Queen of Tarot

The ancient wisdom of the cards

Prudence Tarot Card Meaning and Art Court de Gebelin Trumps

Designation

Prudence

About the Deck

Court de Gebelin Trumps

Drawn by Court de Gebelin in attempt to show that the Tarot was Egyptian in origin, these cards represent the height of circular logic. They are far more eighteenth-century than they are Egyptian, and in any case they are basically a reproduction of the far older Marseilles pattern tarot deck, with some ideological changes to help him prove his own point.

Provenance

Court de Gebelin. France, 1781.

Tags

trumps-12, prudence

According to Many Schools of Thought

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings

The Hanged Man. This is the symbol which is supposed to represent Prudence, and Eliphas Levi says, in his most shallow and plausible manner, that it is the adept bound by his engagements. The figure of a man is suspended head-downwards from a gibbet, to which he is attached by a rope about one of his ankles. The arms are bound behind him, and one leg is crossed over the other. According to another, and indeed the prevailing interpretation, he signifies sacrifice, but all current meanings attributed to this card are cartomancists' intuitions, apart from any real value on the symbolical side. The fortune-tellers of the eighteenth century who circulated Tarots, depict a semi-feminine youth in jerkin, poised erect on one foot and loosely attached to a short stake driven into the ground.

S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings

Upright

Self-sacrifice, Sacrifice, Devotion, Bound

Reversed

Selfishness, Unbound, Partial sacrifice.

Papus's Divinatory Meanings

Trials. Sacrifice.