I want to make a few comments in appreciation of Alain's essay.
It has been notoriously difficult to put the cards of the tarot sequence into groups that actually have something in common, as opposed to a hodgepodge. What does the Bagat have in common with the Emperor and the Pope? In
Game of Tarot (1980) and
Il Mondo e l'Angelo (1993) Dummett does not even try to characterize the groups, content to simply name the cards. In his FMR article (1986) he does make an effort. But he does not even attempt to unite the first with the other four in tht group (he excludes the Fool as not technically a trump). They are just the Bagat and then "the papal and imperial cards" (
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-miMjqADaDdY/ ... 600/46.jpg 3rd column). That is three groups! After him, others, such as Hurst, have said that, including the Fool, they have in common their being opposites in society, high and low. OK, that works, after a fashion: if the Fool is added, there are two low-lifes. Many early lists actually did have the Fool first, as can be seen in MM Filesi's lists at
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=552&hilit=susio#p7877 Exactly why those two characters are included here, and not the Traitor, who is more to be reviled than either, is not said.
Then in the next group we have "conditions of human life". For Dummett in FMR, that includes Death (
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MsDIZbTD17c/ ... 600/47.jpg). Others, including Dummett himself before and after the FMR article, have decided that Death belongs in the next group. Why "conditions of human life" excludes the Bagat and the Fool but does include the Traitor is not said. The final group is again hard to unite. What do death, the devil, the moon, and the Last Judgment have in common, so as to make them a group? Dummett in FMR says "spiritual and celestial powers". Well, that is two groups. Is Death really one or the other of these? Perhaps so, since it is shown as a walking skeleton. Dummett in the FMR article conveniently makes Death part of the second group, thus avoiding the question.
It seems to me that Alain's division 1 + 4 + 7 + 10 gives a certain rationale--not the only one possible, to be sure--to the order and interpretation of the cards in each group, if the meanings of these numbers, in Pythagorean terms, is given with them.
We know from Guillaume D’Oncieu,1584 Savoy (
http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=293&lng=ITA), how some in the Renaissance approached the meaning of numbers: by thinking of examples of groups consisting of that number, both as ordinal and cardinal
https://books.google.it/books?id=aFr_Mx ... &q&f=false). Tarot is listed under the number 4, but also partakes of other numbers, such as 3 and 5.
The ordinal "First", with the cardinal "One", is the number, in monotheism, Pythagorean or otherwise, of God the Father, the
Prima Causa and Creator. It is the beginning of everything. The Pythagorean basis of this idea is well stated by Vincent Foster Hopper in his
Medieval Number Theory, 1938 (reprinted 2000), p. 38:
Hence it is very natural that the Pythagoreans should have considered the monad as the first principle from which the other numbers flow (20). Itself not a number, it is an essence rather than a being (21) and is sometimes, like the duad, designated as a potential number, since the point, though not a plane figure, can originate plane figures (22) As first originator, the monad is good and God (24). It is both even and odd, male and female (24), for when added to odd it produces even, and when added to even it produces odd (25). It is the basis and creator of number, but, although it is actually the great Even-Odd, its nature is considered to be more akin to masculine oddness than to feminine evenness. In short, it i always taken to represent all that is good and desirable and essential, indivisible and uncreated. (26)
If 1, the point, is the Father of number, it follows that the duad, the line, is the Mother of number (27)...
_____________
20. Nichomachus, Introduction [to Arithmetic, II, vi, 3; Plotinus, Enneads, V, I, y; Photius, Biography of Pythagoras, 7; Proclus, Elements of Theology, A; C, 21.
21. Plotinus, Enneads, VI, 9, 3.
22. Nichomachus, op. cit. II, vi, 3.
23. Enneads, VI, I; 9, 6; V, I, 7.
24. Macrobius, In Somn. Scip. I, 6.
25. De E apud Delphos, 8.
26. Capella, De nuptiis, VII.
27. Capella, ibid.; Plutarch, De animae procreatione in Timaeo, II.
I include the footnotes because it is important to know if this account would have been known during the Renaissance. Nichomachus. Macrobius, and Capella weres known throughout the Middle Ages, in Latin. These alone would have been enough to convey the basic principles. Plotinus was translated by Ficino, as was Proclus. Macrobius and Capella were in Latin and known throughout the Middle Ages. Plutarch was known in Greek at least from the 1420s and in Latn after 1500. There was also, for some, the
Theologumena Arithemtica, in Greek only, brought to Italy by Bessarion, available in Rome in the 1460s, Venice thereafter and printed in 16th century Paris. Phatius, having been a major polemicist against the Latins at the time of the "great schism", would have been studied by those interested in that issue, which surely were many given the conclave of reconciliation of 1438-39 in Florence.
Since in Christianity God the Father is also God the Son, God is also one of the physically weakest and lowest of his own creation, at least among humanity. So besides the Bagat's association with the number One, there is also his position in the hierachy, as the "little one".
We need not go into the significance of the number 2, that of the Popess (and the A and C orders)or the Empress (in the B order), we are concerned only with groups as generated by Alain's sequence 1, 4, 7, 10.
The number 4 is in Pythagoreanism the number of the three-dimensional universe. It takes a minimum of 4 points to define a solid (as opposed to 1 for a point, 2 for a line, and 3 for a plane figure). So we have the four elements, the four winds, the four directions, the four humors, the four qualities. Even the four gospels, which Irenaeus argued arithmologically could not be more or less, pertain to God's existence in the three-dimensional world. So we have in the tarot two pairs, spiritual and temporal, who hold sway over this domain. Here again is Hopper, pp. 83-84:
The principal Christian innovation in number science was the identification of this spiritual-temporal dualty with the archetypal numbers, 3 and 4. Four, by the known analogues of the 4 winds, the 4 elements, the 4 seasons, and the 4 rivers, is specifically the number of the mundane sphere; and, as the first 3 days of creation foreshadow the Trinity, so the fourth is the "type of man." (56) Mystically, the fact that man in a tetrad is evidenced in the name, Adam, whose letters are the 4 winds (81) For this reason, knowledge of divine things is disseminated throughout the world by the 4 gospels, evangelists or beasts, emblemized by the 4 extremities of the cross (58), the 4-fold division of Christ's clothing, and the 4 virtues, or forms of love, as Augustine names them (59). "It is not possible," says Irenaeus, "that the gospels can be either more or fewer than they are." (60)
_____________
56. Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus; AN III, 82; also Ambrose, De fide II, Introduction; Augustine, On John, IX, 14.
57. Augustine, On John, IX, 14; see above, p. 31.
58. The cross was conceived to have 4 or 5 points--5 if the intersection was included. As the image of 4, it is encompassed man in the universe. As an emblem of 5, it coincided with the 4 wounds in providing the salvation of man, with his 5 senses, or of those living under the Old Dispensation of the Pentateuch.
59. Of the Morals of the Catholic Church, XV, 25.
60 Against Heresies, III, 11, 8.
The number 7 is that of the virtues, the vices, and many other things pertaining to the world of humans' and their choices for good or evil:
From the triune principle of God and the quadruple principle of man are produced the universal symbols, 7 and 12. The addition of 3 and 4, spiritual and temporal, produces 7, which is therefore the first number which implies totality (61). It is the number of the universe and of man, signifying the creature as opposed to the Creeator (62). Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit were derived from Isaiah XI: 1-3 (63) The Lord's Prayer was found to contain 7 petitionns (64). Similarly, the Beatitudes were found to be 7, and by the principle of contraries these septenaries were balanced by the 7 deadly sins ((66). Later, the addition of the 3 theological virtues (Faith, Hope, Charity) to the 4 cardinal virtues produced one of the best known heptads of Catholicism. The habit of presenting these spiritual entities in precise numerical groupings indicates that a relationship was felt between them, but it remained for Augustine to show the precise connection of the 7 petitions of the Lord's Prayer to the 7 beatitudes, whch in turn relate to the 7 gifts of the spirit or to the 7 steps to wisdom (67). Seven is the number of the Sabbath and Salvation, but it is also the number of sn (68). Necessarily the churches on earth are 7, formng a likeness of the universe (69).
___________
61. Augustine, Civ. Dei, XX, 5.
62. Augustine, On the Sermon on the Mount, II, 10, 36; Letter LV, 15, 28.
63. Tertullian, Against Marcion, V, 8; Victorinus, On Creation.
64. Cyprian, On the Lord's Prayer; Tertullian, On Prayer, II. 8.
6. Augustine, On the Sermon on the Mount, II, 10-11.
66. Tertullian, Against Marcion, IV, 9; Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels, VI, 13.
67. On the Sermn on the Mount, II, 10-11. Contra Faustum, XII, 15; On Christian Doctrine, II, y, 9-11.
68. Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels, VI, 13.
69. Augustine, Letter LV, 5, 9.
Seven, it seems to me, is the number of humanity's being tested for worthiness. This group of tarot subjects, besides including at least two of the four virtues, show the situations in which people are tested: love, triumph, fortune, shame, and the limits of time (you never know when the proctor will call "time"). The Bagat, as the tester, is easily excluded.
The number 10 is that of the cycle of the basic numbers, after which one can go on forever. It also is that which returns to the One. Here is Hopper (p. 84):
Ten had long been recognized in the image of unity, but it was Augustinian Pythagoreanismm that produced it by adding the Trinity of the Creator to the hebdomad of the created (75). In Christian usage, its great type is always the 10 Commandments, whose traditional division into 2 groups of 5 was soon to be altered to 3 and 7, in recognitin of this doctrine.
_____________
75. Augustine, Against the Epistle of Manicaeus, Called Fundamental, X, 11.
In the Tarot, the cycle here begins in the sphere of the earth, at death, and ends in heaven, the Empyrian; it is the course of the soul from underground to eternity, through the medieval cosmograph of concentric circles, although not all are represented.. One card in the sequence, the Star (representing the Fixed Stars, and/or Venus), is out of order. That is for the sake of the players. It is easier to remember a sequence of increasing light than it is the Ptolemaic universe.
I have elaborated on this cosmographic progression in the essay to which Alain, at
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1102#p16911, graciously gave a link, "The Astral Journey of the Soul",
http://letarot.it/page.aspx?id=454&lng=ENG. For an exposition of the entire sequence in the interpretation which I am overlaying onto Alain's structure, see my "Platonism and the Tarot", at
http://platonismandtarot.blogspot.com/.
It is important also to understand the Christian style of incorporating Pythagorean number theory into a text. It is not by citing Pythagoras by name; it is merely enough to use the principles, which were known as Pythagorean by all ealready already. For example, Hopper quotes Augustine (p. 81):
That the flood came 7 days after Noah entered the ark, as we are baptised in the hope of future rest, which was denoted by the 7th day...
This is is an essay (
Contra Faustem) in which Augustine discusses one number after another, for its Christian significance. So also D’Oncieu, discussing the meaning of 3, 4, and 5 in the game of tarot, does not have to mention Pythagoras specifically to be seeing the game in a Pythagorean way.
In Alain's diagram, the 1 is in the center, with the 4, 7, and 10, as concentric enclosures, U-shaped, around it. If the tops are joined, they can be seen as concentric squares, each enclosed in its own circle passing through the four vertices of each. In the center is the Creator, a kind of "big bang" point. The authorities in this world get their legitimacy from that center; they are the divinely appointed earthly representatives of that Creator. Beyond that are humans in general, all confronted with the situations of the middle section. Beyond that is the cosmograph, now represented as dots on a U, or square, or circle. Enclosing all is the "infinite circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere", a definition of God of uncertain origin that Nicholas of Cusa (
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nicholas_of_Cusa) revived in the mid-15th century.
On July 28 I modified this post by adding the quotes from Hopper now embedded in the post.
One other addition: I wrote about d'Oncieu as using Pythagoreanism in relation to the tarot at
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=767&p=14694&hilit=tarotica#p14694. However I did not quote d'Oncieu, as opposed to paraphrasing him. I was hoping for some clarity about what the translation should be of the . Well, three translations were produced, of all or part (Andrea, Zorli, Marco), somewhat contradictory and none of which makes complete sense or is easy to translate into English that makes sense.