The original edition of the Xultun Tarot and its companion book The Maya Book of Life: Understanding the Xultun Tarot by Michael Owen are available from Kahurangi Press at www.xultun.com

The Xultun Tarot was created by New Zealander Peter Balin in 1976. It is also known as the Maya Tarot or the Maya Book of Life. It consists of twenty-two cards of the major arcana plus two cards representing the masculine and the feminine principles and fifty-six cards of the minor arcana (Cups, Jades, Staffs and Swords). The Maya “x” is pronounced “sh” so Xultun is pronounced “shool-tun.”

Where did the tarot come from?

The Maya Book of Life: Understanding the Xultun Tarot challenges the Western-centric notion that archetype of the tarot belongs solely to one geographical place and one historical period.

Tarot cards first appeared in Renaissance Italy in the 14th century. With the late 19th century esotericism of the Order of the Golden Dawn, for example, the cards and their interpretations tended to become more and more arcane as with the Rider-Waite or Crowley decks. Early European decks, such as the Marseilles Tarot, give us a clearer view. Unlike many later tarot they are not burdened with self-conscious symbolism nor do they attempt to make the cards conform to a particular metaphysical or psychological theory. In the last twenty or thirty years there has been an explosion of New Age tarot decks. Unfortunately, most of these have little or no connection to the underlying archetypal structure of the tarot and are often a collection of pictures that solely reflect the author’s conscious intent.

Western culture emerged from the last physical Ice Age over 10,000 years ago but in the last 2,000 years it has succumbed to a spiritual Ice Age. The tarot first appeared in Europe when it was being ground under the glacier of Christianity and had been almost completely severed from its indigenous and instinctual roots by 5,000 years of “progress” and “civilisation.” We shall see the significance of this historical time period and the year 2012 in the Planet Earth card. When spirit and nature become estranged in a rational culture, as had occurred in medieval Europe, the result is that divination and other non-rational pursuits have to live in the shadows. At the same time they become increasingly needed, not to foretell the future but to bring about balance between spirit and nature, this world and the other world, head and heart.

Carl Jung said, “The ideal of spirituality striving for the heights was doomed to clash with the materialistic earth-bound passion to conquer matter and master the world. This change became visible at the time of the Renaissance.” It was a time when scholars had returned to the only roots they could find that they thought were “civilised” enough and were in the neighbourhood—classical Greek and Roman culture. Their desire was to be reborn into an age of light out of the ignorance and superstition of what they called the “Dark Ages.”

The brilliant but highly specialised consciousness of the Renaissance later became the “Age of Enlightenment” of the 17th and 18th centuries. This philosophical and cultural movement, seen in the writings of John Locke, Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes, for example, had an abiding faith in the power of reason to engender progress and enlightenment. However, this enlightenment came at a price. What was of the earth, the feminine and nature fell into the collective shadow. Just as a dream compensates for the one-sidedness of personal consciousness so archetypes compensate for the one-sidedness of cultural consciousness. The tarot emerged from the collective unconscious during the Renaissance as a compensation for the excesses of what was to become “Western” culture.

The tarot is a gift, created not by any individual consciousness or particular culture, but by spirit or, in psychological terms, the collective unconscious. It was not invented but emerged in response to a need for balance and beauty. Not balance between humans but for humans to be able to hold the balance between nature and spirit within themselves. The tarot allows spirit and nature to come into balance through the intercession of humans, a theme we shall return to throughout the book.

When an archetype emerges from the collective unconscious it arises in different places and cultures and historical times. The form of the archetype may be different but the essence is the same. We see the same archetype that underlies the tarot in the Cabala with its 22 Sephiroth, alchemical manuscripts like the Rosarium Philosophorum with 20 woodcuts and Splendor Solis with 22 paintings, the biological structure of DNA and the 20 or 22 amino acids, the Maya vigesimal system based on the number 20, the teachings of the Twenty Count, and the 20 + 2 cards of the Xultun Tarot major arcana.

What is the tarot?

The tarot is an aide-mémoire for the soul. It is an archetype in itself as well as a series of archetypal images that tell the story of the stages of spiritual and psychological development that are possible over a lifetime. It is the story of the flowering of the soul and how it participates in the great cycles of creation. It is a symbolic depiction of the soul’s journey from spirit to substance and back to spirit, from heaven to earth and earth to heaven, and finding heaven on earth and earth in heaven. If we look at the major arcana we see the Great Light at the top of the deck above the Fool and the Sorcerer. At the bottom of the deck we see the zigzag design symbolising the earth. All the human action happens in between and in the process both spirit and substance are changed.

The tarot embodies two principal archetypes. First, the archetype of the Self and how it manifests over a lifetime. Jung defined the Self as the organising centre of the psyche or the “God-image within.” Second, the archetype of number which Jung said was the archetype of order become conscious.

Differences

The Xultun Tarot is similar to other tarot decks in that there are twenty-two major arcana and fifty-six minor arcana. However, it differs in several important ways.

The names and numbering of the Xultun cards differ from the European tarot. Rather than Roman numerals, the Xultun cards are numbered at the bottom of each card using the Maya notation where a “dot” is one and a “bar” is five.

The Xultun is the only tarot where the major arcana, when laid out, form a picture. This is not an artistic convenience or an aesthetic gloss but a reflection of the fact that the tarot is an interconnected whole with multiple cross-connections between the cards. Although the illustrations in this book show a two-dimensional picture, the Xultun Tarot is actually a spherical, 3D hologram. Each card resonates with all the other cards in specific patterns that we shall explore further in the Loom of Time chapter.

As well as a richly cross-connected web, the cards also form a linear sequence that tells the story of the transformation of the soul. Many interpretations of the tarot lean towards considering the cards individually in isolation from each other rather than as part of a coherent and connected developmental sequence. Because the European tarot do not emphasise the developmental sequence of the cards they have blurred the difference between the first and second halves of the deck. The cards in the first half of the Xultun Tarot, from the Priestess (2) to the Balance (11), have more to do with personal and collective processes whereas the cards in the second half of the deck, from the Hanged Man (12) to Planet Earth (21), are more concerned with impersonal and archetypal processes.

The Xultun Tarot was the first tarot not based on traditional images derived from the medieval European tarot or the Western occult tradition. The imagery and teachings of the Xultun Tarot are indigenous to the Americas so the cards are less encrusted with the layers of European tarot interpretation that have accrued over the centuries.

Finally, because of its imagery the Xultun Tarot reveals more clearly the archetypal pattern that underlies all tarot decks.

Beginnings

Peter Balin was born near New Plymouth, New Zealand. A self-taught artist, he travelled widely and by the mid-1970s was living in Los Angeles. In a talk he gave in 1977 he relates how, on the evening of December 21, 1975, some friends came to his house and one of them had a tarot deck. It was the first tarot deck he had ever seen and Balin thought it was sort of medieval and uninteresting. Later in the evening one of his friends suggested that he should draw a tarot deck but Balin thought it was a silly idea and said so. Right in the middle of his protestation:

“Something occurred which had never happened to me before in my life, and which is extremely difficult for me to explain. The only way that I can do so is to say that it approximated a colour slide going on in my brain. That is all of a sudden, I was telling her how crazy I thought she was, and the next minute… Voom! I should say about like that, it’s very difficult to describe because it was not quite like that either. But this large thing appeared in my head it seemed, or somewhere inside of me, I just really don’t quite know where.”

The image was of the twenty-two cards of the major arcana assembled to make one picture and all the figures were in Maya dress. The next morning Balin had a tremendous urge to paint. He took a sleeping bag to the art gallery where he worked and slept on the floor. He painted almost day and night for three months. Balin said, “Apparently I had a lot of the qualifications necessary to be able to make this deck. One of [which] was that I knew nothing about the Tarot. Because if I did, obviously I would be tripped up by what I knew. There would be a great battle in my head.… Within a year of the time that the original cards were painted, they were printed and out on the market. Obviously something somewhere felt that it was very important to get these cards out.”

For the 2010 edition Kahurangi Press have reproduced the cards in their original size and vivid colours. And, in cooperation with Peter Balin, they have redesigned the back of the cards in cinnabar red with a new feathered serpent design and the box in green with a blue feathered serpent encircling it.

Historically, almost all tarot decks were named after their creator but Balin didn’t want the deck named after him. So he made a list of Maya place names and selected Xultun, the name of a Maya site near Tikal in north-eastern Guatemala. Sometime after painting the cards, Balin discovered that the word xultun also means “a storage place” where the Maya stored water or maize. The limestone of the Yucatan peninsula is so porous that no water collects on the surface. The only sources of water are a few cenotes—deep, steep-walled sinkholes with water at the bottom. So the Maya had to dig bottle-shaped cisterns or xultun beneath the ground. These had broad, sloping surrounds, plastered with limestone, to funnel rainwater into the cistern. The bodies of human sacrifices were thrown into abandoned xultun and in shamanic healing ceremonies the conjured evil spirit was cast into a xultun. So the Xultun Tarot is a storage place, a container for the light and the dark, and a repository for seeds of knowledge.

Another other use for the xultun was as a star-tube. The Maya created a sophisticated astronomical calendar for marking the progression of time. For them, time was alive and events were conducted on dates that were most charged with ch’ulel or life force. To make their calendrical calculations they observed the movement of the stars during the day as well as at night. The Maya priest sat at the bottom of a xultun looking up at the sky through its narrow neck. [xultun] Here, even at midday, he could see the stars quite clearly overhead. In the early 1600s the Italian astronomer Galileo used a similar method for observing stars during daylight by sitting at the bottom of a deep well. So when we open the Xultun Tarot we are looking through the star-tube of the tarot, in the daylight of consciousness, at our stars—the patterns of our soul’s movement in time.

Balin had lived for some months in a small Maya village with many ruins close by. He spent the summer of 1972 sketching images at Tikal. The first six figures in the cards (Fool, Sorcerer, Priestess, Consort, Ruler and Priest) are all drawn from wooden lintels in Temple III at Tikal as are the glyphs running across the base of the platform that the last three figures stand on. The glyphs between the second and third rows come from Stela 26 at Tikal. Additional designs are taken from Stelae 1 and 31. A stela (Latin for standing stone) was an upright stone slab or pillar often carved with glyphs. Maya called them tetun, or “tree-stones.”

Balin said he did find a way of signing the cards. He was born on a farm on the slopes of Mount Taranaki in the North Island of New Zealand. At the bottom left hand side of the Sorcerer card we see the same mountain.

Twisted Hairs

Beginning in the early 1970s, with the publication of Carlos Castaneda’s books, a loosely-connected body and lineage of teachings which had previously been an oral tradition became accessible to the public. Since the mid-1970s they have been taught by Harley SwiftDeer Reagan and written about by various authors such as Teisha Abelar, Lynn Andrews, David Carson, Florinda Donner, Jamie Sams and Hyemeyohsts Storm.

The source of knowledge was a teacher or teachers to whom the author apprenticed or a tradition or lineage from which the teachings came. For Andrews it was Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Morning Star from Saskatchewan, for Castaneda it was Don Juan and Don Genaro, for Storm it was Estchimah and the Zero Chiefs, and for Reagan, who studied with Storm, it was Navajo medicine man Tom Two Bears Wilson and the Twisted Hairs Medicine Council of Elders.

Traditionally, Twisted Hairs were medicine people, shamans and storytellers who travelled throughout the Americas (Turtle Island). What differentiates a Twisted Hair from a traditional medicine person is their ability and desire to seek knowledge from outside their tradition. These men and women gather knowledge from every direction of the wheel of life in order to find their own centre and come into alignment with the Creator. Hair symbolises knowledge and a Twisted Hair is one who braids knowledge from all traditions and ways into his or her Path with Heart and makes it their own knowledge. Their purpose, their dream, is to preserve the beauty and integrity of the web of life that has been dreamed by the consciousness of this planet. They hold the breath and blood of this first dream, so that we can feed it, remember it and dream their dream onwards.

The name Xultun has Twisted Hairs associations. At its height Tikal was the largest Maya city with a population of 90,000 people but was abandoned around 900 CE. Tikal was the name used by the local Itzá Maya people and means “Place of Voices” or “City of Echoes.” But this is not the original name of the city. The name glyph of Tikal was recently deciphered by epigrapher David Stuart as Mutul. The glyph appears in the Sorcerer card. A name glyph was like a national flag or coat of arms for a Maya city-state. The central part of Tikal was called Yax Mutul which means “Great Green Bundle.” The surrounding area over which Tikal ruled, which likely included Xultun, was referred to as Mutul which means “knot of hair,” “hair bundle,” or “hair twisted or coiled and tied into a bun.” The Temperate Man, the number 14 card, is one of the most important cards in the Xultun Tarot and he is a Twisted Hair.

Some Twisted Hairs carried a medicine item similar to the Xultun Tarot in their medicine bundles. These “cards” were made of sandpaintings on thin wood and covered with animal glue and contained something from each of the Mineral, Plant, Animal and Human Worlds. It was known as the Book of Life or the Children’s Fire. The Xultun Tarot is the Holder, Keeper and Teacher of many of the Twisted Hairs teachings (or Shields of Knowledge) in symbolic form.

[Michael Owen is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Tauranga, New Zealand]

[Mary Greer will be the Keynote speaker at the ATS 2010 Tarot Convention to be held at over the first weekend in July in Brisbane, Australia. The following contribution first appeared on her weblog: Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog]

An issue came up on one of the forums about which is the best book from which to learn about the Crowley-Harris Thoth deck. The answer for almost everyone is, without question, Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth. This, despite the fact that, for most beginners in esoteric studies, it seems impenetrable. Books by Duquette and Banzhaf are proposed as intermediaries and I agree they are excellent choices, but a problem occurs when Angeles Arrien’s name comes up. Her Tarot Handbook: practical applications of ancient visual symbols takes a completely different approach to the deck, which is often characterized as the “make up anything you want” variety—though it isn’t that at all. I should mention I took several classes with Angie on the Thoth deck starting in 1977, and so I’m not at all objective in my views.

Angie’s approach is based on Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious and the meaningful repetition of archetypal images and themes across world-wide human cultures. The statement by Arrien that probably infuriates people the most is: “I read Crowley’s book that went with this deck and decided that its esotericism in meaning hindered, rather than enhanced, the use of the visual portraitures that Lady Frieda Harris had executed.” Of key importance was that Arrien experienced a powerful response to the deck that did not arise from an esoteric OTO or Golden Dawn background. It was not specifically a rejection of Crowley, though it is easy to take it as such.

Instead, Arrien recognized most of the symbols from her study of anthropology and mythology. As a result she felt that “a humanistic and universal explanation of these symbols was needed so that the value of Tarot could be used in modern times as a reflective mirror of internal guidance which could be externally applied.” She believed that the Thoth deck symbols could be read in an other-than-esoteric way—specifically, as cross-cultural psychological symbols (archetypes from the collective unconscious). Her book offers this alternate perspective, based on the work of Carl Jung, Marie Louise von Franz, Joseph Campbell, Ralph Metzner, Mircea Eliade and Robert Bly.

In essence, Arrien asked: What do these symbols tell us if we strip away the esotericism and look at them purely as symbols and archetypes from the collective unconscious reflecting myths and images that have appeared across many cultures?

I see this simply as an alternate reading of the deck—not as a demand that we discount Crowley—but, rather, asking what can be seen if we do ignore Crowley? Is there anything else to this deck? Do real ‘true’ symbols transcend fixed definitions? Can they transcend any and all dogma?

We might also ask: If Crowley’s book were lost (along with all other esoteric texts), would future generations be able to reconstitute and find anything meaningful in these 78 images? Would this deck still offer something capable of informing our thoughts and actions?

It turns out that this is a valid question, for at least one person involved in the online discussion (and perhaps many others) felt that the Thoth deck is based on a specific language of symbols, defined by Crowley, such that, without his text the symbolism and the deck become meaningless. To remove Crowley, then, is to kill the Thoth deck—to make it worthless. In fact, as explained to me, symbols contain no meaning outside of the stated definitions of an individual. Strip symbols of definition and they either convey no information or they mean anything one likes.

This is absolutely contrary to the understanding of symbols held by such people as Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, the French magician, Eliphas Lévi, and countless others who have written extensively on symbolism and who believe that the meaning of the symbol is inherent in its nature. “Symbols can thus be understood as metaphors for archetypal needs and intentions or expressions of basic archetypal patterns . . . which are ultimately inherent in the human mind-brain” (Anthony Stevens, Ariadne’s Clue: A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind).

Furthermore, symbolism is a sacred, living language that reflects divinity through like vibrations. From this principle arose the occult ‘doctrine of correspondences,’ which says that something that is red, for instance, shares some kind of energy and meaning with other things that are red. Thorns that pierce are the protective weapons and barriers to the alluring rose whose scent also draws the bees. Even an esoteric interpretation takes such elements into account.

Many spiritual teachers do not fear the subjective, for they see each person as partaking of the Divine. The esotericist Manly Palmer Hall wrote in The Secret Teaching of All Ages: “Like all other forms of symbolism, the Tarot unfailingly reflects the viewpoint of the interpreter himself. This does not detract from its value, however, for symbolism is one of the most useful instruments of instruction in the spiritual arts, because it continually draws from the subjective resources of the seeker the substance of his own erudition.”

Certainly Crowley’s erudition is great, and we benefit from the knowledge that he put into the Thoth book and deck (his book is magnificient!). But, if we stop there, we have not done our own work. There may be other interpreters of the Thoth deck who can also point us down what has been called “the royal road” of Tarot. Still, eventually we must make the path our own—there’s no getting around that.

The Egyptologist, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz in Symbol and the Symbolic tells us that symbols are different than an abstract alphabet in that we can reconstitute their meanings: “Any manner of writing formed by means of a conventional alphabetical, arbitrary system can, over time, be lost and become incomprehensible. On the other hand, the use of images as signs for the expression of thought [hieroglyphics] leaves the meaning of this writing, five or six thousand years old, as clear and accessible as it was the day it was carved in the stone.” In The Temple in Man, Schwaller de Lubicz talks about the living quality of the symbol that can not survive too rigid of a definition: “To explain a symbol is to kill it; it is to take it only for its appearance; it is to avoid listening to it. By definition, the symbol is magic, it evokes the form bound in the spell of matter. To evoke is not to imagine. It is to live, live the form.” (See Schwaller’s Egyptianized Tarot Trumps here.)

Most of all I appeal to Oswald Wirth who created the first truly esoteric Tarot deck (1889; revised in 1926) that is a significant influence behind all that have followed. Wirth, in Le Symbolisme Hermétique (translated by P. D. Ouspensky), wrote that symbols are meant to awaken us to our own freedom:

Each thinker has the right to discover in the symbol a new meaning corresponding to the logic of his own conceptions. As a matter of fact, symbols are precisely intended to awaken ideas sleeping in our consciousness. They arouse a thought by means of suggestion and thus cause the truth which lies hidden in the depths of our spirit to reveal itself. . . . They especially elude minds which . . . base their reasoning only on inert scientific and dogmatic formulae. The practical utility of these formulae cannot be contested, but from the philosophical point of view they represent only frozen thought, artifically limited, made immovable to such an extent, that it seems dead in comparison with the living thought, indefinite, complex and mobile, which is reflected in symbols. . . . By their very nature the symbols must remain elastic, vague and ambiguous, like the sayings of an oracle. Their role is to unveil mysteries, leaving the mind all its freedom.

“. . . Leaving the mind all its freedom.” It saddens me that the fears and anger provoked by Angeles Arrien’s book indicate a deep mistrust that the Thoth deck can survive the common touch of the “masses,” or that it has any worth whatsoever outside of Crowley’s text. It is felt that the mistakes and misconceptions in Arrien’s book (of which there admittedly are many) could create a devastating sense of betrayal in those who eventually find out that Crowley intended something different. This supposedly-fearful juxtaposition, however, led me to a much deeper appreciation of Crowley, while Angie encouraged independence and freedom in how I work with the deck and its symbols (not a good thing to those who see Crowley as the absolute and only fundament).

Although Crowley professed love for “the scarlet woman,” yet he feared the prostituting of his work, insisting that the deck and book always be sold together (it isn’t) and describing the deck’s potential use in fortune-telling as being a base and dishonest purpose (here – see text at the end). In fact, it seems that Crowley feared even the thought that anyone might claim independent insight into his deck for, despite her working diligently for five years with him to produce the deck, Crowley made clear that his student and artist, Frieda Harris, at no time contributed “a single idea of any kind to any card, and she is in fact almost as ignorant of the Tarot and its true meaning and use as when she began.” What hope is there, then, for the rest of us?

But, hope does exists, for the ever-contradictory Aleister Crowley (using the pseudonym “Soror I.W.E.”) wrote in the introductory biographical note to the Book of Thoth, that “the accompanying booklet [this book] was dashed off by Aleister Crowley, without help from parents. Its perusal may be omitted with advantage.” And Frieda Harris’ innovative use of Steinerian ‘Synthetic Projective Geometry,’ described here, certainly deepens the effect of its imagery on the psyche.

I can only hope that, if you care about the Thoth deck, that each of you are brave enough to make up your own minds and feel free to “do as you will.” I leave you with this thought from old Aleister:

Know Naught!

All ways are lawful to innocence.

Pure folly is the key to initiation.

Let me start by asking what everyone in the tarot world is wondering: do you remember your first kiss?

Oh yes!

How did that first kiss compare to the moment in which you ‘got’ the tarot? I mean that moment in which the whole tarot suddenly made sense to you.

These are moments of exceptional intensity, rare in a lifetime and much alike. Suddenly the sky rips open and you are sent into a state of fusion with the surrounding world: it suddenly becomes meaningful and is understood. You hallucinate, give thanks for the beauty of the world and fall head over heels in love with the tarot, or Britney Spears.

Now, you probably didn’t marry the first girl you kissed, but you became a master card- maker. How did that come about?

First of all, on December 6, 1986, the day I experienced this moment of fusion, I started to write an autobiography. In my vision, all my life had recapitulated before my eyes to the rhythm of the tarot, in precise, quasi-surgical slices of life. So I wrote my experiences, while “remembering myself”, according to the arcana. The basic link between experience and image, essential for the tarot, was accomplished. The rest was easy. “Remembering oneself” means to relive the past as an observing/observer, with the savor of the moment’s energies. It is a “Madeleine of Proust”. This book is finished, but I have given up on finalising it.

At about the same time, I started doing readings using the deck I had stowed away when I was twenty. Each arcane is a graphic programming of a “place of consciousness”, or as Castaneda might have said, a precise “assemblage point”. So, when my visitor drew the Lover, I could break into the tears of a 16 year old. If Force was turned up, I felt again the ambition of my 30 years. I was in sympathy (in the Greek etymological sense: suffer with) my visitor and it was therefore very easy for me to evoke and transmit the energetic quality needed for finding a way out of her existential crisis.

Then, in 1995 a Parisian theatre commissioned me to make scenery using the 22 majors of the Marteau tarot. Each measured 2.50m x 1.20. The theatre had financed the materials and I had got as far as Temperance when the production was cancelled. I was left with my work and a surfeit of the Grimaud tarot. It was then that I began a serious historical study, painted my canvases white and started over with the Conver. I enjoyed the work very much, and the year and one-half immersion changed me. Among other things, I was able to observe the incredible operativity these images exercise in such formats. Then I took on the first 8 majors of the Noblet. Since the ektachromes for the others wouldn’t be available from the Bibliothèque Nationale for a year, I did the Dodal majors and then went back to finishing the Noblet. In the course of these projects, four completely “unusual” Viévilles (XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX) were also produced in large formats.

You have given us restored versions of the Noblet and the Dodal, first in limited, hand-stencilled editions and now in full, mass-printed versions. I know how important it is for you to preserve the correctness of the original decks, but how much of you do you think there is in these decks?

The minimum!

I see none in the Noblet. And few in the Dodal: the reversible back, still a debated question, and two errors in color placement: one accidental (on the Moon), the other deliberate (Soleil).

Of course, an industrial edition requires that the card dimensions be standardised. The original inner-frame dimensions vary by 2mm in height and by 1mm in width. I chose the maximum height as reference. Around this is a 1mm black frame and then an outer band of 3mm. This last space is imposed by the printer for technical reasons, and is not determined by whether the corners are to be square or rounded.

In your reconstruction of the Dodal you had access to the two only existing originals: the one at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and the other at the British Museum. Did you work with both of these decks?

Yes

What differences did you find between the two?

First of all, the colors on the English copy are in better condition, but soiled and dull. The English print is more charged with ink, as well.

Then, three cards come from another, probably earlier block: the Ace of Batons, Ace of Swords, and the Valet of Batons. For our edition of the Dodal, the choice was made according to which card was more carefully engraved. The English copy was selected for the Ace of Swords, while the French deck was retained for the two others.

How is it technically possible that three cards came from a different block?

The stocks! At that time, people didn’t hesitate to re-compose complete decks from disparate sources, even using decks from diverse workshops. Worse, they were often re-cut. We will probably never know if the tarot moulds controlled by the of the Généralité de Lyon marked «français pour l’étrange» (“French for export”) were included or not in the royal destruction edict of 1701. We only know that Dodal began a new production in that year. In those days, little was wasted: everything was used and re-used. So, leftovers from an earlier edition could have been used in another.

As for the inscription “F.P. LE.ETRANGE”, T. Depaulis suggests it could mean either “Franc pour L’Etranger” or “Fait pour l’Etranger”, both appellations exonerating, from French taxes, decks destined for export.

Could Dodal have added an i to his name in order to promote the sale of his decks in Italy?

How long did it take you to finish this re-construction?

More than two years.

How long do you think it could have taken for the original engraver to create these plates?

I would imagine a maximum of two to three months, but I’m not sure.

I often wonder how much care was really put in the manufacturing of these decks. What is your feeling about that?

The engraver as free and independent person always worked as cleanly and conscientiously as possible.* In the workshops, printing the black line was mostly carried out by highly qualified professionals. Colors, however, were often put on negligently, sometimes by children in deplorable conditions. I have read in the Sainte-Suzanne archives that in 1792 the local carterie started stencil work at midnight, employing children who applied the colors by candlelight.

When printing your version of this deck, you had to settle for a color palette. Would you say that the final result is closer to the French or to the British deck?

Closer to the French.

I find a strong graphic resemblance between any of the Dodal images and the images in the Noblet. I am talking about the posture of the characters. This is especially clear in the court cards: Pages, Queens, Kings and Knights. The Dodal knights seem like loose versions of the Noblet’s horsemen. Do you think that it is possible that the Dodal was made by copying from the Noblet?

No, the graphic style and significant details are too dissimilar. They draw the same thing, the same theme, but each has his own personal style. On the other hand, one can use the word copy for the later tarots made in Marseille from about 1720/30. As elsewhere, there is no more re-actualisation.

When I showed the restored Dodal to a couple of people their reaction was “So… it is the same deck you already have, only bigger, right?” In a way I understand what they are seeing, but at the same time I think they are missing the point. In your view, why was that restoring the Dodal made sense? What are people going to get from it that they won’t get from the Noblet?

The Dodal generates a flash, or energetic short-circuit of the unconscious, different from that of the Noblet. A tarot image opens a door, and the landscape behind it is different depending on the door. As I mentioned before, the image is a programming of a “place of consciousness”, the precise assemblage point of a particular inner regard. Depending on the arcane and the engraver, they resemble each other a bit, much, or not at all. It’s like a chocolate Charlotte made by two chefs: one will be sweeter, the other juicier.

Tell me a little bit about the term ‘companion’. Is that a term you use to define all medieval guilds, or do you mean something else by it?

The “companions” entered into a “Compagnonnage” fraternity like one joins a religion or the Communist Party. Work was organised in the modern way, almost as a trade-union would, with sectors devoted to mutual aid, recruitment or intense in-house techno-spiritual training. As a craftsman you must have manual skill and a highly-developed feeling for materials, but also practice, all at the same time, the 6 other basic traditional qualities: courage, patience, generosity, humility, obedience and sense of responsibility. With time and application, these 6 qualities progress together with one’s skill.

But what was it that these fraternities were asked to build? Athanors, alchemical crucibles: collective trance machines intended to transform a whole population and carry it to God! We are in the realm of technological shamanism! So the “companions” within “Compagnonnage” on their building sites, whatever their trade (mason, stone mason, carpenter, sculptor, glass-maker…) are part, whether they know it or not, of a permanent school of wizard/technicians worthy of Harry Potter. The companion becomes Master when it knows he is one. We are a far cry from the later guilds which only served to structure the privileges of professional castes.

I was talking to a woman who has restored a few Thangka paintings from the 12th Century. We were talking about how there is an underlying visual knowledge in a Thangka painting that we can also find in the stained-glass windows of a European cathedral, or the illustrations in a Medieval manuscript. I am talking about an understanding of shape that it is also an understanding about how to use shape to move the human spirit. At a technical level, a Tibetan artist and an European draughtsman knew the same things, they just lent them to different belief systems.

Exactly!

In your text you wrote “the wisdom underling the tarot is a pragmatic professional philosophy”. Are you talking about that same knowledge?

Yes, but not only that. There is also the idea of progressive improvement in which work and the spiritual world are inseparable. For a craftsman/artist, the more you make beauty (the beautiful is operative, direct like a punch, creates an astonished destabilisation and opens the doors to paradise), the more your soul is beautiful!

How would you describe the “operative science” you see in the tarot?

Operativity is what the apprentice is learning to acquire. For the image-maker in a sacred period, it is a question of using an image to program the unconscious to a precise meditation. The state it focuses on, the arcane under consideration, is defined by the graphics and above all by the colors. Thangkas and the tarot function on the same operative level.

Whether we like it or not, colors manipulate us. The art is to consciously distribute them in a meaningful way.

Now, mandalas invite our mind to take a spiritual/psychological voyage. Would you say the tarot does the same thing?

Yes

In this case, do you think the tarot intends to take us all to a specific place?

Yes, it it has been doing that discreetly for centuries. It would seem that today there are still amateurs for this variety of shamanism, and a very modern one it is. The source tarots behave like a GPS. They all lead us to the same place, but for some it will be springtime in a crowd while others will experience loneliness and winter. The tarot is above all experimental, so I have often chosen to use the word psychonaut (or tarotnaut!) to indicate this “spiritual-psychological voyager”. Aren’t we all sailors on the ocean of the soul?

There is an idea, behind contemporary art, about taking our mind for an illicit spin.

“Art” and “illicit”: these words remind me of the interminable and highly Parisian discussions I participated in when I studied philosophy in university. “Illicit” seems to stand for the courage, which would like to see itself as exceptional, to accept crossing the barriers of conventional regard, and to let oneself be carried on towards an unknown. Illicit, in my opinion, simply means “random”. The GPS precision is lost, and one is tossed about wherever the emotional winds choose to carry us. I fear that with contemporary art we are certainly operative, but like a crazy compass!

Materials and symbols have an experiential meaning,

Meaning isn’t exactly the right word; power would be more appropriate.

but although each artwork would set some collective coordinates to start our trip, the arriving point is both individual and unexpected. How do you see that happening with the tarot?

With the tarot we approach precise states of consciousness, valid for all and validated by many generations. This is not the case with highly egocentric and anarchistic contemporary art. As long as we are discovering a territory, the landscape varies according to the seasons, to our position, our mood and the taste of our first kiss. It is a permanent innovation in perpetual motion. The goal of the tarot is to indicate an itinerary of the soul, undertaken one foot in front of the other, and not to toss us about on the tides of emotion.

In your writings I detect a notion that interest me a lot, but I would say it has been more developed in the Eastern world than in the Western world: any craft can be a spiritual path.

Yes, but let us not forget that culturally we are descended from a quadripartite system of social organization :

Producers : artisans/peasants: batons
Merchants: shopkeepers/financiers: coins
Warriors: aristocrats/soldiers: swords
Savants: doctors/priests: cups

The tarot is its reflection. What fundamental difference can we perceive between the castes of the Hindu orient and the “colleges” of the occident? None on a theoretical level, more with respect to action. What characterizes a fraternity of the Middle Ages is the recognition by one’s peers, through ritual and ceremonies, of a progress towards excellence, as much technical as (we would now say ) shamanistic or spiritually operative. Modern western Sufism comes closest to this genre today.

When you say, for example, that The Star card shows an eye in the belly of the woman as an allusion to the stone cutters’ “eye of the master”, their ability to feel the stone and know how to place it, are you talking about a craftsman’s ability to intuitively understand the nature and limitations of the material he is working with?

Still more, to feel them physically! In the course of an apprenticeship comes a moment when you are taught how to place your attention, both in the here and now (seeing the instant as it occurs; letting it happen while observing it) and in a particular corporal sensation, a sort of attraction/repulsion, related to the sense of the stone. This trick is useful to a craftsman, but the essential thing is learning to attain a state of observing/observer. One can also call this state “second attention”, and its automatic practice is what makes you a master.

I would think of Jackson Pollock, and how he understood painting to such a extent that he could take it beyond the limits of representation.

He seems to go beyond symbol or meaning and speak directly to the unconscious. All depends on what he has to tell it!

Pollock is an interesting example in that some physicists have now established that all of his paintings follow a fractal structure. He seemed to have painted in tune with the rhythm of nature, and as such one could see his action painting as the by-product of some sort of spiritual momentum.

The golden section had this function. To me, certain modern artists seem have gained the worlds of operativity by breaking and entering, in an illicit way, loaded down with a whole pack of more or less convoluted, neurotic and egotistical material. Others open the Doors of Paradise for us.

But I am also thinking about Chang Canasta, a magician who devoted the last decades of his life to painting. When he was asked why, he answered: “I believe in something called talent. Once you have it, you can apply it to everything.”

Idries Shah named this “learning how to learn”. Once you’ve learned how to learn, in 6 months to a year you can achieve excellence in a profession previously unknown to you. He went on to say that in a well-filled life it was necessary to have practised at least 6 trades at the highest level! Serghiu Celebidache was the celebrated orchestra conductor and the respected mathematician and rug expert and pheasant breeder and exceptional linguist speaking 7 languages…

Talent here is, again, an understanding of form, rhythm and pattern that a guy like Canasta could use to present a card trick or to paint a landscape. As soon as we understand proportion, balance, symmetry and contrast, we can apply that knowledge to all areas of our experience. Is it that the tarot intends to teach us, beyond the iconographic choice of imagery: mastering your craft is mastering yourself?

You have perfectly summarised the mission of the tarot. It goes even further: «mastering yourself» in order to participate in the Soul of the World.

You also mention in your text that “All master engravers during the second half of the 17th century were instructed in the inner meaning of the tarot – Mermé is their last representative.” How do you relate that affirmation to the idea of the Dodal being the last tarot that was consciously permeated by the companions intention?

It is the flame of Maison-Dieu which induces me to say that.

The tarot emerged from a Platonic-type mental world of philosophical immanence: the individual can, by his own achievements, put himself in a position to join the worlds of the Spirit. The flame is thus ascending, and to my knowledge Dodal’s is the last tarot to depict it in this way. All the other significant details confirm how well-understood the “pilgrimage of the soul” was, and how at that time the procedures of transmission were fully-functioning and conscious.

Later, the flame billows down from above, raising the question of  divine grace and its intercessors: we are in a philosophy of the Aristotelian type. The inner meaning is lost; what remains is reduced to recollection and hearsay. The same applies to the other meaningful details. At best one installs them by copying, while at worst “fantasy” takes over. The engraver of Nicolas Conver went so far as to settle his accounts with nascent freemasonry by placing 3 dots on the chest of the Devil: freemasonry is a she-devil! These mid-eighteenth century quarrels mean nothing to us today. Respect for a tradition vanishes, the overall consciousness of a civilization shifts and the pre-industrial era dawns.

Cartouche of Haultin l’aîné, cardmaker at La Rochelle attested in 1680

Dodal furnishes only meaningful details and signs with the Master’s chrism. Resembling a stylized 4, this figure evokes measuring instruments and has been the prerogative of image-makers, carpenters and stonemasons since the Middle Ages.

I am asking you this because I am not familiar with the companions’ tradition, but I am familiar with what I would call the ‘Marseille Lore’. To me, this lore consists of a series of footnotes added to certain images, without their necessarily being in accord with the image’s original iconographic intention. I take that lore to be a fundamental part of the Marseille tradition, and by tradition I mean the narrative/divination use we made of these cards. To mention a couple of these footnotes, there is the idea that The Fool is the card without a number and Death is the card without a name; so when you overlap both, Death becomes The Fool’s skeleton.

If I remember correctly, it is to Tchalaï that we owe this idea.

That lore is the reason Jodorowsky said, in a preface to his first deck edition or in one of his books, that having been raised on classic Marseille lore (Grimaud), “killing the father” was the condition on which he could produce his deck. Numerous bad “good habits” had been acquired because this was the only historic deck on the market. Along the same lines, there is Tchalaï’s fine discourse concerning the comma on Force’s hat. But this comma was the result of damage to the woodblock!

When I began work on the Conver, after having painted over the Marteau images, I underwent the same temptation: make my own deck. For example, at first I painted the figures in Soleil naked, then put on vines with green leaves…then became annoyed with myself and dressed them back in their shorts! When Jodo liberated himself from the Marseille/Grimaud lore, he went into an egotistical creation frenzy. Considering his talents, this choice was regrettable.

There is also the idea of the person who is emerging from the grave in Judgement being, graphically at least, composed of two halves of two visibly different persons, or the idea of The Hermit containing a visual pun in that a man who looks at his lantern blinds himself instead of finding anything.

This pun is part of the essence itself of the Hermit. But within this lore, some details are significant, like this androgynous figure in Jugement, or the Hermit’s cane which resembles a spine, while others are not.

Your book is full of these great “narrative spells”. I call them ‘narrative spells’ because they are these little stories that validate a detail in a card, but at the same time they get validated by that same detail, in some sort of symbiotic loop; but these little tales don’t seem to amount to a coherent code one can read through the whole sequence,

These stories are there to bring into relief a particular perceptive state, explain certain experiences, or highlight a detail. They don’t add up together, and are indeed like footnotes.

I am a little bit septical about their historical validity.

You are right to be sceptical. Certain stories come from my own stock of experiences and I can validate them, while others are visions drawn from the memory of the world. These are from time to time corroborated by other people in strange ways. For example, I received a mail explaining that the “caterpillar trance” was an exercise practised in simplified form by people studying phosphenism.

For one thing, these descriptions can’t be found in books. They spread by word of mouth, it seems. So, what I want to know is, what is your take on that lore?

For the last 150 years, and it is barely older than that, this Lore has been fed at best by visions, at worst by the analyses and pronouncements of its spokesmen. The word-of-mouth transmissions have been interrupted for centuries. Only the world’s memory remains, that strange source phenomenon which is the tarot’s gift to its faithful enthusiasts. The memory of Jean Noblet or Jean Dodal is present still, and the path has been cleared of underbrush. These ancient masters can still flood you with their spirituality. It is for us to make contact. The stories issued from the world’s memory have an incomparable savour, leading you into a consciousness where doubt doesn’t exist. Here direct transmission comes into play; it is the storyteller’s talent. As a tarot reader, you often enter into visions and know how to share them. You already exercise this talent.

It is that lore part of the message from the companions,

Yes, direct transmission was part of the Compagnons’ teaching in times past. Today the younger generation is thirsty for stories, as it is these that transmit. In any case, what choice do they have? There is no longer any techno-spiritual instruction available through a profession.

or is that an embellishment on the way we describe the images that happened later? Do you think that such lore may have influenced the way the images were drawn?

Significant details were transmitted and utilized. The other details, those nourishing the lore, are late and intellectual, mostly dating from the middle of the 19 th century.

I like that lore a lot. In fact, at some point I mentioned to Roxanne that one of the reasons why I enjoy working with the Dodal more than working with the Noblet is precisely because many of these footnotes can’t be seen in the Noblet.

Noblet is a bit dry, and close-fisted with details, while Dodal’s engraver is savory, his details are numerous and imaginative! Compare their versions of the lady in the Star: Noblet made her half adolescent/half man to illustrate the virginal-purity/force-maturity of the master, a very strict and masculine definition of the canon. Dodal makes her pregnant to emphasize the transmission of essentials, and gives her a double regard to signify that she understands from within and without – a very supple and feminine description of mastery.

This leads to my next question: you make a distinction between the Noblet, the Dodal and the Viéville and the rest of the decks within the Marseille tradition. For you the Dodal is the last deck within the Marseille tradition in which some details were purposefully added.

Yes.

Now, for the untrained eye, like mine, when it comes to certain details the Dodal is more similar to the Conver than to the Noblet. The Noblet seems to be the odd one.

That is exact, and I feel the same way. I think the answer has mostly been covered: it is the “Marseille lore”. Noblet undoubtedly is part of it, but from afar and in a strange way. He gives the impression of being an ancestor from another planet! One sees that the basic teaching is the same, but the two seem not to have had the same professor.

How do you manage to see such distinction between the Dodal and the following decks so clearly?

Dodal’s engraver knows what he’s talking about from experience, or transmission, or (as I believe) both. After him, one speaks of things because at best one has heard them spoken of. It is hearsay: my cousin told me that his brother had heard this or that… As long as the engraver has not lived the inner process of transformation to mastery, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and can only copy. With Noblet and Dodal, we are in the same world, but not with Conver and even less with those who follow him. We know their mental world by heart, and let me say we are very glad to be rid of them.

Finally, I wouldn’t like to end this interview without knowing: what will be next? I imagine that right now you and Roxanne may be feeling ready to rest a little bit and rejoice in the enormous accomplishment you have made but, what will you do when you get restless again? What is next?

Viéville, if I manage to extract myself from the historian’s quandary I’m mired in. I am convinced that this tarot was made “as mirror” by necessity, by an impossibility to do otherwise, and not to confer a particular meaning. Furthermore, why perturb and confuse the coming generations with all these images conforming to the Marseille pattern, but reversed? As for the 4 or 5 unusual arcana, they alone justify the effort. These “exceptions” confirm the rule and are the major interest of this tarot. The question deserves reflection by the community of historians and enthusiasts.

So yes, I would like to edit the Viéville in the classic Marseille order and direction. This would indeed be an illicit act. Will I have the courage to deliver myself up to massacre by the purists?

New-York / Sainte-Suzanne

Originally posted in February 2010 on Enrique’s site: tarology.wordpress.com

At the date of his marriage, he worked for another Master Card-maker from AVIGNON, ÉTIENNE BLATEROND. JEAN PIERRE PAYEN and BLATEROND confirmed his declarations on that day.”

SOURCES: Archives Départementales du Vaucluse. Étude Charrasse.
Posted by Yves le Marseillais here

I like to imagine what it will be like in 300 years hence: perhaps one of Flornoy’s decks survives, having been found in one of Melbourne’s museums, and perhaps a mastercraftsman has picked it up, obtained high resolution images thereof, and seeks to remake it afresh for all to enjoy. Some of the colours have faded, some of the cardstock is damaged. Perhaps there is even a card ripped with part of its image then missing.

For myself, holding Flornoy’s restoration of the Dodal deck is somewhat akin to the joy that a future cardmaker may have brought to a fellow enthusiast and traveller of the times.

Already having the photographic (and size-reduced) reproduction of the Dodal (now long out of print) published by Dussere, and having, a number of years ago, held one of the two known remaining Dodal decks when visiting the British Museum, it especially strikes me that this restoration is superb. Of course I’m also going to be critical, and Jean-Claude and Roxanne Flornoy undoubtedly expect this. So let me spill my critique in what I trust will be taken in the best way possible.

Card stock

When I first held the original c. 1701 British Museum [BM]-held deck, what especially struck me what the relative thinness of the deck. Unlike, for example, the 1963 imprint of the Grimaud deck, this 300 year old deck was, truly, ‘fine’ – which in the French has more of the literal ‘thin’ as its meaning. What Flornoy has managed is to get a cardboard quality that approximates, as much as is feasible, the thickness of the original. So a very pleasant surprise here! It’s not only the overall card size which has been more or less matched, but also its ‘grade’.

From left to right: Grimaud Marseille 1963; Flornoy 78-card deck; Dusserre photographic reproduction of BN copy

In the image above, the left-hand deck is the Grimaud from the 1960s, the central deck is Flornoy’s Dodal, and the right-hand deck, slightly thinner, is the photographic reproduction by Dusserre of the Dodal held in the Bibliotheque Nationale [BN].

Card size

This is especially pleasant, and undoubtedly has meant that the printers have had to use a greater number of card sheets than is usual. Flornoy’s meticulous and uncompromising focus here is examplary. If anything, the border ‘added’ surrounding the card images means that each card (not its image) is a little larger than the known decks. If a woodblock had been used, of course, then this would not have arisen as the ‘space’ between cards would not have allowed for such extravagance. What’s interesting (for myself at any rate) is that this printed version has images a little larger than the hand-made trump-only edition.

Dodal decks from left to right: Flornoy 78-card deck; Flornoy 22 trump-only hand-made deck; Dusserre photographic reproduction of BN copy

Colours

Not sure what to say here. Of course, one of the features of Flornoy’s decks is that they are crisp and seek to reflect the colours as the original designers may have intended them to be. I frankly do not have sufficient access to the details of both the BM and BN decks to be able to properly ascertain how closely these colours have been matched but, knowing Flornoy, I am confident that he would have, to the best of anyone’s ability, carefully considered both these decks and tried to bring out the colours as they would have been used at the time. Colours… not tone, however: personally, I suspect that the red used by Flornoy’s printers was rather more pinkish than expected… but then again, variations occured quite a lot with the imprints of the 18th century!

Card backs

Perhaps many will very much appreciate the pate-d’oix reversals that Flornoy has introduced, but, sadly, not I. Whereas he was careful to preserve the non-reversibility of the original decks in the hand-made version of the Dodal (previously released in a trumps-only edition), it’s as if he has succumbed to what is misguided commercial marketability and the preferences for those who are also readers amongst us: yet surely someone who values this deck would have been happy with the upright design!

Dodal decks from left to right: Flornoy 78-card deck; Flornoy 22 trump-only hand-made deck; Dusserre photographic reproduction of BN copy

Perhaps it’s only a small point which remains, for me, something that is somewhat of a disappointment.

Line details

The style of deck, being originally a woodcut, implies that the image is primarily based on outlines which are then overlayed with colour stencils. This gives the black lines themselves somewhat more importance than if the figures were painted. In fact, in observing and comparing various types of early woodcuts, what is often primarily done is a careful comparison of the lines, rather than of the colours (which may, after all, alter from imprint to imprint).

Many lines remain ambiguous as to their intended ‘meaning’ or representation. In simply assessing Flornoy’s new restoration, what is striking are the number of minor alterations that have occured between this deck and the earlier one he made for the hand-crafted one some years ago. This reflects something that I think is highly important, especially in a work of restoration: that Flornoy is not stuck to his previous work, but rather willing to carefully revise his previous work based on careful re-visioning of the two extant decks.

Admittedly, in the trump-only hand-made version, Flornoy only had access to the BN version. I recall, when we had the pleasure to visit Roxanne and Jean-Claude in 2005, mentioning to him that I had then recently looked through the BM deck, but I was then unable to answer his questions regarding various minor details of comparisons to the BN, not having had my Dusserre copy with me at the time from which to make such comparisons. That he subsequently obtained images from the BM for the purposes of accurate image comparison, including usage of colour across those two decks, says a lot for Jean-Claude’s integrity as card-maker.

In the image that follows, I have not included all alterations between the newer and the trump-only lines used on each deck. For example, in that section of that card, attention could also be given to the more curved nature of the sleeves; the pupils of the eyes of the figure; her hair as it meets the ‘collar’ on the right hand side… and yet other details! Still, even with paying attention to ‘only’ such details as the eye of the respective eagles, the triangular form sitting atop her heart, the colouration of the base of her sceptre, and the undulating patterns on her ‘collar’ – these give sufficient evidence that with this deck is was not simply a reprint of their earlier work, but a re-composition based on what we can only hope and surmise is careful study.

Flornoy 78-card deck on the left; his 22 trump-only hand-made deck on the right

Booklet

I am not here going to compare in any detail the booklet that came with the trump-only deck with the newer one issued with this full restoration, save for one point, well worth considering. In the older booklet, Jean-Claude says that (my translation):

From a graphic perspective, the Lyonese tarot of Jean Dodal and the Avignonese tarot of Jean Payen are strangely similar, to the point of confounding them. My conclusion is therefore simple: it is the same engraver to whom we owe these two tarots from the beginning of the 18th century.

As he mentions therein and again in the newer booklet, there is a distinction to be made between a carver and a cartier (or ‘cardmaker’). I agree with him entirely on this – and emphasise this due to what is to follow. In the newer booklet, he also names that the engraver as Jacques Mermé without mentioning his sources. Given that this information is not readily accessible, it would have been useful to include sources for those amongst us who wish to check the precise nature of the claim: how much interpretation is being presented?

Personally, I too see it as likely that the carver of the Dodal and the (Jean) Payen is the same – though I personally also take it a step further, and would claim that not only is the Dodal carved by the same hand as the Payen, but that the ‘I.P.’ on the the Moon suggests that the carver is either still in the employ of Payen, or that the Dodal is carved ‘under contract’ with Payen. There is likely, therefore, more than simply a matter of carver moving from Avignon to Lyons and working for two separate houses, but also a connection at the level of the cartier-houses of Payen and Dodal.

Another small, but still very significant point, is a statement that is repeatedly made, including by Flornoy, about the supposed destruction of woodblocks: though this was indeed the case for cards in general, tarot woodblocks were specifically exempted from this otherwise legal requirement.

Enrique’s preface

Finally, I cannot omit some comments on Enrique’s suggestions for reading tarot. As Enrique well knows, we have much in common (with many others, of course) in advocating a careful looking at what is presented. Not just glancing, but rather beholding as fully as possible the imagery and its inter-relationships.

Yet it is not so much that which is here important, but rather that he manages to capture what is effectively a whole book in poetic seed-form.

With his preface together with this deck by Flornoy, we have a source of deep and essential tarot.

The Box

The design is the second of Robert Mealing’s tarot boxes, each, as far as I’m aware, constrained by the pre-determined physical box that was to be used. In other words, the visual design is his on a physical cardboard box not of his own design.

If the box is considered as an efficient storage for both marketing and collectables, then its basic structure is ideal. If the user intends to use it as a long-term enclosure to be carried around and used daily then it will need to be exchanged for something a little sturdier or (conversely) more flexible.

Given the constraints (to return to the visuals of the box), Mealing has produced, as he had for the Flornoy Noblet, an excellent and attractive package, managing to capture the deck’s essential information within the limitations of the space.

Overall

This is the deck that Marteau, I strongly suspect, would have used for the Grimaud historical revival of tarot had he had access to such between the two world wars in the first part of the 20th century.

I many ways, it is regretful that he did not, as some of the most important tarot works later written, such as Meditations on the Tarot, have instead based commentary on what is a 1760 Conver restoration.

Where to obtain a copy of the deck

It’s really somewhat sad to even have to write the above sub-heading: it should be available wherever tarot is stocked and sold!

Nonetheless, here is a brief key list.

If located within or near Europe, then I would suggest obtaining a copy directly from the Flornoys:

> www.letarot.com

If in North America, I would suggest either TarotGarden or from Enrique Enriquez (I presume they each have some in stock!):

www.enriqueenriquez.net
www.tarotgarden.com

If in Australasia, I have a few copies available:

www.fourhares.com

If elsewhere, then you’re probably the best judge of the manner in which postal services from France, the USA or Australia manage to reach you, and also the current value of your local exchange rate.

In any case, this is a(nother) deck I would without any hesitation highly recommend!

Jean-Michel David
www.fourhares.com

When the French author, priest and Freemason Antoine Court de Gebelin (1719-84) in 1781 advanced the allegation, that the tarot deck constituted the Egyptian god Thoth’s ‘Secret Book’, he cast a seed to something, which during the next couple of centuries should grow to immense heights. Tarot was an ordinary card game in many parts of France, but not in Paris, where Gebelin lived. One day, when he noticed a group of tarot players, he intuitively grasped the idea, that he had here discovered something far more than an utterly simple deck of playing cards.

Gebelin put forward his discovery in volume eight of his nine volume work ‘Le Monde Primitif analisé et comparé avec le Monde moderne’. The deck of cards used by the players that Gebelin watched, was presumably the Marseilles standard pattern. Playing card terminology defines a ‘standard pattern’ as a set of images, with none or only minor differences, produced by many different card makers in various localities’. The Marseilles pattern fits very well into this definition. It was produced by many card makers, not only in France but also in Italy. By and by a number of local varieties developed, like the Tarot Bolognese, the Sicilian Tarot, the Tarot Piemonte and Tarot Milanese. Distinct variations saw the light of day in France, Belgium, Switzerland. All with their own characteristics but all with the Marseille pattern as a distinct background.

Gebelin’s seed was slow in germinating, development took its time. The first, who took up the concept, was the Parisian fortune-teller Etteilla. Inspired by Gebelin, he saw the tarot cards as a sort of expanded fortune-telling cards, which he, however, did not find completely satisfying. So he started ‘improving’ them by adding interpretative texts, visual symbols and small vignettes, as we know them from ordinary fortune-telling cards. He also published books with practical instructions on how his ‘tarot decks’ could be used. Etteilla’s ‘tarots’ have in general been considered reprehensible but, maybe, time is now ready for a further study of their symbolism.

With Etteilla’s intervention, the seed from the big tree in the wood, the Marseille pattern, had finally began to sprout and from now on it grew quickly. We now come to the French esoterist, Alphonse Louis Constant, writing from about 1850 under the name of Eliphás Levi. Levi rejected Etteilla’s ‘improvements and ‘corrections’ and returned to the Marseilles tarot in its pure form. Levi’s books, which described quite a number of esoteric systems, like kabbala, alchemy, astrology and tarot, started a wave in the world of esotericism. At this time a tarot deck, which rightly can be called the very first created for a solely esoteric purpose, saw the light of the day. Swiss Oswald Wirth (1860-1943), a competent artist, student and secretary of another of the occult characters of the time, Marquis Stanislas de Guaita, was by him encouraged to create a tarot deck, cleaned of Etteilla’s ‘improvements’. Wirth’s tarot, with relatively simple stencil coloured images, was for the first time produced in 1889. The cards, still with the Marseilles pattern as a basis, had the Hebrew letters, essentially for the tarot correspondences with the Kabbala and the Tree of Life. Here I feel it necessary to add the remark, that the deck currently marketed as ‘the original and only authorised Oswald Wirth Tarot deck’, has nothing what so ever to do with Wirth’s tarot. The images are not Wirth’s original (but drawn by a Michel Simeon) and Wirth’s deck did not comprise a minor arcana, which was not a part of his scheme of things. The ways of tarot publishers are past understanding.

Gebelin’s seed had found its ground. Tarot moved from France to England in the second half of the 19th. Century and dumped right into the Victorian era, where occult- and esoteric lodges flourished. In particular Tarot found a home in ‘The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’, established in 1888. The basis for Golden Dawn’s order work was, in particular, the writings of the French esoterics as they were expressed in Levi’s books. The order papers, which were granted to the adepts as they raised in the order grades included, at the time the adept was admitted to The Second Order, instructions which would make it possible for him or her to create their own tarot deck. At a time a prototype, drawn by Moina Mathers (married to Samuel Liddell Mathers, one of the GD’s founders), was available for copying. Tarot as a card game was not known in Great Britain and even to get a Marseilles deck was near to impossible.

In this environment, a big and vigorous tree grew out of Gebelin’s seeds: the Waite-Smith Tarot, created by the man of letters, Arthur Edward Waite and the artist Pamela Colman Smith, both members of the Golden Dawn. Right now in December 2009 we can celebrate the Waite-Smith Tarot’s 100 years anniversary. How many other tarot decks will ever come to celebrate a 100 years anniversary? None, in my opinion. The time was the early 20th Century, during which tarot, unpredictably, should come to grow to immense heights.

For the members of the secret societies and lodges, for the magicians, who strived for controlling the forces of the universe and for the kabbalists, who wanted to explore the scheme of things to understand the creation and man’s place in the universe through the Tree of Life’ spheres and paths, tarot was the tool par excellence. For many decades the Marseille pattern tarot had been that tool. The tarot deck’s ‘divinatory’ aspects, those of ‘seeking the advice of the Devine through a mantic method like casting of lots, dice, runes, tarot..’ were considered inferior, that was not what tarot essentially was for. Now a new and different tarot was available, a tarot which also changed the concept of tarot over the next century, more or less away from that of being a tool of recognition to that of being a tool for an upcoming craze of ‘card-reading’. While the number cards in the Marseille patterned decks depicted only the relevant number of the suit symbols: wands, cups, swords and coins (fine enough for the Kabbalists and numerologists), the Waite-Smith tarot depicted four series of action pictures, with people engaged in various activities. There were other differences from the Marseilles tarot, but not so obvious at a first glance. Waite’s had, however, changed the sequence of the majors, compared to the Marseilles deck sequence. Waite was not only a man of letters, he was also a man of secrecy and this was his secret which he did not want to reveal. Essentially it was all about making a more relevant correspondence with the astrological signs which each major arcana card related to. These correspondences were considered being secrets available only to Golden Dawn adepts (secret societies need to have some secrets to guard), and Waite was afraid that he, if he published any details in the book accompanying the deck: ‘The Key of the Tarot, being Fragments of a Secret Tradition under the Veil of divination’, he would have broken his oath to the Golden Dawn. For the same reason of secrecy, he did not include Hebrew letters in the card design, as Wirth had done it.

The Tarot Forest’s underwood continued to grow steadily but slowly over many decades. Pamela Colman Smith’s drawings were unrestrained copied and redrawn. Waite’s book was soon copied and sold under the name of an American ‘author’. The Tarot Forest had, by and by, got a low undergrowth of tarot decks, more or less based upon the Waite-Smith Tarot. The next seedling to become a powerful trunk in the Forest of Tarot was Crowley/Harris’ ‘Thoth Tarot,’ which came alive in 1944 after five years cooperation between the esoterist, magician, provocateur, eroticist and drug-addict Aleister Crowley and the artist and upper-class housewife, Lady Frieda Harris. Tarot was still for the few.

With the Waite-Smith tarot the world had got a comic book in loose leaf format and an endless combination of comic strips could be created and read as a story by mixing the 78 card and placing them in one of many patterns. The flower power era, named by the American poet Allen Ginsburg, that erupted in the American counterculture during the late 1960s and early 1970s stimulated this new way of looking at the tarot and several packs showed up, published by alternative publishers. In the early 1970’s it, however, went wrong. Greedy capital interests took over the Tarot Forest, like they took over the South American rainforests. Tarot was turned into an industry, a massmedia that could be compared with the continual flow of comic books. Every week its comic book, every week its tarot deck and each ‘tarot-reader’ felt that she too had to create her own tarot deck. We had come far away from the tarot of the Golden Dawn adepts. All sorts of tarot decks appeared, all subjects, which had no whatsoever with tarot to do: Norse mythology, Red Indian lore, the Vikings, the Celts, the Saints, the Mayans, the Angles, the Gay, the Witches – the list is long – , were forced into a tarot structure of 78 cards. Most of them with voluminous books that tried to explain why exactly this subject reflects the tarot. Many privately published and personal decks appeared too, which was fine for the persons, who created them and their own circles, but essentially of no common importance. In my own collection I have about 1400 tarot deck up to the year 2000 (divinatory and fortune telling packs not included), a huge industry of tarot. Only occasional seedlings gained foothold in the tarot underwood, particularly those drawn by artists with a capital ‘A’ like Pamela Colman Smith and Frieda Harris. The major part of the underwood flourished only for a short time to perish soon, which also is the main purpose of capital interests: to create a continuous turnover.

Rider Waite Tarot, Rider Waite-Smith Tarot and latest Smith-Waite Tarot (!), we have many names for the things we love, but that doesn’t necessarily make a name appropriate. These three names are all constructions attributed to the deck by USGames Systems Inc, who took over the publication in the early 1970’s. The original publisher, William Rider did never connect his own name to the tarot, and why should he. It was simply named ‘Tarot Cards’ in advertising; no other tarot decks were available in England at that time. Rightly it should be named the Waite-Smith Tarot, as a tribute to its two creators. Publishers are publishers, they are in it for the money and need not be given a credit for that. A good and easy way to honour the two creators right now, where the deck’s 100 years existence can be celebrated would be from now persistently to call the deck Waite-Smith Tarot. For reasons I am not aware of, several of the best known American tarotists continue to include ‘Rider’ in its name. It is certainly not to honour William Rider, the publisher, but rather the person, who named it ‘Rider-Waite’ years later.

Lately, voices have advocated for, that Pamela Colman Smith is the ‘real’ creator of the Waite-Smith tarot. My own book ‘The Story of the Waite-Smith Tarot’ has also been used as an argument for that. Sorry, but no (and this is not to minimize PCS’s work, on the contrary), but without Waite, there would not have been a tarot deck illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, while there very well could have been a Waite tarot illustrated by another artist. Quite a different deck, of course, but still based upon Waite’s concept.

This is the anniversary year, which we certainly shall celebrate. A lot has lately been written about the Waite-Smith Tarot and tarot conventions reserved time for WST-related talks. USGames Systems Inc. did it their own way by publishing a package called ‘The Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set’. Not much honour for Waite here, since the package only included a twisted version of A.E.Waite’s ‘The Pictorial Key to the Tarot’, twisted in the way that the pictures’ were simply cut away. The pack includes also a tarot deck (this is where the name ‘Smith-Waite Tarot’ comes in) which is a likely twisted ‘reproduction’ of the first published Waite-Smith Tarot, the one with the roses and lilies backpattern. In this case the reproduction work is muddy and the original back pattern is substituted by a stylised monogram. The only gem in the package is a small book depicting colour reproductions of other works by Pamela Colman Smith.

For my own part, I have initiated a mail art project by mailing 22 small books, illustrating in b&w all 78 WST-cards, to tarot artists and mail artist around in the world, asking them to transform the book in whatever way they want.

In a few years, the copyright to Pamela Colman Smith’s artwork for the Waite-Smith Tarot comes to an absolute end, regardless of what attempts are made to hide that fact. Maybe then a tarot publisher will at last present the tarot world for the true facsimile of the original pack, which has long been wanted.

Back in 1995 when I ‘discovered’ that two early Waite-Smith tarot decks, I happened to have in my collection, actually were quite different when looked on at close hand, no one had cared for details like that before, even though questions like “How were the original colours” had been asked. My book “The Story of the Waite-Smith Tarot” was published in 2006. When I should find a name for it, I considered calling it “The True Story of the Waite-Smith Tarot” but gave up the idea again. There were too many gaps that still could not be filled in. Meanwhile the interest for the deck has grown and the few copies of the early decks that come up for sale fetch extraordinary high prices. The research goes on and the most remarkable late discovery is that of Piero Alligo, one of the two owners of Lo Scarabeo who, supported by careful analyses of the printing technique used, has found a likely printing sequence in contrast to the publication sequence I present in my book. By accepting the existence of both sequences several questions are answered, questions like “why was the deck redrawn several times”, “why are early editions accompanied by a later dated “Key” and “what does that strange line on the Sun-card mean”. The biggest question of them all has, however, never been answered: ’What happened to Pamela Colman Smith’s original artwork?”

We are now at the end of the Waite-Smith anniversary year. Are we also getting nearer to the end of the tarot era? Have we reached a boundary, where enough is enough and where the tarot market is becoming satisfied? Where we have to realize that the many, who became familiar with tarot during the last four decades of the 20th Century have grown older, and that young people of today have other interests to occupy themselves with. Additionally, we are in a current economical crisis and it looks like there signs of that the tarot factories have slowed down the production.

Three big tree trunks reach still high and solid and robust up over the Tarot Forest’s crumbled and withered underwood: the progenitor, the Marseille-tarot, followed by the Waite-Smith Tarot and the Crowley-Harris Thoth Tarot. They are here to stay and what more does a serious tarot student actually need?

One can ponder about what tarot would be today, had not Court de Gebelin back in 1781 caught the confused idea, that an ordinary playing-card deck was an Egyptian god’s secret book. Tarot would, undoubtedly, still be a cardgame but would it be more than that? I doubt. Maybe the time is now to place flowers on the gravestone of the so far rather discredited Antoine Court de Gebelin.

K. Frank Jensen, November 2009

See also my web-site: www.manteia-online.dk for new details on the Waite-Smith Tarot. Here you can also find my review of ‘Twenty Years of Tarot: The Lo Scarabeo Story’ including my comments to Piero Alligo’s article on the printing sequence of the early Waite-Smith Tarot decks.

Documentation of ‘Asta Erte’s Waite-Smith Tarot Mail Art Project’ can be found at the same web-site from late December 2009.

Unless living in continental Europe and knowing what to look for and where, it is only since the nineteen-eighties that images from older decks became easily accessible with Kaplan’s first volume of his now four volume (and I hear soon-ish to be five) Encyclopedia of Tarot. Even with the first two volumes available by 1990, historically oriented decks were themselves scarce. It’s only with the advent of the internet that the last ten years has made a reasonably large number of early images readily available for those of us in search – yet without the proper research means – of early models and what these may possibly have meant or intended. This does not of course mean that many books were not also earlier available: to be sure, they were, and provided much to whet the mind’s imaginative faculty.

Grimaud (c. 1930)		Conver (c. 1760)

‘simplified’ though typical tympanum showing Christ and four evangelists

It’s in this context that what has always been apparent (at least to me) is twofold: on the one hand the obviousness of the Christian basis and Christian content of the imagery of the trumps; and on the other that decks to which I had access to simply seemed to be ‘missing’ the one image that it seems ‘ought’ to be there in this context, namely that of Christ. It seemed of course obvious that the Grimaud Marseille, and the 1760 Conver on which it is based, bore direct iconographic similarities to the ubiquitous cathedral tympanum carvings showing Christ amongst the four evangelists. The obvious and ‘problematic’ connection being, of course, Christ’s and the World card’s contrasting depicted gender: whereas Christ is obviously masculine, the World, in those cards, is unquestionably depicted with feminine attributes.

This does not negate in any manner the way in which tarot has also, especially since the development of the neo-Pagan revivalism of the 1980s, been appropriated and modified to reflect numerous world-views: from those that suggest more jungian concepts to others that incorporate Buddhist, Australian Dreamtime, Native American, Aztec, Wiccan, or indeed harken to ancient and modern myths and sagas from those of Ancient Egypt or Greece to the Kalevala and modern literary giants such as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. All these, of course, irrespective as to what I personally consider the merit or otherwise of any specific examplar, and omitting another huge range of decks that are essentially artistic templates or ‘frames’ (from Dali to the hundreds of perhaps lesser known, but in some cases incredibly talented artists).

Having before us a deck such as the Grimaud that reflected in so many ways the central trunk of tarot’s diversity, and finding that this deck was essentially unmodified since the 1760s, the type of deck was very fast, for myself at any rate, the core upon which an understanding of tarot as a whole needed to be mapped to or, perhaps by better analogy, anchored. Even more so when it is realised that most twentieth century tarot themselves derive in large part via the works of either Wirth, Waite, Crowley, Falconnier, or Etteilla, and that each and all of those are based, at least for their trumps, on first and foremost the Marseille-style.

It is also apparent, however, that as we look back into history, the earliest of known decks differ from the Marseille-type. Of most obvious differing form are the Visconti-type decks, individually hand-painted and gilded in the 15th century. Also, differences arise in what appears to be a number of possible orderings (not only were the earliest decks un-titled and un-numbered, but when numbering did start to make an appearance, variations occurs, with, for example, the Hermit numbered XI). In terms of imagery, the Visconti-Sforza, Cary-Yale, anonymous Parisian (due to the publishing house’s name having been carved out of the woodblock prior to the imprint that has survived), and Vieville, each pre-1700 decks yet the second pair dating two centuries later than the first, display significant enough differences:

Visconti-Sforza (c. 1450)		Cary-Yale Visconti (c. 1450)
anomynous Parisian (c. 1650)		Vieville (c. 1650)

Each of those decks include elements that have important symbolic references, many of which slowly being re-discovered by the tarot community. In the decks above, for example, the Visconti-Sforza may display, as suggested by both Moakley and more recently by Berti and Gonard, the Heavenly Jerusalem; in contrast the Cary-Yale and the Parisian seem to suggest Fate or Fortune over the fate of lands and the Earth. In the Vieville, we find the closest overall iconographic image to the Marseille-type earlier shown. Yet this quite late depiction is not the sole of the period or earlier as both the card found in one of the Sforza castlelets and the Noblet bear important resemblances:

Sforza Castle well card (c. 1500)		Noblet (c. 1650)

The Heavenly Jerusalem of the Visconti-Sforza is, to be sure, conceptually very closely related to the Vieville in that this city is deemed as the heavenly abode of the eternal Christ as presented in especially mediæval and renaissance Christianity. That he appears more ambiguously feminine in the Noblet does not diminish the intent as Christ. Apart from any other considerations, numerous mystical works exist that speak of Christ in feminine terms and, specifically, with reference to his bosom suckling his children – ie, us.

Amongst a couple of other examples I also include in my Reading the Marseille Tarot is a quote from Lia Moran and Jacob Gilad’s ‘From Folklore to Scientific Evidence’ [International Journal of Biomedical Science Dec. 2007], who remind us that:

Contrary to modern days, Jesus Christ has been often portrayed as having feminine qualities in medieval times. This includes both having physical feminine attributes such as lactating breasts as well as religious ones, such as Christ lactating his believers, reversing the role of Mary and Christ-child to Mother Jesus and the child-like soul. Others have connected the wound in Jesus’ side and breasts full of soul-sustaining milk or used breast milk symbolism to illustrate ideas of the motherhood of Christ versus the fatherhood of God.

That there is a ‘natural’ transformation of a figure that earlier clearly represented Christ surrounded by the four evangelists to that same figure as (initially) ambiguously feminine and over time ever less so makes sense in this context – as long as the concept of Christ with feminine attributes remains something that is alive to the mystical life of the community. Once this aspect is lost, so too does the figure’s original reference become somewhat forgotten and eventually transformed to something else that can be meaningfully re-considered. In our case, a figure that increasingly becomes simultaneously removed and present as tentative steps are taken to gain anew what a ‘Spiritu Mundi’ may mean.

In a sequence of cards that clearly bears a Renaissance Christian worldview – albeit one infused with neo-platonic and neo-aristotelean elements – it ‘makes sense’ to have its highest figure alive in the realm of the spirit yet at once both reachable and ineffable. The perfected Man, the second Adam, into which not only as breath been breathed (the ‘A’–air into the blood formed out of earth–DaM), but also, for the Christian, the Fires of Life (Shin) descended within humanity, and at once also showing a metamorphosis of Yahweh to Jeheshuah.

Allow me a little to explain the above.

Let’s first take a couple of steps back.

If the Hebrew alphabet has had any organising influence of the ordering of the trumps (and also have a small impact on minor details), then it is unlikely to have been in the order that was imposed on the cards by late 19th century views – though these in turn have of course had an impact on how decks that adopt views from the derivative orders of the three main ‘traditions’ will include details to match the preference.

In my personal view, I still consider it highly likely that some simple influence assisted in getting the trump sequence and its iconography stabilised between its creation around the first half of the 15th century and the time it became ‘canonised’ by what we now call the Marseille-type in the mid-17th century. Something like an ordered alphabetic sequence, due to its simplicity, certainly has appeal. This in itself does not make it correct, of course. What is interesting is that the letters’ ordinal values reflect well the Marseille-type’s numbered trumps, with the un-numbered Fool placed where only he can be: last, yet wherever he pleases.

If this sequence has any meaning, then each and every card, without much effort, would need to in some extent or other reflect an alphabetic consideration. Some more ‘obvious’ visual ones are Alef and the Bateleur, Lamed and the Pendu, Ayin and the Tower, Tzaddhi and the Moon, Kof and the Sun; some become ‘as obvious’ with a little reflection on the similarity of meanings of the letter-as-word or its import, such as Beit and the Papess, Samek and the Devil, and Resh and Judgement.

With Shin (or Sin – excuse the pun that only works in English and could not resist in the title of this piece), what we have is the twenty-first letter, so some aspect to its relation to Christ needs to be found if the methodology is to yield feasible or plausible results. Fortunately, this is one of the easiest upon which to reflect as long as some of the common practices of the times is known.

Yahweh, or the unpronounced name of God in the Torah, is written with four letters: YHVH, and these are themselves found commonly enough in especially high places enclosed within a triangle in numerous Cathedrals – though at times it is obvious that the carver knew no Hebrew but was instead merely copying script he or she was not able to ‘read’:

YHVH rendered in typically poor Hebrewl

One of the views that gained some prominence (and a means used in attempts to convert Jews – when more brutal means were not at play), was to claim that God the Father becomes God the Son in the ‘insertion’ of the Holy Spirit (who has tongues of flame, as does Shin) within the tetragrammaton (tetra means four in Greek, hence ’4-lettered name’). In other words, YHVH→YHShVH Yahweh is Yeheshuah (Jesus).

YHShVH (as read from right to left)

In the context of the card image, this can be brought to reflection as the central figure is seen to be embedded within the four living creatures said to be at the Throne of God.

Within the religious context and mysticism of the times, the image, its placement, and even its possible Hebrew letter become understandable, and a redemption of the World in its eternal call towards Holy Jerusalem something that, for the person wishing to reflect on the imagery as religious art, a feasible reflection.

Of course, these reflections do not mean that the trumps necessarily developed in quite the way here mentioned…

Similarly, that the central image has come to be first and foremost feminised beyond its likely earlier pointing to Christ reflects the mores of the times that change with the spiritual strivings within cultural shifts. Nonetheless and in my personal view, the grounding of the image needs to also be recognised.

There are a small number of decks which many amongst us have longed to see re-printed or make it to publication. The Jean Payen Tarot is one of those, and that for a variety of reasons, not least of which it forms an important link in the lineage of tarot during one of its most important phases of standardisation.

It comes less than fifty years before the French Revolution, and from a city having had long associations with the Papacy: Avignon. Admittedly, though still officially a Papal State at the time of Payen’s residence, it had effectively been under the rulership of the French Crown for a number of generations.

Payen himself had moved to Avignon from Marseille, establishing himself as a Master Cardmaker. Together with his younger namesake Jean-Pierre Payen, whose decks are visually nearly indistinguishable apart from some slight details, a number of tarot were designed. In a much earlier Newsletter (#32), I also draw attention to the Jean Dodal (from Lyons) that may have arisen from the Payen workshop.

The map below, produced at the time of the Payen, shows the proximity of the above named places (highlighted in red): Paris at the top; moving down to Lyons (Dodal), then Avignon (Payen), situated ever so close to Marseille.

Highlighted sections refer to (in order): Paris; Lyons; Avignon; Marseille

Map presented to the Academies des Sciences (French equivalent to the Royal Society) in 1744 and 1752 by Phil. Buache ‘1st Geographer of the King’, and presented to the King on the 15th May 1757 (subsequently published in 1770). Source: www.davidrumsey.com

Deck Type

The Payen is what is often referred to as a ‘TdM-I’ type deck. In other words, the earlier (‘type-1’) of the two major kinds of decks in what has come to be called the ‘Marseille’ style. The ‘type-2’ exemplified by the more common Grimaud, itself based on the deck by N. Conver from circa 1760.

There are a number of cards which can quickly identify whether a deck is of type-1 or -2: amongst these the Lovers, Chariot, Moon, and World. I’ll omit the Chariot in what follows, as I’ll get back to the card a little later (for those interested, the Chariot’s distinguishing feature is how the canopy hangs).

The Lovers, in this and other type-1 decks, has the ‘cupid’ emerging from a stellated burst and is, importantly, blind-folded; the Moon faces us full-on; and the World card has a ‘masculine’-looking figure within the aureole, and is caped. By contrast, the type-2 decks have none of these details as described – but have of course different consistent alternatives.

I must admit (and those who know my tastes in tarot already know this) that the type-1 TdMs are amongst my favourite, so obtaining a copy of the Jean Payen was sure to be a delight.

Deck Manufacture

Scott Marchus (aka thinbuddha) has produced a deck that is sometimes referred to as a ‘photographic’ reprint or clone of the original. He has decided, thankfully as far as I’m concerned, to allow the deck to maintain squared corners, though this will undoubtedly mean that some users round these off. It nonetheless gives the deck an ‘authentic’ feel that is further accentuated by the cards not all being precisely the same size: it seems that there are three minor (and they are very minor) sizes that have resulted within the deck, reminding me of the cut of some books from the 1930s, with the pages not all cut ‘en bloc’.

The sleeve (or ‘box’) for the deck – or at least for the Deluxe model – is similar to the design used for many of the Italian-based (and excellent) Il Meneghello decks, and also similar to the first edition Prague Deck. In this case, it is cloth covered and sturdy, and the deck is further encased within a folded cardboard ‘holder’, the lot held together by a black cloth-covered ‘hair’-elastic afixed to a metallic button.

If I have any minor criticism of the deck, it lies with the cardboard stock used. Not that it is inadequate: it isn’t! Rather, I personally would have preferred something that feels a little more durable – though it may mean that I am a little more careful in the manner in which I handle the cards. Still, as something that will be taken into consideration by those who obtain a copy of the deck as a ‘working horse’, it’s likely that a card or two will bend and crease earlier than one has come to anticipate in card stock.

For study purposes, it nonetheless remains an ideal addition.

Deck Details

There are a number of details about the deck that are worth considering, especially given that this is a deck that is likely to occasionally see the light of day as an original deck from the 18th century.

In the Encyclopedia of Tarot, S. Kaplan displays two decks by Jean Payen and one by Jean-Pierre Payen. It may be worth noting that one of the Jean Payen decks is therein incorrectly attributed to the younger Jean-Pierre: on page 321 of volume II is displayed the partially complete Jean Payen held in the Cary Collection of Playing Cards at Yale University. This is the one incorrectly titled as ‘Jean-Pierre Payen’, and furthermore likely also dated a little earlier than perhaps warranted, for it seems a cognate of the one produced by Scott Marchus, and earlier reproduced some ten years earlier in vol I of the Encyclopedia of Tarot – in that volume a copy of the deck held in the Fournier Museum in Vitoria, Spain.

One of the details I find particularly striking is the ‘missing’ shield that would normally show the engraver’s initials upon the Chariot. It’s as if this has been chipped out from the woodcut used for the examplar used by Scott Marchus and for the one in the Fournier Museum…

Even the Jean-Pierre Payen, also at Yale University, has at least the shield, even though it remains without initials. As this latter dates from 1713, it makes me wonder if the Jean Payen woodblock used for the deck at hand was in fact carved far earlier by someone no longer at the Payen workshop in 1743, and the two-coin ‘lemniscatory’ manufacturing detail was added to what otherwise was a far older printing block. If such is the case, the guesstimated date by Kaplan for the deck woodblock as circa 1735 may be more accurate than the two-coin information offers. Perhaps, indeed, even earlier than the 1730s.

Or even… do we have another case of a deck, like the Chosson’s use of the Sellon woodcut with its ‘corrected’ date, in this Payen deck having the ‘43’ newly carved onto glued wood that replaced the original, yet, in this case at least, remaining in the Payen workshop. If these meandering reflections are in any way accurate, it may show that in this case, the frequent State regulation for the destruction of woodblocks was not in all cases carried out!

But is the deck worth it!?

This is undoubtedly a question that many will want answered. I can, of course, only present my own personal view. At US$40 it’s a little expensive for a deckyet, given the care that went into it, its overall quality, its rank in the hall of importance, and its overall feel, I would without reservation have paid a little more (but not much more!).

Scott mentions, in the 2009 Tarot Lovers’ Calendar, that ‘every effort is being made to maintain the integrity of the woodblock lines and color choices found on the original cards without sacrificing the hand crafted appearance of the beautiful and significant deck’ – something I entirely support and which, in my opinion, he has managed to achieve.

[copies of the deck may be obtained by contacting Scott]

“Form Follows Priority”

Jordan Hoggard is an architect (principal for J. Jordan Hoggard Design in Denver, CO), artist, and creator of “The Mystereum Tarot”. Definitely a Renaissance man! I had the privilege to meet Jordan while taking a teleclass given by Tarot author/artist Robert M. Place. I was very excited to hear that Jordan was independently producing a deck of his own, and highly intrigued when I saw the “back story” material. I think at times that we pay so much attention to the material produced – whether it be a Tarot deck, book, CD, or DVD – that we don’t even think to look for the muse that initiated the creative effort, and fueled it to completion.

Where does the story begin? Does it begin when he was a child, with his mother’s familiarity with the Tarot? Does it begin when he presented his stepmother with a book which he created containing pictures that he painted to accompany a poem that she had translated (which prompted her to say that he should become an illustrator of children’s books)? And how does architecture play into this?

Let’s start with architecture. After an interesting experience flying over the handles of a bike, Jordan was gifted with a full blown passion for the subject. He takes architecture down to its Greek roots, arche and techne. Arche is defined as the first spark of an idea – it is the place of inception. It is formless. Techne is the place of conception, the place where form begins. Jordan associated the Magician with arche, the “first spark”, and the High Priestess with techne, the giving of form. He paid intermittent attention to the Tarot, reading text and history when he could, or whenever it crossed his path, for a period of years.

In the summer of 2006 he was gardening, and paused to look up at his turn-of-the-century Victorian house (1906). In an “Aha!” moment, he raced inside and opened the Tarot folder on his computer. There they were … in his own words “The Empress carrying to full term, and the Emperor overseeing!” He suddenly realized that here he was, in the middle of the largest scale project that he had ever undertaken, and living the Tarot as he worked the soil in his garden! As he puts it, this was the equivalent of the Judgment card having a Hanged Man moment!

The world of architecture provided the springboard for this deck, but does not really define it. For Jordan, the Tarot cards act as wonderful trail-markers, as well as storytellers along the path that is life. He sees the Tarot as archetypal image references, as a seat for the mind, a place “giving place” to your story. Jordan references a four-point mode that he uses for the purpose of general architectural analysis. I looked at this, and found that if you replaced the word “building” with the word “psyche”, that the Tarot connection falls right into place.

1. How does a building stand on the ground?
2. How does a building extend to the sides?
3. How does a building open and close?
4. How does a building meet the sky?

A vector-based architectural drawing program called Archicad was used to create the “Mystereum Tarot”. The format makes use of geometric form and strong presence of color. The deck is vibrant with basic colors (yellow, red, blue, orange, green, brown, and white) – in part due to the limitations of the system – only 99 color hues are available, based on the primary colors. In a review on his blog site (www.alchemywebsite.com), Tarotist Adam McLean notes that “The limitations of the architectural CAD system, impose a clear geometrical structure on the imagery in the cards, and this is of course the intention of the artist. Thus many forms are broken down into circles, arching forms and structured regular curves. This does not mean that the artist keeps to simple forms, indeed many of the images are very complex.”

The card backs come from a client’s window project. The window acts symbolically as a portal into the wisdom of the Tarot – with use made of white blinds, blue background, beautiful gray leaves, and a reflection from the top of the window to the bottom.

The card border also acts as a window, or portal into the energy of each card. The border is dark blue in the upper right and left hand corners, a lighter blue, with a thin orange inner border, defines the top of the window. The sides and bottom of the window are a dark orange.

The thought “How do they inform them?” acts as a device to pull the Major Arcana characters into the Minor Arcana. There is so much esoteric imagery to see here, including the lemniscate over the “O” of the Fool; the black hole eyes of the Fool’s – very reminiscent of Johanna Gargiulo-Sherman’s “Sacred Rose Tarot”; and the four pillars (a recurring theme) in the Lovers, acting as a backdrop to the two figures, with the symbol of a cup in the third eye area of one of the figures.

A great effort has been made to make this deck, and the material surrounding it, available to everyone. The deck can be purchased from Jordan’s site (www.mystereum.com) , using Pay Pal, personal check, or money order. There is a LWB (Little White Book), and a foldout cardlet that accompany the deck. Images of all 78 cards, along with text, can be seen at www.cafepress.com. Imagination Primers have been published for all 78 cards a www.lulu.com. There is a 157 page full color book covering all 78 cards with images and text, entitled “The Fool Loves … Journeying”, and five individual books: one for the Major Arcana; one for each of the four suits; and a spiral bound book entitled “The Mystereum Tarot: Study Size Card Images”. There is a video (entitled “Flowing Through Inner Essence”) of the card images that is quite nicely done, that can be seen on the “Mystereum Tarot” site (www.mystereum.com), or on Leisa ReFalo’s Podcast site (www.tarotconnection.net), where you can also listen to an interview with Hoggard (Episode 84).

For people like me who clamor for more, there is something else quite exciting that is in the works: a no holds barred, full color coffee table book that hopefully will be out by the end of the year! I hope that you are right there with me on the “Mystereum Tarot” site, watching for updates on this happening!

Dream the big dreams … they can come true!

© September 2008

In 1781, the French author Court de Gébelin referred to the Tarot as a book preserving the pure wisdom of ancient Egypt. This is the first written suggestion that occult wisdom had been encoded in the cards – in spite of the fact that they had already been in use for over 300 years.

It was soon thereafter that Tarot decks claiming Egyptian origins would be published. The first of many was a 1789 deck(1) by the French astrologer and cartomancier Etteilla, who called his cards The Book of Thoth(2). These early designs are sometimes referred to as Etteilla I; one version of this pattern is still produced today by Grimaud under the name Grand Etteilla, or Egyptian Gypsies Tarot (shown below). Subsequent designs which altered the symbolism of certain Trumps are referred to as Etteilla II. A third variation, referred to as Etteilla III (shown below), was first produced in 1865 with larger, more ornate imagery.

From left to right, the Chariot cards shown above are from: 1. Etteilla I pattern, Egyptian Gypsies Tarot, modern reprint by Grimaud in 1982; 2. Etteilla III pattern, Grand Jeu de Oracle des Dames, designed in 1865 by G. Regamey, reprinted as Tarot Egyptien by Éditions Dusserre in 1985; 3. 1843 Etteilla pattern, Jeu de la Princesse Tarot, reprinted as Cartomanzia Italiana by Edizioni del Solleone in 1983; 4. Lévi’s own illustration of Trump VII, Dogme et rituel de la haute magie, 1856; 5. 78 Tarot designs by Jean-Gabriel Goulinat from Papus’ 1909 work Le Tarot Divinatoire, reprinted as a deck titled Le Tarot Divinatoire by Éditions Dusserre in 1992.

One early departure from the Etteilla decks was the jeu de la Princesse Tarot(3) (shown above). First published as book illustrations in 1843, the designs attempted a more Egyptian setting than previous decks to emphasize their supposed origins. The cards were numbered consecutively from 1 to 78, following the system started by Etteilla to emphasize that the cards were pages of an ancient book.

But in spite of their titles, these early ‘Egyptian’ designs were not passed down from ancient culture as their authors claimed, nor did they even portray convincing Egyptian iconography. The science of Egyptology was very young: the Rossetta stone would not be discovered until 1799. The early Etteilla decks are nonetheless interesting, especially because they incorporated symbology from such sources as Genesis and the Hermetic creation myths of The Divine Pymander.

1863 marks the next major notch in the Egyptian Tarot timeline: the publication of a book titled L’homme rouge des Tuileries (‘The Red Man of the Tuileries’) by a French author writing under the pen name of Paul Christian. This work tells of an encounter between Napoleon and a Benedictine monk who possesses an occult manuscript(4). This manuscript described in detail seventy-eight symbolic houses or pictorial keys, corresponding to the Tarot deck but using Egyptian names and imagery. Virtually the same descriptions of the Arcana would reappear in Christian’s later work Histoire de la magie in 1870. Christian’s presentation of the Tarot is filled with fictitious history, but his stories were taking hold during this time of growing European interest in all things ancient and occult.

We might surmise whether Christian conceived these descriptions himself, or if he fabricated his fictitious histories as an excuse to document the ideas circulating in the occult circles of his time. There are certainly some details in his book which can be found earlier in the writings of his contemporary: Éliphas Lévi. Lévi’s own drawing (shown above) of The Chariot, for example, was the first to replace the horses with sphinxes – a detail repeated by Christian. In any case, much of Christian’s elaborate symbolism would find its way into the occult decks that were soon to follow, including those by Falconnier, Papus, Wirth, and even Waite.

Perhaps the watershed event for the Egyptian pattern was the 1896 publication of the book Les XXII lames hermètiques du tarot divinatoire by R. Falconnier. Here, for the first time, could be seen designs which truly mimicked Egyptian art. The images (shown below) were drawn by M.O.Wegener and based on the detailed descriptions by Christian. Readers were encouraged to cut the 22 designs out of the book for use with the divinatory instructions provided. The 56 suit cards were not a part of this divination process, so they were not included in the book.

Tarot historians place the Etteilla decks within the Egyptian Tarot tradition. But it is the designs of Falconnier and Wegener – more authentically Egyptian and based squarely on French occult theory – which mark the birth of the Egyptian Tarot as we think of it today. Although there is no historical basis to claims of Egyptian origin, there is something compelling to the symbolism of these decks.

From left to right, the Chariot cards shown above are from: 1. Falconnier and Wegener, Les XXII lames hermètiques du tarot divinatoire, 1896; 2. Egyptian Tarot, 1978 deck by AGMüller based on the 1901 illustrations from Practical Astrology; 3. The Brotherhood of Light Tarot, 1936 illustrations from The Sacred Tarot; 4. The Zain designs were redrawn for the 1996 edition of The Sacred Tarot; 5. The Ibis Tarot by Josef Machynka, published by AGMüller in 1991.

In 1901, just five years after the Falconnier-Wegener publication, Edgar de Valcourt-Vermont published his book Practical Astrology under the pseudonym of Comte C. de Saint Germain. His book reproduced the earlier illustrations of Wegener, and added designs for the Minor Arcana. The only difference between the Wegener designs and the Valcourt-Vermont reproductions is that Trump II (The Gate of the Sanctuary) was slightly redesigned. These 78 images were later published as a deck in 1978 by AGMüller under the name Egyptian Tarot.

The pattern was redrawn in 1936 by Gloria Beresford(5) to illustrate C.C.Zain’s(6) book The Sacred Tarot. This version (shown above) added numerous small details, such as the constellations that appear throughout the deck and the miniature drawings added to many designs. The deck was published by the Church of Light under the name Egyptian Tarot Cards, also known as The Brotherhood of Light Tarot which takes its name from the organization which Zain founded. The material in Zain’s book was first published by him in 1918 as a series of instructional courses, and was at that time illustrated with the reproductions from Practical Astrology. A new edition of The Sacred Tarot was published in 1996 with significantly improved Tarot designs which are beautifully redrawn (shown above).

Zain’s book is especially noteworthy because it included what is likely the first English translation of Christian’s original Arcana descriptions. The passages were translated in 1901 by Zain’s friend Genevieve Stebbins, to whom he gives credit.

John H. Dequer published a deck in 1949(7) with Trump designs based on those by Zain. Dequer’s Egyptian version of The Empress appeared as the cover of Crowley’s The Book of Thoth in 1944(8).

Another early appearance of the Egyptian pattern is found in a 1931 book by Woldemar von Uxkull, titled Die Einweihung im alten Ägypten. These designs were the basis of a 1949 deck titled Schikowski Tarot(9) as well as a 1954 deck which accompanied the book Tarot der Eingeweihten by Joachim Winkelmann.

There are several modern decks which follow the Wegener pattern. The Ibis Tarot (shown above), published in 1991 by AGMüller, is one of the most beautiful interpretations of the pattern. It is also one of the most faithful, even though it was painted almost 100 years after the original designs were first published. The artist Josef Machynka actually based his cards on the designs in Practical Astrology, unaware that they were taken directly from the earlier designs of Wegener.

From left to right, the Chariot cards shown above are from: 1. Egyptian Tarots by Silvana Alasia, published in 1996 by Lo Scarabeo; 2. Tarots of the Sphinx by Silvana Alasia, 1998 Lo Scarabeo; 3. Tarocchi di Nefertari by Silvana Alasia, 1998 Lo Scarabeo; 4. Egipcios Kier Tarot, published in the 1970s by Editorial Kier, reprinted in 1984 by U.S.Games Systems; 5. Divinatory Egyptian Tarot, designed by Margarita Arnal Moscardo and published in 1988 by Naipes Comas.

The Italian artist Silvana Alasia has created several Egyptian decks, all published by Lo Scarabeo. The earliest of these was her 1996 Egyptian Tarots (shown above), featuring 78 designs hand painted onto parchment. Her Trumps follow the Wegener pattern, with the exception of cards XII, XIII, XIX, and XX which are based on Egyptian art. In 1998 she created the Tarots of the Sphinx (shown above) which is primarily based upon actual Egyptian imagery. A deluxe version of the deck was simultaneously published as the Tarocchi di Nefertari (shown above), using gold foil stamped onto the backgrounds and text. The designs of the two decks are “mirror images” of each other, but are otherwise identical.

An interesting variation of the Wegener pattern was introduced in the Egipcios Kier Tarot, published by Editorial Kier of Buenos Aires in the 1970’s. The deck’s designer was an employee of Editorial Kier but his identity is unknown. An English version of this deck (shown above) was printed by U.S.Games Systems in 1984. Many of these Trumps follow the Wegener pattern while others are completely redesigned according to authentic Egyptian sources.

This was the first Egyptian deck to bring fully illustrated scenes and characters into the Minor Arcana. These are inspired by Egyptian sources, and used by the deck designer to symbolize such concepts as Meditation, Cooperation and Rivalry. This was also the first Egyptian Tarot deck to completely remove all suit delineations; all 78 cards are instead numbered in sequence, beginning with The Magician (1) and ending with Rebirth (78).

The Egipcios Kier Tarot pattern spawned numerous decks, many of these published in Spain and South America. One such deck is the Divinatory Egyptian Tarot (shown above), designed by Margarita Arnal Moscardo and published in 1988 by Naipes Comas, Barcelona. Each card represents concepts that are analogous to those of the Egipcios Kier, but the artist has used entirely different designs to do so. The artwork is also taken from actual Egyptian sources.

From left to right, the Chariot cards shown above are from: 1. Eulogy to the Book of Thoth, serigraphs published in 1980 by Editorial Barath, Madrid; 2. I Tarocchi Egiziani, published in 1995 by De Vecchi Editore, Italy; 3. Le Tarot des grands initiés de l’ancienne Égypte, Jean-Louis Victor and Geneviève Monat, published in 1994 by Editions de Montagne; 4. Egyptian Tarot, designed by Esther Casla and published by Heraclio Fournier, Spain; 5. Il Destino Svelato dal Tarocco, originally designed by Bruno Sigon in 1912, reprinted in the 1970s by Modiano.

The watercolor designs of the Egyptian Tarot (shown above) were published by Heraclio Fournier. It’s designs reflect the same concepts found in the Egipcios Kier pattern, yet like the Divinatory Egyptian Tarot it reinterprets these ideas with slight nuances. Card 35, for example, is Desolation in the Egipcios Kier, Pain in the Divinatory Egyptian Tarot, and Sadness in the Fournier Egyptian Tarot, Card 58 is Meditation, Prevention, and Reflection respectively; Card 71 is Avarice, Conservation, and Greed respectively.

The Spanish artist Suarez designed 22 beautiful Arcana images (shown above) to accompany poetic verses written by Victorino del Pozo in 1980. The designs were silk-screened onto large sheets and published by Editorial Barath as a limited edition of 999 sets. The prints and poem are titled Eulogy to the Book of Thoth, although it is sometimes referred to as the Barath Egyptian Tarot.

Laura Tuan designed a 78-card deck called I Tarocchi Egiziani or The Egyptian Tarot (shown above), published in 1995 by De Vecchi Editore. The Major Arcana are based exclusively on Egyptian imagery generally corresponding to the Trumps. The deck retains the traditional Tarot structure of 22 Major and 56 suit cards, although the Trumps do not follow their traditional sequence. The Minor cards show arrangements of the suit symbols, which take the form of djed staves, lotus chalices, Egyptian daggers, and scarab coins. This is a nice example of a deck which uses true Egyptian iconography without abandoning a Tarot structure.

Il Destino Svelato dal Tarocco (shown above) is a stylized Egyptian Tarot deck originally painted by Bruno Sigon in 1912. Its 56 suit cards are distinct from the Trumps – they are not by Sigon but were taken straight from a Milanese pattern.

Modiano, the original publisher, reprinted this deck in the 1970s under the title Cartomanzia 184, as well as an English version in 1981 under the title Cagliostro Tarot. Interpretive keywords are printed at the top and bottom of every card. Those for the 22 Trumps are noteworthy because they come from the work of Éliphas Lévi and Paul Christian(10).

From left to right, the cards shown above are from: 1. The Book of Doors, designed in 1986 by Athon Veggi and Alison Davidson, published in 1995 by Destiny Books; 2. Ishbel’s Temple of Isis Egyptian Tarot, designed by Ishbel and published in 1989 by Llewellyn; 3. Tarot of Transition, published in 1983 by Carta Mundi. 4. Tarot of the Ages, 5. The Ancient Egyptian Tarot, illustrated by Clive Barrett and published in 1994 by Thorsons.

Some decks explore the Egyptian mythos by abandoning the Tarot structure altogether. The Book of Doors (shown above) does this with 64 beautifully painted cards depicting Egyptian deities. The designs were created in 1986 by Athon Veggi and Alison Davidson, and published by Destiny Books in 1995. The Book of Doors is truly representative of the mythology and iconography of ancient Egypt.

Ishbel’s Temple of Isis Egyptian Tarot (shown above) was designed by Ishbel and published in 1989 by Llewellyn. It retains a traditional Tarot structure, but the Major Arcana designs are replaced with various Egyptian deities. The artwork is colorful but simplistic, with each deity placed against a golden yellow background with no other symbols or scenery. The Minor Arcana cards show arrangements of the suit symbols: Shepherds Crooks, Flail, Sebas (Solar cross), and Lotus Flowers.

The Tarot of Transition (shown above) also replaces the traditional Trumps with Egyptian deities and symbolism, but these selections are rather idiosyncratic. The Minor Arcana cards display arrangements of the suit symbols. The deck was published in 1983 by Carta Mundi.

Several multi-cultural decks incorporated Egyptian mythology. The Ancestral Path Tarot and the Kazanlar Tarot, for example, both devote one suit to Egyptian scenes. The Tarot of the Ages (shown above) incorporates several ancient cultures into its art, but its Major Arcana is primarily Egyptian.

Unlike the two-dimensional designs of most Egyptian decks, the beautiful paintings by Clive Barrett stand out because of their realistic style. The Ancient Egyptian Tarot (shown above) is a traditional 78-card deck with fully illustrated Major and Minor Arcana. Barrett’s designs have an underlying connection with the teachings of the Order of the Golden Dawn, but his images have little similarity to the Waite-Smith and Crowley-Harris decks. Barrett’s symbolism is also well-researched; he even authored a separate study of the Egyptian pantheon titled The Egyptian Gods & Goddesses: The Mythology & Beliefs of Ancient Egypt. The Ancient Egyptian Tarot was published in 1994 by Thorsons as a book and deck set.

Tracing the evolution of the Egyptian decks helps us understand the origins of the occult Tarot. But this overview is by no means exhaustive; hundreds of such decks have been published, and hundreds more have been influenced by this lineage.

© Mark Filipas, 2001 [this review originally appeared on Mark Filipas's site at pasteboardmasquerade.com/Reviews/historye.html]

Footnotes:

(1) Decker, Depaulis and Dummettt, A Wicked Pack of Cards, pp.91–92

(2) This pseudonym for the Tarot first appeared in an earlier essay by comte de Mellet, which was included in Gébelin’s book of 1781.

(3) Also known as the grand jeu de tarots égyptien; see also Decker, Depaulis and Dummettt, A Wicked Pack of Cards, p.150.

(4) A fuller summary can be found in A Wicked Pack of Cards, p.197–202.

(5) See front of the 1987 edition of The Sacred Tarot.

(6) Pseudonym of Elbert Benjamine.

(7) See Kaplan’s Encyclopedia of Tarot vol. I, p.219

(8) This cover is shown in Kaplan’s Encyclopedia of Tarot vol. I, p.354

(9) This deck can be seen in Kaplan’s Encyclopedia of Tarot vol. I, p.220

(10) See Levi’s Dogma and Ritual of High Magic (Transcendental Magic) and Splendor of Lights; Christian’s The History and Practice of Magic.

Images Copyright © their respective publishers

If the ‘Whence come you?’ can be said to often be asked of tarot, its complementary question seems often overlooked.

Painting upon a broad canvas the development of tarot, we find its genesis in the region that is now Northern Italy, amidst influences from neo-platonism and neo-aristotelean thought. During the 19th century, its adaptation and redesign by Etteilla brought about a renewed interest and local esoteric re-evaluation and appreciation to not only Francophones, but also eastward into deep European lands, so that not only Hungary and Poland, but also Russia had its share of Etteilla ‘clones’. A similar situation arose a century later in England and, by association, Anglophonic countries with, again, its redesign by A. Waite and P. Coleman Smith, bringing the deck not only into popular culture across the English speaking world, but also again likewise re-igniting interest in tarot in general, and esoteric re-evaluation and appreciation.

In each of these two cases, the model upon which the respective decks were based was what is commonly referred to as the Marseille – a deck that has not ceased to be produced and designed with various modifications throughout its 300+ years of recorded existence (and likely itself being from circa 1500 in some closely linked form).

In the European world and those countries that have developed their population and political structures directly in consequence of European expansions, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA (at the same time recognising their respective significant local indigenous traditions), tarot forms part and parcel of its culture – however marginalised it may remain in some pockets.

In Continental Europe, the prevalence of the Etteilla has slowly given way, after a century of dominance and ‘clone’ variants, to a return to a Marseille-type deck. In the English speaking world, we are beginning to see the tides also turn. Certainly myriad new decks based or derived (‘clones’) of the Waite-Smith are still being produced, yet at the same time a return to their antecedent is similarly making its entry. It now is not only easier to find a Marseille-type deck in stores both local and online, but even distinctions between various Marseille-types are more generally understood – a situation that even only five years ago was simply not the case.

In European nations and their western world cognates, then, it seems that tarot is heading in a return to its impulse or archetypal form. Whether it is something like the Grimaud, or Conver (on which the Grimaud is closely based), or some more modern rendition like the Canadian Hadar (again mainly based on the Conver), or the refreshed TdM-I style Noblet from J-C Flornoy, or something yet to be released, only time will tell.

This does not mean that currently alternative designs will suddenly cease to be used or written about. After all, the Etteilla is still available, and groups working in specific ways continue to view it as holding a central ‘key’ to their way of understanding tarot. Similarly, this will continue to be the case for the Waite-Smith, the Crowley-Harris, and the Falconnier-Wegener – all important variants that have their own advocates.

In ‘our neck of the woods’, then (for those reading this in parts of the world I earlier referred to), I strongly suspect that tarot’s course will continue to be an ongoing diversity around a central Marseille core, with the core becoming increasingly well known and appreciated.

Heading towards the Far-East

In Japan, numerous tarot decks have already appeared. Some, such as the ‘Angel’ tarot, closely resembling the Marseille-style. Many, however, taking as their base the general artistic image-type and allowing a total make-over in Manga (and similar) styles. Such decks, already in their hundreds, have already began to form a ‘tradition’ of their own.

Yet, it seems to me that no matter how transiently popular they may be, they generally lack that other aspect that the Etteilla and the Waite-Smith did for, respectively, the Francophonic and Anglophonic worlds: ignite interest in esoteric lore and tie tarot to its local initiatic culture. And that is an element that I suspect is still in the making… and yet close to being achievable in the coming few years. And it is this aspect that I will now briefly look at in the brief space I have in this Newsletter.

One of the dominant features of a renewed China is that its population will inevitably strive to reach and understand afresh the many areas that had previously been despotically hindered. Of this will include, I surmise, its long cultural heritage and its religious and spiritual wealth. Yet it is not insensitive to the developments that are also in the rest of the world. One of these is the divinatory usage of tarot – something that can be added to and, I suggest, incorporated with the I Ching (or Yi-King). How it may do so I will suggest in some detail in a forthcoming Newsletter. With the trumps, I suggest that, as did Etteilla and Waite-Smith in different ways, altering the ordering of the sequence may provide a better ‘local’ flavour and ‘natural’ understanding. So let’s briefly go through some of these possibilities.

Ordering the sequence

I’m frankly unsure as to which other cards are likely to be altered, but would suggest that Death will be re-ordered as fourth card. As there is for the more traditional European understanding direct correlations between eight and Justice (from Ancient Pythagorean Greek considerations) and thirteen and Death (from various sources, but especially the demise of the Knights Templar on Friday the thirteenth of October 1307), there is similarly, there due to word similarity, a close proximity between Death and Four.

Judgement, as simply an imagery of many who have died, may be renumbered 14 for similar reasons; whereas nine and an old Hermit seems entirely apt.

The Lovers may be renumbered seven – with an entirely different mythical saga attached. And, with similarly different connotations, the Wheel of Fortune re-positioned as eighth.

Perhaps, following some of these thoughts that have their basis on Chinese understanding of number-meaning, the flow of the Star would better be numbered six.

In the same manner that it required a local person immersed in the culture to make alterations that seem near natural in the Etteilla or the Waite-Smith, it will very much depend on someone having the ability to capture the imagination and tradition of the place to make appropriate alterations. It may be, for example, that the Emperor is deemed absolutely fine in position four given the political climate! and that Death moved one across to 14 captures that other aspect.

Whatever, if any (and I suspect that will be some) alterations, it is also how it is weaved into both mythic reflection and progression as a whole that will enable the deck to be adopted as a local artefact – though ‘local’ in perhaps a broader sense than perhaps we are accustomed.

Image alterations

Some obvious ones are perhaps the Empress and Emperor. Many others, however, are easily considered if we broaden the image resource from some neighbouring influences, such as India and Durga for the image that we currently call Strength. I say currently for, again as did both Etteilla and Waite-Smith (with, as examples amongst others, the Hanged Man and the Tower respectively), renaming cards in manners that may be deemed more apt in the local (written form of the) language may suggest alterations that we may find, to say the least, odd or misguided.

This overall task is quite distinct to the various decks that have been produced over the last fifteen or so years that begin to make such alterations – with possibly the best known example being Robert Place’s Buddha Tarot. Yet though the deck is a wonderful appropriation and understanding aspects of Buddhism applied to tarot’s frame of reference, what it ‘lacks’ in terms of this discussion is precisely the ‘natural’ orientation from the East seeking to make tarot in its own image.

The I-Ching and the pips

I mentioned earlier that there are ways that make sense of correlating the I-Ching and the pips. In fact, there are a number of ways of doing so, and some undoubtedly better than others – and hope my suggestion in another Newsletter will be ranked amongst the ‘better’. Basically, however, the I-Ching is composed of 64 hexagrammes, some of which form a different form when inversed, and others not (being symmetrical). If an hexagramme and its reversal are taken to be two forms of the same general ideagramme, there are precisely 36 ‘archetypal’ forms. Given there are 40 pip cards of which four are Aces and best left as is, there are manners in which the 36 remaining pips and the 36 ‘archetypal ideagrammatic’ hexagrammes can co-exist. The correlated form I will present is one I have used on and off since the late 1980s or early 90s.

So… Whither directing your course? Its Chinese intrusion demands a renewed understanding for each of its cards, determined by those who have a depth of regional myths and its philosophical fondations.

Zi Lu – the Fool as filial piety

(adapted from www.pureinsight.org)

Zi Lu was born during the Zhou Dynasty. He was a most respectful and devoted son. His family was poor, so the boy had to dig wild greens and roots from the fields in order to feed himself. Because he wanted to make sure his parents get adequate, suitable food, he often traveled a long way looking for wage-paying jobs.

Zi Lu would get up long before dawn and make a lengthy, dangerous trip into the neighboring states, earning what money he could, in order to buy rice and staples for his household. Then shouldering the sack of provisions, he would run back the long distance in time to cook a meal for his parents. When the bag was empty, he would tie on his leggings and set off once again looking for work. Everyone considered him a good example of true filial service.

After his parents died, the young man left his native land for the country of Zhou in the south. The king of Chu was impressed with Zi Lu’s learning and his moral character, so he offered him a post in the civil service. Zi Lu accepted, and rose to become a high-ranking official. He was given a handsome salary and rich side-benefits for his able leadership in state affairs.

Despite the life of affluent comfort, Zi Lu in his heart constantly pined for the days of his youth, when he was able to serve his mother and father. He would often sigh, “This wealth and honor is flavorless and depressing. How I wish I could return to the old days, when I ate field greens and carried rice on my back for mother and father. How happy I was in those days!”

Perhaps this may not be the story chosen… it is more that a wealth of possibilities are there for the picking by those who have the skill to so do, and I very much look forward to what is to emerge!