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Back then, there were some very good books on Rider-Waite-Smith
(RWS) meanings around, but precious little really in-depth tarot information. Many of us were forced to “reverse engineer”
our tarot understanding, in other words, we had knowledge of RWS meanings, but
we didn’t have access to the reasons WHY certain cards mean certain things, so
we tried to figure it out for ourselves.
One of the most puzzling and annoying questions was on the RWS astrological attributions of the majors. Some fit great (Sun for Sun, Venus for Empress), some not so great (Cancer for Chariot?, Water for Hanged Man?, and most of all, Pisces for Moon?). (And if Empress is Venus, why isn’t Emperor Mars?)
With the advent of the great miracle of our age, instant information on anything and everything, commonly known as the internet, esoteric (in both the “alternative spirituality” and “obscure” meanings of the word) documents became readily available, and many things became clear(er).
The mundane answer to the title question is this:
At the turn of the 20th century, an esoteric group/secret society was formed in London called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (GD). It treated tarot as a kind of esoteric filing cabinet, associating such diverse systems as astrology, kabbalah, yoga, demonology, and (pre-Rosetta Stone) Egyptian mythology with the cards. The chief architect of the attributions seems to have been MacGregor Mathers, one of the founders of the group. The astrological associations are given in the short tract, Book T. http://www.tarot.org.il/Library/Mathers/Book-T.html
Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Coleman-Smith, author and artist of the RWS deck (Rider was the deck’s first publisher), and later Aleister Crowley, author of the Thoth deck, were members of the Golden Dawn and used its attributions for their decks.
Book T attributes the 22 majors to the 12 signs, 7 planets, and 4 elements of astrology. The first make-it-fit juggling was to make 22=23 by making Judgement carry 2 attributions, 1 planet and 1 element.
The next goal was to make the order of the signs match up with the order of the majors. (But evidently the order of the planets and elements was not important. They were stuck in between the signs wherever they would make some bit of sense with the ideas of the cards.)
This led to the famous switch of Strength and Justice, 8 and 11, since Leo comes before Libra. Well, it WOULD be really odd to have a lion on a Libra card and scales on a Leo card! And they’re both cardinal virtues, so nobody will notice, right?
This also led to the Moon not being the Moon. Pisces is the last sign, so which card at the end of the majors could it be? Moon = influences water = fish live in water = Pisces = close enough!
The joke is on the GD because the order of the tarot majors was not as stable and unchanging through the Renaissance and later as they thought. They could easily have gotten away with assigning things in any order they wanted to unnumbered majors (as some modern deck creators do).
So, you might ask, since I am ratting out, or at least exposing to mild ridicule, the GD astrological attributions, why do I use them for Arcana Stones?
Easy answer: GD/RWS tarot meanings and attributions are by far the most known and used, especially in the English-speaking world, but also in most of the world at large, and by me. I intend Arcana Stones to be part of the mainstream tarot tradition (with a little side-eddy into crystals . . .). And, of course, I have created something that comes from my own tarot knowledge, which is mostly GD-based.
Harder answer: I really haven’t found anything better. Back in the old reverse engineering days, and occasionally since, I have tried to come up with my own attributions. But with little satisfaction. So I’m sticking with the tried and true, at least for now. Even though I STILL think it takes a good bit of mental gymnastics to associate Cancer with the Chariot . . .
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