The Evolution Of A Deck Of Cards: Face Cards
- Filed under: Casinos
- Date: Jan 26,2010
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 from a knight in Charlemagne’s court; diamonds were for Hector; for hearts we have La Hire himself and Judas Maccabeus represented clubs. A variation on the theme had the four jacks being represented by four well-known knights: Lancelot, Ogier, Roland, and Valery. These four were youthful, clean-shaven and longhaired warriors, all with battle axes. All had a bloodhound-like dog at their feet except for Valery, possibly because Valery was the chief craftsman who created the deck.
Going lower on the scale, we have cards ten down to two, marked with their corresponding number and value. The Ace which was an English word meaning “unit” had translations in French, Spanish, German and other equivalents as well, such as: as, ass, aus, etc. The Ace was ranked lower than even the two. This greatly upset the Catholic Church of the middle ages as God was “one” and any numeric system defining His number as lowly was blasphemous and smacked as consorting with the devil. Should you disagree with this theory, you would undoubtedly come to see it their way on your way to the dungeon.
The Ace of today symbolizes a quintessential quality freely associated with any number of entities. It is of greater value than any one personage. But can any card in the deck be a stand-in for the crassness of science or metaphysical meanderings of the mind?
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.
Back to earth – cards serve the same purpose today as they did back in the middle ages. The rank of cards in the deck possibly reflecting back on the rank of humanity in society, from monarch to serf, with value depending upon rarity and the specific results of thousands of combinations.
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