This pair presents what might be considered a "turnaround" of the previous one since the trump cards swap position from top to bottom and left to right: where before the Tower and the Lovers were subsidiary counterparts to the Chariot and the Devil, respectively, here they are the primary trumps. The Lovers now appears to … Continue reading Recombinant Trumps: Lovers and Tower

This tableau presents the Tarot de Marseille in a matched arrangement of numerological and archetypal counterparts that provides a condensed "snapshot" of the model I've been exploring in detail with the Waite-Smith deck. This layout shows the pre-eminence of the first nine numbered trump cards (the Fool as zero is a non-participant in this model), … Continue reading Counterparts and the Tarot de Marseille

The fourth array of trump-card counterparts involves the Chariot and the Devil on opposite sides of Justice, and the relevant numbers for the accompanying cards are Seven, Fifteen and Six; there are no court-card counterparts for these trumps. Once again, I have inserted the Fool into this tableau without an obvious numerological derivation because the … Continue reading Recombinant Trumps: Chariot and Devil

The third array of trump-card counterparts involves Strength and Temperance on opposite sides of Justice, and the relevant numbers for the accompanying cards are Eight, Fourteen and Five. I decided to insert the Fool in all of these tableaux, even without an obvious numerological derivation. because the Fool represents the "jumping-off place" for all of … Continue reading Recombinant Trumps: Strength and Temperance

The second array of trump-card counterparts involves the Hermit and Death on opposite sides of Justice, and the relevant numbers for the accompanying cards are Nine and Four. The interplay of numbers across this one is fascinating, and it will be interesting to see if it repeats with the remaining eight tableaux. The Hermit, numbered … Continue reading Recombinant Trumps: Hermit and Death

This post brings together a few ideas I've floated in past essays: "playing both ends against the middle" when approaching the trump-card sequence; the concept of "numerological counterparts" among the trumps; the trumps as "archetypal expressions" of the "pip" cards; and the linking of certain trumps through means other than immediate proximity. I've recently been … Continue reading Recombinant Trumps: Rescuing Chaos from Conformity