Hi all,
crackpot Beanu here. Sorry I haven't been around...
To answer some of the questions....
I use the RWS deck because the original work came about from a suggestion to study the background colours in the RWS, and I primarily worked with the RWS. But it works just as well with older decks also. While the cl;ues are in RWS, the pattern that the clues point to is in all "standard" decks.
I could just claim that I have cracked Waites code, but....
The theory that evolved seems to imply origins in before Waite, and also works will with other decks.
Although Waite did do his own deck, it doesn't show the divergence that many of the modern ones do.
I consider his deck to be the last of the "older tradition" decks. At least it has the rignt number of cards, and I can recognise them all without the need for a companion book ;)
My theory is analytic, not historical, in that it takes the cards as they are, and looks for information within them, but mostly in pattern between cards, moreso than in details of individual cards.
At first it was just my own pattern, but then two things happened -
Someone else suggested a simple mapping from it onto the tree of life, and I was able to compare card meanings with Sephira meanings. I think the match was good.
Next, I noticed that some alchemical drawings have strong correspondence to Tarot images (Waite or older - both work). I searched for more alchemical image matches, and came up with a good set. (about 16, I think )
Using the alchemical images, I was able to map the three-fold process of Spagyrics onto the tarot ant the tree of life. Again, a good match resulted, and I was able to clarify my meanings for cars, sephira and alchemical processes and meaning.
I hang around on the history forum at eclectic, not because I am a historian, but because there are people there who have the knowledge to explore my concept further. One of the good things coming out of these discussions is indications of Platonic, or neo-platonic influence on the cards.
Here's the tricky bit.
One of the sticky points on the tarot to tree of life mapping, was that the cards indicated chockmah = female, and Binah = male, the reverse of the usual interpretation. This reversal also follows through in other areas.
A denizen there challenged me to provide astrological mappings for my system, as he considered astrology to be the ultimate way to map systems together. It took me a while, but I was able to map the standard old (mythologically consistent) sequence onto my system, with a couple of minor problems, and one big one. ( yes, you can now add astrology to the theory. No numerology yet, but I can see it coming down the road with a big headlamp)
Once again, I had to swap male and female at binah and chockmah to get a fit.
Said denizen seems to be quite taken with the resulting astrology to system mapping, and he is currently doing an excellent job of justifying the male female swap for me, by going back before zohar, into gnostic stuff.
So, it appears that my pot may be cracked in that sense. I may have to throw out kabalah and replace it with gnostic numerology. One of the interesting things that looks like coming out of this discussion is an exploration of the formative influences that gnosticism may have had on zohar. Its all well out of my league, but the more the experts dig, the more support I find for my theory (and its continual evolution and refinement).
As for the work up on my website, I don't put any effort into convincing people of the deep dark secret. I basically just present correspondence between tree of life, tarot majors, and some alchemical images. If you see the pattern, you'll love it. If you don't, sorry. However, there is material from the discussion sites that I will add at some stage that firms up the theory into a fairly straight-forward depiction of Plato's Ascent and Descent in the majors.
Does anyone know a good copyright-free source of older deck images that I can use in conjunction with the RWS, or replace the RWS with? Pehaps the presence of an older deck might encourage history-minded people to take a deeper look.
Thanks for the attention - better to be criticised than ignored.
B