The Illustrated Key
To The Tarot
THE VEIL OF DIVINATION
Illustrating The Greater And Lesser Arcana
EMBRACING
THE VEIL AND ITS SYMBOLS.
SECRET TRADITION UNDER THE VEIL OF DIVINATION.
ART OF TAROT DIVINATION.
OUTER METHOD OF THE ORACLES.
THE TAROT IN HISTORY.
INNER SYMBOLISM.
THE GREATER KEYS.
_By_
_L. W. de Laurence_
AUTHOR OF, THE MASTER KEY. THE IMMANENCE OF GOD,
KNOW THYSELF. GOD, THE BIBL, TRUTH AND CHRISTIAN
THEOLOGY. MEDICAL HYPNOSIS AND MAGNETIC HYPNOTISM.
MANUAL OF DISEASE AND MODERN MEDICINE. VALMONDI:
THE OLD BOOK OF ANCIENT MYSTERIES. THE DEAD MAN'S
HOME. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN PUBLIC. THE GREAT
BOOK OF MAGICAL ART, HINDU MAGIC AND EAST INDIAN
OCCULTISM, A SELF GUIDE FOR ALL MEN, ETC., ETC.
The de Laurence Company
Chicago, Ill., U. S. A.
_Copyright, 1918_
_By_
de LAURENCE, SCOTT & CO.
SPECIAL NOTICE
The illustrations, cover design and contents of this Volume are
protected by copyright, and must not be reproduced or copied without
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Disregard of this warning will subject the offender to the penalty
provided by law.
This book is manufactured in strict conformity with Government
regulations for saving paper.
Printed in U.S.A.
_THE ILLUSTRATED KEY TO
THE TAROT_
Preface
It seems rather of necessity than predilection in the sense of
_apologia_ that I should put on record in the first place a plain
statement of my personal position, as one who for many years of literary
life has been, subject to his spiritual and other limitations, an
exponent of the higher mystic schools. It will be thought that I am
acting strangely in concerning myself at this day with what appears at
first sight and simply a well-known method of fortune-telling. Now, the
opinions of some, even in the literary reviews, are of no importance
unless they happen to agree with our own, but in order to sanctify this
doctrine we must take care that our opinions, and the subjects out of
which they arise, are concerned only with the highest. Yet it is just
this which may seem doubtful, in the present instance, not only to
those, whom I respect within the proper measures of detachment, but to
some of more real consequence, seeing that their dedications are mine.
To these and to any I would say that after the most illuminated Frater
Christian Rosy Cross had beheld the Chemical Marriage in the Secret
Palace of Transmutation, his story breaks off abruptly, with an
intimation that he expected next morning to be door-keeper. After the
same manner, it happens more often than might seem likely that those who
have seen the _Occult Powers_ of Nature through the most clearest veils
of the sacraments are those who assume thereafter the humblest offices
of all about the House of Wisdom. By such simple devices also are the
_Adepts_ and _Great Masters_ in the secret orders distinguished from the
cohort of Neophytes as _servi servorum mysterii_. So also, or in a way
which is not entirely unlike, we meet with the Tarot cards at the
outermost gates--amidst the fritterings and débris of the so called
_occult_ arts, about which no one in their senses has suffered the
smallest deception; and yet these cards belong in themselves to another
region, for they contain a very high symbolism, which is interpreted
according to the Laws of Grace rather than by the pretexts and
intuitions of that which passes for divination. The fact that the wisdom
of God (Nature) is foolishness with men does not create a presumption
that the foolishness of this world makes in any sense for Divine Wisdom;
so neither the scholars in the ordinary classes nor the pedagogues in
the seats of the mighty will be quick to perceive the likelihood or even
the possibility of this proposition. The subject has been in the hands
of cartomancists as part of the stock-in-trade of their industry; I do
not seek to persuade any one outside my own circles that this is of much
or of no consequence; but on the historical and interpretative sides it
has not fared better; it has been there in the hands of exponents who
have brought it into utter contempt for those people who possess
philosophical insight or faculties for the appreciation of evidence. It
is time that it should be rescued, and this I propose to undertake once
and for all, that I may have done with the side issues which distract
from the term. As poetry is the most beautiful expression of the things
that are of all most beautiful, so is symbolism the most catholic
expression in concealment of things that are most profound in the
Sanctuary and that have not been declared outside it with the same
fullness by means of the spoken word. The justification of the rule of
silence is no part of my present concern, but I have put on record
elsewhere, and quite recently, what it is possible to say on this
subject.
* * * * *
The little treatise which follows is divided into three parts, in the
first of which I have dealt with the antiquities of the subject and a
few things that arise from and connect therewith. It should be
understood that it is not put forward as a contribution to the history
of playing cards, about which I know and care nothing; it is a
consideration dedicated and addressed to a certain school of occultism,
more especially in France, as to the source and center of all the
phantasmagoria which has entered into expression during the last fifty
years under the pretense of considering Tarot cards historically. In the
second part, I have dealt with the symbolism according to some of its
higher aspects, and this also serves to introduce the complete and
rectified Tarot, which is available separately, in the form of colored
cards, the designs of which are added to the present text in black and
white. They have been prepared under my supervision--in respect of the
attributions and meanings--by a lady who has high claims as an artist.
Regarding the divinatory part, by which my thesis is terminated, I
consider it personally as a fact in the history of the _Tarot_; as such,
I have drawn, from all published sources, a harmony of the meanings
which have been attached to the various cards, and I have given
prominence to one method of working that has not been published
previously; having the merit of simplicity, while it is also of
universal application, it may be held to replace the cumbrous and
involved systems of the larger hand-books.
_CONTENTS_
PAGE
PREFACE 3
An explanation of the personal kind--An illustration from
mystic literature--A subject which calls to be rescued--
Limits and intention of the work.
PART I
THE VEIL AND ITS SYMBOLS 7
§ 1.--Introductory And General.
§ 2.--Class I. The Trumps Major, Otherwise Greater Arcana.
§ 3.--Class II. The Four Suits, Otherwise Lesser Arcana.
§ 4.--The Tarot In History.
PART II
THE DOCTRINE BEHIND THE VEIL 33
§ 1.--The Tarot And Secret Tradition.
§ 2.--The Trumps Major And Their Inner Symbolism.
§ 3.--Conclusion As To The Greater Keys.
PART III
THE OUTER METHOD OF THE ORACLES 85
§ 1.--Distinction Between The Greater And Lesser Arcana.
§ 2.--The Lesser Arcana, Otherwise, The Four Suits Of Tarot Cards.
The Suit Of Wands.
The Suit Of Cups.
The Suit Of Swords.
The Suit Of Pentacles.
§ 3.--The Greater Arcana And Their Divinatory Meanings.
§ 4.--Some Additional Meanings Of The Lesser Arcana.
§ 5.--The Recurrence Of Cards In Dealing.
§ 6.--The Art Of Tarot Divination.
§ 7.--An Ancient Celtic Method Of Divination.
§ 8.--An Alternative Method Of Reading The Tarot Cards.
§ 9.--The Method Of Reading By Means Of Thirty-five Cards.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A CONCISE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE CHIEF WORKS DEALING
WITH THE TAROT AND ITS CONNECTIONS 164
The Illustrated Key To The Tarot
Part One
THE VEIL AND ITS SYMBOLS
Section I
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.
[Illustration]
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 I
SECTION 2
TRUMPS MAJOR
OTHERWISE, GREATER ARCANA
1. _The Magus, Magician, or Juggler_, the caster of the dice and
mountebank, in the world of vulgar trickery. This is the _colportage_
interpretation, and it has the same correspondence with the real
symbolical meaning that the use of the Tarot in fortune-telling has with
its mystic construction according to the secret science of symbolism. I
should add that many independent students of the subject, following
their own lights, have produced individual sequences of meaning in
respect of the Trumps Major, and their lights are sometimes suggestive,
but they are not the true lights. For example, Eliphas Lévi says that
the Magus signifies that unity which is the mother of numbers; others
say that it is the Divine Unity; and one of the latest French
commentators considers that in its general sense it is the will.
2. _The High Priestess, the Pope Joan_, or Female Pontiff; early
expositors have sought to term this card the Mother, or Pope's Wife,
which is opposed to the symbolism. It is sometimes held to represent the
Divine Law and the Gnosis, in which case the Priestess corresponds to
the idea of the _Shekinah_. She is the Secret Tradition and the higher
sense of the instituted Mysteries.
3. _The Empress_, who is sometimes represented with full face, while her
correspondence, the Emperor, is in profile. As there has been some
tendency to ascribe a symbolical significance to this distinction, it
seems desirable to say that it carries no inner meaning. The _Empress_
has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a
general sense with activity.
4. _The Emperor_, by imputation the spouse of the former. He is
occasionally represented as wearing, in addition to his personal
insignia, the stars or ribbons of some order of chivalry. I mention this
to show that the cards are a medley of old and new emblems. Those who
insist upon the evidence of the one may deal, if they can, with the
other. No effectual argument for the antiquity of a particular design
can be drawn from the fact that it incorporates old material; but there
is also none which can be based on sporadic novelties, the intervention
of which may signify only the unintelligent hand of an editor or of a
late draughtsman.
5. _The High Priest or Hierophant_, called also Spiritual Father, and
more commonly and obviously the Pope. It seems even to have been named
the Abbot, and then its correspondence, the High Priestess, was the
Abbess or Mother of the Convent. Both are arbitrary names. The insignia
of the figures are papal, and in such case the High Priestess is and can
be only the Church, to whom Pope and priests are married by the
spiritual rite of ordination. I think, however, that in its primitive
form this card did not represent the Roman Pontiff.
6. _The Lovers or Marriage._ This symbol has undergone many variations,
as might be expected from its subject. In the eighteenth century form,
by which it first became known to the world of archæological research,
it is really a card of married life, showing father and mother, with
their child placed between them; and the pagan Cupid above, in the act
of flying his shaft, is, of course, a misapplied emblem. The Cupid is of
love beginning rather than of love in its fulness, guarding the fruit
thereof. The card is said to have been entitled _Simulacrum fidei_, the
symbol of conjugal faith, for which the rainbow as a sign of the
covenant would have been a more appropriate concomitant. The figures are
also held to have signified Truth, Honor and Love, but I suspect that
this was, so to speak, the gloss of a commentator moralizing. It has
these, but it has other and higher aspects.
7. _The Chariot._ This is represented in some extant codices as being
drawn by two sphinxes, and the device is in consonance with the
symbolism, but it must not be supposed that such was its original form;
the variation was invented to support a particular historical
hypothesis. In the eighteenth century white horses were yoked to the
car. As regards its usual name, the lesser stands for the greater; it is
really the King in his triumph, typifying, however, the victory which
creates kingship as its natural consequence and not the vested royalty
of the fourth card. M. Court de Gebelin said that it was Osiris
Triumphing, the conquering sun in spring-time having vanquished the
obstacles of winter. We know now that Osiris rising from the dead is
not represented by such obvious symbolism. Other animals than horses
have also been used to draw the _currus triumphalis_, as, for example, a
lion and a leopard.
8. _Fortitude._ This is one of the cardinal virtues, of which I shall
speak later. The female figure is usually represented as closing the
mouth of a lion. In the earlier form which is printed by Court de
Gebelin, she is obviously opening it. The first alternative is better
symbolically, but either is an instance of strength in its conventional
understanding, and conveys the idea of mastery. It has been said that
the figure represents organic force, moral force and the principle of
all force.
9. _The Hermit_, as he is termed in common parlance, stands next on the
list; he is also the Capuchin, and in more philosophical language the
Sage. He is said to be in search of that Truth which is located far off
in the sequence, and of Justice which has preceded him on the way. But
this is a card of attainment, as we shall see later, rather than a card
of quest. It is said also that his lantern contains the Light of Occult
Science and that his staff is a Magic Wand. These interpretations are
comparable in every respect to the divinatory and fortune-telling
meanings with which I shall have to deal in their turn. The diabolism of
both is that they are true after their own manner, but that they miss
all the high things to which the Greater Arcana should be allocated. It
is as if a man who knows in his heart that all roads lead to the
heights, and that God (Nature) is at the great height of all, should
choose the way of perdition or the way of folly as the path of his own
attainment. Eliphas Lévi has allocated this card to Prudence, but in so
doing he has been actuated by the wish to fill a gap which would
otherwise occur in the symbolism. The four cardinal virtues are
necessary to an idealogical sequence like the Trumps Major, but they
must not be taken only in that first sense which exists for the use and
consolation of him who in these days of halfpenny journalism is called
the man in the street. In their proper understanding they are the
correlatives of the counsels of perfection when these have been
similarly re-expressed, and they read as follows: (_a_) Transcendental
Justice, the counter-equilibrium of the scales, when they have been
over-weighted so that they dip heavily on the side of God (Nature). The
corresponding counsel is to use loaded dice when you play for high
stakes with _Diabolus_. The axiom is _Aut Deus, aut nihil_. (_b_) Divine
Ecstasy, as a counterpoise to something called Temperance, the sign of
which is, I believe, the extinction of lights in the tavern. The
corresponding counsel is to drink only of new wine in the Kingdom of
the Father, because God (Nature) is all in all. The axiom is that man
being a reasonable being must get intoxicated with God (Nature); the
imputed case in point is Spinoza. (_c_) The state of Royal Fortitude,
which is the state of a Tower of Ivory and a House of Gold, but it is
God (Nature) and not the man who has become _Turris fortitudinis a facie
inimici_, and out of that House the enemy has been cast. The
corresponding counsel is that a man must not spare himself even in the
presence of death, but he must be certain that his sacrifice shall
be--of any open course--the best that will ensure his end. The axiom is
that the strength which is raised to such a degree that a man dares lose
himself shall show him how Nature (God) is found, and as to such
refuge--dare therefore and learn. (_d_) Prudence is the economy which
follows the line of least resistance, that the soul may get back whence
it came. It is a doctrine of divine parsimony and conservation of energy
because of the stress, the terror and the manifest impertinences of this
life. The corresponding counsel is that true prudence is concerned with
the one thing needful, and the axiom is: Waste not, want not. The
conclusion of the whole matter is a business proposition founded on the
law of exchange: You cannot help getting what you seek in respect of the
things that are Divine: it is the law of supply and demand. I have
mentioned these few matters at this point for two simple reasons: (_a_)
because in proportion to the impartiality of the mind it seems sometimes
more difficult to determine whether it is vice or vulgarity which lays
waste the present world more piteously; (_b_) because in order to remedy
the imperfections of the old notions it is highly needful, on occasion,
to empty terms and phrases of their accepted significance, that they may
receive a new and more adequate meaning.
10. _The Wheel of Fortune._ There is a current _Manual of Cartomancy_
which has obtained a considerable vogue in England, and amidst a great
scattermeal of curious things to no purpose has intersected a few
serious subjects. In its last and largest edition it treats in one
section of the Tarot; which--if I interpret the author rightly--it
regards from beginning to end as the Wheel of Fortune, this expression
being understood in my own sense. I have no objection to such an
inclusive though conventional description; it obtains in all the worlds,
and I wonder that it has not been adopted previously as the most
appropriate name on the side of common fortune-telling. It is also the
title of one of the Trumps Major--that indeed of our concern at the
moment, as my sub-title shows. Of recent years this has suffered many
fantastic presentations and one hypothetical reconstruction which is
suggestive in its symbolism. The wheel has seven radii; in the
eighteenth century the ascending and descending animals were really of
nondescript character, one of them having a human head. At the summit
was another monster with the body of an indeterminate beast, wings on
shoulders and a crown on head. It carried two wands in its claws. These
are replaced in the reconstruction by a Hermanubis rising with the
wheel, a _Sphinx_ couchant at the summit and a Typhon on the descending
side. Here is another instance of an invention in support of a
hypothesis; but if the latter be set aside the grouping is symbolically
correct and can pass as such.
11. _Justice._ That the _Tarot_, though it is of all reasonable
antiquity, is not of time immemorial, is shown by this card, which could
have been presented in a much more archaic manner. Those, however, who
have gifts of discernment in matters of this kind will not need to be
told that age is in no sense of the essence of the consideration; the
Rite of Closing the Lodge in the Third Craft Grade of Masonry may belong
to the late eighteenth century, but the fact signifies nothing; it is
still the summary of all the instituted and official Mysteries. The
female figure of the eleventh card is said to be Astræa, who personified
the same virtue and is represented by the same symbols. This goddess
notwithstanding, and notwithstanding the vulgarian Cupid, the Tarot is
not of Roman mythology, or of Greek either. Its presentation of Justice
is supposed to be one of the four cardinal virtues included in the
sequence of Greater Arcana; but, as it so happens, fourth emblem is
wanting, and it became necessary for the commentators to discover it at
all costs. They did what it was possible to do, and yet the laws of
research have never succeeded in extricating the missing Persephone
under the form of Prudence. Court de Gebelin attempted to solve the
difficulty by a _tour de force_, and believed that he had extracted what
he wanted from the symbol of the Hanged Man--wherein he deceived
himself. The Tarot has, therefore, its Justice, its Temperance also and
its Fortitude, but--owing to a curious omission--it does not offer us
any type of Prudence, though it may be admitted that, in some respects,
the isolation of the Hermit, pursuing a solitary path by the light of
his own lamp, gives, to those who can receive it, a certain high counsel
in respect of the _via prudentiæ_.
12. _The Hanged Man._ This is the symbol which is supposed to represent
Prudence, and Eliphas Lévi says, in his most shallow and plausible
manner, that it is the adept bound by his engagements. The figure of a
man is suspended head-downwards from a gibbet, to which he is attached
by a rope about one of his ankles. The arms are bound behind him and
one leg is crossed over the other. According to another, and indeed the
prevailing interpretation, he signifies sacrifice, but all current
meanings attributed to this card are cartomancists' intuitions, apart
from any real value, on the symbolical side. The fortune-tellers of the
eighteenth century who circulated Tarots, depict a semi-feminine youth
in jerkin, poised erect on one foot and loosely attached to a short
stake driven into the ground.
13. _Death._ The method of presentation is almost invariable, and
embodies a bourgeois form of symbolism. The scene is the field of life,
and amidst ordinary rank vegetation there are living arms and heads
protruding from the ground. One of the heads is crowned, and a skeleton
with a great scythe is in the act of mowing it. The transparent and
unescapable meaning is death, but the alternatives allocated to the
symbol are change and transformation. Other heads have been swept from
their place previously, but it is, in its current and patent meaning,
more especially a card of the death of Kings. In the exotic sense it has
been said to signify the ascent of the spirit in the divine spheres,
creation and destruction, perpetual movement, and so forth.
14. _Temperance._ The winged figure of a female--who, in opposition to
all doctrine concerning the hierarchy of angels, is usually allocated to
this order of ministering spirits--is pouring liquid from one pitcher to
another. In his last work on the Tarot, Dr. Papus abandons the
traditional form and depicts a woman wearing an _Egyptian_ head-dress.
The first thing which seems clear on the surface is that the entire
symbol has no especial connection with Temperance, and the fact that
this designation has always obtained for the card offers a very obvious
instance of a meaning behind meaning, which is the title in chief to
consideration in respect of the Tarot as a whole.
15. _The Devil._ In the eighteenth century this card seems to have been
rather a symbol of merely animal impudicity. Except for a fantastic
head-dress, the chief figure is entirely naked; it has bat-like wings,
and the hands and feet are represented by the claws of a bird. In the
right hand there is a scepter terminating in a sign which has been
thought to represent fire. The figure as a whole is not particularly
evil; it has no tail, and the commentators who have said that the claws
are those of a harpy have spoken at random. There is no better ground
for the alternative suggestion that they are eagle's claws. Attached, by
a cord depending from their collars, to the pedestal on which the figure
is mounted, are two small demons, presumably male and female. These are
tailed but not winged. Since 1856 the influence of Eliphas Lévi and his
doctrine of occultism has changed the face of this card, and it now
appears as a pseudo-Baphometic figure with the head of a goat and a
great torch between the horns; it is seated instead of erect, and in
place of the generative organs there is the Hermetic caduceus. In _Le
Tarot Divinatoire_ of Papus the small demons are replaced by naked human
beings, male and female, who are yoked only to each other. The author
may be felicitated on this improved symbolism.
16. _The Tower struck by Lightning._ Its alternative titles are: Castle
of Plutus, God's (Nature's) House and the Tower of Babel. In the last
case, the figures falling therefrom are held to be Nimrod and his
minister. It is assuredly a card of confusion, and the design
corresponds, broadly speaking, to any of the designations except _Maison
Dieu_, unless we are to understand that the House of God (Nature) has
been abandoned and the veil of the temple rent. It is a little
surprising that the device has not so far been allocated to the
destruction of Solomon's Temple, when the lightning would symbolize the
fire and sword with which that edifice was visited by the King of the
Chaldees.
17. _The Star_, Dog-Star, or Sirius, also called fantastically the Star
of the Magi. Grouped about it are seven minor luminaries, and beneath it
is a naked female figure, with her left knee upon the earth and her
right foot upon the water. She is in the act of pouring fluids from two
vessels. A bird is perched on a tree near her; for this a butterfly on a
rose has been substituted in some later cards. So also the Star has been
called that of Hope. This is one of the cards which Court de Gebelin
describes as wholly Egyptian--that is to say, in his own reverie.
18. _The Moon._ Some eighteenth-century cards show the luminary on its
waning side; in the debased edition of Etteilla, it is the moon at night
in her plenitude, set in a heaven of stars; of recent years the moon is
shown on the side of her increase. In nearly all presentations she is
shining brightly and shedding the moisture of fertilizing dew in great
drops. Beneath there are two towers, between which a path winds to the
verge of the horizon. Two dogs, or alternatively a wolf and dog, are
baying at the moon, and in the foreground there is water, through which
a crayfish moves towards the land.
19. _The Sun._ The luminary is distinguished in older cards by chief
rays that are waved and salient alternately and by secondary salient
rays. It appears to shed its influence on earth not only by light and
heat, but--like the moon--by drops of dew. Court de Gebelin termed these
tears of gold and of pearl just as he identified the lunar dew with the
tears of _Isis_. Beneath the dog-star there is a wall suggesting an
enclosure--as it might be, a walled garden--wherein are two children,
either naked or lightly clothed, facing a water, and gambolling, or
running hand in hand. Eliphas Lévi says that these are sometimes
replaced by a spinner unwinding destinies, and otherwise by a much
better symbol--a naked child mounted on a white horse and displaying a
scarlet standard.
20. _The Last Judgment._ I have spoken of this symbol already, the form
of which is essentially invariable, even in the Etteilla set. An angel
sounds his trumpet _per sepulchra regionum_, and the dead arise. It
matters little that Etteilla omits the angel, or that Dr. Papus
substitutes a ridiculous figure, which is, however, in consonance with
the general motive of that Tarot set which accompanies his latest work.
Before rejecting the transparent interpretation of the symbolism which
is conveyed by the name of the card and by the picture which it presents
to the eye, we should feel very sure of our ground. On the surface, at
least, it is and can be only the resurrection of that triad--father,
mother, child--whom we have met with already in the eighth card. M.
Bourgeat hazards the suggestion that esoterically it is the symbol of
evolution--of which it carries none of the signs. Others say that it
signifies renewal, which is obvious enough; that it is the triad of
human life; that it is the "generative force of the earth ... and
eternal life." Court de Gebelin makes himself impossible as usual, and
points out that if the grave-stones were removed it could be accepted as
a symbol of creation.
21--which, however, in most of the arrangements is the cipher card,
number nothing--_The Fool, Mate, or Unwise Man_. Court de Gebelin places
it at the head of the whole series as the zero or negative which is
pre-supposed by numeration, and as this is a simpler so also it is a
better arrangement. It has been abandoned because in later times the
cards have been attributed to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and
there has been apparently some difficulty about allocating the zero
symbol satisfactorily in a sequence of letters all of which signify
numbers. In the present reference of the card to the letter _Shin_,
which corresponds to 200, the difficulty or the unreason remains. The
truth is that the real arrangement of the cards has never transpired.
The Fool carries a wallet; he is looking over his shoulder and does not
know that he is on the brink of a precipice; but a dog or other
animal--some call it a tiger--is attacking him from behind, and he is
hurried to his destruction unawares. Etteilla has given a justifiable
variation of this card--as generally understood--in the form of a court
jester, with cap, bells and motley garb. The other descriptions say that
the wallet contains the bearer's follies and vices, which seems
bourgeois and arbitrary.
22. _The World, the Universe, or Time._ The four living creatures of the
Apocalypse and Ezekiel's vision, attributed to the evangelists in
Christian symbolism, are grouped about an elliptic garland, as if it
were a chain of flowers intended to symbolize all sensible things;
within this garland there is the figure of a woman, whom the wind has
girt about the loins with a light scarf, and this is all her vesture.
She is in the act of dancing, and has a wand in either hand. It is
eloquent as an image of the swirl of the sensitive life, of joy attained
in the body, of the soul's intoxication in the earthly paradise, but
still guarded by the Divine Watchers, as if by the powers and the graces
of the Holy Name, Tetragammaton,--those four ineffable letters which are
sometimes attributed to the mystical beasts. Eliphas Lévi calls the
garland a crown, and reports that the figure represents Truth. Dr. Papus
connects it with the Absolute and the realization of the Great Work; for
yet others it is a symbol of humanity and the eternal reward of a life
that has been spent well. It should be noted that in the four quarters
of the garland there are four flowers distinctively marked. According to
P. Christian, the garland should be formed of roses, and this is the
kind of chain which Eliphas Lévi says is less easily broken than a chain
of iron. Perhaps by antithesis, but for the same reason, the iron crown
of Peter may lie more lightly on the heads of sovereign pontiffs than
the crown of gold on kings.
CLASS II
SECTION 3
THE FOUR SUITS
OTHERWISE, LESSER ARCANA
The resources of interpretation have been lavished, if not exhausted, on
the twenty-two Trumps Major, the symbolism of which is unquestionable.
There remain the four suits, being Wands or Scepters--_ex hypothesi_, in
the archæology of the subject, the antecedents of Diamonds in modern
cards: Cups, corresponding to Hearts; Swords, which answer to Clubs, as
the weapon of chivalry is in relation to the peasant's quarter-staff or
the Alsatian bludgeon; and, finally, Pentacles--called also Deniers and
Money--which are the prototypes of Spades. In the old as in the new
suits, there are ten numbered cards, but in the Tarot there are four
Court Cards allocated to each suit, or a Knight in addition to King,
Queen and Knave. The Knave is a page, valet, or _damoiseau_; most
correctly, he is an esquire, presumably in the service of the Knight;
but there are certain rare sets in which the page becomes a maid of
honor, thus pairing the sexes in the tetrad of the court cards. There
are naturally distinctive features in respect of the several pictures,
by which I mean that the King of Wands is not exactly the same personage
as the King of Cups, even after allowance has been made for the
different emblems that they bear; but the symbolism resides in their
rank and in the suit to which they belong. So also the smaller cards,
which--until now--have never been issued pictorially in these our modern
days, depend on the particular meaning attaching to their numbers in
connection with the particular suit. I reserve, therefore, the details
of the Lesser Arcana, till I come to speak in the second part of the
rectified and perfected Tarot which accompanies this work. The consensus
of divinatory meanings attached both to the greater and lesser symbols
belongs to the third part.
SECTION 4
THE TAROT IN HISTORY
Our immediate next concern is to speak of the cards in their history, so
that the speculations and reveries, which have been perpetuated and
multiplied in the schools of occult research may be disposed of once and
for all, as intimated in the preface hereto.
Let it be understood at the beginning of this point that there are
several sets or sequences of ancient cards which are only in part of our
concern. _The Tarot Of The Bohemians_, by Papus, which I have recently
carried through the press, revising the imperfect rendering, has some
useful information in this connection, and, except for the omission of
dates and other evidences of the archæological sense, it will serve the
purpose of the general reader. I do not propose to extend it in the
present place in any manner that can be called considerable, but certain
additions are desirable and so also is a distinct mode of presentation.
Among ancient cards which are mentioned in connection with the Tarot,
there are firstly those of Baldini, which are the celebrated set
attributed by tradition to Andrea Mantegna, though this view is now
generally rejected. Their date is supposed to be about 1470, and it is
thought that there are not more than four collections extant in Europe.
A copy or reproduction referred to 1485 is perhaps equally rare. A
complete set contains fifty numbers, divided into five denaries or
sequences of ten cards each. There seems to be no record that they were
used for the purposes of a game, whether of chance or skill; they could
scarcely have lent themselves to divination or any form of
fortune-telling; while it would be more than idle to impute a profound
symbolical meaning to their obvious emblematic designs. The first denary
embodies Conditions of Life, as follows: (1) The Beggar, (2) the Knave,
(3) the Artisan, (4) the Merchant, (5) the Noble, (6) the Knight, (7)
the Doge, (8) the King, (9) the Emperor, (10) the Pope. The second
contains the Muses and their Divine Leader: (11) Calliope, (12) Urania,
(13) Terpsichore, (14) Erato, (15) Polyhymnia, (16) Thalia, (17)
Melpomene, (18) Euterpe, (19) Clio, (20) Apollo. The third combines part
of the Liberal Arts and Sciences with other departments of human
learning, as follows: (21) Grammar, (22) Logic, (23) Rhetoric, (24)
Geometry, (25) Arithmetic, (26) Music, (27) Poetry, (28) Philosophy,
(29) Astrology, (30) Theology. The fourth denary completes the Liberal
Arts and enumerates the Virtues: (31) Astronomy, (32) Chronology, (33)
Cosmology, (34) Temperance, (35) Prudence, (36) Strength, (37) Justice,
(38) Charity, (39) Hope, (40) Faith. The fifth and last denary presents
the System of the Heavens: (41) Moon, (42) Mercury, (43) Venus, (44)
Sun, (45) Mars, (46) Jupiter, (47) Saturn, (48) Eighth Sphere, (49)
_Primum Mobile_, (50) First Cause.
We must set aside the fantastic attempts to extract complete Tarot
sequences out of these denaries; we must forbear from saying, for
example, that the Conditions of Life correspond to the Trumps Major, the
Muses to Pentacles, the Arts and Sciences to Cups, the Virtues, etc., to
Scepters, and the conditions of life to Swords. This kind of thing can
be done by a process of mental contortion, but it has no place in
reality. At the same time, it is hardly possible that individual cards
should not exhibit certain, and even striking, analogies. The Baldini
King, Knight and Knave suggest the corresponding court cards of the
Minor Arcana. The Emperor, Pope, Temperance, Strength, Justice, Moon and
Sun are common to the Mantegna and Trumps Major of any Tarot pack.
Predisposition has also connected the Beggar and Fool, Venus and the
Star, Mars and the Chariot, Saturn and the Hermit, even Jupiter, or
alternatively the First Cause, with the Tarot card of the world.[1]But
the most salient features of the Trumps Major are wanting in the
Mantegna set, and I do not believe that the ordered sequence in the
latter case gave birth, as it has been suggested, to the others. Romain
Merlin maintained this view, and positively assigned the Baldini cards
to the end of the fourteenth century.
[1] The beggar is practically naked, and the analogy is constituted
by the presence of two dogs, one of which seems to be flying at his
legs. The Mars card depicts a sword-bearing warrior in a canopied
chariot, to which, however, no horses are attached. Of course, if
the Baldini cards belong to the close of the fifteenth century,
there is no question at issue, as the Tarot was known in Europe
long before that period.
If it be agreed that, except accidentally and sporadically, the Baldini
emblematic or allegorical pictures have only a shadowy and occasional
connection with Tarot cards, and, whatever their most probable date,
that they can have supplied no originating motive, it follows that we
are still seeking not only an origin in place and time for the symbols
with which we are concerned, but a specific case of their manifestation
on the continent of Europe to serve as a point of departure, whether
backward or forward. Now it is well known that in the year 1393 the
painter Charles Gringonneur--who for no reason that I can trace has been
termed an occultist and kabalist by one indifferent English
writer--designed and illuminated some kind of cards for the diversion of
Charles VI of France when he was in mental ill-health, and the question
arises whether anything can be ascertained of their nature. The only
available answer is that at Paris, in the Bibliothèque du Roi, there are
seventeen cards drawn and illuminated on paper. They are very beautiful,
antique and priceless; the figures have a background of gold, and are
framed in a silver border; but they are accompanied by no inscription
and no number.
It is certain, however, that they include Tarot Trumps Major, the list
of which is as follows: Fool, Emperor, Pope, Lovers, Wheel of Fortune,
Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, Moon, Sun, Chariot, Hermit, Hanged Man,
Death, Tower and Last Judgment. There are also four Tarot Cards at the
Musée Carrer, Venice, and five others elsewhere, making nine in all.
They include two pages or Knaves, three Kings and two Queens, thus
illustrating the Minor Arcana. These collections have all been
identified with the set produced by Gringonneur, but the ascription was
disputed so far back as the year 1848, and it is not apparently put
forward at the present day, even by those who are anxious to make
evident the antiquity of the Tarot. It is held that they are all of
Italian and some at least certainly of Venetian origin. We have in this
manner our requisite point of departure in respect of place at least. It
has further been stated with authority that Venetian Tarots are the old
and true form, which is the parent of all others; but I infer that
complete sets of the Major and Minor Arcana belong to much later
periods. The pack is thought to have consisted of seventy-eight cards.
Notwithstanding, however, the preference shown towards the Venetian
Tarot, it is acknowledged that some portions of a Minchiate or
Florentine set must be allocated to the period between 1413 and 1418.
These were once in the possession of Countess Gonzaga, at Milan. A
complete Minchiate pack contained ninety-seven cards, and in spite of
these vestiges it is regarded, speaking generally, as a later
development. There were forty-one Trumps Major, the additional numbers
being borrowed or reflected from the Baldini emblematic set. In the
court cards of the Minor Arcana, the Knights were monsters of the
centaur type, while the Knaves were sometimes warriors and sometimes
serving-men. Another distinction dwelt upon is the prevalence of
Christian mediæval ideas and the utter absence of any Oriental
suggestion. The question, however, remains whether there are Eastern
traces in any Tarot cards.
We come, in fine, to the Bolognese Tarot, sometimes referred to as that
of Venice and having the Trumps Major complete, but numbers 20 and 21
are transposed. In the Minor Arcana the 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the small cards
are omitted, with the result that there are sixty-two cards in all. The
termination of the Trumps Major in the representation of the Last
Judgment is curious, and a little arresting as a point of symbolism; but
this is all that it seems necessary to remark about the pack of Bologna,
except that it is said to have been invented--or, as a Tarot, more
correctly, modified--about the beginning of the fifteenth century by an
exiled Prince of Pisa resident in the city. The purpose for which they
were used is made tolerably evident by the fact that, in 1423, St.
Bernardin of Sienna preached against playing cards and other forms of
gambling. Forty years later the importation of cards into England was
forbidden, the time being that of King Edward IV. This is the first
certain record of the subject in our country.
It is difficult to consult perfect examples of the sets enumerated
above, but it is not difficult to meet with detailed and illustrated
descriptions--I should add, provided always that the writer is not an
occultist, for accounts emanating from that source are usually
imperfect, vague and preoccupied by considerations which cloud the
critical issues. An instance in point is offered by certain views which
have been expressed on the Mantegna codex--if I may continue to dignify
card sequences with a title of this kind. It has been ruled--as we have
seen--in occult reverie that Apollo and the Nine Muses are in
correspondence with Pentacles, but the analogy does not obtain in a
working state of research; and reverie must border on nightmare before
we can identify Astronomy, Chronology and Cosmology with the suit of
Cups. The Baldini figures which represent these subjects are emblems of
their period and not symbols, like the Tarot.
In conclusion as to this part, I observe that there has been a
disposition among experts to think that the Trumps Major were not
originally connected with the numbered suits. I do not wish to offer a
personal view; I am not an expert in the history of games of chance, and
I hate the _profanum vulgus_ of divinatory devices; but I venture, under
all reserves, to intimate that if later research should justify such a
leaning, then--except for the good old art of fortune-telling and its
tamperings with so-called destiny--it will be so much the better for the
Greater Arcana.
So far as regards what is indispensable as preliminaries to the
historical aspects of Tarot cards, and I will now take up the
speculative side of the subject and produce its test of value. In my
preface to _The Tarot Of The Bohemians_ I have mentioned that the first
writer who made known the fact of the cards was the archæologist Court
de Gebelin, who, just prior to the French Revolution, occupied several
years in the publication of his _Monde Primitif_, which extended to nine
quarto volumes. He was a learned man of his epoch, a high-grade Mason, a
member of the historical Lodge of the Philalethes, and a _virtuoso_ with
a profound and lifelong interest in the debate on universal antiquities
before a science of the subject existed. Even at this day, his memorials
and dissertations, collected under the title which I have quoted, are
worth possessing. By an accident of things, he became acquainted with
the Tarot when it was quite unknown in Paris, and at once conceived that
it was the remnants of an Egyptian book. He made inquiries concerning it
and ascertained that it was in circulation over a considerable part of
Europe--Spain, Italy, Germany and the South of France. It was in use as
a game of chance or skill, after the ordinary manner of playing-cards;
and he ascertained further how the game was played. But it was in use
also for the higher purpose of divination or fortune-telling, and with
the help of a learned friend he discovered the significance attributed
to the cards, together with the method of arrangement adopted for this
purpose. In a word, he made a distinct contribution to our knowledge,
and he is still a source of reference--but it is on the question of fact
only, and not on the beloved hypothesis that the Tarot contains pure
Egyptian doctrine. However, he set the opinion which is prevalent to
this day throughout the occult schools that in the mystery and wonder,
the strange night of the gods, the unknown tongue and the undeciphered
hieroglyphics which symbolized Egypt at the end of the eighteenth
century, the origin of the cards was lost. So dreamed one of the
characteristic _literati_ of France, and one can almost understand and
sympathize, for the country about the Delta and the Nile was beginning
to loom largely in the preoccupation of learned thought, and _omne
ignotum pro Ægyptiaco_ was the way the delusion to which many minds
tended. It was excusable enough then, but that the madness was continued
and, within the charmed circle of the occult sciences, still passes from
mouth to mouth--there is no excuse for this. Let us see, therefore, the
evidence produced by M. Court de Gebelin in support of his thesis, and,
that I may deal justly, it shall be summarized as far as possible in his
own words.
(1) The figures and arrangement of the game are manifestly allegorical;
(2) the allegories are in conformity with the civil, philosophical and
religious doctrine of ancient Egypt; (3) if the cards were modern, no
High Priestess would be included among the Greater Arcana; (4) the
figure in question bears the horns of Isis; (5) the card which is called
the Emperor has a scepter terminating in a triple cross; (6) the card
entitled the Moon, who is Isis, shows drops of rain or dew in the act of
being shed by the luminary and these--as we have seen--are the tears of
Isis, which swelled the waters of the Nile and fertilized the fields of
Egypt; (7) the seventeenth card, or Star, is the dog-star, Sirius which
was consecrated to Isis and symbolized the opening of the year; (8) the
game played with the Tarot is founded on the sacred number seven, which
was of great importance in Egypt; (9) the word Tarot is pure Egyptian,
in which language Tar = way or road, and Ro = king or royal--it
signifies therefore the Royal Road of Life; (10) alternatively, it is
derived from A = doctrine; Rosh = Mercury = Thoth, and the article T; in
sum, _Tarosh_; and therefore the Tarot is the _Book Of Thoth_, or the
_Table Of The Doctrine Of Mercury_.
Such is the testimony, it being understood that I have set aside several
casual statements, for which no kind of justification is produced.
These, therefore, are ten pillars which support the edifice of the
thesis, and the same are pillars of sand. The Tarot is, of course,
allegorical--that is to say, it is symbolism--but allegory and symbol
are catholic--of all countries, nations and times; they are not more
Egyptian than Mexican; they are of Europe and Cathay, of Tibet beyond
the Himalayas and of the London gutters. As allegory and symbol, the
cards correspond to many types of ideas and things; they are universal
and not particular; and the fact that they do not especially and
peculiarly respond to Egyptian doctrine--religious, philosophical or
civil--is clear from the failure of Court de Gebelin to go further than
the affirmation. The presence of a High Priestess among the Trumps Major
is more easily explained as the memorial of some popular
superstition--that worship of Diana, for example, the persistence of
which in modern Italy has been traced with such striking results by
Leland. We have also to remember the universality of horns in every
cultus, not excepting that of Tibet. The triple cross is preposterous as
an instance of Egyptian symbolism; it is the cross of the patriarchal
see, both Greek and Latin--of Venice, of Jerusalem, for example--and it
is the form of signing used to this day by the priests and laity of the
Orthodox Rite. I pass over the idle allusion to the tears of Isis,
because other occult writers have told us that they are Hebrew _Jods_;
as regards the seventeenth card, it is the star Sirius or another, as
predisposition pleases; the number seven was certainly important in
Egypt and any treatise on numerical mysticism will show that the same
statement applies everywhere, even if we elect to ignore the seven
Christian Sacraments and the Gifts of the Divine Spirit. Finally, as
regards the etymology of the word Tarot, it is sufficient to observe
that it was offered before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and when
there was no knowledge of the Egyptian language.
The thesis of Court de Gebelin was not suffered to repose undisturbed in
the mind of the age, appealing to the learned exclusively by means of a
quarto volume. It created the opportunity of Tarot cards in Paris, as
the center of France and all things French in the universe. The
suggestion that divination by cards had behind it the unexpected
warrants of ancient hidden science, and that the root of the whole
subject was in the wonder and mystery of Egypt, reflected thereon almost
a divine dignity; out of the purlieus of occult practices cartomancy
emerged into fashion and assumed for the moment almost pontifical
vestures. The first to undertake the role of _bateleur_, magician and
juggler, was the illiterate but zealous adventurer, Alliette; the
second, as a kind of High Priestess, full of intuitions and revelations,
was Mlle. Lenormand--but she belongs to a later period; while lastly
came Julia Orsini, who is referable to a Queen of Cups rather in the
tatters of clairvoyance. I am not concerned with these people as tellers
of fortune, when destiny itself was shuffling and cutting cards for the
game of universal revolution, or for such courts and courtiers as were
those of Louis XVIII, Charles IX and Louis Philippe. But under the
occult designation of Etteilla, the transliteration of his name,
Alliette, that _perruquier_ took himself with high seriousness and posed
rather as a priest of the occult sciences than as an ordinary adept in
_l'art de tirer les cartes_. Even at this day there are people, like Dr.
Papus, who have sought to save some part of his bizarre system from
oblivion.
The long and heterogeneous story of _Le Monde Primitif_ had come to the
end of its telling in 1782, and in 1783 the tracts of Etteilla had begun
pouring from the press, testifying that already he had spent thirty,
nay, almost forty years in the study of Egyptian magic, and that he had
found the final keys. They were, in fact, the Keys of the Tarot, which
was a book of philosophy and the _Book Of Thoth_, but at the same time
it was actually written by seventeen Magi in a Temple of Fire, on the
borders of the Levant, some three leagues from Memphis. It contained
the science of the universe, and the cartomancist proceeded to apply it
to Astrology, Alchemy, and fortune-telling, without the slightest
diffidence or reserve as to the fact that he was driving a trade. I have
really little doubt that he considered it genuine as a _métier_, and
that he himself was the first person whom he convinced concerning his
system. But the point which we have to notice is that in this manner was
the antiquity of the Tarot generally trumpeted forth. The little books
of Etteilla are proof positive that he did not know even his own
language; when in the course of time he produced a reformed Tarot, even
those who think of him tenderly admit that he spoiled its symbolism; and
in respect of antiquities he had only Court de Gebelin as his universal
authority.
The cartomancists succeeded one another in the manner which I have
mentioned, and of course there were rival adepts of these less than
least mysteries; but the scholarship of the subject, if it can be said
to have come into existence, reposed after all in the quarto of Court de
Gebelin for something more than sixty years. On his authority, there is
very little doubt that every one who became acquainted, by theory or
practice, by casual or special concern, with the question of Tarot
cards, accepted their Egyptian character. It is said that people are
taken commonly at their own valuation, and--following as it does the
line of least resistance--the unsolicitous general mind assuredly
accepts archæological pretensions in the sense of their own daring and
of those who put them forward. The first who appeared to reconsider the
subject with some presumptive titles to a hearing was the French writer
Duchesne, but I am compelled to pass him over with a mere reference, and
so also some interesting researches on the general subject of
playing-cards by Singer in England. The latter believed that the old
Venetian game called Trappola was the earliest European form of
card-playing, that it was of Arabian origin, and that the fifty-two
cards used for the purpose derived from that region. I do not gather
that any importance was ever attached to this view.
Duchesne and Singer were followed by another English writer, W. A.
Chatto, who reviewed the available facts and the cloud of speculations
which had already arisen on the subject. This was in 1848, and his work
has still a kind of standard authority, but--after every allowance for a
certain righteousness attributable to the independent mind--it remains
an indifferent and even a poor performance. It was, however,
characteristic in its way of the approaching middle night of the
nineteenth century. Chatto rejected the Egyptian hypothesis, but as he
was at very little pains concerning it, he would scarcely be held to
displace Court de Gebelin if the latter had any firm ground beneath his
hypothesis. In 1854 another French writer, Boiteau, took up the general
question, maintaining the oriental origin of Tarot cards, though without
attempting to prove it. I am not certain, but I think that he is the
first writer who definitely identified them with the Gipsies; for him,
however, the original Gipsy home was in India, and Egypt did not
therefore enter into his calculation.
In 1860 there arose Eliphas Lévi, a brilliant and profound _illuminé_
whom it is impossible to accept, and with whom it is even more
impossible to dispense. There was never a mouth declaring such great
things, of all the western voices which have proclaimed or interpreted
the science called occult and the doctrine called magical. I suppose
that, fundamentally speaking, he cared as much and as little as I do for
the phenomenal part, but he explained the phenomena with the assurance
of one who openly regarded charlatanry as a great means to an end, if
used in a right cause. He came unto his own and his own received him,
also at his proper valuation, as a man of great learning--which he never
was--and as a revealer of all mysteries without having been received
into any. I do not think that there was ever an instance of a writer
with greater gifts, after their particular kind, who put them to such
indifferent uses. After all, he was only Etteilla a second time in the
flesh, endowed in his transmutation with a mouth of gold and a wider
casual knowledge. This notwithstanding, he has written the most
comprehensive, brilliant, enchanting _History Of Magic_ which has ever
been drawn into writing in any language. The Tarot and the de Gebelin
hypothesis he took into his heart of hearts, and all occult France and
all esoteric Britain, Martinists, half-instructed Kabalists, schools of
_soi disant_ theosophy--there, here and everywhere--have accepted his
judgment about it with the same confidence as his interpretations of
those great classics of Kabalism which he had skimmed rather than read.
The Tarot for him was not only the most perfect instrument of divination
and the keystone of occult science, but it was the primitive book, the
sole book of the ancient Magi, the miraculous volume which inspired all
the sacred writings of antiquity. In his first work Lévi was content,
however, with accepting the construction of Court de Gebelin and
reproducing the seventh Trump Major with a few Egyptian characteristics.
The question of Tarot transmission through the Gipsies did not occupy
him, till J. A. Vaillant, a bizarre writer with great knowledge of the
Romany people, suggested it in his work on those wandering tribes. The
two authors were almost coincident and reflected one another thereafter.
It remained for Romain Merlin, in 1869, to point out what should have
been obvious, namely, that cards of some kind were known in Europe prior
to the arrival of the Gipsies in or about 1417. But as this was their
arrival at Lüneburg, and as their presence can be traced antecedently,
the correction loses a considerable part of its force; it is safer,
therefore, to say that the evidence for the use of the Tarot by Romany
tribes was not suggested till after the year 1840; the fact that some
Gipsies before this period were found using cards is quite explicable on
the hypothesis not that they brought them into Europe but found them
there already and added them to their stock in trade.
We have now seen that there is no particle of evidence for the Egyptian
origin of Tarot cards. Looking in other directions, it was once advanced
on native authority that cards of some kind were invented in China about
the year A. D. 1120. Court de Gebelin believed in his zeal that he had
traced them to a Chinese inscription of great imputed antiquity which
was said to refer to the subsidence of the waters of the Deluge. The
characters of this inscription were contained in seventy-seven
compartments, and this constitutes the analogy. India had also its
tablets, whether cards or otherwise, and these have suggested similar
slender similitudes. But the existence, for example, of ten suits or
styles, of twelve numbers each, and representing the avatars of Vishnu,
as a fish, tortoise, boar, lion, monkey, hatchet, umbrella, or bow, as a
goat, a boodh and as a horse in fine, are not going to help us towards
the origin of our own Trumps Major, nor do crowns and harps--nor even
the presence of possible coins as a synonym of deniers and perhaps as an
equivalent of pentacles--do much to elucidate the Lesser Arcana. If
every tongue and people and clime and period possessed their cards--if
with these also they philosophized, divined and gambled--the fact would
be interesting enough, but unless they were Tarot cards, they would
illustrate only the universal tendency of man to be pursuing the same
things in more or less the same way.
I end, therefore, the history of this subject by repeating that it has
no history prior to the fourteenth century, when the first rumors were
heard concerning cards. They may have existed for centuries, but this
period would be early enough, if they were only intended for people to
try their luck at gambling or their luck at seeing the future; on the
other hand, if they contain the deep intimations of Secret Doctrine,
then the fourteenth century is again early enough, or at least in this
respect we are getting as much as we can.
Part Two
THE DOCTRINE BEHIND THE VEIL
SECTION I.
THE TAROT AND SECRET TRADITION
The Tarot embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind
which lie all the implicits of the human mind, and it is in this sense
that they contain secret doctrine, which is the realization by the few
of truths imbedded in the consciousness of all, though they have not
passed into express recognition by ordinary men. The theory is that this
doctrine has always existed--that is to say, has been excogitated in the
consciousness of an elect minority; that it has been perpetuated in
secrecy from one to another and has been recorded in secret literatures,
like those of Alchemy and Kabalism; that it is contained also in those
Instituted Mysteries of which Rosicrucianism offers an example near to
our hand in the past, and Craft Masonry a living summary, or general
memorial, for those who can interpret its real meaning. Behind the
Secret Doctrine it is held that there is an experience or practice by
which the Doctrine is justified. It is obvious that in a handbook like
the present I can do little more than state the claims, which, however,
have been discussed at length in several of my other writings, while it
is designed to treat two of its more important phases in books devoted
to the Secret Tradition in Freemasonry and in Hermetic literature. As
regards Tarot claims, it should be remembered that some considerable
part of the imputed Secret Doctrine has been presented in the pictorial
emblems of Alchemy, so that the imputed _Book Of Thoth_ is in no sense a
solitary device of this emblematic kind. Now, Alchemy had two branches,
as I have explained fully elsewhere, and the pictorial emblems which I
have mentioned are common to both divisions. Its material side is
represented in the strange symbolism of the _Mutus Liber_, printed in
the great folios of Mangetus. There the process for the performance of
the great work of transmutation is depicted in fourteen copper-plate
engravings, which exhibit the different stages of the matter in the
various chemical vessels. Above these vessels there are mythological,
planetary, solar and lunar symbols, as if the powers and virtues
which--according to Hermetic teaching--preside over the development and
perfection of the metallic kingdom were intervening actively to assist
the two operators who are toiling below. The operators--curiously
enough--are male and female. The spiritual side of Alchemy is set forth
in the much stranger emblems of the _Book Of Lambspring_, and of this I
have already given a preliminary interpretation, to which the reader may
be referred.[2] The tract contains the mystery of what is called the
mystical or arch-natural elixir, being the marriage of the soul and the
spirit in the body of the adept philosopher and the transmutation of the
body as the physical result of this marriage. I have never met with more
curious intimations than in this one little work. It may be mentioned as
a point of fact that both tracts are very much later in time than the
latest date that could be assigned to the general distribution of Tarot
cards in Europe by the most drastic form of criticism. They belong
respectively to the end of the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries. As I
am not drawing here on the font of imagination to refresh that of fact
and experience, I do not suggest that the Tarot set the example of
expressing Secret Doctrine in pictures and that it was followed by
Hermetic writers; but it is noticeable that it is perhaps the earliest
example of this art. It is also the most catholic, because it is not, by
attribution or otherwise, a derivative of any one school or literature
of occultism; it is not of Alchemy or Kabalism or Astrology or
Ceremonial Magic; but, as I have said, it is the presentation of
universal ideas by means of universal types, and it is in the
combination of these types--if anywhere--that it presents Secret
Doctrine.
[2] See the _Occult Review_, vol. viii, 1908.
That combination may, _ex hypothesi_, reside in the numbered sequence of
its series or in their fortuitous assemblage by shuffling, cutting and
dealing, as in ordinary games of chance played with cards. Two writers
have adopted the first view without prejudice to the second, and I shall
do well, perhaps, to dispose at once of what they have said. Mr.
MacGregor Mathers, who once published a pamphlet on the Tarot, which was
in the main devoted to fortune-telling, suggested that the twenty-two
Trumps Major could be constructed, following their numerical order,
into what he called a "connected sentence." It was, in fact, the heads
of a moral thesis on the human will, its enlightenment by science,
represented by the Magician, its manifestation by action--a significance
attributed to the High Priestess--its realization (the Empress) in deeds
of mercy and beneficence, which qualities were allocated to the Emperor.
He spoke also in the familiar conventional manner of prudence,
fortitude, sacrifice, hope and ultimate happiness. But if this were the
message of the cards, it is certain that there would be no excuse for
publishing them at this day or taking the pains to elucidate them at
some length. In his _Tarot Of The Bohemians_, a work written with zeal
and enthusiasm, sparing no pains of thought or research within its
particular lines--but unfortunately without real insight--Dr. Papus has
given a singularly elaborate scheme of the Trumps Major. It depends,
like that of Mr. Mathers, from their numerical sequence, but exhibits
their interrelation in the Divine World, the Macrocosm and Microcosm. In
this manner we get, as it were, a spiritual history of man, or of the
soul coming out from the Eternal, passing into the darkness of the
material body, and returning to the height. I think that the author is
here within a measurable distance of the right track, and his views are
to this extent informing, but his method--in some respects--confuses the
issues and the modes and planes of being.
The Trumps Major have also been treated in the alternative method which
I have mentioned, and Grand Orient, in his _Manual Of Cartomancy_, under
the guise of a mode of transcendental divination, has really offered the
result of certain illustrative readings of the cards when arranged as
the result of a fortuitous combination by means of shuffling and
dealing. The use of divinatory methods, with whatsoever intention and
for whatever purpose, carries with it two suggestions. It may be thought
that the deeper meanings are imputed rather than real, but this is
disposed of by the fact of certain cards, like the Magician, the High
Priestess, the Wheel of Fortune, the Hanged Man, the Tower or _Maison
Dieu_, and several others, which do not correspond to Conditions of
Life, Arts, Sciences, Virtues, or the other subjects contained in the
denaries of the Baldini emblematic figures. They are also proof positive
that obvious and natural moralities cannot explain the sequence. Such
cards testify concerning themselves after another manner; and although
the state in which I have left the Tarot in respect of its historical
side is so much the more difficult as it is so much the more open, they
indicate the real subject matter with which we are concerned. The
methods show also that the Trumps Major at least have been adapted to
fortune-telling rather than belong thereto. The common divinatory
meanings which will be given in the third part are largely arbitrary
attributions, or the product of secondary and uninstructed intuition;
or, at the very most, they belong to the subject on a lower plane, apart
from the original intention. If the Tarot were of fortune-telling in the
root-matter thereof, we should have to look in very strange places for
the motive which devised it--to Witchcraft and the Black Sabbath, rather
than any Secret Doctrine.
The two classes of significance which are attached to the Tarot in the
superior and inferior worlds, and the fact that no occult or other
writer has attempted to assign anything but a divinatory meaning to the
Minor Arcana, justify in yet another manner the hypothesis that the two
series do not belong to one another. It is possible that their marriage
was effected first in the Tarot of Bologna by that Prince of Pisa whom I
have mentioned in the first part. It is said that his device obtained
for him public recognition and reward from the city of his adoption,
which would scarcely have been possible, even in those fantastic days,
for the production of a Tarot which only omitted a few of the small
cards; but as we are dealing with a question of fact which has to be
accounted for somehow, it is conceivable that a sensation might have
been created by a combination of the minor and gambling cards with the
philosophical set, and by the adaptation of both to a game of chance.
Afterwards it would have been further adapted to that other game of
chance which is called fortune-telling. It should be understood here
that I am not denying the possibility of divination, but I take
exception as a mystic to the dedications which bring people into these
paths, as if they had any relation to the Mystic Quest.
The Tarot cards which are issued with the small edition of the present
work, that is to say, with the _Key To The Tarot_, have been drawn and
colored by Miss Pamela Colman Smith, and will, I think, be regarded as
very striking and beautiful, in their design alike and execution. They
are reproduced in the present enlarged edition of the Key as a means of
reference to the text. They differ in many important respects from the
conventional archaisms of the past and from the wretched products of
colportage which now reach us from Italy, and it remains for me to
justify their variations so far as the symbolism is concerned. That for
once in modern times I present a pack which is the work of an artist
does not, I presume, call for apology, even to the people--if any remain
among us--who used to be described and to call themselves "very occult."
If any one will look at the gorgeous Tarot valet or knave who is
emblazoned on one of the page plates of Chatto's _Facts And Speculations
Concerning The History Of Playing Cards_, he will know that Italy in the
old days produced some splendid packs. I could only wish that it had
been possible to issue the restored and rectified cards in the same
style and size; such a course would have done fuller justice to the
designs, but the result would have proved unmanageable for those
practical purposes which are connected with cards, and for which
allowance must be made, whatever my views thereon. For the variations in
the symbolism by which the designs have been affected, I alone am
responsible. In respect of the Major Arcana, they are sure to occasion
criticism among students, actual and imputed. I wish therefore to say,
within the reserves of courtesy and _la haute convenance_ belonging to
the fellowship of research, that I care nothing utterly for any view
that may find expression. There is a Secret Tradition concerning the
Tarot, as well as a _Secret Doctrine_ contained therein; I have followed
some part of it without exceeding the limits which are drawn about
matters of this kind and belong to the laws of honor. This tradition has
two parts, and as one of them has passed into writing it seems to follow
that it may be betrayed at any moment, which will not signify, because
the second, as I have intimated, has not so passed at present and is
held by very few indeed. The purveyors of spurious copy and the
traffickers in stolen goods may take note of this point, if they please.
I ask, moreover, to be distinguished from two or three writers in recent
times who have thought fit to hint that they could say a good deal more
if they liked, for we do not speak the same language; but, also from any
one who, now or hereafter, may say that she or he will tell all, because
they have only the accidents and not the essentials necessary for such
disclosure. If I have followed on my part the counsel of Robert Burns,
by keeping something to myself which I "scarcely tell to any," I have
still said as much as I can; it is the truth after its own manner, and
as much as may be expected or required in those outer circles where the
qualifications of special research cannot be expected.
In regard to the Minor Arcana, they are the first in modern but not in
all times to be accompanied by pictures, in addition to what is called
the "pips"--that is to say, the devices belonging to the numbers of the
various suits. These pictures respond to the divinatory meanings, which
have been drawn from many sources. To sum up, therefore, the present
division of this key is devoted to the Trumps Major; it elucidates their
symbols in respect of the higher intention and with reference to the
designs in the pack. The third division will give the divinatory
significance in respect of the seventy-eight Tarot cards, and with
particular reference to the designs of the Minor Arcana. It will give,
in fine, some modes of use for those who require them, and in the sense
of the reason which I have already explained in the preface. That which
hereinafter follows should be taken, for the purposes of comparison, in
connection with the general description of the old Tarot Trumps in the
first part. There it will be seen that the zero card of the Fool is
allocated, as it always is, to the place which makes it equivalent to
the number twenty-one. The arrangement is ridiculous on the surface,
which does not much signify, but it is also wrong on the symbolism, nor
does this fare better when it is made to replace the twenty-second point
of the sequence. Etteilla recognized the difficulties of both
attributions, but he only made bad worse by allocating the Fool to the
place which is usually occupied by the Ace of Pentacles as the last of
the whole Tarot series. This rearrangement has been followed by Papus
recently in _Le Tarot Divinatoire_, where the confusion is of no
consequence, as the findings of fortune-telling depend upon fortuitous
positions and not upon essential place in the general sequence of cards.
I have seen yet another allocation of the zero symbol, which no doubt
obtains in certain cases, but it fails on the highest planes and for our
present requirements it would be idle to carry the examination further.
SECTION 2
THE TRUMPS MAJOR AND THEIR INNER SYMBOLISM
ONE. THE MAGICIAN
A youthful figure in the robe of a magician, having the countenance of
divine Apollo, with smile of confidence and shining eyes. Above his head
is the mysterious sign of the Holy Spirit, the sign of life, like an
endless cord, forming the figure 8 in a horizontal position [Symbol:
Infinity]. About his waist is a serpent-cincture, the serpent appearing
to devour its own tail. This is familiar to most as a conventional
symbol of eternity, but here it indicates more especially the eternity
of attainment in the spirit. In the Magician's right hand is a wand
raised towards heaven, while the left hand is pointing to the earth.
This dual sign is known in very high grades of the Instituted Mysteries;
it shows the descent of grace, virtue and light, drawn from things above
and derived to things below. The suggestion throughout is therefore the
possession and communication of the Powers and Gifts of the Spirit. On
the table in front of the Magician are the symbols of the four Tarot
suits, signifying the elements of natural life, which lie like counters
before the adept, and he adapts them as he wills. Beneath are roses and
lilies, the _flos campi_ and _lilium convallium_, changed into garden
flowers, to show the culture of aspiration. This card signifies the
divine motive in man, reflecting God, the will in the liberation of its
union with that which is above. It is also the unity of individual being
on all planes, and in a very high sense it is thought, in the fixation
thereof. With further reference to what I have called the sign of life
and its connection with the number 8, it may be remembered that
Christian Gnosticism speaks of rebirth in Christ as a change "unto the
Ogdoad." The mystic number is termed Jerusalem above, the Land flowing
with Milk and Honey, the Holy Spirit and the Land of the Lord. According
to Martinism, 8 is the number of Christ.
[Illustration: THE MAGICIAN.]
TWO. THE HIGH PRIESTESS
She has the lunar crescent at her feet, a horned diadem on her head,
with a globe in the middle place, and a large solar cross on her breast.
The scroll in her hands is inscribed with the word _Tora_, signifying
the Greater Law, the Secret Law and the second sense of the Word. It is
partly covered by her mantle, to show that some things are implied and
some spoken. She is seated between the white and black pillars--J. and
B.--of the mystic Temple and the veil of the Temple is behind her: it is
embroidered with palms and pomegranates. The vestments are flowing and
gauzy, and the mantle suggests light--a shimmering radiance. She has
been called Occult Science on the threshhold of the Sanctuary of Isis,
but she is really the Secret Church, the House which is of God (Nature)
and man. She represents also the Second Marriage of the Prince who is no
longer of this world; she is the spiritual Bride and Mother, the
daughter of the stars and the Higher Garden of Eden. She is, in fine,
the Queen of the borrowed light, but this is the light of all. She is
the Moon nourished by the milk of the Supernal Mother.
In a manner, she is also the Supernal Mother herself--that is to say,
she is the bright reflection. It is in this sense of reflection that her
truest and highest name in bolism is _Shekinah_--the co-habiting glory.
According to Kabalism, there is a _Shekinah_ both above and below. In
the superior world it is called _Binah_, the Supernal Understanding
which reflects to the emanations that are beneath. In the lower world it
is _Malkuth_--that world being, for this purpose, understood as a
blessed Kingdom--that with which it is made blessed being the Indwelling
Glory. Mystically speaking, the _Shekinah_ is the Spiritual Bride of the
just man, and when he reads the Law she gives the Divine meaning. There
are some respects in which this card is the highest and holiest of the
Greater Arcana.
[Illustration: THE HIGH PRIESTESS]
THREE. THE EMPRESS
A stately figure, seated, having rich vestments and royal aspect, as of
a daughter of heaven and earth. Her diadem is of twelve stars, gathered
in a cluster. The symbol of Venus is on the shield which rests near her.
A field of corn is ripening in front of her, and beyond there is a fall
of water. The scepter which she bears is surmounted by the globe of this
world. She is the inferior Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, all
that is symbolized by the visible house of man. She is not _Regina
coeli_, but she is still _refugium peccatorum_, the fruitful mother of
thousands. There are also certain aspects in which she has been
correctly described as desire and the wings thereof, as the woman
clothed with the sun, as _Gloria Mundi_ and the veil of the _Sanctum
Sanctorum_; but she is not, I may add, the soul that has attained wings,
unless all the symbolism is counted up another and unusual way. She is
above all things universal fecundity and the outer sense of the Word.
This is obvious, because there is no direct message which has been given
to man like that which is borne by woman; but she does not herself carry
its interpretation.
In another order of ideas, the card of the Empress signifies the door or
gate by which an entrance is obtained into this life, as into the Garden
of Venus; and then the way which leads out therefrom, into that which is
beyond, is the secret known to the High Priestess: it is communicated by
her to the elect. Most old attributions of this card are completely
wrong on the symbolism--as, for example, its identification with the
Word, Divine Nature, the Triad, and so forth.
[Illustration: THE EMPRESS.]
FOUR. THE EMPEROR
He has a form of the _Crux ansata_ for his scepter and a globe in his
left hand. He is crowned monarch--commanding, stately, seated on a
throne, the arms of which are fronted by rams' heads. He is executive
and realization, the power of this world, here clothed with the highest
of its natural attributes. He is occasionally represented as seated on a
cubic stone, which, however, confuses some of the issues. He is the
virile power, to which the Empress responds, and in this sense is he who
seeks to remove the Veil of Isis; yet she remains _virgo intacta_.
It should be understood that this card and that of the Empress do not
precisely represent the condition of married life, though this state is
implied. On the surface, as I have indicated, they stand for mundane
royalty, uplifted on the seats of the mighty; but above this there is
the suggestion of another presence. They signify, also--and the male
figure especially--the higher kingship, occupying the intellectual
throne. Hereof is the lordship of thought rather than of the animal
world. Both personalities, after their own manner, are "full of strange
experience," but theirs is not consciously the wisdom which draws from a
higher world. The Emperor has been described as (_a_) will in its
embodied form, but this is only one of its applications, and (_b_) as an
expression of virtualities contained in the Absolute Being--but this is
fantasy.
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR.]
FIVE. THE HIEROPHANT
He wears the triple crown and is seated between two pillars, but they
are not those of the Temple which is guarded by the High Priestess. In
his left hand he holds a scepter terminating in the triple cross, and
with his right hand he gives the well-known ecclesiastical sign which is
called that of esotericism, distinguishing between the manifest and
concealed part of doctrine. It is noticeable in this connection that the
High Priestess makes no sign. At his feet are the crossed keys, and two
priestly ministers in albs kneel before him. He has been usually called
the Pope, which is a particular application of the more general office
that he symbolizes. He is the ruling power of external religion, as the
High Priestess is the prevailing genius of the esoteric, withdrawn
power. The proper meanings of this card have suffered woeful admixture
from nearly all hands. _Grand Orient_ says truly that the Hierophant is
the power of the keys, exoteric orthodox doctrine, and the outer side of
the life which leads to the doctrine; but he is certainly not the prince
of occult doctrine, as another commentator has suggested.
He is rather the _summa totius theologiæ_, when it has passed into the
utmost rigidity of expression; but he symbolizes also all things that
are righteous and sacred on the manifest side. As such, he is the
channel of grace belonging to the world of institution as distinct from
that of Nature, and he is the leader of salvation for the human race at
large. He is the order and the head of the recognized hierarchy, which
is the reflection of another and greater hierarchic order; but it may so
happen that the pontiff forgets the significance of this his symbolic
state and acts as if he contained within his proper measures all that
his sign signifies or his symbol seeks to show forth. He is not, as it
has been thought, philosophy--except on the theological side; he is not
inspiration; and he is not religion, although he is a mode of its
expression.
[Illustration: THE HIEROPHANT]
SIX. THE LOVERS
The sun shines in the zenith, and beneath is a great winged figure with
arms extended, pouring down influences. In the foreground are two human
figures, male and female, unveiled before each other, as if Adam and Eve
when they first occupied the paradise of the earthly body. Behind the
man is the Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits, and the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil is behind the woman; the serpent is twining
round it. The figures suggest youth, virginity, innocence and love
before it is contaminated by gross material desire. This is in all
simplicity the card of human love, here exhibited as part of the way,
the truth and the life. It replaces, by recourse to first principles,
the old card of marriage, which I have described previously, and the
later follies which depicted man between vice and virtue. In a very high
sense, the card is a mystery of the Covenant and Sabbath.
The suggestion in respect of the woman is that she signifies that
attraction towards the sensitive life which carries within it the idea
of the Fall of Man, but she is rather the working of a Secret Law of
Providence than a willing and conscious temptress. It is through her
imputed lapse that man shall arise ultimately, and only by her can he
complete himself. The card is therefore in its way another intimation
concerning the great mystery of womanhood. The old meanings fall to
pieces of necessity with the old pictures, but even as interpretations
of the latter, some of them were of the order of commonplace and others
were false in symbolism.
[Illustration: THE LOVERS.]
SEVEN. THE CHARIOT
An erect and princely figure carrying a drawn sword and corresponding,
broadly speaking, to the traditional description which I have given in
the first part. On the shoulders of the victorious hero are supposed to
be the _Urim_ and _Thummim_. He has led captivity captive; he is
conquest on all planes--in the mind, in science, in progress, in certain
trials of initiation. He has thus replied to the _Sphinx_, and it is on
this account that I have accepted the variation of Eliphas Lévi; two
sphinxes thus draw his chariot. He is above all things triumph in the
mind.
It is to be understood for this reason (_a_) that the question of the
sphinx is concerned with a Mystery of Nature and not of the world of
Grace, to which the charioteer could offer no answer; (_b_) that the
planes of his conquest are manifest or external and not within himself;
(_c_) that the liberation which he effects may leave himself in the
bondage of the logical understanding; (_d_) that the tests of initiation
through which he has passed in triumph are to be understood physically
or rationally and (_e_) that if he came to the pillars of that Temple
between which the High Priestess is seated, he could not open the scroll
called _Tora_, nor if she questioned him could he answer. He is not
hereditary royalty and he is not priesthood.
[Illustration: THE CHARIOT.]
EIGHT. STRENGTH, OR FORTITUDE
A woman, over whose head there broods the same symbol of life which we
have seen in the card of the Hierophant, is closing the jaws of a lion.
The only point in which this design differs from the conventional
presentations is that her beneficent fortitude has already subdued the
lion, which is being led by a chain of flowers. For reasons which
satisfy myself, this card has been interchanged with that of Justice,
which is usually numbered eight. As the variation carries nothing with
it which will signify to the reader, there is no cause for explanation.
Fortitude, in one of its most exalted aspects, is connected with the
Divine Mystery of Union; the virtue, of course, operates in all planes,
and hence draws on all in its symbolism. It connects also with
_innocentia inviolata_, and with the strength which resides in
contemplation.
These higher meanings are, however, matters of inference, and I do not
suggest that they are transparent on the surface of the card. They are
intimated in a concealed manner by the chain of flowers, which
signifies, among many other things, the sweet yoke and the light burden
of Divine Law, when it has been taken into the heart of hearts. The card
has nothing to do with self-confidence in the ordinary sense, though
this has been suggested--but it concerns the confidence of those whose
strength is God (Nature), who have found their refuge in Him. There is
one aspect in which the lion signifies the passions, and she who is
called Strength is the higher nature in its liberation. It has walked
upon the asp and the basilisk and has trodden down the lion and the
dragon.
[Illustration: STRENGTH.]
NINE. THE HERMIT
The variation from the conventional models in this card is only that the
lamp is not enveloped partially in the mantle of its bearer, who blends
the idea of the Ancient of Days with the Light of the World. It is a
star which shines in the lantern. I have said that this is a card of
attainment, and to extend this conception the figure is seen holding up
his beacon on an eminence. Therefore the Hermit is not, as Court de
Gebelin explained, a wise man in search of truth and justice; nor is he,
as a later explanation proposes, an especial example of experience. His
beacon intimates that "where I am, you also may be."
It is further a card which is understood quite incorrectly when it is
connected with the idea of occult isolation, as the protection of
personal magnetism against admixture. This is one of the frivolous
renderings which we owe to Eliphas Lévi. It has been adopted by the
French Order of Martinism and some of us have heard a great deal of the
Silent and Unknown Philosophy enveloped by his mantle from the knowledge
of the profane. In true Martinism, the significance of the term
_Philosophe inconnu_ was of another order. It did not refer to the
intended concealment of the Instituted Mysteries, much less of their
substitutes, but--like the card itself--to the truth that the Divine
Mysteries secure their own protection from those who are unprepared.
[Illustration: THE HERMIT.]
TEN. WHEEL OF FORTUNE
In this symbol I have again followed the reconstruction of Eliphas Lévi,
who has furnished several variants. It is legitimate--as I have
intimated--to use Egyptian symbolism when this serves our purpose,
provided that no theory of origin is implied therein. I have, however,
presented Typhon in his serpent form. The symbolism is, of course, not
exclusively Egyptian, as the four Living Creatures of Ezekiel occupy the
angles of the card, and the wheel itself follows other indications of
Lévi in respect of Ezekiel's vision, as illustrative of the particular
Tarot Key. With the French occultist, and in the design itself, the
symbolic picture stands for the perpetual motion of a fluidic universe
and for the flux of human life. The Sphinx is the equilibrium therein.
The transliteration of _Taro_ as _Rota_ is inscribed on the wheel,
counterchanged with the letters of the Divine Name--to show that
Providence is implied through all. But this is the Divine intention
within, and the similar intention without is exemplified by the four
Living Creatures. Sometimes the sphinx is represented couchant on a
pedestal above, which defrauds the symbolism by stultifying the
essential idea of stability amidst movement.
Behind the general notion expressed in the symbol there lies the denial
of chance and the fatality which is implied therein. It may be added
that, from the days of Lévi onward, the occult explanations of this card
are--even for occultism itself--of a singularly fatuous kind. It has
been said to mean principle, fecundity, virile honor, ruling authority,
etc. The findings of common fortune-telling are better than this on
their own plane.
[Illustration: WHEEL of FORTUNE.]
ELEVEN. JUSTICE
As this card follows the traditional symbolism and carries above all its
obvious meanings, there is little to say regarding it outside the few
considerations collected in the first part, to which the reader is
referred.
It will be seen, however, that the figure is seated between pillars,
like the High Priestess, and on this account it seems desirable to
indicate that the moral principle which deals unto every man according
to his works--while, of course, it is in strict analogy with higher
things--differs in its essence from the spiritual justice which is
involved in the idea of election. The latter belongs to a mysterious
order of Providence, in virtue of which it is possible for certain men
to conceive the idea of dedication to the highest things. The operation
of this is like the breathing of the Spirit where it wills, and we have
no canon of criticism or ground of explanation concerning it. It is
analogous to the possession of the fairy gifts and the high gifts and
the gracious gifts of the poet: we have them or have not, and their
presence is as much a mystery as their absence. The law of Justice is
not, however, involved by either alternative. In conclusion, the pillars
of Justice open into one world and the pillars of the High Priestess
into another.
[Illustration: JUSTICE.]
TWELVE. THE HANGED MAN
The gallows from which he is suspended forms a _Tau_ cross, while the
figure--from the position of the legs--forms a fylfot cross. There is a
nimbus about the head of the seeming martyr. It should be noted (1) that
the tree of sacrifice is living wood, with leaves thereon; (2) that the
face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering; (3) that the figure, as
a whole, suggests life in suspension, but life and not death. It is a
card of profound significance, but all the significance is veiled. One
of his editors suggests that Eliphas Lévi did not know the meaning,
which is unquestionable--nor did the editor himself. It has been called
falsely a card of martyrdom, a card of prudence, a card of the Great
Work, a card of duty; but we may exhaust all published interpretations
and find only vanity. I will say very simply on my own part that it
expresses the relation, in one of its aspects, between the Divine and
the Universe.
He who can understand that the story of his higher nature is imbedded in
this symbolism will receive intimations concerning a great awakening
that is possible, and will know that after the sacred _Mystery Of Death_
there is a glorious _Mystery Of Resurrection_.
[Illustration: THE HANGED MAN.]
THIRTEEN. DEATH
The veil or mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and
passage from lower to higher, and this is more fitly represented in the
rectified Tarot by one of the apocalyptic visions than by the crude
notion of the reaping skeleton. Behind it lies the whole world of ascent
in the spirit. The mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black
banner emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life. Between
two pillars on the verge of the horizon there shines the sun of
immortality. The horseman carries no visible weapon, but king and child
and maiden fall before him, while a prelate with clasped hands awaits
his end.
There should be no need to point out that the suggestion of death which
I have made in connection with the previous card is, of course, to be
understood mystically, but this is not the case in the present instance.
The natural transit of man to the next stage of his being either is or
may be one form of his progress, but the exotic and almost unknown
entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death is
a change in the form of consciousness and the passage into a state to
which ordinary death is neither the path nor gate. The existing occult
explanations of the 13th card are, on the whole, better than usual,
rebirth, creation, destination, renewal, and the rest.
[Illustration: DEATH.]
FOURTEEN. TEMPERANCE
A winged angel, with the sign of the sun upon his forehead and on his
breast the square and triangle of the septenary. I speak of him in the
masculine sense, but the figure is neither male nor female. It is held
to be pouring the essences of life from chalice to chalice. It has one
foot upon the earth and one upon waters, thus illustrating the nature of
the essences. A direct path goes up to certain heights on the verge of
the horizon, and above there is a great light, through which a crown is
seen vaguely. Hereof is some part of the Secret of Eternal Life, as it
is possible to man in his incarnation. All the conventional emblems are
renounced herein.
So also are the conventional meanings, which refer to changes in the
seasons, perpetual movement of life, and even the combination of ideas.
It is, moreover, untrue to say that the figure symbolizes the genius of
the sun, though it is the analogy of solar light, realized in the third
part of our human triplicity. It is called Temperance, fantastically,
because, when the rule of it obtains in our consciousness, it tempers,
combines and harmonizes the psychic and material natures. Under that
rule we know in our rational part something of whence we came and
whither we are going.
[Illustration: TEMPERANCE.]
FIFTEEN. THE DEVIL
The design is an accommodation, mean or harmony, between several motives
mentioned in the first part. The Horned Goat of Mendes, with wings like
those of a bat, is standing on an altar. At the pit of the stomach there
is the sign of Mercury. The right hand is upraised and extended, being
the reverse of that benediction which is given by the Hierophant in the
fifth card. In the left hand there is a great flaming torch, inverted
towards the earth. A reversed pentagram is on the forehead. There is a
ring in front of the altar, from which two chains are carried to the
necks of two figures, male and female. These are analogous with those of
the fifth card, as if Adam and Eve after the Fall. Hereof is the chain
and fatality of the material life.
The figures are tailed, to signify the animal nature, but there is human
intelligence in the faces, and he who is exalted above them is not to be
their master for ever. Even now, he is also a bondsman, sustained by the
evil that is in him and blind to the liberty of service. With more than
his usual derision for the arts which he pretended to respect and
interpret as a master therein, Eliphas Lévi affirms that the Baphometic
figure is occult science and magic. Another commentator says that in the
Divine world it signifies predestination, but there is no correspondence
in that world with the things which below are of the brute. What it does
signify is the Dweller on the Threshold without the Mystical Garden when
those are driven forth therefrom who have eaten the forbidden fruit.
[Illustration: THE DEVIL.]
SIXTEEN. THE TOWER
Occult explanations attached to this card are meager and mostly
disconcerting. It is idle to indicate that it depicts ruin in all its
aspects, because it bears this evidence on the surface. It is said
further that it contains the first allusion to a material building, but
I do not conceive that the Tower is more or less material than the
pillars which we have met with in three previous cases. I see nothing to
warrant Papus in supposing that it is literally the fall of Adam, but
there is more in favor of his alternative--that it signifies the
materialization of the spiritual word. The bibliographer Christian
imagines that it is the downfall of the mind, seeking to penetrate the
mystery of God (Nature). I agree rather with Grand Orient that it is the
ruin of the House of Life, when evil has prevailed therein, and above
all that it is the rending of a House of Doctrine. I understand that the
reference is, however, to a House of Falsehood. It illustrates also in
the most comprehensive way the old truth that "except the Lord build the
house, they labor in vain that build it."
There is a sense in which the catastrophe is a reflection from the
previous card, but not on the side of the symbolism which I have tried
to indicate therein. It is more correctly a question of analogy; one is
concerned with the fall into the material and animal state, while the
other signifies destruction on the intellectual side. The Tower has been
spoken of as the chastisement of pride and the intellect overwhelmed in
the attempt to penetrate the Mystery of God (Nature); but in neither
case do these explanations account for the two persons who are the
living sufferers. The one is the literal word made void and the other
its false interpretation. In yet a deeper sense, it may signify also the
end of a dispensation, but there is no possibility here for the
consideration of this involved question.
[Illustration: THE TOWER.]
SEVENTEEN. THE STAR
A great, radiant star of eight rays, surrounded by seven lesser
stars--also of eight rays. The female figure in the foreground is
entirely naked. Her left knee is on the land and her right foot upon the
water. She pours Water of Life from two great ewers, irrigating sea and
land. Behind her is rising ground and on the right a shrub or tree,
whereon a bird alights. The figure expresses eternal youth and beauty.
The star is _l'étoile flamboyante_, which appears in Masonic symbolism,
but has been confused therein. That which the figure communicates to the
living scene is the substance of the heavens and the elements. It has
been said truly that the mottoes of this card are "Waters of Life
freely" and "Gifts of the Spirit."
The summary of several tawdry explanations says that it is a card of
hope. On other planes it has been certified as immortality and interior
light. For the majority of prepared minds, the figure will appear as the
type of Truth unveiled, glorious in undying beauty, pouring on the
waters of the soul some part and measure of her priceless possession.
But she is in reality the _Great Mother_ in the _Kabalistic Sephira
Binah_, which is supernal Understanding, who communicates to the
_Sephiroth_ that are below in the measure that they can receive her
influx.
[Illustration: THE STAR.]
EIGHTEEN. THE MOON
The distinction between this card and some of the conventional types is
that the moon is increasing on what is called the side of mercy, to the
right of the observer. It has sixteen chief and sixteen secondary rays.
The card represents life of the imagination apart from life of the
spirit. The path between the towers is the issue into the unknown. The
dog and the wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of
that place of exit, when there is only reflected light to guide it.
The last reference is a key to another form of symbolism. The
intellectual light is a reflection and beyond it is the unknown mystery
which it cannot show forth. It illuminates our animal nature, types of
which are represented below--the dog, the wolf and that which comes up
out of the deeps, the nameless and hideous tendency which is lower than
the savage beast. It strives to attain manifestation, symbolized by
crawling from the abyss of water to the land, but as a rule it sinks
back whence it came. The face of the mind directs a calm gaze upon the
unrest below; the dew of thought falls; the message is: Peace, be still;
and it may be that there shall come a calm upon the animal nature, while
the abyss beneath shall cease from giving up a form.
[Illustration: THE MOON.]
NINETEEN. THE SUN
The naked child mounted on a white horse and displaying a red standard
has been mentioned already as the better symbolism connected with this
card. It is the destiny of the Supernatural East and the great and holy
light which goes before the endless procession of humanity, coming out
from the walled garden of the sensitive life and passing on the journey
home. The card signifies, therefore, the transit from the manifest light
of this world, represented by the glorious sun of earth, to the light of
the world to come, which goes before aspiration and is typified by the
heart of a child.
But the last allusion is again the key to a different form or aspect of
the symbolism. The sun is that of consciousness in the spirit--the
direct as the antithesis of the reflected light. The characteristic type
of humanity has become a little child therein--a child in the sense of
simplicity and innocence in the sense of wisdom. In that simplicity, he
bears the seal of Nature and of Art; in that innocence, he signifies the
restored world. When the self-knowing spirit has dawned in the
consciousness above the natural mind, that mind in its renewal leads
forth the animal nature in a state of perfect conformity.
[Illustration: THE SUN.]
TWENTY. THE LAST JUDGMENT
I have said that this symbol is essentially invariable in all Tarot
sets, or at least the variations do not alter its character. The great
angel is here encompassed by clouds, but he blows his bannered trumpet,
and the cross as usual is displayed on the banner. The dead are rising
from their tombs--a woman on the right, a man on the left hand, and
between them their child, whose back is turned. But in this card there
are more than three who are restored, and it has been thought worth
while to make this variation as illustrating the insufficiency of
current explanations. It should be noted that all the figures are as one
in the wonder, adoration and ecstasy expressed by their attitudes. It is
the card which registers the accomplishment of the great work of
transformation in answer to the summons of the Supernal--which summons
is heard and answered from within.
Herein is the intimation of a significance which cannot well be carried
further in the present place. What is that within us which does sound a
trumpet and all that is lower in our nature rises in response--almost in
a moment, almost in the twinkling of an eye? Let the card continue to
depict, for those who can see no further, the Last Judgment and the
resurrection in the natural body; but let those who have inward eyes
look and discover therewith. They will understand that it has been
called truly in the past a card of eternal life, and for this reason it
may be compared with that which passes under the name of Temperance.
[Illustration: JUDGEMENT.]
ZERO. THE FOOL
With light step, as if earth and its trammels had little power to
restrain him, a young man in gorgeous vestments pauses at the brink of a
precipice among the great heights of the world; he surveys the blue
distance before him--its expanse of sky rather than the prospect below.
His act of eager walking is still indicated, though he is stationary at
the given moment; his dog is still bounding. The edge which opens on the
depth has no terror; it is as if angels were waiting to uphold him, if
it came about that he leaped from the height. His countenance is full of
intelligence and expectant dream. He has a rose in one hand and in the
other a costly wand, from which depends over his right shoulder a wallet
curiously embroidered. He is a prince of the other world on his travels
through this one--all amidst the morning glory, in the keen air. The
sun, which shines behind him, knows whence he came, whither he is going,
and how he will return by another path after many days. He is the spirit
in search of experience. Many symbols of the Instituted Mysteries are
summarized in this card, which reverses, under high warrants, all the
confusions that have preceded it.
In his _Manual Of Cartomancy_, Grand Orient has a curious suggestion of
the office of Mystic Fool, as a part of his process in higher
divination; but it might call for more than ordinary gifts to put it
into operation. We shall see how the card fares according to the common
arts of fortune-telling, and it will be an example, to those who can
discern, of the fact, otherwise so evident, that the Trumps Major had no
place originally in the arts of psychic gambling, when cards are used as
the counters and pretexts. Of the circumstances under which this art
arose we know, however, very little. The conventional explanations say
that the Fool signifies the flesh, the sensitive life, and by a peculiar
satire its subsidiary name was at one time the alchemist, as depicting
folly at the most insensate stage.
[Illustration: THE FOOL.]
TWENTY-ONE. THE WORLD
As this final message of the Major Trumps is unchanged--and indeed
unchangeable--in respect of its design, it has been partly described
already regarding its deeper sense. It represents also the perfection
and end of the Cosmos, the secret which is within it, the rapture of the
universe when it understands itself in God (Nature). It is further the
state of the soul in the consciousness of Divine Vision, reflected from
the self-knowing spirit. But these meanings are without prejudice to
that which I have said concerning it on the material side.
It has more than one message on the macrocosmic side and is, for
example, the state of the restored world when the law of manifestation
shall have been carried to the highest degree of natural perfection. But
it is perhaps more especially a story of the past, referring to that day
when all was declared to be good, when the morning stars sang together
and all the Sons of God (Nature) shouted for joy. One of the worst
explanations concerning it is that the figure symbolizes the Magus when
he has reached the highest degree of initiation; another account says
that it represents the absolute, which is ridiculous. The figure has
been said to stand for Truth, which is, however, more properly allocated
to the seventeenth card. Lastly, it has been called the Crown of the
Magi.
[Illustration: THE WORLD.]
SECTION 3
CONCLUSION AS TO THE GREATER KEYS
There has been no attempt in the previous tabulation to present the
symbolism in what is called the three worlds--that of Divinity, of the
Macrocosm and the Microcosm. A large volume would be required for
developments of this kind. I have taken the cards on the high plane of
their more direct significance to man, who--in material life--is on the
quest of eternal things. The compiler of the _Manual Of Cartomancy_ has
treated them under three headings: the World of Human Prudence, which
does not differ from divination on its more serious side; the World of
Conformity, being the life of religious devotion; and the World of
Attainment, which is that of "the soul's progress towards the term of
its research." He gives also a triple process of consultation, according
to these divisions, to which the reader is referred. I have no such
process to offer, as I think that more may be gained by individual
reflection on each of the Trumps Major. I have also not adopted the
prevailing attribution of the cards of the Hebrew alphabet--firstly,
because it would serve no purpose in an elementary handbook; secondly,
because nearly every attribution is wrong. Finally, I have not attempted
to rectify the position of the cards in their relation to one another;
the Zero therefore appears after No. 20, but I have taken care not to
number the World or Universe otherwise than as 21. Wherever it ought to
be put, the Zero is an unnumbered card.
In conclusion as to this part, I will give these further indications
regarding the Fool, which is the most speaking of all the symbols. He
signifies the journey outward, the state of the first emanation, the
graces and passivity of the spirit. His wallet is inscribed with dim
signs, to show that many sub-conscious memories are stored up in the
soul.
Part Three
THE OUTER METHOD OF THE ORACLES
SECTION 1
DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE GREATER AND LESSER ARCANA
In respect of their usual presentation, the bridge between the Greater
and Lesser Arcana is supplied by the court cards--King, Queen, Knight
and Squire or Page; but their utter distinction from the Trumps Major is
shown by their conventional character. Let the reader compare them with
symbols like the Fool, the High Priestess, the Hierophant, or--almost
without exception--with any in the previous sequence, and he will
discern my meaning. There is no especial idea connected on the surface
with the ordinary court cards; they are a bridge of conventions, which
form a transition to the simple pretexts of the counters and denaries of
the numbers following. We seem to have passed away utterly from the
region of higher meanings illustrated by living pictures. There was a
period, however, when the numbered cards were also pictures, but such
devices were sporadic inventions of particular artists and were either
conventional designs of the typical or allegorical kind, distinct from
what is understood by symbolism, or they were illustrations--shall we
say?--of manners, customs and periods. They were, in a word, adornments,
and as such they did nothing to raise the significance of the Lesser
Arcana to the plane of the Trumps Major; moreover, such variations are
exceedingly few. This notwithstanding, there are vague rumors concerning
a higher meaning in the minor cards, but nothing has so far transpired,
even within the sphere of prudence which belongs to the most occult
circles; these, it is true, have certain variants in respect of
divinatory values, but I have not heard that in practice they offer
better results. Efforts like those of Papus in _The Tarot Of The
Bohemians_ are strenuous and deserving after their own kind; he, in
particular, recognizes the elements of the Divine Immanence in the
Trumps Major, and he seeks to follow them through the long series of the
lesser cards, as if these represented filtrations of the World of Grace
through the World of Fortune; but he only produces an arbitrary scheme
of division which he can carry no further, and he has recourse, of
necessity, in the end to a common scheme of divination as the substitute
for a title to existence on the part of the Lesser Arcana. Now, I am
practically in the same position; but I shall make no attempt here to
save the situation by drawing on the mystical properties of numbers, as
he and others have attempted. I shall recognize at once that the Trumps
Major belong to the divine dealings of philosophy, but all that follows
to fortune-telling, since it has never yet been translated into another
language; the course thus adopted will render to divination, and at need
even to gambling, the things that belong to this particular world of
skill, and it will set apart for their proper business those matters
that are of another order. In this free introduction to the subject in
hand, it is only necessary to add that the difference between the
fifty-six Lesser Arcana and the ordinary playing-cards is not only
essentially slight, because the substitution of Cups for Hearts, and so
forth, constitutes an accidental variation, but because the presence of
a Knight in each of the four suits was characteristic at one time of
many ordinary packs, when this personage usually replaced the Queen. In
the rectified Tarot which illustrates the present handbook, all numbered
cards of the Lesser Arcana--the Aces only excepted--are furnished with
figures or pictures to illustrate--but without exhausting--the
divinatory meanings attached thereto.
Some who are gifted with reflective and discerning faculties in more
than the ordinary sense--and I am not speaking of clairvoyance--may
observe that in many of the Lesser Arcana there are vague intimations
conveyed by the designs which seem to exceed the stated divinatory
values. It is desirable to avoid misconception by specifying definitely
that, except in rare instances--and then only by accident--the
variations are not to be regarded as suggestions of higher and
extra-divinatory symbolism. I have said that these Lesser Arcana have
not been translated into a language which transcends that of
fortune-telling. I should not indeed be disposed to regard them as
belonging in their existing forms to another realm than this; but the
field of divinatory possibilities is inexhaustible, by the hypothesis of
the art, and the combined systems of cartomancy have indicated only the
bare heads of significance attaching to the emblems in use. When the
pictures in the present case go beyond the conventional meanings they
should be taken as hints of possible developments along the same lines;
and this is one of the reasons why the pictorial devices here attached
to the four denaries will prove a great help to intuition. The mere
numerical powers and bare words of the meanings are insufficient by
themselves; but the pictures are like doors which open into unexpected
chambers or like a turn in the open road with a wide prospect beyond.