O Fortuna velut luna . . .

Yesterday I did some urban exploring and kept running into capital letter Rs in strange orientations -- upside down, backwards, "lazy," etc. Today, I saw someone wearing a hoodie with a huge blackletter R (normal orientation) and under it -- in Latin, but written as if it were German -- Fortis Fortuna adiuvat -- one of several Latin versions of the proverb "Fortune favors the bold."

This served as a reminder that I had been meaning to post about Fortuna ever since she came up in William Wright's January 26 post "Predators, Manticores, Dwarf-Lions, the Mary Celeste, Sirens, and Illusions." In that post, he discusses a movie called The Last Unicorn, which I have never seen, and a character in it called Mommy Fortuna. Fortuna is the Latin name of the goddess Tyche, ancient mother of all Tychonieviches, and I suppose I show myself her true son in having taken "The highway is for gamblers" as my personal motto.

I thought of the old medieval poem from Carmina Burana which begins O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis -- "O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable." I posted about this back in 2019 as part of a series of posts on the development of the Wheel of Fortune Tarot card. The post even mentions "my august ancestress Tyche or Fortuna herself," tying in with the Mommy Fortuna theme. After holding forth on the philosophical meaning of the symbol, I end with a throwaway pun:

I had no deeper meaning in mind than that cats like to eat tuna, but Túna, as a geographical name from Tolkien's writings, where it is glossed "Hill City," has appeared several times on William Wright's blog, suggesting other possible meanings.

The idea of Fortuna as a single goddess who changes "like the moon" was synchronistically interesting to me. William's post with Mommy Fortuna was largely in response to my own January 25 post "An old pre-dator, chameleons, and le Demiurge." In that post, I discuss the Piers Anthony character Chameleon, who first came up on my blog as the mother of the character Dor. In the novel A Spell for Chameleon, we meet three very different women -- Wynn, Dee, and Fanchon -- who all turn out to be the same person, Chameleon, who undergoes extreme physical and psychological changes in a regular cycle following the phases of the moon. He personal lunar cycle only has three "phases," though.

In my January 5 post "Rapunzel and the True Song of Wandering Aengus," I recount a dream in which a woman going by the pseudonym Claire Delune (i.e. clair de lune, "moonlight") elicited from me a poem about the phases of the moon, but only three phases were mentioned:

From none to half, or half to all,
Or all to half, or half to none
Takes seven days, and this we call
A week, and now my tale is done.

It was the final line of this poem that first got me thinking about Chameleon, by way of her son Dor, as detailed in my January 7 post "My tail is dun."

On January 25, just after posting "An old pre-dator," I posted "Surround, confound," about a dream in which three women were singing. In comments there, William Wright suggested that, though they appeared human, the women in the dream might actually represent spiders. Then he added that they also reminded him of the Sirens.

That checks out. There were three Sirens according to Hesiod and many later writers (though not Homer, oddly), and as William notes there is something spider-like in the way the Sirens passively wait for victims to be drawn into their trap.

Then I thought of another female trio from myth: the Fates. One of them, Clotho, even has the spiderly task of spinning thread. Fate and fortune are clearly closely related concepts, which can be personified either as a single changeable woman (Fortuna) or as three different women (the Fates). Just as Wynn, Dee, and Fanchon in A Spell for Chameleon are aspects of a single woman, Chameleon; there is another Piers Anthony novel, With a Tangled Skein (which I have not read), in which Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos are aspects of a single Irishwoman.

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Several things have conspired to make me think of a Tarot card in connection with all this -- and no, not the Wheel of Fortune, but Strength.

First, the hoodie I saw today used fortis instead of the more canonical audentes. The card called Strength in English is Fortezza in Italian and Force in French, both of which derive from fortis.

Second, the card features an orange-colored tame feline, like the "Oh, for tuna!" image.

Third, in my October 2020 post "Can the deck itself be prophetic?" I discuss how the structure of the Rider-Waite deck itself successfully predicts the outcomes of five U.S. presidential elections in a row. (It strongly predicted a Trump win in 2020, though, which failed to play out.) In connecting the eighth trump with the 2008 election, I identified the woman on the card with Barack Obama's mother. Her name was Dunham, which means "hill home" -- a close cousin to the "Hill City" of Túna

Fourth, when I ran an image search for fortune favors the bold, this was one of the results:

Fifth, wolves have been in the sync stream, which prompted regular commenter Debbie (Ra1119bee) to leave a comment on this morning's post "The pillar of blackness" about how wolves have been paranormally associated with her. The first time she told me that story was in response to an email I sent her back in October 2021, just a few days after we first "met" online. I had written (edited slightly for privacy):

The other day, as I often do when some new person enters my life, I asked, "So who is this Debbie lady?" and drew a single Tarot card from the Rider-Waite deck. I got Strength, which portrays a woman with a lion. As I have detailed elsewhere on my blog, this image likely descends from pictures of Samson killing a lion -- with Samson's long hair causing someone along the line to mistake him for a woman. The idea of a "female Samson" relates directly to your name: Samson was one of the 12 biblical Judges, and the only female Judge -- the only woman ever to play Samson's role -- was Deborah. Note also that when Samson returned to look at the body of the lion he had killed, "behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion" (Judges 14:8).

On August 19 . . . I had posted about the version of this card that appears in the music video for the Grateful Dead song "Ripple" (https://magicianstable.blogspot.com/2021/08/strength-in-grateful-dead-ripple-video.html). In the "Ripple" version, the woman is black and wears a crown of red flowers. . . . The "Ripple" version also removes the Samson imagery, replacing the lion with a wolf.

Debbie had replied with her wolf stories, explaining how the wolf version fit her even better than the lion. So reading those stories again today was yet another factor steering my attention to the Strength card.

Sixth, one of the things William Wright says about Mommy Fortuna in his post is that "she captures an old harmless lion, and has him appear as a fearsome Manticore."

Out of the strong came forth sweetness.

Briton Rivière, Una and the Lion (1880)

In my last post (qv), I hypothesized that the Strength card of the Tarot de Marseille originated when a depiction of Samson -- long-haired, beardless, and labeled with the grammatically feminine title La Fortezza or La Force -- was misinterpreted as being a woman. (Something similar seems to have happened to no less a personage than Jesus Christ in the World card.)

Visconti-Sforza Tarot, Tübinger Hausbuch, P. Madenié Tarot

As can be seen above, the earliest surviving Tarot cards (painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza family) used Hercules rather than Samson as a representation of the virtue of Fortitude. The hero's identity is made clear by his short hair and by the fact that he carries a club. (Hercules first stunned the Nemean lion with his club and then strangled it with his bare hands; when Samson killed his lion, though, "he had nothing in his hand.")

While depictions of Hercules and the Nemean lion typically show the hero using his club or else grappling with the beast after the fashion of a Greek wrestler, Samson is almost universally depicted holding the lion's jaws open. This may seem strange -- wouldn't you want to hold its jaws closed? -- but reflects the biblical language. While Hercules bludgeoned and strangled his adversary, Samson "rent him as he would have rent a kid" (Judges 14:6). Pictures like the one in the Tübinger Hausbuch show him preparing to tear the beast in two.

The woman in the Tarot de Marseille also holds the lion's jaws open with her hands -- a pose specific to Samson, for a specific biblical reason. For me, this is conclusive evidence confirming my earlier speculation. The Strength card of the TdM came into being as a corruption of what was originally a picture of Samson -- the mistake being facilitated by his long hair and by the strangely androgynous faces so common in medieval and Renaissance art.

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But when it comes to the development of the Tarot, the oldest cards are not always the truest, and a mistake is not always just a mistake. There is evolution at work here -- perhaps literal memetic evolution by natural selection (where only such mistakes as improve the card are preserved and copied), perhaps something more mysterious.

Hercules and the Nemean lion is just a standard hero-slays-monster story, with nothing particularly interesting about it. Vico, though, sees it is a symbolic representation of razing the forests of Nemea so that the land could be cultivated.

In the Samson story, this connection between killing the lion and providing food becomes more explicit, as Samson returns to the lion's carcass some time later and finds honey in it. This is the basis of his famous riddle:

Out of the eater came something to eat.
Out of the strong came something sweet.

I have quoted a version that rhymes -- it's a riddle, it has to rhyme! -- but the King James version says, "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness" (Judges 14:14). The answer, discovered by his enemies through the treachery of his Philistine girlfriend, is "What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?" (v. 18).

The woman in the TdM image cannot be identified as any particular historical or mythological person, but I have illustrated this post with Briton Rivière's Una and the Lion -- a scene from Spenser -- because that is who she (anachronistically) reminds me of. Waite apparently thought likewise; his Strength card includes the Spenserian detail of the lion's licking Una's hand.

It fortuned out of the thickest wood
   A ramping Lyon rushed suddainly,
   Hunting full greedie after saluage blood;
   Soone as the royall virgin he did spy,
   With gaping mouth at her ran greedily,
   To haue attonce deuour'd her tender corse:
   But to the pray when as he drew more ny,
   His bloudie rage asswaged with remorse,
And with the sight amazd, forgat his furious forse.

In stead thereof he kist her wearie feet,
   And lickt her lilly hands with fawning tong,
   As he her wronged innocence did weet.
   O how can beautie maister the most strong,
   And simple truth subdue auenging wrong?
   Whose yeelded pride and proud submission,
   Still dreading death, when she had marked long,
   Her hart gan melt in great compassion,
And drizling teares did shed for pure affection.

And what is this but Samson's riddle completed? Out of the strong came forth sweetness, and out of the sweet came forth strength.

Samson and the Strength card

Rider-Waite Tarot

One of the deepest and most evocative cards in the Tarot is the trump called variously, Fortitude, Force, or Strength -- showing not some powerful warrior or strongman, but rather a peaceful, serene young woman gently and effortlessly controlling a lion.

As I say, an evocative image. Did it originate by mistake? By what I have taken to calling a Jungian slip?

Today I happened to be (virtually) flipping through the Tübinger Hausbuch, a German tome of the mid-15th century, full of medical, astrological, and geomantic lore, and lavishly illustrated. The picture below (left) caught my eye because of its striking similarity to the Strength card.

Tübinger Hausbuch (left); Pierre Madenié Tarot (right)

I have already noted the convention of depicting Samson holding a lion's jaws open and pointed out two examples from West Minster. The West Minster Samsons are, as is usual, bearded -- Nazarites didn't shave, right? -- but the Tübinger Hausbuch shows him beardless and with flowing golden locks, so that -- were it not for the familiarity of the image, and the helpful scroll in the background labeled "Samson der something-or-other," we just might mistake the Hebrew Hercules for a woman!

Could anyone actually make such a mistake in the Middle Ages, though? Surely the story of Samson, and the associated iconography, would be much too familiar to cause any such confusion.

But suppose we decided Samson was the perfect embodiment of the Classical virtue of fortitude and, instead of labeling his image Samson, wrote instead La Fortezza or La Force -- feminine nouns both. Then would a mistake become more plausible?

More Tarot-relevant art from York Minster

From Joseph Halfpenny's Gothic Ornament: Architectural Motifs from York Cathedral (1795).

This is, I suppose, an abbess, but her crozier might easily cause her to be mistaken for a female bishop, and her crown (unusual but not unheard-of for an abbess) is something one associates with the papacy. She is also holding a book, as is the Female Pope of the Tarot.

These two depictions of Samson show that holding a lion's jaws open (as in the Strength card of the Tarot) was standard symbolic shorthand for victory over that beast.