AUTHOR’S NOTE: A number of tarot writers have explored the concept of “numerological counterparts” for the Major Arcana. Here I will examine their ideas and expand them to include the Minor Arcana and the court cards in instances where a direct numerical correlation exists or where arithmetic manipulation reveals similarities.

Phillip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm did so in the companion book to the DruidCraft Tarot, applying what is known as “Theosophical addition” to come up with a single digit that numerically links two or more* of the trumps (for example, the Emperor as “4” is related to Death in this way: “1+3=4”). James Wanless, in his companion book to the Voyager Tarot, took a different route by using the second of two digits in a complex number (the “tens” place in conventional mathematics) to connect the cards; one case would be the Emperor (“4”) corresponding to Temperance (“14” with “1” in the “ones” place and “4” in the “tens” position). As can be seen from this instance, in many of the cards the Magician leads off the pair and in a few of them this role is taken over by the High Priestess; I see them acting as “conductors” for the energy of the second number. but that is beyond my scope here and was covered in a previous essay.)

To begin the analysis, I’m going to consider the Fool, which is a partial outlier in this model. It has no counterparts when using Theosophical addition because no other combination of cards will sum to zero (unless one of them is reversed, which in my system of reduction means “negative”). However, in the Wanless approach it is tied to the Wheel of Fortune and Judgement by their second digit. If we think of the Fool as a formless harbinger of incipient opportunity (aka “0”), that promise is fulfilled by the former in practical terms and by the latter in a more spiritual sense.

Similarly, there are no Minor Arcana or court cards that relate to zero by numerical reduction, but the “10” at the end of each ten-card set conceals the Fool in its second digit and might be seen as a “jumping-off-place” to the next suit in the Fool’s figurative side-trip through the small cards. (Maybe he’s “slumming?”) But there is another way to look at it. The Fool embodies what I call the “principal of preparation,” and as such it can be associated with both the Aces and the Pages. This is not a numerological relationship but rather a functional one that has been described by a different group of tarot authors (whose names escape me).

A more full-fledged example is the Hierophant, and I’m tackling it because, along with Temperance, it is a card whose interpretation at one time eluded me in practical reading situations due to its religious overtones. By Theosophical reduction, the Hierphant as “5” is associated with Temperance as “1+4=5.” The functional convergence between them is illustrated by the fact that both have to do with “teaching,” the Hierophant for obvious reasons and Temperance through its astrological correspondence to Sagittarius and the mythological centaur Chiron. Using the premise of Dr. Wanless, the Hierophant is subsumed in the number of the Devil (“15”), making for an interesting dichotomy that non-Christians may find entertaining. (We could even say that between them the Magician and the Hierophant are cooking up something diabolical. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”)

In the Minor Arcana, the Hierophant can be found symbolically in all of the Fives, and if we want to get really fancy we could bring the other “isomorphs” of Five into the mix, specifically “1+4” and “2+3” and their associated minor cards. With the court cards we can link the Hierophant to the Kings in two different ways: the King is the fourteenth card of of the numerical sequence, and “1+4=5;” from another angle, the King is the secular “head of state” while the Hierophant is his spiritual counterpart as “head of the Church.”

As far as the rest of the Major Arcana, Aleister Crowley said it best in the Book of Thoth: “It is very important as a mental exercise to work out for oneself these correspondences.” (In other words, he let himself off the hook and so will I!) Below is a graphic presentation of the concept. (I was tempted to place a second tier of reversed Fives below the Devil in keeping with the trump’s deceptive nature but decided to leave it as only a suggestion.)

*Most of the trump cards have a single numerological counterpart by Theosophical reduction, but some have two. The Magician as “1” connects to both the Wheel of Fortune (1+0=1) and the Sun (1+9=10; 1+0=1), while the High Priestess as “2” is reflected in Justice (or Strength depending on deck) in the form of “1+1=2, and in Judgement as “2+0=2. In the same way, the Empress as “3” can be found in the Hanged Man (1+2=3) and the World (2+1=3).