On a number of Tarot cards in the RWS deck you can see drop-like things. On the Tower and on three of the aces (Cups, Swords, Wands) they are very visible. With the Cups they look like drops of water, with the Wands they look like leaves. But what are they about the in the Swords suit? What do these drops symbolize and why was the Ace of Pentacles skipped?
Continue reading “To Yod or Not?”Tag: Gematria
Gematria is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase according to an alphanumerical cipher. A single word can yield several values depending on the cipher which is used.
The different number of Yods on Tarotcard ‘The Tower’
On a number of Tarotcards you can find ‘Yods’. The Yod is the tenth Hebrew letter and means “the creative hand of God.” The Yod as a letter is assigned to Tarotcard IX the Hermit by occultists who follow the Golden Dawn as a system (others sometimes assign it to Tarotcard X The Wheel of Fortune). The Yod is depicted on the Aces, the Tower, the Moon and on some decks also on the Sun. There it represents a ‘divine spark’.
In this post I would like to elaborate on the number of Yods that appear on Tarot card ‘The Tower’. This differs per deck and that is no coincidence! All occultists have had their own reasons for displaying exactly that number of Yods on the card. I’ve listed a few for decks that I own myself, but I’m sure there are many more decks that show a different number of Yods.
Continue reading “The different number of Yods on Tarotcard ‘The Tower’”The Staff of the fool and the number 37
The Tarot is full of symbolism. To what extent some symbolism has always been in there, we do not know for sure but is not likely. The Tarot seems to have been designed primarily as a game, as an artistic gift in honor of marriages of the high nobility and perhaps to promote Renaissance thought. What we do know is that the occultists who have been working with the Tarot since the 18th century, did add a lot of hermetic and occult symbolism to the Tarot. Eliphas Levi, Arthur Edward Waite, Paul Foster Case and Aleister Crowley are some of them who have indulged themselves in particular.
When you study the Rider-Waite-Smit deck carefully, you will see that not a single penstroke was done by chance! Some Tarotists don’t find it helpful to dig through all this symbolism. Others find it too far-fetched and implausible. I personally really enjoy doing it and it really helps me interpret the cards. This way, I am able to empathize more and see the cards come to live in front of me…
In this article, I would like to share an insight about the angle in which the Fool’s staff is positioned. It is exactly 37 degrees! 37 degrees is the average ‘normal’ body temperature of man. So “human” seems like an important keyword. When we look up this number in the reference books on Gematria, we come across many interesting associations that refer to “The Fool”!