Why these cards? Why this order?
The cards are weird, aren’t they? Would you be able to quickly and easily memorise the order of them so that you could play the game if there were no names or numbers printedon them?
As discussed in the post about trick-taking games, Michael Dummet identified three common orders of cards that developed in Italy. Elements of these orders (also listed in the table below) make some sense, but others are difficult to understand if one assumes that there should be a fairly obvious hierarchy to the cards so that new players could know which card triumphed over which card.
If the cards were influenced by Petrarch’s Triumphs (this is a common assumption, but not necessarily agreed upon), why is the sequence “out of order” and also so broken up? Sure, there’s a general sense that a Pope would triumph over a Fool, and that Love might triumph over a Pope… that a Traitor might triumph over Fortune, and that The Devil would triumph over a Traitor. We seem to have a series of increasing celestial light, obvious with the Star, then Moon, then Sun, but The Tower only fits in to that group (if we want to put it there at all) if we know that originally, it probably wasn’t the tower part of the card that was important, but instead it was the lightening, the arrow lightening bolt hitting the tower illuminating the sky that, perhaps, makes some sense to be triumphed by the brighter celestial bodies. At the end of the Southern order, we have an Angel card that is always associated with the Biblical Judgement Day so “Eternity” makes sense, and if the Southern order holds any weight, but then one expect that the Hermit (Time) would be near the end, not not The World (Fame). So whilst it’s possible to make associations with Petrarch’s Triumphs in the Tarot, the order doesn’t match up with and historical sequence.
Another obvious oddity is the lack of a fourth “Cardinal Virtue”
Something else odd about the deck is that the cardinal virtues of Temperance, Justice, and Strength are “out of sequence” rather than grouped together, except in the “Southern” order, and oddly, they were almost always depicted outside of Tarot as a group of four, but in Tarot Prudence seems to be missing. It has been argued that if seen as the meaning The Chariot, then Prudence could be equivalent to Chastity, and in fact, in the Trionfi poems, Chastity is grouped with the other virtues, so this does make some sense in the Southern order.
Perhaps the only thing to explain it is simply that an earlier order was lost and the orders we do know about have things shifted about a bit. Or, there is simply only a casual relationship between Petrarch and the trumps, but if that is true, then what is the order that would make sense to players learning how to play the game?
Michael Dummet’s list of common historical orders again.
| ORDER A: The Southern Tradition (prototype: Tarocco Bolognese) | ORDER B: The Eastern Tradition (prototype: Steele Sermon) | Order C: The Western Tradition (prototype: Tarot de Marseille) |
| the Bagatto | the Bagatto | the Bagatto |
| the Papess | the Empress | the Papess |
| the Empress | the Emperor | the Empress |
| the Emperor | the Papess | the Emperor |
| the Pope | the Pope | the Pope |
| Love | Temperance | Love |
| the Chariot | Love | the Chariot |
| Temperance | the Chariot | |
| Justice | Justice | |
| Fortitude | Fortitude | the Old Man |
| the Wheel | the Wheel | the Wheel |
| the Old Man | the Old Man | Fortitude |
| the Traitor | the Traitor | the Traitor |
| Death | Death | Death |
| Temperance | ||
| the Devil | the Devil | the Devil |
| Fire | Fire | Fire |
| the Star | the Star | the Star |
| the Moon | the Moon | the Moon |
| the Sun | the Sun | the Sun |
| the World | the Angel | the Angel |
| Justice | ||
| the Angel | the World | The World |
Notice, too, that the names Dummet uses are also a bit weird to modern sensibilities? The Hermit is “The Old Man”, The Tower is “The Fire”, Judgement is “The Angel”. Without names and numbers, we really aren’t sure what the “original names” may have been or the “correct” sequence of the cards, but these old names help us understand how the cards were viewed in the 15th and 16th centuries, early in the development of Tarot cards.
Whilst there was some consistency in the naming of many of the trumps, there were also variations in some of the cards, particularly The Magician, The Hermit, and The Tower. The lists of orders that we do have are from many decades after the invention of the game, and like the ordering of the cards, the names also seemed to change over regions over time.
An attempt to make some sort of sensible order
The ordering on the below is not attested historically, it’s completely reordered to try to reconstruct some sort of easy to learn system on what is increasingly seeming like a slightly “mismatched” collection of cards that really need (and will eventually have!) names and numbers added on to them to help new players to learn to play the game.
This proposed order takes into consideration that the Fool and Magician are “the lowest of the low”, that the Popes and Emperors (we’ll get into the more deeply in another post very soon) are constantly rising and falling in power, that Petrarch’s Triumphs are understood to represent an essential truth about how the world, and afterworld, work; that there are virtues to help guide us on the right path as well as “unvirtuous” allegorical figures of Fortune, Betrayal, and The Devil ready to keep us from moving forward. Then we move to the “heavenly” realm of increasing celestial light leading eventually to Time itself being Triumphed by judgement and eternity.
| a Possible Sequence | Modern Name | Historical Variations and meanings |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest social status | The Fool | “The madman”, “The crazy one” |
| Lowest social status | The Magician | “A trifle”, “a small thing of little importance”“street performer”, “juggler”, “sleight-of-hand artist”, ”the mountebank” or “the street performer” |
| Temporal Ruler | The High Priestess | “The Popess”, “Female Pope” [One of the four “Papi” in Bolognese tradition] |
| Temporal Ruler | The Empress | [One of the four “Papi” in Bolognese tradition] |
| Temporal Ruler | The Emperor | [One of the four “Papi” in Bolognese tradition] |
| Temporal Ruler | The Hierophant | “The Pope” [One of the four “Papi” in Bolognese tradition] |
| Petrarch Triumph | The Lovers | “Love” |
| Petrarch Triumph | The Chariot [Chastity? Prudence??] | “The Triumphal Chariot” |
| Cardinal Virtue | Temperance | |
| Cardinal Virtue | Justice | |
| Cardinal Virtue | Strength | “Fortitude” |
| Unvirtuous Allegorical Figure | The Wheel of Fortune | |
| Unvirtuous Allegorical Figure | The Hanged Man | “The Traitor”, “The Hanged One” |
| Unvirtuous Allegorical Figure | The Devil | |
| Petrarch Triumph | Death | |
| Increasing Celestrial Light | The Tower | “The Lightening”, “The Fire”, “The Arrow”, “The House of God”, “The Devil’s House” |
| Increasing Celestrial Light | The Star | |
| Increasing Celestrial Light | The Moon | |
| Increasing Celestrial Light | The Sun | |
| Petrarch Triumph | The World [Fame?] | |
| Petrarch Triumph | The Hermit [Time?] | “The Old Man”, “Time”, “The Hunchback” |
| Petrarch Triumph | Judgement [Eternity?] | “The Angel” |
There are many other possible orders that can be made depending on how the meanings of the cards are interpreted, this is just an exercise in working through one possibility.
There’s an interesting thread on the forum that’s quite active at the moment discussing the A sequence, Bologna and Petrarch’s triumphs:
https://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=334&start=270