The Trumps of the Consonants
From Tarotpedia
THE TRUMPS OF THE CONSONANTS
Allow me to present the Trumps in their bardic calendar order, to best present the sequential element in the symbolism. Number and tree are symbolically interchangeable in a sense, and we try to find the common strand between these:
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[edit] V Le Pape
V LePape is B-beth-birch, the month beginning at the winter solstice, and stands for the sign capricorn on the Cauldron: the inner horizon. All of its meaning derives from this. Its white bark and diminutive size stands for the clean slate and small stature of the fresh child or newborn year—in tifinag a ‘buckler’ (round shield, bisected circle) standing for the hero’s destiny, in Libyan the newborn sun itself (dotted circle)—and its number signifies the digits of a single hand that blesses, a number counted on every newborn. The year is born in twin form, just as hands are, hence two are being presented to the pontiff, yet it is as much the love of the mother whose arm enters the card from the right—our own and runic B are her ever-pregnant torso in profile—that is the spiritual or cleansing force here, manifested in matter by its atom-type boron, whose ore is borax—cleansing, whitening. Just so, Hebrew beth means ‘house’, as in house or offspring of, but also as in ‘beth-el’, house of God, and its proto-Canaanite form shows the mitre of the high priest, which the pontiff also wears. This letter is one of only two in runic that retain their tree-names, I and B, standing for the pillars Jachin and Boaz, connected with Solomon’s Temple and with Masonry, where Boaz is dramatized as a broken pillar next which a woman weeps: this is the front-column of the body, broken off to permit the womb’s enlargement and thus associated with the female. We would never know this, perhaps, but for the mother’s arm (thank you).
[edit] XIIII Temperance
XIIII Temperance is L-luis-rowan and signifies the educating of the young sun-hero. In tifinag and thereby in Libyan it is two vertical lines side by side, called ‘like’ and indicating learning to classify and to coordinate, tempering the hero’s metal for the struggle ahead (in Fionn Mac Cumhail’s gang, one had to be poet as well as warrior). The number means two complete manifestations are being compared, seven being the number of manifested signs. This is Egg’s aquarius, the back of the shoulders—where the mother’s wings are strapped on as she acts in the morality play—and square Hebrew shows arms swinging while walking seen from above, as when teaching a child to walk: Heb. lemedh means ‘to learn, teach’. In the broken-and-extended zodiac, aquarius is the ankles, opposite the swing of which the arms move when walking. Rowan itself was used for whips to tame bewitched horses, and lamedh is oft called ‘ox-goad’ and in proto-Canaanite even looks like a whip or riding crop. L’s rune pictures that quality of rowan that qualified it to represent schooling in the first place: it shows the part of a roof extending out beyond the wall of a house and reminds us that rowan protects the young of other species (which oft later displace it), just as, as a teacher, one takes younger pupils ‘under one’s wing’. Its atom-type silicon gives us silica, quartz, which is the abstraction of space: space, which is no-thing—Sameness throughout—is symbolized by H (LeMat), the sign on L’s level without, this being what precedes the outer horizon—what makes it a horizon, in fact—and L, being its abstraction (inner recognition of it), is Conscious Sameness.
[edit] XIII (Death)
XIII (Death) is N-nion-ash, wood of tool-handles, spear-shafts, and oars: the grim reaper here holds his scythe like an oar. N is the sound of negation and renewal in Indo-European, and proto-Canaanite N shows the hand raised in goodbye or in greeting, for it is the last sign, pisces, but thereby immediately precedes the round’s return to its own beginning as well. It is the third month of the year, however, so Libyan and tifinag make it one vertical line, one spear (whose shaft is ash) taken from among like spears: it is the hero’s individuation or realization of what is unique about him—from L’s ‘like’ to N’s difference—namely the destiny he faces. Ash was the world-tree of Scandinavian legend because it is where man grasps the world: its rune is the oar going through the side of a ship. It is Egg’s pisces (nun meant ‘fish’ in Semitic), the back of the neck or axis of shaking one’s head: square-Hebrew nun pictures this as a link between two things (head and trunk) but can also be seen as those other pisces, the feet (facing left, seen from above), renewal being wherever the feet take us, I guess, in this case. If in the preceding trump the dual or twin principle was being mixed, here its sexual connotation has been annihilated, heads of king and queen being at the reaper’s feet. For it is the hero’s denial of all that would distract him from his destiny: Pure Intelligence or Abstract Will. Its atom-type, aluminum, is, again, an abstraction of the quality represented by its counterpart without, taurus: taurus is 20-calcium, the lightness-combined-with-strength that manifests in bone, and aluminum—which is always found in combination in nature and thus must be extracted—is our abstraction of this quality, which we naturally picture as a skeleton. Its number relates it to what it leads to, namely a return to the beginning of the round, which is the thirteenth middah or divine attribute.
[edit] VIII La Justice
VIII LaJustice is unique. In pagan terms, being at the spring equinox, it is F-fearn-alder, the Corn Spirit or spirit of vegetation that produces its atom-type, oxygen, without which we could not remain balanced, hence the scales: its number is the weighing of two fourfold or earthly things. But this is the wielder of the scales, aries, not the scales themselves, which are straight down from aries at libra. In square-Hebrew it is samekh, picturing the head, the proto-Canaanite showing the spine on which it sits, presumably, which also happens to be ogam consaine for Ng, not present in Semitic but present in some branches of Indo-European. In the calendar, Ng is placed at Cauldron’s sagittary, whereas samekh sounds “s” and sits atop the Egg, on the tip of the tongue. Fearn the alder represents Orpheus himself—Bran or Bron of the partying severed head—the head or chief of the mysteries: chieftainship meant the dispensing of justice. The Grimaud has the head very clearly outlined in yellow, the color of grain, which is also what the yellow scales weigh and the yellow sword harvests (meaning the heads of one’s enemies, if we are pagan Kelts). This represents the hero’s stint as chief, seated at the ruling station of the year—where the round itself begins (though not the year). It is the power at the root of the round, where it begins at the center of its ‘mother’ round before progressing to the circumference then proceeding back to the center, thus concretizing the manifested half of the larger round in whose ‘belly’ it resides, complete with inner reaction to said concretization. Tifinag F in the far north was called ‘ferry-boat’ and showed one with passenger (like rounded trident without stem), since alder is resistant to moisture, while in North Africa its tifinag form changed to a bridge seen from above, for which alder was used for the pilings. Libyan has it as a cauldron, meaning the Cauldron of Plenty no doubt, F’s rune being called ‘cattle’ or ‘wealth’ (its shape that of a stalk of corn).
[edit] XVI La Maison Dieu
XVI LaMaisonDieu is S-saille-willow, symbolizing the weaving of enchantment, of sudden inspiration. By its number, it is the end of the process 4-8-16 (O, vowel of spring, followed by spring’s first two months, F-S, which lead to H or no-thing): this is the flower’s sacrifice of itself (the card shows the scattered pollen) and symbolizes the hero’s willingness to sacrifice himself in the flower of his youth. Its atom-type, sulfur, expresses this explosive ‘self-sacrifice’ by its function in gunpowder, probable source of the cannonball striking the tower (in the card). The Jews hung their harps on the willows of Babylon to mark their suffering: it is a suffering that inspires holiness (like that of Samson). The twins ejected from the tower are the distilling out of ambivalence or hesitation, in order to focus on one’s greater destiny, with which the hero here becomes fully inspired. It is a lightning-bolt or vertical zig-zag in Libyan, runic, and Greek, a molar in proto-Canaanite, symbolizing pain or suffering but also what grinds up the grain that is the hero as chief or king. As Holy Spirit, center of the Throne world, S-shin uplifts the hero as he is pulled toward his doom. For S is the month following F in the pagan calendar, yet Hebrew shin is piously held back to reinforce aries, indicating (by doubling F’s number) that the center of a wheel twice F’s height is what determines where aries is. Ogham order (B-L-F-S-N) pulls S back one from its calendar position, displacing N and F in the process. S as center aries yields its tifinag form, circle with dot in the center, symbolizing here is where the sun-hero becomes the full-grown sun (in the far north, at least). Its rune later combined the shape of a lightning-bolt of inspiration with the name *sowela, cognate with Latin sol. And its abandonment of its calendar position necessitates its month be taken over by its double, Ss.
[edit] XX Le Jugement
XX LeJugement is Ss-straif-blackthorn, symbolizing strife, hence this card pictures the ultimate in strife, Armageddon: Gabriel, ‘Warrior of God’, calls to battle from amidst the smoke of battle and a phalanx of spikes. Blackthorn is la mere du bois, ‘the mother of the wood’, because it acts as the forest’s vanguard in retaking for chaos what man’s efforts with iron had claimed for order. The proto-Canaanite tzaddi is a tilted chair or throne in its more squared-off form, a banner waving in battle in its more rounded form. The square Hebrew has it as the throat in breathing, this being Egg’s taurus, tzaddi-sofit (its final form) being the throat in swallowing. Its tifinag form is a torc, which was worn at the throat, and the angel in the Grimaud version (another reason I like it) very definitely holds the trumpet up to the throat, not mouth, there being a sort of reverse torc in the form of a white crescent—rather like a starched collar—separating it from the lips. For its atom-type, calcium, is controlled in the body from the parathyroids, which are in the throat. Its rune is *algiz or ‘elk’ (strong-necked, like the bull taurus) and shows one as an eagle sees it from on high: elk symbolizes rutting combat, albeit the season for this is later in the year, hence it is potential at this point, and indeed a Semitic word close to this letter’s name means ‘lying in wait, malice’. Its meaning is really Motion itself, the passage of time—passage beyond the summit of the hero’s reign of uprightness, aries—time during which ‘la mere du bois’ does its stuff (the neglect that leads to chaos making inroads), for in Libyan, it is an hourglass. This number represents the ten grasping digits of desire times two, two competing complete sets and hence a balanced and fair combat or judgment.
[edit] Le Mat
LeMat is H-huath-hawthorn, quintessential (flowering) hedge symbolizing what separates: space or no-thing. Our H and its rune show a section of fence, proto-Canaanite a blocked passage. The rune’s name is *hagalaz, ‘hail’, signifying the trampling feet of the vagabond the hedge is supposed to exclude, who is here seen traversing space, that is, the space between towns (in town, he becomes LeBateleur, I presume). The pattern of dots in the Grimaud version very explicitly marks his station: five on his mantle plus the two white ones where his pole rests on each shoulder (gemini being the shoulders and arms) indicate the seven manifested signs (from ‘out’ to ‘in’), and the red dot at the end of his cap shows exactly where gemini is in relation to these. The shoulders are also the way one ‘blocks’ (as in football). The dog nipping at his privates partly indicates this is the month of chastity—of the may or hawthorn flower, which is white—but also refers to a deeper meaning connected to the Orphic mystery’s teaching about after-death states (hence Orpheus’s visit to the underworld): transmigration back to one of that part of oneself that inhabits the animal kingdom between lives, in preparation for conception in the following sign, which on the Egg is XVII L’Etoile, the mixing together of fluids in human conception, the bird on the tree to the left being the soul waiting to be embodied, whose presence is necessary for conception to take place. But this month, hawthorn, is the hero’s nemesis in a sense: it is the space between him and his objective as he nears the end, making that objective futile (though still worthy), and as no-thing it is his being reduced to nothing, his defeat, his being brought low.
