Cards of the Major Arcana

The Tower depicted in this arcane is the Tower of Babel, elevated out of selfishness and ambition: a living, sensitive construction, as evidenced by the flesh-coloured bricks, a symbol of our own organism. The two characters, who have demanded too much from their ambition, forgetting to come to terms with reality, are thrown from the building.

The correspondence between the sixteenth blade and the sign of Scorpio is revealed to be very close and how this sign, which appears so nefarious in the eyes of all, contains a positivity that is difficult to recognize for those who are not endowed with farsightedness.

The woman depicted has a sweet and beautiful face; it pours the burning contents of a golden urn into a pond which revives the putrid water and onto the earth the fresh, fertilizing water placed in a silver urn. Lucifer, the bearer of light, also called Venus, is the great star of this blade, made up of eight golden rays from which green fires rise.

The stars are the symbol of the luminosity that guides man lost in a desert of the matter: the earth. There are eight stars in this image, perhaps the Pleiades, because 8 is the emblem of justice, universal order, and infinity.

This arcanum depicts the pale face of our satellite which is reflected in a swamp. At the center of this, an enormous crab, in analogy with the zodiacal sign of Cancer domicile of the Moon, with the month of July, with the night, with Monday, devours all the residues so that the water does not give off bad smells; translated from the symbolic to the real this means that the weight of the past must be gradually lightened for renewal to lead to constant evolution.

Near the swamp two Dogs, the constellations of Canis Maior and Canis Minor, guard the road which would astronomically belong to the Sun, distrusting, with their barking, the Moon from moving away from the ecliptic; they are the defenders of order, of the untouchable rights of property.

The nineteenth arcana presents us with a couple tenderly embracing in the center of a flowerbed: reason united with the sentiment. When the light of the Sun has redeemed all men they will be able to regain possession of their integrity, of the lost paradise, of peace and of the common work.

The Sun enriches the embraced couple with a perpetual shower of gold: the philosophical gold of alchemy, the gold of the spirit which is the supreme wealth. This blade symbolizes luck, the lasting happiness that is continually created through knowledge and love; certainty, serenity, family joy, and peace.