It's not without flaws, however. I'm going to couch that mild criticism in an aura of praise; to my knowledge, this is the first properly academic attempt to present a coherent theory of the deep sources, origins, and development of the tarot. It's a vast subject, which Decker covers in just 275 pages (plus copious notes); as such, it's hardly surprising that sometimes his explanations feel a little brisk and not as rigorous as they might be. 

A subject of this magnitude should probably be some university doctoral thesis. The Esoteric Tarot has elements of such a thesis, and although it's still a little dry and academic in places, it nevertheless shines with lots of fascinating details and anecdotes. It's not a quick, flighty read, though; be prepared for some slow, concentrated study from time to time, as Decker occasionally goes deep, and rightly so. 

So what is The Esoteric Tarot about? In short, it's a book which analyses the "invention", not just of tarot cards, but of playing cards in general; and the origins and development of the whole Western Mystery Tradition, astrology, divination, symbolism, Gnosticism (which Decker calls "Hermetism"); and of the intersection of both of these elements with the Jewish cabala, and the development of a Western Mystical version of the cabala which Decker dubs "Hermetic cabala", and the role which all these three elements play in the birth of the tarot as a divinatory tool. 

It's ambitious; and, with a few creaks here and there, Decker makes a very compelling case. I accept, in broad brush, 95% of his theory; it's well elucidated and supported by ample documentation, and thoroughly believable. I found myself straining at a couple of propositions, namely his insistence that the early tarot deck had only 14 trumps, but then jumped to 21 a generation later; I found myself thinking this was maybe a supposition too far, and doubting its value. But that's just me. 

The one striking shortcoming of the book, in my humble opinion, is its sudden dead-stop. Decker presents wonderful detail and analysis right up to Etteilla's groundbreaking deck, including an exhaustive analysis of the meanings Etteilla assigned to the minor arcana, and their very close association with Gikatilla's cabalistic text "The Gates of Light". We're all steaming along nicely, inspiring and entertaining, and I'm wondering what Decker's going to make of the 19th century, Levi, Papus, The Golden Dawn, Waite, Crowley...

And the book stops. The 20% of pages still to read are notes. 

To be honest, crediting Decker properly with the huge work he's done on The Esoteric Tarot, I felt its curtailed scope was a missed opportunity. I appreciate that the 19th century is an encyclopedic task in its own right, and not really the subject matter for a chapter or two at the end of a book, but it could have at least received a treatment. However, after a quick search on Amazon, I discovered that Decker has already co-authored with Sir Michael Dummett "A History of the Occult Tarot", which covers the period 1870 to 1970, so I'm going to give that a look!

As it is, The Esoteric Tarot is a worthwhile and praiseworthy attempt to trace the sources, origins, and development of our beloved tarot, right up to the end of the 18th century, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in a serious, academic treatment of the facts and source material currently available to us. It also sports gorgeously evocative cover art by Kirsten Hansen Pott, and would grace anyone's esoteric book shelves.

The Esoteric Tarot, by Ronald Decker, Quest Books 2013  

Like the three-card PPF, you have the "Present" card in the bottom centre, officially position #4, but it's always the first card I lay. Next comes the "Past" card in the top left, position #1, but the second card I lay. I then lay, in counter-clockwise order:

• Position 2: Hidden Influences
• Position 3: External Influences
• Position 5: Obstacles
• Position 6: The Counsel
• Position 7: The Outcome from following the Counsel (The "Future" part of the traditional PPF three-carder)

The elemental dignities in this spread are of course potentially much more involved than in the three-card spread, so I tend to indicate them all visually. Today's spread was very Pentacles-heavy, which led to the following dignities:

• The 5 of Pentacles, Material Trouble, in position #2 is strengthened because it's flanked by two Pentacles, so I give it a one-quarter turn to the right to help me remember. 
• The 2 of Wands, Dominion, in position #4 is strengthened because it's flanked by two Pentacles (Fire and Pentacles are friendly, not inimical), so again it gets one-quarter turn to the right. 
• The 3 of Pentacles, Material Work, in position #5, is flanked by a Wands card and a Cups card. This is a judgement call; Fire and Water are inimical to one another, and my intuition told me they would interfere with the 3 of Pentacles, blocking its influence somewhat. Technically speaking, I could have ignored this, but in this case I gave the 3 of Pentacles a quarter-turn to the left to indicate it has a somewhat weakened influence. 
• The elemental dignities didn't indicate any full reversals in this spread. 

Personally this was a very meaningful spread, dealing with our current increasingly effective efforts to sort out our material situation, and the need to let go of some lingering projects which I'm still fond of but which are ailing and holding me back. This Counsel spread was very useful for embellishing and expanding upon the substance of previous three-card dailies and really clarifying some of the concrete steps to take. 

I like horseshoe spreads, and this one in particular is a really good "step up" from the three-card PPF. 

Blessed be,

Sarah 

There are many ways to categorise tarot card decks. The "big three" appear to be tracing a line of descent back to three seminal decks: the Tarot de Marseille, the Rider-Waite-Smith "rectified" tarot, and the Thoth tarot. There's also a fourth - the Grand Etteilla - which is a little non-standard and, in my humble opinion, less influential today. By influential I mean that almost all tarot decks produced these days trace their lineage back to either the Tarot de Marseille, the Rider-Waite-Smith, or the Thoth. And, by lineage, I mean the names and numbers of their cards, their attributions and correspondences, their symbolism, and their meanings. There are significant differences in all of these areas between these three major types of tarot deck. 

But there's an additional niggle, which IMHO often seems to be glossed over, as it really is a little thorny. It's the nature and significance of the "court cards", those 16 cards which sit at the "top" of the Minor Arcana, representing kings, queens, knights, and pages for each of the four suits. Or Knights, Queens, Princes, and Princesses, if you're using a Thoth-derived deck. Or something similar; often decks with more distant inspirations will use radically different nomenclature for these four cards in each suit. 

Now, there's a tricky problem here. Look at this:

• RWS / TdM Decks: King, Queen, Knight, Page. 
• Thoth Deck: Knight, Queen, Prince, Princess. 

It might not seem like much, but did you see how the Knight has changed position in the hierarchy, from 3rd position in the RWS / TdM decks to first position in the Thoth deck? Well, it's actually a big deal, and one that's caused no end of confusion and disagreement. 

It's About Correspondences...

It all boils down to correspondences. That is to say, the symbolic frameworks and attributions we use to create and interpret, well, almost anything, but in this context, the meaning of each card of the tarot deck. A simple set of correspondences is found in the colour attributed to each suit: red hues for Wands, green hues for Cups, blues for Swords, browns or other earth colours for Pentacles. Another set of correspondences is found in the element attributed to each suit: fire for Wands, water for Cups, air for Swords, earth for Pentacles.

But there are other correspondences that are more intricate, less commonly overt, and require a little more reading and study to really understand. A key example in the case of the Tarot are the Qabbalistic (or Kabbalistic) correspondences. In the 19th century, occultists like Eliphas Levi and the members of the Golden Dawn drew elaborate yet very meaningful correspondences between elements of the qabala and elements of the tarot. For example, they noticed that the ten sephiroth "stations of power" on the qabalistic Tree of Life could be attributed to the ten numbers of the Minor Arcana, from the Aces with the topmost sephira of Kether to the Tens with the bottom-most sephira of Malkuth. They also found that the 22 Major Arcana could each be associated with one of the 22 "paths" which connect the ten sephiroth of the Tree of Life. These correspondences are quite esoteric, but it's undeniable that they add richness of meaning to the tarot cards they affect. Almost all of the tarot decks, their cards' meanings, and the books written about them in the modern era are very heavily influenced by these correspondences. 

The Four Worlds

But there's another layer of qabbalistic correspondence which has caused problems, largely because of the incremental way it was released into the public domain. This is the correspondence system of the four "worlds", "realms", or "emanations"; essentially, a descending order of mystical cosmological events according to which the physical universe was created. The first world, known as Atziluth, is called the World of Emanation, where the forces of the four elements first appear; the second is Briah, the World of Creation, followed by Yetzirah, the World of Formation, and finally the world of Assiah, the World of Manifestation. Each of these four worlds is also associated respectively with one of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, the Qabalistic "name of god", which we represent by the four Hebraic letters "yod", "heh", "vau", and again "heh". Starting with the first emanation of, say, the creative and spiritual energies of fire (corresponding, remember, to the tarot suit of Wands) in Atziluth, those energies gain potential, form, and finally manifest physically as they descend through these four worlds, realms, or emanations. The metaphor here is that as the Tetragrammaton name of God is uttered, letter by letter, the world comes into being.  

It's all a bit abstract, but there are oceans of material written about these Four Worlds and the Tetragrammaton. Most importantly for our purposes, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn chose to attribute these Four Worlds, and the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, to the four tarot court cards. Which is where things get thorny...

Secrets of  a Secret Society

Now, the Golden Dawn was a secret society, and members swore oaths not to reveal its secret teachings. Such were the spooky-yet-fun predilections of our 19th century predecessors. They loved that "secret" stuff.
 

One of the key members of the Golden Dawn was occultist and theoretician A.E. Waite, who as we know was one of the two driving forces behind one of the three most influential tarot decks of all time, the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (Pamela Colman Smith, artist, illustrator, occultist, being the other driving force). When Waite and Smith produced their influential tarot deck in 1909, Waite was under oath to the Golden Dawn not to reveal certain secrets. I haven't been able to find absolute confirmation of the fact, but I surmise that one of those secrets related to the nature and hierarchy of the so-called "court cards" of the tarot and their correspondences to the Four Worlds of the Qabala. 

Historically (such as in the Tarot de Marseille), the court cards were labelled (translations are approximate) King, Queen, Knight, Page. When the Golden Dawn tried to associate each of these with one of the Four Worlds and the four letters of the Tetragrammaton (in the natural order of Yod, Heh, Vau, and Heh), they found problems with the Kings and the Knights. Their own analyses suggested that it was in fact the Knight that was the incarnation of the "fiery" forces associated with Yod and with Atziluth (the first of the Four Worlds), and that attribution produced the energetic, fiery, active, rapid nature of the Knight's traditional tarot card meanings. In contrast, the King was better associated with the "airy" power of Vau and with Yetzirah (the third of the Four Worlds), producing the reasoned, controlled, outwardly directed nature of the King card's traditional meanings. 

Whether you agree with this or not, it's what the Golden Dawn determined. You can find it in Regardie, in Crowley, and, in slightly hidden form, in Waite, too (he was still restrained by his oath of secrecy, remember). The upshot is that the Golden Dawn's theory of correspondence necessitated a re-ordering of the four court cards into a new hierarchy which matched the Tetragrammaton and Four Worlds.

This hierarchy was: Knight, Queen, King, Page. 

Not very intuitive, right? Well, the Golden Dawn addressed this by basically renaming the cards. You can find these names in various places; usually any tarot book worth its salt will mention them. For example, the King of Pentacles was given the name "Prince of the Chariots of Earth"; the Knight of Wands became "Lord of the Flame and the Lightning, King of the Spirits of Fire"; the Page of Swords became the "Princess of the Rushing Winds". Only the Queen retained her original title, in names like "Queen of the Thrones of the Waters".

So, this meant the Golden Dawn created a new hierarchy: Knight (renamed King), Queen, King (renamed Prince), and Page (renamed Princess). Sometimes this is hybridised; in the Thoth deck, you get Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess. But it's effectively the same thing; a re-ordering of the court cards to represent the new Golden Dawn correspondences of the Tetragrammaton and the Four Worlds. 

And Here's the Rub...

Now, back to the new Rider-Waite-Smith deck of 1909. In this deck, Waite chose to present the court cards in their old order, ie King, Queen, Knight, Page. However, he chose to use the new attributions and correspondences of the Golden Dawn. So, the King is Vau / Air, and the Knight is Yod / Fire. If you were to put the RWS court cards in true hierarchical order, you would read them in that order (above) of Knight, Queen, King, Page. That's the order used in attributing their meanings. 

If you like, this was one of the "initiated secrets" of the RWS deck; that, despite appearances, the court cards were actually the Golden Dawn court, and not the traditional court. But that simple act of obfuscation has created a whole world of confusion and contradiction since. 

Because, quite simply, many sources over the past 50 or so years mix up and confuse this configuration. They take the traditional court card correspondences (such as the Tarot de Marseilles), where the King comes first, and then simply jam the Golden Dawn correspondences on top. This results in the King being associated with the Golden Dawn symbols and meanings for Yod, Atziluth, and Fire, and the Knight being shoehorned into Vau, Yetzirah, and Air. 

Why Does It Matter?

Does this really matter, you may ask? Well, yes, to be honest. If your Knight is now Air and not Fire, that's going to profoundly affect the meaning of all the Knight cards across all four suits (and Kings too, of course). In any case, if you care about consistency and logic in your symbolism, it matters. Because there are additional correspondences beyond the ones I've given above, such as the astrological correspondences of the 36 Decans, whereby each of the Knights, Queens, and Kings are associated with three minor arcana, two major arcana, and two zodiacal signs (one which "rules" that court card, one which "precedes"). If you arbitrarily switch around the Knight (Yod, Atziluth, Fire) and the King (Vau, Yetzirah, Air), you end up mixing the clear, logical, yet intricate sets of correspondences created by the Golden Dawn, which underpin the meanings we now attribute to these cards. 

If you read your tarot cards "intuitively", ie you don't mind much about systems of symbolism and correspondence, then you can reasonably ignore all this. But if you're looking to the Tarot as a kind of internally consistent library of myths, Jungian archetypes, and symbols which are heavy with cultural resonance, and worthy of a lifetime's study, then it's kind of a big deal. For example, if you open up a book claiming to provide you with insight into the Tarot working from a deck which is part of the RWS or TdM lineage, and you find yourself with a description of the King of Wands which declares it's the "Fire of Fire" (ie, the mixed-up attribution of the King to Yod, Atziluth, and Fire), then you know right from the start there's going to be an underlying disconnect to all the reasonings underpinning the meanings and interpretations that book is giving you. And that means the book will, here and there, contradict everything else you've read in your quest to understand the cards, sometimes profoundly so. In other words, it's going to sow confusion, not generate clarity. 

For me, that's a big deal. 

So What Is To Be Done?

Now, I don't want to suggest this is a "problem", per se. The Tarot is a living tradition, and it's filled with contradictions. I love the Rider-Waite-Smith lineage for the wonderful scenes which Colman-Smith crafted for each of the Minor Arcana, I find them so much richer than the simple "here's a pic of 4 wands, make of it what you will" approach of the TdM and Thoth lineages. But this historical quirk has made the already intricate court cards a stage more opaque and indeed confusing, and they need approaching with care to understand them properly. It would be nice at least if modern-day Tarot discussed this issue more clearly. 

Personally, I'd love to see a beautiful tarot deck which does the following:

• it has the symbolic and narrative richness of the RWS lineage, specifically in the Minor Arcana. I love those little scenes that Pamela came up with.
• it presents the court cards in "correct" Golden Dawn hierarchy, and renames them to: King (on horseback, used to be a Knight), Queen, Prince (on a chariot, used to be King), and Princess. At a pinch, I could live with the Thoth naming of Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess. 
• uses the full GD system of correspondences, so that the Kings (on horseback, ex-Knights) are Yod / Atziluth / Fire, and the Princes (on chariots, ex-Kings) are Vau / Yetzirah / Air). 
• are as simple, clear, and readable as the best of the RWS lineage, but which incorporate GD and Thoth correspondences without becoming overloaded and difficult to read. 

Now that would be a rectified tarot! Does anyone know of such a beast? 

Blessed be, 

Sarah x

Now, I don't use standard reversals in my spreads. In other words, I don't shuffle a deck which contains certain cards upside down, which are then read as reversed when dealt. I used to, when I first began reading many moons ago, as that's how I thought you did things, but over time I found that I was overthinking the whole shuffling / reversing process and it was giving me all kinds of mental blocks. 

So, instead, I shuffle and deal all my cards upright, and use the elemental dignities beloved of the Golden Dawn et al to determine how strongly or weakly aspected each card is, based on the cards surrounding it. I'm using an RWS deck - in fact, the Radiant Wise Spirit. I use the astrological associations of Major Arcana to determine their elemental correspondences, and they factor into the dignities. 

The dignities rely on flanking cards - you focus on the card in the centre, and then refer to the card immediately preceding and immediately following to determine if the central card is read "neutrally" (ie as-is), whether it's strengthened or "boosted", or whether it's weakened or even reversed. If a card is strengthened, I usually move it upwards out of alignment to show this (see yesterday's blog post), and if it's "reversed", well, I physically turn the card upside down and read it reversed. 

That happened this morning. I have the Page of Pentacles (and Earth card) in the "present" position, flanked by the Lovers (Gemini, so an Air card) in the "past" position, and Justice (Libra, so also an Air card) in the "future" position. Air opposes Earth, so the Page of Pentacles finds itself so weakened (by two Major Arcana, no less!) that it's reversed. I physically turn the card upside down, as shown in the pic. 

Now to the reading. Looking at the Present first; I'm currently scatter-brained, unable to focus, clumsy, absent-minded. Usually my Significator is the Queen of Cups, but today the reversed Page of Pentacles is me to a tee; I have a major anniversary of a terrible personal event on my mind today, and the past week or so has seen me frequently beset by brain fog. But, more widely, it's also symptomatic of my current overwhelming and constrictive work and life overload (as seen in yesterday's boosted Devil in the Present position). Yesterday's spread said it would pass. Today's spread agrees. 

But first, the Lovers in the Past position. This is very true; not only am I in a new marriage, I'm also in a spiritual and creative partnership which is deep and consciously appreciated. It forms the background to everything that's going on in my life right now. 

Which leads to Justice in the Future position. Cosmic justice, natural justice, social justice. In this context, it forecasts the just recompense for your efforts, once again indicating that the conscious, intentional, well-directed work done now will pay off as hoped. 

I find reading the elemental dignities like this to be very satisfying; it feels less arbitrary than simply reversing cards in the mix, as if the spread itself was imposing a coherence to tie all the cards together into a narrative. It also gives you a lot of room for intuitive manoeuvre, as today, having an Earth court card surrounded by two Major Arcana Air cards. Big forces indeed!

Blessed be, 

S x

#ElementalDignities

#DailyTarot

Against initial appearances, this is actually quite a positive spread for my daily reflections. But first of all, the elemental dignities: the Devil is Capricorn, so another Earth card alongside both the Pentacles cards. So the two flanking Pentacles boost the Devil to the max! 

My reading of this: in the past, I've been mosying along, balancing tasks, making choices where either option was pretty ok, and advancing with reasonable progress and harmony. But now, I'm overloaded with tasks, partly from a desire to excel, to win, to prove to myself and others I can do it; but also because I've kind of got trapped in the inexorable bind of constantly taking on work that looks like it'll help carry me forwards. So at the moment I feel little liberty; my daily round is interesting, even rewarding, but everything I do seems planned out, fixed, like I'm acting according to a diabolical schedule with little freedom of choice. 

All of which is true. 

In the future, though; well, Material Works speaks to collaboration, creativity, and success. Personally this is deeply encouraging; it suggests that the current mountain of restrictive labour and constraints on choice and time will pay off. 

Given this is Pentacles, I'm interpreting all of the above in material terms. It's possible the activities concerned could relate to my music, or to my writing, or in general to daily efforts to sort out my finances; but the overall movement suggests that the unavoidable laissez-faire of the recent past, which I'm trying to rectify, is in the process of being dealt with. 

Blessed be.

S x