PART I
The Veil
and its Symbols
§ 1
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL
THE pathology of the poet says that "the undevout astronomer is mad";
the pathology of the very plain man says that genius is mad; and between
these extremes, which stand for ten thousand analogous excesses, the
sovereign reason takes the part of a moderator and does what it can. I do
not think that there is a pathology of the occult dedications, but about
their extravagances no one can question, and it is not less difficult than
thankless to act as a moderator regarding them. Moreover, the pathology,
if it existed, would probably be an empiricism rather than a diagnosis,
and would offer no criterion. Now, occultism is not like mystic faculty,
and it very seldom works in harmony either with business aptitude in the
things of ordinary life or with a knowledge of the canons of evidence in
its own sphere. I know that for the high art of ribaldry there are few
things more dull than the criticism which maintains that a thesis is
untrue, and cannot understand that it is decorative. I know also that
after long dealing with doubtful doctrine or with difficult research it is
always refreshing, in the domain of this art, to meet with what is
obviously of fraud or at least of complete unreason. But the aspects of
history, as seen through the lens of occultism, are not as a rule
decorative, and have few gifts of refreshment to heal the lacerations
which they inflict on the logical understanding. It almost requires a
Frater Sapiens dominabitur astris in the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross
to have the patience which is not lost amidst clouds of folly when the
consideration of the Tarot is undertaken in accordance with the higher law
of symbolism. The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and
offers no other signs. Given the inward meaning of its emblems, they do
become a kind of alphabet which is capable of indefinite combinations and
makes true sense in all. On the highest plane it offers a key to the
Mysteries, in a manner which is not arbitrary and has not been read in,
But the wrong symbolical stories have been told concerning it, and the
wrong history has been given in every published work which so far has
dealt with the subject. It has been intimated by two or three writers
that, at least in respect of the meanings, this is unavoidably the case,
because few are acquainted with them, while these few hold by transmission
under pledges and cannot betray their trust. The suggestion is fantastic
on the surface for there seems a certain anti-climax in the proposition
that a particular interpretation of fortune-telling--l'art de tirer les
cartes--can be reserved for Sons of the Doctrine. The fact remains,
notwithstanding, that a Secret Tradition exists regarding the Tarot, and
as there is always the possibility that some minor arcana of the Mysteries
may be made public with a flourish of trumpets, it will be as well to go
before the event and to warn those who are curious in such matters that
any revelation will contain only a third part of the earth and sea and a
third part of the stars of heaven in respect of the symbolism. This is for
the simple reason that neither in root-matter nor in development has more
been put into writing, so that much will remain to be said after any
pretended unveiling. The guardians of certain temples of initiation who
keep watch over mysteries of this order have therefore no cause for alarm.
In my preface to The Tarot of the Bohemians, which, rather by an
accident of things, has recently come to be re-issued after a long period,
I have said what was then possible or seemed most necessary. The present
work is designed more especially--as I have intimated--to introduce a
rectified set of the cards themselves and to tell the unadorned truth
concerning them, so far as this is possible in the outer circles. As
regards the sequence of greater symbols, their ultimate and highest
meaning lies deeper than the common language of picture or hieroglyph.
This will be understood by those who have received some part of the Secret
Tradition. As regards the verbal meanings allocated here to the more
important Trump Cards, they are designed to set aside the follies and
impostures of past attributions, to put those who have the gift of insight
on the right track, and to take care, within the limits of my
possibilities, that they are the truth so far as they go.
It is regrettable in several respects that I must confess to certain
reservations, but there is a question of honour at issue. Furthermore,
between the follies on the one side of those who know nothing of the
tradition, yet are in their own opinion the exponents of something called
occult science and philosophy, and on the other side between the
make-believe of a few writers who have received part of the tradition and
think that it constitutes a legal title to scatter dust in the eyes of the
world without, I feel that the time has come to say what it is possible to
say, so that the effect of current charlatanism and unintelligence may be
reduced to a minimum.
We shall see in due course that the history of Tarot cards is largely
of a negative kind, and that, when the issues are cleared by the
dissipation of reveries and gratuitous speculations expressed in the terms
of certitude, there is in fact no history prior to the fourteenth century.
The deception and self-deception regarding their origin in Egypt, India or
China put a lying spirit into the mouths of the first expositors, and the
later occult writers have done little more than reproduce the first false
testimony in the good faith of an intelligence unawakened to the issues of
research. As it so happens, all expositions have worked within a very
narrow range, and owe, comparatively speaking, little to the inventive
faculty. One brilliant opportunity has at least been missed, for it has
not so far occurred to any one that the Tarot might perhaps have done duty
and even originated as a secret symbolical language of the Albigensian
sects. I commend this suggestion to the lineal descendants in the spirit
of Gabriele Rossetti and Eugène Aroux, to Mr. Harold Bayley as another New
Light on the Renaissance, and as a taper at least in the darkness which,
with great respect, might be serviceable to the zealous and all-searching
mind of Mrs. Cooper-Oakley. Think only what the supposed testimony of
watermarks on paper might gain from the Tarot card of the Pope or
Hierophant, in connexion with the notion of a secret Albigensian
patriarch, of which Mr. Bayley has found in these same watermarks so much
material to his purpose. Think only for a moment about the card of the
High Priestess as representing the Albigensian church itself; and think of
the Tower struck by Lightning as typifying the desired destruction of
Papal Rome, the city on the seven hills, with the pontiff and his temporal
power cast down from the spiritual edifice when it is riven by the wrath
of God. The possibilities are so numerous and persuasive that they almost
deceive in their expression one of the elect who has invented them. But
there is more even than this, though I scarcely dare to cite it. When the
time came for the Tarot cards to be the subject of their first formal
explanation, the archaeologist Court de Gebelin reproduced some of their
most important emblems, and--if I may so term it--the codex which he used
has served--by means of his engraved plates-as a basis of reference for
many sets that have been issued subsequently. The figures are very
primitive and differ as such from the cards of Etteilla, the Marseilles
Tarot, and others still current in France. I am not a good judge in such
matters, but the fact that every one of the Trumps Major might have
answered for watermark purposes is shewn by the cases which I have quoted
and by one most remarkable example of the Ace of Cups.
I should call it an eucharistic emblem after the manner of a ciborium,
but this does not signify at the moment. The point is that Mr. Harold
Bayley gives six analogous devices in his New Light on the Renaissance,
being watermarks on paper of the seventeenth century, which he claims to
be of Albigensian origin and to represent sacramental and Graal emblems.
Had he only heard of the Tarot, had he known that these cards of
divination, cards of fortune, cards of all vagrant arts, were perhaps
current at the period in the South of France, I think that his enchanting
but all too fantastic hypothesis might have dilated still more largely in
the atmosphere of his dream. We should no doubt have had a vision of
Christian Gnosticism, Manichæanism, and all that he understands by pure
primitive Gospel, shining behind the pictures.
I do not look through such glasses, and I can only commend the subject
to his attention at a later period; it is mentioned here that I may
introduce with an unheard-of wonder the marvels of arbitrary speculation
as to the history of the cards.
With reference to their form and number, it should scarcely be
necessary to enumerate them, for they must be almost commonly familiar,
but as it is precarious to assume anything, and as there are also other
reasons, I will tabulate them briefly as follows:--
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