# serpentia sol



## Alladine

Hello,
I would like to know if this is a proper latin phrase as I find difficult to understand it exactly. It's been used to represent le 21st trump in _The Mystical Dream Tarot, _instead of the world. It is "the self-realized being", and has one limb "serpentine", and "energy explodes from the powerful head, the combined sun and moon".
Thank you,
Alladine


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## jazyk

It doesn't make any sense to me. A serpentine sun, if that is the intended meaning, would be sol serpentinus.


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## Alladine

Thanks Jazyk... Not sure it is genuine Latin...


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## Nicomon

I'm probably reading way  too much into this, and as I unfortunately never learned latin,  I can't make any sense of _Serpentia.  _

But given this definition and attached picture : #mysticaldreamtarot Instagram posts (photos and videos) - Picuki.com 



> Serpentia Sol 🐍🌞 . The World card is Serpentia Sol as per Janet Piedilato. This is the Fool who has emerged from the egg of creation [...]
> He portrays the Enlightened One who has reached the highest levels of manifestation and illumination.


 I wonder if Sol couldn't be a reference to this :  





> *Phoebus the Sun God*
> 
> In the Latin language the Sun was called Sol and also worshiped as a god, and naturally identified with Helios. But Latin poets also very often gave him the titles Titan and Phoebus, though never identifying, outside some purely religious texts, *Phoebus Sol *with Phoebus Apollo.



I guess there is a reason why it  was left "as is" in the Portuguese adapt' of the book.


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## Alladine

Could  _"serpentia"_ mean something like "acting as a serpent"? (From your Instagram post, Nico, I understand that _Sol_ (feminine in latin I think) would be the sun of course, representing "the Enlightened one", and the idea of the Serpent seems to be in the shedding of one's skin as the shedding of the illusions of life:_ He crawled forward like a serpent, shedding his skin against the rocks of false illusion (...) in order to emerge as his true authentic self.  _


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## Scholiast

saluete amici!

Please pardon this intervention, but a few things seem to need comment—and fully admitted, I know nothing of the Tarot or its history.

First, this cannot be classical Latin of any kind. _Pace_ Alladine (# 5), _sol_ is masculine (like the Romance derivatives _*le* soleil_, _*il* sole_), so there is no way _serpentia_ can be construed as being in grammatical agreement with it.

Secondly, from its form, _serpentia_ ought to be a present participle, with the sense of 'creeping things', a neuter plural. If 'serpent' (= 'snake') is in question, the plural would be _serpentes_ (common gender).

I infer then, thirdly, that there would need to be a wider context before we can make any coherent sense of this phrase.

Finally, poor, or downright incorrect, Latin has commonly been used by people who don't understand the language to convey a (spurious) air of intellectual sophistication to their 'spells'.

Sorry to be so negative.

Σ


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## Alladine

Thank you for these explanations Scholiast! I have no idea why I thought _sol_ might be feminine, I was probably influenced by the feminine-sounding ending in _serpentia _(to my latin ears). But I'm happy to have confirmation that the phrase doesn't seem to be proper latin, the author probably just wanted to "sound" scholarly...  Thank you!
Alladine


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