The colours of the spades and wands are always given as black, hearts and cups as red. The symbology of the Tarot is too pure for such a detail to be an accident, though the ordinary pack of playing-cards might be considered to some extent as a sort of 'profanation' of the original Tarot. These colours, however, bear an essential meaning, as does everything in the Tarot.

Wands take their black colour from the 'Black Wisdom' (compare the Secret Doctrine);

Swords or spades are black from the Earth, which has no light of its own;

Hearts are coloured red by the 'blood' and cups by the 'wine,' the liquor of life in the body and in the soul respectively, and both bearing light. So the Wine imparts the Holy Communion of the spirit to the soul, and the blood renders the same service, relatively, to the particles of the body, to which it imparts the life of the Ego or rather of its soul.

As I have explained in my previous book referred to above, Evolution may well be represented by a spiral starting from the spiritual centre and descending through the twelve houses of zodiacal ideation and formation into the 'worlds' - spiritual, psychical, physical.

This Spiral of Evolution may be divided into at least three parts, that is, three different beginnings may be seen. There is the Divine Beginning, starting in Aries, the sign of Initiation and highest abstraction, the divine cycle being completed in Pisces, where it is handed over or 'offered' or sacrificed to the world of appearances.

The cycle of the spiritual in Man begins in the fifth sign, Leo, the individual cycle being that of the Spark or the Ego, and it runs from this sign of the heart to Cancer, the sign of memories.

Subsequently: a cycle of the personal being of the Ego, the cycle of the soul in Man, which we may call the personal cycle, starts from Sagittarius, the sign of thought and manifestation, and ends in Scorpio, the sign of death.

Then there is the cycle of the body, body of Earth, with the etheric initiative in Aries once more at the same point but lower down in the scale, and ending in Pisces as the house of the 'Universal Solvent,' applying also to the body of Earth, for here personal separateness is solved into the physical surroundings of the Universe from which it was built up.

After this the physical organs in the body of Earth will be built up and have their own cycle, starting again in Leo and building them between the heart and the stomach: Cancer.

And in Sagittarius the physical manifestations in happenings, deeds, facts, proceedings, etc., begin their cycle in co-operation with their surroundings. This cycle again ends in Scorpio, where life's lessons or experiences are drawn out of the materials.

Divine Intelligence being the beginning of all that to our conception means Evolution, the Spiral of Evolution must necessarily open with the suit of Wands, thus ruling the First to the Twelfth house. They stand for intelligence in general and 'intelligences' in Nature, for messages and communications, relations, connections, plans and ideas, for knowledge and insight. They work through the head and have to do with 'mutations.'

Then follow hearts, representing the individual cycle, from the Fifth to the Fourth house. They rule in this cycle the fiery force of the spirit and represent power, goodness, love, fixed purpose, desire, well-being, virtue, warmth and heat, generation, development, they work through the heart.

The cups rule the cycle of the soul, or personal cycle, and represent, working from the Ninth to the Eighth house, the emotions and motives, the activity of the soul, its experiences from the highest philosophy and religion down to the merest lust or sensation. They work through the senses and the organs of motion.

They have what may be described as an undulating movement, and they may be favourable or unfavourable.

But they move and cause growth and death, rise and decline; they mould life into physical circumstances and forms; they 'influence' everything and this is their particular business.

The body of Earth is built up by the elements of Earth, represented by the suit of swords, running from the First house again up to the Twelfth. They speak of birth in matter, of facts, formations and resistance, of material good luck and bad fortune, achievements and failure in material respect; of afflictions and pain, but also of the effects produced by this suffering.

Again comes the cycle of hearts, now in the significance of the round of physical organs. This is very strict and can be absolutely relied upon. Every astrologer can tell you the relationship between the houses and the organs of the body. But it must be borne in mind that this rulership first relates to the ethereal centres or chakras, the fiery wheels in the etheric body. So the Fifth house rules the solar plexus and the heart . . . etc.

Finally the cups rule the cycle of events, happenings, movements. From the Ninth to the Eighth house again.

In a general way the cups will relate to water, as the hearts to fire, the wands to air, and the spades to earth in the practice of daily life as well as in a philosophical sense.

It appears further that each of the three cycles come twice into play: the cycle of Aries - Pisces by wands and swords; that of Leo - Cancer by hearts on two different niveaux; and that of Sagittarius-Scorpio in the same way twice by cups.

Astrologers may wonder perhaps, how and why it is that the 'mutable' suits of wands and spades start from the 'moveable' sign Aries, while the 'moveable' suit of cups starts from the 'mutable' sign Sagittarius. We can only answer that the facts are as they are, but may add, that evidently every suit has something of a particular sort of accent, which does not necessarily fall on the first sign or house, but on that in which house and suit coincide with regard to element and property (guna). Thus:

Spades, earth and mutable, will have their accent in the sign Virgo, mutable sign of earth, in which discrimination is said to be born;

Cups, water and moveable, in the moveable sign of water Cancer, which in fact is the proper sign of the moon and in which all properties of the soul can be said to be gathered or hidden;

Hearts, fire and fixed, in the fixed and fiery sign Leo; the suit of hearts appears to be the only one out of the four to have its particular accent on the first 'card' or house, which naturally confirms the essential being of hearts as interpreting fire and the centre of things;

Wands, air and mutable, have their accent on the airy and mutable sign Gemini, the sign of the Messenger.

The subsequent cycles are so many suits of Principles in the process of Building the Cosmos, Houses in the Holy City of the Great Architect of the Universe. They represent happenings in the proceedings of Evolution and experiences on the side of Involution at the same time. If the suits of colours in the Tarot system convey any meaning at all, it must be this, and there cannot be anything else to represent except these principles and houses, happenings and experiences. We shall see hereafter, how the Greater Arcana falls in with them, and may now proceed to explain the role of the Lesser Arcana. Each suit of cards has been given as a set of fourteen, viz. ten numbered cards, ace to ten, and four 'court cards' named King, Queen, Page or Knave, and Knight. The latter has been omitted in the ordinary playingcards. Now whereas the cosmological cycle consists of twelve houses, these sets or suits have ten or fourteen cards - just as we choose to take it. Still - if we take for granted - that the analogy exists, each principle must be represented in a card and vice versa. If it were not so, the Tarot system would be found wanting, and we have sufficient reasons not to accept this supposition beforehand, both by reason of theoretical and practical tests, the traditional renderings of the cards confirming the experience. We need not trouble about the question why the Initiates, who presented the Western World with such an inheritance, chose to number up to ten only instead of going to Twelve. The 'Chosen People' were given only ten commandments for their guidance. They who understand astrology in its essential meaning, can perceive something of the reason; afterwards when the Preacher of Divine Life came to the same chosen people, He gave a double new commandment to complete the ancient Law: that of Brotherhood (Aquarius - eleven) and Love (Pisces - twelve). In each suit of Tarot cards the numbering is from the one or ace up to the ten; the King is to be considered in some way as a higher octave of the one, the Queen or Dame as the same of the two, whereas the Page or Knave is a representative of the 'relation between the two' and consequently is a higher octave of three, while the Knight is the higher octave of the four and the other side of the same 'relation.' This absolutely covers the general and conventional meanings of Pages and Knights in the Tarot system and its divination, the Pages being said to be always something of messengers, and the Knights to be signifies of transition, conversion, transmission, changing from one condition into another. But at the same time we find the intimation, that the Page as well as the Knight 'bears a double meaning.' Now, as they stand for 'the relation between the two' they already bear an inherent 'double meaning' or significance of a double nature. But 'double meaning' implies something else and something more.

The Page and the Knight are also the figures standing for the XIth and XIIth principles, in the Eleventh and Twelfth houses, conveying the commandments of their King and Queen, as their messengers or officers, and at the same time standing as it were for the whole suit collectively, while in the former meaning, viz. as higher octaves of the 3 and 4, they are the messenger and bridge from one suit to the next one.

To give the analogy between the cards of the Tarot's Lesser Arcana and the zodiacal houses categorically:

Wands
1 and King	Aries or I house
2 and Queen	Taurus or II house
3 and Page	Gemini or III house
4 and Knight	Cancer or IV house
5	Leo or V house
6	Virgo or VI house
7	Libra or VII house
8	Scorpio or VIII house
9	Sagittarius or IX house
10	Capricornus or X house
Page	Aquarius or XI house
Knight	Pisces or XII house

Hearts
1 and King	Leo or V house
2 and Queen	Virgo or VI house
3 and Page	Libra or VII house
4 and Knight	Scorpio or VIII house
5	Sagittarius or IX house
6	Capricornus or X house
7	Aquarius or XI house
8	Pisces or XII house
9	Aries or I house
10	Taurus or II house
Page	Gemini or III house
Knight	Cancer or IV house

Cups
1 and King	Sagittarius or IX house
2 and Queen	Capricornus or X house
3 and Page	Aquarius or XI house
4 and Knight	Pisces or XII house
5	Aries or I house
6	Taurus or II house
7	Gemini or III house
8	Cancer or IV house
9	Leo or V house
10	Virgo or VI house
Page	Libra or VII house
Knight	Scorpio or VII house

Swords
1 and King	Aries or I house
2 and Queen	Taurus or II house
3 and Page	Gemini or III house
4 and Knight	Cancer or IV house
5	Leo or V house
6	Virgo or VI house
7	Libra or VII house
8	Scorpio or VIII house
9	Sagittarius or IX house
10	Capricornus or X house
Page	Aquarius or XI house
Knight	Pisces or XII house

A diagram of the Spiral of Evolution will be added with its suits of cards. It will be seen, that:

King, 1, 5, 9, Falls on houses of Fire
Queen, 2, 6, 10 Falls on houses of Earth
Page, 3, 7 Falls on houses of Air
Knight, 4, 8, Falls on houses of Water

Astrologers will be able to draw immediate conclusions from these coincidences, which are absolutely natural.

One other detail may be added in this part:

The cards of the heart-suit must relate to years, to the day-time and summer, those of the cup-suit to months, to night-time and winter, the swords to days (in duration: i.e. - axial rotations of the Earth), while wands do not seem to have much relation to time and may consequently mean, that a thing will not happen at all, will remain in the realm of ideas, or is in the act of happening itself at the very moment. These particulars may be useful in the practice of divination.

Further, hearts relate to gold, cups to silver and to money in general, wands may relate to paper money and effects, shares, bonds, acts. Swords relate to material objects, and in general may indicate the cost or price of things, losses, debt, as well as the things bought by money.

In proportion to the more or less exoteric standpoint of the consulent and... the professor of divination, hearts will specially indicate 'good' and 'yes,' spades 'bad' and 'no,' while wands may mean 'indifferent, perhaps, doubtful, relatively, undecided as yet,' and cups do not appear to confer any special meaning with relation to these things, except that they may make the feelings pervert the facts. They also give the sentiment with which the facts will be received or encountered.

Hearts are 'sunny' and more or less venusian; cups are jovial, sometimes neptunian, and may become 'loony' in weak cases; spades are martial and, by reflex, saturnian; wands are mercurial and sometimes uranian.



To conclude these considerations on the Lesser Arcana, it will be interesting to compare a general figure or diagram of the process of Creation with the four suits of the Tarot, and it will be seen that even the symbolic figures of our playing-cards are very distinctly to be recognised in it.

The four court-cards of each suit make together the full zodiac. When the soul reaches perfection, the oval form becomes a circle, and the nearer this state is approached, the more the two focal points of the ellipse draw together and the inscribed quadrangle approaches to the square.





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