Tarot and the “Virtues”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Reading Ronald Decker’s occult tarot history book, The Esoteric Tarot . . . etc, has put me into “intellectual overdrive.” Here I’m reflecting on his discussion of the “Virtues” — both the four Platonic originals and the three “theological” additions of Christianity — in which he explores their relationship to the Major Arcana of the tarot.
Decker presents the four Platonic virtues as Prudence, Fortitude, Justice and Temperance. He relates Fortitude, Justice and Temperance to the tarot trumps of the same name, but once again shows creative nuance by assigning Prudence to the Popess/High Priestess without making any mention of the fact that it isn’t depicted in his benchmark deck, the Tarot de Marseille, or that some modern authorities have assigned it to the Hermit because of the astrological correspondence of that card to the prudent sign of Virgo. His rationale is that, in line with Plato’s analysis of the soul, the Popess exemplifies the brain’s rationality and thus the Virtue of Prudence (Wisdom, Reason); the book on her lap “had at first belonged to personifications of Sophia (Wisdom) but later was transferred to Prudence, the Virtue that requires clear reasoning.” Although as an astrologer I’ve long been a proponent of the “Hermit = Prudence” theory, Decker makes a compelling argument.
He chooses to toss out the “theological” Virtues — Faith, Hope and Charity — as irrelevant to the Pythagorean/Platonic roots of the tarot and instead proposes as more pertinent three others favored by the Platonist philosopher Apuleius. To the Pope/Hierophant he assigns “Beatitude,” by which he means “spiritual blessing” as symbolized by the Pope’s gesture of sanctification. “Providence” (Latin providere — “to see ahead” — and to “provide” assurance of God’s “good and gracious intentions”) he places with the Star as a harbinger of “Destiny, Fate or Fortune,” although Providence is more exalted than any of these; the woman he sees as “a celestial being who dispenses influences upon the earth.” Decker notes further that “The Hieroglyphica says that the celestial bodies receive and transmit divine Providence.” Finally, he postulates “Sagacity” as the alternative Virtue that best describes Judgement — a sublime mode of sophic perfection that is the “culmination of all other Virtues” derived from “the exercise of justice, piety and wisdom.”
Decker closes his essay on the Virtues by stating “The Tarot has seven Virtues but not of the Christian kind. The Trumps enroll the four Virtues that Plato taught, plus the three highest Virtues that Apuleius taught: Beatitude, Providence, Sagacity.” I can’t, of course, let all of this pass without comment. As one of today’s professed “spiritual but non-affiliated” individuals, I have little use for the purveyors of orthodox theology of any stripe, and I seriously doubt that the Christian Virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity have retained their traction in modern secular society, which has been edging away from conventional religion for some time. (Not that they’re necessarily bad ideas in human terms, just that they are somewhat out-of-touch from a jaded cultural perspective, and I certainly don’t see that changing.)
So I’m open to entertaining Decker’s substitutions as a working model. The lofty nature of the Popess seems like a good fit for Prudence, although it may well embody a wisdom that remains out-of-reach for the mundane populace; the concept of Beatitude as “spiritual blessing” I can take or leave since as a “Spinozan sympathizer” I’m not entirely sure of the origin and manner of this benediction, nor of who is doing the blessing and who is being blessed (perhaps Omar Khayyam said it best: “Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?”); I provisionally accept the Star as Providence and have no quarrel with the idea of a judicious Sagacity as the mandate of the Angel of Judgement in delivering salvation to the worthy in the form of metempsychosis (i.e. “transmigration of the soul”). But my normal embrace of the tarot is more utilitarian than philosophical, so I don’t place too much store in any of this except as fodder for contemplation (and material for convoluted metaphysical essays like this one).
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on April 8, 2024.
