Posted on by Kyle Roques · 1 Comment

Medieval Number Symbolism

I got this book to help me better understand number symbolism – the philosophy and relationship of numbers to themselves and to the cosmos – to apply this knowledge to the use of Tarot.

… medieval number philosophy, which often appears as sheer nonsense or at best as the product of extraordinarily confused thinking, is explicable only by reference to its origins. … It is the purpose of this study to reveal how deeply rooted in medieval thought was the conciousness of numbers, not as mathematical tools, nor yet as the counters in a game, but as fundamental realities, alive with memories and eloquent with meaning. … An important result of these studies has been to reveal in the medieval mind a web like structure of abstract ideas and concrete realities so closely interwoven and interdependent that no serious gap was felt to exist between them.

Vincent Hopper
Posted on by Kyle Roques

Essence of Tarot

The tarot embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind which lie all the implicits of the human mind, and it is in this sense that they contain secret Doctrine, which is the realization by the few of the truths embedded in the consciousness of all.

The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs. Given the inword meaning of its emblems, they do become a kind of alphabet, which is capable of indefinite combinations and makes true sense in all.

A. E. Waite
Posted on by Kyle Roques

More than a Gateway to the West.

  • The Civil Court building in STL
  • Knapp-Hall deck

The Arch lays the fertile ground – or foundation – to St.Louis and gives birth to the rest of the nation, symbolized by the symbols of fertility on the Arch grounds.

The Sphinx alludes towards the mind ascending to take dominion over the processes of life, disorder, and destruction being overcome. It represents equilibrium or the balance of all forces of nature, it also intimates illusion and like the Sphinx of Oedipus sits ready to destroy all incapable of answering it’s riddle. The whole sphere of Nature as man knows it is but a shadow of reality. The Sphinx is the keeper of the gates of mystery, illusion itself is the keeper of reality and illusion destroys itself when we give the right answer to life’s riddles. Though there is only one, the Sphinx of Egypt guarding the Giza complex, looking East, watching the sunrise, these two sphinxes sit back to back watching the sunrise and sunset as if they’re the keepers of this illusion we call reality (crowning the Wheel of Fortune). These sit just like the Sphinx on the Wheel of Fortune card in Tarot crowning the wheel declaring the entire wheel itself is an illusion.

Credit for the large majority of the interpretation goes to Yolanda M. Robinson and Manly P. Hall

Posted on by Kyle Roques

Lovers Card Origins

A motif similar to the Lovers can be seen and the frontispiece for the Triompho di Fortuna by Fanti, a fortune book published in Venice in 1527. In this allegorical illustration, we find a large figure of Atlas supporting a globe that is actually an elaborate wheel of Fortune with a belt displaying the signs of the zodiac surrounding it and crank handles extending from the central axes. On our left, there is an angel, representing Good Fortune, turning the handle clockwise. On right, there is a devil, representing Bad Fortune, also turning the handle. At the top of this wheel and globe, sits a pope. As in the Tarot, he represents the highest temporal ruler – he is literally on top of the world. On either side of him, sits one of two women with their names written in latin next to their heads. On the left is Virtus (virtue) and on the right, the same side as the devil, sits Voluptas (sensuality). The Pope’s fate hangs on his choice of a mate.

Robert M. Place
Posted on by Kyle Roques

Renaissance Homage

Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelites believed that art was a spiritual or magical endeavor and toward this end they formed a mystical brotherhood of English artist dedicated to recapturing the sincerity of the art of the early Renaissance – the same period that gave us the Tarot.

Burne-Jones based his tall female “stunners” and melancholy heroes on the paintings of Botticelli and Michelangelo, two artists, whose works are considered primary examples of Renaissance neoplatonism. His work expresses the Renaissance idea that physical beauty and spiritual beauty are linked and in one continuum that can lead to the mystical experience of beauty itself, as a timeless, underlying reality – Plato’s “true food of the soul.”

In the Renaissance, artists, like Botticelli, symbolized this spiritual essence as an ideal female nude and this ideal allowed early Tarot artist to place a nude on the World card as a symbol of the primary beauty and allowed alchemists to use the nude as a symbol for the Anima Mundi.

Robert M. Place
Posted on by Kyle Roques

Oracular Keys

The tarot is a veritable oracle and replies to all possible questions with more precision and infallibility than the android of Albertus Magnus. (Albertus Magnus was said to have created a brass head that could answer any question. It was called Androides) an imprisoned person with no other book other than the tarot, if he knew how to use it, could in a few years acquire universal knowledge, and would be able to speak on all subjects with unequalled learning and inexhaustible eloquence. In fact, this wheel is the real key to the Oratorical art in the Grand Art of Raymund Lully (Raymon Lull); it is the true secret of transmutation of shadows into light; it is the first and most important of all the Arcana of the Great Work.

Eliphas Levi
Posted on by Kyle Roques

Hellenistic Gifts

When the Greeks came to dominate Egypt and the Middle East it created a cosmopolitan environment that synthesized Egyptian and Middle East religion with Greek rationalism, leading to groups of mystical philosophies known as Neoplatonist. It also led to a series of mystical texts known as the Hermetic texts, containing works on alchemy, magic, astrology, and philosophy – collectively called the Hermetica. Hermetic philosophy became a major influence on all Western magical practices and mystical traditions. Neoplatonism, alchemy, Kabbalah, Sufism, mystical Christianity and occultism, including the Tarot are all affected by this influence.