Association for Tarot Studies

Christ, the World and Sin

Jean-Michel David
www.fourhares.com
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 [...]

Tarot Trumps and Hebrew Letters:
variety and divergence

Jean-Michel David
www.fourhares.com
In looking through various decks and reading across a reasonably broad variety of books on tarot, divergent claims are made for trumps and various correlations. One of the most persistent is the claim that somehow trump cards and letters of the alphabet have correlations.
If the earliest extent tarot cards have any such letter attributions [...]

Tree of Life on the Tarot in the Four Worlds

Mary Greer
First published on Mary’s blog: marygreer.wordpress.com
I am delighted to provide this previously unpublished text, which is from a hand-copied manuscript of Sub Spe [John Brodie Innes] I apologize to those who will find many of the references difficult, but the information can help greatly in understanding the Golden Dawn approach to the Minor [...]

Tarot Trumps & the Tree of Life

a personal perspective
byJean-Michel David
In two previous Newsletters, I have discussed some aspects relevant here. The first of these was for issue 22, titled ‘Kabalah and Tarot‘, in which I looked more at the Tree of Life in its various forms – though also mentioned the Hebrew alphabet; the second was for issue 28, titled [...]

Inquiries into Tarot
& on divination by means of tarot cards (Part 1)

by M. C. de M***
trans. by Jean-Michel David
For this translation, I was very much aided by the various (often provisional) translations of Mary Greer and Jack Meier, Jess Karlin, Donald Tyson and those who contributed to Tarotpedia’s entry (especially Stephen John Mangan / kwaw). Each different translation provided thoughts for different nuances, for which I [...]

Kabbalistic Tarot
Hebraic Wisdom in the Major and Minor Arcana

by Dovid Krafchow
…being an introduction to the ancient kabbalistic origins and meanings of the tarot
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Newsletter foreword by Jean-Michel David
When I first came across Dovid Krafchow’s book, its description intringued me, not so much because here was another title that was going to present some kind of relation between Tarot and Kabbalah, [...]

The Fool, Alef and Orion

by Stephen John Mangan [Kwaw]
The first image is detail of Ninurta/Orion standing next to a Lion [sacred animal of Innana and symbol of Sirius], 2nd image the complete picture from the ancient Sumerian Seal of Adda. 3rd is of Ninurta enthroned with image of double headed eagle, 4th Orion and Canis Major detail from cylinder [...]

The Tarot and the Kabbalah,
the Ancient Mesopotamians and the Sufist

by Nicholas Swift
an extract from Mirror of the Free
www.vaxxine.com/mirrorofthefree
Authors of books on the Tarot cards commonly assert that their true origin is unknown. One sometimes gets the impression, however, that their attitude to the mystery it presents is ambivalent: knowledge means not only less excuse to speculate but, also, more responsibility. They write as if [...]

The Golden Dawn’s attributions…

by Jean-Michel David
The Golden Dawn’s system of understanding Tarot’s Atouts (Major Arcana) is through a specific positioning of these upon the Tree of Life (and of these, the Kircher version of the Tree), each card placed on a connecting ‘path’ between two Sefirot (or emanations). This, together with the quality, elemental, planetary, or astrological associations [...]

Kabalah and Tarot

by Jean-Michel David
(Kabbalah – Qabalah – Cabala)
It has now been well over two centuries in which implied connections between Tarot and the Kabalah has been made in writing – and perhaps longer than that if one considers the plausible Hebrew letter influence on the very design of Tarot’s Atouts (Major Arcana).
What I [...]