Romulus and Remus is good: the twins whom we see in the Sun card, next to the wall of the citadel at Rome, where Remus was killed. Or perhaps you don't want to go that far. I'll post something about that on the "Sun" thread eventually. But for now the Pope card.
What I find interesting is the change that occurs between Noblet and Conver, in the lower half of the card.
Noblet has two acolytes, one with hands outstretched and the other with hands in prayer. When I make those gestures, it feels like the first is receptive, receiving from above, the second sending, to the above in prayer. Very nice. Only one acolyte has a hat, for some reason; perhaps the one with a hat is someone already a member of the hierarchy, a sponsor perhaps, even someone with the rank of cardinal, since it is red (the color has faded over time). There is a white diagonal line between the two acolytes, perhaps merely a defect in the plate.
The "Chosson," as it is called, 1672 or whenever (2nd from left above), introduces an arm from the side. The Pope appears to be looking in the direction of that person, whoever it is. The acolyte's hat is now yellow. And the hand gestures are different. All we see is the left-hand acolyte's hand upraised, perhaps palm toward the Pope, and a hand below, perhaps that of the same acolyte, perhaps palm toward us. It reminds me of Nazi salutes I see in World War II movies. The white line of the Noblet has turned intoo an odd crescent-shaped image between the two acolytes.
In Dodal, c. 1701, the style (so-called "Marseille I") is mostly like that of Noblet, but has the arm of the "Chosson" and his yellow hat on the acolyte. The crescent has shrunk to a nondescript line. Perhaps Dodal did not approve of that crescent and wanted to return to something like Noblet's diagonal line.
In Conver, 1760 and 1761 (1761 shown), we return to the style of the "Chosson" ("Marseille II"); the crescent has turned into a dagger, or so it seemed to Daimonax (bacchos.org), following the suggestion of Camoin and Jodorowky in their version of the Marseille. In reference to the Conver I agree. The "Nazi salute" is still there.
So what happened? It seems to me that the "Nazi salute" is the taking of an oath, a pledge of secrecy and obedience. The pledge of secrecy was key to all the "mysteries," as they were seen in the 18th century. That is what the finger to the lips meant in the Egyptian hieroglyphs and the image of Harpocrates as shown in the emblem books (it was actually the hieroglyph for "child," but that is beside the point). And the dagger is the indicator of what will happen to those who break their oath--the usual punishment threatened in the "secret societies," or so it was said. In Mozart's
Magic Flute, for example, this punishment is intimated by the initiation-master (see for example the synopsis to Act II at
http://www.freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography ... flute.html) for breaking the oath. A different priest conducts the characters through their "trials" than the high priest who admitted them, Sorastro. Thus the hand on the card belongs to the one who will accompany those to be initiated into the "mysteries."
I do not know at all that the one-hand-up-one-hand-down gesture is in fact a sign of the taking of an oath. It just seems like that; it is what goes with the blade. My only iconographic reference is the two torch-bearers in the Mithraic mysteries, pictured in Cartari 1647, one holding his torch up and the other down. The high priest of Mithras was called "papa"; and there were in the Mithraic ruins of Italy images of an imposing figure with the head of a lion holding one or more keys, similar to those in the coats of arms of the Popes and also appearing in some versions of the card, such as the Geoffrey 1557 (left second below) and the Anonymous Parisian c. 1650.
The Mithraic image on the left (first above) apparently existed as an amulet in the Middle Ages. In 1489, the Florentine philosopher Ficino described a leonine image "in gold, using his feet to roll a stone in the shape of the sun." In the figurine above, the figure stands on a ball. Ficino recommended the image a cure for kidney disease, "approved by Pietro d'Abano and confirmed by experience" (Brian Copenhaver, "How to do magic, and why?" in
The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, p. 153f). According to Wikipedia, Pietro d'Abano was professor of medicine at Padua and died around 1316, after being imprisoned for practicing magic, making a pact with the devil, and similar crimes.
It seems to me that it would have been a smart move on the part of the early Church, eager to win over the Imperial Roman army, to adopt terms and symbols from the army's most popular mystery cult (another example, of course, is the fixing of the new cult-god's birthday to correspond to that of the old).
My main reason for introducing this subject is to discuss the dagger, a puzzling detail that can also, for some, be dismissed as a mere fold in the fabric. Yet its shape is similar to the curved blade seen on the Dionysian sarcophagi that fascinated the Renaissance and those after, the one that would kill the goat when the procession and other rituals were done, the goat of atonement, which Daimonax says, and I agree, is prefigured in the animal reaching up for the Fool's genitals (as I outlined at
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=383&start=20#p6495).