Dodal, linked reproduction
Quatre de Deniers
Jean Dodal’s Marseille pack · Lyon, 1701–1715.
Read the BnF catalogue record ↗What does a boundary protect?
A central shield, a person’s grip and a fortress offer different pictures of holding something secure.
Start with the pictures
Four of Pentacles
Pamela Colman Smith · 1922 printing, p. 275
Open the source scan page ↗Notice what changes
Dodal
Quatre de Deniers
Four coins surround a central shield bearing a decorative emblem. Plants and coloured ribbons connect the spaces between the coins.
Smith
Four of Pentacles
A seated figure clasps a pentacle to the chest, with another above the crown and one beneath each foot. A town stands behind.
Harris
Four of Disks · 4
Four square corner blocks form a dark-walled enclosure around a bright central opening. A narrow approach enters the fortress-like structure from below.
Open Harris’s painting and reference page ↗Now read the authors
Waite’s explanation
Waite reads holding securely to possessions, including gifts or inheritance. The image presents a grip on what is already present, without establishing whether that grip is prudent or excessive in a particular life.
Crowley’s explanation
Crowley names Power and identifies the square disks as a fortress marked with the four elements. His Sun-in-Capricorn account describes order maintained through vigilance and active defence.
What appears protected, and what does maintaining that protection require?
Write one thing you can point to in the image, one interpretation from a named author, and one inference of your own. Keeping the three separate gives you something useful to revisit.
Sources and image credits
The Dodal cards are one early-eighteenth-century Marseille witness. The black-and-white Smith plates come from the 1922 Rider reprint, whose title verso lists first publication in 1910. Colours in later editions can differ.
Foolmade supplies the linked Dodal reproductions. Its surrounding commentary is not the basis for our historical claims. These images are linked externally; the Smith illustration reuses the public-domain source scan with its full page context.
Harris’s paintings are linked on their host’s reference pages. Crowley’s text is the separately identified Thelemagick transcription of The Book of Thoth. Neither a modern reproduction nor a transcription replaces examination of the original artwork or edition.