Joseph Littleshoes — a regular practitioner on alt.magick.moderated, known for careful analysis and occasional flights of practical mysticism — offers a personal taxonomy of the Major Arcana. The essay works outward from the human trumps (the named characters: Magician, High Priestess, Empress, Emperor, Hierophant, Lovers, Chariot) through the threshold figures (Strength, the Devil, Death, the Tower) toward the cosmic and the inarticulable. It ends where the Tarot ends — with the Fool and Judgement, which he declines to summarise.
Some would argue that the numbering of the trumps is arbitrary and for convenience only. But even then I still see the Chariot as being of less significance than the charioteer — the warrior within it, guiding the chariot. The old cards where an ornamental chariot is driven by a well-dressed young lady suggest to me a censoring of the card for the Ladies. Turning the warrior at best into Diana the Huntress (at worst the young, spoiled, rich "valley girl" with her own car).
But again, and still, this is an individual using a tool rather than a force of nature like the Tower or primal bestiality like the Devil.
So I easily put it with the sequence I call brother, sister, mother, father, teacher, lover, WARRIOR, seeker — Trumps I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, IX.
VIII is problematical whichever card one puts there. For symbolic reasons, next to the warrior I would like to have the balance with its sword symbology, and the problem I have with VIII as the other card is that I do not have a suitable English word to refer to her as.
In many respects she is the equal of the Warrior but more importantly she is that which tames the beast that is the warrior. "Catch bull at four" and all that. The female civilising influence on the beast — but by what pithy term do we refer to her as that?
And then there are the other more "object"-oriented Trumps: X the Wheel, XI the Balance, XII the Gallows.
What is commonly seen as evil in the XVth Trump, the Devil, may be a misunderstanding and subsequent mistranslation of this card. It is not so much a person of the Tarot as it is symbolic of a force like Death or the Tower — not in and of itself evil or bad but easily misunderstood. And taking its earliest phallic symbolism it is easy to see why such imagery would have been demonised. The animal nature within us that Christianity is at such pains to deny and demonise — so that which is a natural force in the animal becomes a demon in its theology. Dionysian revelry is frowned upon in this context.
In many respects it is a companion piece to the Strength trump, VIII or XI depending on your numbering. But while the Devil is the beast, the Strength card is that same primal urge turned toward nurture — to tame the beast, to domesticate it, to use it rather than conquer it, to involve with rather than dominate. But which, by the very nature of the animal, ends up dominating — with both brute force and coercion.
The Angel of the XIVth Trump is like a force also, but more so insofar as it is more difficult to explain in modern terms. A winged person pouring a liquid from one jug to another? What is being demonstrated by the angel is what was called "tempering" — a principle that individual things may be strengthened by combining them with others (metal alloys and the tempering of steel, for example). Thus the name "Temperance" with this card. And perhaps it represents the integration of all the disparate parts of our being — devil, death, tower and all — into something greater than the sum of its parts.
Which leaves us with the Star, Sun, Moon, World, and Judgement and the Fool.
Star, Sun, Moon, World are obvious physical objects, though in any practical way their influence is macrocosmic — neither the people in the world, the objects they use, nor the things they do. In the old days these would have been the Gods — Mother Earth and Father Sky. But then, in those days it was thought by most that the earth stood still and the universe moved around it. This, along with the inclusion of two stars in the deck, are but two examples of possible logical inaccuracies of the Tarot. We no longer think the Wanderers are gods; we know their stellar masses and solar types.
The Tarot is very old and may contain within it naive and inaccurate descriptions of reality. However, rather than toss it all away as a mediaeval curiosity of no value in the modern world, it might be worth trying to see if these inaccuracies can be identified and corrected. Much progress has already been made with this idea.
The Fool and Judgement have not been mentioned here, as they require a degree of explanation and integration in the whole that I have not yet formulated — at least not in even the petty, minor way I have done for the others above.
To be able to become effortlessly is the epitome.
And I'm still having trouble articulating that which may be, by definition, unable to be articulated. A description of a phenomenon is always of lesser intensity and quality than the actual experience of it — how much more so any attempt at a literary description of it? The experiencing of the event is of more importance to the individual than any description of it. And any description is at best a personal anecdote and endorsement for a phenomenon that can only be experienced, not really written about. At best a person might write about the effects they think it has had on them, but that is still not the experience itself — which is, to me, what both Judgement and the Fool are about.
It can be put into a spiritual context, but it is also theorised that this apotheosis is a normal part of human existence, just very rare — as the difficulties of life tend to make most people more concerned about themselves or their home and family than spiritual or psychological apotheosis. And even then a state of apotheosis may be inevitable, and of varying degrees of awareness and effect.
Colophon
Posted to alt.magick.moderated by Joseph Littleshoes, May 9, 2006.
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Archived for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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