Editorial note: The non-Rider-Waite tarot card images in this blog are sourced from the online collection of the British Museum, unless noted otherwise. The Marseilles images and Rider-Waite images are from scans I did at home.

In part five of this three-part series, the astrological connections to all the major arcana will be arranged. To get to this point, we had to slog through the very unsexy mathematics and number symbolism of the deck; I know how painful this was to some of us, but no pain, no gain, right?

The tendency of somewhat lazy and amateurish mystics who declared that the 22 cards must be about the 12 zodiac signs and the 10 planets always bothered me, mostly because three of those 10 planets were unknown to the Renaissance, and but because there is more to the heavens than just the zodiac.

Again, this is only my conjecture, based upon my perspective and deconstructions. So, here we go, and my hope is that this will all make sense at the end.

To recap: there are only three shapes the major arcana can form:

Triangle – 6×6×6 = 21
Rectangle – 3×7 = 21
Circle – 2×11 = 22

The 3×7 rectangle also conceals a cross, and not just any ol’ cross, but the one that fits in the vesica piscis model of one side being twice as long as its opposite. Note that The Hanged Man XII is at the center of the cross, making a cross with his legs:

If we move the vertical to the left, the center card also has a cross: the Roman numeral “X” in the Wheel of Fortune X card:

The cross of the square within a circle is the occult symbol for Earth, and the essence of “squaring the circle.” The sum of the rectangle’s factors – 3 and 7 – is also 10, which is X.

The cross as an “X” also shows us that Strength XI is the center of the physical world as represented by the four-sided shape:

From this backdrop, let’s see if we can’t figure out if the tarot has any other astro-gnomical representations.

The Rest of the Zodiac and the Planets

In previous parts of this series, I listed some of the constellational associations of some cards:

The Sun 19	Aries
The Star 17	Pleiades/Taurus
The Tower 16	Gemini
The Moon 18	Cancer
The Fool 0	Orion
The Chariot VII	Auriga
Strength VIII	Leo
Justice XI	Libra
Temperance XIV	Aquarius

This leaves five zodiac signs to match with cards, to which I offer these associations:

The High Priestess II	Virgo
Death XIII	Scorpio
The Hierophant V	Sagittarius
The Devil XV	Capricorn
The Hermit IX	Pisces

My justification for these pairings:

The Devil XV

Ol’ Beelzebub is sporting horns – Baphomet, maybe? Capricorn, the Sea-Goat, the lowest astrology sign when looking from the northern latitudes, is the very reason goat horns are associated with this troublemaker. (Bulls and rams have horns, but the devil has nothing to do with those.) A dark constellation, its figure is entirely below the ecliptic, which compounds the idea of it being a portal to the underworld. The upside down pentagram on The Devil XV is a recent addition, but a pentagram does have 15 segments, being five triangles.

Death XIII and “13”

The card of the ominous and dark, the Grim Reaper itself, may direct us toward Saturn with the scythe, but Scorpio is the natural zodiac sign correlation, given its association with the onset of nature’s dormancy. The number 13 has long been associated with superstitious misfortune, but the most overlooked property of 13 is that it’s a sort of counterpart to 7: three distant from 10 (perfection), and like the number 7, has a similarly irrational inverse:

1/7 = 0.142857142857142857142857142857…
1/13 = 0.076923076923076923076923076923…

The Mitelli deck‘s major arcana is not numbered, but the Death card has the skeleton holding an hourglass in its right hand that implies the number XIII. This small motif seems to have found its way into the modern Hermit IX card, as seen in the next subsection.

Hierophant V and Hermit IX

The Hierophant V and The Hermit IX are the seekers, the masters of the inward life, either as priest holding mass during the day or the monk searching through the dark, these are Jupiterian motifs, and so they are assigned to the Jupiter-ruled signs of Sagittarius and Pisces.

The High Priestess II

The only zodiac sign left is Virgo, a female figure, carrying wheat. Our Priestess is really a counterpart of the Hierophant – Papesse and Pape:

Having already assigned the Hierophant V to Sagittarius, our Mother Superior deserves the Virgin Mother; the holy book in her hands is the message of god, symbolized by Mercury, which both rules over, and is exalted within, Virgo.

At this point, we can construct a diagram with the constellation and zodiac cards, showing how all these symbols compliment one another:

Here, the quadratures make sense:
Sun-Justice X Moon-Devil
Star-Death X Strength-Temperance
Tower-Hierophant X Priestess-Hermit

The Fool 0 and The Chariot VII represent the galaxic band, which is at a ~60° angle to the ecliptic, and also related to the vesica piscis, which eventually found its way into The World XXI:

But, could Chariot be something else? What about the other four planets?

The Rest of the Major Arcana

The Magician I	?
The Empress III	?
The Emperor IV	?
The Lovers VI	?
Wheel of Fortune X	?
The Hanged Man XII	?
Judgement XX	?
The World XXI	?

14 (another 7 × 2) of the 22 trump cards are associated with constellations, leaving us with eight cards to figure out. There are four classical planets (Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) yet to be associated with the deck, if they would be at all. Aliester Crowley associated the Empress III and Emperor VI with Venus and Mars, but we know that Venus is The Star, and part of the ancient triplicity. We can’t have two Venuses, or can we?

The Star may be Venus, but she is posited in her ruling sign of Taurus/Pleiades. More likely, and given that the monarchs are holding orbs, we are looking at Moon and Sun. So, let’s add that to the mix:

The Magician I	?
The Empress III	Venus / Moon
The Emperor IV	Mars / Sun
The Lovers VI	?
Wheel of Fortune X	?
The Hanged Man XII	?
Judgement XX	?
The World XXI	?

The Wheel of Fortune X card is a card of fate, representing the spinning heavens around the stationary Earth, but the most fortunate planet Jupiter is likely the gist of this card.

Wheel of Fortune X is circle’s opposite of The World XXI, but the “world” doesn’t mean “the Earth.” Instead, as the final card, it means the whole of humanity, and also the sense of the ancients and ancestors: a completed life being added to all of what has come before. What planet, or anything, could possibly symbolize that? Crowley’s Thoth deck says Saturn, and there may be some truth to that if indeed this card was the 20th in the sequence and not the 21st.

If true, and Judgement is the true final card, The World would oppose The Hermit IX, and fit the idea of fama, or one’s reputation, and what kind of report you have from others – basically, what was your impact on the world. If the Magus is doing things to manipulate the world, the world takes account, etc. That is the realm of Saturn.

It is important to remember that the tarot was devised well before the Galilean Revolution, from a time when the earth was assumed to exist at the center of the cosmos, and fixed in place, motionless. The world didn’t spin, but instead the heavens rotated around a fixed earth. A sun-centered solar system in some tiny corner of the universe wasn’t in the Renaissance mind.

The Magician I	?
The Empress III	Venus / Moon
The Emperor IV	Mars / Sun
The Lovers VI	?
Wheel of Fortune X	Jupiter
The Hanged Man XII	?
Judgement XX	Saturn?
The World XXI	Saturn?

Next up are The Lovers VI and Judgement XX.

The scene in both cards is of a muse/angelic figure hovering over and guiding the scene, and they are unique in that sense. The Lovers VI is being guided by Eros or Cupid, and the Judgment XX of the dead is being meted out by the Archangel Gabriel, a messenger of God.

Here, we see that 20 – 6 = 14, which brings us back to the 7×3 rectangle, and the sequence of Lovers-Death-Judgement in the sixth column:

The sequence makes sense in the sense that The Lovers VI are becoming adults, dead in Death XIII and are rising again in Judgement XX.

Updating the table:

The Magician I	?
The Empress III	Venus / Moon
The Emperor IV	Mars / Sun
The Lovers VI	Eros
Wheel of Fortune X	Jupiter
The Hanged Man XII	?
Judgement XX	Gabriel
The World XXI	Saturn?

This leaves us with the counterparts of The Magician I and The Hanged Man XII.

Here is where we see the “±11” counterpart theme clearly. The Magus has the power to control the elements before him, while the other fellow does not, and is in this predicament for daring to do the work of the Magus.

I had originally considered the Hanged Man to be a representation of Saint Peter, who chose to be martyred by being cruxified upside down, because he felt he was not of worthy of being cruxified upright as his Savior originally was. The famed crossed legs are, after all, a cross. Yet, the figure obviously has something else going on, as in perhaps a Houdini escape artist trick (yet more Mercury) which we can see in the opposite polarity of the circle’s 11 axes.

Assigning Mercury (the trickster) to the magus and Saturn to the persecuted makes sense in an astronomical sense: of the five non-luminary planets, Mercury is the swiftest (and most elusive), while Saturn is the slowest. And, while I have doubts about the intricacies of Babylonian astrology being well-understood in Renaissance Italy, there was a period in the Babylonian milieu where Mercury and Saturn shared sign rulerships in a “triplicities” scheme:

Updating the list:

The Magician I	Mercury
The Empress III	Venus / Moon
The Emperor IV	Mars / Sun
The Lovers VI	Eros
Wheel of Fortune X	Jupiter
The Hanged Man XII	Saturn
Judgement XX	Gabriel
The World XXI	Eternity

At this point, we have all of our planetary ducks in a row. Or, do we? Eros was considered an offspring of Venus; Venus as Aphrodite ruled over the idea of love and attraction, and is truly the most Venusian card in the deck in that sense. Also, the Chariot VII card situated next to The Lovers VI suggests a sequential paradigm, which would of course be Mars. Chariots were tools of war, and no one loves war like Mars. From there, we can remove Venus and Mars from the royalty. Thus, to finalize the list, we will be removing The Chariot VII from the constellations and giving it to the planets:

The Magician I	Mercury
The Empress III	Moon
The Emperor IV	Sun
The Lovers VI	Venus
The Chariot VII	Mars
Wheel of Fortune X	Jupiter
The Hanged Man XII	Saturn
Judgement XX	Gabriel
The World XXI	Eternity

Behold, this list makes much more planetary sense. In the end, we have 13 constellation-related cards, 7 planet-related cards, and 2 cards devoted simply to God.

A comprehensive diagram of all the cards might look something like this:

(I’m not sure if I agree with the placement of the Tetragram Hebrew letters in that particular cross-quarter array, but who am I to criticize Encausse and A. E. Waite?) Note here that The Hanged Man is pointing downward to the lower half of the zodiac, while The Magician is pointing upward to the northern half.

And, while I hate to disagree with Aliester’s Thoth deck symbolism (Crowley’s natal chart is quite sympathetic to my own), we are in agreement on about one-third of it:

Conclusion

I do want to stress that all of this this is simply how Kohout sees the cards. This is just an assembly of my best educated guesses, based on my own accumulated knowledge of things, and I am open to changing my mind. But, this does simply make more sense – the planets are in classical order; the zodiac is accounted for. Number magic (value) and shape magic are the main determinates.

Also, I am sympathetic to the idea that the final seven cards are not in the correct order. It may be that The Devil belongs in the XIX spot, while the four cards from The Tower to The Sun shift to the left. That would align The Devil with The Pope on either side of the crucifix. Who knows? I don’t!

What was the point of all of this radical exploration of the tarot, and what does any of it have to do with the exaltation of Mars? That’s a fair question, and the tie-in will be forthcoming, and of course have to do with the cross. Cross my heart!

-Ed

• astrology
• numerology
• Tarot