ONE. THE MAGICIAN
TWO. THE HIGH PRIESTESS
THREE. THE EMPRESS
FOUR. THE EMPEROR
FIVE. THE HIEROPHANT
SIX. THE LOVERS
SEVEN. THE CHARIOT
EIGHT. STRENGTH, OR FORTITUDE
NINE. THE HERMIT
TEN. WHEEL OF FORTUNE
ELEVEN. JUSTICE
TWELVE. THE HANGED MAN
THIRTEEN. DEATH
FOURTEEN. TEMPERANCE
FIFTEEN. THE DEVIL
SIXTEEN. THE TOWER
SEVENTEEN. THE STAR
EIGHTEEN. THE MOON
NINETEEN. THE SUN
TWENTY. THE LAST JUDGEMENT
ZERO. THE FOOL
TWENTY-ONE. THE WORLD
THE SUIT OF WANDS.
THE SUIT OF CUPS.
THE SUIT OF SWORDS.
THE SUIT OF PENTACLES.
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL
The
pathology of the poet says that "the
undevout astronomer is mad";
the pathology of the very plain man says that "the
genius is mad";
and between these extremes, which stand for ten thousand analogous
excesses, the sovereign reason takes the part of a moderator and does
what it can. I do not think that there is a pathology of the
occult dedications,
but about their extravagances no one can question, and it is not less
difficult than thankless to act as a moderator regarding them.
Moreover, the pathology, if it existed, would probably be an
empiricism rather than a diagnosis, and would offer no criterion.
Now, occultism
is not like mystic faculty, and it very seldom works in harmony
either with business aptitude in the things of ordinary life or with
a knowledge of the canons of evidence in its own sphere. I know that
for the high art of ribaldry there are few things more dull than the
criticism which maintains that a thesis is untrue, and cannot
understand that it is decorative. I know also that after long dealing
with doubtful doctrine or with difficult research it is always
refreshing, in the domain of this art, to meet with what is obviously
of fraud or at least of complete unreason. But the aspects of
history, as seen through the lens of occultism, are not as a rule
decorative, and have few gifts of refreshment to heal the lacerations
which they inflict on the logical understanding. It almost requires a
Frater Sapiens dominabitur astris
in the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross to have the patience which is not
lost amidst clouds of folly when the consideration of the Tarot is
undertaken in accordance with the higher law of symbolism. The true
Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other
signs. Given the inward meaning of its emblems, they do become a kind
of alphabet which is capable of indefinite combinations and makes
true sense in all. On the highest plane it offers a
"Key" To The Mysteries,
in a manner which is not arbitrary and has not been read in. But the
wrong symbolical stories have been told concerning it, and the wrong
history has been given in every published work which so far has dealt
with the subject. It has been intimated by two or three writers that,
at least in respect of the meanings, this is unavoidably the case,
because few are acquainted with them, while these few hold by
transmission under pledges and cannot betray their trust. The
suggestion is fantastic on the surface, for there seems a certain
anti-climax in the proposition that a particular interpretation of
fortune-telling—l'art
de tirer les cartes—can
be reserved for Sons of the Doctrine. The fact remains,
notwithstanding, that a
Secret Tradition
exists regarding the
Tarot, and as there
is always the possibility that some minor arcana of the Mysteries may
be made public with a flourish of trumpets, it will be as well to go
before the event and to warn those who are curious in such matters
that any revelation will contain only a third part of the earth and
sea and a third part of the stars of heaven in respect of the
symbolism. This is for the simple reason that neither in root-matter
nor in development has more been put into writing, so that much will
remain to be said after any pretended unveiling. The guardians of
certain temples of initiation who keep watch over mysteries of this
order have therefore no cause for alarm.In
my preface to The
Tarot Of The Bohemians,
which, rather by an accident of things, has recently come to be
re-issued after a long period, I have said what was then possible or
seemed most necessary. The present work is designed more
especially—as I have intimated—to introduce a rectified set of
the cards themselves and to tell the unadorned truth concerning them,
so far as this is possible in the outer circles. As regards the
sequence of greater symbols, their ultimate and highest meaning lies
deeper than the common language of picture or hieroglyph. This will
be understood by those who have received some part of the
Secret Tradition.
As regards the verbal meanings allocated here to the more important
Trump Cards, they are designed to set aside the follies and
impostures of past attributions, to put those who have the gift of
insight on the right track, and to take care, within the limits of my
possibilities, that they are the truth so far as they go.It
is regrettable in several respects that I must confess to certain
reservations, but there is a question of honor at issue. Furthermore,
between the follies on the one side of those who know nothing of the
tradition, yet are in their own opinion the exponents of something
called occult science and philosophy, and on the other side between
the make-believe of a few writers who have received part of the
tradition and think that it constitutes a legal title to scatter dust
in the eyes of the world without, I feel that the time has come to
say what it is possible to say, so that the effect of current
charlatanism and unintelligence may be reduced to a minimum.We
shall see in due course that the history of Tarot cards is largely of
the negative kind, and that, when the issues are cleared by the
dissipation of reveries and gratuitous speculations expressed in the
terms of certitude, there is in fact no history prior to the
fourteenth century. The deception and self-deception regarding their
origin in Egypt,
India or
China put a lying
spirit into the mouths of the first expositors, and the later occult
writers have done little more than reproduce the first false
testimony in the good faith of an intelligence unawakened to the
issues of research. As it so happens, all expositions have worked
within a very narrow range, and owe, comparatively speaking, little
to the inventive faculty. One brilliant opportunity has at least been
missed, for it has not so far occurred to any one that the Tarot
might perhaps have done duty and even originated as a secret
symbolical language of the Albigensian sects. I commend this
suggestion to the lineal descendants in the spirit of Gabriele
Rossetti and Eugène Aroux, to Mr. Harold Bayley as another
New Light On The Renaissance,
and as a taper at least in the darkness which, with great respect,
might be serviceable to the zealous and all-searching mind of Mrs.
Cooper-Oakley. Think only what the supposed testimony of watermarks
on paper might gain from the
Tarot Card of the
Pope or Hierophant, in connection with the notion of a secret
Albigensian patriarch, of which Mr. Bayley has found in these same
watermarks so much material to his purpose. Think only for a moment
about the card of the High Priestess as representing the Albigensian
church itself; and think of the Tower struck by Lightning as
typifying the desired destruction of Papal Rome, the city on the
seven hills, with the pontiff and his temporal power cast down from
the spiritual edifice when it is riven by the wrath of God (Nature).
The possibilities are so numerous and persuasive that they almost
deceive in their expression one of the elect who has invented them.
But there is more even than this, though I scarcely dare to cite it.
When the time came for the Tarot cards to be the subject of their
first formal explanation, the archæologist Court de Gebelin
reproduced some of their most important emblems, and—if I may so
term it—the codex which he used has served—by means of his
engraved plates—as a basis of reference for many sets that have
been issued subsequently. The figures are very primitive and differ
as such from the cards of Etteilla, the Marseilles Tarot, and others
still current in France. I am not a good judge in such matters, but
the fact that every one of the Trumps Major might have answered for
watermark purposes is shown by the cases which I have quoted and by
one most remarkable example of the Ace of Cups.I
should call it an eucharistic emblem after the manner of a ciborium,
but this does not signify at the moment. The point is that Mr. Harold
Bayley gives six analogous devices in his
New Light On The Renaissance,
being watermarks on paper of the seventeenth century, which he claims
to be of Albigensian origin and to represent sacramental and Graal
emblems. Had he only heard of the Tarot, had he known that these
cards of divination, cards of fortune, cards of all vagrant arts,
were perhaps current at the period in the South of France, I think
that his enchanting but all too fantastic hypothesis might have
dilated still more largely in the atmosphere of his dream. We should
no doubt have had a vision of Christian Gnosticism, Manichæanism,
and all that he understands by pure primitive Gospel, shining behind
the pictures.I
do not look through such glasses, and I can only commend the subject
to his attention at a later period; it is mentioned here that I may
introduce with an unheard-of wonder the marvels of arbitrary
speculation as to the history of the cards.With
reference to their form and number, it should scarcely be necessary
to enumerate them, for they must be almost commonly familiar, but as
it is precarious to assume anything, and as there are also other
reasons, I will tabulate them briefly as follows:—CLASS
ISection 2
