Minor Arcana: Introduction / A User Guide to R.M. Place’s Tarot of the Saints
A User Guide to R.M. Place’s Tarot of the Saints
Meditations for Pulp Spiritual Direction Through Applied Contemplative Prediction
Major Arcana Introduction: Balance and Development
Major Arcana: Card by Card Analysis
The Suit of Cups: Self Presenting Love
The Suit of Swords: Love Considered
The Suit of Staffs: Love Made Real
The Suit of Coins: Sacramental Engagement
Keyword Guide to Tarot of the Saints
Transversal Theology: Technical Glossary
Minor Arcana: Introduction
The Major Arcana presented a journey of three paths. The journey was the spiritual awakening of the Fool. The points of the path were the abstract and cosmic forces that need to be brought into balance and encountered in order to give one’s self over to cosmic reintegration. Meditation concerning these cards generally runs abstract to applied. When one encounters them in pulp spiritual direction one starts with spiritual or theological concerns and then applies them to the aspects or possibilities in the situation. With the Minor Arcana, we will see the opposite, the cards will work concrete / practical to abstract. Even in the Rider Waite deck, and all decks that mimic it, the Minor Arcana offer visuals of the abstracts applied in the world. The four suits are the four elements of the world and reach the four corners of the world. They demonstrate spiritual discipline and practice. Particularly in the Tarot of the Saints, they are what may be called pastoral application as opposed to “theology” or spirituality proper. Contemplating the integration of arcana XXI, the World, as a goal or the mysteries of Christian ontology, one will see that these two, Major and Minor, form two sides of the same coin, “as above so below”. The Major Arcana are the meta narrative and the Minor Arcana are the instances or applications of these.
In the Tarot of the Saints, the Major Arcana are all saints of the celestial realm. They are the “above”. The patterns of their lives help us conform to the life of the saint. The Minor Arcana, as the “below” constitutes The Church. To be sure there are saints involved in the Church as a whole. Each of the Royal cards portrays a Saint. But the illustrations of the Minor Archana also consist of scenes from the gospel, which are the founding of the Church and the scriptures the Church is founded upon. Many cards also offer symbolic presentations from the Church’s historical trove of aesthetic communication. These are culturally bound symbolic expressions of Christianity that remind us that living the gospel is not abstract but incarnate in each persona and each culture. Lastly, there are some scenes that are simply situations that saints find themselves in. In previous works, we called such situations hagiographical templates. A hagiographical template is a mythic template used to frame the narrative of a certain kind of saint. Hagiographies often follow certain patterns that can be used to assess the holiness of a person and frame the trajectory of their life in order to tell their story. So for example the Eight of Swords shows a “Martyr Waiting”. There are multiple hagiographical templates that deal with martyrdom. One is the waiting martyr who communicates with fellow Christians giving the dying testimony of Truth.
We will also offer a view of the Minor Arcana as a process of the three tiered integration of the self. Similar to the Major Archana as a series of paths toward spiritual perfection, we will be analyzing the Minor Arcana as “fields of operation” in engagement concerning the three tiered integration. The task of the Christian is to love. In Christian ontology, love is the relationship that binds persons into one reality the same way that gravity binds objects into one reality. The stronger the bond, the more “one” the reality is. In order for love to exist, there must be a lover and a beloved (preferably a person). These personal realities are the “objects” and love is the relationship. Bound together we have integration. If the “persons” are the person of the Godhead and the person of the subject, we have the XXI arcana. Since love is the major field of engagement for Christians, along with all the traditional attributes of each suit, we will add attributes of love to three suits. Cups will be analyzed as eros, Swords will be analyzed as philia, and Staffs will be analyzed as agape. For the Christian to be reconciled in love, all of these aspects must be present, but one is not simply reconciled with persons. All of reality is made new. Thus the Coins will be analyzed as the interface of our sacramental cosmology. This is the matrix which the persons abide in and the vehicle that conveys the grace necessary to communicate love. Within these fields of engagement, we exercise the Christian life. The hope is that with them we can actualize Christian ontology and see begin to collapse the three tiered field of experience (inner self, auxiliary self -the body-, and the Exterior world). It is hoped that this application will offer a good expansion that is particularly suited to the Tarot of the Saints but may even breach into other decks.
The Major Arcana are much commented on, but often the Minor Arcana get short shrift. Unfortunately, R.M. Place’s companion book to the Tarot of the Saints, A Gnostic Book of Saints follows suit in this regard. For the Major Arcana his book has an introductory quote and a brief introductory passage followed by sections for hagiography, image comparatives, and finally a section he calls “Tarot Wisdom”, which offers intuitive insight. But when we reach the Minor Arcana the layout completely changes. The Royal cards, which also portray saints, get a decent hagiography and a sentence on intuitive application. The pip cards offer one extremely short paragraph (some no more than two sentences) of intuitive application. The problem with this is that when practicing pulp spiritual direction it is likely that the majority of the cards displayed will be Minor Arcana. The lack of commentary on them may be due to the absolute malleability of the images. Again, the original pip cards in decks such as the Marseille had no images. The only factors which interrelate to form meaning with the pip cards are their suit and number. In the general introduction we noted how numerology is a very dynamic field, and thus for those who would use non aesthetic pips both the meaning of the suits and the communication of the numerology can vary widely and come off as almost haphazard. Compare this dynamism to the relatively consistency of the Major Arcana. The names of each arcana alone beg a certain representation. This is true of the Major Arcana and the Royal cards. For the Major Arcana, there are also foundational images from early development, for example, the Marseille Deck, that form a standard template that is usually only variable upon the template. The Rider Waite deck offers pictorial images for all the pip cards, but that deck is a recent development, thus it does not have the status as a standard maker. The rapid development of varieties of decks that came into existence especially since Samuel Liddell Mathers, cofounder of Golden Dawn, called for members to not only study the Tarot but to take initiative and create their own decks. The development of decks over the past century has happened so fast that no pictorial template seems to have taken root (at least yet) in the Minor Arcana, for the pip cards. It is possible that there will never be one and, as we shall see, that may not be a bad thing.
This dynamism in the images of the Minor Arcana is appropriate, because it reflects the dynamism of the terrestrial plane, as opposed to the archetypal forms of the Major Arcana. For Tarot ,the variance in the Major Arcana will be a cultural variance on the template of the image. That change would consider how the figure in the image looks and is adorned. It could also consider the symbols of the image in their particular manifestations. But ideally (pun intended) the Archetype would remain the same, so the changes would be at most family resemblance and not a whole overhaul. The whole point of an Archetype is that it transcends particulars, thus it should be able to be found in the culture. On the other hand, the Minor Arcana are applied incarnations of the abstract in the culture, therefore they have no template. Any images portrayed on them are completely subject to how the suit interacts with the numerology in a pictorial presentation of an Archetype as it manifests in that culture. Both the suit and the numerology are fairly culturally bound constructs.
All of these variables give the beautiful dynamism of the Minor Arcana. However, the dramatic dynamism makes interpretation of the Minor Arcana much trickier. In the treatise Pulp Spiritual Direction, we described methodologies for using oracle cards in meditation. The opening gambit was a Rorschach on the part of the querent, but at a certain point, the director all takes pertinent information and synthesizes it. There we noted the process when we discussed how to analyze individual cards in a meditation,
Once the Rorschach seems to have played out, the director can begin to analyze the card. This will begin with an “explanation” of the card as it is presented upright. If the card places reverse, that explanation will follow because the reverse position is a commentary of or relational to the upright position. These explanations must be contextualized by everything that has proceeded from the proclamation of a query to the Rorschach conversation to the place in the pattern, to what preceded in the pattern. Whatever the director may “know” about the symbols, narrative, meaning of the card should be revealed only inasmuch as it applies to the relationship at the table. The point is not to show off one’s knowledge. The point is to make useful connections in the querent's life. It is during this part of the analysis that the director can begin in earnest connecting the card to other cards, the meta-narrative, and the narrative of the life of the querent in order to invest the card teleologically or pragmatically. These connections may become brainstorming in advance of the fourth stage of the interpretation of the card. In any event, the “story” or meaning of the card needs to be told. But it is told in relation to a series of meta-narratives or meanings that are present, the meaning of the pattern, the meaning of the querent’s life as it is being discussed, etc. As the director relays this information, to the best of their ability, they should be making these connections or seek to in common with the querent.
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In that treatise, we noted the reserve with the knowledge one has but we also explained the skill that a director would need to cultivate in order to successfully employ pulp spiritual direction. The director must be universally familiar with the artistic symbology of the deck. They must have knowledge of mythic narratives and the ability to existentially deconstruct myth. Lastly, the director must have the ability to relate all of this to the arch narrative of salvation history.
The complexity of all of these along with the malleability of the Minor Arcana is why it takes time and practice to learn a deck. Especially for the Minor Arcana, one cannot simply go with a pat interpretation, like one may for the Major Arcana. The Minor Arcana are hyper specifically attuned to dynamic existence, not fixed forms. Thus one cannot blame people for steering clear of over analyzing the Minor Arcana in guides. For the most part, the analysis will only be applicable for the particular, specific, deck involved. It may be best to allow for the intuition of the person who chose the deck to take the dominant role. This gives one sympathy for Place’s hesitancy to “lay down the law” concerning interpretation of the Minor Arcana. As the creator of the deck, if he offers an interpretation, then it carries authority in a certain respect. It may be better that he is vague and allows the deck to operate mostly by intuition. But, on the other side, if one is creating a guidebook for a particular deck, then the images are set and one can equally elaborate, on the Minor Arcana, especially concerning relevant material to the imagery. Since we aren’t the creator of the deck, everything we are discussing concerning interpretation and application is obviously speculation and guidance. With that in mind, we will try to be more detailed in our analysis.
Below we will try to organize the structure of the Minor Arcana in a similar manner as we did the Major. The Royal cards of the Minor Arcana, being also centered on a saintly figure, will have an identical layout to the Major Arcana for their card by card analysis, Hagiography, Visual Analysis, Meditation, and Application. The layout of the Minor Arcana will be similar, but with one variance. But most of the pip cards do not center around a particular Saint. Therefore instead of a “Hagiography” section, they will have a “Scripture Passage” that relates to the image. It will either be the passage portrayed by the image itself, or, if the image is not taken directly from scripture, it will somehow relate to what is happening in the image.
That being said, there is much scriptural resonance for each of the Royal cards as royals and it may be helpful to briefly examine them in the general introduction. Each of the Royal cards can be illuminated by finding corresponding characters in scriptures that generally convey the symbology. We will take each royal and offer a few brief suggestions for both upright and oppositional in order to foster general application and continual contemplation as we engage each suit.
The King
The King in each suit is generally interpreted as the mature masculine manifestation of that suit’s significance. In contemplation the presence of a King card invites the querent to consider aspects of traditional masculinity, father figures, social order in the situation. Biblically kings are a sign of the secular order. This is a two fold function. First, they demonstrate the relationship of “the people” with God. Such that if the king turns away from God it is assumed that the people have. Yet there are an equal amount of stories where the King is a calibrator of the relationship of “the people” with God. Those stories show a reformative king who brings the people back to God or, more often, a corrupt king who corrupts the people. Given the extremely public nature of the king, most of the concern for a good king in scriptures is justice and protection. Kings generate order and protect the order generated for outside influences that would destabilize. Kings also “set an example” of righteousness. Setting an example is a masculine attribute in that it is transcendently geared. One source to meditate on the attributes of a good king would be seen in Psalm 72,
O God, give your judgment to the king;
your justice to the king’s son;
That he may govern your people with justice,
your oppressed with right judgment,
That the mountains may yield their bounty for the people,
and the hills great abundance,
That he may defend the oppressed among the people,
save the children of the poor and crush the oppressor.
II
May they fear you with the sun,
and before the moon, through all generations.
May he be like rain coming down upon the fields,
like showers watering the earth,
That abundance may flourish in his days,
great bounty, till the moon be no more.
III
May he rule from sea to sea,
from the river to the ends of the earth.
May his foes kneel before him,
his enemies lick the dust.
May the kings of Tarshish and the islands bring tribute,
the kings of Sheba and Seba offer gifts.
May all kings bow before him,
all nations serve him.
For he rescues the poor when they cry out,
the oppressed who have no one to help.
He shows pity to the needy and the poor
and saves the lives of the poor.
From extortion and violence, he redeems them,
for precious is their blood in his sight.
The first stanza shows a concern that a king is just, followed by the transcendent ability to harmonize with nature. Then the psalm expresses a concern for protection of the poor and vulnerable. The king of each suit will express these attributes as they pertain to the significance of the suit.
The summative political king in the scriptures is King David. He is an excellent meditation in how to engage the King card in any given suit. He is a warrior poet who can recognize when he makes mistakes and repent. His personality presents masculinity as both prideful and passive. The second great “King” of scriptures is Christ the King. We noted in the treatise Adaptive Integralism we discussed the implications of “Christ the King” and balanced the triumphalism attached to the title with the recognition of a counter title, “Christ the Criminal”. When considering the King in a suit, Christian power dynamics is certainly a consideration. The juxtaposition of Christ as king and criminal shows the juxtaposition of the power of “this world” and the true power of divine love. Familiarity with such a juxtaposition is extremely helpful for interpreting a king card and its oppositional manifestation.
The oppositional king is tyrannical, alienated from his subjects and his intellect is ruled by his passions. Most of the kings of Israel were corrupt, therefore there is no lack of examples for oppositional kings. The two prominent examples that can be used to engage with the oppositional king could be Saul and Ahab. Saul loses his humility and grasps power against the will and authority of God. His lust for power drives him to madness. Ahab is over involved in power politics and is overruled by his Queen Jezebel. Kings must rule and scheme for the good and surround themselves with good counselors and then they must listen and take their advice.
The Queen
The Queen of each suit is generally interpreted as the mature feminine manifestation of that suit’s significance. Queens are the suit manifest as nurturing, protective, emotive, compassionate, giving, and caring manifestation of what a suit symbolizes. Biblical descriptions of queens are rare, but one example is Esther. Ether is the Jewish princess who is active in the court of King Ahasuerus captive during the Persian domination of Israel. She uses her office to save her people from the political machinations of Haman, who seeks a genocidal agenda against the people of Israel. She accomplishes this by exerting all her feminine beauty and grace to entice the king to act nobly.
The counterbalance of Esther is Judith. Judith is not a princess, but a widow. She is not graceful but dangerous. Her story takes place during the Assyrian conquest. She also uses seduction, but rather than exert her will by marriage, she beheads the general Holofernes, striking terror into the heart of his people and allowing for a victory over the approaching army.
A last Israelite “queen” is Deborah the Judge. She judged Israel and inspired Barak to meet Sisera and destroy his army. This story typifies the role of the Queen Bee who inspires and guides the virtuous masculine against toxic masculinity.
Each of these women is defined by their interaction with a male figure. As disturbing as such dependence may seem to the modern mind, one must remember that these characters represent cosmic concepts, masculinity, and femininity. For example, the masculinity is transcendent and the feminine is imminent. The feminine dependence as well as the feminine ability to effect the masculine plays into the esoteric maximum, “as above so below”. Familiarity with these stories will be helpful as Queens present in pulp spiritual direction. The reverse queen could present as any number of the soothing and manipulative “women of temptation” typified by Jezabel or as Jael from the Story of Deborah, who is a female and uses femininity, but in a masculine way, to conquer and dominate.
The Knight
The Knight of each suit can be thought of as the employment or good use of that suit’s significance. To encounter a knight in contemplation allows the querent to reflect on how the suit the knight represents is best employed, or how it is being employed by someone in the situation.
The early part of the Old Testament is full of warriors. Apart from King David himself, premium examples would be Joshua Son of Nun, The Judges, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, Uriah the Hittite, and Joab. Joshua and the Judges show warriors who are capable and act of their own skill and initiative. Benaiah, Uriah, and Joab are soldiers who dutifully fulfill their obligations and commands.
The warrior of the Old Testament does not rely on physical strength, quality of weaponry or numbers of forces. Rather, he gets his strength from God. Thus many of the combat stories in the scriptures come off as off balanced regarding faithful passivity and active aggression. When one considers Joshua and Jericho, the passivity is present in the wall. The wall poses an insurmountable technology for the unsophisticated Israelites. They are not prepared for a siege and a full frontal assault would be a disaster. The passivity comes in the armies of Israel marching around Jericho for seven days, observing the insurmountable wall. Then, instead of an assault, they blew horns and screamed and the wall collapsed. After the collapse, which probably killed a large portion of the garrison at Jericho, they charged and attacked. The lesson is that, though you have a part to play, God does most of the work. The most powerful weapon of the Israelite warrior is faithfulness to God. Hence, before God even lays out his plan to Joshua “The Lord said: I have delivered Jericho, its king, and its warriors into your power.”
Psalm 91 seeks to inform and inspire the warrior. The primary content is not inspiring the warrior to skillfully use strengths or advantages, but to take refuge in God and trust him. Each approach mitigates fear in battle, but reliance on God orders against simple brutality.
The oppositional knight presents a bully personality who lords his authority like the gentiles, is mercenary in their approach to their duty, simply follows orders regardless of moral consequences, or bolsters the excesses of the privileged class at the expense of the vulnerable. In contemplation, the querent is directed to consider how such factors or personalities are engaged in the situation. An example of these personalities could be Joab, who is a faithful general, but he is faithful to the secular king, not God. He executes King David’s orders to have Uriah the Hittite slain by the sword. Another scriptural example of an oppositional Knight is Doeg the Edomite. He is a mercenary in the employ of King Saul when he was dissenting into madness. He ruthlessly slew the priest of Nob simply because Saul ordered it. Stories such as these are excellent reflective material for drawing out the meaning of a knight in reverse.
The Page
The Page of each suit represents engagement in the significance of that suit at an exuberant, but novice or sophomoric level. To meet a page in contemplation evokes consideration of zeal but also a lack of experience in persons involved in the situation. Probably the best general category of the page in scriptures is the Apostles in the Gospels. All of them are zealous and devout followers of Jesus. But their woeful inexperience at times leads even Jesus to ask “how long can I endure you?!” They constantly misunderstand Jesus’ words and deeds. But as good Apostles (or pages) they are eager to learn. Familiarity with their personalities is definitely one way to frame the Pages scripturally.
There are two major stories of the Old Testament that can be used to consider a Page card, Ruth and Tobiah. Ruth is the Moabite great grandmother of King David who shows fidelity to her mother in law Naomi by returning with her to Israel after Ruth has become a widow. The plot involves Naomi aiding the youthful Ruth in attaining a husband. The story is a story of love, duty, and potentiality. Its imagery revolves around the life giving force of the land (in the form of wheat) and the female body (in the form of Children). Tobiah is equally a story of the youthful quest of maturity through union (marriage). He is the Son of Tobit, who sends him to secure finances when misfortune has fallen upon the family. Aided by the Archangel Raphael he secures the money, a cure for his father’s blindness, and a wife. In each of these stories, a key element is the ability to patiently listen to the proper authority and use the skills and excitement one has to accomplish the necessary task.
An oppositional Page plays up the lack of knowledge and adds arrogance to the little knowledge possessed. Two possible figures from the scriptures that can be used to contemplate the oppositional Pages are the rebellious princes of David; Adonijah and Absolom. Each of these men sought to take possession of authority before it was due to be given and possibly not available in the first place. Another example of the oppositional page would be the proverbial First Son of the scriptures. Especially in the Historical Books, there are a series of Second Son Typologies, where the first son is given all the advantages and attention, but the second son, by the hardest, is able to over come and be the better person. This is further manifest in many of Jesus’ parables that begin, “A man had two sons.
The Royal cards are all summed up by a series of interpersonal relationships that are driven by “mutuality” or in more esoteric terms, the union of opposites. A perfect example of how these mutualities plays out is in Ephesians 5
Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So [also] husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church. In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband. Children, obey your parents [in the Lord], for this is right. “Honor your father and mother.” This is the first commandment with a promise, “that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on earth.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up with the training and instruction of the Lord.
The duty and action of the Knight can be seen in the first sentence, which shows the “mutuality” of the relationships. The Masculine and Feminine principles (King and Queen) are then given their roles in this mutuality, both asked to sacrifice all for the sake of the other as signifiers of Christ and the Church. Then the youth and the parents (pages and kings/queens) are given their relationship as an example of Christian power dynamics, the greatest serves the least and a reverence for authority.
Before the Card by Card Analysis of each Suit will be an introduction that will contain three sections to get at the “Resonance” of the suit. The first section will offer the “Standard Resonance” and explain how the suit is generally viewed for any given deck. This section offers general information that would apply to the suit in any given deck. In that section, we will discuss the general application of the suit in contemplation. We will offer a meditation on the suit as elemental, psycho-spiritual, social, cosmic, and as a manifestation of gender.
The second resonance will be the “Expanded Resonance”, which will give details on how to apply the three loves and the sacramental cosmology to their respective suits. This expansion would probably work for most decks but is particularly suited to a deck like Tarot of the Saints which uses Christian symbology and narrative. The expansion will define the notion added (the love or cosmology), then proceed to apply that expansion to an aspect of the person. Then we will discuss how one uses the aspect in the service of God and how to use knowledge of the expansion in contemplation with the deck.
The last section suggests “Scriptural Resonance” where we will delve into scriptural connections to the standard resonance and the standard imagery for the suit as well as the expanded resonance. It is hoped that these last two resonances will be especially helpful for the successful implementation of pulp spiritual direction.
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