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An Introduction to the Esoteric Tarot


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Posted (edited)

 I'm not a trained academic, in the post-industrial, Western sense of the term. I just want to get that out of the way. But I've been studying Tarot for over 50 years, and started at a time - the early 70s - when there weren't that many books out on the subject. But those books that were available were awesome. Even the crazier ones still get quoted a lot, as they were part of what had become several established traditions concerning Esoteric Tarot that all continue to this day. This is the first post of many, so I'll try to keep it as simple as I can (not my strong point).

 

It is impossible to begin this without making some broad generalizations that can get picked apart later. But I do not think it is unreasonable or oversimplifying the matter to start by saying there are two basic "schools" of Esoteric Tarot, by which I mean two distinct (yet inevitably overlapping) bodies of published opinion on the matter, largely by Freemasons (both fringe & meanstream):

 

The French (i.e., Francophone) or Continental school. 

This begins with 18th & early 19th century speculations about the origins of the "Marseilles" Tarot among the "Gypsies", Bohemians, or Jews, and reached it's early peak with the printing of the "Etteilla" Tarot, also called the "Book of Thoth" and hinting at Egyptian &/or Qabalistic origins. By the mid-19th century, all these speculations collected, distilled, & transmuted by Eliphas Levi into several works written in the 1850s that are among the best modern works on Magick in existence (Crowley claimed to be his reincarnation), and which inspired the formation of the Martinist Order(s) and the Gnostic Church. His works were the first to explicitly correspond the 22 Hebrew letters to the 22 "Triumphs" of the Tarot. Other significant writers of this time are Papus, Oswald Wirth, and Paul Christian. This school has two notable examples of Tarot design, which were copied repeatedly across Europe & the Americas:

 

  • the Egyptian Tarot designs are traced back to members of this school, particularly through the writings of Paul Christian
  • the Oswald Wirth designs, "correcting" the Marseilles Tarot images & incorporating the first popular attribution of the Hebrew letters, and which are excellent illustrations of the writings of Levi & Papus, as well as his own.

The Martinist Tarot school begins it's attributions with Aleph being 1: The Magician.

 

The British school, which is essentially the system of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

This school is what is best known in the English reading world. This - like the Golden Dawn itself - rapidly splits up into many derivative traditions, including, but not limited to:

  • The Golden Dawn; particularly Book "T"
  • Crowley's Thoth Tarot & the system of A.'.A.'.
  • The Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot;... & all it's clones! I don't know why people try to distinguish the RWS from this school; Waite was the first to publicly publish the switch between Strength/Leo & Justice/Libra, which comes directly from the Golden Dawn attributions 
  • Paul Foster Case's BOTA Tarot and the Gareth Knight Tarot both do excellent jobs of reconciling the RWS & Oswlad Wirth imagery, but retain the Golden Dawn order of attributions.

 

The Golden Dawn system begins it's attributions with Aleph being 0: The Fool.

 

I may be about to hit my word limit. So I'll pick this up later.

Edited by Flegetanis
Posted (edited)

The forum won't let me edit or delete that last post, so here are some individual links for the French esoteric Tarots:

Decks of particular interest that belong to this school include:

  • the Oswald Wirth Tarot, which sets the standard for the school
  • the Manly P. Hall-J. Augustus Knapp Tarot
  • Salvador Dali's Tarot
  • the Tarots of Josef Machynka

This school originates with the Tarot de Marseilles, whereas later esoteric decks were largely based on, or were "corrections" of, these Francophone designs.

 

Equating The Fool with the Hebrew letter "Shin" is based on a Christian Cabalistic formula, known as the "Pentagrammaton," formed by inserting Shin between the two halves of the Tetragrammaton, "Yod-Heh" & "Vav-Heh." This yields a result that is constructed on the Tetragrammaton, but can be pronounced as "Yehoshua"; Joshua ("Jesus"). The Fool in the formula is, essentially, the Holy Spirit of the Trinity (itself represented graphically by the letter Shin), seen as a madman or a drunk, he is actually David, King of Israel, dancing before the Ark of the Covenant as it is brought into Jerusalem.

PentaBoehm.jpg

Edited by Flegetanis
Posted

:170: but - you can only edit for 60 minutes unless you are a subscriber or have 1000 posts.

Posted

If you need to delete a post, you need to contact one of the forum staff and request it. We have to justify why it's being deleted, so just let us know. If you double post accidentally, just edit it to make it clear you want it deleted and we will take care of it when we are next browsing through the forum 🙂 

Posted

The most popular and fundamental book on the Martinist Tarot system is 

 

Le Tarot des Bohemiens or The Tarot of the Bohemians by "Papus" - here translated into English Translated by A. P Morton.

 

Other important works include Le Tarot, des Imagiers du Moyen Age: translated as The Tarot of the Magicians by Oswald Wirth

 

And on the mystical & philosophical side, Eliphas Levi's Dogme et Rituel le Haute Magie - "Theory & Ritual of High Magick" or Transcendental Magic as translated by A.E. Waite.

 

 

Posted
1 hour ago, Flegetanis said:

Le Tarot des Bohemiens or The Tarot of the Bohemians by "Papus" - here translated into English Translated by A. P Morton.

 

Brought to you by the Dept. of Redundancy Department.

Scandinavianhermit
Posted
1 hour ago, Flegetanis said:

And on the mystical & philosophical side, Eliphas Levi's Dogme et Rituel le Haute Magie - "Theory & Ritual of High Magick" or Transcendental Magic as translated by A.E. Waite.

I may add, that a new translation, paying closer attention to some of the nuances in the French original and with some additional notes, is available since 2017: The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic

 

Scandinavianhermit
Posted
1 hour ago, Flegetanis said:

Other important works include Le Tarot, des Imagiers du Moyen Age: translated as The Tarot of the Magicians by Oswald Wirth

When Wirth's book from 1926 was re-edited in France in 1966, there were a few misprints, particularly about astrology. The English translation contains these misprints, unless the latest printings are corrected. 

Posted
21 minutes ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

I may add, that a new translation, paying closer attention to some of the nuances in the French original and with some additional notes, is available since 2017: The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic

 

 

Indeed; an old friend - and Brother - John Michael Greer was a part of that. I just don't happen to have it yet, nor is it online for easy reference. 

Waite is a bit of a $3 bill; his notes in this (as in his translation of The History Of Magic, & his book The Holy Kabbalah) often seem deliberately misleading, even outright false at times. He'd never be my first choice if it weren't for the simple fact it's the translation I know (& know well), and which I can easily reference online.

Scandinavianhermit
Posted (edited)

The French school of tarot flourished in the Russian Empire before the revolution and during the early phase of Soviet Russia, before Stalin became even more authoritarian. This Russo-Ukrainian branch of French tarot survived among Russians, Ukrainians, Balts and Poles in exile. To this group of books belong:

 

  • G.O. Mebes: Tarot Majors
  • G.O. Mebes: Tarot Minors
  • Vladimir Alexeevich Shmakov: The Holy Book of Thoth: The Great Arcana of the Tarot
  • Mouni Sadhu: The Tarot
  • (anonymous, which in reality was Valentin Tomberg): Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism
Edited by Scandinavianhermit
grammar and book title
Posted
3 minutes ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

The French school of tarot flourished in the Russian Empire before the revolution and during the early phase of Soviet Russia, before Stalin became even more authoritarian. This Russo-Ukrainian branch of French tarot survived among Russians, Ukrainians, Balts and Poles in exile. To this group of books belong:

 

  • G.O. Mebes: Tarot Majors
  • G.O. Mebes: Tarot Minors
  • Vladimir Alexeevich Shmakov: The Holy Book of Thoth: The Great Arcana of the Tarot
  • Mouni Sadhu: The Tarot
  • (anonymous, which in reality was Valentin Tomberg): Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism

 

The site I link to for the "Egyptian" Tarot card images is actually a primarily Russian-language site. All of those resources are there.

 

Russian site on Early Esoteric Tarots

Posted

The basic "model" or numerical "archetype" used by the Martinist School is the Tetragrammaton. The application of this is to first contemplate the cards in groups of three, plus a fourth. This is represented by a cross, at first, and then by a triangle, where the "fourth" (letter or image) is in the center of the triangle. This can then be doubled into a group of seven cards.

Papus Minors Cross+Trianges.png

Tarot Minors - Papus.jpg

Wirth Septenaries.png

Posted (edited)

For full the descriptions of these processes & meditations, I refer you to the original, as well as the work of Oswald Wirth.

 

These are dynamic activities; you can't just read them, you really need to "play" with your cards to appreciate them.

Edited by Flegetanis
Adding practice to the theory
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

When Wirth's book from 1926 was re-edited in France in 1966, there were a few misprints, particularly about astrology. The English translation contains these misprints, unless the latest printings are corrected. 

 

I'll assume they're not. 🤓 The newer English edition looks exactly the same as the old one, just with a new introduction and the full color Wirth designs printed onto cardstock bound into the book. I can only hope that the English translation is as productive for others as it was for me!

Edited by Flegetanis
Posted

Another important Tarot tradition which came out of this same school are the "Egyptian" Tarots, linked above. The sequence of these images is actually very Masonic, so the The "Poor Blind Candidate" (the Fool) is conducted by the psychopomp figure of the Senior Deacon (the Magus) the the Door of the Lodge, or "he Gate of the Sanctuary" (the High Priestess), the pillars of which are marked explicitly as such in the Waite-Smith designs.

Poor Blind Candidate.jpg

ar02.jpg

Posted (edited)
On 3/5/2024 at 4:47 PM, Flegetanis said:

Another important Tarot tradition which came out of this same school are the "Egyptian" Tarots, linked above. The sequence of these images is actually very Masonic, so the The "Poor Blind Candidate" (the Fool) is conducted by the psychopomp figure of the Senior Deacon (the Magus) the the Door of the Lodge, or "he Gate of the Sanctuary" (the High Priestess), the pillars of which are marked explicitly as such in the Waite-Smith designs.

 

 

 

I had intended to accompany those images with these:

Candidate - Duly and Truly.jpg

Candidate with SD.jpg

MidChamber BW.jpg

 

 

Edited by Flegetanis
Posted

Beyond the Pillars is the Lodge, represented by III: The Empress, or "Isis-Urania" in the Egyptian Arcana:

Isis-Urania-G.jpg

checkered_floor_long.jpg

Posted

I am certain of my correspondences so far, but to continue would be speculation -- but speculation based on reason, experience, and the assistance of many Brethren.

 

I would continue the Masonic correspondences as follows:

 

IV: Hiram, King of Tyre

V: Solomon, King of Israel

VI: The White Leather Apron

VII: Hiram Abiff

VIII: The Obligation

IX: The Past Master (The Broken Column = Isis Mourning)

X: The Altar

XI: The Cardinal Virtues

XII: The Penalties of the Obligations

XIII: The Death of Hiram

XIV: Raised to the Sublime Degree

XV: The Ruffians

XVI: The Unfinished Sanctum Sanctorum

XVII: The Acacia

XVIII: (Masonic) Distress

XIX: (Masonic) Relief

XX: The Word Restored

XXI: The Perfect Ashlar

 

 

Posted (edited)
On 2/15/2024 at 10:23 AM, Flegetanis said:

It is impossible to begin this without making some broad generalizations that can get picked apart later....

 

The French (i.e., Francophone) or Continental school. 

This begins with 18th & early 19th century speculations about the origins of the "Marseilles" Tarot among the "Gypsies", Bohemians, or Jews, and reached it's early peak with the printing of the "Etteilla" Tarot, also called the "Book of Thoth" and hinting at Egyptian &/or Qabalistic origins. By the mid-19th century, all these speculations [had been] collected, distilled, & transmuted by Eliphas Levi into several works written in the 1850s that are among the best modern works on Magick [and Tarot]...

 

I just want to provide links to these sources that are antecedent to Eliphas Levi's works:

Edited by Flegetanis
Flegetanis
Posted (edited)

Sorry! I didn't mean to disappear. I was in a car accident in early April that has set in motion a lot of other orthopedic issues, so I haven't been around the past few months.

 

Soon, I want to discuss the Eudes Picard designs for the Minor Arcana, which are conceptually a sort of Spanish extension of the French/Martinist school. After that I'll move on to Sefer Yetzirah in general, & the basic "Book T" Tarot correspondences of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Edited by Flegetanis
Rose Lalonde
Posted

Sorry to hear you were in a car accident. I hope the orthopedic issues are improving! 

Scandinavianhermit
Posted

I hope your health improve! Do you approve prayers for your health, or do you consider that intrusive?

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