The Tarot Code

by Carlo Bozzelli

  We may say then that the symbols which are to be found in the diverse ancient decks of the Marseilles Tarot, are witness to this oral form which continued to hand down that which remained of a lost esoteric tradition of the Tarot. This art spread in every direction, in the engravings, paintings and frescoes of the churches, and many artists continued this diffusion without actually realizing its deeper sense. The existence of a model of Tarot containing the secret framework makes it anterior with respect to decks in which this structure is absent or deteriorated, which are to be regarded, precisely owing to this lack, as posterior. Yet the problem of this sort of research is always the same: one begins by studying antique decks different from the Marseilles Tarot, believing them to be the true esoteric source, and judging them to be of a later epoch, does not hypothesize that it is the Marsellaise that contain the original Coded Structure. In the last two to three centuries, from the end of the 1700’s forward, those who have attempted to study the Tarot seriously from a symbolic point of view have been thrown off the track because of this vicious circle. In truth, acting in this manner, we can find nothing for the simple reason that…there is nothing to be found! However, knowing of the presence of the system of reference, it is possible to invert the methodological reasoning. If we estimate the Marseilles Tarot to be antecedent to all others, as if they were the primary source of this Structure, we may use the symbols found in the different ancient decks, as testimony to an oral and a written/graphic tradition which, simply and majestically, confirm the esoteric framework contained in the Marsellaise themselves. Therefore, following the logic of this sort of symbolic “breakdown”, it is easy to guess why the Icons became, over time, a simple game of cards. At the time, in fact, this sort of recreation was so over-used by the entire population, including aristocrats and clergy, that numerous ordinances were passed to forbid its use, at least in religious locations such as inside monastery walls. Often this prohibition had diametrically the opposite effect, causing an increase in the diffusion of this pastime. In any case, among the many references, one is of particular interest for us. This is the most ancient ordinance known today, which expressly forbids the practice of the Paginae (in Latin, page, paper, parchment) and which dates from the year 1337: “Quod nulla persona audeat nec praesumat ludere ad taxillos nec ad paginas nec ad eyssychum (That no one dare, or take up the game of dice, cards, or chess).”

  According to the lexicographer Du Cange and the historian d’Allemange,24 this may be the most ancient citation in the world referring to card games. In 1408, the word “card” and “playing–card” are used in the same sentence to describe the same game. What makes this quote so amazingly particular? That of having been unearthed in the statutes of a monastery by now known to the reader, the Abbey of Saint Victor. The most ancient term known today meaning playing-cards, and the history of the Tarot cards, crossed paths in precisely the same place…A probability of this sort is decisively against all statistical calculations, therefore this “coincidence” must be even more heavily underlined. Certainly, it does not prove by itself the origin of the Arcana, but it is an element of comparison for objective deduction deriving from the Coded Structure. In fact, to this same period (the XIV century) dates a petition of the card makers of Lyon, accusing their colleagues of Marseilles of counterfeiting the Lyonese cards; we may affirm that the master card makers of Marseilles, although officially authorized to form a corporation only from 1638, were already active and operative.

  To return to the Visconti-Sforza deck, we seem now to be able to collocate it in the correct dimension. Historians maintain that it is the oldest, while esoterists and occultists believe it to be the original, imperfect, model. Both hypotheses are wrong; they are neither the oldest, nor the original model. The card deck known as the Visconti-Sforza Tarot (apart from further historical and archive cataloguing, to which we refer the reade25), is a deck derived from even older Icons, the Marseilles Tarot. We refer to a “faded” copy of a progenitor prototype. Basically, thanks to the contacts between Provence, the Abbey and the Visconti, the images must have arrived by word of mouth or at most, in some altered graphic form, at the court of Milan, leading to the creation of the deck so famous today. However these images may be judged valuable or priceless from an artistic point of view, we can find only a residue of the symbolic Tradition from far earlier; the primitive Tarot, those of Marseilles, bore this Tradition, which is totally absent in these other figures.

  Fig. 6

  Cary Sheet, Yale University

  2.3 From the end of the 1700’s to modern times

  Referring the reader to the final appendix for analysis of the period between the 1600’s and part of the 1700’s, let us view the more recent and much better-known history of the Tarot, from the end of the 1700’s to today.

  We have said that at the end of the XVIII century the Tarot had been assimilated into a game of chance and that their profound significance was no longer recognized. However, in 1781 a bizarre event occurred which, although considered by many only a sham, was rather relevant. This was the year in which the Protestant Pastor Court de Gèbelin, whom we have already mentioned, claimed to have discovered a connection between the game-cards, used for recreational purposes, and ancient Egyptian religion.

  Fig. 7

  Court de Gébelin

  The words of de Gèbelin, a complex and well-known personage of the French cultural environment, had great resonance in intellectual circles and were not considered fanatical or fantastic. This surprising announcement was, in our opinion, his greatest achievement, as in this way the flagging interest regarding the Tarot was re-awakened, focusing the attention of scholars on the philosophic and esoteric sense of these images and reclaiming them from the exclusively and merely profane use to which they had been relegated as a game of chance.

  Consequently, from that time on, the Arcana will be an object of passionate and diversified study, which prepared the terrain, although among deviations and distortions of all sorts, for the comprehension of this new instrument in its progressive development in modern times. After the publication of de Gèbelin’s treatise, we may delineate a conventional subdivision of scholars and occultists of the following decades, into two large Schools: one French, the other Anglo-Saxon, of whom we offer a brief summary.

  The French School

  Between 1783 and 1787, in Amsterdam and Paris, five booklets entitled Manière de se recréer avec un jeu de cartes nommées Tarot (Ways to amuse oneself with a card game called Tarot) were published. They contained instructions on the methods of use of the Tarot in cartomancy, and were written by the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1724-1791), otherwise known by the psuedonym Etteilla (Aliette written backwards).

  Etteilla became a famous cartomancer but also a cult member of the Pythagoriean Cabala so esteemed that he was invited to participate in the reunion of the Order of the Philatelists, the Masonic Lodge who counted amongst its founders, that same Court de Gèbelin. Apart from any technical consideration, we shall remember simply that Etteilla also regarded the Tarot as a magic text dating back to ancient Egypt, which he. as did de Gèbelin, identified with the legendary Book of Thoth. However, because according to him the figures had been completely altered, he decided to restore their (perhaps presumed) original aspect; and circa 1769 published his own deck entitled Livre de Thot, ou Jeu des 78 Tarots Egyptiens (Book of Thoth, or Deck of the 78 Egyptian Tarot).

  Fig. 8

  Jeu des Tarots Egyptiens

  (Deck of Egyptian Tarot)

  Although the use of cards for divinitory purposes was quite ancient, as we are reminded by authors such as Pico della Mirandola,26 these times of which we speak are generally accepted as the dawn of modern cartomancy, that is, of an exclusively divinatory use of the Tarot. A more noble interest on the part of esoterists made itself vividly known only after the printing of the book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (Dogma and Ritual of High Magic), published in Par
is in 1855 and written by the French esoterists Eliphas Levi, pseudonym of Alphonse Louis Constant.

  The interpretation of Levi, although characterized by great intuition, was, briefly: judging the Marseilles Tarot to be exoteric, he redesigned a version, in his opinion esoteric, of certain figures, maintaining only the 22 figures of the Major Arcana to be indispensable. By rejecting the 56 Minoir Arcana, he affirmed with conviction that only the Major had deep significance, to be found through a comparitive study of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Basically, in attempting to explain the Tarot through the Cabala, he was responsable for the aforementioned error which caused so many negative repercussions on the modality of research of future generations.

  Fig. 9

  Eliphas Levi

  Some years later, in 1863, another esoterist, Jean-Baptiste Pitois, published the book L’Homme Rouge des Tuileries (The Red Man of the Tuileries). Little is known about this individual, better known as Paul Christian. Among the thousand contradictions of his multiform religious inclinations, Pitois may be considered a Hermetic scholar, who, while declaring himself Christian, admitted to being attracted by the ancient mystery religions and the magic arts, “because magic is not contrary to wisdom, nor to our religious beliefs.27” This first work of his is characterized by a mixture of three divinatory techniques: astrology, onomancy, and the “78 Hermetic blades”, as he himself termed the Tarot. In a later work of his, Histoire de la Magie (History of Magic), we find a detailed description of a secret rite which, in a distant epoch, was said to have taken place inside the Sphinx of Ghiza, to conclude inside the Pyramid of Cheope. Here the neophytes came in order to know “The Arcana of Destiny”, which represented a first step towards a more elevated knowledge. In this Egyptian context every Arcanum, according to the description of Christian, assumes a precise denomination and is connected to a rigorous description, which may be interpreted as a keyword28. This concept which, not by chance, will be copied and repeated many times, correctly developed and comprehended, is revealed today of capital importance for understanding the true meaning of the Tarot.

  In 1886 a young French poet and cabalist, Stanislas De Guaita, published the book Au Seuil du Mystère (At the Threshold of Mystery). The object of this work was to liberate occultism of mystification and vulgar, witchlike, spiritistic and divinatory practices which had come to characterize it. His purpose was to show the nobility of High Magic and above all the importance of the Tarot as a synthesis of all initiatic knowledge. Despite the modest commercial success of this work, the text awakened an enormous fascination among many contemporary esoterists, among whom the French physician Gèrard Encausse, known as Papus, and the Swiss hypnotist Oswald Wirth. In 1889 in fact, not long before the turn of the century, another book was printed, Clef absolue de la science occulte: Le Tarot des Bohémiens, le plus ancien livre du monde, à l’usage exclusif des initiés (Ultimate key to Occult Science: the Tarot of the Gypsies, the oldest book in the world, for exclusive use by initiates) by Papus.

  Fig. 10

  Clef absolue de la science occulte, Papus

  The fundamental aspect of this study consists in the affirmation that the Tarot are an initiatic pastime brought to the West by the gypsies, or Bohemians. This idea, already put forth by de Gèbelin some hundred years earlier, continued circulating and growing in certain circles. Papus affirms that not only were the Tarot at the root of the Ars Magna of Raimondo Lullo (1235-1316), Spanish philosopher, writer and missionary, one of the most famous in the Europe of his time, but that through them it was possible to understand the mysterious ties between God, man and the universe. In spite of the fact that Papus, as did all preceding occultists, allowed himself to re-create his “own” Tarot (specifically, with Egyptian personages illustrating a Hebrew cabalistic framework), he had great merit all the same. Let his writing speak for him:

  “Most modern occultist writers who have dealt with the Tarot manifest great transport regarding the Major Arcana and an equally intense disdain for the Minor Arcana from which were born card games. There are also many false systems of reading Tarot based only upon the 22 Major Arcana, taking into no account the 56 Minor. This is truly infantile. The Tarot is a marvelous whole.29”

  Fig. 11

  Oswald Wirth

  Dr Encausse, then, differently from Levi, understood a fundamental aspect: the total unity of all 78 images, the 22 Major Arcana and the 56 Minor. This regards another remarkable matter which we will deal with in due tiime. In the 1800-1900’s, another notable representative of the French school was, as already mentioned, Oswald Wirth (1860-1943). Born in German Switzerland, after various sojourns in France and England, in 1884 he affiliated himself with the Great East of France, interesting himself deeply in Masonic symbolism. In 1887 he met De Guaita, who introduced him to the study of the Cabala and the Tarot. Appreciating his artistic capabilities, De Guaita suggested he create a new deck, in order to restore to the cards their “Hieroglyphic purity”, as Eliphas Levi himself had hoped at one time.

  Taking as example the Marseilles Tarot (specifically a Tarot of Besançon) and an Italian deck, Wirth created a new deck, Les XXII Arcanes du Tarot kabbalistique, restitués à leur pureté hiérogliphique sous les indications de Stanislas De Guaita (The XXII Arcana of the Cabalistic Tarot, restored to their hieroglyphic purity by indication of Stanislas De Guaita, Paris, 1889). It was dutiful to give credit to the marquis, because, although he left nothing written regarding the Tarot, it is correct to affirm that the Wirth Arcana were an expression of his teachings. Later, in 1926, Wirth, had a new version of the 22 Arcana printed, entitled Le Tarot des imagiers du Moyen Age (The Tarot of the Illustrators of the Middle Ages), with eleven inserted tables, destined to have considerable editorial success. These Tarot, much appreciated also by Masonic members, are today a frequent object of study for the many various manuals of cartomancy and archetypical symbolism.

  In the 1900’s, another fundamental researcher of the French school, although less known to the public at large, was Joseph Maxwell, who in 1933 wrote a book entitled Le Tarot, le symbole, les arcanes, la divination (The Tarot, the symbol, the Arcana, the Divination).

  Fig. 12

  Le Tarot by Joseph Maxwell

  His merits were numerous, the first being that of declaring, “the Arcana are an optical language and constitute a book written in symbols”. This may appear a secondary affirmation, but it is one of the ultimate keys to understanding the Tarot. After some two centuries of hypotheses and suggestions, someone again began to speak of this matter in a completely new way, favoring the aspects of empirical observation with respect to the the complicated and almost always abstruse occult theories. This is not, however, the only merit of Maxwell who, in fact,was the first to indicate a disposition of the cards (already studied in the XIX century) according to a triple septenary (3x7), with the Fool, numberless, considered apart. “The Fool has no number (...) is therefore outside of the triple septenary numbered from I to XXI; it is, then, outside the Universe of the 3x7.30”

  Although we will consider this last aspect more in detail later, we may affirm even now that Maxwell was overall a fundamental researcher of the history of the Tarot; and seeing that some individuals of our age have appropriated certain of his more notable intuitions, passing them off as their own, we consider it essential to render justice to his thinking and his worthy goals. In the wake of this scholar the French school began a progressive decline and we would not pause longer were it not for an author who had a great, unfortunately negative,impact on the development and use of the Tarot for a good part of the 1900’s: we refer to the Basque, naturalized French, Paul Marteau. This individual, in the book Le Tarot de Marseille (The Marseilles Tarot), analyzed a Marsaillese deck, which he considered the first true esoteric model, explaining its symbolism, features, numbers and colors, following the presumed criteria of Western magic. His principal fault was in considering this deck, now much known to the ge
neral public as the Ancient Marseilles Tarot, to be the ancient deck of Marseilles Tarot which, lost over the centuries, had been rediscovered by him. Recent comparitive studies have demonstrated that it was a deplorable fake. The features and drawings of these cards, are in fact exact reproductions of the Besançon Tarot, published by the editor Grimaud in 1898, who merely reproduced other, former, Besançon Tarot published by Lequart and signed “Arnault 1748.31” Furthurmore, as if this plagiarism were not enough, Marteau also took the liberty of modifying certain details of the original, and conserved only the four basic colors imposed by the typography machines which, in the course of the industrial revolution, had forced printers to modify their methods of the coloration of playing cards. In substance, instead of respecting the more diversified ancient colors of hand-copied cards in re-creating these Tarot, he used only only the 4 colors of a Convers deck published by the editor Camoin in 1880: red, blue, yellow, and very little green. His deck, during the 1900’s, was the source of hundreds of interpretations regarding the symbols, illustrations and colors of these supposedly “authentic” Marseilles Tarot, inspiring generations of aficionados and researchers, totally unknowing of the fact that they were basing their interpretations on a banal and mediocre copy, a result of technical and commercial machinations. It is easy to understand that this episode contributed heavily towards to the increase of an already widespread lack of knowledge regarding the Tarot. In fact, if a large number of scholars and cartomacers were “formed” by, or yet still practice with and study on these cards and their presumed meanings, how may we give credit, even in good faith, to their technical preparation?