Aeon418 Posted March 20, 2024 Posted March 20, 2024 A confession. I've had a copy of Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett's book, A History of the Occult Tarot, on my bookshelf for over 20 years now. And while I have dipped into it a couple of times, I've never read it cover to cover. I hate buying books and leaving them unread, particularly when they are expensive hardbacks, but for one reason or another I have neglected this book for two decades now. It's not that I find the subject matter boring or uninteresting. Quite the opposite actually. But every time I've contemplated reading this book I've found something else more worthy of my time. I think part of my reluctance to read this book is based on a fear of re-treading old ground, reading page after page of stuff that I'm already very familiar with, like Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn. Shortly after buying the book I remember reading a review by someone (?) who I believed was informed and knowledgeable, claiming that the book was not quite as scholarly as it claimed to be, and the author's were pushing a particular agenda. I think this may have influenced my initial decision to leave the book on the shelf and ultimately to forget about it. But earlier this week I picked the book off the shelf for the first time in years, blew a bit of dust off the top, and suddenly remembered how long ago I had bought it. Despite being 23 years old the book is in immaculate condition and it seems a shame to leave it unread. But is it worth my time?
gregory Posted March 21, 2024 Posted March 21, 2024 I enjoyed it - but I read it MANY years ago and I suppose I might "know better today".... And I know I already knew a lot of it, even then. But I'd say - DO it; then you've DONE it ! Worst case look on it as you would revision for an exam ! It never hurts to be reminded.
DanielJUK Posted March 21, 2024 Posted March 21, 2024 Looking through the Amazon and GoodReads reviews for it, it's highly rated in the averages of reviews. Reviews seem to think it's very comprehensive but a little dry, you have to really enjoy the history. Sometimes it's quite sarcastic, it seems quite obsessed with Golden Dawn infighting. People seem to mostly like the book though. I found this old thread on Aeclectic about it.... https://www.tarotforum.net/threads/history-of-the-occult-tarot.9900/ There is a link to TarotPassages to the review by Lee Bursten, Sadly TP seems to no longer be hosted and their domain just goes to their FB page now 😭 Another thread discussing it in the context of books for scholars - https://www.tarotforum.net/threads/best-books-for-scholars.100535/
Aeon418 Posted March 21, 2024 Author Posted March 21, 2024 3 hours ago, gregory said: Worst case look on it as you would revision for an exam ! It never hurts to be reminded. I suppose I could treat it as a "time capsule" of scholarship as it existed back then. As a child of the Margaret Thatcher years I should be accustomed to revising with out of date text books. 😄
smw Posted March 21, 2024 Posted March 21, 2024 I haven’t read it, though I wonder how the Mamluk playing cards fit in his theory. I think the fragments found were earlier than the 15c. An interesting page on them here - https://www.wopc.co.uk/egypt/mamluk-playing-cards
Aeon418 Posted March 22, 2024 Author Posted March 22, 2024 7 hours ago, smw said: I haven’t read it, though I wonder how the Mamluk playing cards fit in his theory. I think the fragments found were earlier than the 15c. I don't think it goes back that far. The dust jacket on my copy says 1870 - 1970. That would be the era when actual occult Tarot's began to appear. The speculative and/or fanciful history behind occult Tarot may not feature all that much. I guess I will find out this weekend, provided I can steel myself enough to start reading.
smw Posted March 22, 2024 Posted March 22, 2024 (edited) 7 hours ago, Aeon418 said: I don't think it goes back that far. The dust jacket on my copy says 1870 - 1970. That would be the era when actual occult Tarot's began to appear. The speculative and/or fanciful history behind occult Tarot may not feature all that much. I guess I will find out this weekend, provided I can steel myself enough to start reading. perhaps I am thinking of the earlier version - A wicked pack of cards - origins of the occult tarot. (Amazon £50) The blurb mentions tarot cards invented in Italy, but not Mamluk Egyptian dynasty fragments of playing cards, which look to be the early source, probably coming originally from China. . Quote Tarot cards were invented in Italy in the early fifteenth century, and for almost four centuries used exclusively for playing games. In late eighteenth-century France, however, they were purloined from the card-players for fortune-telling and the occult. For a hundred years, the use of Tarot cards for divination, and their interpretation as enshrining an occult meaning, remained all but exclusively confined to France Edited March 22, 2024 by smw
Aeon418 Posted March 22, 2024 Author Posted March 22, 2024 3 hours ago, smw said: perhaps I am thinking of the earlier version - A wicked pack of cards - origins of the occult tarot. My copy is the 2002 hardback - A History of the Occult Tarot. It's the one with the frankly awful cover that looks like a picture of a completely random doorway with crudely photo-shopped signs and fake neon stuck on as an afterthought. The impression is of a seedy back street psychic out to fleece anyone stupid enough to walk through the door.
smw Posted March 22, 2024 Posted March 22, 2024 48 minutes ago, Aeon418 said: My copy is the 2002 hardback - A History of the Occult Tarot. It's the one with the frankly awful cover that looks like a picture of a completely random doorway with crudely photo-shopped signs and fake neon stuck on as an afterthought. The impression is of a seedy back street psychic out to fleece anyone stupid enough to walk through the door. Pretty obvious intentions then… the earlier book was published in 1996 by Dummet & two others. Reading one of the reviews the occult idea of an Egyptian source for the trumps was debunked here. Ages ago I vaguely remember reading a critique of his book (s) which suggested that he did not understand or interpret the symbols, but focused on the historical context of them. Something like that - but I could be completely wrong. Read it & sell it! £70+ on ABE books
Misterei Posted March 22, 2024 Posted March 22, 2024 (edited) This quote from above is partially wrong: <<Tarot cards were invented in Italy in the early fifteenth century, and for almost four centuries used exclusively for playing games. In late eighteenth-century France, however, they were purloined from the card-players for fortune-telling and the occult. For a hundred years, the use of Tarot cards for divination, and their interpretation as enshrining an occult meaning, remained all but exclusively confined to France>> We have at least one literary source which suggests the Tarocchi Triunfi were used for fortune telling as early as 1527 in Italy. Nothing is said about occult or how they were used [I would guess more intuitively, but I digress]. Anyway I've observed a reactionary group in the Tarot community who INSIST the cards were ONLY used for gaming until 1700s France. And this is just not true. But as with all things Tarot history ... there are mysteries and gaps and things are difficult to prove conclusively. Edited March 22, 2024 by Misterei
Aeon418 Posted March 23, 2024 Author Posted March 23, 2024 From the foreword to A History of the Occult Tarot, p.xii Quote "As in A Wicked Pack of Cards, we seek to show that various of the recounted theories are baseless and anachronistic: they usually assume far too great an antiquity for the Tarot, and tend to interpret it according to pagan and/or Jewish doctrines that Italians of the early XV century could not have known. Some occultists, when responding to our earlier book, abused us for using rational arguments; but the constructive critic would do better to meet us on our own ground and use rational argument to prove us wrong." Okay, fair enough. That's the angle that the author's take on their preferred battleground. But then they go on to say: Quote "Perhaps the truth of the matter lies in a speculation expressed in private correspondence with Gareth Knight, that 'any association of stock images from the general cultural store' would work as does Tarot for imaginative endeavour of an esoteric nature: the mind may project other structures upon it. If this is so, it need not matter to Tarotists whether or not a hidden meaning originally underlay the Tarot: it will serve their purposes equally well in either case." I may be misreading this, but to me it sounds suspiciously like trying to have it both ways. 🤔
dancing_moon Posted March 23, 2024 Posted March 23, 2024 1 hour ago, Aeon418 said: I may be misreading this, but to me it sounds suspiciously like trying to have it both ways. 🤔 Maybe, it's just a way of comforting those who'd be bitterly disappointed to find no built-in ancient pagan/Jewish/Egyptian etc. framework in Tarot. But yeah, because it doesn't matter, they sort of indirectly give their OK if it's assumed to be there.
Misterei Posted March 23, 2024 Posted March 23, 2024 38 minutes ago, dancing_moon said: Maybe, it's just a way of comforting those who'd be bitterly disappointed to find no built-in ancient pagan/Jewish/Egyptian etc. framework in Tarot. ... I think much of the controversy arises b/c we're really talking about 2 different reading methods. an intuitive style which was likely used by all sorts of people from the 1500s onward for reading ANY cards. Early Euro playing cards OR Tarots. I would guess this was amongst the less educated "fortune tellers" or just regular folks having some fun with cards. an Occult method which might depend on NeoPlatonic, Kabbalistic, Hermetic, or whatever philosophy and applying occult principles to card meanings. Which only could be done by literate, educated people who had the means and ability to study the occult. History is written by the literate types ... who may have been dismissive or ignorant of what the lower classes were actually doing with cards. I think we modern readers have the best of both worlds. We can use both methods.
gregory Posted March 23, 2024 Posted March 23, 2024 20 minutes ago, Misterei said: I think much of the controversy arises b/c we're really talking about 2 different reading methods. an intuitive style which was likely used by all sorts of people from the 1500s onward for reading ANY cards. Early Euro playing cards OR Tarots. I would guess this was amongst the less educated "fortune tellers" or just regular folks having some fun with cards. an Occult method which might depend on NeoPlatonic, Kabbalistic, Hermetic, or whatever philosophy and applying occult principles to card meanings. Which only could be done by literate, educated people who had the means and ability to study the occult. History is written by the literate types ... who may have been dismissive or ignorant of what the lower classes were actually doing with cards. I think we modern readers have the best of both worlds. We can use both methods. I think you have the nub of it. I don';t think the hoi polloi would have called what they were doing "occult", after all. They just told the future with whatever they chose to use - entrails, bones, cards, tea-leaves....
Misterei Posted March 23, 2024 Posted March 23, 2024 14 minutes ago, gregory said: ... I don';t think the hoi polloi would have called what they were doing "occult", after all. They just told the future with whatever they chose to use - entrails, bones, cards, tea-leaves.... EXACTLY. And of course this isn't as well-documented as what the literati were doing ...
Aeon418 Posted March 23, 2024 Author Posted March 23, 2024 1 hour ago, dancing_moon said: Maybe, it's just a way of comforting those who'd be bitterly disappointed to find no built-in ancient pagan/Jewish/Egyptian etc. framework in Tarot. But yeah, because it doesn't matter, they sort of indirectly give their OK if it's assumed to be there. I guess that's why the exclusively historical angle falls flat for me. Decker and Dummett may have thought they were bursting a few balloons with their book. But as a devotee of the Thoth Tarot I'm very well aware that Crowley used the Qabalah and the Tarot for his own purposes with little or no regard for history or authority. Quote The Book of Thoth: "Unimportant to the present purpose are tradition and authority." Any historical demolition of the supposed origins of Tarot has no bearing on how I view the Tarot. I can quite happily agree with any historically based assessment of the Tarot and its uses throughout the centuries because I'm not invested in any the "sacred cows" of mythical Tarot lore. Because Aleister Crowley used the past as a lumber yard for his own creations, it is completely irrelevant whether any of that 'construction material' was objectively true or used in ways that break with tradition.
smw Posted March 24, 2024 Posted March 24, 2024 (edited) On 3/22/2024 at 6:05 PM, Misterei said: This quote from above is partially wrong: <<Tarot cards were invented in Italy in the early fifteenth century, and for almost four centuries used exclusively for playing games. In late eighteenth-century France, however, they were purloined from the card-players for fortune-telling and the occult. For a hundred years, the use of Tarot cards for divination, and their interpretation as enshrining an occult meaning, remained all but exclusively confined to France>> We have at least one literary source which suggests the Tarocchi Triunfi were used for fortune telling as early as 1527 in Italy. Nothing is said about occult or how they were used [I would guess more intuitively, but I digress]. Anyway I've observed a reactionary group in the Tarot community who INSIST the cards were ONLY used for gaming until 1700s France. And this is just not true. But as with all things Tarot history ... there are mysteries and gaps and things are difficult to prove conclusively. Are you referring to my post? Just for clarity the quote is not mine nor reflective of my views. ( which are pretty limited when it comes to Tarot history). It is an extract from the descriptive overview of A wicked pack of cards: Origins of the Occult Tarot, by Dummett Decker & Press. Edited March 24, 2024 by smw
Misterei Posted March 24, 2024 Posted March 24, 2024 29 minutes ago, smw said: Just for clarity the quote is not mine nor reflective of my views. ... It is an extract from the descriptive overview of A wicked pack of cards: Origins of the Occult Tarot, by Dummett Decker & Press. Yes. I understood this quote is from the book. No worries. It's all good!
smw Posted March 24, 2024 Posted March 24, 2024 10 minutes ago, Misterei said: Yes. I understood this quote is from the book. No worries. It's all good! Hello there Misterei! That’s great 👍
gregory Posted March 24, 2024 Posted March 24, 2024 Sigh. Maybe I have to get it out and read it again....
Scandinavianhermit Posted March 25, 2024 Posted March 25, 2024 On 3/23/2024 at 7:21 PM, Misterei said: I think much of the controversy arises b/c we're really talking about 2 different reading methods. an intuitive style which was likely used by all sorts of people from the 1500s onward for reading ANY cards. Early Euro playing cards OR Tarots. I would guess this was amongst the less educated "fortune tellers" or just regular folks having some fun with cards. an Occult method which might depend on NeoPlatonic, Kabbalistic, Hermetic, or whatever philosophy and applying occult principles to card meanings. Which only could be done by literate, educated people who had the means and ability to study the occult. History is written by the literate types ... who may have been dismissive or ignorant of what the lower classes were actually doing with cards. I think we modern readers have the best of both worlds. We can use both methods. This I agree with, but Decker and Dummett are up to describing the second group, and they were decent historians. As for "reading ANY cards", reading methods for the 52 card deck are attested much earlier than methods for reading the tarot deck. Francesco Marcolini di Forli wrote a book about using playing cards for bibliomancy: Le sorti intitolate giardino di pesieri (Venice, 1540), but it has to be said that Marcolini's particular mix of cartomancy and bibliomancy doesn't resemble the sort of cartomancy with spreads we are familiar with today: The book, not the deck, is the important tool. The Lenthall deck was produced in England at some time between 1690 and 1715. A 52 card deck for divination purposes with a heavily Catholic style was printed in Augsburg, Swabia, in 1718 – all of these examples long before the cartomantic explosion in late 18th century France. The last time I looked at the question, the earliest attested method of reading a tarot deck is present in a manuscript from Bologna, c. 1750 (not France 30 years later). Any taromancy methods before that date, if they existed, didn't produce any evidence. Until older evidence turn up, the Bologna method is the oldest one available.
Aeon418 Posted March 25, 2024 Author Posted March 25, 2024 (edited) Chapter 0 finished. At the moment I'm not sure if there is an underlying meaning behind the Tarot inspired numbering of the 22 chapters that make up the book. But right at the conclusion to the first chapter the author's particular 'angle' seems to emerge. This might be summarised as Atu 0 - The Birth of Folly. After a description of the gradual development of various Jewish Kabbalistic systems, we are asked to ignore the complex way that ideas cross-pollinate each other. Instead the later Christian Cabalists simply "stole," "purloined," or "filched" everything in their marriage of Christian Cabala with Theurgy. I'm not saying this argument can't be made. (And do have some sympathy with it.) But it is a particularly hard line reading of history. After all, where did the ancient Hebrew Kabbalists get some of their influences from? The Greeks for example. But it is towards the end of the first chapter, where the author's introduce the Rosicrucian Manifestoes (Fama & Confessio), that I suddenly sat up and took notice A History of the Occult Tarot, p.24. (Emphasis added) Quote Nothing more was heard from the Brothers of the Rosy Cross, who thus proved themselves to be truly invisible. The interest aroused by the Fama and the Confessio rapidly evaporated; the outbreak of the Thirty-Years War raised graver concerns. The manifestoes had a long lasting importance, all the same, for they had created a potent occultist myth. Hermetic and Cabalistic teachings are not authenticated by scientific of deductive proof, nor even by personal experience, but by being part of an ancient wisdom transmitted from the remote past. Such teachings are the more immune from question when they can be said to have been transmitted by a chain of initiates sworn to secrecy. Frankly, I think anyone claiming verifiable historical lineage to actual Rosicrucians needs to have their head examined. But the myth of the Rosicrucians, and the way that myth has been subsequently used, does have an underlying meaning and purpose. Whether Decker and Dummett would accept this as valid is debateable due to the narrow way they circumscribed their argument in the foreword. In the The Equinox, Aleister Crowley promoted his system of "Scientific Illuminism" with the slogan: The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion. The premise is that so-called "spiritual development" is possible through a repeatable and methodical, step-by-step process (which included Tarot reading) that produces an expansion of consciousness beyond the individual to the universal. It is this greater consciousness that lies behind individual awareness, that is symbolised by such things as the Sanctum Sanctorum, the Invisible College, and the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, etc. Apart from the methodology and a rejection of sectarianism, there's nothing particularly unique or original in any of this. All of the "secret traditions" from around the world in all ages have been aimed at the same goal, despite the apparent differences in mythical language and religious symbolism that are used to describe it. Can any of this be proved to the satisfaction of the historian who seeks a physical paper trail going back to year dot? Probably not. This leaves anyone who claims otherwise open to charges of fraud when their claim is viewed in a strictly historical context. Viewed in this light the "secrets" are always absurd nonsense and ridiculous myth because they are really fingers pointing somewhere else that can't be documented and filed away according to academic standards. Although it may be presented as such, neither is the "secret" to be found with any particular group or organization, past or present. And yet the Door is open to everyone. Quote Aleister Crowley: "All this secrecy is very silly. An indicible Arcanum is an arcanum that cannot be revealed. It is simply bad faith to swear a man to the most horrible penalties if he betray . . ., etc., and then take him mysteriously apart and confide the Hebrew Alphabet to his safe keeping. This is perhaps only ridiculous; but it is a wicked imposture to pretend to have received it from Rosicrucian manuscripts which are to be found in the British Museum. To obtain money on these grounds, as has been done by certain moderns, is clear (and, I trust, indictable) fraud. The secrets of Adepts are not to be revealed to men. We only wish they were. When a man comes to me and asks for the Truth, I go away and practice teaching the Differential Calculus to a Bushman; and I answer the former only when I have succeeded with the latter. But to withhold the Alphabet of Mysticism from the learner is the device of a selfish charlatan. That which can be taught shall be taught, and that which cannot be taught may at last be learnt." Quote Liber XXXIII, ..... "Any man can look for the entrance, and any man who is within can teach another to seek for it; but only he who is fit can arrive within. Unprepared men occasion disorder in a community, and disorder is not compatible with the Sanctuary. Thus it is impossible to profane the Sanctuary, since admission is not formal but real. Worldly intelligence seeks this Sanctuary in vain; fruitless also will be the efforts of malice to penetrate these great mysteries; all is indecipherable to him who is not ripe; he can see nothing, read nothing in the interior. He who is fit is joined to the chain, perhaps often where he thought least likely, and at a point of which he knew nothing himself. To become fit should be the sole effort of him who seeks wisdom." Edited March 25, 2024 by Aeon418
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