3 Alchemical symbols and the Tarot Major Arcana
-
I wanted to ask why the 5 elements are crammed into 22 Major Arcana keys Aleph - Air, Mem - Water, Shin - Fire, Spirit, Tau - Saturn, Earth when a more elegant solution would be to use the alchemical symbols of Aleph - Mercury, Mem - Salt, Shin - Sulphur? It looks like the Minor Arcana is already represented by the 5 element symbols - 4 elements being the cards from 1-10 and Spirit being the court cards no? Any insight into this?
-
Aleph - Mercury, Mem - Salt, Shin - Sulpher are all also already correspondences used in tarot. To say that they also correspond to Air, Water, and Fire in the five elements is also correct. A correspondence is not necessarily an exact equality; it’s a “kinda like.” And the Three Qualities are so close in nature to the Five Elements that to say they correspond is only natural.
-
Yes, but Crowley's Thoth Tarot specifically labels 7 planets, 12 zodiac signs and 5 elements in the Major Arcana. My question was why he decided to label the 5 elements coming to to 24 symbols instead of 3 Alchemical symbols coming to exactly 22 symbols?