Thanks Mike for the illustration. Pliny’s quote turns up in a few places in works published around that time (Döllinger’s history of paganism and christianity, for one), and Constant presumably was well-read in the classics. Perhaps he had that image - or something close - in mind when writing the c...

I have come across a detail in Pliny’s work, which may well shed light on one of the later occultist modifications of one of the Tarot cards, namely, the Chariot. The detail in question is the phallus, or lingham as it is usually called, following the Sanskrit term, depicted on the shield on the fro...

Mike, John: For some reason I was unable to post for a couple of months since my previous thread, and I haven’t got my notes to hand right now. In any case, the Tarot in Eliot’s Wasteland has been researched quite a bit, on account of the notoriety of the poem, and because of some the incongruities ...

Mike, I was referring to the supposed connection to the Tarot, and not to the historians of antiquity.

Interesting and informative posts, John: thanks. The Johannès Trismégiste book caught my eye some time ago, as it is the source (and probably recycled at that) of quite a few things that turn up in a number of other books, Bourgeat, for instance. Another thing: it also appears to be the first instan...

Hi Ross, the idea that XVI is part of a mini-sequence reflecting the cosmic order rather than presenting an innate value in terms of its building can be found in the old Grimaud LWB written by Tchalaï Unger (1981), as follows: “Examine the sky. When does it make its appearance in the major arcana? O...

Thanks for saying who Akbar is. Is there anything more about him, ie.g. when he lived? I think that there are two versions of the 96 card game, and he only told us one, the simpler version, for which he gives us the footnote to "B.G.," then mentioning Akbar's more elaborate version in pas...

I wondered about that. After describing the 96 card game he has a footnote to "BG". Then he says "The game played by Akbar was more elaborate" with a footnote to Ain . Then he says, without a new paragraph, "In north India the suits are:" followed by the four suits, in...

Mike, you're conflating the 2 Persian/Indian games with the "English" deck, mentioned beforehand: the deck in which the valet-slave appears is the "Akbar version" on the top of page 336 in Sharif's book, which contains 13 cards per suit; 1-10 plus Slave/knave, Queen, King.

Hi Mike,

The Shakespeare reference was just in passing, something that came up as I searched for the missing link between valet and slave.

That book by Sharif does look interesting in other respects, I might add.