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To: alt.tarot,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick From: azoth@netcom.com (Az0th) Subject: Re: Emblems/Symbols, Meditation/Reading and Case-workers (was Re: Plotinus, evil, ....) Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 16:14:51 GMT Hi Peggy! : >I suspect that the system(s) of ideas which have been related in this genre : >to tarot-based imagery can stand well enough on their own merits, traditions : >and textual formulations as to remove any direct necessity for the relation. : Maybe the major arcana can, but not the minor arcana. The development and explanation of the minors in the 'occult' decks I believe perfectly illustrates my point: the suit/number/court structure of the minors contributes nothing whatsoever to the philosophical import of the Kabbalistic, astrological or elemental ideas which have been associated with them. Kabbalah, astrology and the elemental, planetary, decanate and zodiacal ideas found in those systems exists and has existed quite independently of any association with playing cards. IOW, if the cards are taken away, no knowledge/meaning is lost, and the reference traditions remain intact. Conversely, alternative systems of meaning can be assigned to the minors without recourse to anything of an overtly Kabbalistic or astrological nature. One of the more interesting bits I've come across on the Web was a brief dissertation on the combinatorics of dice, related specifically to divination using, and the equivalence of a various numbers and types of dice to particular numbers of cards. The document was written by a Greek fellow, and if I can find it again, I'll post a pointer. It may also be worthwhile to bear in mind that the number of court cards we have now may actually be less than originally contained in a regular deck (WPC, DD&D). Nothing constrains us, once we step beyond the bounds of an existing formal system, to assign specific philosophical nuance to the cards. A very un-philosophical system, intended only for divination, say, might interpret the suit signs purely in terms of reward and punishment, a naive, almost primitive, view of events which fits well with the usual goals of divination. We might take cups and disks on the reward side of the ledger, reasoning from cups==nourishment in a scale from subsistence to feasting, and disks==wealth in a similar scale. We might take staves and swords on the punishment side, in an obvious scale all the way from light corporal to inescapable capitol punishment. In fact, this scheme has an obvious, mnemonic quality about it, but so far as I'm aware, no history at all. We could elaborate the numeration of the suits with Pythagorean or pop-numerological niceties, but we could as well keep it simple and consider that bigger means more, number-wise, and we can as simply choose to read the court cards in terms of age or family, or both. Voila, and we don't have to be occultists to make, use or understand our impromptu system of meaning. The questions are not, WRT the minors, whether there is inherent meaning and whether it corresponds to any of the formal systems of 'occult' tarot, which are unanswerable and unprovable, in all liklihood. The useful questions are, what are you trying to accomplish with your meaning assignments, and how well have you succeeded. Az0th
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