Thanks, Steve. Let me make clear that I was not meaning to assume Daimonax's baggage about underground cults surviving since antiquity, just crediting him with the interpretation of the "tail" that I was making. The particular details I am concerned with--the Fool's testicles, the Pope's assistant's sickle or dagger, and the left twin's tail--are most likely late 17th to 18th century additions to the cards. I theorize that they were added as part of a syncretist trend initiated in the 15th century by Pico and Ficino, who particurlarly emphasized the Bacchic/Orphic "mysteries". This trend, in its Egyptomanic expression, was adopted even by the the popes, starting with Alexander VI and including the Medici (see Curran's
The Egyptian Renaissance). In the broader sense it was popularized by Colonna's
Hypnerotomachia (soon translated into French), Cartari's
Imagini (likewise), etc. The secret societies of the 17th-18th centuries incorporated aspecdts of these imagined "mysteries," witness the Masonic Egyptomania of Mozart's
Magic Flute. In tune with the Greek and Roman writers, Dionysus and Osiris were equated as different expressions of the same god. I have elaborated on this theme at
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=216&start=50#p6572. See also the Bacchic interpretation of the Lover card by Ricci, 1713, which I posted on the "Lovers" thread. the page at
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=389#6605 (for some reason the computer will only take me to the beginning of the thread, as opposed to the exact post).
As far as the tail or sickle, as applied to the "Marseille," we are talking late 17th and early 18th century France ("Chosson" and Conver). If people looking at the old zodiacs then saw Castor or Pollux with the "peaceful sickle" of agriculture, that identifies it with Saturn's sickle, Roman god of agriculture. Hercules was not associated with agriculture. If so, why is an association then between Castor and the sickle of castration unreasonable (in addition to its association with Hercules), especially among people acquainted with Isadore's beaver, hunted for its rejuvenating juices?
In fact, the symbolism of the slaying of the Hydra is more of the same. The Hydra was both a positive and negative symbol. On the one hand, it symbolizes difficult tasks of any kind, where eliminating one difficulty leads to the discovery or creation of many more. It also symbolized the nature of evil, when the desire it perversely satisfies is not satisfied on a higher level: you crush one illicit desire, and ten more take its place (instead, desire ravishment by Christ); you eliminate by rational argument one theological doubt, and ten more appear (instead, strengthen your faith); you defeat one enemy by unjust means and ten more arise against you, who may not have been in opposition before.
Yet the Hydra also represented regeneration and fecundity (I can't at the moment locate a literary example from the period, but I did see some in an earlier search on the web). You kill one Christ, and a dozen disciples carry on the work; you martyr one Christian, and a dozen more take his or her place. It is the sacrifice of the animal nature (as Jodorowsky characterizes the one with the tail) that makes possible the spiritual salvation of many, and entry into the Apollonic light.
And once more to Isadore. Like Heidegger and many other pseudo-philologists, he projects his preferred symbolism into an imagined etymology of words, one that somehow confirms his combination of ideas. His description of the chestnut, it seems to me, combines both ideas, of castration and of the cut-off hydra heads:
:Latin speakers name the chestnut (castanea) from a Greek term, for the Greeks call it ..., because its paired fruits are hidden in a small sack like testicles, and when they are ejected from it, it is as if they were castrated (castrare). As soon as this tree is cut down, it commonly sprouts again like a forest.
(
Etymologies p.344.)
In this comment on the testicle-like nuts, perhaps he is thinking of Christ and his own celibacy as a "eunuch for Christ" (which Origen literalized): you effectively cut off one set of "chestnuts" and a forest of them appears, ready for the harvesting.