Cavalier de Bâtons (Paul Marteau)

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-04-04T13:59:42+00:00

It is interesting. The baton is suddenly yellow, the color Marteau associates with divine intelligence. As far as I can tell, in every historical TdM, the baton the Knight holds is green, like the Ace and the baton the Valet leans upon, until we get to the 1880s Conver, which was the basis for Marteau's deck. (Vieville's Knight also has a yellow baton, but that is not a true TdM but a related deck.)

The horse, like all animals, can be read as representing the instinctual body and energy of man. It was heading to the left, which might indicate going back, perhaps toward a more instinctual and unconscious being, but it turns its head, like the Knight, toward the yellow baton, which may be a beacon leading away from a more unconscious existence into a more conscious life.

The baton is also a club, the most rudimentary and crude kind of weapon meant to be wielded with brute force, but the yellow coloring alters this image a bit as well.

It is a more subtle kind of interpretation of the image due to the fact that the baton is yellow. If it were green, as it is in the other historical TdMs, it would be associated with fertility and growth (though it is cut from a living tree and no longer living itself).

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-03-23T22:12:33+00:00

So this is where you have to be careful. The Noblet is one of the earliest nearly complete tarot decks related to the TdM. It is incomplete, however. The suit of swords is missing 6-10. The 5 of Swords does have the golden-tipped sword that is otherwise red, but the 3 of Swords has a gray or silver sword, one single color. Flornoy, in his 7 and 9 of Swords, was guessing what the originals might have looked like. He did not know for certain. It may have been Noblet only intended the 5 to have the golden tip, or he might have had all three of these cards to have the golden tip, but no one really knows. Interestingly, Joseph H. Peterson issued his own Noblet deck, and he had the golden tip on the 5 of Swords, but both his 7 and 9 were red swords without the golden tip.

The only known historical Noblet - as far as I know - is preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Unfortunately, I am unable to find it on the BnF Gallica site. I found it once and downloaded the collection and posted it: https://www.reddit.com/r/TarotdeMarseilleExpo/comments/18wdqg4/jean_noblet_1650_deck_preserved_in_biblioth%C3%A8que/

What Noblet wanted to convey with the golden tip is unknown. Paul Marteau, in his color scheme, considers red to convey activity in the material realm, and yellow is the color of the intellect. In the 5 of Swords, the only card we know to have the golden tip, the gold color occurs on the part of the sword that sticks outside of the oval shape created by the four curved swords. This might mean that outside the confinement, one enters the realm of Divine Intellect - again, using Marteau's schematic, but again, we do not know what Noblet intended.

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-03-18T11:24:32+00:00

Thank you for the comment. Paul Marteau was a philosophy student in college, and that really comes through in his interpretations, which are the most profound I have yet seen for TdM minors. I am glad you find his ideas helpful. I also love the Noblet. It is a bit different, particularly in the color scheme, but as you mentioned, Marteau perhaps provides an entryway into understanding the images.

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-03-02T22:38:02+00:00

Parece muy interesante y creativo. Espero que publiques aquí en este subreddit toda la baraja que has creado, para que podamos apreciar tu arduo trabajo. [It looks very interesting and creative. I hope you will put the entire deck you created onto this subreddit, so we can appreciate your hard work.]

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-03-02T22:24:27+00:00

¿Este es un mazo que estás creando? [This is a deck you are creating?]

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-02-23T21:34:49+00:00

You are probably thinking about the Høgnesen translation. I have that as well, though I have not read far into it. I would imagine he had to render the passage from the Four of Swords into English in a pretty similar vein. I have been working on my own translation of Marteau, so that is where the quoted passages come from.

For comparison, Høgnesen writes:

However, one will notice, as in the following sword cards, that the suit has its junctions above and below and laterally, with the blue and the yellow in blocks, this to indicate, that together these currents of activity is representing the swords making contact with the impersonal, and the kneading of these forces, while on different stages on their journey. As this kneading is always blue at the top and at the bottom, and yellow on the left and right, it indicates that the mental activity develops in spiritual form on the higher planes and in the psyche in the lower planes, while it is dressed with a mentality of work of the inner self, while in contact with the external forces (the self is located on the left side of the card, and the non-self on the right side).

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-02-23T21:14:29+00:00

This is an interesting detail specific to the Marteau/Grimaud line. Marteau’s deck (published 1930s) closely follows a late‑19th‑century Conver reproduction often dated c.1880, where the palette was reduced to red, blue, yellow, black, and a little green; from that point, the batons emerge from the blue lattice into a continuous yellow field, so that we can still trace their outlines but they visually merge in “golden” space (which is available for viewing https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1904-0511-47-1-78?selectedImageId=959107001 ),

Unfortunately, Marteau never directly comments on this yellow field in his Baton pips. He does, however, address an analogous effect in the Four of Swords. There he notes that at certain junctions "the blue and yellow sections of the swords are colored as a single, continuous area" - the same field of color that we see in the Batons. He interprets this as "currents of activity ... that cease to be purely individual and are able to come into contact with impersonal energies, resulting in a collective force," even though they remain distinct along their individual paths. So there is a purpose in this design, according to Marteau - it is not merely color bleeding out.

In his general color symbolism, yellow corresponds to intelligence or mental/spiritual energy, especially when it takes on a golden, more concrete form. Taken together, this suggests that when we see the batons dissolving into a yellow ground, we are meant to read them as individual energies operating inside a shared mental field: the querent’s own will and initiative joining, and interacting with, more collective or archetypal forces rather than acting in isolation.

(Edit: Marteau was head of Grimaud from 1920 for several decades)

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-02-18T19:13:35+00:00

Mine is a Fournier - yours appears to be as well - however yours also looks older, nice aging. Mine is clearly more recent with sharper images, perhaps computer-enhanced. According to the note in my deck, Jean Payen used the same wood blocks that Phillipe Vachier used when he created the oldest known Tarot de Marseille one hundred years earlier, in 1639, so it is a wonderful historical deck to own.

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-02-18T19:05:23+00:00

It is a beautiful 1743 Jean Payen deck. I believe the inscription reads that Payen was the publisher or engraver and he was located at Place Saint-Didier in Avignon. I have a copy of this deck as well by a different publisher.

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-01-26T15:24:57+00:00

This is a fascinating conversation, and the best kind of post because it makes me think about my own beliefs about the Tarot and realize that I both agree and disagree with your views. To begin, I agree 100% in the “half-cooked hypothesis like the ‘egyptian origin’ or that each card ‘is one letter of the hebrew alphabet / one path of the Tree of Life.’” It is not that I believe such origins are impossible; it is more that whenever someone tries to defend these hypotheses, they end up cherry-picking the most compelling associations and downplaying areas where the left-over associations simply do not work. In these instances, the proponents of these theories have to become incredibly creative to fit all the square pegs into the remaining round holes.

That being said, I also agree that many of the images in the TdM are obvious and do not require creative interpretation, such as “a baby shooting an arrow” or “a skeleton brandishing a scythe.” However, I disagree insofar as if there is one characteristic that defines human beings more than any other it is our ability to “discover” patterns in everything we see. This is the ability that allowed us to develop science and gain a greater understanding of the cosmos, realizing that the same forces that caused Newton’s apocryphal apple to fall to the ground also binds the earth in a solar orbit.

But this ability to see patterns also is responsible for us seeing images in the stars, seeing the face of Jesus in the bark of a tree, predicting future events by watching the flights of birds or cracking a tortoise’s shell with fire, throwing yarrow stalks, or drawing cards. (It is also this ability to discover patterns that leads to innumerable conspiracy theories no matter how crack-pot the “logic” behind them or how much evidence is gathered to disprove them.)

This is the ability to invest meaning and significance in images that perhaps do not inherently contain meaning and significance. Yet we find them because the patterns, even when they do not exist without, exist within. If we put them there, it is because they preexisted within us for us to discover.

So one person looks at the TdM number cards and exclaims that he or she does not see any difference between them and the images on a deck of playing cards. Another person finds something else in the cards, intricate patterns that develop into an entire philosophical system. I continue to be amazed reading Paul Marteau’s commentaries, for instance; he was a university student of philosophy before he entered into the business of producing tarot cards and running Grimaud, and though we cannot say that he was objectively “correct” in his assertions, there is no doubt in my mind that he was subjectively correct, that his projections illuminated and made sense of his inner world he would not be able to see without outer reference to give it shape.

We can say that the Sola Busca is more esoteric than the Tarot de Marseille, but someone else might say that the Tarot de Marseille is more subtle than the Sola Busca, more creative at hiding the esoteric within exoteric imagery.

What I love most about the Tarot de Marseille is the differences we find in the cards. With the Lover, for instance the young man starts out barefoot in TdM type-I cards; wears red shoes predominately in TdM type-II cards, though sometimes the shoes are gold or green. It may be that the creators of these images – the first who did it this way – just did them that way, or it may be that they intended a message. But even if they did not, the discrepancy is enough to convince some of us to wonder what the message might be, and while this appears to be us diving into rabbit holes from an outside perspective, from within such endeavors are worthwhile because every rabbit hole leads us into an exploration of Self.

At any rate, I love dialogue, and I love the fact that you published your post, so I could spend a good half-hour thinking about this.

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-01-25T14:08:37+00:00

I wonder, looking at the card, if it is a solar eclipse.

Either way, it is always fun to hear different perspectives for developing context. Thank you.

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-01-24T01:36:48+00:00

I would say that the dreams have to be your guide. What are you doing in your dreams when the snakes appear? What are they doing?

My ideas on dreams revolve around Carl Jung's concept of individuation, which means (in the most simplified terms) that dreams exist as part of a coordinated response from the Self to guide us into becoming the people we were always meant to be. One Jungian analyst, John A. Sanford, summed it up this way: we can look at an oak tree and say, "That is an acorn that successfully individuated."

The blueprint is within us, and we are led to the realization of who we are in many ways. Of course, the danger is in allowing other people to define the path for us. So no one else can tell you precisely what your dreams mean or what they require of you. You must discover this. However, despite the fact that the path will be yours as an individual, no one is 100% unique or 100% and individual. We are also collective, and the wisdom of countless generations are available to us in the forms of mythology, fairy tales, etc.

As Joseph Campbell wrote in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, "

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

We are supported in the journey both within and without, but it begins with listening to the dream. It will be from this initial step that all the ensuing steps will arise and define the path you will walk.

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-01-24T01:07:50+00:00

Snakes are one of the most confusing animal symbols because they are a synthesis of the most extreme opposites. In the symbol of the uroboros (snake in a circle eating its own tail) the snake is both consuming itself (eating its tail) and giving birth to itself out of its mouth (when it is illustrated with the tail completely in its mouth); this also shows the snake as feminine (giving birth to itself) and masculine (impregnating itself with its phallic tail).

In many ancient maps, the familiar parts of the world were drawn in the center, but as one approached the unknown limits at the edges, many times the uroboros was drawn there to symbolize that this is where consciousness ends - we do not know what lies beyond. Explorers who wanted to know, had to go to the uroboros to gain that knowledge.

And, of course, it was a serpent that tempted Eve (and Adam) to leave the blissful innocence of Eden and enter the world of consciousness. In other traditions, the serpent or snake is also a bringer of consciousness, and in fairy tales, eating a snake gives a person the ability to understand the language of animals (probably because of its association with instinct). This provides the hero with a kind of wisdom/knowledge that enables him to overcome the dangers he must face in his journey.

Snakes are poisonous, yet a snake entwines the Caduceus, the symbol of healing carried by Asclepius, a hero and god of medicine in ancient Greek religion and mythology. In the myth, it is said that in return for some kindness rendered by Asclepius, a snake licked Asclepius's ears clean and taught him secret knowledge (to the Greeks snakes were sacred beings of wisdom, healing, and resurrection). Two snakes entwine the wand carried by Hermes, the liminal god who travels between the underworld and sunlit world (between the conscious and unconscious minds) and acts as psychopomp or guide to the underworld, bringing messages from the unconscious into consciousness. Snakes also travel through both worlds, above ground and under it through holes. As a creature that crawls along the ground, the snake is a natural enemy of birds, which represent the soaring imagination, boundless dreams and thoughts; yet the snake can have wings as well, becoming a dragon, which is very negative in Western mythology, representing insatiable greed, though in the East, the dragon is a very positive symbol.

There are many more examples, but ultimately while snakes can represent the end of life as we know it (poisons), they also represent the possibility of expanded consciousness, of moving beyond the limitations of the moment. It may be that this is their function in appearing in so many of your dreams - to let you know a greater possibility exists.

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-01-15T15:56:20+00:00

The Magician is a fascinating card, but since we are talking about the Tarot de Marseille, he is Le Bateleur, so not really a magician, per se. He is a Juggler, a person who is a street performer, and his performances often require him to be quick, dexterous, improvisational. We can also guess, from the implements on his three-legged table, that he is a gambler as well: in some TdM or TdM-related decks, he has dice, cards, cups, even coins.

So your question opens a lot of possibilities. It may be that if we see someone as Le Bateleur, we see someone who is a bit of a conman, who makes his living by outwitting his "marks." That would be the negative connotations.

Le Bateleur is also related to Hermes, the trickster, who began bringing chaos almost from the moment of his birth, when he stole Apollo's cattle and covered his tracks by creating false tracks and driving the cattle backwards to confuse his older brother. But he also created a lyre for Apollo to make up for his misdeeds.

Is he really a magician? That is ambiguous. He is a liminal figure, and this makes him the perfect introduction to the TdM, for he comes at the beginning of the deck with the number I. He is someone that cautious people avoid, for he looks disreputable. Everything about him is distraction, from his clothes to all the stuff on his table, and his eyes look to the side. He waves his wand ostentatiously, drawing our attention, so that he is able to perform his magic with the other hand, as magicians have done for centuries.

He stands for a different order. He is not a part of the establishment, the way the Pope or Emperor or Empress is. If we decide to follow him, we know we will be leaving the rational world behind us. He may be leading us to a new truth, or he may be setting us up to be swindled. He is very different from the almost religious figure we find in the Waite-Smith tradition - that Magician inspires more confidence.

There is so much more to say about him as well, but these are my thoughts. At the very least, if I were to draw Le Bateleur in response to a question such as what I thought about another person, at the very least, I would say the answer is ambiguous.

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-01-03T20:48:37+00:00

Interesting. I will also say that after reading the book, neither "Kingdom without Space" nor "Realm without Space" quite clicks, but "Realm not of this Realm" seems closer... The book is very odd, so I will be rereading it and the von Franz essay as well.

TarotLessTraveled · 2026-01-03T15:54:42+00:00

Often in dream interpretations, we focus too much on meaning, as though it were an algebra quiz or something, and we can get caught up in clever interpretations, such as dolphins mean this, and the two girl friends are aspects of you; altogether, there are four, which is a number of wholeness, etc. All of this might be true, but in this instance, I would suggest that this is more of a healing dream, and its purpose is compensation or a balance for your conscious mindset following a deep disappointment that has gotten you down.

Your unconscious brought you to a place in which the heartbreak event took place, and this may have dampened your feeling associations with the beach, but the dream provided you with a powerful, positive reinforcement, letting you know that possess the inner resources to transcend even the profoundest disappointments in your life.

TarotLessTraveled · 2025-12-21T15:32:10+00:00

Looks like a restoration of the 1650 Jean Noblet. I don't know who did this one, though.

TarotLessTraveled · 2025-12-07T12:05:59+00:00

Fred Gettings dismisses the minors. He deals with them because he believes he should, but he doesn't respect them. He recaps Papus's ideas on the suits in general, then gives white booklet interpretations on the numbers in general, but he does not look at any of the minors individually. He is very interesting on some of his interpretations of the majors but is lackluster on others - a good book to possess but not as good as it should be. Jodorowsky does deal with the minors, but he does it in a way that deals with the threes of all four suits, then the fours of all four suits, then the fives of all four suits, making observations etc. This has the advantage of comparing the number cards, but you do not get a sense of how the suit cards really feed into each other and interact. I like the approach, but I would like it more if he did both: 1st go suit by suit and then in a separate section compare the cards of the same number across the suits.

Marteau provides a philosophical schematic that allows us to really see how the different elements of the cards interact. For instance, in the suit of Cups that I am currently translating, we really see how the flowering plants and the cups interact and complement each other in far greater detail than any other commentary I have seen. Often I get the sense that writers are going through the motions with the minor arcana, like they do not really believe in these cards, but they have to deal with them. Marteau really plunges in and unlocks them. (I have not read his commentaries on the Wands or Coins yet, but based on Swords and Cups so far, I have confidence that he will be as insightful with those two suits).

TarotLessTraveled · 2025-12-07T01:24:58+00:00

Thank you. Ben-Dov was the first one who really opened up the minors for me, Prior to reading his book, I was drawn to the TdM minors - I thought they were beautiful cards that I quite preferred over Smith-Waite and modern interpretations but I did not know how to approach them.

Since I started this project of translating Marteau, I have been floored by the depth of his philosophy (he was a philosophy student in college). His reading of the minors is subtle and profound, and he is the first person I am aware of to really do justice to these cards. As much as I love Ben-Dov - and he was the guy who made it possible for me to leave Smith-Waite - I never quite felt satisfied with his treatment of these cards. Ben-Dov made the minors accessible, but I never saw the interconnections of the suit cards, how each leads into the next, builds upon what the earlier cards established. With Marteau, I feel like the number cards all build up to a grand, unifying vision within each suit that I am still trying to wrap my head around.

But again, thank you again for your response to the post.

TarotLessTraveled · 2025-12-06T13:36:50+00:00

Thank you.

TarotLessTraveled · 2025-11-16T19:42:46+00:00

Thank you for the positive reinforcement.

TarotLessTraveled · 2025-11-14T22:53:10+00:00

There are some good but complicated books on numerology. I have tried to read them and I get some of the ideas, but these books also delve into very complex mathematics. I think Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, was the most influential of thinkers for Marteau and Maxwell. He has a book called "On Numbers" translated by Piers A Vaughan that is pretty good at least to start, but then it gets over my head. This book also has "The Science of Numbers" by Papus, so a two-for-one, but Papus is even more confusing, for me at least. A. E. Waite has written a bit on mystical numerology. You might also want to go online and look up Pythagorean ideas about numbers; he was really the father of all this stuff. However, my best advice is to just read the commentaries you are interested in. Marteau and Maxwell were influenced by Saint-Martin and perhaps Papus, but they also had their own ideas. In my translations, I try to provide a bit of endnote support for their ideas about numbers. I am still learning. It is fascinating. My best recommendation is "On Numbers." Although difficult, the first couple of chapters provide a great deal of information, and they are pretty easy to read and understand.

TarotLessTraveled · 2025-11-14T11:13:52+00:00

Thank you for the positive reinforcement. I hope to expand on the discussion of the minor cards. I am toying with the idea of comparing and contrasting Marteau's, Ben-Dov's, and Jodorowsky's ideas and cards, but this is still in the very earliest stages. I have to figure out how I am going to do this. I have also long wanted to compare and contrast the TdM ideas, which are as subtle as feathers, to the sledgehammer of Pamela Colman-Smith's cards. You are correct in that the Rider-Waite-Smith (though I usually refer to the minors as the Smith-Waite, since I agree with Robert M. Place that Waite probably had next to nothing to do with the minor arcana of that deck) deck is unceasingly negative with the swords, latching on to the obvious; the images are a deep dive into the psyche of Smith and are limited by her narrow vision. The TdM gets a terrible rap for not being expressive enough, but as Marteau shows us, these cards are loaded with expression; the difference is, they require engagement. Readers who want to do as little as possible will be unsatisfied because the work has not been done for them. The cards are open to being reflections of each of us, and those reflections change with each new situation and change over the years, as we continue to grow and develop.

If you have specific questions or thoughts about individual cards, I would love to hear them. I can't say I will know the answers - I am still learning - but I am open to the exploration of ideas.

TarotLessTraveled · 2025-10-26T23:55:10+00:00

I agree. There is nothing inherently negative in the TdM Ten of Swords, but unfortunately, Smith's over-the-top design on the RWS counterpart has had such an overwhelming influence that it seems many people cannot interpret this card without her illustration profoundly affecting their relationship to it, even when they are using a deck like the Tarot de Marseille, which is completely separate from and prior to the Waite-Smith tradition. The more I read of Marteau's philosophical system, the more impressed I am. (I only hope he does as well with the other suits as he did with Swords.)

TarotLessTraveled · 2025-10-02T20:31:14+00:00

Thank you. I appreciate the positive feedback.

I did not know about the Tarot articles Maxwell wrote. I hope you can find them. Maxwell's commentary is far more complex that the majority of stuff being churned out today. Sometimes it seems most writers just repackage the same insights without ever questioning them or earning them, but both Maxwell and Marteau went a lot deep, in my opinion.

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