Dodal, linked reproduction
Quatre de Bâtons
Jean Dodal’s Marseille pack · Lyon, 1701–1715.
Read the BnF catalogue record ↗A frame with an inside
Look at the space made by four wands before deciding whether it is shelter, ceremony or a limit.
Start with the pictures
Four of Wands
Pamela Colman Smith · 1922 printing, p. 191
Open the source scan page ↗Notice what changes
Dodal
Quatre de Bâtons
Two pairs of diagonal batons cross in a regular central lattice. Floral ornaments occupy the open areas above, below and to the sides.
Smith
Four of Wands
Four staffs hold a hanging garland before two figures raising flowers. Buildings and other people appear beyond the open frame.
Harris
Four of Wands · 4
Four wands cross within a large circle. Animal-headed ends touch its circumference, and flames occupy the central field.
Open Harris’s painting and reference page ↗Now read the authors
Waite’s explanation
Waite emphasizes refuge, domestic celebration, harmony and completed work. Unusually, he says the reversed card retains the same favourable meaning rather than becoming its opposite.
Crowley’s explanation
Crowley treats Completion as active force built into a stable system. He identifies ram and dove heads and reads the circle as both the completion and the limitation of the work.
What does the completed frame make possible, and what does it leave outside?
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.