"Then they go to the Sun, and tell dignity, power, multitude of effects, its consistent movement; calling it eye of the world, the joy of the day, virtue of rising things, beginning of light, King of nature, splendour of Olympus, director of the world, perfection of stars, moderator of firmament and universal lord of all planets".
(Thomaso Garzoni da Bagnacavallo, De’ Cervelloni universali, & ingegnosi - Discorso XXXIIII in "Il Theatro de’ vari e diversi cervelli mondani", page 158, Reggio, 1585)
Sun and Moon
Tower of Ceparano, X century, on the border between Modigliana and Brisighella (Romagna-Italy)
In the illuminated card of the Triumphs of Francesco Sforza (figure 1) the Sun is shown as a youth with wings, who holds the shining luminary in his hand. This is the Genius of the Sun, as he appears in the Iliaco card in the “E Series” of the Mantegna Tarots (figure 2). The youth is virtually naked; on his neck, he wears a coral necklace, a reference to the dry heat of the Sun based on the theory of humours. Identical necklaces can be found, in Medieval and Renaissance art, on the necks or wrists of children as talismans against the plague. About his nakedness, Cartari, in his Imagini de gli Dei de gli Antichi (Images of the Gods of the Ancients), quoting from Macrobius, writes that in Syria Phoebus (the Sun) and Jove were considered to be the same thing, and were represented by a single naked being who showed his sex, conceived as the anima mundi (page 37 - ed. 1609). It should be borne in mind that the Sun, because of its qualities and virtues, gives life to everything.
In the so-called Mantegna Tarots, the image which leads us to the mythological episode of the fall of Phaeton (figure 3), who had obtained from his father Helios permission to drive the Chariot of the Sun for one day, not knowing how to govern the fiery horses, fell away from his track, setting fire to heaven and earth. Zeus punished the overbold charioteer by striking him with a lightning bolt and casting him into the Eridanus, the river which appears on the lower part of the card.
In the card from the Tarots of Charles VI (figure 4), as in the one from an Ancient Italian Tarot, the Sun shines high, lighting up a girl who is spinning. This is a reference to the Fates who supervise the unravelling of human life, a myth closely related to the Sun, in that they carry out the same task, dispensing life and distributing it to every living being until its death.
The card of the Tarot of Ercole I d’ Este (figure 5) represents Diogenes seated in his barrel while talking with a young man, presumably Alexander the Great. The image refers to the Biblical teaching mentioned in the Book of Ecclesiastes (1:12, 17), that is that everything that happens under the Sun is vanity, even the thoughts of the wise (2:12, 7). The same teaching is to be found in the card of the Sun of the Paris Tarot by an anonymous author of the 17th century, where a woman looks at a mirror held by a monkey's hand (figure 6). When there is no consciousness that the research of beauty is vane, human nature gets down at the same level of the animal one. The men should remeber that “All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again” (Ecclesiastes 3:20).
The card of the Sun in the Vieville Tarot (figure 7) shows a man on horseback holding a banner. The horse is a solar animal: the chariot of the Sun is drawn by horses consecrated to it. For Christianity, the white horse becomes a symbol of majesty and is ridden by Christ, by him who is called the “Faithful and the Truthful”. In this sense, Christ appears upon a white horse in a fresco in the Cathedral of Auxerre holding a stick in his hand as a royal sceptre, symbol of power over all nations. The red and black colours of the banner have no symbolic value, since they are colours which recur throughout the figures of the whole pack.
The 16th century Cary sheet (figure 8) ) appears an iconographic variant: the sheet has a lack just in this card, but it is sufficient to illustrate what was an iconography that will establish in the Marseille Tarots (figure 9): a High and central Sun from which start sun drops above two boys. This ensemble leads us to the Neo-Platonist myth concerning the birth of the souls in the generation, as already described about the cards of the Stars and the Moon. About the intellect that is transmitted from the Sun to the Moon so that this last one gives them to the souls that are going to be born on earth, Plutharcus writes that “When the sun with its vital strength once again fecundate her with the intellect seed, the moon produces new souls and earth gives the body” (Plutharcus, The face of the Moon, translation by Luigi Lehnus, 1991, page 114). The two boys therefore represent the new births on earth, in their completeness of body, soul and intellect.
It is necessary to underline the function of divine enlightment which these solar drops, already present in the Cary sheet, have always had for Christianity, and which are amply documented in hagiographic iconography. We can find a significant example in a woodcut in the Liber Chronicarum of 1493 illustrating the conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle on the road to Damascus: the future saint, on horseback, is struck from heaven by celestial drops, by the divine function of enlightening hearts and minds to the faith in Christ (figure 10). On the Marseille Tarot, solar drops fall from the luminary into a pair of twins, who will take on a male and female nature in the esoteric tarots as opposite natures the union of which will lead to the realization of the Great Work.
It is evident, after various iconographical analysis, that some representations of Triumphs are connoted by symbolic polysemies (from the Greek polýsêmos, “with many meanings”, composed by polýs = many and sêma = meaning) due to the confluence of many traditions.
The presence of the two boys under the Sun can be also related with the concept of the "ever young Sun" which was a feature of the thought of the ancients. In fact, they depicted Apollo and Bacchus together as youths, emblems of the Sun and of its youthfulness. Bacchus, in fact, was considered to be “il medesimo, che il Sole” (the same as the Sun): “ It - the Sun - was depicted by the ancients, in his face, as a beardless youth; since Alciato wanted to put youth among his emblems, he painted Apollo and Bacchus, as it is upon these - more than on any other - that it befell to be ever youthful; hence Tibullus says that Bacchus and Phoebus are eternally Young, and the head of both is covered with beautiful, resplendent hair" (Questo - il Sole - fecero gli antichi giovine in viso senza barba, onde volendo l’Alciato ne’suoi emblemi porre la giovinezza, dipinse Apollo e Bacco, come a questi due più, che a gli altri, sia tocco di essere giovani sempre, onde Tibullo dice che Bacco e Febo eternamente Giovani sono, e hanno il capo armato ambi di bella chioma risplendente) (Vincenzo Cartari, Imagini de gli Dei de gli Antichi, page 38, ed. 1609. The first edition of the works was printed in 1556). The illustration (figure 11) of the emblem C. “In Iuventam” in Alciati’ s work (page 418, ed. 1621), shows the two youths “Both the sons of Jove, young and beardless both, one carried in her womb by Latona, the other - also - by Semele, greetings unto you, and may you flourish together with eternal youth, and may this be for me, by your will, as long as possible" (natus uterque Jovis tener atque imberbis uterque, quem Latona tulit, quem tulit et Semele, salvete, eterna simul et florete iuventa, numine sit vestro qua diuturna mihi).
I have come across this concept of the youthfulness of the sun several times also in the work Antiquae Tabulae Marmoreae Solis Effige by Hieronimo Aleandro (pages 17-18, ed. 1616), from which I quote a few lines: “O Sun, ever youthful since as you set - as Fulgentius says in his First Book of Mythology - and rise again, you are always young; or rather, since it never loses its efficacy… on the other hand, the Mythologists say nothing in a more certain manner than the fact that Apollo is one and the same as the Sun, and for this reason they used to maintain that he was usually represented as a youth. In fact, the Sun - as Isidore says in his Book VIII of Origins - rises every day and is born with a new light" (Sol semper juvenis... quia occidendo (inquit Fulgentius primo Mythol.) et renascendo semper est iunior, sive quod nunquam in sua virtute deficiat... at nihil facilius Mythologi affirmant, quam unum, enodunque, cum Sole esse Apollinem, quem ideo adolescentulum fingi solitum dixerunt, quod Sol (inquit Isidor. VII Orig.) quotidie oriatur et nova luce nascatur). Concerning this matter, Cartari writes “ The youthfulness [of the Sun] lets us understand that it is its virtue, and that of Heat, which gives life to the created things, and such virtue is always the same and never ages, so that it becomes weak" (La cui giovinezza - del sole - ci da ad intendere, che la virtù sua, e quel Calore, che da vita alle cose create, è sempre il medesimo e non invecchia mai, si che divenga debole).
The same way of representing the energy, always identical and young, of the sun, is to be found in the depiction of the god Mithras. Strabo the geographer stated that the Persians used to venerate Helios under the name Mithras, and in late Persian, the word Mirh actually means the Sun. In the Avestic hymn to Mithras, white horses draw the chariot of the God, which has a golden wheel, a symbol of the Chariot of the Sun. A relief made on a rock, dating back to the times of the Sassanid sovereign, Ardashir II, in the 4th century AD, shows Mithras with a halo of rays.
In his Annotazioni alle Imagini del Cartari (Notes on the Images of Cartari) Lorenzo Pignoria tells how, in 1606, he saw in Rome, on the Capitoline Hill, a piece of marble depicting Mithras with the words “Deo Sol invict... Mitrhe” and how, among other things, “there were two figures made of stone, one on each side, but in ruin” (p. 293-Ed. 1647). The two figures were Cautes and Cautopates, the two young youthful torchbearers who can be found in the complete representations of the god. One of these is quite well known, and is to be found in the Mithraic cave under the Basilica of Saint Clement in Rome.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, in fact, speaks of Mithras “Triplasios” (Epist. 7,2), that is having a triple form, an affirmation of the substantial identity of the god and of the two torch bearers as a representation of the rising Sun, of the midday Sun and of the setting Sun. Cautes, the youth to the left of the god, is shown with a raised torch, representing the birth of the Sun. Mithras, the midday Sun, is shown slaying a bull (a representation of the victory of the spirit over the terrestrial essence). The youth to the right of the god, Cautopates, holds a lowered torch, signifying the setting of the luminary (figure 12 - Mitra Triplasios, Bologna, City Museum). Sometimes, next to Cautes a cock appears. Cartari, quoting Pausanias, explains that in Greece “...they used to honour the cock as Apollo’s bird, because he would announce the return of the Sun in the morning" (...riverivano il gallo come uccello di Apollo, perché cantando annuncia la mattina il ritorno del Sole) (page 43). Cautopates sometimes appears near an owl, a bird which in fact shows itself after sunset. Cautes and Cautopates respectively became a representation of Lucifer, the star which appears in the morning, and of Hesperus, the evening star.
This symbolic aspect of the Sun, that is its identical energy and its perpetual youth, represented by the solar gods as youths, was well known in the Renaissance, as we have seen from the treatises discussed here, all published in the mid 16th century, and it is plausible to believe that this concept was expressed iconographically in the tarot card of the Sun. We must not forget, in fact, that throughout the Renaissance, the images of the ancient gods used to awaken, among those who observed them, memories of the classical myths, to which a great ethical and moral value was attributed, and that the treatises on these topics were used as reference material in order to illustrate allegories and symbolisms of a Christian nature.
It is even meaningful how the figure of Mithras had a very important role in Neo-Platonic philosophy, as connected not only to the Sun, but even to the Moon: “The relation between Moon - Taurus set by planetary theology, in particular the Iranian one, can be found in images in the Mithras’ representations of the bull that travels on a boat moon sickle shaped (here it evident the relation with the horns of the moon, editor’s note) sometimes ridden by Mithras, the one who submit the primordial waters whose symbol is the scapha (boat)” (Laura Simonini, edited by, Porfirius, De Antro Nimpharum, 1986, page 176). In Christian iconography, Mithras was often represented as a symbol of animal sacrifice (Mithras Tauroctonus, that is, the bull slayer). We find him in this sense in a capital in the cloister of the Monreale Cathedral, dated between 1172 and 1189.
It was also suggested that in the Cary sheet was shown the "Sign of Gemini" commonly depicted in many astrological cycles. An identical Medieval representation can be found at the Calvet Museum in Avignon. This is a bas relief dating back to the 13th century, which comes from the area of Nimes. Both twins appear under the disk of the Sun accompanied by the words Sol in Gemini (figure 13). Identical words appear in many miniatures, bas reliefs or frescoes of the cycle of the months, for example in the famous cycle of the months of Torre Aquila in the Castle of Buonconsiglio in Trent. In each of the twelve frescoes, on the top and in the middle, one can see the disk of the Sun with its rays, and the words SOL IN and to the right the name of the sign of the Zodiac, in the ablative.
It necessary to notice that Apollo, meant as Sun-Apollo, was considered as God of Gemini. About this, we have to refer to the Greek triumphing pantheon divinities in Schifanoia (Cfr: Marco Bertozzi, The tyranny of the Stars. The astrological frescos of Schifanoia Palace, Livorno, 1999).
Macrobius, about the Doors of Cancer, through which the souls goes down to generation, affirms that it must be identified with that zodiacal sign, as point of intersection between the Milky Way and the Zodiac (Macrobius, In Somnum Scipionis, 1, 12, 5). To bear out the thesis that in the card Gemini have been set in relation to the descend of the souls to the generation, it is necessary to think about a generalization of the myth, since the Door of Cancer is connected to the Moon and not to the Sun. But if we consider that Gemini have been set on the card independently from the myth, I believe that it is not a merely astrological representation, but that the presence of the two boys can be put in relation with the concept of “forever young sun” that ancients had or as an emblem of young souls, according to what expressed above. Indeed, through a closer examination of the child in Cary sheet, we note that he wears a hat similar to the one of some minstrels, a kind of small mantle and maybe a little sword, iconographical elements difficult to attribute to the children represented in the Sign of Gemini, being instead game tools typical of youth.