Tarot Thrones | The Court Card Blog

Tag: Rider Waite Smith

  • Strength | Summer Solstice | Blog Hop

    Welcome to the Midsummer
    Blog hop! If you’ve happened here by chance, then you are in for a
    treat if you follow the links below to all the other blog hoppers who
    are providing a chain that runs from 0 The Fool through to XXI The
    World.
    My card of choice is
    Strength.
    Most decks published today show
    Strength as Major Arcana VIII, however this wasn’t always the case.
    In older Marseille-style decks Justice is found at position
    VIII.
    So why the switch? Well, Back in the early 1900s, The Golden Dawn’s 
    A
    E Waite (the creator of the Rider Waite Smith Tarot) was keen to add
    astrological references to the Major Arcana.  But if Strength (Leo),
    kept her position at Major XI, then pesky Justice (Libra) would disrupt
    their plan to show all the Astrological trumps in their correct
    order. 
    And Lo! The switch was made!  Righting some ancient Tarot wrong, no doubt 🙂
    Aleister Crowley, another but more notorious member of the Golden Dawn, stuck resolutely to the traditional
    numbering for his Thoth deck. But changed the names of the cards – Strength became Lust.  Contrary ol’ coot!
    Does this order-switching matter? Probably
    not really, because back in the day, the old decks didn’t have numbered
    Major Arcana cards. 
    Why were numbers added? I fondly imagine that the various City States of Italy – each more powerful and vainglorious than the
    next – ended up with different cards in different orders.  It’s easy to imagine courtly gents in tights arguing heatedly about whether Temperance scored more points than Justice in their card game.  That’s the sort of argument that can get you run through with a rapier….
    But I digress, what I REALLY wanted to share with you is the evolution
    of the image:
    Visconti Sforza – 1451

    Hercules giving the Ebil Nemean lion a jolly good thrashing.
    Pretty danged violent to our contemporary eyes, isn’t it? 
    The Sola Busca Tarot – 1491

    A completely different viewpoint from a completely unique deck.
     This is Tulio, meditating on the night

    Don’t mix up card VIII which shows a child being dismembered over a fire by Nero – that’s Justice, not Strength!


    This is a deck crammed with alchemical symbolism 🙂
    Tarot del Mantegna – 1470(ll Meneghello version)


    A woman holds a club and wears a lion’s mask.
    There is also a lion behind her and a broken column.
    The broken column is traditionally the symbol for Forteza.


    BTW – this deck doesn’t actually have anything to do with Mantegna 🙂
    The Rider Waite Smith – 1909

    The combination of lion, woman and physicality that we strongly associate with this card makes an appearance.

    Tarot Sophistique – 2014

    A contemporary version of a Marseille Tarot image 
    Woman and Lion
    we can see the nascent leminscate of the RWS in the circle of her hat.

    Strength earned her place in the Tarot deck by dint of being one of the four Cardinal Virtues: Fortitude.

    The other virtues are Prudence (The High Priestess), Temperance and Justice (represented by, erm, Temperance and Justice).

    I like the virtue of Fortitude being part of the Tarot deck.  But Fortitude and Strength have slightly differing meanings:

    Fortitude means courage in
    pain or adversary.
    Strength means:
    a) the
    quality or state of being physically strong
    b) the capacity of an
    object or substance to withstand great force or pressure
    The subtle difference is that Fortitude brings a moral strength, a valour (indeed a Virtue!) to the heart of the card, which Strength alone does not.
    And there endeth the Lesson on Strength!
    Hope you’re ready to hop onwards to the next card?

  • And it’s Good Knight from him!

    There are lots of spreads that you can do to mark the passing stages of the moon.  Last night was a full moon, so I thought about whose personality energies would be now lessening their grip on me from here to the Dark Moon.

    Of course, when it’s the Dark Moon, I’ll be looking to see whose energies are going to become more powerful as we draw towards the next Full Moon.  There are lots of variations on this reading theme, but that’s the two that we’ll initially be looking at.

    The card drawn was The Knight of Cups.  And here he is;

    Copyright info:  Published by US Games
    Words/Art – A E Waite/Pamela Colman-Smith
    You can buy it here:   
                                                                                         
    This is one of two Knights in the Rider Waite Smith deck that I’d quite like to give a damn good shake. Look at him, trotting around totally absorbed by the Cup in his grasp.  I could smack him.
    His character is similar to the river that runs through the card: it slowly twists and turns through the countryside.  It meanders.  The Knight of Cups meanders.  This is a Knight who is in grave danger of disappearing up his own ass if he doesn’t rouse himself from the adoration of his Cup to some kind of action.  
    He’s a Knight – the Knights are not supposed to demonstrate the maturity of their Kings and Queens.  It’s their job to QUEST and to seek for that elusive THING and he’s seeking something in that Cups of his.  
    Frankly, I’m tired of looking for The Knight of Cups Thing.  You know The Thing.  The Thing that will Make You Emotionally Fulfilled.  If you’re lucky, you won’t know what I’m talking about – but if you’re at the Knight stage of anything, you’ll know just what I mean 🙂
    As a member of the Cups family, you would think that this chap is all about those Watery traits (the fish on his tabard, the waves on his horse’s bridle) such as love, compassion, warmth….but as a Knight, he also has a lot of intellectual, logical Airy energy blowing around too (check out those wings on his helmet and spurs) and for me, this Watery/Airy combination manifests in a character who is more interested in examining  his own experience of emotions than anyone else’s.  Looking again at the river in the card, I can confirm that point of view by the almost arid landscape that is clearly not much nourished by the water that runs through it.
    This is a guy who will lovingly compose a ballad for you, but only really for the pleasure of hearing himself sing!  He will sweep you off for a weekend to Paris, but forget to buy Euros….. Oh don’t get me wrong – he will declare his undying love and genuinely mean it.  Until he doesn’t and you’re dumped unceremoniously from a great height.  And he’s off again on his Great Quest…. do you recognise him?!
    So from now until the moon becomes dark, the disengaged emotional pleasures of the Knight of Cups ebbs from my life as does his dilly-dallying abstractedness.  Thank goodness!
    I wonder whose energies will take his place?!