Gryphon + Mock Turtle = Cherubim

Mock turtle soup is traditionally made with a calf's head, and so the Mock Turtle in Alice is portrayed as a turtle with the head, tail, and back hooves of a calf. Its companion, the Gryphon, is of course part lion and part eagle.

This comes very close to matching the four component creatures of the Cherubim. According to Ezekiel, the Cherubim had the faces of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle. In John’s adaptation of this imagery in Revelation, the ox actually becomes a calf. In the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, we have these same four -- except that the man is replaced with a turtle.This substitution is astrologically justified. The four creatures of the Cherubim represent the fixed signs of the zodiac -- Aquarius, Leo, Taurus, and Scorpio -- but the scorpion is replaced by the nearby constellation of Aquila, the Eagle. The man stands for Aquarius, and in Chinese astrology Aquarius belongs to the Black Tortoise. Thus, the turtle can stand in for Aquarius.

According to Ezekiel, the Cherubim had feet like "a calf's foot" and "the hands of a man." This maps perfectly to the Mock Turtle, whose "feet" are calf's hooves and whose "hands" are the flippers of a turtle (corresponding to Aquarius and thus to the man).

In Ezekiel, each Cherub looks the same, and each is a combination of all four creatures. In Revelation, there are four different Cherubim, each corresponding to only one of the four creatures. Lewis Carroll is intermediate between the two, having two different Cherubim, each combining two of the four creatures.

The World card of the Tarot follow's John's schema, with four distinct Cherubim, but notice how perfectly it corresponds to the illustration from Alice above: On the left, Aquarius and Taurus (the Mock Turtle); on the right, Scorpio and Leo (the Gryphon); in the center, a human female with her body turned toward the Gryphon but her face turned toward the Mock Turtle.

Just as the Eagle is above the Lion on the World card, the eagle parts of the Gryphon are above the lion parts. The Mock Turtle has calf parts at both the top and the bottom, with the turtle parts in the middle, so it doesn't map quite so perfectly.