Is there a better picture of The Lovers and The Sun card?

[JepMZ]

Google is absolutely terrible lately. Thought I would just ask here. Is there a full size image of The Lovers and The Sun card shown in a very specific endgame battle?

I have my own theories of what those two cards' significances is. As any AST player would know, there's only six major arcanum: The Spire, The Balance, The Bole, The Spear, The Ewer, and The Arrow. And Koji Fox at one point said the Deck of Sixty has existed in every astral era, even beyond the third astral.

First theory: The Lovers and The Sun are just an earlier iteration of The Spear and The Balance cards respectively. Since the goddess's appearance is shaped by worhipper's prayers, her cards could have been artifacts of the past. There's still the fact that it's different from the image from the constellations but the tying of the constellations is only important for AST history. If the Deck of Sixty predates Sharlayan ASTrology, by existing in all the previous eras, then the images of the 6 major arcanum doesn't have to adhere with the constellation imagery. It would have similar parallels with the irl tarot history, where when hundreds of years the The Devil card depicted the traditional devil with no astrological sign connection, to the Rider Deck Devil Card with Baphomet depicted instead and with the astro sign Capricorn attached to it in recent times.

Second theory: The Lovers and The Sun card are alternative forms of two of the minor arcanum. This is the headcanon I'm using for card readings in-game. That way it doesn't conflict with the constellations lore. To be honest, the lore for the Deck of Sixty is all over the place, even the elemental heavens/hells are completely different order from the typical eorzean cycle, so I don't mind the irl major arcana became minor arcanums. Some irl tarot decks had illustrations in their pip deck. And Thoth deck had named minor arcana as well. If I'm following this logic, I would definitely place The Lovers as the Two of Irons card, since the irons suit is the actual Lover goddess's domain besides Halone. And it takes two to be eternally bonded. It's not perfect since the card depicts a heart, which is supposed to be associated with the cup suit, which also makes way more sense since that's the emotions suit, but the irons suit also better conveys the irony of the bittersweet aspects that being a lover has. The Sun has to be in Azeyma's staves suit for sure, it could be the Six of Staves, the last pip, to represent the completion and the happiness behind it (also 6.0 expansion), or Ace of Staves, since aces are the pure form of a suit, or it's beginning, like the dawn.

Third theory: Since this boss is a goddess of fate, she can create new cards outside of the Deck of Sixty to show she's above the AST law. But The Sun is heavily tied to Azeyma, it just doesn't make sense to have repeated themes

[Cleretic]

Yeah, those cards don't exist within the Deck of Sixty; we know what the minor arcana are in that. There's six suits; Crowns, Cups, Rings, Knives, Staves, and Irons. If we assume the cards to have roughly equal meaning to the similar cards in the tarot, I... probably wouldn't link the Lovers and the Spear; I'd probably instead point to the Bole. The Sun and the Balance could be pretty close, I guess.

My bet is probably that it's either a lost or obscure alternative form of divination. We know that the Twleve aren't exactly current; we've got Menphina still with Dalamud, and Althyk pulling up ruins that seem Amdapori. It wouldn't be especially weird to me that there was just another divination deck somewhere that had those cards.

[Turnintino]

The highest resolution currently available, afaik.

Concerning your theories, I think it's a mistake to search for many parallels between the Deck of Sixty and the rl tarot deck. Despite the obvious inspiration it takes, it's impossible to make them match perfectly because, as you said, the elements and symbology are all mixed up thanks to the way the Twelve were conceived/developed -- who similarly don't line up perfectly with their seeming rl inspirations, setting tarot aside -- and then reduced to a pair for each constellation. Never mind the fact that there are also a vastly different number of cards (not just the major arcanum), as you already touched on.

[JepMZ]

Wow, the artwork is gorgeous! Thank you so much! It kinda looks like The Sun is a Three of something. Hmm. And the figures don't immediately look like any of the Twelve it seems. Look more like regular folks.

I can't figure out how to just quote some stuff so I'm just gonna have to copy paste bits

Concerning your theories, I think it's a mistake to search for many parallels between the Deck of Sixty and the rl tarot deck

I disagree, when it comes to reality based lore stuff, I want to know what the lore people know, and dig into their process so I can better fill in the blanks myself. Like for example, I wanted to know what irl culture Ala Mhigo is supposed to be based on as intended by the devs, because I want to know what's the devs vision first, as an "official" answer. The answer is that it has Turkey as a direct inspiration, and I'm happy to get a direct answer at all. Sure, it's a hodgepodge of other things, but I'm happy to see what's exactly Turkey about it (such as the landscape) and what isn't Turkey about it

It may seem like the Deck of Sixty is only based on the English speaking tarot from only in-game stuff, and I see why you said the quote in the first place but the Eorzean Encyclopedia reveals the lore folks's scope of research is greater than just the card readings aspect. Yes they directly use the same 4 suits and 4 elemental ties from Rider, but the use of pip cards suggests they know some tarot history and the fact that they were games first from the look of the suggested games. Heck, I'm pretty sure somebody confirmed at one point the cards eozearn were playing poker or whatever with are deck of sixties too. We found out two of the suits is the Crowns and Irons, that shows they read up on moghul ganjifa circle cards where those suits originally came from. Their research spans generations in card game history! I reflect on these because I get the impression Koji likes to put some logic or realism into world building, like the migration explanations he has of the different races. (I haven't watched/read them recently but his impression resonates with me since then). I feel it's important to see where they were coming from when they write these stuff

But, of course, I don't want a 1:1 direct translation, FFXIV has a decade of world building already to tap into. I remember that geomancer mentioned the Bole constellation is known as something else in Shirogane, so, the constellations may be constant, it could have been interpreted in different ways across the past of it already does so in the present alone

If we assume the cards to have roughly equal meaning to the similar cards in the tarot, I... probably wouldn't link the Lovers and the Spear

I'm assuming the pentacles suit is related to bodily attraction , right? For this instance, I would favor the in-game stuff more. But it left me with two choices: the cups, because they use the cups pip cards all the time for in-game valentoine events related for lovers-ish things, and they all have hearts on it. And the other choice is the association of The Spear (irons) according to the Eorzean Encyclopedia. Mind you, I don't have the newest edition, so maybe they retconned it out, but it notes that the reversed The Spear represents Menphina, it's a hard choice to not link it together that way since she's the final boss for that and all. Of course, the lore book also made it weird that The Arrow upright represents Llymnea instead, but I already interpret it as meaning Oschon is approximately accidentally the Hangman lol. But, of course, incorporating reverses isn't a requirement in readings, but the main point is that The Spear represents both goddesses, the Lover especially.

[Iscah]

I can't figure out how to just quote some stuff so I'm just gonna have to copy paste bits

You just have to quote the whole post and delete all the bits you're not quoting. If you're doing multiple quotes from the one post, you copy-paste the leading {quote=name;number} tag and add it to the subsequent quotes, plus the {/quote} at the end.

Also, if you're immediately editing a post to add in more text around the initial limit, just leave the reason blank. If you edit within a minute or so of the initial post, it doesn't get marked as being edited at all.