There was a card craftsman who, as a French military commander, battled alongside Joan of Arc. His name was Etienne de Vignolles, known as La Hire. The courage and heroism of the legendary maid of Orleans so impressed him he removed the knight from a deck of cards and replaced it with a dame. Decorating cards with religious motifs or those depicting humans did not raise the wrath of the Catholic church. The king of spades was designed after King David including his sword and quiver. Charles the Great became the king of clubs, Julius Caesar the king of diamonds, and Alexander the Great was symbolized by the king of hearts. These four members of the monarchy came together to represent the four springboards of western civilization.
The depiction of what we would call today Queens and Jacks was not as consistent. The queen of spades was drawn in the form of Athena, meant likewise to remind of the warlike Joan of Arc. The queen of diamonds was the beautiful Rachel that Jacob waited for 14 years before be able to take her as wife. The queen of hearts stood for Judith, the heroine who had beheaded Holofernes. While the queen of clubs was a collective image and represented a certain abstract favorite of kings, named Argine, which was apparently an anagram of “regina” (queen), or which possibly meant to suggest Joan of Arc again, since the king of clubs was Charles the Great, the distinguished French Catholic leader.
The jack of spades was the symbol for one of Charlemagne’s knights of the court. Hector stood in for diamonds; La Hire himself for hearts, while clubs were represented by Judas Maccabeus. For the sake of variety, the four jacks depicted four famous knights: Lancelot, Ogier, Roland and Valery. Each knight’s name appeared below their picture on the cards. They were long-haired, clean-shaven youths, warriors wielding battle axes. All of them buy Valery had at their feet a dog similar to a bloodhound. This may have occurred because Valery was also the lead craftsman of the deck.
For the lower numbers, cards two to ten, their value was on the same scale, i.e. two to ten. The Ace, an English word first defined as “unit”, did not fit into the two through ten range and had French, German, Spanish and other equivalents: as, ass, ace, etc. The Ace was actually valued below the two. The medieval Catholic Church took great exception to this as God was “one,” so to represent the almighty’s number as the lowest on the scale was clearly the work of the devil. Anyone deigning to disagree with this was shown the door to the torture chamber.
The Ace stands today for something almost metaphysical – the quintessence of oneness, if you will, which becomes more valuable than any one personification. In reality, should a lone, simple card be given such mystical attributes?
This amorphous debate has been argued for centuries. There are many countries in this world of ours that consider spirit and matter as one and as an important facet of our self-awareness. In these modern times more than ever before, the rational, mystical, quasi-physical and sometimes, sexual elements of a deck of cards are greatly admired. The Ace remains the essential entity of all or nothing, or something of an indeterminate element in the game of cards and life.
Otherwise, the cards serve us pretty much as they served any specific class or a mixture of class during the middle ages or the Renaissance. The basic hierarchy of the deck from King to lowest number, and the 2.598.960 possible combinations of varying value, the value of combinations decided by their rarity, allow ample possibility to project anybody’s social and spiritual aspirations.
The author is a full time online poker player and makes the majority of his income from his online play and rakeback at Doyles Room. To sign up for a Rakeback account of your own visit Rakeback Solution.
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