Prophetical, Educational and Playing Cards — John Shaqi
Prophetical, Educational and Playing CardsVan Rensselaer, John King, Mrs.
Religion
Prophetical, Educational and Playing Cards
Van Rensselaer, John King, Mrs.
Fortune-telling by cards -- History; Playing cards -- History
In the "Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum," by
William Hughes Willshire, M. D. (1876, page 52), he shows a picture of
Addha-Nari, saying, "she is the Isis of the Hindus, a pantheistic emblem
typifying Nature, Truth and Religion." In this Hindu emblematic figure the
four symbols of the ancient Tarots (now the suit marks of the numeral
playing cards of the Tarots and of Italy and Spain) are placed in the four
hands of the figure that has the crescent or emblem of prophetic power on
her head--namely, the Cup, the Circle (or Money), the Sword and the
Magician's Rod. "These are recognised," says Mr. Willshire (page 62), "as
being the symbols of the four chief castes into which men were divided on
the banks of the Ganges and of the Nile. Accordingly, the Cup denotes the
sacerdotal rank or priesthood; the Sword implies the king, a soldier or
military type; the Circle or ring of eternity (that in the hands of the
protector of commerce became Money) typifies the world or commercial
community, and the Staff is emblematic of agriculture or the tiller of the
soil." This connection between these symbols with those on the Tarots has
been copied slavishly by many authors as the only explanation for the
adoption of these devices. That there were in early days these principal
caste divisions is unquestionable, and men of the different professions
selected their heraldic emblems when consulting the oracle to worship or
consult Mercury as Chthoneus, Argiphontes, Cyllenius or Caduceator.
The bridge connecting the great goddess of India with Mercury has not yet
been built, although the foundations have been laid and will soon be given
to the world. It is sufficient to say at present that the mythologies of
Babylonia and Egypt have mingled mysteriously, and that the mother of
Thoth is connected with the Indian deity so that symbols and rites common
to one country are often found in the sister continent.
Before the era of printing men crystalised their ideas by making pictures
to portray the thing or person that it was desired to represent. Thus the
heraldry of to-day is simply this crude idea scientifically treated and
classified, and a coat-of-arms is the name of a family pictorially
represented. The totem of the North American Indian displays his family
cognomen in this way, as do the various symbols of uneducated people all
over the world who are unable to express their ideas in written
characters.
Signs over the doors of tradesmen carry out the same plan, as the barber's
basin or pole (the latter being really the caduceus of Mercury, that was
inherited from the doctors who studied at the Temple of Thoth). The bunch
of grapes or bush of a wine dealer shows an inn, and a well-known saying
of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu recalls this, for she remarked, "How should
we know where the wine was sold if we did not see the bush?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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