opposite things at once: abundance through labor, and death through deprivation. Combining the two, there is also a third thing: the retreat to the desert, or solitude anywhere, to restore an equilibrium in one's life, like the four swords of the SB card, the four Jungian functions in balance and sustaining a victory within.
Waite's card captures some of these meanings, that of the skull representing death. Here is his card, together with his divinatory interpretations:
Divinatory Meanings: Vigilance, retreat, solitude, hermit's repose, exile, tomb and coffin. It is these last that have suggested the design. Reversed: Wise administration, circumspection, economy, avarice, precaution, testament.These of course are directly from the Etteilla school, only "tomb and coffin". fit the picture taken literally, one of the Sola-Busca ox skull's double meaning. However we may see the effigy on the tomb as a real person, engaged in solitude and prayer. So besides death also work, inner work,and instead of a victory wreath we see a stained glass window with some kind of supplication, perhaps to Jesus. There are also other types of work, captured by Waite's reversed meanings, which can lead to more materially oriented victory.
The Sola-Busca Four of Cups has a man holding a cup above a sack, with
three on the shelf. Di Vincenzo sees the scene as him putting the cup
into the sack, and applies a Jungian concept to it (Sola-Busca p. 40): the cup being put in the sack is that aspect of our
personality, one out of the four functions, that we hide from view,
even from ourselves (Jung called it the "shadow"). My first thought was that such a perspective is again too modern to fit the card in its historical context. And how would one hide one's temperament? But in one way, the Etteilla school's word-lists in a way support her:
4 OF CUPS, UPRIGHT: BOREDOM. Displeasure, Discontentment, Disgust, Aversion, Aversion, Enmity, Hate, Horror, Anxiety, Mental Suffering, Mild Dejection, Affliction, Trying, Annoying, Unpleasant. Saddening, Troubling. REVERSED: NEW KNOWLEDGE New Instruction, New Information, New Light, New Intelligence, New Clarification. Sign, Indication, Conjecture. Omen, Presage. Presentiment, Forecast, Oracle, Prediction, Prophecy, Divination, Novelty.
On the one hand, many of the words in the Uprights
describe things we wish to hide in ourselves: we are
disgusted by just those aspects of our personalities that we hide from
view. Bringing these aspects to light might very well help bring about the
results indicated by the words in the Reverseds. Jung says somewhere that the inferior function is the gateway to the self.
Another possibility for the SB Four of Cups is suggested by Etteilla's upright meanings: it
could be that the man has taken out the fourth cup and the putto and he are looking into
the sack to see if there is anything more. He is bored with what he has received and wants something more. From this viewpoint, the Tetrad,
standing for the whole of material abundance, is not enough. Life is about more than that. What is
left out is soul, which in the Theology of Arithmetic is the subject of numbers five through eight.
D'Odoucet derives Etteilla's keyword from the stability associated with 4: "The cubic position indicates a monotonous cessation of motion," for which the antidote is new knowledge. He also derives it from the numbers 4 and 6 on this card, 4 as the universe and 6 as the globe, both offering only their habitual manner of being, and no further exercise of the mind (https://archive.org/details/b22018529_0002/page/102/mode/2up), without new information.
In summary: all four suits and the
trumps relate to similar themes: material abundance through careful and
secure management of the whole, and to the opposites of these. That is the function of the Emperor, in
his capacity as a benevolent secular leader. But there can also be too much stability: soul has been left out, which thrives on new information.
Divinatory Meanings: Weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary vexations, as if the wine of this world had caused satiety only; another wine, as if a fairy gift, is now offered the wastrel, but he sees no consolation therein. This is also a card of blended pleasure. Reversed: Novelty, presage, new instruction, new relations.
It could also be that he is thinking that while his material needs are being met, his soul is not thriving. That is the idea of what is missing in the fours, which will be answered in the fives through eights.
CONCLUSION
In summary: all four suits and the
trumps relate to similar themes: material abundance, or at least adequacy in times of scarcity, through careful and
secure management of the whole. That is the function of the Emperor, in
his capacity as a benevolent secular leader. All that is needed is soul.
As far as the Etteilla keywords and word-lists' relation to the SB designs, there is a strong relationship in all four suits. Coins has Swords are connected only via the skull, with a secondary meaning made primary. In Batons it is a different thing that brings prosperity, laws vs agriculture. So perhaps we can assign a 60 per cent correlation as a whole.
Waite in relation to Etteilla: Waite has a different twist on the Uprights, wealth in Coins, miserliness vs. Etteilla's generosity, only only part of Etteilla's Reverseds so only 50% similar. In Batons, Uprights are different but Reverseds the same, so another 50%. In Swords, Waite has again taken only one meaning out of at least two, so 50%. In Cups, finally, there is a good correspondence between the two, 100%. So on average 62%.
In regard to Neopythagoreanism, it seems to that both Waite and Etteilla convey well the idea of the material world and its expansion in usefulness and shortcomings, in three of the suits. So do the SB and Smith designs, even if different in spirit. The problematic one is Swords in the Uprights, in all except the SB. In the Smith images, it is a bit worse, because it is only the Upright that is illustrated in Swords. However, the SB, with four swords with a wreath in the middle, has much the same message as in Batons: prosperity through the maintenance of order. So 50% for Smith's design, 75% for Etteilla's and Waite's, and at least the same, relative to Etteilla, for the SB.
NEOPYTHAGOREAN INFLUENCES ON THE TAROT AFTER ETTEILLA AND D'ODOUCET
Papus, besides restoring the Emperor to the tarot, also gave him the cubic stone as his seat, clearly related to its number: "initiation, power, the tetragrammaton, the quaternary, the cubic stone or its base," he declares. He also notes that his legs form a cross, another foursome, which together with the triangle of his body forms the alchemical sign for sulphur, "the Athanor of the philosophers," in his terms.
Christian adds that 4 marks the "realization" of the action initiated in the 3:
Human Will [I], illuminated by Knowledge [II] and manifested by Action [III,] creates Realization, [IV] of a power that it can use rightly or wrongly, according to its good or evil Inspiration [V], in the circle described for it by the laws of universal order.
He adds that "The cross described by the position of his limbs symbolizes the four elements and the expansion of human power in every direction."
Papus sees the Emperor as the first term of the second ternary, and so a "reflex" of the first term of the first ternary (the Bateleur), just as the second card is a "reflex" of the first. He has two formulations each of its definition in the three worlds. In the divine world, it is "the reflex of God the Father, Will," and specifically "realization of the divine Word in the creation." In the human world, it is the reflex of Adam, the Power," and "the realization of the ideas of the creature shared by the quadruple work of the spirit: Affirmation, Negation, Discussion, Solution." In the physical world it is the reflex of the natura naturans, i.e. "the soul of the universe" and "realization of the actions conceived by the Will."
Will, form, authority, protection, fire. (Pap.)
Unity completed by the trinity and giving the perfect square: affirmation, negation, discussion, solution. (Falc.)
Power, support, stability, a great person. (J. B.)
We recognize "protection" and "support" from the keywords on Etteilla's card. We will see "stability" again in Jodorowsky.
Now for Picard's versions of the fours, together with his explanations, which occur on the previous page.
Batons (near right) expresses some of the features of the Emperor: the lion represents "the force indispensable to realization. It sustains and protects" - just as the Emperor sustains and protects his domain. The wheat is a token of the fertility thereby achieved, the "realization" of that fertility.
Cups shows the fruit of love as a physical phenomenon, the birth of an infant, above all a male infant or that of an animal. The symbol for Gemini above, he says, signifies infancy. This is perhaps a result of Etteilla's reduction of the two young men of the Marseille versions to two small children. The eagle - perhaps taken from the Emperor's shield - breaking its shell has the same meaning, as do the ripe wheat and berries - again, the realization of the gestation seen in the threes. The butterfly is the new soul that has been realized on earth.
Coins, as usual, has the symbols of the three zodiacal earth signs inside the discs, with a square in the fourth, with four units on a side. The meaning, predictably, is the realization of the fortune whose foundations began in card 3. He also associates it with the births of female infants and reptiles. Both historically were associated with earth, women as providing the matter of the developing foetus while sperm was thought (by Aristotle and his followers, but not Plato) to provide the form. Reptiles, of course, move low to the ground. They may also be grouped with women due to Eve's ill-favored venture with the serpent in Eden.
Picard calls the symbol in the middle the sign for the Earth. It is not the usual one, but Wikipedia does include a circle surmounted by a cross among the variations for earth as an element. It is similar to the knob at the end of the Emperor's scepter. The difference is that the scepter's knob is divided into three parts, for each of the three continents (Europe, Africa, Asia) known at the time the symbol became established. So it symbolizes the entirety of the world, except perhaps its oceans. On Picard's card, what we see is rather a schematic version of the earth as a globe, showing the equator and some longitude lines. The cross in both cases symbolizes the dominion of Christ over the world.
Jodorowsky, using the standard "Marseille" images of Conver 1760 but with a few more colors (below, Batons and Cups), continues the tradition of seeing the 4s as about realization, to which he adds, perhaps following Picard, stability. It is for him an unstable stability. The ecstasy of sex and creativity dulls with lack of novelty and so, to survive, must evolve into the five. He does not point to any specific aspect of the Marseille card to illustrate his point; but along with the rigid X of the four Wands are sprouts coming out in all four directions, like new exploratory shoots. His analysis is reminiscent of Etteilla and d'Odoucet's "ennui" and "new information" on the 4 of Cups: boredom unless there is new information.
There is a similar danger in Swords. Thinking is of great use, but without intuition, it becomes rigid and stultified, closed to new ideas and forms of expression.
Jodorowsky seems to be trying to put the French tradition first seen in Etteilla in today's terms, but reducing the "three worlds" of Christian and Papus to one for cards 1-4, called "earth," another for the cards 6-9, called "heaven," with 5 and 10 as transition cards, the 5 from "earth" to "heaven" and the 10 transitional to the "next" suit.
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