Tarot Symbolism - The Suits

I've decided I'm not really ready yet to unveil my theory of the origin of the Tarot deck (still got a few things I need to work out). So I'm going to jump right into the symbolism and meaning of the cards.

First, let me make an important point: I do not believe that the cards original creators had any intention of using the suits to symbolize the four elements of alchemy; indeed, it is quite clear from the historical record that all such assignments are arbitrary at best and at worst injurious to understanding either the native meaning of the suits, the deeper understanding of the element, or both. The very fact that there has been so much disagreement over which suit goes with which element goes to show that there is no such thing as an "inherent" correspondence between them. I realize that those whose primary research tool is the World Wide Web might not be aware that there has been serious disagreement about this over the years, because the Golden Dawn schema has become so pervasive over the last 20 years that nearly all the Internet resources -- which are, after all, mostly relatively new (though there is some old material that has been made electronically available) -- follow their lead.

So if you think that Wands=Fire and Swords=Air, well, you're welcome to think that. Many people do. I'll be demonstrating later why I believe it's wrong to do so, but for now let's just say that any such attributions, even when they prove useful, should be taken with a large dose of salt.

Because it has been pretty firmly established now that Tarot grew out of ordinary card decks by way of the game of Trumps (Italian Trionfi), we must begin our examination of the suits with the Mamluk cards, from which early Italian cards were derived. The Mamluk cards had four suits, which I believe can be best seen as representing the activities proper to an Islamic gentleman of the Mamluk empire:

Swords: warfare
Polo sticks: amusement
Cups: consumption
Coins: commerce

When the cards first appeared in Italy, no one knew what the polo sticks were, so they straightened them and called them bastoni. Also known as "staffs" or "wands," and presumably the forerunner of the modern suit of clubs, bastoni actually has a connotation missing from the French and English interpretations. The common reading of the suit symbolism comes from France a few centuries after the cards first appeared, and it sees each suit as representing a different class of society:

Swords: Nobility
Staffs: Peasants
Cups: Clergy
Coins: Merchants

There is one fairly major problem with that analysis, however. The early Italian bastoni are not crude clubs but ornately decorated symbols of office. They are carried by the Emperor and Empress, for instance, in both of the earliest partial decks known to exist -- the Cary-Yale Visconti and Pierpont-Morgan Visconti-Sforza decks. Indeed, the Pierpont-Morgan puts bastoni in the hands of no less than eight personages among the Trumps, while only Justice and Judgment carry swords.

So staffs, bastoni, originally symbolized power and authority. That is the suit, then, that would seem to represent the nobility.

If so, then what do Swords represent? And what suit represents the peasantry?

To answer the last question first, I think the peasant were ignored completely, a not uncommon practice. Because there was a class in Northern Italy at the time cards were first introduced there that was very important, one that is left out if you follow the French attributions: the condottiere, or mercenary soldiers. One of them, Francesco Sforza, became the son-in-law and heir of Filippo Maria Visconti, by whom or for whom the game of Trumps was probably invented, and the most famous and most complete set of 15th century cards was probably painted for him.

I believe, therefore, that the suits actually were originally seen as corresponding to the classes thusly:

Staffs: Nobility
Swords: Soldiers
Cups: Clergy
Coins: Merchants

This may seem to be a small difference of little matter, but it has a bearing, particularly on the appropriateness of the Golden Dawn's elemental system -- which it supports, but which there is still a problem with. Because staffs being power works better with fire, but swords are essentially conflict, and only secondarily represent any element.