Pisces – IsleVue

The Nine of Cups – A One Page Guide

December 10, 2019February 7, 2020 John Iacovelli Cups, Nines, One Page Guide, Pisces, Water, Yesod

A well-fed gent in front of a dais laden with wine but not food, awaits his drinking companions. As W.C. Fields once said, “I cook with wine; sometimes I even add it to the food.” Colman Smith is cooking with Yesod and a double helping of Jupiter in the Nine of Cups. It’s a surface filled with sexual shapes and below it, sexual meanings. Does this mean that when we see the Nine of Cups we should assume it means the height of sexual pleasure? Such an interpretation might make a new friend or two for the modern reader! But I don’t think so. Rather, in the same way we need to recognize the pattern of clues in the surface of the card, it could be taken as advice to then look for clues on the surface of the situation the querent describes which might then be ascribed to sexual urges when analyzed less superficially.

Collage for the Eight of Cups - JMW Turner - The Golden Bough

Tarot

The Eight of Cups – A One Page Guide

October 5, 2019February 7, 2020 John Iacovelli Cups, Eights, Hod, Moon, One Page Guide, Pisces, Water

The Eight of Cups is one of those cards in which Waite has only slight differences in divinatory meanings versus the Golden Dawn. The differences are in the illustration. Instead of Pisces and Jupiter, the main element is instead the full Moon eclipsing the Sun. The Romans, in their panoply of gods, assigned Diana three aspects, goddess of the Moon, the huntress, and the queen of the underworld. They nicknamed her “trivia” or “three roads.” She was the goddess of forks-in-the-road! Waite and Colman Smith use this as a metaphor to portray the action of the divinatory meaning. The character deserts the cups of an enterprise or previous concern; i.e., he came to a fork in the road, and after, no longer travels the original road. The card is full of “dualities”—harvest and planting, death and rebirth, male and female, Sun and Moon, old path and new path—which seem to mimic the dual nature of the divinatory meanings. Thus, the Eight of Cups is a collection of reflected images, none exactly the same as the original. It occurs to me that if we understand the illustration correctly, the proper reading of this card is more than “the decline of a matter” in importance, as Waite put it. It is actually advice to avoid the consequences of whatever the “decline” was. The occurrence may be infrequent but not rare (as suggested by the solar eclipse). And the advice is that the best path to be on during or after that decline is “the road less traveled.”

collage Noahs Thank Offering - Joseph Anton Koch 1803

Tarot

The Ten of Cups – A One Page Guide

September 27, 2019February 7, 2020 John Iacovelli Christian mysticism, Cups, Malkuth, One Page Guide, Pisces, Tens, Water

The Ten of Cups is a great card to get in a reading… but it may not be one of Waite’s best. There are three imperfectly executed themes in the RWS Ten of Cups that I believe show Waite’s desire to infuse his mystical Christianity into the card. Firstly, there is an attempt to link the second covenant, by which belief in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth washes away the original sin of Adam and Eve. Possibly related, a second theme links the water and cups to the Holy Grail and the last supper, at which that second covenant was announced. Finally, an attempt to link the alchemical symmetry between heaven and Earth as in the saying “As above, so below.” But these three themes aren’t anchored securely to the astrological, elemental and qabalistic influences, and therefore don’t affect the divinatory meanings strongly. The result is that the Christian mysticism that Waite imbued in other cards’ divinatory meanings could not be “poured” into the Ten of Cups, and upon analysis, it just doesn’t “feel” right.

Tarot Fundamentals, though more expensive than most alternatives, is my recommendation as the single best book for beginners. It has the grounding you need in tarot history; it lists the astrological, elemental and qabalistic influences for every card; it provides excellent "how-to" essays on approaches such as intuition and the journey of the fool; and it provides illustrations of the renderings of eight decks for every card. The primary authors have continuing relationships with the Tarosophy Tarot Association, and this book is meant to be an encyclopedic volume of a good portion of their teachings.

Tarot: History, Symbolism and Divination is the best history of the origin of tarot, bar none. The first two thirds of the book should be required reading for anyone who wishes to even begin to truly understand the major arcana. Robert M. Place does have his "hobby-horse"—alchemy—and he gives far too little emphasis to the Golden Dawn. But his explanation of how the symbols in the majors got there and what they mean is unparalleled. The last third of the book is a description of the RWS deck.

The Lo Scarabeo Tarot is the "go-to" deck I use when I have my own questions. (I use RWS for other people). It's an attempt to reconcile the Golden Dawn, Waite/Colman Smith and Thoth. It doesn't do it perfectly. It's gorgeous. It's not for everybody. But if Tarot "theory" is your cup of tea, it may be a good choice for you, too.

To be honest, Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot is more "cute" and "fun" than insightful, in my opinion. But it is great fun. It visually relates Pamela Coleman Smith's theatre work to the deck she drew.