The Court Cards as “Decimal Equivalents”
I’ve been working with the concept of “Theosophical reduction” (adding together and reducing the digits of a composite number to produce a simple, one-factor sum) for so long that I’ve been more than a little skeptical of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s notion of “decimal equivalency” between the double-digit and single-digit cards of the Major Arcana. His premise is that the number that sits in the right-hand position of a two-digit number (that is, in the “ones” place when read from right-to-left after making allowances for the “exploded” numeration of the Tarot de Marseille) forms a philosophical and mystical link between its card and the card of the same single-digit number. This has held true for me even though I’ve seen this assumption used to good effect by James Wanless when writing about his Voyager Tarot.
But while reading about the Fours of the “pip” card series in The Way of Tarot, I found an observation that brought me to a new wrinkle.
“The equivalent of Four is a square, the geometrical shape that best symbolizes security in the material world. In the Major Arcana, The Emperor (IIII) represents terrestrial stability, while Temperance (XIIII) indicates mental and spiritual balance.”
In thinking about this, I was struck (not for the first time) by the insight that the court cards can be brought into the “equivalency” paradigm. Although Jodorowsy dismisses out-of-hand the belief that the court cards have a numerical value because they bear no numbers on their faces, I’ve long held that every card is an expression of number, and in the case of the court cards the four in each suit are a logical extension of the first ten “pip” cards, representing the eleventh through fourteenth members of the suit: the Pages stand for “11;” the Knights for “12;” the Queens for “13;” and the Kings for “14.”
Therefore, in this model the four Kings share a common mode of operation with both the Emperor and Temperance because they are solidly seated on their thrones, the very picture of mundane stability, and as “God’s secular representative on Earth” (think Holy Roman Emperor) they also promote spiritual continuity and perpetuity. The connection to the Emperor is an obvious one (I’ve sometimes characterized the Kings as the “little brothers” of the Emperor), but their relationship to Temperance takes a little more thought. If we key on the idea of maintaining order in the kingdom through judicious use of both forceful and merciful measures (the wise “King’s Justice”) that creates at least an imposed sense of equilibrium and solidarity, I think we can get there.
The Queens as “13” have a clear affinity for the Empress in Jodorowsky’s system, but their relationship with Death is less clear-cut. If we think of the Queen as the “power behind the throne,” we could say that the King’s trademark patriarchal (“alpha-male”) rigidity is only transformed into something more “tempered” through the intervention of his feminine counterpart (which in practical divination might be taken in both prosaic and psychological terms).
The connection between the Knights and both the High Priestess and the Hanged Man is even more tenuous. But if we think of it in the sense of Medieval chivalry, we might conclude that the Knight is prepared to “sacrifice his all” (Hanged Man) to win the favor of the Ideal Feminine (High Priestess). I can see him bearing her token in a “holy war.”
The Pages represent the archetypal “students” of the tarot, so in their association with the Magician and Strength (of the historical tarot) we could view them as “honing their chops” as they aspire to the mastery of the former and the fortitude of the latter. In one system of interpretation, the Pages are understudies to the Knights as their squires, with visions of eventually attaining knighthood themselves. But they have a long way to go to reach that point.
As you can see from the sketchy interpretation I’ve given them, these conceptual thumbnails bear more careful consideration since in the past I’ve only used Theosophical reduction to equate the trump cards as “numerological counterparts” and never approached bringing in the court cards. But I’m already using the “11-through-14” model in my practice of the “quintessence” calculation and have found that it works just fine.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on December 18, 2022.
