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In the essay titled "The Major Arcana" I empha-size that
"something happened" to the Tarot inthe late 1600s, when a new
trend emerged in theimages of the Major Arcana. I point to
theMarseilles family of decks and the Etteilla Tarots
to illustrate my point. Theimages shown by AntoineCourt de
Gebelin in hisbook Le Monde Primitiffurther validates this idea.The
remainder of thisessay is about exploring"what happened."
Let's review the situationof Tarot in the first half ofthe
1600s. Since the early1400s, both handmadeand woodblock Tarots
showed a remarkable constancy of internalstructure even though
some packs were eitheredited or expanded to meet the needs of
thevarious games for which they were created.Tarot appeared in
72-card form in Italy around1450, although this model may
represents"splice" between preexisting symbol sets: thetwenty-two
Hebrew alphabet-keyed set calledthe Major Arcana, and the Turkish
Mamlukcards of unknown provenance, a 15th centuryversion of which
can be seen in Volume 2 ofStuart Kaplan's Encyclopedia of Tarot
(see essayon the Minor Arcana).
Kaplan also explains that the numerical order theArcana appear
in now is carried over from theFrench pack by Catelin Geofroy,
published in1557 (Vol. 1, p. 65). Some earlier fragmentary
Tarots show Roman numerals on some of theirMajor Arcana, but not
all of them, and not in theorder we are now familiar with. Those
very oldwoodblock decks tend instead to follow the listenumerated
in a sermon written by an Italianfriar in the late 15th century
(see illustrationopposite page 1 in Volume 1 of Kaplan's
Ency-clopedia of Tarot). There is also another orderderived from
the Charles VI pack that keepsTemperence, Fortitude and Justice
together in agroup. A very small minority of Tarots followthis
order, including Etteillas Tarots.
Many of the earliest decks did not show eitherRoman or Arabic
numerals, titles or astrologysigils. Some of the images do,
however, utilizetraditional scenes and characters from the signsof
the zodiac, the personae of the planets andother traditional mythic
themes familiar to theculture of the times.
A look at these oldestpacks reveals imagesfrom the
persecutedCathar movement as wellas Hebrew, Greek andGypsy occult
symbolism.The vehemence withwhich the Church at-tacked the cards
and theirmakers only reinforcesthe evidence that Tarotwas the
repository ofheretical wisdom pre-served in imagery. Closestudy of
the excellentbook called Tarot Sym-bolism by Robert ONeil exposes
the falsity ofthe belief that there were no esoteric
associationswith Tarot imagery before Eliphas Levi.
THE CONTINENTAL TAROTS by Christine Payne-Towler
MONTEGNASTHEOLOGIA
THE MOON CARY YALE SCAPINI DECK
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The Marseilles family of Tarots began to appearin the late 1400s
or early 1500s, slowly evolvingand becoming more distinct as
versions werereproduced and a their popularity spread. Thedeck we
are featuring from this family is basedon the classical
Italian-Piedmontese tarot ofGiusep Ottone, first published in1736.
Dr.Lewis Keizer considers this family of decks tobe the best
reproduction of the earliest Arcanato have survived the Inquisition
(see "TheEsoteric Origins of Tarot: More than a WickedPack of
Cards").
ONeil suggests that the Marseilles Tarots wereactually the
original "folk" pattern, but sincemost copies were woodblock-print
"catchpenny"decks, not expensive works of art like thehandmade
decks of the Milanese ducal families,they more easily became worn
and were dis-carded and replaced. (I agree to the extent that Itoo
think the earliest extant Tarots are probablynot true to the
sources that originally inspiredTarot.) This helps explain the
uniqueness of the
Visconti Sforza andrelated Tarots, whichhave more in commonwith
the Mantegna Tarotsthat the Marseilles.
Most of the differencesfrom one pack ofMarseilles Tarots
toanother were simply localdetails entered into thestandard image
to identifythe maker and the regionin which the givenversion was
produced.But in the early 1660s,
two decks appeared that permanently changedthe look of several
Major Arcana. Subsequently,those changes "leaped out" of the
Marseillesmold, appearing in the works of de Gebelin andall the
Etteilla variants of the following century,effectively obliterating
the older versions ofthese cards except in the case of a nostalgic
few
Tarot makers who preferred the archaic form.The two
Marseilles-style decks that date thistelling change in the Tarot
canon are the Tarotsby Jacques Vieville and Jean Noblet,
bothParisian cardmakers in the Marseilles tradition.
A Glance At the Cards in QuestionTwo defining characteristics of
the oldest Tarotswere a Lovers card that shows "The Union of
theKing and Queen" theme, and a Devil card thatshows the image of a
traditional werewolf orlamia from European pagan antiquity. After
thechange in the late 1600s, those two cards aredrawn to entirely
different models, called theTwo Paths and Typhon (or later
Baphomet).These amendments to the Arcana can first beseen in the
aforementioned two FrenchMarseilles Tarots which appeared in the
early1660s. A century later these same amendmentsappeared as
illustrations in Le Monde Primitif byCourt de Gebelin, and Etteilas
Tarot also fol-lowed them faithfully. By the beginning of the19th
century, all schoolsof Tarot used the "new"models despite
theirother differences. Ad-justments were made atthe same time to
severalother Major Arcana, butthe Lovers and the Devilserve as
perfect "mark-ers" in Tarots thataccepted this newinfluence.
In Volume 2 of StuartKaplans Encyclopedia,we have an
excellentillustration of the devel-opment of these two"new" Arcana
as they appeared in 1660 inJacques Vieville and Jean Noblets decks.
Kaplanwas kind enough to put them on opposite pages,and we can
actually see the ideas developing.Apparently Vieville liked the new
version of theLovers, but rejected changes to the Devil, while
THE LOVERSJEAN NOBLETS DECK
DEVILJEAN NOBLETS DECK
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Jean Noblet went all the way and changed themboth. It is uncanny
how they form the line ofdemarcation--before them, only the old
formsappear, but after them, entirely new images takeover. It's
hard not to wonder "what happenedhere?"
Introducing Athanasius KircherOne way to answer the above
question would beto ask the parallel question, "What else
washappening in Europe during the second half ofthe 1600s that
might cause a ripple of change inthe Tarot?" This question is
easier to answer. In ageneral way the answer is "the closing years
ofthe Renaissance." But the more specific answer,very relevant to
Tarot, is "Athanasius Kircher."One has only to find a copy of
JoscelynGodwin's wonderful presentation AthanasiusKircher: A
Renaissance Man and the Quest forLost Knowledge from Thames and
Hudson torealize that this German Jesuit scholar is a key tomany
riddles in the history of esoteric Tarot.
In the essay "Kabbalah/Cabbalah," an entiresection is devoted to
Kircher's ChristianCabbalah paradigm. It is he who adapted thepaths
of the Tree of Life into the form thatmodern magicians and Tarot
practitioners arefamiliar with. It is also Kircher who was
soconvinced of the Egyptian source of the ancientmysteries, and so
learned and literate in theexposition of his ideas, that the sheer
force of hiscertainty impregnated esoteric thought forcenturies
afterward. And I think it is he who,either directly or indirectly,
affected the look ofthe Tarot forever after.
As you gaze upon his illustration of Pan orJupiter, it is
difficult to miss how closely the"new" Devil image that appears in
the 1660sresembles Kircher's conception. A shift ingender in
evidence by Levi's time (late 1880s),in which the Devil gravitates
from a masculineform, through a form with attributes of
bothgenders, to the final female form, gives us theBaphomet image
favored in the esoteric schools
all over Europe. (see chapter on The MajorArcana) If we accept
this resemblance as rel-evant to the changing of the Devil cards of
Tarot,then we can see the process by which we mightfind evidence in
Kircher's work or that of hiscontemporaries for the shift in the
Lovers card,and possibly other details as well. Unfortunately,my
catalog of Kircher's work is not extensiveenough to let me point to
such a striking parallelimage in the case of the Lovers. But even
partialexposure to his ideas and images serves toconvince us that
Kirchers voracious mind madeitself an expert on whatever it
contemplated.
Meanwhile, the article by Dr. Keizer points tothe mid-1700s as a
pivotal time in the history ofTarot, because that is the time of
the FratresLucis or Brothers of Light. In essence, Dr.Keizer says
that the books published by deGebelin and Etteilla, lauding the
Egyptian originof the Tarot Arcana, were not original in theirideas
at all, but were "already common under-standing in French occult
circles, which were
PAN/JUPITERKIRCHNERS TAROT
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essentially Freemasonic" (p. 12). Keizer setsforth that the
"Egyptian Initiation" manuscriptthat was translated and published
by PaulChristian (aka Jean Baptiste Pitois) in 1870 isactually a
Fratres Lucis initiatory document frombefore the French Revolution
(which started in1789). Keizer does not say at which point
theFratres Lucis got the document or when theimages were created
for it. Upon exmining thebook Dr. Keizer refers us to, called
EgyptianMysteries, anonymously published by Weiser in1988, we find
in its foreword ... EgyptianMysteries was probably translated into
Frenchby Christian, though not from the originalmanuscript....but
from a handwritten copy, manyof which had been circulating in the
occult worldfrom the Middle Ages up to the 19th century.(italics
the authors.)
These ideas in mind, we can now see a themeemerging: In the late
Renaissance Kircheramalgamates the Ari version of the
SephirYetzirah with the Pythagorean astro-alphanu-meric code, and
the basis for Christian Cabbalahis born. Kircher may have also been
exposed tothe Fratres Lucis document, which by then wasavailable to
occultists in Europe, and which alsoreflects the Hermetic
asto-alphanumeric varient.He declares in no uncertain terms that
the entireoccult canon of the Renaissance comes fromEgypt. The
stream of Marseilles Tarots showssudden and characteristic changes
that couldeasily reflect the mammoth catalog of sacred artKircher
both created and commissioned.
The Freemasonic community either picked up orwere bequeathed
Kircher's works, stimulatingthe enhancement of the already existing
Gnostic-inflected folk Tarot with his fabulous and ex-tremely
occult images. Secret initiatory docu-ments would then have been
created to furtherilluminate the teachings contained in the
images.Court de Gebelin and Etteilla (both Freemasons)each
publicized the story of the Egyptian originof the Arcana just as
Kircher asserted it. How-ever, the resulting initiatory document,
which
became associated with the Fratres Lucis by thetime of the
French Revolution, was not revealedpublicly until 1870, by Paul
Christian.
Meanwhile, the descriptions of the Arcana inthat manuscript
match exactly the changeswhich appear spontaneously in the
Marseillesfamily of Tarots during the first half of the1660s. I
draw the conclusion that the inspira-tion for those changes is to
be found in theFratres Lucis manuscript, traveling throughthe
underground stream of the Secret Societ-ies.. And if Kircher
himself did not have ahand in mirroring the Fratres Lucis
imagesinto the Major Arcana of Tarot, then theRosicrucian and
Masonic community whofollowed in his immediate footsteps did.
Tarot historians havenever seen the originalmodels for the
changesthat appear in the Vievilleand Noblet Tarots, butthat may be
just becausewe are not studying atheRenaissance magicarefully
enough. Thetelling fact that theimages first appeared onTarot cards
two centuriesbefore Paul Christian'spublication of the FratresLucis
document meansthat we have to reevalu-ate the current theory
thatthe "Egyptian-styleimages" on some Tarots are late developments
inTarot art.
The very first of these Egyptian-style Tarots toemerge after
Christian's publication was theFalconnier/Wegener Tarot of 1896.
GarethKnight, in his fascinating book The TreasureHouse of Images,
tells us Designs for theFalconnier Tarot were taken from
original
LE TYPHONAKA THE DEVIL
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frescos and bas-reliefs in the Louvre and theBritish Museum, but
they nonetheless retain avery French flavour (p. 20) In the article
writtenabout this deck in Volume 2 of the Encyclopedia,Kaplan says
"Interestingly, he [Falconnier] citesthe 1760 Tarot of Marseilles
by N. Conver [seeVol. 1 of the Encyclopedia] as one that is
closestto the 'traditional' Tarot." Perhaps now we canunderstand
why Falconnier would make such acomment!
The catalog of Egyptian-style Tarots, matchingthe Fratres Lucis
manuscript, also includes thePapus Tarot, the St. Germaine Tarot,
the Ibis, theBrotherhood of Light Tarot, Egypcios Kier, Tarotof the
Ages and a few others. Thee informationaccompanying these Tarots
all create the impres-sion that their images come to us from
sourcesfar anterior the first historical decks of the 1400s,and yet
each shows the Two Paths andBaphomet rather than the earliest
"European"images. We cannot prove such an early date asthe origin
of the manuscript or the images thathave become associated with it.
But it's clear thatthose who say it's "proven" that
Pitois/Christianmade that manuscript up for his book are simplynot
looking at the cards themselves.
Dr. Keizer also reminds us that the images thathave become
associated with the Fratres Lucisdocument might be influenced by
the Isaian/Serapian cult that existed in Italy duringAlexandrian
times (until the 400s AD). TheItalians were excavating and studying
Serapiantemples by the 10th century (see the essay "TheEsoteric
Origins of Tarot"). Kircher spent thelater decades of his life in
Italy, and was knownas an omnivorous thinker and student of
theworld. Can we really imagine that he missed outon visiting one
of those Serapis temples duringhis decades in Italy, when Egypt was
his pas-sion?
To summarize, although the temptation formodern historians has
been to look at the pivotal19th century and the work of Eliphas
Levi as
defining the epoch of esoteric Tarot, upon closerexamination,
the situation is not so easy tocharacterize.
A Bit of Secret Society HistoryThe term Secret Societies is used
to refer to anunderground affiliation of esotericists
deemedheretical by the Catholic Church since the 1100s,made up of
pagans, Jews, Arabs, Gnostics,Gypsies and other people of minority
beliefs inChristian Europe. The Churchs abuses drovethem into each
others arms over time, and bythe earliest publication of Tarot
there weresophisticated international organizations withinwhich
mystically and philosophically inclinedpeople, including Christians
of a tolerant ilk,could associate and cross-pollinate their
ideas.
A particularly important group in the history ofTarot is the
Rosicrucians (having their beginningin Germany in 1614), whose
membership wasalways kept secret, and who were dedicated tokeeping
aspects of ancient wisdom alive despitethe Catholic overthrow of
pagan Europe. Overtime the Rosicrucians created various
MasonicOrders to serve as a doorway through which toattract new
menbers. Masonry became toleratedas the only legitimate
non-Christian "religion" inCatholic Europe, providing a haven of
refugefor alternative thinkers who were spirituallyinclined but
would not bind themselves to thePope and all he stood for.
The Order of Elect Cohens (established in thesecond half of the
1700s by Martines dePasqually) is the more recent origin of a
lineagewhose members have included many esotericscholars pivotal to
the history of Tarot, includingCourt de Gebelin and Etteilla. A
century later,this lineage produced The Martinist Order,named after
the philosophical stream ofMartinez de Pasqually and Louis Claude
de St.Martin and started by Papus in 1891.
So we can confidently assert that, from the timeof Etteilla, the
first to popularize a Tarot with
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overt esoteric content in the 1780s, virtually allthe pivotal
writers and makers of esoteric Tarotdecks in Europe have been
Secret Societymembers. It may prove true that the Tarot isitself a
Secret Society creation, although theconditions of persecution
under which it origi-nated make that assertion difficult to
eitheraffirm or deny.
It is possible to find many books of Tarot "exper-tise"
professing to recount the known history ofTarot but that entirely
gloss over the SecretSociety connections of the people who havebeen
most pivotal in the history of Tarot. Thisresults in a view of
Tarot development withholes big enough to swallow an entire
esotericlineage! Thus I am infinitely grateful to have inmy
possession, due to a simple twist of fate, athree-volume
restatement of the history of theEuropean lodges, (called The Book
ofRosicruciae, published in 1947) which puts anentirely different
spin on the situation.
The author, E. Swynburne Clymer, also assertsthat many of the
people whose names areintertwined with the 18th and 19th
centuryTarots were members in the remarkable, multi-layered web of
connections linking the mysticalintelligentsia of Europe. In his
giant Book, hestarts with the publication of the seminal docu-ment
"Fama Fraternatis" in Germany, around1614. From that event he moves
forward in timewith biographies of all the leaders through
thegenerations who were willing to have theirnames go down in
history (many more arementioned, but anonymously).
I have been greatly enriched by reading theesoteric biographies
of St. Germaine, Cagliostro,Stanislas de Guaita, Eliphas Levi and
GerardEncousse/Papus. All these names are familiar tostudents of
Tarot, but the public record on thesepeople is in some cases scant,
in others distorted.Clymer's information has given me a less
lop-sided perception of these dedicated and culti-vated persons.
Although some have felt that
Clymer is a less than unbiased source andtherefore his word is
not taken as gospel, wecannot correct his excesses or gain
perspectiveon his contribution unless his work is repub-lished in
accessible form for all.
When I looked for confirmation of Clymer'sexcellent volumes, I
found Isabel Cooper-Oakley and her book The Count of
Saint-Germaine, (as derived from the Masonic Ar-chives, with all
sources cited). Cooper-Oakleyaffirms that a whole cohort of magical
personali-ties--St. Germaine, St. Martin, Etteila,
Mesmer,Cagliostro and others --collectively representedthe French
at the Masonic Convention in Paris in1785 (see pages 108-9). By the
end of thechapter she has supplemented that quote withsimilar
remarks from other contemporarysources. As in the previous
paragraphs, we are
BAPHOMETLEVI DECK
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seeing the names of people who have featuredheavily in the
history of the Orders, in thehistory of occultism, and in the
history of Tarot.
I find it fascinating to imagine just what thechemistry of those
times and this group was like.Some of these people were
tremendously contro-versial in their times, in particular St.
Germaineand Cagliostro. It has piqued my interest that inthis
century, Tarots have emerged bearing thenames of St. Germaine and
Cagliostro. Subtledetails on these Tarots point back to this
excitingmoment in history when Etteilla, Cagliostro, St.Germaine
and their Brothers were fanning theflames of the Tarot revival
begun in the previouscentury.
The Older Alexandrian StreamIn addition to the revolutionary
reemergence ofthe Fratris Lucis-style images of the Devil and
theLovers (among others), the European Lodges alsorevived the
traditional astro-alphanumeric corre-spondences of the Alexandrian
Hermetic systemset into place by Pythagoras around 600 BC
andrevived during the flowering of Alexandrianculture after 300 BC.
These correspondences,slightly different from those given in the
SephirYetzirah of the Jews, are the only other version ofthe
letter/number/Arcana correspondences we canbe sure are truly
authentic and founded in antiq-uity. Etteila taught these
correspondences in hisbooks published in the late 1700s, but the
corre-spondences printed on his decks are a blind. Levimade subtle
modifications in the late 1800s, andall the European Rosicrucian
and Masonic lodgesused them, with the exception of the
English,right up to the 20th century
Etteilla's Tarot became the most famous deck inEurope in the
century after its inception. Itsoffshoot, the Catalan Tarot, became
the first 78-card Tarot deck published in Spain in 1900,according
to Fournier's playing card encyclope-dia. Etteilla-style Tarots
became more ornate inthe 19th century (see Kaplan's
Encyclopedia,Vol. 1, p. 141-144 and Vol. 2, p. 400-410). A
shortened version was also printed in France atthe end of the
19th century to simplify it forfortune telling. In Italy, the 19th
centuryCartomancia was the homegrown response toEtteilla, and that
Tarot has made it considerabllyeasier to unscramble which of
Etteilla's imagesgo with which Arcana of the usual Tarots, asboth
of the sources mentioned below have onlypartial information in
their lists, and over twocenturies of reprinting in various
countries, theEtteilla cards began to show considerablecorruption
in the letter/astrologycorresponcences, making a confusing
situationeven more difficult to unravel.
The two lists I am citing to detail Etteillas astro-alphanumeric
correspondences are the one givenby Papus in the late 1800s, and
Stuart Kaplansversopm in Vol I of his Encyclopedia. Athough Icannot
read French to confirm those earlierconnections, I know that Papus
was the recog-nized expert of his time and was cited by allEnglish,
French and Spanish Tarot writers of hisday. I trust his reporting,
although his informa-tion only goes so far as to link Etteillas
Arcana tothe more usual versions from the MarseillesArcana. Stuart
Kaplan shows a differently orga-nized version of the same set in
his Encyclopediaof Tarot, Vol. 1, having taken the trouble to
supplythe astrology correspondences from Etteillasbooks. These
correspondences became standardfor all of Europe's Secret Societies
and theirTarots by the time of Levi.
That would make Etteilla the harbinger of thelate-appearing
Egyptian-style decks, whichinclude the Falconnier/ Wegener Tarot,
itsmodern cognate the St. Germaine Tarot, the Ibis,the Egypcios
Kier and the Brotherhood of LightTarot. All these Tarots bear
Egyptian-styleimages (which I stated earlier could be
Serapian-inspired, reflected through A. Kircher's syntheticgenius).
The texts of these decks reference, to agreater or lesser degree,
the Fratres Lucis texttranslated and published by Paul Christian in
hisHistory of Magic.
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Again, the numbers and signs printed onEtteilla's' cards exist
in their own little universe,as they are purposefully rearranged
compared toany previous Tarot ordering. This body ofattributions is
a blind. What is true to theAlexandrian stream are his
astro-alpha-numerol-ogy connections.
Why Did Etteilla Modifythe Major Arcana?It seems that Etteilla
was attempting to realignthe images of the Major Arcana with a
Greekcreation story, a later, Alexandrian modificationof the
ancient Hebrew mythos of middle-eastern
origin. Recentresearch shows thatin changing theimages of the
MajorArcana, Etteilla wasdrawing from aHermetic book,
ThePoimandres, aGreek treatise on thecreation of the worldand the
fall ofhumanity into Eros.Essentially it's aGreek version of
theGenesis story, butwith differing names
and an altered ordering of events. It fits thestandard type of a
hypostasis narrative.
The hypostasis is a detailed recitation of thestages that The
Creator used to step downuniversal power so it can be organized
into atime-space world peopled with creatures. TheKaballah Tree is
one hypostasis narrative,evident when you follow the angles of
theLightning Bolt as it descends through the plan-etary Sephira
into matter. Such presentations area recognizable feature of a
Mystery Schoolformat. This is the classic "how the world cameto be"
narrative (see A Wicked Pack of Cards byDumett et. al.).
Etteilla's Tarot assimilated the seven days ofcreation theme
directly from The Poimandres (or"Pymander"; there are several
spellings). This isone of the manuscripts the Moors saved when
itwas taken from Alexandria in the sixth century.It was later
returned to Europe in the 1500s. Byso explicitly detailing a seven
days of creationtheme that is not the Judeo-Christian version, heis
waving a red flag, stating without words that"this is not the folk
Tarot that can be passed offas Catholic." Perhaps the workings of
demo-cratic groups like the Fratres Lucis emboldenedhim to tell his
truth, if only in veiled form, andonly in the pictures. In
hindsight, he was gettingaway with a lot!
Along with referencing the Greek and Hermeticstream of Gnosis as
the source of his Arcana,Etteilla also reintroduced certain themes
thatwere present in the earliest handmade andwoodblocked Tarots but
which had been sup-pressed through the efforts of the
Church.Etteilla put back the earliest Goddess images thathad been
replaced by male figures like Hercules(Strength), Mars (The
Chariot), the Hanged Man(Prudence), not to mention any extra Popes
andEmperors.
To my eye, Etteilla attempted to revive the moreblatant
representation of the Sophianic, HebrewGoddess-based suppressed
Gnostic and HolyGrail mythos so threatening to the Church
fivecenturies earlier among the Cathars. GershemScholem asserts
this very theme in many placesin his excellent works--that the
Gnostic religionof the Cathars was by no means a purely Chris-tian
phenomenon, but instead was imprinted bythe Jewish Gnosticism
fermenting locally at thesame time. Remember, the earliest
handmadeTarots (from the mid-1400s) prominently featurethe Popess
card as a woman in full ecclesiasticalgarb, intimately identified
with the Catharheresies. Perhaps by clothing these oldestGnostic
images in Hermetic garb, he hoped tocement the link between
Alexandrian culture andGnosticism in Tarot tradition. It is too bad
that
EVECATALAN DECK
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the layers of veiling he applied to his Arcanahave obscured them
for so long!
Etteilla also put the signs of the zodiac on hisfirst twelve
Arcana, although again following noprevious traditional ordering
system, but super-imposing his own logic, then claiming it wasfrom
the Hebrew. However, as we have seenabove, he was, in fact, working
with the Her-metic/ Alexandrian variation, which dates backto the
Pythagorean corrections to the Greekalphabet in the 7th century
bc.
Reassessing Etteilas Work
Elizabeth Cooper-Oakley's book The Count ofSt. Germaine names
Etteilla as a compatriot toMasons and Martinists in his time. We
also can
see that he wasusingKabbalisticcorrespondencesthat are in
linewith what weknow ofPythagorean andHermeticteachings. Aswell,
his Tarotsbecame the mostpopular andinfluential of theworld's
Tarots inthe centuryfollowing theirpublication.Why, then, doTarot
historiansinvariably skimover him solightly? It is ameasure of
his
success as a lodge member that the popular presshas never seen
the esoteric merit of these Tarots."Hidden in plain sight,"
indeed!
It is more than likely that the Etteilla Tarot is the"blind"
that the English writers from the early20th century were warning
students againstgetting caught up in. I can appreciate the
thicketof considerations the Etteilla Tarot raises, appear-ing as
it seems to, "out of the blue" and stealingthe show so completely
in its century that somescholars of his day feared Etteilla's
Tarots wouldpush out all the other decks on the market.
But if Papus and Kaplan are correct, and thesimilarities between
Etteilla's Arcana images andthe Fratres Lucis model are not
accidental, itbecomes clearer how important Etteilla's Tarot isfor
transmitting historical values, like a fly inamber, until we could
finally decode them. Hiscorrespondences, both in the images and in
theoccult attributions, reach back to an ancientstrata of magic,
theurgy and mysticism referingus to Alexandrian sources rather than
the olderJudeo-Christian ones.
It is important to note that in the Arcana whichEtteilla chose
to rework to his own liking, heshows a high degree of literacy in
the canon ofmagical art and the original Tarots. This suggeststhat
the portrayal of Etteilla by exoteric history isanother aspect of
the "blind" around his Tarot. Forall of Levis bluster about the
imperfection of theEtteilla Tarots, it is no accident that a
centurylater, Papus would borrow the entire frameworkfor his own
Minor Arcana from Etteilla!
One Century Later: Eliphas LeviReturning to Secret Society lore,
let us note thatClymer spares no pains in mentioning, amongthose
rosters of illustrious lodge members andesoteric scholars, that
Eliphas Levi was theSupreme Grand Master of the Fraternitas
RosaeCrucis of Europe (with the exception of En-gland) from 1856
until his death in 1875. Thismakes him a distinctly more
interesting personthan has yet been admitted by his translators
orbiographers. The public perception of this manand his life work
would have one believe that hisimportance to the transmission of
the esoteric
THE BIRDS AND THE FISHESAKA EMPRESS ETTEILLAS DECK
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In his introduction to Oswald Wirths insightfulbooklet
Introduction to the Study of Tarot,Stuart Kaplan states that Wirth
was followingLevi in putting the Fool between Judgment andthe
World, while in the Arabic sequence, TheFool was designated 22 or 0
(p. 9). This is theone and only time I have seen the Arabicsequence
mentioned, but it suggests a periodwhen the astro-alphanumeric
correspondenceswere diverted to the Moslem libraries and
thereforgotten. After the waning of Alexandrianculture, they
reappeared in Europe in the late1600s to effect the correction that
theMarseilles and Etteilla Tarots represent.
Levis work on the Vatican treasures stolen byNapoleon made him
and his co-workers,Nodier and Pitois, privy to materials that
hadbeen out of circulation for centuries already,materials we would
give our eyeteeth to seeagain today. Quite likely it was all very
care-
paradigm was mostly in his own mind! Somemodern Tarot scholars
seem genuinely puzzledthat he commanded such respect from
theEuropean intelligentsia of his day, a huge over-sight in view of
the facts as stated by Clymer.
Whatever aspersions have been cast by thedubious upon the name
of Eliphas Levi, esoterictradition reveals his steadying influence
in thechaos which the Secret Societies were experi-encing during
his tenure as Supreme GrandMaster. Not only did he serve as Grand
Masterfor over twenty of the most difficult years thecombined
orders had faced in his century (thesiege of Paris during the
Franco-Prussian War),but his name and writings were the turning
pointfor esoteric Tarot, making it more accessible forthe masses
after the century of Etteilla's confus-ing tarots. Clymer also
names him as aKabbalistic and Magean Initiate, and a memberof
L'Ordre Du Lit.
The books for which Levi is most known ap-peared during his
earliest years as the GrandMaster. In them he indicated the Sephir
Yetzirah,Pythagoras and Court de Gebelin (among others)as sources
for the letter/Arcana/astrological codesand correspondences used
within the Fraternitas(Levi's History of Magic, p. 76-7). In an
articlecalled "The Science of the Prophets" found in TheMysteries
of Magic, a digest of Levi's writingstranslated by A. E. Waite (p.
275-288), Levi laysout his Hebrew letter/Arcana correspondencesvery
clearly, with no ambiguity. If his attributionswere spurious or
mistaken, there was plenty oftime for the world to critique his
assertions whenhe was still alive. But no such controversy
evererupted, because these were the common corre-spondences all
over Europe and had been so forover a century. Only after his
death, upon thedisposal of his papers and the translating of
hisworks, did the efforts at revisionism begin.
Levi's Significant Contributions to TarotIt is clear that
Eliphas Levi's monumentalscholarship and high status in the Secret
Societ-
ies made it easier for his attributions to becomethe standard
European pattern from the late1900s until today. Yet a few Tarots
continued tofollow the older pattern represented by Etteilla.The
switch is subtle, because nothing changesbetween the Hebrew
letters, their numbers ortheir astrology. But Levis work and the
decksthat grew out of his work show the letter Tav onThe World and
Shin on The Fool. The element/planet correspondences with the
letters stay thesame, but the Arcana themselves switch placesin the
alphabet.
It is possible that while working with CharlesNodier and Jean
Baptiste Pitois (aka PaulChristian) on the spoils of Napoleons sack
ofthe Vatican, cataloging and translating manu-scripts from
disbanded heretical monasteries ofearlier centuries, Levi
discovered something thatinspired him to make this adjustment. So
far Ihave found nothing among his translated writ-ings which
explains this transposition.
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11
fully arranged to enlist Levi and his student(Papus) when the
time came to catalog it allwho else at that time would have known
whatthey were looking at? With access to theseremarkable papal
treasures as well as to thearchives of the Rosicrucian and
Masonicsocieties they each belonged to, they wereinsiders in the
most inside sense of theword! (This, by the way, shows one
possiblepath the Fratres Lucis manuscript could havetaken to reach
Pitois/Christian, although it iscertainly not the only possible
way.)
We can now attribute to Levi the pattern ofcorrespondences
leading to the decks byPapus, Wirth and the one named
afterCagliostro. The lions share of modern Euro-pean esoteric
Tarots seems to be informed bythis style of connecting the letters
to theArcana, no matter whether or how they spliceon the astrology
after the fact.
Reinstating LeviEliphas Levi was not the only person to
sufferpostmortem redactions and come out lookingsignificantly
reduced in the translation. Ibelieve an unwritten mandate within
theSocieties states that when a member comesout with a book, deck
or course of trainingthat is too power-packed with the real
teach-ings, or if it looks like it might be misunder-stood or
misapplied, several generations oflodge members following after
them will beassigned to disclaim them. Etteilla disclaimsde
Gebelin. Levi disclaims Etteilla. LevisGolden Dawn translators play
havoc with him.Papus disclaims Christian/Pitois, and
Waiterepudiates them all.
This is all part of the ancient debate over howmuch of the inner
teachings should be sharedwith the masses. Built into the Secret
Society
paradigm is the notion that our group is privyto esoteric truths
that others lack. The Churchwas continually trying to infiltrate
the SecretSocieties and criminalize their activities, soSociety
members could not freely share theirteachings even if they had
wanted to. Manyoccultists were also scientists, mathemati-cians,
doctors, inventors and the like whorightly feared that their
experiments andinventions would fall into the hands of thosewho
would exploit them materially withoutadequate moral or spiritual
guidance. (This isexactly what has happened in the nineteenthand
twentieth centuries, with the rise ofsecular scholarship
disconnected from reli-gious frameworks and ethical
considerations.)
So even those who were seen by Secret Soci-ety members as
teaching the esoteric paradigm(Etteilla and Levi, for instance)
felt they hadto resort to a bit of obfuscation, retaining
theinnermost secrets for those who had eyes tosee. Even though Levi
states in public that hethinks of Etteillas Tarots as misguided
anderroneous, in truth he is using the very samesystem, with only
the slightest amendments.And neither he nor Etteilla were
entirelytruthful about where the attributions camefrom. We must try
to keep this trend in mindwhen we see how disparaging the
EnglishTarot writers were about Levi just forty orfifty years later
(see The English School).
Interestingly enough, both Etteilla and Leviwere educated
occultists who would mostlikely have been exposed to whatever
versionsof esoteric correspondences were being taughtand used in
the widespread Secret Societygroups of their respective times. Yet
theychose not to specify that they were eachrepresenting the
Alexandrian/Hermetic branchof the Hebrew tradition rather than the
consid-
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12
momentum.
As mentioned earlier, the crowd that hasfollowed Levis adjusted
correspondences,from the late 1800s to this day, places the Tavon
the World card, while the letter Shin is onthe Fool (see the essay
The Confluence ofAncient Systems). I think we can use thisvariation
as another marker to show whichTarots were constructed by
Fraternitas mem-bers after Levi and which were drawn fromthe
Fratres Lucis document from the 1600s.
For further insight into the more recent eso-teric decks that
promote the assignment ofShin to the Fool, see Valentine
Tombergspriceless Meditations on the Tarot. Tombergtells us that
this correspondence was given tohim from a
Martinist-Templar-Rosicrucianconfederation he belonged to in St.
Peters-burg, Russia in 1920. The modern occultwriter Mouni Sadhu
uses a redrawing of Courtde Gebelins images with Levis
correspon-dences in his extraordinary manual, The Tarot.Irene Gads
valuable Tarot and Individuationalso teaches this arrangement. I
hope that thepublication of these essays within the TarotMagic
Cd-Rom will stimulate more scholar-ship to emerge on the European
esotericparadigm.
erably older Semitic branch as originallytabulated in the Sephir
Yetzirah.
In ConclusionIn light of the above, we can now define
theContinental Tarot as comprised of a lineage oflodge brothers
collectively committed to thesurvival of the Hermetic/Alexandrian
Gnosis,already old and revered at the time of thefounding of the
Fraternitas. The first, hand-made Tarots revealed the
Hebrew/Cathar/Gnostic origins of the Arcana, but those Tarotswere
eventually either lost or misunderstood,resulting in the
promulgation of mass-produceddecks with little but folk meanings,
taking theplace of the original flash cards for the Myster-ies (see
The Confluence of Ancient Systems).
Kircher, the Fratres Lucis, Etteilla, Levi andother Tarot
reformers eventually imprinted amore esoteric version of the
ancient Arcanainto the collective consciousness. This waslargely an
underground endeavor until Levilaid it out in a systematic way for
the whole ofthe Fraternitas. We have seen that this streamof Tarots
has formed the riverbed in whichmost modern European Tarots (not of
theEnglish stream) are flowing.
My meta-theory that underlies most of whatIm working with here
is that theRosicrucians, especially the Martinist Lodge,has made it
their business to save and revivethe Inner Tradition of Tarot. The
ContinentalEsoteric Tarots perpetuate representations ofthe ancient
Hermetic/Alexandrian Mysteries,of the earliest proto-Tarots, and of
the secretdocuments from the Middle Ages. This is onereason for
calling the nineteenth century theFrench Occult Revival. Most
sources point toLevi as the figurehead, but the dates prove thathe
was coasting on the previous centurys
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13
Arc
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Con
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1 A a 1 a A U A A U U
2 B b 2 b z z z z z z
3 C g 3 g ; C D F F F
4 D d 4 d E A E E E E
5 H h 5 e D o p D o o
6 V v 6 V p w p p
7 Z z 7 z w q q C q q
8 Ch c 8 h u r u u r r
9 T t 9 q s n s s
10 I y 10 i x x x
11 C k 20 k s F s s C C
12 L l 30 l U u n o u u
13 M m 40 m G J G G
14 N n 50 n m m m
15 S s 60 x C w C w w
16 Ayn f 70 o o x o U x x
17 P p 80 p F D F p D D
18 Ts x 90 j r m r r m m
19 Qk q 100 r q n U q n n
20 R r 200 s n G w G G
21 Sch W 300 t p E U Fool World
22 Th u 400 u U U World Fool
U
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TABLE OF CORRESPONDENCES FOR THECONTINENTAL DECKS
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