Knights as “Messengers”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: As I continue to pick apart Alejandro Jodorowsky’s thinking while wading through The Way of Tarot a second time, I encountered another instance of differing opinion among the general tarot population. I should probably mention that the book is so crammed with ideas that each successive page threatens to crowd out what I thought was a crystal-clear understanding from the previous page, so I will try to capture this as precisely as possible.
In my reading of the tarot literature over the years, I’ve come across the notion that the Pages of the tarot suggest “messengers” bringing information to the querent, apparently because they echo the heralds of the Medieval royal court. There is, however, another belief that the mounted Knights are the “messengers” because their mobility can symbolize an influence that is entering (or is about to enter) the matter, which could be awareness or intelligence just as readily as a person or an event. For Jodorowsky, the Knights sit at the pinnacle of the hierarchy and perform the function of “transmitting consciousness” of the experience they gained while mastering their suit to the Pages of the following suit, who than work this gift up through the Queen and King to the Knight of that suit, thereupon repeating the transfer of wisdom to the subsequent Page in a cyclical manner.
Here is a graphic portrayal of this sequence using the Tarot de Marseille style that Jodorowsky favored (but not the deck he created with Philippe Camoin). I’ve omitted the Queens and Kings for clarity, so their contribution must be inferred; also, while the series Batons, Swords, Cups and Coins agrees with Jodorowsky’s model, for me it more closely expresses the alignment of the suits to the four “worlds” of the Qabalistic Tree of Life: spiritual (Fire/Wands); intellectual (Air/Swords); emotional (Water/Cups) and material (Earth/Pentacles). The seated Queens and Kings imply internal processes, while the more energetic Pages and Knights that “bookend” the array invoke incoming and outgoing kinetic forces that energize the act of becoming at each stage of human development.
Le Veritable Tarot de Marseille by Kris Hadar, Edition de Motagne, Boucherville, Quebec, Canada
My personal approach to all of this is to stick with the Golden Dawn’s assumption that the mounted figures represent something actively “coming or going” in the matter according to whether they are facing “upstream” into the flow of the reading or “downstream” in the direction the series is moving (“going with the flow,” as it were). The upstream orientation indicates a dawning awareness and appreciation of the significance of emerging events or insights, while looking downstream these cards anticipate what is to come and are preparing to seize the opportunity. Regarding the Pages, the fact that they are standing suggests that they are contemplating action but still lack the initiative to undertake it. (Jodorowsky characterizes them as “standing outside the palace” waiting for admittance). Thus, while they may indicate “something new on the horizon,” they are not yet delivering it. (In esoteric tradition, they have much in common with the Aces in this regard.)
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on December 13, 2022.
