What is the significance of the animal on the Noblet Fool card? I pick the Noblet in particular because it is the only one where the animal is clearly reaching for the man’s testicles. Later ones cover up this detail. Also, this is the only one in which the animal has webbed feet. I think it is important to call it “the animal” rather than “the dog.” In an earlier post on this thread (
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=383&start=20#p6495) I suggested it might be an imaginary animal. I gave some 15th century engraved examples, some of which were as closely related to dogs as the Noblet animal is.
I have been looking at 16th and 17th century alchemical illustrations lately, to see whether there is any relation between them and Noblet. I found the following,
It is from Johann Daniel Milius’s
Philosophia reformata, 1622. Admittedly, this animal is not reaching for any testicles. However the lady is probably a symbol of something for which testicles might be another symbol. This animal is more fear-inspiring than the one on the card, less domesticated-looking, and it doesn’t have webbed feet.
Here is what de Rola, from whose
Golden Game (p. 172) I get this image, says about it (p. 180):
Every fixation of the Volatile (the fleeing maiden caught by the monster) is followed by a volatization of the Fixed until Perfection is reached.
I am not sure what “fixation of the volatile” and vice versa mean, but it would seem to be something that pertains to the whole of the work, from beginning to end. As such, it is suitable for a card that has no definite place in the sequence. I would guess that “volatile” is a term that would fit the Fool. A madman is someone who overreacts to everything, reading everything with suspicion one minute and with total innocence the next, and either overwrought to the point of mania or over-depressed to the point of suicidality. Helping him to achieve a state of calm and steadiness is a worthy endeavor, and not just for alchemists: countless psychiatric treatment centers have tried and failed. Removing the testicles used to be standard treatment in mental institutions.
I looked for other representatives, in de Rola's commentary to Mylius's work, of fixed and volatile and their interpenetration. (The images alone are at
http://www.hermetik.ch/eidolon/bilder/d ... /index.htm.) In other emblems in the same work, the fixed is usually a male lion (#4, #5, #16, #23, #26, #4 of 2nd series). In one it is a king (#11), and in another it is a hermaphrodite on a tomb (#14). The volatile is a winged dragon (#4), a queen (#16), a serpent (#5), a winged lioness (#23), the god Mercury (#26), and an eagle (#14 and #4 of second series). In #11 it is unclear to me who the volatile is. In #4 of the second series, their reconciliation is a salamander (
http://www.hermetik.ch/eidolon/bilder/d ... 622_52.htm). The salamander supposedly could live in the fire unaltered by it (see e.g. Emblem XXIX at
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/atl26-0.html).
In Mylius’s
Anatomia auri, 1628, the Volatile is represented by Mercury as a winged-footed Queen; the Fixed is a fire-breathing King. These are shown on the bottom branches of a tree and thus at the beginning of the Work (de Rola p. 207, or
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10127432@N00/2692957518/, among many sites on the Web).
I looked for representations of fixed and volatile in other engravings by the same publisher and family of engravers as Mylius. In Michael Maier’s
Symnbola Aureae mensae, 1617, the second emblem shows a small, tailless, doglike creature on the ground, chaining an eagle:
De Rola’s comment is “The Volatization of the Fixed, and the Fixation of the Volatile, constitute the whole of the Work” (p. 114). He also observes that the alchemist looking on is Avicenna. Fabricius, in his discussion of the engraving, quotes Maier’s commentary on the engraving: “The eagle flying through the air and the toad crawling on the ground are the magistry” (
Alchemy, p. 55). The doglike creature is actually a toad.
So the toad is a symbol of the Fixed. (It also is one image for the “first matter” of alchemy, as Adam MacLean explains at
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/toad.html. Our images thus are that which O’Neill could not find, to connect the "prima materia" with the Fool, in his
Tarot Symbolism, p. 276. See my post at
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=647#p9670.) From this image of the Fixed as a toad, I think I can say more. I recognize that toad from alchemist George Ripley’s
Vision, 15th century, and art historian Laurinda Dixon’s analysis of Bosch’s
Adoration of the Magi.
Here is Ripley’s
Vision.I have indicated the most relevant lines in red:
When busie at my Book I was upon a certaine night,
This Vision here exprest appear'd unto my dimmed sight:
A Toade full rudde I saw, did drink the juice of Grapes so fast,
Till over charged with the broth, his Bowels all to brast:
And after that, from poyson'd bulke he cast his venome fell,
For greif and pain whereof his Members all began to swell;
With drops of poysoned sweate approaching thus his secret Den,
His cave with blasts of fumous ayre he all be-whited then:
And from the which in space a golden humour did ensue,
Whose falling drops from high did staine the soil with ruddy hue.
And when this Corps the force of vitall breath began to lacke,
This dying Toade became forthwith like Coale for colour blacke:
Thus drowned in his proper veynes of poysoned flood,
For tearme of eightie dayes and fowre he rotting stood;
By triall then this venome to expell I did desire,
For which I did committ his carkase to a gentle fire;
Wich done, a wonder to the sight, but more to be rehear’st,
The Toade with Colours rare through every side was pear’st,
And White appeared when all the sundry hewes were past,
Which after being tincted Rudde, for evermore did last.
Then of the venome handled thus a medicine I did make,
Which venome kills and saveth such as venome chance to take.
Glory be to him the graunter of such secret wayes,
Dominion, and Honour, both with Worship, and with Prayse. AMEN.
(from Lynn Thorndike, A history of magic and experimental science, vol. IV, p. 353.)
To put the process briefly: A toad eats some grape juice and starts excreting poison from his bowels, which kills it. So as to expel the venom, Ripley subjects the toad’s body to gentle heat; it turns various colors, starting with black, then white, and then red again, where it stays. The resulting fluid is now a potent medicine.
In other words, the venom, extracted from the poisonous body and excreta of the toad, becomes the elixir. But it is a rather odd elixir: it sometimes kills, or so I read the third-to-last line.
Toads had a symbolic life outside of alchemy. Dixon tells us that they were a symbol of human sinfulness (
Bosch, p. 224):
Chemical theory relegated toads to the lowest sphere of creation, for they were believed to arise spontaneously form the action of heat on rotted substances. Their low nature is also reflected in Christian iconography, which associated toads with sin and heresy. Chemical texts picture them as symbols of nigredo, upon which the entire process rests. Like Christ, they must be killed before their resurrection into perfected substance.
In this tradition, Hieronymus Bosch's
Adoration of the Magi shows as one of the gifts a small golden sculpture of the sacrifice of Isaac. The sculpture is supported by toads. Below is the relevant detail (Dixon p. 208).
To see this detail in contact, look to the lower right on the ground in the reproduction at
http://www.lib-art.com/artgallery/7274- ... bosch.html.
The sacrifice of Isaac was seen as a precursor to the Crucifixion. Hence the sculpture symbolizes the redemption of the toads beneath. A similar redemption is implied in the alchemical transformations described by Ripley: the end result of the toad's transformation is the elixir. If the toad is human sinfulness, the alchemical sequence could also be an "imitatio Christi” within the human soul.
My thought is that the creature on the Fool card is symbolically equivalent to the toad. But it is more than sinfulness; it is also the material basis of salvation.
The juice of the grape, as in the poem’s fourth line, is the fruit of the tree of knowledge, by which humanity plunged into sin. But it is also the “happy fault” by which humanity, after much purifying suffering, may regain immortality. Even after purification, salvation is up to God. The elixir is the Last Judgment, which is death to some and life to others, by God’s grace. Grape juice is also the sacrament of Christ’s blood, transubstantiated wine.
On the Noblet Fool card, the animal is grabbing for the Fool’s equivalent of the grapes, his testicles. The animal is the fixed, which needs to become volatilized. Eating the grapes will do that; their effect is like wine.
In my earlier post (
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=383&start=20#p6495), I compared the animal to the goat that was sacrificed in the Roman-era Dionysian rites. According to Virgil, its sin was eating the young grapes on the vine. (In that regard he is like the “little foxes” in the Song of Songs, who also would eat the Shulamite’s grapes, so to speak, before their time.) So the goat, who as an individual is probably innocent of the crime, must be dismembered, boiled, roasted, and eaten, all in a sacred way. That is exactly what happened to the young Dionysus-Zagreus at the hands of the Titans. The creature is thus the god whose sacrifice atones for the sins of his fellows.
In my view, Ripley’s toad, and the creature on the Fool card, are Christianizations of this Dionysian tradition. The transformations of the toad are the transformations of the Christ-spirit within humanity, imbibed in the eating of God the Father’s spiritual testicles (the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge). The tarot sequence accomplishes similar transformations. In the Death card, for example we see not only Death but also dismemberment, with human body parts on the ground.
Toads, most of them, do not have webbed feet. They are merely animals that are at home both on land and in the water, amphibians. So why does the creature on the card have webbed feet? I think it is to make the relationship to water evident: the creature represents the element of water, to the Fool’s fire. The application of water on fire calms the fire. The chemicals present in the water then transform it.
I get some confirmation of my theory, with additional alchemical imagery, from the illustrations to another Ripley poem, the “Scrowle." Although apparently written in the 15th century, perhaps with some sort of illustrations (if it was originally intended as a scroll), a very handsome version was done in 1588. The entire illumination, from which I am focusing on salient details, is at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... Scroll.JPG. In addition to this one, many other copies were made, including printed ones (although some discreetly omitted the details I find of most interest).
Here is the toad, near the bottom of the long, narrow sheet.
You will have noticed the webs. In this version, the toad is being eaten by the dragon: a case of the fixation of the volatile. What spurts out of the toad’s mouth is a red liquid called “the tayming Venome.” That phrase corresponds to a couplet in Ripley’s poem (
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/ripscrol.html). The poet is speaking in the person of the Stone, which here is in the form of a dragon. I--the poet says--
...That sometyme was both wood and wild,
And now I am both meeke and mild;..
So the outcome is much as I have speculated about the calming of the Fool.
I cannot read what is written below the dragon. I think it has something to do with the “Sonne,” who nught be Christ. In the poem, it appears that eating the toad kills the dragon:
And downe in his Den shall lye full lowe:
Iswel'd as a Toade that lyeth on ground,
Burst with bladders fitting so round,
They shall to brast and lye full plaine,
And thus with craft the Serpent is slaine:
It is the same as in the “Vision,” but with the addition of the dragon.
The poem also makes a very clear allusion, in its only mention of fixation, to the blood of Christ.
Now maketh hard that was lix,
...And causeth him to be fix.
Of my blood and water I wis,
Plenty in all the World there is.
It runneth in every place;
Who it findeth he hath grace:
But in much of the scroll’s illumination--its most interesting aspects, in fact--I do not see an equivalent in the verses at all.
In the top portion of the scroll is a very toad-like woman—with webbed feet, even—reaching down to a somewhat toad-like man.
The woman is labeled “Spiritus” and the man “Anima,” that is, spirit and soul. The woman has a tail, suggesting the serpent in the garden of Eden—in other words, the bringer of death; but since she is climbing the tree, in the direction of heaven, she also represents eternal life.
Above the tree, at the very top of the scroll, a very demiurgic, God-the-Father-looking, enormous alchemist holding a flask with representations of the various operations—and the toad again, spewing his life-giving, life-taking venom.
On the tree itself, you will have noticed clusters of grapes. At the base of the tree, in the middle of the scroll, a man and a woman seem to be eating from them.
This pair is not the same as the pair further up, because they are labeled Sol and Luna rather than Soul and Spirit, and the man has a beard. They are the alchemical equivalent of Adam and Eve. The monks looking on are alchemists, identifiable by the flasks they hold.
To find “Spiritus” and “Anima” again, we have to go down one more level, below Sol and Luna’s water bath. Here is what we see:
The two figures have their feet in a pool of fire. Here is a closer look, in case the labels are hard to read. They are soul and spirit, with the large man in the middle as body.
They are clearly the pair that transform into toadlike humans further up. Notice that the woman is also labeled “water.” She is the agent-to-be of a water-based fixation process. And since they will be ascending the tree, what is fixated is also being volatilized.
The Noblet Fool card thus seems to me an example of the tarot borrowing imagery and symbolism from the alchemical emblems of the time. It is not a question of the designer of the card having seen the “Scrowle” and used what he saw; it is simply that an alchemical convention for indicating fixation by water-based solution was adopted by the Noblet designer to indicate, for those inclined to see, the corresponding spiritual process.