Tarot of Marseilles This card shows a woman pouring liquid both onto dry land and into the water. Eight stars shine above her, symbolising the fact that seventeen can also be seen as 1+7=8. The number eight can also be seen as an infinity symbol, and the stars were believed to be made of an everlasting substance. The eighth Tarot card is Justice, associated with duty, good conduct, virtue, and consequence. Seventeen was an unlucky number for Italians, and it was also considered unlucky by Pythagoreans, who called this number "the Barrier". According to the Seeress of Prevorst, seventeen symbolises the participation in two worlds, celestial and terrestrial. Henry Blanquart agrees that it "represents the junction between the material world and the spiritual world". According to Jâbir Ibn Hayyân, alchimist and Sufi, the number seventeen represents the balance of each thing. The Greeks called this number "antiphraxis" meaning "interposition" bec...

Tarot of Marseilles Thirteen, that dreaded number, is considered unlucky by many, but why? The number is associated with the moon in all cultures, because there are approximately 12.4 lunations per solar year. This means that there are always twelve lunations in a year, from which we derive our twelve months, but there is one lunation which straddles the old year and the new year. Thirteen therefore represents an inbetween time. In the Anglo-Saxon calendar, the number of full moons was counted from winter solstice to winter solstice. Most of the time there would be twelve full moon but sometimes there would be thirteen. If there were thirteen then an extra month of the year was inserted at the time of the summer solstice, making the summer a whole month longer than usual. The Summerland is a concept of an afterlife paradise where good souls live inbetween incarnations. This concept was devised in the 19th century by a Spiritualist called Andrew Jackson Davis. The concept of a Summ...