In the essay A Few Minor Changes the results of a survey were given that showed which cards of the Rider/Waite/Smith tarot deck a select group of people being surveyed might change, IF they had a mind to change the superficial imagery of RWS to be more consistent in tone or mood all the way across each suit. In that essay it was pointed out that the earliest playing card decks... the ones that appeared before those of tarot had a much more consistent design to their form, including suits that were considered - in their entirety - to be either "good" or "bad" in character all the way across... from ace to 10... or in some cases 9. Thus, the question was asked as to which cards of the RWS deck a person might change IF they were to ever consider restoring this "two suits good, two suits bad" design to the structure of a tarot deck like RWS. In conducting this survey of imagery (using the Rider/Waite/Smith deck) the question of which cards a person might change was based solely on the visual imagery of the Minor Pips of that one particular deck, and people's initial reaction to those images, as opposed to their reasoned or learned responses (see the results in the chart below).
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Which images make you smile? Which images make you frown? Which would you change to make each suit a more consistent row of smiles or frowns? Would you even want to?
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It is pretty clear that the visual imagery of the RWS deck was heavily influenced by the Qabalistic and Astrological associations - and resulting card titles, that were worked out by the members of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as an expression of interests in the occult. How well Pamela Colman Smith conveyed the intent of each card, as dictated by the invented formula of (Qabalistic Sephira and World) + (Astrological Planet in Sign) is debatable. Some people suggest that other important sources of knowledge were also being blended into the overall design of the RWS deck, thus leading to a hybrid result that some say detracts from being a pure expression of the Golden Dawn formula. Fortunately, however, there is another famous deck that also attempted to convey these calculated intentions of (Sephira and World) + (Planet in Sign) - the Thoth Tarot by Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris. Crowley changed a few of the titles that were meant to summarize each Qabalistic and Astrological calculation, but, for the most part, they agree with what we assume was also being used by Waite and Smith. Thus the question is begged once again, this time regarding calculated titles, instead of visual imagery: what Golden Dawn titles would we change, IF we had a mind to make each suit of the Minor Pips more consistent in tone or mood all the way across... instead of accepting the somewhat random outcome dictated by the fusing of differing systems and the somewhat fateful calculations thereof?
What cards might we change, if we had a mind for consistency. That is the question of this essay. But... for some, this is a completely ridiculous premise that should not even be given a moments thought. To some, the structure involved in calculating card titles via a fusion of disparate systems like Qabalah, Astrology and Tarot is completely satisfactory. No clearer or more obvious structure is necessary at all. And in fact, in some people's opinion, a clearer and more obvious structure would be less attractive than the current Golden Dawn methods followed by so many. In this way, different people are shown to have different opinions about how much chaos a given system of wisdom should or shouldn't have. To some, the inconsistent design of decks that use the Golden Dawn approach is completely acceptable. In fact, the inability to predict the tone or mood of a card by its location within a suit increases the level of complexity, which in turn increases the level of mystery involved in understanding. To some this kind of complexity and mystery is what makes tarot interesting, and to remove it by being more clear is to destroy the charm of tarot. That may be true for those with minds that think along chaotic, random lines. But... this study of tarot does not agree that any amount of charm would be lost by imposing a more consistent design upon the cards of tarot.
Over the years, I've heard many people complain about the inconsistencies they encounter when attempting to learn tarot. On this issue, experts of the traditional ways usually prescribe patience. I, however, prescribe... a new paradigm. A new paradigm that I believe is much easier to learn and use. Unfortunately, though, most people end up choosing patience with the methods of old, because... they don't want to stray from the heard of tradition. In this way, learning the confusing, inconsistent design of tarot becomes a right of passage fraught with obstacles. As a path of initiation, the ways of old are to be respected and tradition followed. And so it is that I've heard many beginners admit to "biting the bullet" and accepting the confusion of tarot's design as part of its charm, or as a right of passage to endure. But... what if we didn't do that?
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Bumps of Bullshit in the Royal Road
When it comes to making something confusing appear simple, a good bullshitter can rationalize anything. The world of tarot is full of skilled bullshitters who can rationalize anything, and equally full of people willing to believe any rationalization given to them (see Imagine a Reason to Believe elsewhere on this site) especially if that rationalization incorporates ample amounts of history and mystery from long ago and far away (see The Handrail of History elsewhere on this site). The reverence that many have for knowledge that is alleged to have come from cultures that are supposedly more spiritually inspired than our own is a powerful force to impose upon a psyche. Ultimately, it may be shown that everything being presented on this site is in fact my own form of bullshit, being used to rationalize an alternative approach to tarot that doesn't really make any sense at all. That may be correct. But as bullshit goes, the many inconsistencies of mood and tone found across the various suits, in decks that are using the Golden Dawn approach, leads to rationalizations that often seem very strained.
If one examines the titles of the Minor Arcana cards, as dictated by the Golden Dawn formula, we will find several instances where the tone or mood seems greatly elevated with one card, and then... is lowered with a following card, and then... elevated again a few cards later, and then... back down again with the next card. Some suits have an abundance of one type of tone or another, leading us to suspect a possible consistency of mood all the way across. But then... inevitably, we encounter a bump in the road in the form of a card that does not seem to conform with the overall tone or mood seen throughout the rest of the suit. People accepting of these inconsistencies will typically absorb these impacts, and accept them as part of the charm of the deck design, and simply set about the task of memorizing these exceptions. However... when someone comes along who is not as accepting of these inconsistencies in design, the explanations and rationalizations of the Golden Dawn approach, and the chaotic result it yields, can at times lead to acts of bullshitting that are often less than satisfactory.
Some experts will admit that the end result of the Golden Dawn system is a bit chaotic. Upon admitting that, some will then attempt to elevate chaos as a selling point - i.e. not a bug, but a feature! Those whose mind think in chaotic ways will agree and be accepting of the chaos. Those who wish that it wasn't so chaotic, will grin and bear it, and simply hope that they have a good enough memory to memorize a jumble of ideas with a less than satisfactory level of predictable organization to its form. Other times, experts who don't want to admit that there is any confusion will attempt to demonstrate just how consistent the Golden Dawn design is. But... when someone tries to demonstrate how a suit of Minor Pips, from a deck that appears to be illustrating the Golden Dawn system, is in fact consistent all the way across, the abrupt changes that we encounter from success to failure and back again, or from pleasure to loss and back again feel like unwelcome bumps in the road. In a reading, we might expect ups and downs or "good" and "bad" cards to appear right next to each other - a reading deliberately employs randomness. But to find such randomness in the underlying structure of the deck itself seems like a deficiency in design. In my opinion, the underlying structure of a tarot deck should be as ordered and consistent as possible, because it is the very interplay of that order with the randomness of shuffling that leads to efficacy of outcome in any reading (see Divine Mechanics and Binary Buddy elsewhere on this site).
It is my opinion that the end result of fussing Qabalah, Astrology and Tarot is less than satisfactory. In my opinion, the end result, while employing individual structures that might be satisfactory, leads to chaos and a confusing jumble of disparate tones and moods that prevents easy and effortless assimilation of knowledge. In my opinion, this is not charming. Thus... this site presents an alternative. An alternative road with no bumps. For purposes of comparison, I have included another chart showing where I find bumps in the Royal Road of Minor Pip cards that use the Golden Dawn Qabalah/Astrology system of titles and meanings.
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| Tarot started out as a game with a logical structure of positive and negative suits, or good and bad suits. Given the evidence seen in modern playing cards, the suits of Diamonds (which we correlate with Coins) and the suit of Hearts (which we correlate with Cups) would be the positive or good suits and Clubs (which we correlate with Staves) and Spades (which we correlate with Swords) would be the negative or bad suits. As this kind of logical game-playing structure was part of what the occultists assimilated when combining tarot with other systems like Qabalah and Astrology, this chart is laid out in such a way as to show how the original design of two suits good and two suits bad becomes altered by the addition of the Golden Dawn's Qabalistic and Astrological associations. I see these alterations as a corruption of a more elegant design, and when people try to show how the suits in such decks are indeed capable of telling a story all the way across that is consistent in mood or tone, these abrupt changes feel more like bumps in the road, and their rationalizations over these bumps sound like fancy talking bullshit designed to cover up the fact that the Golden Dawn influence leads to suits that are not at all balanced, symmetrical, contrasting or consistent in design. |
The survey of Golden Dawn titles and meanings, shown above, results in a pattern that is a bit different from that of the completely visual assessment of the Rider/Waite/Smith deck given in the previous chart, and the essay A Few Minor Changes.
For example: lots of people take the visual image of the RWS 2 of Swords as ominous and somewhat scary, but the Golden Dawn title is Peace Restored. While Aleister Crowley's title is just Peace. Likewise, the RWS image for the 6 of Swords does not look too happy, but the Golden Dawn title is Earned Success. Crowley's title is Science. In the RWS 7 of Pentacles, the plant looks healthy, the man looks healthy, but the Golden Dawn title is Success Unfulfilled. Crowley's title is Failure. What's going on here?
In applying these Golden Dawn titles and meanings, the suit of Coins seems to have an abundance of associations that seem mostly favorable, with only a couple of bumps in the road. The suit of Staves appears to have an identical formation of mostly favorable titles, in fact some might even disagree with this chart's assessment of the 7 of Staves being more negative in meaning. But... the suit of Staves ends poorly, while the suit of Coins, with an almost identical balance of "good" and "bad" meanings, ends more favorably. What went wrong with all that favorable energy to allow the suit of Staves to end so poorly? If we don't look at the suits as representing a progression of ideas from Ace to 10, then there is no answer to that question; good and bad cards just appear here and there, depending on the luck of the draw concerning the alignment of Sephira, World, Planet and Sign when using the Golden Dawn system of calculating influence. But, if the suits are supposed to represent a progression of some kind, what goes wrong with energy of Staves?
Because of Golden Dawn associations to positions on the Qabalistic Tree of Life, decks that use this system arrive at a formation of cards wherein NONE of the 5s of ANY suit are EVER favorable (except perhaps in their reverse)! Likewise with the 7s. At the same time, because of its central location on The Tree of Life, ALL the 6s seem mostly favorable. And likewise, because of the elimination of the Aces, ALL of the 2s are mostly favorable, because... even though they are not balanced on the Tree of Life, they are considered the first manifestation of the suit's overall element. Thus.. with the Golden Dawn system, there are no "bad" or unfavorable 2s or 6s, and no favorable or "good" 5s, or 7s. Most of the 3s and 9s are favorable... except for the Swords. Is this charming, or what?
To this study of tarot, these abrupt changes in tone, mood and culminating energy seem highly questionable in design and exceptionally unbalanced. I do not find a chaotic jumble of shifting moods and energies to be all that charming a feature for a deck design to have. Thus, in The Numerical Tarot I prefer to smooth out these inconsistencies by abandoning the Golden Dawn influence altogether, and returning to the elegant design of early playing card decks that appeared before tarot. Rather than offering yet another volume of interpretations that bullshit their way across bumps in a poorly designed road, I prefer to utilize a classic design that lays down as smooth a road as possible from the beginning. When we shuffle the deck and lay out cards in a reading, our Binary Buddy will pull whatever cards are necessary to illustrate the bumps that are in our road of life. While, I believe, the deck itself should be as smooth as possible.
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The Bumpy Ride of the Occult World
The titles of the Golden Dawn, and the illustrations of decks that use them, result in a chaotic jumble of ideas. For the most part, they are all good ideas, and so people have yet another reason to forgive the difficult to follow design of such decks and just accept the challenge of learning what is being offered in whatever way they can, facing down whatever obstacles a system of chaos might offer. In continuing down this path of chaotic learning, it is suggested by some experts that we view the entire series of Minor Arcana cards as a 40 card sequence of ideas that tell a story of enlightenment. By way of Qabalistic influence, we are told that the 40 cards of the Minors are to be strung together as one continuous line of cards, to illustrate a complete progression - through various Qabalistic Worlds - describing the descent of Spirit into Matter, or... backwards, to describe our ascent out of material existence toward enlightenment. As Qabalistic Worlds become associated with Tarot Suits, this progression of Spirit into Matter is supposed to run from the suit of Staves, on the Spiritual side, through the suit of Cups, then to the suit of Swords, and then to the suit of Coins on the Material side.
But... when one reads along this 40 card sequence... backwards... on our supposed path of enlightenment through these Worlds, or Suits... using the Golden Dawn titles and meanings along the way... it can be challenging at times to gather any sense that we are progressing from a material existence on one side, toward a more spiritually enlightened state on the other side. Because of the many "bumps in the road" or ups and downs of tone and mood that we find along the way, the idea of progressing along a gradient path that gets progressively less Material and more Spiritual (or... if read forwards, more Material and less Spiritual) can be difficult to find. Because we are using a system that is fundamentally chaotic in form, we find concepts of materiality and spirituality scattered here, there and everywhere... leading to inconsistencies of intent along this 40 card path that prevent any kind of smoothness of transition from coming across. For example: To help us along, we see the words Material and Earthly used a lot in the titles that are given within the suit of Coins - on the material side. That makes sense. But... the words Spiritual or Heavenly are not used at all in the suit of Staves - on the supposedly spiritual side! Also, we find that the word Material is being used just after we pass the half way point of this 40 card sequence, in the 9 of Cups, which carries the title of Material Happiness. Looking further, we notice that the concept of Oppression appears just 10 steps away from the enlightened end of our path... even though it is our material existence that is supposed to oppress us.
Taken as a single pass along The Tree of Life, the number 10 is supposed to represent the Material, and the number 1 is supposed to represent the Spiritual. In this 40 card sequence of Minors, we are repeating this one idea four times, end to end. To repeat a "Material-to-Spiritual" progression four times, and expect the full 40 card result to appear as one long path from Material to Spiritual seems poorly conceived. Nevertheless, I could imagine it working... IF, the Material concepts along the way seemed progressively less material... but... in this particular sequence, they don't. People who subscribe to the "Spirit descending into Matter" idea usually describe our material existence as oppressive - i.e. filth to be washed away. So... to have the 10 of Staves expressing Oppression only 10 steps away from the Spiritual end of our path of enlightenment seems strange, as does the aforementioned Material Happiness appearing within the suit of Cups, instead of the supposedly material suit of Coins. Finding Material Happiness in the 9 of Cups does not sound like the 9s and 10s are getting less material as we ascend... backwards... along this 40 pip progression. Also... people frequently associate the ineffable enlightenment of some kind of Godhead with the concept of Love. So... one might then expect this 40 pip progression to end with the Love that we see in the 2 of Cups... but it doesn't. One might also expect the Sorrow, Futility, Despair and Ruin found in the suit of Swords to be placed in such a way as to represent the oppressive result of a material existence, and as a result might expect the suit of Swords to be inferior to that of Coins... but it isn't.
If the Suits are sequential, the Seasons are all mixed up.
If the Seasons are sequential, the Suits are all mixed up. |
In addition to the strangeness of progressing backwards in a numerical sequence, from Material to Spiritual, along four repeating progressions of Material to Spiritual... the way in which the Zodiac of Astrology is fused with these Suits, or Worlds, adds additional confusion. While the details of how the Zodiac is aligned with Suits is too complex to elaborate in this essay, suffice it to say that the end result has us jumping back and forth between seasons of a year as we move through the 40 card sequence. For example: we start out at the mundane, material 10 of Coins being associated with the month of September, where we progress (or regress) to August... then while passing through the 7, 6 and 5 of Coin, we experience May and April... then... with the 4, 3 and 2 of Coin we experience January, then December. How is that a progression!?? If we fix this so that we are progressing smoothly through the seasons of a year, then we mix up the Qabalistic sequence and are no longer progressing through four repetitions of Material to Spiritual! If we fix it so that the seasons progress smoothly, we are no longer progressing from Staves to Cups to Swords to Coins, instead we jump around through the Suits or Worlds, just as we did through the seasons when using the first method. Furthermore, the sequence with which we move through the various suits doesn't even match the suggested sequence of suits utilized in the first progression! If, in following the seasons, we were caused to jump through the suits in a way that at least matched the first progression of Worlds we could imaging the same progression occurring in pieces... but it doesn't. Plus, it is not clear to me what the progression of ideas are supposed to represent when the cards are arranged by seasons of a year. One might guess something akin to the life and death cycle of the seasons. But... the scattering of Golden Dawn titles and meanings seems even more random, when arranged through the seasons, than they do with the 40 pip progression of Worlds/Suits.
Is there really a cohesive story being told across these suits... in either direction... Qabalistically, with Astrology mixed up or Astrologically with Qabalah mixed up? A good bullshitter, or storyteller, could probably make one up, no matter how randomly we scatter the ideas. Is that what the Golden Dawn has handed us? Did they arbitrarily fuse incompatible belief systems; take the luck of the draw as to how things combined; and then make up bullshit rationalizations after the fact? The more I look at the Golden Dawn structure, and the more I listen to people explain it, the more I think that such thoughtless actions are indeed at the core of the Golden Dawn system, and are indeed leading to bullshit after-the-fact rationalizations... at least, much more so than are to be found within the All Things Are Numbers approach. There are a few discrepancies with the system being put forth on this site, but, the description of possible progressions through the Suits and Trumps of The Numerical Tarot is much more clear and obvious than it is with the Golden Dawn approach. By not being so random in the fusing of incompatible systems, and returning to a more elegant design of opposites, the All Things Are Numbers approach leads to patterns that are capable of telling cohesive stories that don't include surprising bumps in the road. In the All Things Are Numbers approach, a progression from the Material to the Spiritual is described with ideas that convey both sequential progress as well as gradual increase or decrease of said enlightenment or materiality. The elements of those balanced, symmetrical, contrasting and consistent progressions can then be randomized to tell any kind of story that needs to include any number of bumps in its road. But, I believe that the bumps in the road should remain in our readings, and not the underlying structure.
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Put DOWN That Deck, and Step AWAY from the Qabalah!
By itself, Kabbala, or Cabala, or Qabalah is interesting, and an effective tool. By itself, Astrology is interesting, and an effective tool. But when fused together in this Golden Dawn fashion, along with Tarot, I personally think the end result leaves a bit to be desired. This unholy trinity survives though, because of how much reverence people have for each part, individually. Thus, to imagine that they are indeed compatible as one amalgam of thought becomes too tempting to deny. It is for this reason that so many ignore all the bumps in the road created by this luck-of-the-draw approach to card meanings, and rationalize them away with ongoing acts of denial capable of smoothing out any road before them. The All Things Are Numbers approach and the Numerical Tarot Deck abandon this unholy trinity to suggest a more organic and more ergonomic approach that fits well with the original design of Tarot - before the occultist got their hands on it.
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Before the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn imposed their beliefs upon the pips of tarot, they looked like the pips of regular playing cards of today. After fusing the Qabalah with Astrology and Tarot (minus the Aces), and taking whatever meanings that happened to form as a result of that unholy marriage of disparate systems, the pips of tarot changed into a random scattering of highs and lows appearing here and there. And because people want, or in some cases demand that tarot be about something spiritual, while also wanting it to be a tool for divination, this marriage of Qabalah (for the spiritual) and Astrology (for the divination) survives... in spite of the resulting confusion of meanings being scattered in asymmetrical chaos. People simply adapt, and view the confusion as an intrinsic quality that must be endured in order to acquire the spirituality and tool of divination they seek.
The Numerical Tarot exists as an alternative to this asymmetrical confusion. If one studies the ideas being presented on this site, they will find both a spiritual philosophy, as well as a tool for divination. But as an alternative, the Numerical tarot employs balance, symmetry, contrast and consistency in its design. Asymmetrical confusion is not the only way to impose meaning upon the pips of tarot!!! |
All systems that get applied to Tarot are speculative associations. One is no better than another when it comes to how they get their tentacles to attach. No fit is ever perfect. Some might think, or be taught by authors of tarot to think that the Qabalah/Astrology method used by important decks like the Rider/Waite/Smith and the Crowley/Harris Thoth is the "one true method" by which tarot was meant to be understood, and that anything else is just an interesting diversion from the truth about tarot. But this is not really the case. All methods for finding meaning in the cards of tarot require a certain amount of faith and trust in how we as individuals extend a willingness to believe associations as meaningful (see Imagine a Reason to Believe elsewhere on this site). In this way, the approach being offered on this site is no better, and most importantly no worse than the approach crafted by the members of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Do not make the mistake of judging the approach taken on this site by how well it agrees with or reinforces the approach of the Golden Dawn, or by how it fails to duplicate the form of tarot dictated by the Golden Dawn. The ideas being presented on this site require that we step away from the Qabalah/Astrology/Tarot trinity of the occultist, and look at Tarot a whole different way! Do not read another word from this site if you are not willing to do this!!!
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