EUGIM wrote:
" In the suits of Swords and Batons,the original ranking of the cards was (in descending order ) : King,Queen,Knight and Jack,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,Ace.
While i the other two suits of Cups and Coins,it was King,Queen,Knight and Jack.Ace,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.
In the figures of the fool and the juggler, Moakley saw a figure of lent, an ending of carnival. In such a Christian context, we may then read into the 40 pips a remembrance to the forty days of lent.
According to St. Augustine, the number 7 represents the creature (because God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days, and on the 7th he rested). The number 3 represents the creator, Father and Son and Holy spirit. The number 10 represents a proper understanding of the relationship between creator and creation and the fullness of wisdom. Dispensed in time we arrive at the number 40, because the number 4 is a marker of temporal time, as there are four seasons in the year and four markers of the day (midnight, sunrise, midday, sunset) and 10x4 is 40. That is why we fast 40 days “to signify that in this time it is necessary to abstain from love of the things of time. That, I mean, is what is signified by those total fasts for forty days. For the same reason the people of Israel too was led through the desert for forty years, before it could enter the promised land to reign in it. In the same way we too in this life, full of endless anxieties, of fear, of danger from temptations and trials, are being led as it were through the desert by a temporal dispensation. But when we have made a good passage through the number forty, that is, lived good lives in this temporal dispensation, walking according to the commandments of God, we shall receive as wages the tenner of the faithful; because the Lord too, when he hired workmen for the vineyard, gave them a tenner as their wages. He gave them all a tenner, both those he had hired early in the morning, and those at midday, and those at the end of the day, all of them a tenner.”
As St. Augustine considers the four as a marker of time, the relationship to such over day and year relate to the culmination from one point to another, on the rise and fall of the sun, from midnight to midday, from solstice to solstice, rising and falling like our ranks of pips. As a mark of our love of God, we disdain our love for the things of time, from perfect love of God comes love for ourselves and our neighbour.
