Restoring the Missing Tarot Card

Restoring the Missing Tarot Card

If you’ve been following my illustration adventures (and occasional frustrations) on Facebook, you might have noticed some “discrepancies” in the numbering of some of my Major Arcana. Seriously what’s up with numbering the World as twenty-TWO? (Of course if you don’t know anything about Tarot, you might not have been confused by that at all!)

The issue arose when I restored the missing tarot card.

Now, let me be clear about something. By “missing,” I don’t mean I discovered it in some musty old tome once owned by the Grand High Pubah of the Golden Dawn (who conveniently happens to be my dearly departed Great Uncle Joe—or Hermes-istottle to his Lodge buddies), nor did I “discover” it in some ancient Egyptian Text. (Just in case you didn’t get the memo, the Tarot is  completely unrelated to ancient Egypt; the only time a genuine connection between the two exists is when we modern—or early-modern—artists and occultists put it there.)

So if it’s not some ancient arcane secret, long lost and/or hidden, where did the “missing” card come from? None other than Plato. He came up with this idea that there were four great virtues worth cultivating: Prudence (or wisdom), Justice (or fairness), Fortitude (or courage), and Temperance (moderation). Three of those should sound familiar.

From the Rider-Waite-Smith Deck

 These are probably the Tarot Images you're most familiar with;
a preponderance of modern decks are modeled after the 1909 deck by
A.E. Waite and Pamela Coleman-Smith (published by Rider).
My Elemental Colors Tarot derives some of it's symbolism from Waite and Smith;

other symbolism was based on the earlier Minchiate Tarot; some is unique to me.

But in classical art, the Virtues look a little different:

Fortitude--Botticelli

(I'll talk more about Fortitude's influence on the

Strength Card another day)

Temperance--Botticelli

Justice--Botticelli

Prudence--Botticelli

 Early tarot decks (dating from the mid- to late-fifteenth century) were far from standardized affairs. They were hand-painted, commissioned pieces of art that reflected the tastes of the families they were created for. The order of the tarot trumps wasn't standardized either and  varied from region to region and one was, I imagine, simply expected to go with the flow. (Since tarot is a trick-taking game like bridge—about which I have absolutely no first-hand knowledge—I tend to imagine a lot of cheating going on: “Why no Bernice Justice trumps the Star here—doesn’t it in Venice? Tisk, I win.”)

But we’ll talk tarot history another day, too. I only want to touch on it enough here to put the discussion of our missing tarot card into perspective. The short version is that the trumps are Christian allegories (an allegory is a story, poem--or in this case an image--with a hidden message or riddle, revealing some deep political, moral, or theological truth or mystery.) Yet, for reasons no one can quite explain (unless someone finds their Great Uncle Hermes-istottle’s Ancient Tome of Lost Tarot Knowledge in attic somewhere), only three of the Cardinal Virtues made it into our modern tarot decks. Prudence is missing.

(swiped from the Internet...if anyone knows the location/attribution, please let me know!
I presume these are located in a church/cathedral somewhere; that *may* be why Prudence is sans one serpent and only holding her arrow, instead.)

Arguments have been made that Prudence can be found in other cards, most notably the High Priestess (I reject that notion outright, because while the imagery more-or-less fits, I think there’s another “missing” card to be found in the High Priestess, namely Faith), or the Hanged Man. I reject that notion as well; precious little about the Hanged Man speaks (to me at least) of Prudence. Where we do find Prudence is in Minchiate decks.

Here are the Cardinal Virtues from two different Minchiate decks:

Temperence

Fortitude (Strength)

Justice

Prudence

Also in the Minchiate Tarot, we find the Zodiac--each on its own card--the Four Elements, and Three Graces. All of that seemed a bit much, especially since I have some opinions on where we can find the Graces in the existing cards, but Prudence's absence seemed glaring to me--so I restored her.

Here's another depiction of the Cardinal Virtues. You can see Temperance with her cup, Fortitude with her pillar, Justice with her sword and scales and Prudence with her mirror and snake.

Again, I'm uncertain who the artist is on these; if anyone knows, please comment below

And of course, here are my Cardinal Virtues, including the restored Prudence:

Next week, I'll talk about the symbolism on the Prudence Card and how to interpret her in your tarot readings.

First Look

Over the next few weeks, I'll start explaining some of the nuisances of my deck (in other words, I'll give y'all the skivvy on why I made some of the non-traditional and perhaps unorthodox choices that I made!), but in the meantime, here's a first look at part of my Major Arcana.