From my Tarot Jounal: Plants & Arabesques

[BradGad]

Not-random musings, but still just musings…

 

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The plants and arebesques in the pip cards of a TdM dek are like a fifth suit, completely differrent than the others. They're like the suit of the tarot itself. The deck showing itself as present with us. Alive.

 

Think about the holy ghost or holy spirit in Christianity.  It's like that. They represent the life of the deck. That extra element that makes the whole thing sing, have life and relevance. 

 

Like a spirit, they appear and disappear unpredictably. They’re here and then not; they take different forms. Sometimes when they are here, we don't see them (silly us).

 

Completely different, a fifth element (four suits + plants), turning a square into a pyramid. Like the eye at the top of the pyramid, they access all four sides, all four suits.  

 

The tarot is made up of cycles: Plants live and die: We sow a crop, put in work, reap a harvet, and replant some of the harvest for a new crop. A tree draws nutrients up from the soil, sprouts new leaves, which fall and then nourish the soil. 

 

The tarot is made up of progressions: A plant starts as a seed (aces), grows, matures, and dies. Also, human society grew up around the progression of tilling, sowing, working, harvesting. 

 

The tarot is made up matrices: The plants appear throughout the minor pips, the largest matrix in the deck. In a TdM deck, they are arguably the most present, consistent element. 

 

Plants -- actual plants (the green things) are our companions -- are our fellow Earthings. We shouldn't ignore then. We should thank them and learn. We need them. Same with the plants in TdM.

 

A cool tihng: The books don't have much to say about how to read them, so you can form your own innocent relationship with them.

 

Edited January 17, 2023 by BradGad

[_R_]

Interesting post. And it's true, a neglected topic as far as the books in English are concerned. But in French, it is a slightly different matter. Tchalaï, notably, made a great deal out of observing the progress of the vegetation patterns in the pip cards, and then coming to one's own conclusions with respect to what they may actually "mean," an idea that some others have also adopted, to a lesser degree. Prior to that, Marteau, and before him, Maxwell and Picard stressed the importance of these apparently incidental details. 

 

Another thing I quite like - even though one need not subscribe to some theory of Egyptian origins of the Tarot in any way to appreciate this - is the following quote from Apuleius' classic novel The Golden Ass:

 

 

Quote

 

Book XI:20-23 Preparations for initiation

Then that most generous of men [the high-priest] took my arm and led me to the doors of the vast temple, and when he had opened them according to the ritual prescribed, and then performed the morning sacrifice, he brought from the inner sanctuary various books written in characters strange to me. Some shaped like creatures represented compressed expressions of profound concepts, in others the tops and tails of letters were knotted, coiled, interwoven like vine-tendrils to hide their meaning from profane and ignorant eyes. From these books he read aloud for me the details of what was needed for my initiation.

Translated by A. S. Kline

 

 

[Tarot_Apprentice]

Again, BradGrad — simply outstanding!

 

I find the arrangement of foliage in the pups to be wonderfully suggestive as they combine or separate or serve in conjunction or adversatively. Blue, azure, yellow, red, green, etc. also enrich meaning for me.

 

Or can we read Jodorowsky’s take on and use of The World  and not recall XXI when we meet—say Pentacles 5? Or do we understand Pentacles 6 as 3 + 3, or as 4 + 2? Do we arrive at Pentacles 7 by way of 6 + 1, 3 + 4, 5 + 2, or 4 + 2 + 1?

[BradGad]

Thanks so much, @Tarot_Apprentice !

 

Those were off-the-cuff thoughts. I want to work up a bigger essay like what I did with white and pink in TdM on my blog.

 

An idea I'm tinkering with... that fits (I think) with what I've said so far... is that it's like Chi, the idea from traditional Chinese medicine and beyond, about "life energy." 

 

We know that the pips are all about cycles and progressions. I'm starting to see some meaningful patterns in how much "foliage" (plant/life/chi) energy there is on given pips, and where they fall in the cycles and progressions of the pips considered as a group. That is, the arabesques are an index of how much "velocity" is present at a given point, driving the cycle forward. 

 

But to discuss that well, we have to first establish the hierarchy or sequence of suits. I have a sequence that I'm loving, that I have totally adopted, and I need to unpack that first.

 

Here's the short version. Most (certainly not all) sources guide us to rank the suits like Coins > Wands > Cups > Swords. But I really think it should be Coins > Swords > Wands > Cups.