Tarot Trumps Redux!

[Spike]

Not to take away from Lady V's thread, but I wanted to put this out as a fresh start focusing more on making an actual assignment of Tarot cards to Trump.  

What follows is a rough hashing of ideas from yours truly as the raw material to actually make a completed list.

Filling in the Trumps using the Rider-Waite Tarot as a starting point:



Major Arcana:

0 – The Fool
1- The Magician - Dworkin
2- The Priestess - Suhuy
3- The Empress
4- The Emperor - Oberon
5- The Heirophant – King of Chaos courts
6- The Lovers – Unicorn and Serpent
7- The Chariot
8- Strength
9- The Hermit
10- Wheel of Fortune – Ghostwheel ?
11- Justice
12- The Hanged Man
13- Death – The Abyss
14- Temperance - Pattern
15- The Devil - Logrus
16- The Tower  - Castle Amber
17- The Star - Rebma
18- The Moon – Tir na'nog
19- The Sun
20- Judgement – Eye of Chaos/Jewel
21- The World - Shadows

Where possible I believe it would be relevant to keep most of the primary characters of Amber out of the Major Arcana. While temptation to put Gerard in Strength, Brand as the hanged man and Benedict as Death is strong, I feel that all the primary actors are transient and fill out the minor arcana instead. This may seem odd when I put Dworkin and Oberon and their Chaos counterparts into the Major Arcana, but I believe that this is justified when you look to the role those persons occupy in the stories/amberverse.  

In the minor arcana I intend to, as much as possible, keep to both the nature of the suits (Rods being both Fire and Creativity, for example) and the symbology of the cards itself, rather than pip cards.  In some cases I expect this is easy to place characters in suits. Gerard for example would clearly be an earth card (coins) as this reprents the material body.  Ideally, as this would be of value to Amber RPG rather than generic Amber novel reading, keeping the suits in line with the attributes they represent may, in some cases, be easier.  So Coins represent Strength?  Cups Psyche, definitely.  I would like discussion on this before I go hog wild assigning things.  

I see Endurance being the Earth, which obviously contradicts my previous statement. Using 'oriental' mythology does not match up here, as water would then be strength and in the Tarot, water is emotion and 'clergy', which implies spiritual natures.

Fire as strength can work, if awkwardly, and Air more closely matches warfare than strength.  

The notional breakdown of Tarot suits to attributes would then be:

Staves: Strength
Coins: endurance
Cups: Psyche
Swords: Warfare (Hey! Happy coincidence!)

Thus if we view certain characters as exemplars of various traits we can automatically assume a suit.  Gerard would naturally be a Staff, Corwin could be a coin (if we view him as the primary Endurance character, though this is strongly debatable), Fiona is a Cup and Benedict is a Sword.  Naturally where a character does not have a 'primary' attribute, we move back to more traditional interpretations.  Using Rider-Waite, we have no pip cards, and each card has a specific meaning, which makes assigning somewhat easier, and there is no reason to assume the greater value of the card must necessarily be reflected by their rank in an attribute, as the symbology is more important than the number.  

Now, using this as a loose framework, we could put Brand in Cups (trump mastery is a psyche thing), but there is the (um...I'm rusty) ten of swords, which is betrayal and linked to the Heirophant, which I assigned the King of Chaos... and if my understanding is correct, the courts of chaos helped/pushed Brand in his mad scheme.  Again, keeping with the RPG aspect, the Shadow Knight book suggested a means for Brand to escape the Abyss, which keeps with the golden horizon on the Ten of Swords... symbolically representing that all is not lost.



How I see this working in game/behind the scenes:

A trump artist must be able to accurately depict the person they are drawing, even if making a crude scratch drawing on a wall.  We can suggest they must also be able to accurately place the person within the deck, though for new Trump artists they merely accept the Trumps as 'written'.  A more advanced Trump artist would actually be able to accurately predict shifts of deck placement (assumption that Brand would not always be a traitor to Amber), though they may not understand why or what it represents.  Major arcana that do not represent actual people (the Tower, for example) are almost unknown before this level, as they are unimportant for standard trump use. You can't 'trump call' Castle Amber or the Pattern, though we could postulate uses for Major Arcana that an advanced user could attempt.  At Brand's level of mastery of Trump (becoming a living Trump), the Trump Artist understands much of the underlying symbolism behind the various cards, and can use that symbolism and even force changes.  

The Trump then represent the universe as it is, a manifestation of the Amberverse if you will. They are powered by this. Call Trump the physics underpinning all of Amber, and understanding that allows you to do things that seem impossible.  

While in a real tarot deck there are only 56 suit cards we are not forced to limit a trump deck to 56 cards, nor the 'major characters' of Amber to 56 total. Not at all. First, as the underpinning of card assignments is understanding the role, it is possible to assign, at least in minor arcana, multiple people to the same card (though for Canon characters this should be avoided where possible).  Likewise, we can assume that the Major Arcana is capable of being bigger where additional forces are revealed.

In cases of Card drift, older representations with the wrong card/suit are still viable cards, but any new representations would require the new card/suit.

[Croaker]

I'm disturbed by the presence of ghostwheel in this.
It is a fairly recent creation. Before it, was there no wheel? Unless you put a spikard ring there.

Hum... This somehow reminds me of Erickson's books. The malazarian empire, something like this. Maybe major arcanas are cosmic positions of power, thrones that can be taken to their previous owners, along with benefits. Thus, Ghostwheel could have taken a void seat, or taken it from something else.

[RPGPundit]

Ghostwheel would have no place in a "traditional" Amber trump deck.

I would correct the following:
The high priestess: should not be Suhuy. It should probably be one of Oberon's Wives.
The Empress: Should be another of his wives.
The Hierophant should be the head of the church of the Unicorn, aka Oberon in priestly instead of kingly robes.
The Lovers should probably just be The Lovers.
The Chariot might be the Unicorn, driving Oberon on a chariot.
Strength should feature either Oberon, or in later decks possibly Gerard or Deidre wrestling with either a small dragon or a Lion.
The Hermit could be a different interpretation of Dworkin.
The wheel could be a wheel featuring a man, a unicorn, a dragon and a phoenix.
Justice should be justice.
The Hanged man could look just like the hanged man, but it should actually be a mythological representation of a young Dworkin plucking out the eye of the Dragon.
Death could be the abyss, or the courts of chaos.
Temprance should be the temperance card, but it should feature symbols from Amber, ie. the unicorn, possibly the dragon, a lion, the phoenix. The woman pouring the vase could be Moins.
The Devil should be a very propagandistic image of a Chaos demon.
The tower should NOT be castle amber. The symbol is "The tower of destruction", it should be an image of how the artists of amber imagine the "courts of chaos", like a wicked version of castle amber, crumbling to the ground being destroyed.
The star could indeed be remba, and the moon Tir Na Nog.
The Sun should be the pattern superimposed on a sun.
Judgement the jewel, yes.
And the World should be Amber itself.

As for the minors; I would attribute Disks to Strength, Swords to Warfare, Cups to Endurance and Staves to Psyche. Yours worked too, but this is a more esoterically significant interpretation.

RPGPundit

[boulet]

I find this major arcana musical chair game interesting. Not that it would come up during game very often : you might sell your players on doing some divination once or twice, but it would get old quick. It's more like  recycling Zelazny's material in a creative way and an opportunity to look at some characters/entities/symbols differently.

Ghostwheel would have no place in a "traditional" Amber trump deck.

I never used Ghostwheel in any of my games and I don't plan to. He's a nice comic relief and supposed to illustrate an alternative to the Unicorn and the Serpent... But Ghostwheel is so tied to the personification of the Pattern and the Logrus, which is my biggest grievance against Merlin's cycle, that I usually erase them all from my canonical material during game. Hence no Ghostwheel in the arcana for me thanks, it kills my suspension of disbelief.

I would correct the following:
The high priestess: should not be Suhuy. It should probably be one of Oberon's Wives.

Why not... If said wife is given some real historical significance and influence. I mean more weight than just being the mom for this prince or that princess.

The Hierophant should be the head of the church of the Unicorn, aka Oberon in priestly instead of kingly robes.

It's getting a little literal and systematic now. but OTOH Oberon is surely apt to impersonate a jovian symbol, assigned the values of wisdom and spiritual leadership.

Strength should feature either Oberon, or in later decks possibly Gerard or Deidre wrestling with either a small dragon or a Lion.

Fortitude seems to me more related to internal struggles, moral dilemna and personal discipline than feats of physical strength. If this arcana should have a face on it I would picture Benedict. He learned his place at the Palace witnessing how his brothers were consumed by ambition and quickly purged by a Machiavellian father. I think there must have been a fire of revenge and ambition burning inside Benedict toward Oberon. That he managed to keep it under control is a nice illustration of the arcana.

Death could be the abyss, or the courts of chaos.

Meh. Too straightforward to me. Sure the Chaosian surrender their dead to the abyss. Sure Amberite tend to associate the Court of Chaos with danger and death. But the arcana transcends the notion of death as an ending. It's a symbol of rebirth as much as a morbid one, a bit like Scorpio in astrology. A time in the cycle of life where life ends (end of Autumn), harvest has been done, the soil is bare and lifeless. But below the seeds are waiting for next spring like Demeter did. Alas there's not much in term of reincarnation or rebirth in the text of Amber. Except maybe shape shifting but remotely. Tir Na Nogt could well fit the symbolism. The moon sister of Amber is like a furnace where memories and prophecies meld together, where past is recycled and reused. Rien ne se perd, rien ne se cree, tout se transforme...

The Devil should be a very propagandistic image of a Chaos demon.

Why not. Still a bit literal to me. The absolute evil kind of imagery is out of context in a way. The card is supposed to reflect bondage to earthly desires or beliefs, a bondage that is self inflicted. But the propaganda angle makes quite sense.

The tower should NOT be castle amber. The symbol is "The tower of destruction", it should be an image of how the artists of amber imagine the "courts of chaos", like a wicked version of castle amber, crumbling to the ground being destroyed.

The original meaning is one of dramatic change and disaster, it's the least ambiguous of the "bad omen" arcana. I could swear that in the Chaos version of Trump it's represented by Dworkin printing the original Pattern. The equivalent for Amber would be Brand shedding Martin's blood, but it only works for recent trump. I'm not sure where to go with this one. Maybe a representation of the Unicorn enduring some torment of some sort.

[JongWK]

Perhaps you guys should first decide who made the deck and when, before assigning the cards.

[Spike]

I've worked from the assumption that the Trumps, at least as far as 'trump powers' go are sort of universal constants.  The Empress, in Tarot, is not specifically tied to the Emperor in any way.  

I had an idea of trying to cross over masculine and feminine roles to Pattern/Logrus, thus the chaos counterparts to Oberon and Dworkin would be feminine, Logrus feminine, etc. The problem I ran into with that is the Unicorn appears to be both tied to the Pattern and a feminine power, while the Serpent is obviously masculine, so I dropped the gender tie and tried to stick to the symbolic natures of the characters being represented.

I assigned the spiritual rulers to Chaos because it seemed that the Courts of Chaos seemed more religious while the Amberites appear entirely secular.  If I really wanted to keep that symbology up, Dworkin should be the Empress, represnted by his giving Amber life by drawing the Pattern in the first place.

As for Ghostwheel and Spikards, I personally know only whats in the RPG, as I've stated, and at least Spikards should be represented on assumes.  At least in my schema only truly powerful, unique people would ever appear in the Major Arcana. Becoming the King of Amber does not make one Oberon, only Oberon is Oberon if you will.

If Brand had succeeded he might have appeared as a Major Arcana, though its possible that he might have simply wiped the old Trump system out instead.

The Pundit pointed out in the other thread that an ordinary trump deck used for games/divination, rather than true Trumps, would reflect biases of the artist/possessor vs. the real thing, which is where I started.

[jibbajibba]

its your Amber so you cna do what you like.
Cannoically the debate is moot. As Pundit pointed out on the other thread Zelazny knew next to nothing about tarot and just used the idea of the cards as nice conceit and plot tool.
If fact you can go a step further and say that when he wrote Nice Princes and invented the Trumps he hadn't really thought through the whole 'what would happen if there was a family of immortals question'.
Dworkin drew the trumps. Did he draw the deck as a deck? Unlikely as that woudl imply some hundred of years in which there was no trump of Benedict becuase Random hadn't been born.
Now hte implication in Nine Princes is that it was drawn as a deck but it is also implied that there was a golden age of Amber when all the siblings lived at the castle and all their ages were pretty close together.
None of this stands up to critical examination in relation to where the story ends up or how its played out in the RPG.

This is why I pull the court cards and stick the Amberites in there with no suits.

[RPGPundit]

Why not... If said wife is given some real historical significance and influence. I mean more weight than just being the mom for this prince or that princess.

Well, I think we have to imagine that in their time, when they were around, at least some of Oberon's wives were very significant. Some of them were queens in their own right, after all.

It's getting a little literal and systematic now. but OTOH Oberon is surely apt to impersonate a jovian symbol, assigned the values of wisdom and spiritual leadership.

Yes, that's the idea. Oberon is both the head of state and head of the church, he is both King and Priest to the people of Amber.

Fortitude seems to me more related to internal struggles, moral dilemna and personal discipline than feats of physical strength. If this arcana should have a face on it I would picture Benedict. He learned his place at the Palace witnessing how his brothers were consumed by ambition and quickly purged by a Machiavellian father. I think there must have been a fire of revenge and ambition burning inside Benedict toward Oberon. That he managed to keep it under control is a nice illustration of the arcana.

Well, I was going by the traditional illustration of the Strength card, which is either of a man (in the earliest decks, probably meant to be Heracles) or a woman (in later decks) wrestling with a lion.

Meh. Too straightforward to me. Sure the Chaosian surrender their dead to the abyss. Sure Amberite tend to associate the Court of Chaos with danger and death. But the arcana transcends the notion of death as an ending. It's a symbol of rebirth as much as a morbid one, a bit like Scorpio in astrology. A time in the cycle of life where life ends (end of Autumn), harvest has been done, the soil is bare and lifeless. But below the seeds are waiting for next spring like Demeter did. Alas there's not much in term of reincarnation or rebirth in the text of Amber. Except maybe shape shifting but remotely. Tir Na Nogt could well fit the symbolism. The moon sister of Amber is like a furnace where memories and prophecies meld together, where past is recycled and reused. Rien ne se perd, rien ne se cree, tout se transforme...

The thing is, I'm going mostly by the medieval original imagery of the Tarot, which I would imagine would best fit the medieval theme of Amber's society.  And in those Death is essentially the "grim reaper".
Also, Tir Na Nog fits too well with the imagery of the Moon.

The original meaning is one of dramatic change and disaster, it's the least ambiguous of the "bad omen" arcana.

Yes. If you want to talk the REAL original meaning, ie. the 14th century imagery, it was the Tower of Babel.

So to me it would represent the end of unity, and the will of God striking down the haughty.  So that would fit perfectly with the propagandistic idea that Oberon "struck down" chaos in creating the state of Amber.

RPGPundit

[RPGPundit]

Perhaps you guys should first decide who made the deck and when, before assigning the cards.

Well, my posts here are all assuming that we're talking about a Trump deck created in the time of Oberon, before he disappeared, but when the elders were already around.

Of course, just like the Tarot itself evolved, later trump decks from other periods would have slightly different imagery.  Though such evolution would take time, especially among the "regular population" and it would be likely that the "classic" trump-tarot would still be in use in most of Amber for card-playing and cheap fortune telling purposes.

RPGPundit

[finarvyn]

The notional breakdown of Tarot suits to attributes would then be:

Staves: Strength
Coins: endurance
Cups: Psyche
Swords: Warfare (Hey! Happy coincidence!)

I should probably do some research before I post, but here goes anyway. For some reason I was thinking that Coins in some Tarot decks are disks and in other decks are pentacles (similar to the pentagram). As such, I would have assigned Coins to Psyche and Cups to Endurance. Cups works well for Endurance anyway as you think about starting with a full cup and the level draining as one grows tired. Just a thought.

[Croaker]

IIRC, cups are both a feminine symbol, and represent the fount of mystical knowledge. It seems their meaning is perfect for psyche.

[RPGPundit]

The cups in the Tarot relate to water, which is usually seen as feminine, and they relate to the emotions and intuition.
The staves or wands on the other hand relate to fire, and represent willpower and drive and "energy".

So you can see how either would kind of apply.

Of the two, I put Psyche in Wands because the Wands are more "magical" and less "physical" than the Cups. But yes, really it could go either way.

RPGPundit

[Spike]

I should probably do some research before I post, but here goes anyway. For some reason I was thinking that Coins in some Tarot decks are disks and in other decks are pentacles (similar to the pentagram). As such, I would have assigned Coins to Psyche and Cups to Endurance. Cups works well for Endurance anyway as you think about starting with a full cup and the level draining as one grows tired. Just a thought.

Yes, I am aware of the Pentacles connection. I put the rational up in the OP for the divide I used, though I am aware there is room for debate.  I, for example, really wanted to pull in elements from different mythologies, where earth is the element of endurance and water is the element of strength...

Coins/pentacles is the suit of 'Earth'... which makes some sense as 'coins' would be made of metal with no other links to any other element. There is some tie in from geometry and pentagrams with earth as well, but I'm too scatter brained this morning to complete the link in my head, much less pass it on, sorry.

Wikipedia has an exhaustive series of links on the Tarot, though I do wish they had more on the minor arcana of the rider-waite, which is pretty in depth and facinating in its own right.  I leaned heavily on it while typing up the OP, as my own book is buried somewhere and I'm too cheap to buy another.

[JongWK]

Someone should try and convince this artist to do an Amber version. That set is amazing.

[Lady Vivamus]

Amen to that-- her tarot is the next one I plan to buy, has been since I first found her on dA.