Isis and the Myth of the Egyptian Tarot

[_R_]

Following on from the earlier article on the translations of the founding documents of the occult Tarot by Court de Gébelin and Etteilla, I have published a study on the origins of the Egyptian myth of the Tarot, which may interest those who enjoy history, myth and other enigmas. The article may be read here.

[devin]

What a fascinating read. I had always thought the esoteric Tarot's roots were rather Masonic in nature. It's not surprising, really, considering the amount of white aprons scattered about the early literature. (Not just the early literature, mind you.) That said, what I didn't know was that Court was attempting a 'Golden Bough' style work as opposed to a ragbag bestiary of real or imagined esoteric curiosities. Again, fascinating, and a rare example of charting a course between the two extremes of unadulterated credulity and rigorous bah humbug. Thanks. The extended introduction was a pleasure, too.

 

For general interest: The essay by Claude Levi-Strauss, The Structural Study of Myth, mentioned in the notes for the above piece is well worth a read and is available here: https://people.ucsc.edu/~ktellez/levi-strauss.pdf

 

 

Edited December 29, 2020 by devin

[_R_]

Thank you. To be honest, it is rare to find an article of that depth on such a hackneyed subject. Seemingly, no one has seriously wondered what exactly was going on with this so-called occult Tarot; generally, scholars focus on the bare facts of the case, producing time lines and so on, but giving short shrift to the motivations behind the projects. This, in my opinion, has been a mistake, and the introduction only touches on the “why” after presenting some of the “what.” In other words, a lot could and should be said about this phenomenon and this period. The sequel of sorts is on hold for the foreseeable future, but a couple of supplementary posts will come along shortly to stir things up further.

[PathWalker]

Thank you. Reading, but nothing intelligent to say right now.

 

[TheLoracular]

@_R_

That was a really interesting article.  I will have to go through it more than once to do it justice and absorb.  I can tell there's a lot of other things on your site that I likewise need to read and I've bookmarked it accordingly!  

 

[_R_]

On 1/1/2021 at 10:41 PM, TheLoracular said:

@_R_

That was a really interesting article.  I will have to go through it more than once to do it justice and absorb.  I can tell there's a lot of other things on your site that I likewise need to read and I've bookmarked it accordingly!  

 

Thank you. Take your time.

[devin]

On 1/1/2021 at 4:41 PM, TheLoracular said:

.  I can tell there's a lot of other things on your site that I likewise need to read and I've bookmarked it accordingly!  

 

Yeah, the place is a goldmine. Here are some of my personal favourites.

 

Jean Paulhan

On the Proper Usage of the Tarot: Preface to Le Tarot de Marseille by Paul Marteau

 

Jean Carteret
The Tarot: An Arrangement of the Verb
The Tarot, Architecture of a Poem of the World

 

Théophile Briant
The Image

 

Roger Caillois
Preface to Le Tarot des Imagiers du Moyen-Âge by Oswald Wirth

On Joseph Maxwell's The Tarot

 

Marcel Lecomte

Exegetes of the Tarot

Tarot Vertigo

 

And, of course, all the materials relating to Ms. Tchalaï Unger.

 

Many of the above pieces could constitute vast, I'm tempted to say, almost complete, avenues of study in and of themselves. A gold mine, yes.

 

And here's the cast of characters featured in this selection, in order of appearance. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unrelatedly, Jean Carteret, second from top, is actually a dead-ringer for an unknown ancestor of mine that has, as far back as I can remember, always stared on grimly from the first page of the family photo album. No, wait, on second thoughts, Carteret looks far cheerier, lacking that Scots Calvinism je ne sais quoi.

Edited January 4, 2021 by devin

[TheLoracular]

@devin

You are the best!  I feel like I can just take your post and build an entire year curriculum for myself.  I might end up with a lot of eager questions for you and @_R_ along the way.  

[devin]

2 minutes ago, TheLoracular said:

@devin

You are the best!  I feel like I can just take your post and build an entire year curriculum for myself.  I might end up with a lot of eager questions for you and @_R_ along the way.  

 

You're very kind, but if you want my advice..... stick to asking _R_! 😀

[_R_]

Put like that, it certainly does make for an impressive rogues' gallery.

Thanks Devin.

[TheLoracular]

Alright, I made it through a second time taking notes.  Much of this shows my current limitations and ignorance.   But I would very much like to educate myself and be able to talk historical Continental tarot with you both 🙂    I worked my way top down in reading Isis & The Myth of Egyptian Tarot.  Unlike your incredibly detailed and nuanced writing, this is very off the cuff.
 

I found an accessible copy of Hornug's "The Secret Lore of Egypt" at the Internet Archive and added it to my 2021 list of books to read this year.  
 

Ms. Farley's article "Out of Africa: Tarot's Fascination With Egypt" was short enough that I tackled it tonight.  It was a helpful refresher course in the topic, exactly what you suggested: "a descriptive and uncritical list of dates, names and books, without any serious analysis, although it may be useful as a reference timeline."  which was helpful as a place to start.  

Someone gave me a copy of the Egipcios Kier Tarot she mentioned back in the 1980s when it was new but I gave it away decades ago.  Tonight was the first time I missed it.
 

Her mention of Horapollo's Hieroglyphica did make me go look something up and I noticed that I had it bookmarked in my Athanasius Kircher folder.  Now, Athanasius Kircher's work is something I want to give a little focus this year.  Do you have any suggestions on where to start there?  
 

Wicked Pack of Cards is in my library and I will keep it on hand as I delve into these topics.  
 
History of the Occult Tarot is not in my library.   2013 was the year I became disabled and stopped buying/reading anything tarot for a long hiatus, so things published between than and now are texts I'm having to catch up on.  
 

We aren't going to talk about how much I just spent to get a copy of Dummett’s The Game of Tarot purchased from AbeBooks, but I'm telling myself that it is an investment..... and more than $600 less than copies I saw for sale on Amazon. -gulps-

 

I have always been mildly curious about the Sophisians and what made them unique from other groups of that era.

 

 

Thankfully Donald Tyson's Essential Tarot Writings proved available on Scribd because I won't be buying any more books for... months.  LOL. 

" That is to say that it conclusively demonstrates Court de Gébelin’s writings as being the articulation of the founding myth of the occult Tarot."  _R_

 

LOL!!!   I love your writing style.  I had to go through it all very carefully and taught myself a a half dozen new vocabulary words which was utterly worth it. 🙂

Antoine Court de Gébelin was on my 2021 "To Do" List, like Kircher.  I feel like you are going to be getting me off to a very promising start.  

 

Thankfully, I already owned  a copy of the Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism and I paused with some hot tea to read its entry on Court de Gébelin when you cited it.
 

Random question @_R_:  Have you written about the Order of the Knights of the Star? I don't know anything more about them than I do regarding the Sophisians and would like to change that.

 

.. So I was not aware that Court de Gébelin was very dismissive of astrology.  I find it highly entertaining what he ascribed to the Egyptians regarding the tarot.  Astrology most definitely was those those things in Alexandrian Egypt and I personally think we have astrology/alchemy as it went from Alexandria and Babylon/Persia to Greece & Rome to thank for the occult tradition ever making it onto playing cards. 
 

Oh Johb Robison and your brilliant but wacky mind. I'd never fully appreciated what you and Adam Weishaupt might be laying the groundwork for when I first heard of you both.

The work of Charles François Dupuis I'm a little familiar with,  but mostly in the context of sun worship/the mythology of Christ vs. anything tarot related.  I'm pretty ignorant of continental mysticism/occultism during the Napoleonic era in general.
 

How and why the very Christian Freemasons of the late 18th century became so enraptured with Egyptian paganism;  you just educated me very well on the Anglo-Saxon and Continental Freemasonry schism.  I'd known there was one; I didn't know why until just now.  
 

I just added Freemasonry And The Hidden Goddess to my PDF library.  That most definitely interests me.  Thank you.  I made a note that you consider it "unscholarly" but interesting. 
 

You inspire me to dig in the closet and find my battered old copy of Arcanum 17 to read in this specific context.  
 

Éliphas Lévi and Paul Christian stray us into topics that have been part of my own studies/practices but Jean-Marie Lhôte was a completely new name!  I blame my Americanism on that one. 
 

The only thing I know right now about the the Order of the Philalèthes was that several noted alchemists used Philalethes as a pseudonym around that time? Most notable was George Starkey and I'm completely ignorant of his biography or what ties there were between his work and de Gébelin.
 

Having read the Stromata in college forever ago during the passion for Hellenistic philosophy, early Gnosticism and Jewish mysticism?  I can only rub my face at the stretch that was being made by Court de Gébelin to tie all of this together and then point at Egypt.  But I have the advantage of living now, not then. 
 

Marie Anne Lenormand was also someone I was ignorant about before reading your article.

[devin]

9 hours ago, TheLoracular said:

Have you written about the Order of the Knights of the Star? I don't know anything more about them than I do regarding the Sophisians and would like to change that.

😀 Haha. I got it into my head a little while ago that card XVII was in fact a tongue in cheek visual pun on the Order of the Star, or maybe chivalric orders more generally. This was after reading Johan Huizinga's Autumn of the Middle Ages. With a bit if squinting, I still think it fits, kinda, maybe: Vows and toasts to the Lady, the Virgin, to the Bird, the order's star emblem, ceremonies involving bathing. I can't remember, exactly, but I'm sure there was a numerical tie-in, too. At the very least, I take heart that I am participating in a very traditional Tarot pursuit: Wild and unqualified speculation!

 

You can read the relevant chapter from the abridged, but apparently very faithful in spirit, English translation of Huizinga's book here: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.100122/2015.100122.The-Waning-Of-The-Middle-Ages_djvu.txt Chapter VI Orders of Chivalry and Vows 85 - 95.

Edited January 5, 2021 by devin

[_R_]

Well, this is the sort of motivated response one likes to see.

 

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

I found an accessible copy of Hornug's "The Secret Lore of Egypt" at the Internet Archive and added it to my 2021 list of books to read this year.  

It is a good starting point for any serious investigation of the subject.

 

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

Ms. Farley's article "Out of Africa: Tarot's Fascination With Egypt" was short enough that I tackled it tonight.  

Credit where due, etc.

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

Her mention of Horapollo's Hieroglyphica did make me go look something up and I noticed that I had it bookmarked in my Athanasius Kircher folder.  Now, Athanasius Kircher's work is something I want to give a little focus this year.  Do you have any suggestions on where to start there?  

You really do not want to know. Godwin's book and the other one I forget are decent enough; if you read Latin, the originals are online. Some of his work has been translated into English.

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

Wicked Pack of Cards is in my library and I will keep it on hand as I delve into these topics.  
 
History of the Occult Tarot is not in my library. 

The works by Messrs Dummett, Depaulis and Decker are essential. Throw Decker's Esoteric Tarot and Depaulis' Tarot Révélé (if you read French) in there too.

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

I have always been mildly curious about the Sophisians and what made them unique from other groups of that era.

 

I am curious how you know of them as it is very obscure as an order. Spieth's book is the only serious work on them as far as I can tell, in any language. Most Masonic historians only mentioned them as a footnote, even those on Egyptian Masonry.

 

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

Thankfully Donald Tyson's Essential Tarot Writings proved available on Scribd because I won't be buying any more books for... months.  LOL. 

 

Try deciphering General Rainsford's manuscript; it will be worth it, and you can add palaeography to your CV too.

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

LOL!!!   I love your writing style.  I had to go through it all very carefully and taught myself a a half dozen new vocabulary words which was utterly worth it. 🙂

 

Thank you. Our blog has a pedagogical aim, after all.

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

Thankfully, I already owned  a copy of the Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism and I paused with some hot tea to read its entry on Court de Gébelin when you cited it.

It has a few minor errors or unsourced claims here and there; and in this connection, bear in mind that Etteilla does not correlate the Tarot cards to the Hebrew letters, etc.

 

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

Have you written about the Order of the Knights of the Star?

I have not.

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

Oh Johb Robison and your brilliant but wacky mind. I'd never fully appreciated what you and Adam Weishaupt might be laying the groundwork for when I first heard of you both.

 

I debated including a section on the attendance of one of Weishaupt's gang at the Masonic congress mentioned in the piece, but then decided against it, for a number of reasons. It did not go too well, by all accounts. But one little known fact is that the Masons themselves first claimed credit for the Revolution, and this before Barruel's books came out. I did not see fit to mention it since this can be found in some of the more serious analyses I cite. 

 

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

I just added Freemasonry And The Hidden Goddess to my PDF library.  That most definitely interests me.  Thank you.  I made a note that you consider it "unscholarly" but interesting. 

Yes, I should have prefaced that with "decidedly" and will modify it now, come to think of it.

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

Jean-Marie Lhôte was a completely new name!

Unfortunately his name is unknown but to a few, even in France. His work is absolutely essential, and also very engaging.

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

The only thing I know right now about the the Order of the Philalèthes was that several noted alchemists used Philalethes as a pseudonym around that time?

Homonymy is all.

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

 I can only rub my face at the stretch that was being made by Court de Gébelin to tie all of this together and then point at Egypt.

This is worth putting in parallel with the efforts of Dupuis and co., or even Cagliostro. Plus, the suggested reading in the opening paragraph provides plenty of pointers more generally.

 

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

Marie Anne Lenormand was also someone I was ignorant about before reading your article.

Her name is well known, of course, but her life and contribution much less so. The few biographies all have their problems, or so I am told, but it is not something I have looked at in any depth.

1 hour ago, TheLoracular said:

You inspire me to dig in the closet and find my battered old copy of Arcanum 17 to read in this specific context.  

I had something to post in that regard, but alas forget what it is and can no longer find it, so we will just have to do without for now.

[devin]

2 hours ago, TheLoracular said:

Marie Anne Lenormand was also someone I was ignorant about before reading your article.

 

Mary Greer has some good historical nuggets up:

Mlle. Lenormand, the most famous card reader of all time

A Curious Account of a Reading with Mlle Lenormand

A Visit to Mlle. Lenormand by Marie, Comtesse d’Agoult

 

 

 

[TheLoracular]

Thank you both!  It will probably take me about a week to spend another night reading, learning and having some things to toss at you both based on what you posted for me. 

I muddle myself  through esoteric scholarship with very poor Latin and Biblical Hebrew; I do myself more harm than good when I try to be my own translator.   My French is even worse  😞   My strength comes from good-natured enthusiasm and an inquiring mind.  

 

7 hours ago, _R_ said:

I am curious how you know of them as it is very obscure as an order. Spieth's book is the only serious work on them as far as I can tell, in any language. Most Masonic historians only mentioned them as a footnote, even those on Egyptian Masonry.

I don't know if the modern Sacred Order of the Sophisians as a National Grand Lodge are still around but I'd had lengthy correspondence back in the 90s with someone in the Order Aurum Solis who was active in both supposedly but we didn't talk much about our group affiliations with other for all the reasons.  I am not and never was part of the Aurum Solis tradition but I love them from afar.  

[TheLoracular]

@_R_ @devin

So starting at the top of Devin's recommendations I tackled Jean Paulhan: On the Proper Usage of the Tarot: Preface to Le Tarot de Marseille by Paul Marteau as my next piece of your writing to learn from.  I got out my Tarot De Marseille study deck, which is the Lo Scarbeao Anima Antiqua limited edition using Conver's 1760 plates.  It notes in its LWB that while Martenau had lauded Conver in Le Tarot de Marseille that the deck Martenau presented, which was being sold by Grimaud (and therefore himself) at the time used Lequart's post 1870s woodblocks and the color scheme favored by Convert's successor Camoin.    This is the only Marseilles in my collection so I don't have a Grimaud deck to compare it to. 

Until reading your article, my only familiarity with Jean Paulhan was as Anne Desclos' lover and The Flowers of Tarbes (which I've never actually read) because I suffer the flaw of Americanism.  XD  

I found Kitos Digiovanni's translation of Le Tarot de Marseille and I might jump straight into that, read it before I go further down Devin's list.  

Tarology was a term I had only heard before in connection with the 2013 Enrique Enriquez documentary which all of this is inspiring me to go watch tomorrow to lighten my headspace a bit from world events plural.   I don't find it difficult or all to look at the Marseille deck without a lot of occultism or mysticism fluttering about in my head.  🙂   I am very content to ascribe the assimilation of tarot into the Western occult tradition with Court de Gébelin and the suspicious similarities between the Sola Busca engravings and alchemical engravings of the same time period.  

I don't consider myself familiar enough with the art, culture, and non-tarot playing cards of 1700-1710 France to have the right context for Pierre Madenié's original work to speculate with Paulhan on why Marseille deck has its specific iconography as far as II. Disorder and Metamorphosis goes.  But for all that I'm an occultist, I'm also practical and so my personal conclusion, until I'm educated otherwise, is that the Marseilles deck was not designed with a common arrangement or insistence that was any deeper than the marketing strategies understood by card-makers of that era in what was likely to sell well.

 

"Here is the first: observed (or practiced) in all places and at all times by decent people – not necessarily those of whimsical or chimerical mind, as most writers (and even the learned) are, no, but for the most part solid and practical and down-to-earth people: hunters and fishermen, farmers, soldiers – their entire falsity would be an even more unbelievable (and, if you wish, occult) phenomenon than their apparition. "

… And he lost me.  I was doing so well but I hit a wall and only managed to parse this down to  (Something) has been observed not only in imaginative but ordinary people - (something) would be even harder to believe in than ghosts.    
 

I am so bewildered by the entire top half of that paragraph.  I start feeling like I'm regaining an understanding of the narrative after "The savants make a great deal, in their method, out of the principle of economy,"    But before?  What is the identical error that is getting repeated a million times over?

 

((continues on))

Palaver was a new word for my vocabulary and I like it very much 🙂

I think he does a little too much lumping together of all those early tarot-loving occultists with grifting and the exploitation of little old ladies, but he does make a very good point in pointing out how many esoteric scholars and ceremonial magicians end up either broke or living off the good graces of women/friends who took them in.  XD

And that was a lovely ending and like any good preface, made me look forward to reading the translation of the book itself starting tomorrow. 

Edited January 11, 2021 by TheLoracular

[_R_]

28 minutes ago, TheLoracular said:

It notes in its LWB that while Martenau had lauded Conver in Le Tarot de Marseille that the deck Martenau presented, which was being sold by Grimaud (and therefore himself) at the time used Lequart's post 1870s woodblocks and the color scheme favored by Convert's successor Camoin.

Yes, but those woodblocks are much older than the Lequart ownership would indicate, and go back to the time of the Conver deck, more or less, of which they are something of a copy.

29 minutes ago, TheLoracular said:

This is the only Marseilles in my collection so I don't have a Grimaud deck to compare it to. 

 

You can find the entirety of the original 1930 deck on the BNF website here. It presents a few small differences with the post-1948 deck (dice on the Bateleur's table, fleur-de-lis replaced with a tulip, etc.)

40 minutes ago, TheLoracular said:

… And he lost me.  I was doing so well but I hit a wall and only managed to parse this down to  (Something) has been observed not only in imaginative but ordinary people - (something) would be even harder to believe in than ghosts.    

What Paulhan is saying is that the non-existence of supernatural phenomena would be even more surprising than its existence. "Occult matters" is the unwritten subject of that sentence. The principle of economy refers to Ockham's Razor.

46 minutes ago, TheLoracular said:

What is the identical error that is getting repeated a million times over?

Belief in the supernatural.

48 minutes ago, TheLoracular said:

And that was a lovely ending and like any good preface, made me look forward to reading the translation of the book itself starting tomorrow. 

 

There will be more by and on Paul Marteau and his deck to come in the next few months. The generous excerpts provided on Kitos' website will give you a very good idea of his overall approach, and the singularity of his method.

 

PS: I would leave the pieces by Jean Carteret to the very end of the reading list, but that is just my suggestion, of course. I think the Roger Caillois preface makes for a very good follow-up to the Paulhan one, for what it is worth.

 

[TheLoracular]

@_R_

Thank you for every part of your response.  You clarified the places where I'd gotten muddled in my reading perfectly and I am excited to continue with all of this.  

[_R_]

8 hours ago, TheLoracular said:

Thank you for every part of your response.  You clarified the places where I'd gotten muddled in my reading perfectly and I am excited to continue with all of this.  

You are very welcome.

[TheLoracular]

On 1/11/2021 at 2:05 AM, _R_ said:

PS: I would leave the pieces by Jean Carteret to the very end of the reading list, but that is just my suggestion, of course. I think the Roger Caillois preface makes for a very good follow-up to the Paulhan one, for what it is worth.

I am finished with my personal projects for the weekend and will be starting Roger Caillois: Preface to Le Tarot des Imagiers du Moyen-Âge by Oswald Wirth with all the related referential reading and getting another list of comments and questions ready if you are up to indulging me more @_R_.  I do have Wirth's Tarot of The Magicians that was published by Weiser in 1985 and I am more familiar with Wirth that I am with Marteu so I've got a better foundation for this next foray into historical tarot.  Weiser only included Wirth's own preface in that edition, unfortunately.  

I will start a new thread for this.   I am hoping my interest in your scholarship might catch the eye of some other forum folk too.  If not now, then in the future 🙂   You are brilliant.    

 

[_R_]

2 hours ago, TheLoracular said:

I am finished with my personal projects for the weekend and will be starting Roger Caillois: Preface to Le Tarot des Imagiers du Moyen-Âge by Oswald Wirth with all the related referential reading and getting another list of comments and questions ready if you are up to indulging me more @_R_.  I do have Wirth's Tarot of The Magicians that was published by Weiser in 1985 and I am more familiar with Wirth that I am with Marteu so I've got a better foundation for this next foray into historical tarot.  Weiser only included Wirth's own preface in that edition, unfortunately.  

I will start a new thread for this.   I am hoping my interest in your scholarship might catch the eye of some other forum folk too.  If not now, then in the future 🙂   You are brilliant.    

Sure. There is no need to go back and read Wirth though; Caillois quotes one brief passage from the book, and his preface is more of a general overview rather than a book-specific introduction. Therein lies its usefulness.

[InternationalIcon]

This quote comes up from time to time for me.  I spend a lot of time reading theosophical material.  This page https://www.theosophy.world/encyclopedia/tarot-cards includes this couple of paragraphs:

 

“One reference suggests that the Major Arcana contains the secret of theosophy. This is the Tarot of initiation, the secret of the combination of Force and Matter; the union into one of Philosophy, Science, Religion and Wisdom (The Encyclopedia of Occult Sciences, New York, 1939).

“The real Tarot, in its complete symbology, can be found only in the Babylonian cylinders, that anyone can inspect and study in the British Museum and elsewhere. Anyone can see these Chaldean antediluvian rhombs, or revolving cylinders, covered with sacred signs; the secrets of these divining ‘wheels,’ or, as de Mirville calls them, ‘the rotating globes of Hecate,’ have to be left untold for some time to come” (Helena P. Blavatsky, CW XIV:106).“

 

Any art history student is very familiar with Sumerian cylinder seals, which were rolled over a wad of damp clay as a seal and a signature.  They featured the pantheon of Mesopotamian figures we’re used to.  But I don’t know of any scholarship that claims to translate them.  Anyone know where to direct me?

[_R_]

On 12/30/2021 at 1:29 AM, InternationalIcon said:

“One reference suggests that the Major Arcana contains the secret of theosophy. This is the Tarot of initiation, the secret of the combination of Force and Matter; the union into one of Philosophy, Science, Religion and Wisdom (The Encyclopedia of Occult Sciences, New York, 1939).

“The real Tarot, in its complete symbology, can be found only in the Babylonian cylinders, that anyone can inspect and study in the British Museum and elsewhere. Anyone can see these Chaldean antediluvian rhombs, or revolving cylinders, covered with sacred signs; the secrets of these divining ‘wheels,’ or, as de Mirville calls them, ‘the rotating globes of Hecate,’ have to be left untold for some time to come” (Helena P. Blavatsky, CW XIV:106).“

 

This kind of quote is best taken with a large grain of salt. All the more so since the citation from Eudes de Mirville's work (Pneumatologie) is truncated and misleading: he does not equate the Tarot with the "rotating globes of Hecate," he merely happens to mention both in the same sentence.

 

 

[katrinka]

I'd suggest going a step further and taking Theosophy and Ms. Blavatsky with a large grain of salt.  It's required reading since it was so influential, but I prefer seeing more reliable sources than a "brotherhood of secret ascended Masters" cited.