ancientofnights The Wayfarer Hieronymus Bosch A thin man wearing grey clothes is walking, holding his hat in his left hand. In his right hand he is holding a stick fending off an angry dog. On his back he is carrying a large basket. This type of basket was normally used by peddlers in the 16th century in the Netherlands. To the left an inn (and possibly also a brothel). To the right a path leading into a field where a cow and a magpie seem to watch the man. Above the man, in a tree, an owl is gazing at a great tit. In the background a gallows stands on a hill.
The Lovers Tarot card, which paints an allusion to famous Biblical plot of temptation in Heavenly Garden, now gaining it's popularity among the begginers in magic discovering divination ways.
Tarot card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, also known as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.
Probably that's because of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil entwinned by snake.
According to modern interpretations of card, this should represent a magician's movement through the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.
The Hebrew word for denoting the ancient serpent in Genesis – נחש (nhs) "nahash” as a verb has another meaning – to divine, to interpret, which comes from the root (NHSH) – to decipher, to find out; and it's tongue, I guess, hasn't ever been viewed before as a forking symbol, to evoke such deep insights.
Diamondback rattlesnake – Crotalus adamanteus
There's quite doubtful, unspoken, but common practice to allign meanings of 22 trumps from Tarot with Kabbalah and 22 Hebrew letters for accertaining of specific astrological correspondences. Most writers on subject are reffering to the article of some Count de Mellet in Court de Gebelin's volume VIII of Monde primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne, where such link is believed to be firstly noticed. Infact, there were nothing more than just supposition of it's relation and explanation of seven letters compliance to cards in the context of Biblical story about Joseph.
That's indeed, after all: since there are distinct hint onto the Ancient Egyptian origin of the Tarot, pictographic Hieroglyphs, of course, may be compared to Hebrew letters.
However the author is reffering there to utterly other image of man choosing between vice & virtue; and the way of reading cards for the proper interpretation is reversed:
Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck correspondence to Hebrew letters and Kabbalah according to Count Louis Raphaël Lucrèce de Fayolle de Mellet.
Therefore starting from twenty first card The Universe, the image of querent's choice by it's sequence number corresponds to the letter Ayin, following to alphabetic order.
Plates from the Encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert, volume 2.
Thanks to linguistic researches which reffers to the earliest traces of writing we now may assume that this Hebrew letter represents an eye in Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Eye in proto-semitic alphabet, a theological invention.
Interestingly, but in Waite's perspective, who first introduced the Christian image of Heavenly Garden into Tarot in general, this letter falls in with The Devil card by way of the Kabalistic perception.
Tarot card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, also known as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.
The Tree of Life, an engraving by Athanasius Kircher, published in his Œdipus Ægyptiacus in 1652. The basic structure of sephirot and links has since become the most common variant of the Tree among modern seekers.
