SECTION 2

TRUMPS MAJOR
OTHERWISE, GREATER ARCANA

1. _The Magus, Magician, or Juggler_, the caster of the dice and
mountebank, in the world of vulgar trickery. This is the _colportage_
interpretation, and it has the same correspondence with the real
symbolical meaning that the use of the Tarot in fortune-telling has with
its mystic construction according to the secret science of symbolism. I
should add that many independent students of the subject, following
their own lights, have produced individual sequences of meaning in
respect of the Trumps Major, and their lights are sometimes suggestive,
but they are not the true lights. For example, Eliphas Lévi says that
the Magus signifies that unity which is the mother of numbers; others
say that it is the Divine Unity; and one of the latest French
commentators considers that in its general sense it is the will.

2. _The High Priestess, the Pope Joan_, or Female Pontiff; early
expositors have sought to term this card the Mother, or Pope's Wife,
which is opposed to the symbolism. It is sometimes held to represent the
Divine Law and the Gnosis, in which case the Priestess corresponds to
the idea of the _Shekinah_. She is the Secret Tradition and the higher
sense of the instituted Mysteries.

3. _The Empress_, who is sometimes represented with full face, while her
correspondence, the Emperor, is in profile. As there has been some
tendency to ascribe a symbolical significance to this distinction, it
seems desirable to say that it carries no inner meaning. The _Empress_
has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a
general sense with activity.

4. _The Emperor_, by imputation the spouse of the former. He is
occasionally represented as wearing, in addition to his personal
insignia, the stars or ribbons of some order of chivalry. I mention this
to show that the cards are a medley of old and new emblems. Those who
insist upon the evidence of the one may deal, if they can, with the
other. No effectual argument for the antiquity of a particular design
can be drawn from the fact that it incorporates old material; but there
is also none which can be based on sporadic novelties, the intervention
of which may signify only the unintelligent hand of an editor or of a
late draughtsman.

5. _The High Priest or Hierophant_, called also Spiritual Father, and
more commonly and obviously the Pope. It seems even to have been named
the Abbot, and then its correspondence, the High Priestess, was the
Abbess or Mother of the Convent. Both are arbitrary names. The insignia
of the figures are papal, and in such case the High Priestess is and can
be only the Church, to whom Pope and priests are married by the
spiritual rite of ordination. I think, however, that in its primitive
form this card did not represent the Roman Pontiff.

6. _The Lovers or Marriage._ This symbol has undergone many variations,
as might be expected from its subject. In the eighteenth century form,
by which it first became known to the world of archæological research,
it is really a card of married life, showing father and mother, with
their child placed between them; and the pagan Cupid above, in the act
of flying his shaft, is, of course, a misapplied emblem. The Cupid is of
love beginning rather than of love in its fulness, guarding the fruit
thereof. The card is said to have been entitled _Simulacrum fidei_, the
symbol of conjugal faith, for which the rainbow as a sign of the
covenant would have been a more appropriate concomitant. The figures are
also held to have signified Truth, Honor and Love, but I suspect that
this was, so to speak, the gloss of a commentator moralizing. It has
these, but it has other and higher aspects.

7. _The Chariot._ This is represented in some extant codices as being
drawn by two sphinxes, and the device is in consonance with the
symbolism, but it must not be supposed that such was its original form;
the variation was invented to support a particular historical
hypothesis. In the eighteenth century white horses were yoked to the
car. As regards its usual name, the lesser stands for the greater; it is
really the King in his triumph, typifying, however, the victory which
creates kingship as its natural consequence and not the vested royalty
of the fourth card. M. Court de Gebelin said that it was Osiris
Triumphing, the conquering sun in spring-time having vanquished the
obstacles of winter. We know now that Osiris rising from the dead is
not represented by such obvious symbolism. Other animals than horses
have also been used to draw the _currus triumphalis_, as, for example, a
lion and a leopard.

8. _Fortitude._ This is one of the cardinal virtues, of which I shall
speak later. The female figure is usually represented as closing the
mouth of a lion. In the earlier form which is printed by Court de
Gebelin, she is obviously opening it. The first alternative is better
symbolically, but either is an instance of strength in its conventional
understanding, and conveys the idea of mastery. It has been said that
the figure represents organic force, moral force and the principle of
all force.

9. _The Hermit_, as he is termed in common parlance, stands next on the
list; he is also the Capuchin, and in more philosophical language the
Sage. He is said to be in search of that Truth which is located far off
in the sequence, and of Justice which has preceded him on the way. But
this is a card of attainment, as we shall see later, rather than a card
of quest. It is said also that his lantern contains the Light of Occult
Science and that his staff is a Magic Wand. These interpretations are
comparable in every respect to the divinatory and fortune-telling
meanings with which I shall have to deal in their turn. The diabolism of
both is that they are true after their own manner, but that they miss
all the high things to which the Greater Arcana should be allocated. It
is as if a man who knows in his heart that all roads lead to the
heights, and that God (Nature) is at the great height of all, should
choose the way of perdition or the way of folly as the path of his own
attainment. Eliphas Lévi has allocated this card to Prudence, but in so
doing he has been actuated by the wish to fill a gap which would
otherwise occur in the symbolism. The four cardinal virtues are
necessary to an idealogical sequence like the Trumps Major, but they
must not be taken only in that first sense which exists for the use and
consolation of him who in these days of halfpenny journalism is called
the man in the street. In their proper understanding they are the
correlatives of the counsels of perfection when these have been
similarly re-expressed, and they read as follows: (_a_) Transcendental
Justice, the counter-equilibrium of the scales, when they have been
over-weighted so that they dip heavily on the side of God (Nature). The
corresponding counsel is to use loaded dice when you play for high
stakes with _Diabolus_. The axiom is _Aut Deus, aut nihil_. (_b_) Divine
Ecstasy, as a counterpoise to something called Temperance, the sign of
which is, I believe, the extinction of lights in the tavern. The
corresponding counsel is to drink only of new wine in the Kingdom of
the Father, because God (Nature) is all in all. The axiom is that man
being a reasonable being must get intoxicated with God (Nature); the
imputed case in point is Spinoza. (_c_) The state of Royal Fortitude,
which is the state of a Tower of Ivory and a House of Gold, but it is
God (Nature) and not the man who has become _Turris fortitudinis a facie
inimici_, and out of that House the enemy has been cast. The
corresponding counsel is that a man must not spare himself even in the
presence of death, but he must be certain that his sacrifice shall
be--of any open course--the best that will ensure his end. The axiom is
that the strength which is raised to such a degree that a man dares lose
himself shall show him how Nature (God) is found, and as to such
refuge--dare therefore and learn. (_d_) Prudence is the economy which
follows the line of least resistance, that the soul may get back whence
it came. It is a doctrine of divine parsimony and conservation of energy
because of the stress, the terror and the manifest impertinences of this
life. The corresponding counsel is that true prudence is concerned with
the one thing needful, and the axiom is: Waste not, want not. The
conclusion of the whole matter is a business proposition founded on the
law of exchange: You cannot help getting what you seek in respect of the
things that are Divine: it is the law of supply and demand. I have
mentioned these few matters at this point for two simple reasons: (_a_)
because in proportion to the impartiality of the mind it seems sometimes
more difficult to determine whether it is vice or vulgarity which lays
waste the present world more piteously; (_b_) because in order to remedy
the imperfections of the old notions it is highly needful, on occasion,
to empty terms and phrases of their accepted significance, that they may
receive a new and more adequate meaning.

10. _The Wheel of Fortune._ There is a current _Manual of Cartomancy_
which has obtained a considerable vogue in England, and amidst a great
scattermeal of curious things to no purpose has intersected a few
serious subjects. In its last and largest edition it treats in one
section of the Tarot; which--if I interpret the author rightly--it
regards from beginning to end as the Wheel of Fortune, this expression
being understood in my own sense. I have no objection to such an
inclusive though conventional description; it obtains in all the worlds,
and I wonder that it has not been adopted previously as the most
appropriate name on the side of common fortune-telling. It is also the
title of one of the Trumps Major--that indeed of our concern at the
moment, as my sub-title shows. Of recent years this has suffered many
fantastic presentations and one hypothetical reconstruction which is
suggestive in its symbolism. The wheel has seven radii; in the
eighteenth century the ascending and descending animals were really of
nondescript character, one of them having a human head. At the summit
was another monster with the body of an indeterminate beast, wings on
shoulders and a crown on head. It carried two wands in its claws. These
are replaced in the reconstruction by a Hermanubis rising with the
wheel, a _Sphinx_ couchant at the summit and a Typhon on the descending
side. Here is another instance of an invention in support of a
hypothesis; but if the latter be set aside the grouping is symbolically
correct and can pass as such.

11. _Justice._ That the _Tarot_, though it is of all reasonable
antiquity, is not of time immemorial, is shown by this card, which could
have been presented in a much more archaic manner. Those, however, who
have gifts of discernment in matters of this kind will not need to be
told that age is in no sense of the essence of the consideration; the
Rite of Closing the Lodge in the Third Craft Grade of Masonry may belong
to the late eighteenth century, but the fact signifies nothing; it is
still the summary of all the instituted and official Mysteries. The
female figure of the eleventh card is said to be Astræa, who personified
the same virtue and is represented by the same symbols. This goddess
notwithstanding, and notwithstanding the vulgarian Cupid, the Tarot is
not of Roman mythology, or of Greek either. Its presentation of Justice
is supposed to be one of the four cardinal virtues included in the
sequence of Greater Arcana; but, as it so happens, fourth emblem is
wanting, and it became necessary for the commentators to discover it at
all costs. They did what it was possible to do, and yet the laws of
research have never succeeded in extricating the missing Persephone
under the form of Prudence. Court de Gebelin attempted to solve the
difficulty by a _tour de force_, and believed that he had extracted what
he wanted from the symbol of the Hanged Man--wherein he deceived
himself. The Tarot has, therefore, its Justice, its Temperance also and
its Fortitude, but--owing to a curious omission--it does not offer us
any type of Prudence, though it may be admitted that, in some respects,
the isolation of the Hermit, pursuing a solitary path by the light of
his own lamp, gives, to those who can receive it, a certain high counsel
in respect of the _via prudentiæ_.

12. _The Hanged Man._ This is the symbol which is supposed to represent
Prudence, and Eliphas Lévi says, in his most shallow and plausible
manner, that it is the adept bound by his engagements. The figure of a
man is suspended head-downwards from a gibbet, to which he is attached
by a rope about one of his ankles. The arms are bound behind him and
one leg is crossed over the other. According to another, and indeed the
prevailing interpretation, he signifies sacrifice, but all current
meanings attributed to this card are cartomancists' intuitions, apart
from any real value, on the symbolical side. The fortune-tellers of the
eighteenth century who circulated Tarots, depict a semi-feminine youth
in jerkin, poised erect on one foot and loosely attached to a short
stake driven into the ground.

13. _Death._ The method of presentation is almost invariable, and
embodies a bourgeois form of symbolism. The scene is the field of life,
and amidst ordinary rank vegetation there are living arms and heads
protruding from the ground. One of the heads is crowned, and a skeleton
with a great scythe is in the act of mowing it. The transparent and
unescapable meaning is death, but the alternatives allocated to the
symbol are change and transformation. Other heads have been swept from
their place previously, but it is, in its current and patent meaning,
more especially a card of the death of Kings. In the exotic sense it has
been said to signify the ascent of the spirit in the divine spheres,
creation and destruction, perpetual movement, and so forth.

14. _Temperance._ The winged figure of a female--who, in opposition to
all doctrine concerning the hierarchy of angels, is usually allocated to
this order of ministering spirits--is pouring liquid from one pitcher to
another. In his last work on the Tarot, Dr. Papus abandons the
traditional form and depicts a woman wearing an _Egyptian_ head-dress.
The first thing which seems clear on the surface is that the entire
symbol has no especial connection with Temperance, and the fact that
this designation has always obtained for the card offers a very obvious
instance of a meaning behind meaning, which is the title in chief to
consideration in respect of the Tarot as a whole.

15. _The Devil._ In the eighteenth century this card seems to have been
rather a symbol of merely animal impudicity. Except for a fantastic
head-dress, the chief figure is entirely naked; it has bat-like wings,
and the hands and feet are represented by the claws of a bird. In the
right hand there is a scepter terminating in a sign which has been
thought to represent fire. The figure as a whole is not particularly
evil; it has no tail, and the commentators who have said that the claws
are those of a harpy have spoken at random. There is no better ground
for the alternative suggestion that they are eagle's claws. Attached, by
a cord depending from their collars, to the pedestal on which the figure
is mounted, are two small demons, presumably male and female. These are
tailed but not winged. Since 1856 the influence of Eliphas Lévi and his
doctrine of occultism has changed the face of this card, and it now
appears as a pseudo-Baphometic figure with the head of a goat and a
great torch between the horns; it is seated instead of erect, and in
place of the generative organs there is the Hermetic caduceus. In _Le
Tarot Divinatoire_ of Papus the small demons are replaced by naked human
beings, male and female, who are yoked only to each other. The author
may be felicitated on this improved symbolism.

16. _The Tower struck by Lightning._ Its alternative titles are: Castle
of Plutus, God's (Nature's) House and the Tower of Babel. In the last
case, the figures falling therefrom are held to be Nimrod and his
minister. It is assuredly a card of confusion, and the design
corresponds, broadly speaking, to any of the designations except _Maison
Dieu_, unless we are to understand that the House of God (Nature) has
been abandoned and the veil of the temple rent. It is a little
surprising that the device has not so far been allocated to the
destruction of Solomon's Temple, when the lightning would symbolize the
fire and sword with which that edifice was visited by the King of the
Chaldees.

17. _The Star_, Dog-Star, or Sirius, also called fantastically the Star
of the Magi. Grouped about it are seven minor luminaries, and beneath it
is a naked female figure, with her left knee upon the earth and her
right foot upon the water. She is in the act of pouring fluids from two
vessels. A bird is perched on a tree near her; for this a butterfly on a
rose has been substituted in some later cards. So also the Star has been
called that of Hope. This is one of the cards which Court de Gebelin
describes as wholly Egyptian--that is to say, in his own reverie.

18. _The Moon._ Some eighteenth-century cards show the luminary on its
waning side; in the debased edition of Etteilla, it is the moon at night
in her plenitude, set in a heaven of stars; of recent years the moon is
shown on the side of her increase. In nearly all presentations she is
shining brightly and shedding the moisture of fertilizing dew in great
drops. Beneath there are two towers, between which a path winds to the
verge of the horizon. Two dogs, or alternatively a wolf and dog, are
baying at the moon, and in the foreground there is water, through which
a crayfish moves towards the land.

19. _The Sun._ The luminary is distinguished in older cards by chief
rays that are waved and salient alternately and by secondary salient
rays. It appears to shed its influence on earth not only by light and
heat, but--like the moon--by drops of dew. Court de Gebelin termed these
tears of gold and of pearl just as he identified the lunar dew with the
tears of _Isis_. Beneath the dog-star there is a wall suggesting an
enclosure--as it might be, a walled garden--wherein are two children,
either naked or lightly clothed, facing a water, and gambolling, or
running hand in hand. Eliphas Lévi says that these are sometimes
replaced by a spinner unwinding destinies, and otherwise by a much
better symbol--a naked child mounted on a white horse and displaying a
scarlet standard.

20. _The Last Judgment._ I have spoken of this symbol already, the form
of which is essentially invariable, even in the Etteilla set. An angel
sounds his trumpet _per sepulchra regionum_, and the dead arise. It
matters little that Etteilla omits the angel, or that Dr. Papus
substitutes a ridiculous figure, which is, however, in consonance with
the general motive of that Tarot set which accompanies his latest work.
Before rejecting the transparent interpretation of the symbolism which
is conveyed by the name of the card and by the picture which it presents
to the eye, we should feel very sure of our ground. On the surface, at
least, it is and can be only the resurrection of that triad--father,
mother, child--whom we have met with already in the eighth card. M.
Bourgeat hazards the suggestion that esoterically it is the symbol of
evolution--of which it carries none of the signs. Others say that it
signifies renewal, which is obvious enough; that it is the triad of
human life; that it is the "generative force of the earth ... and
eternal life." Court de Gebelin makes himself impossible as usual, and
points out that if the grave-stones were removed it could be accepted as
a symbol of creation.

21--which, however, in most of the arrangements is the cipher card,
number nothing--_The Fool, Mate, or Unwise Man_. Court de Gebelin places
it at the head of the whole series as the zero or negative which is
pre-supposed by numeration, and as this is a simpler so also it is a
better arrangement. It has been abandoned because in later times the
cards have been attributed to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and
there has been apparently some difficulty about allocating the zero
symbol satisfactorily in a sequence of letters all of which signify
numbers. In the present reference of the card to the letter _Shin_,
which corresponds to 200, the difficulty or the unreason remains. The
truth is that the real arrangement of the cards has never transpired.
The Fool carries a wallet; he is looking over his shoulder and does not
know that he is on the brink of a precipice; but a dog or other
animal--some call it a tiger--is attacking him from behind, and he is
hurried to his destruction unawares. Etteilla has given a justifiable
variation of this card--as generally understood--in the form of a court
jester, with cap, bells and motley garb. The other descriptions say that
the wallet contains the bearer's follies and vices, which seems
bourgeois and arbitrary.

22. _The World, the Universe, or Time._ The four living creatures of the
Apocalypse and Ezekiel's vision, attributed to the evangelists in
Christian symbolism, are grouped about an elliptic garland, as if it
were a chain of flowers intended to symbolize all sensible things;
within this garland there is the figure of a woman, whom the wind has
girt about the loins with a light scarf, and this is all her vesture.
She is in the act of dancing, and has a wand in either hand. It is
eloquent as an image of the swirl of the sensitive life, of joy attained
in the body, of the soul's intoxication in the earthly paradise, but
still guarded by the Divine Watchers, as if by the powers and the graces
of the Holy Name, Tetragammaton,--those four ineffable letters which are
sometimes attributed to the mystical beasts. Eliphas Lévi calls the
garland a crown, and reports that the figure represents Truth. Dr. Papus
connects it with the Absolute and the realization of the Great Work; for
yet others it is a symbol of humanity and the eternal reward of a life
that has been spent well. It should be noted that in the four quarters
of the garland there are four flowers distinctively marked. According to
P. Christian, the garland should be formed of roses, and this is the
kind of chain which Eliphas Lévi says is less easily broken than a chain
of iron. Perhaps by antithesis, but for the same reason, the iron crown
of Peter may lie more lightly on the heads of sovereign pontiffs than
the crown of gold on kings.


CLASS II