The Greater Trumps: (30) The Universe

This image shows the World, the sum of all that is seen from the human perspective - whether the World, the System, the Galaxy, or the Void which contains all things. At the corners of everything stand four mythical figures, or sometimes six, or eight, or twelve, or thirty, or even sixty - for all these numbers stand for completion in various stories. And in the middle, if one looks carefully enough, one sees a Fool relieved of his burdens and filled with the understanding that has always been latent in him; in many versions, the Fool is not central, but the Mother is, or the Womb, or its equivalent in one of the many symbolic languages of our species.

For this image symbolises Completion, Attainment and Wholeness. Something important is complete, a part of life is whole, a collection has found its last missing piece. It need not be an ending to all things, but to what has been a burden of incompleteness for a long time. It need not mean an end to life, but a beginning for a new phase of it, the threshold of the rebirth of hope - or the hope of rebirth. For all things are become new, and the old has passed away through the vortex of the Singularity, never to be seen again.

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Andrew Marvell has never really been a fashionable poet. And yet, one of his poems is extremely oft-quoted, and the English language has been enriched by its numerous felicitous phrases, many of which (sadly) have become clichés. Here is one of the least-quoted (and most awkward) parts of this much-quoted piece:

Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Indeed, the Universe image is one which finally combines all things and turns them into a completeness which is in itself pleasure and great gain.

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This is the last of the Thirty. Perhaps a review is in order - and perhaps not.

The Greater Trumps: (29) The Savant

Here is a person hard at work, surrounded by astrolabe and alembic, canopic jar and retort, text and picture; the central figure is surrounded by all manner of instrument, artifact and item. Sometimes, there are peripheral figures, bearing even more things. What is the Savant to do? The world of the Savant is full, busy, and most important of all - occupied by the act of understanding. In the background, the stars shine in a dark sky; in the foreground is a book that might be the Book of Books.

The Savant image is that which evokes Wisdom. It is not merely knowledge that is represented here; it is the attempt to tease out from it that which is useful, that which can be understood and applied. For this image represents Wisdom, that hard-earned coin of enlightenment. It is not mere reflection either, or imagination. The central figure, often shown as old, either female or male, and with shrewd perspicacity shining in the eyes, actually has come to understand the nature of things, and to do the best with that understanding.

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Of course, I understood early that the Savant doesn't know everything. But the Savant is wise, and has learnt how to understand, how to pursue knowledge, how to use that knowledge - and how not to do (or how to not do) any of these. Sometimes, the relative measures of pursuit of knowledge are interesting to contemplate - in the sciences, knowledge doubles every 4-5 years as measured by publications. But is this any measure of wisdom?

Learn from Kipling, and become wiser...

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.

The rest of the poem is even more instructive in its own way. It's also instructive that the second word of this poem is often misquoted as 'have' or 'know'. It isn't what (or who) you have or know, it's what (or which company) you keep that counts.

The Greater Trumps: (28) Judgement

The Trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, says that venerable Book of Books. Indeed, this image shows a sea of graves, a sea of waves, a crystal sea - and the dead rising. Above all things and to one side stands an angel, who looks suspiciously like the Fool of the first trump. For this is the Judgement, and at the vanishing point of perspective, in the hallowed and infinite distance, is a great throne, hidden in pure light.

It is not only the dead who rise, but the images of the past, of all hidden things being called forth to face the Judgement. This is no mere transformation from one state to another, but irrevocable change without continuity - an apocalypse, an apostrophe, perhaps a catastrophe or eucatastrophe. Not everyone wishes for Judgement; some have things to hide. But this image signals that the time for hiding is over, that all things are made plain, and old things are raised so that they will no longer have power. There is no more burden of the past, no more burden of the future, for all things are made present and presented.

Once you have negotiated the Judgement, you have made irrevocable Decision the focus of your action. Where Will and Power are one, so let it be, ask now no more.

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When I was young I most enjoyed the Apocalypse of St John, among all the books of the New Covenant. Now that I am older, I realise why that must have been so: it is a book written in symbolic language, easy to understand and accept when you are a child. But the truths it conceals or half-reveals are painful to adults and those who have lived enough to feel guilt, remorse, and antipathy towards things past.

Georg Handel's oratorio, The Messiah, is a truly great work. I remember listening to it live once; my father had decided to play matchmaker and asked me to invite a young lady. I remember she was very pleasant company, but that was our first and last date. Decision had struck again, and it was irrevocable. But one of the great arias of the last part of The Messiah remained with me. The Trumpet Shall Sound will always remain a favourite of mine for its clear and clarion call, evoking the destiny of those who believe.

The trumpet shall sound,
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible,
and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption,
and this mortal must put on immortality.

Whereas the image called Death signifies Change, and the image called Temperance signifies Alchemy, both are merely processes. The image of Judgement sounds the call to a pivotal moment, the dividing line between two states, beyond which return is impossible and no longer desired. Terminus est, the old language says.

The Greater Trumps: (27) Thought

As the Sun rises and the lights of Star and Moon fade in comparison, so also does Reason look more enlightening to people in the bright light of day. This image shows a brightly glowing and naked Titan holding Chaos at bay, or perhaps supporting the massive burden of the World. Whether Reason alone can support the World is debateable. Intuitively, it is hard for any human to accept that this might be true. But the Titan in the image is more often Prometheus - 'Forethought', and not Atlas.

What this image symbolizes is the strength of pure Reason. Many of the previous images emphasized the more nebulous or mysterious workings of the mind and soul; this one emphasizes the work that goes into building structures with the mind in such a way that others can appreciate them and build further on them. Whether the Titan that is Reason builds bridges ('pontificates'), towers ('a towering intellect'), foundations ('fundamentals') or lights ('illumination', 'enlightenment') in a dark world, the image signifies a source of productive insight which creates new things - or renews old and tired things.

Reason is not always the best option, many will say. But it is always worth considering.

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I don't often quote Shelley, and then most often from Ozymandias. But I have a special place in my heart for Prometheus Unbound, quoted in part below:

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance -
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!

I have long kept these words at all my places of work; they are implicit in my own mission statement. More important to me is that these lines show Reason for what it ought to be, a spectrum of approaches: Gentleness - Reason as primarily non-aggressive, firm without aiming deliberately to cause hurt, declaring only itself; Virtue - Reason as moral and compassionate, declaring what should rationally be for the best; Wisdom - Reason without arrogance, in a spirit of understanding, declaring what ought to be done; Endurance - Reason with determination, declaring its truth in all possible ways until it triumphs over the dark.

Reason isn't just logic, or linear thinking. Reason is more than that; it is the highest ability of humanity, and the most dangerous.

The Greater Trumps: (26) The Sun

It is an open land, and ever a beautiful one. Nothing hides here; the roads are free and children play without fear - on horseback or afoot. It is always high summer here. And above all things glows the warm and welcoming Sun, triumphant.

Where the Moon is the subversive and deceptive side of creativity, the Sun is creativity brought into the open and made concrete. It is the presiding eminence that watches over a heady blend of fire, wine and song - the fruits of alchemy that come from substance, flux, and mind. Perhaps the only negative side to this image is the fact that it is always the same - it holds no surprises, and therein may lie the seeds of Stasis, rather than Triumph.

In some of the older images, there are other stories - of the Sun burning up the Earth in its enthusiasm, of Phaethon's chariot burning the lands of Africa, of Icarus and his melting wings - which serve as warnings to those who would worship the Sun alone. Perhaps, it is best to let the Sun be, to welcome it in all its guises and not attempt to be its master or come too close to it.

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Probably many of us who grew up in those messy decades of the 1960s and 1970s will remember where these two verses come from:

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right

While, as always, my favourite poet of the Welsh Renaissance had his own cautionary note, embedded in that famed villanelle:

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

The Sun, source as it is of all that keeps our world running, beacon as it is of the days and seasons, should not be worshipped. But it is always obvious why men might worship him - for the Sun is a power which simply cannot be ignored.

The Greater Trumps: (25) The Moon

Above all things beams the Moon. No innocent face this, but a face both wise and winsome, half in darkness and half in light. Twin pillars frame a gateway beneath it, and a river, its tide both rising and falling, runs through it. At the edge of vision, wolves howl, and odd creatures respond in their own peculiar ways. Everything is secret, and yet everything is seen; everything is possible, and yet everything seems impossible. This is the secret of the White Goddess.

Whether Selene, Diana, or Artemis, the moon in its phases has often been a symbol of fortune and of womanhood. But it would be unwise to see it as unrestrained and random fortune. Rather, just as womanhood is the source of birth, and the moon goes through both waxing and waning phases, the moon is generative and cyclical. You can ride it towards insanity or genius. In this light, the Moon therefore stands for Delusion (Deception?) or the creative productivity of the unfettered Mind.

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When I think of the Moon, I am irresistably drawn to the nightmare quality of Robert Graves's scholarship. In his odd anthropological opus, The White Goddess, he sculpts an image of mankind's religious history that is unsettling, and perhaps a little deranged. But oddly enough, I am drawn also to Khonsu, the Egyptian power of the Moon. Unusually, he is male, a god of knowledge and time. He was also a power of healing, and of madness. I think of Khonsu because, quite often, people tend to think of men as sane, stable and boring - hysteria, for example, comes from the Greek hystera, which means womb. But Khonsu shows that a male power can be pretty odd too.

Dylan Thomas was one for the odd visions. Here he is, in an excerpt from I See The Boys Of Summer:

But seasons must be challenged or they totter
Into a chiming quarter
Where, punctual as death, we ring the stars;
There in his night, the black-tongued bells
The sleepy man of winter pulls,
Nor blows back moon - and midnight as she blows.

It's hard to imagine that he could say more about the moon. But he did. You'll have to see for yourself.

The Greater Trumps: (24) The Star

The Tower is lost, its rubble far away. But while the landscape is at first sight bleak and sparsely populated, there is a young lady filling and emptying her chalices at a pool beneath the starlight. And what a star it is! Serene and beautiful, it lights up the bleak landscape, softening its features instead of highlighting its contrasts. It seems to say that no matter how despairing the mood of the land, there is yet hope and beauty.

The symbol of the Star is almost always Hope, whether the little extra that helps or the great hope which brings one through the time of disaster. Although sometimes, rarely, the Star brings an air of uncertainty as people look into the murky future in the faint light, there is really nothing to fear. People being people however, they will fear the unknown. But that isn't the concern of the Star.

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The classic hymn by Phillips Brooks, O Little Town Of Bethlehem, written in memory of his horseback ride from Jerusalem to Bethlehem in 1865, best conveys the sense of hope and the slightly unsettled emotions of those exposed to its strength. The first stanza says:

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

It never fails to send a thrill down my spine to hear these words sung in the cool echoing dimness of a night-time service.

The Greater Trumps: (23) The Lightning-Struck Tower

There is a great Tower standing on a cliff, a Tower on a high place where it looks down upon the plains and waters of the earth. The Tower is built by the hands of men, and years of falsity and human error have seeped into its stones. Some say this Tower is Babel, where God first confounded the languages - some say this edifice is the first pyramid, broken at the top and never completed because higher powers rose against it.

In the image, a mighty bolt of lightning strikes the Tower and casts its inhabitants out as it crumbles and falls. It is a sign that nothing made imperfectly by the faith and work of man will survive the wrath of God's truth and the dictates of Heaven - no matter how grand it seems. In the most ancient readings, it is the work of men who have forgotten the higher truths and raised themselves above others, proclaiming, "Let us build a tower to heaven." These are men who think they can be as God, and the sundering of their Tower denies that presumption.

At the same time, as the thunderbolt lays bare the insides of the Tower and casts its people out, it brings sudden and earth-shaking understanding to those below. What is Disaster in one way is also Revelation in another. It all depends on which side you are on, and what understanding you gain. Regardless, expect upheaval and a different order of things.

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I have a subtle appreciation for this image. I can feel the pain of having your foundations shattered, but it is like wound debridement or the re-setting of a broken bone that has healed badly. It will hurt a lot, but with a chance to begin again, and the enlightenment of having finally cleared out the rubbish, things will be better henceforth.

Here is the fourth stanza of a rare poem, translated from the Dutch by Cliff Crego. It is The Wanderer by Martinus Nijhoff (1894-1953).

I am a spectator looking out from a high tower,
A space divides me from the rest of the world,
That I see as small and as very far away
And that I cannot touch and cannot hear.

It reminds one of these lines from Chesterton's Lepanto:

The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.

The breaking of the Tower brings both Disaster and Revelation, and yet this is where all things become new, and we can start afresh.

The Greater Trumps: (22) The Accuser

Here is a high mountain or perhaps, by trick of perspective, a deep abyss. Whatever it is, it enthrones a bat-winged entity of gross but compelling aspect. Around it are strewn chained human beings engaged in all manner of debauchery. This is an unpleasant image altogether.

In Christian symbology, the Accuser, le Diable, il Diavolo, el Diablo - this is Satan, the proud angel who was thrown out of Heaven. In pagan symbology, this is Pan, the all-power, the force of nature given free reign. To many, this is the same thing, and so the image represents Violence and Randomness. The Mayans of old worshipped a bat-god, Camazotz the Night Stalker; in some ways, the modern image of the Batman is parallel.

But what does this image mean? On closer approach, it can be seen that the people at the Accuser's feet are chained by their own chains, their own desires. It is by their lusts and urges that they are forced to remain in his presence. And the odd thing is that he seems as much a prisoner as they, unable to break out of the cycle of natural forces because there is no higher authority present to free them - or him.

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The trap of freedom leading to slavery is a subtle one. I've often pondered the paradox that when limitations and constraints are given to creative people (for example: choice of medium, size of work, colour selection), they transcend these constraints and produce more creative work than when they are not given any constraints at all. The same is true for many disciplines - creativity can best be seen against severe discipline and constraint.

As often the case in this particular matter, it is John Milton who best portrays that frame of mind which is the reverse - that freedom must be won at all costs from such restraints:

What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome.
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
Doubted his empire—that were low indeed;
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of Gods,
And this empyreal substance, cannot fail;
Since, through experience of this great event,
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.

It's common to humans that the quest for freedom of expression leads us to disdain the idea of hierarchical sovereignty. None of us likes to have a master, and all of us sometimes think that expression without constraint is good. This is what the image of the Accuser teaches us - not all that gleams in this way is gold. A heavy price will be paid for abandoning free will for 'freedom'. I remember saying some things related to this matter a few years back.

The Greater Trumps: (21) Temperance

This time, there are two chalices. In the background, a lady bears the first chalice, pouring its surplus into the empty second chalice. The chalice is held by a man, nude and muscular, kneeling with his left side facing us. It seems oddly domestic, until we notice the tiny details.

The surplus of the first chalice is fiery gold; the pooling liquid in the second seems to be mercury; more unusually, the flow appears to be from the second vessel to the first! The lady has wings, and seems to be of unearthly beauty; the man's skin is stony, and he is unusually plain. The four elements, it would seem, are all present.

In earlier images of Temperance, water is turned to wine, a magician balances two chalices, a centaur juggles balls of fire and air. At first glance, the image is named 'Temperance' because it seems to be trying to produce a happy medium. But the ancients sometimes called this card 'Alchemy', or 'Transformation'. It symbolises the harnessing of change between two opposites to produce Synthesis. It reminds us that we have two types of choice - synergy or compromise - when asked to choose a middle way between two powerful opposites.

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This is one of my favourite images in terms of ambiguity. What on earth is being accomplished here? Will anything ever change? Is any question ever answered?

It is in Yeats's poem, The Song of Wandering Aengus, that we see a synthesis of all four elements and an answer of sorts. It's a rather gloomy poem, I'm afraid. But these closing lines will haunt me for a long time:

And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Piers Anthony calls the image 'Transfer'. It raises a further question: after something is transferred from one place to another, is it still the same thing?

The Greater Trumps: (20) Imagination

The chalice hangs suspended over the lake. The lake ripples, but we do not know whether what comes forth will be the arm of a lady in white samite, brandishing a sword; or the afanc, roaring anger at being awakened in this age. Behind the chalice, or perhaps above, we see two curiously wise eyes - we cannot tell whether they belong to a man or a woman. The lake might be a river's mouth - we see it banked to the left and right, but cannot glimpse a farther shore.

The scene is too full of imagery, too full of potential, for anyone to see all the possibilities. But one thing is clear, from the wise eyes to the vanishing point of perspective, from the chalice and the ripples: this montage symbolises Vision and Possibility. It isn't the extravagant chance of the Wheel, nor the inner vision of the Hanged Man - it is the outward gaze, with too many things within its scope.

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It isn't always hardcore poetry. Sometimes, I'm affected by the power of song lyrics; especially those of Lennon and McCartney. Here are some lines from John Lennon's Imagine:

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Of course, it's a somewhat secular utopia which is offered to us. It doesn't convince me, but it does make me think about the ideas which frame our humanity, and what lies beyond that frame.

The Greater Trumps: (19) Death

Death rides, armoured in black steel, against the white fire of the rising sun. Somehow resplendent in his fuliginous robes, the gaunt figure on a pale horse strikes fear into every watching soul. In long and skilful hands, Death wields a scythe; he sometimes bears a flag unfurling to reveal a single silver rose. It is almost too obvious a symbol. Yet, near the hooves of his charger, a small child plays, fearless and unmoved by the grim sight above.

The image here is one of Transformation, from one state to another of almost-equal potential. Death is the facilitator here, a catalyst which shifts the nature of the landscape, from the familiar to the unknown, from one perspective to another; and of course, Death walks the thin line, the boundary or terminus between Life and what lies beyond it. Yet, Death is also Change, the progression from one state to another quite different - from night to day as the sun rises, from darkness to light, from childhood to maturity. Death is the harbinger of the new.

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It's odd how often one returns to T S Eliot. And yet, he was one of the great prophets of the Age of Decay - so perhaps we should not be surprised. In his Dans le Restaurant, and again in his magnum opus, The Waste Land, Eliot returns to the theme of Death as transformation.

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passes the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

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Phlébas, le Phénicien, pendant quinze jours noyé,
Oubliait les cris des mouettes et la houle de Cornouaille,
Et les profits et les pertes, et la cargaison d’étain:
Un courant de sous-mer l’emporta très loin,
Le repassant aux étapes de sa vie antérieure.
Figurez-vous donc, c’était un sort pénible,
Cependant, ce fut jadis un bel homme, de haute taille.

Death transforms us all; the death of self and the resultant transformation, while still in this flesh, may be one for the better.

The Greater Trumps: (18) The Hanged Man

There is a mighty cross in a still place. A man (a Fool?) dangles from it by one foot, with his other ankle tucked behind the suspended knee. On his face is a look of utter calm, total peace. Sometimes, his arms are folded, sometimes they dangle. His pockets are emptying themselves of coins and the other debris one normally finds in pockets. Some of the fallen pieces have begun to form words on the ground, but none of them are readable as yet.

The Hanged Man will depend from his cross for nine days. On the ninth day, he will find Wisdom, say the old myths. Some say he will be harvested, like John Barleycorn. Some say he will gain the knowledge of the future, like Odin on Yggdrasil. Whatever it is, the enlightenment of the Hanged Man is the reason for his odd position, suspended between heaven and earth. With his suspension, he loses his cares and his coins, and comes to be at rest.

This image symbolises Sacrifice - the surrender of all earthly attachments and perspectives. It also symbolises Insight, for the Hanged Man sees himself endlessly, at the centre of the universe for a brief instant before he falls into the sea of knowledge.

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The Hanged Man has always been at or near the centre of the Greater Trumps. I think of this image a lot - the 'surrender that leads to serenity' is what comes to my mind. Yet the Hanged Man isn't hanging there to escape, or to have fun. He is hanging there in order to gain knowledge from the loss of his material attachments. It's hard work.

Here's something from one of my favourite poems, T S Eliot's The Waste Land:

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Why was the Hanged Man not found? The answer is clear - in a wasteland, there is no wisdom to be had, even with sacrifice.

The Greater Trumps: (17) Justice

Justice is a female of stern and unseeing aspect, conventionally portrayed as blind, with the scales in one hand and a sword in the other. This representation has its roots in the Qabbala, and even earlier: it was in the past quite conventional to portray Justice as female and Mercy as male. Only in this present age have these roles been more frequently reversed, to the discomfiture and bane of society.

But why is it that we think of Justice as blind? Some representations have her as fully sighted, the better to assess the findings of the scales and to deliver the judgement of the sword. The idea of 'blind Justice' is a Greek idea - that Justice should be the equal right of all who were qualified to receive it, without fear or favour. This is the seed of an idea - that it is honourable to be perfectly just.

Other cultures were not so idealistic - the Egyptian image of the jackal-headed god Anubis, peering with shrewd and exacting eyes at the scales of justice, comes to mind. Anubis, of course, did not wield a sword; rather, he would have pounced upon the guilty heart and thrown it into the darkness to be devoured. But Anubis was not Justice; rather, he was the Guardian of the Dead, holding a watching brief over the souls undergoing the process of judgement. More a bailiff, perhaps.

The image of Justice, therefore signifies Honour and Rectitude - the righting of the scales for everyone, regardless of place or position.

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I have always thought of Justice as a feminine aspect. My mother could descend upon me and pronounce sentence with exquisite exactness for all my youthful failings. It was my father who was merciful. I will always remember the day my A-level results came out. Mother's response: "Whaaaaat??? That's not very good!" Father's response: "You passed everything? Let's buy a CD player."

And so, to Kipling, and his peculiarly British awareness of God's justice:

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

It's a sobering thought to realise that in the long term, Justice prevails by balance, by the natural internal adjustment of societal forces. When Justice can no longer prevail, society fails. Sometimes, individuals must take upon themselves the terrible burden of being Justice to the world around them. It is one of the most painful and exacting of burdens.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is...

So said Hopkins, and his Jesuitical eye certainly saw the truth of it.

The Greater Trumps: (16) The Future

He is an ordinary man, but well-built, with the eye and aspect of a roosting hawk. He bears a staff in one hand, shields his eyes from the sun with the other. He stands on a cliff, and looks out to sea. In the distance are approaching ships, but he cannot see what colour their sails are, and he cannot remember why that should be important. The look on his face is difficult to describe; he is perplexed, perhaps a little angry - at himself or at another. He is a little grim as he wills himself to recall the past, but there is an openness about his gaze, about the crows' feet around his eyes, that speaks of wonderment at what is to come - and the will to meet it with all his powers.

That is the nature of this image. The Future signifies the indomitable Will, that which is armour against the unlooked-for disaster and that which is proof against the too-early acceptance of joy. Not only does it speak of the Will, but of Perspective, that sense which compares one thing against another and assesses its significance against a broader background. In many ways, the Future complements the Past; and neither is the other's inferior.

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The one thing I hope for all the future is a simple thing: I pray that God forgives us for all we have done that was grievous and all we have failed to do which would have made life better than it was before. Kipling, for all his tendencies toward jingoistic imperialism, understood this very well. Auden, for all his elegant cynicism, yearned for that healing.

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

The future ends for each of us when the prison door opens. We will be free then, in that day when the words in our head say, "Terminus est" - here is the line of division.

The Greater Trumps: (15) The Past

She is a stately figure, tall, elegant, beautiful and wise. Her long hair is as white as snow, and her robes are as dark as night. She looks out of a window, down into a distant courtyard. In that courtyard a child is playing - and that child is the person she once was. Beyond the courtyard are walls; beyond the walls, a river flows. As we look upon this scene, certain ambiguities begin to manifest: the window looks like a mirror's frame, or perhaps the frame of a picture; the woman's face shows both triumph and regret; her robes are rich velvet or austere fuligin. Do the walls constrain, or do they protect?

And that is the nature of this image. The Past portrays our capacity for Reflection and Retrospection - we learn from History, both personal and public; the Past defines us somehow. We might feel regret or triumph, having survived the Past and paid a certain cost. We never escape it, and yet the fact that it remains with us gives us a sense of existence and something to think about - always.

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I'm probably over-romanticising this image, but it brings to mind a particular piece by Lord Byron...

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

The Past is always with us. It's both a comforting and a disconcerting thought; but the way I am, I think of it mostly with fondness, forgetting the ill that is gone by and remembering the good times that continue to encourage me.

The Greater Trumps: (14) The Sphinx

In the far wastelands of the world, in the white desert under the cold stars, the Sphinx sits. It is certainly large; its body is that of a titanic lion and its head is that of a noble human. Some portray it as a female form, hungry for wisdom and with a weakness for riddles; some portray it as a male form, contemplative and static, bound to a specific place. In either form, it has presence and exerts a kind of pressure on its surroundings - the pressure of its existence and the weight of years.

It is this influence which the Sphinx symbolises - the weight of Time as it moves on inexorably, or the sheer influence of Duration, of perdurability and the property of being there all the time. To invoke the image of the Sphinx is to evoke both time and timelessness, both duration and decay, both existence and entropy - for each pair is a coin with two sides.

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Yeats's peculiar magical vision in The Second Coming is often dominated in our minds by the image of the falcon "turning and turning in the widening gyre". The centripetal effect of entropy, of spiritual loss leading to things falling apart, blots out the equally compelling image in the second half of the poem:

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

It is clear what Yeats had in mind when he penned these ominous words. What is troubling and less clear is whether our fragile modernity can withstand the weight of that monstrous image when it finally manifests, perdurable and insulting to our human world.

The Greater Trumps: (13) The Wheel Of Fortune

A wheel this is, its struts and essence forged of a hundred different metals. It flames with light, it turns its many spokes in sequence to the sky. Oddly, unusually and disturbingly, a man and a woman, the beasts of their acquaintance, the symbols of their language are here too, all turning upon the wheel while an angel with a flaming sword (or a sphinx, or some other inscrutable Power) looks down. What is on the lips of the noble observer, no mortal can fathom.

The wheel seems to turn always from darkness to light; it is almost always the symbol of Fortune, and sometimes rarely of Chance which does not quite seem fortunate. It is the ridiculous but happy optimism of one kind of Fool - and it galls the pessimist because this kind of Fool always seems to have it right. Life, according to the Wheel of Fortune, is generally good. Or almost always so.

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When I had just begun dating, I had the misfortune to encounter that extremely persistent song, Noel Harrison's The Windmills Of Your Mind. It seeped into the gaps between the bricks of my consciousness and could not be grouted out. The first part goes:

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning, running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes on its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find, in the windmills of your mind

But the part that really made every subsequent date an adventure on the brink of fatalism (perhaps seasoned with a touch of terror) were these penultimate stanzas:

Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said?
Lovers walk along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?

Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song
Half-remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over, were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the colour of her hair?

Yes, indeed one ought to savour every moment of youth, every last drop of summer wine. Yet, as Ecclesiastes seems to hint, with the sweet comes the bitter - and time brings out every poignant aftertaste there is. Every heady dose of fortune comes with its little chances and the potential for great loss.

The Greater Trumps: (12) The Family

A man and a woman, with two children; a traditional family to the casual eye. But look at the background: that forest foliage is a single great tree - a twining entanglement of darkness and light, and the knowledge thereof. A huge serpent awaits in the shade of the tree. And this traditional family has two very dissimilar sons, one handling a lamb, the other holding wheatsheaves.

The imagery is ancient; in ancient Egypt, the father and mother might have been Shu and Tefnut - the twin powers of dry hot radiance and moist cool darkness. More likely, they would have been Geb and Nut - the heavens and the earth - whose children Osiris and Set would war against each other, the bright king of fertile crops and the evil prince of animals, and lay waste to the land of Egypt. The serpent would have been Apophis, the monster that chases the sun on its path through the underworld.

But those familiar with the Biblical account of Adam and Eve would see a different symbolism: this is the family outside Eden, an allusion to the fallen nature of man. It is not a happy family - soon, the two sons will grow older and Cain the elder (whose sacrifice of grain is rejected) will kill Abel the younger (whose sacrifice of a lamb is accepted). The tree in the background is that of the knowledge of Good and Evil, whose fruit it was death to consume; the serpent is the agent of Satan, or Satan himself.

The Family is the symbol of Nature, animal and vegetable, dark and light, good and evil, male and female. Like Nature, it always appears to be in balance. But this balance is an illusion; Nature is as inexorable in change and progress as anything else. Like the Chariot, it moves; like the Lovers, it has duality and complementarity; but Nature moves towards its own inscrutable and imbalanced end. It is an end which is buried in Entropy and the end of all songs; there is no 'happily ever after'.

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To my mind, this image really exposes the false dichotomy between Nature and Nurture. It is natural for humans to do things to their world, to impose their strength upon the world and remake it in their own image. We are Nature's unnatural offspring, but we are part of Nature nevertheless - and the other face of Nature is Entropy.

The last two verses of Auden's intriguing poem, After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics, describe that odd dilemma we face: are we of Nature or not? Is it Sin to want to know?

This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.

It has chosen once, it seems,
And whether our concern
For magnitude's extremes
Really become a creature
Who comes in a median size,
Or politicizing Nature
Be altogether wise,
Is something we shall learn.

And so, we work our own uncertain way within the Family of Man, trying to control Nature (of which we are a part), accusing one another of perverting Nature and perverting ourselves. Perhaps the only neutral arbiter is He who made Nature, and often, He does not comply with our incessant and importunate requests.

The Greater Trumps: (11) Strength

In some representations of Strength, he is Heracles, the Lady's own champion, clad in the skin of the Nemaean Lion. The dead beast's skull is his helm. He has mastered the untameable by breaking its neck; he has taken its totemic power for his own. And now, he sees no challenges before him - the mastery of challenge has left the champion bereft. Or perhaps, he is his own master, and the circle is closed.

In most representations of Strength, however, she is Koré - the ever-virginal, the Maiden. The Lion is very much alive, but her gentle hands are stroking its jaws, and the jaws are either closing or opening at her persuasion. Innocent belief, coupled with the will towards mastery, has achieved the impossible. This is another kind of strength, the strength of innocence which calms the savage beast.

Either of these representations reveals that Strength is not about strength, really, but about Discipline and Mastery. Whereas the Chariot unites opposites, pitting them against each other until a useful outcome is produced, Strength pits the inner self against an external challenge, and balance is attained when both come to an agreement. So both Heracles and Koré become the Lion, in a metaphorical sense, and in doing so, harness energy for their future tasks.

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The funny thing is that in the same year of my life, I read W H Auden, Dylan Thomas, G M Hopkins and Wilfred Owen. Those of you who went through the same English Literature course will remember it. Along the way, our encounter with Auden revealed a very disciplined poet whose mastery of language was too great. Because he was able to select the exactly appropriate word for each line, and select them all with ironic (and sometimes bitter) wit, he was sometimes thought to be trite; he was often seen as a facile dabbler, an amateur who played too much. Yet on deeper digging, one finds the oddly rueful and pathetic:

Our earth in 1969
Is not the planet I call mine,
The world, I mean, that gives me strength
To hold off chaos at arm's length.

My Eden landscapes and their climes
Are constructs from Edwardian times,
When bath-rooms took up lots of space,
And, before eating, one said Grace.

This is strength drawn from the ambience of tradition, from the comfort of the surroundings which generate affection. But there are those who find strength in more heroic vein, and here, as most would, I must quote a far less cynical (but not less powerful) poet - Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Strength - whether of the desperate, urgent kind or of the gentler and more reflective kind - is the mark of the heroic. And as Ulysses looks into the twilight, he sees where that strength can yet lead him.