Fig. 13
Lequart Arnoult Edition 1748
Fig. 14
Conver Edition 1880
Fig. 15
Ancient Marseilles Tarot - Paul Marteau
The Anglo-Saxon School
In most other European countries, no great effort was made towards a fuller understanding of the Tarot. At least, we can find no figures of equal fame prestige founded or unfounded (and that itself is another matter) as in the French school, as it was called. The only other society to evince a deep interest in the subject, and continues to do so today, is the Anglo-Saxon.
The pioneer of this current of thought, Kenneth Mackenzie, was an English Mason, member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA). Thanks to a letter written in 1887 to his friend and brother Mason Francis G. Irwin, regarding instructions received from Eliphas Levi “for working with the Tarot”, we know that he associated with Eliphas Levi in 1861, during the French occultist’s second trip to England. In another letter in 1879, this time to Dr William W. Westcott, also a member of the SRIA, he wrote that he did not wish to communicate his “Tarot system” indiscriminately because “it might become a dangerous weapon in the hands of persons less scrupulous than myself.32”
From his writings we learn that he collected numerous notes on the Tarot and planned a work, never published, entitled The Game of Tarot, Archaeologically and Symbolically Considered, containing 78 illustrations. Although it was never published, we know that Mackenzie showed the project of the work, “as a curiosity”, to Brother Mathers. It is precisely with this last eccentric personage that the history of the study of the Arcana in the Anglo-Saxon world really began.
In 1888 Samuel Liddel Mathers published the first English volume dealing with the Tarot, a simple small manual of cartomancy, entitled Fortune-telling Cards. The Tarots, Its Occult Significance and Method of Play. The information was taken from de Gèbelin and from the deck The Great Etteilla by Julia Orsini, reworked with various notes gathered from Levi and legends of Egyptian initiatic ceremonies narrated by Pitois. Here are some of Mathers’ affirmations in appendix to the booklet:
“This is the hieroglyphic alphabet which Moses made the great secret of his Cabala (…) it is the famous Book of Thoth (…), preserved until the present epoch in the form of that particular deck of cards called Tarot (…).”
These very decided affirmations of Mathers give only an idea of his opinion regarding the Tarot. His thoughts, in effect, will emerge only following the foundation of a new esoteric organization, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. For the members of this institution, which gathered many adepts (including the Irish poet William Butler Yeats) in the UK, in France, and later, in the United States, the Tarot had a fundamental role.
The Golden Dawn gathered, in fact, numerous manuscripts, the so-called Flying Rolls, composed by various acolytes and put at the disposition of the other members for the learning of the diverse occult and magic disciplines. Among these rolls, which actually constituted a course of esoteric studies, there was one of particular interest to us, the so-called Liber T, a treatise attributed almost certainly only to Mathers.
This volume, which already in its title refers to the ancient Egyptian manuscript so often cited by the occultists of centuries past, was a crucial text of which the initiates of the Order were required to know all the secret attributes, theoretical and practical. Among the various scholars, we will mention two who had a more than substantial role in the XIX century history of the Tarot: Aleister Crowley and Arthur Edward Waite.
The first, an unusual individual, according many depraved, for others a black wizard, defined himself “the most sublime mystic in history, the Word of a new Eon, the Beast, the 666 Man, the self-crowned king that men must adore and curse.”
Fig. 16
The Fool - Alister Crowley
His name, after his death in 1947, was forgotten for a long time, to be rediscovered at the end of the seventies by the hippy generation and raised to the status of prophet of a new era based on free love... It is not our intention to dwell upon his fantastical life and on his more than original and not always shareable thoughts, because that which interests us is only his role in the history of the Tarot. Crowley, in 1907, after a series of vicissitudes and personal tragedies, founded the Argentum Astrum, a magic brotherhood which he intended to replace the aforementioned Golden Dawn. In 1912, he published the first volume of The Equinox of the Gods, a magazine divulgating instructions for his disciples, in which he furnished a detailed description of the 78 Arcana. Actually, it was not an original study of his, but a plaigiarism of the Liber T of Mathers, of which we wrote above.
Around 1935, the painter Frieda Harris, wife of a Member of Parliament, entered the organization. The meeting with the artist permitted Crowley to realize a long-time dream of his: the two together created the illustrations of The Book of Thoth Tarot, published for the first time in London in 1944 in a black and white version, which was reprinted in the 70’s in the graphic colour version more familiar today.
In this manner, the interest for the Tarot migrated from England to the United States, thanks to the Golden Dawn and its two best-known affiliates, Aleister Crowley and Arthur Waite. This last is remembered above all for the Rider-Waite Tarot, the work that gave him lasting fame. A few of his affirmations:
“The Tarot incarnates the symbolic representation of universal ideas (…), and it is in this sense that it contains a Secret Doctrine (…) handed down from one of the chosen to another and which is vouched for by mysterious literature such as that of Alchemy and Cabala; it is inherent also in certain mysterious Institutions of which the Rosacrucians are an example near to us, and of which the Masonic Guild is a living example. (…) I do not mean to suggest that the Tarot is the figured expression of the secret doctrine, nor that it was followed by the Hermetic philosophers; but it is notable in that it is the first expression of this art.33”
“There is an explanation of the Major Triumphs through that combination of the figures which belongs to the highest order of Spiritual Truth; it is not occult but mystic; it is not possible to communicate it because it lies inside its own Sanctuary.(…) If we attempt individually to define the highest meanings conceivable in a state of meditation, then combine the message , modifying their formulations until the entire series is led to harmony, the result may be something absolutely valid in itself, and therefore true. We are speaking especially of the Major Triumphs. In conclusion, we must understand that we are simply working with painted figures; but the modality of the mystical goes beyond figured mental portrayals: it is behind the kaleidoscope of external things that the Silent Light may rise inside the mind, in that state of purity that is the Life of the Soul in God.34”
Fig. 17
The Fool, Rider-Waite Tarot
From these writings, we may appreciate the greatness of the scholar, fully aware of a mystical function of the Tarot, but unfortunately, of his deck, the aforementioned Rider-Waite Tarot, we cannot say the same.
It is, in fact, a deck lacking a real objective esoteric component, and which barely conserves, as do all of the decks described up to now, only vague symbolic traces confirming the basic Coded Structure. This lapidary statement will be motivated in detail.
In concluding this research of ours, which does not claim to treat fully all of the events of the complex history of these images, we will merely mention that regarding approximately the last two centuries, attention has been concentrated only upon the two principal currents of study and the accent has been exclusively on the occult and esoterical aspects of the Tarot. This is not meant to imply that there have not been other researchers of note, dedicated to other branches, nor that the approach to the Tarot has always been of an exclusively esoteric sort.
Regarding the first consideration, we might cite, among thousands of scholars, several names quite famous in Western culture, such as Peter D. Ousp
ensky, who wrote extensively of the Tarot in the volumes A New Model for the Universe and The Symbolism of the Tarot and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who mentioned them frequently in her Secret Doctrine. Concerning instead other sorts of approaches, such as the artistic, we prefer to refer the reader to publications specialized in the subject. Our point of view, in fact, which considers the cards Iconic bearers of Wisdom, would be unable to describe the manner in which this modality of orientation, thanks to its infinite and various nuances, may have contributed to enrich in general, but under other perspectives, the subject of Tarot.
2.4 The Great Error
At this point, wishing to point out one of the principal traits which dominated the investigation of the Tarot in the course of recent history, we might say that almost all researchers made, more or less artlessly, the same mistake. As we have seen, most scholars hypothesized that these images had an ancient origin, and in the long list of hypothetical characteristics, there were those who connected them to the Book of Thoth of ancient Egypt, to the Hebrew Cabala, to Gypsy fortune-telling, and so on. In substance, based on these conjectures, esoterists maintained that the Renaissance Visconti Tarot, the most ancient known today, were none other than the most recent echo of a remote tradition of which they conserved only an imperfect memory, but to which because of the lack of direct provable ties, it was not possible to trace them. What to do, then, if these cards from the 1500’s were inadequate for expressing a deeper sense? Convinced that their knowledge was enough to guarantee an integral restoration of the meaning of the Arcana, they all took the same path:
They redesigned the Tarot according to their own personal visions!
For this reason, each one wrote a text, commenting his own ideas and theories, using as analysis model the re-created and perfected deck. If, to these Tarot with more esoteric characteristics, we add the infinite number of decks produced for other motives, as those for artistic or for recreative purposes, the reason is clear for which the quantity of decks published, especially in the last two centuries, has been, and today still is, so copious, reaching an impressive number of editions. Referring specifically to the Tarot decks created by the more famous authors of the 1700’s to the 1900’s we may say that the drawings of these cards express their perspective, their moral prejudices, their personal convictions on the world.
Each has modified the original plan of the Tarot in favour of a subjective representation, committing an act of free will, but not to the good. Every authentic tradition, by definition, transmits an objective message which must prove to be far from any individual interpretation. Therefore why did these scholars commit such an abuse? Why did they violate a balanced and impartial knowledge in favour of a personal and private vision? Were they all in bad faith? The answer is quite simple: they were unaware of the existence of the Coded Structure which, once comprehended, allows the revelation of the true sense of the Tarot.
If this framework were unknown, not only did it not represent the factor of orientaton of their research, but neither did they consider it in designing their decks… For this reason, in all the decks of different creators who followed one upon the other in the course of the epochs, and more generally in all those designed for the most varied needs, any system at all of codified reference is totally lacking. This Structure, which explains the meaning of the Tarot, their function and the correct manner in which to utilize them, even in the known practice of interpretation, is to be found, in its completest form of perfection, only in the deck of Nicolas Conver, French cardmaker of the 1700’s, who engraved a deck belonging to the so-called Marseilles Tarot (a detailed description of this group may be found in the Appendices).
Nicolas Conver
Nicolas Conver, who founded the manufactory35 which bears his name, created his Tarot deck in 1760. He had been named “Master of Cards in Marseilles, engraver at the court of the King”, which, in his epoch, put him at the top of his category. Scholars agree that the features engraved by Nicolas Conver on the blocks in pear wood used in those times for printing the Tarot decks, even though subject to the limits and errors of woodwork, are the highest exmple of perfection ever reached. In fact, these cards, in the centuries to come, will be used for numerous reprintings and re-editions by various publishing houses.
Fig. 18
The World, Conver edition of 1760 - editor Heron
In any case these later publications, although not substituting the matrices and therefore safeguarding the features, made many alterations and modifications to the colors. This was owing to the fact that every change in the technique of fabrication caused inevitable variations. From 1760 to 1880, the Conver Tarot were painted with colored stencils (the pochoirs), a method of coloring by hand in which the color passes through sections of the surface of the material (cardboard or metal) of the stencil cut-out. With this sort of production, once in widespread use above all in France, in many varied sectors of graphics, one painted onto the stencil, but the color passed onto the material below in the shape of the image desired. Thus there were stencils for yellow, for dark blue, light blue, one for red, etc, and the technique allowed the reproduction of a rather large number of colors. stencils, though, subject to wear, were changed fairly often, creating problems for later reproductions.
In 1880, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the transformation of methods of printing, the original tints were simplified, as the machines allowed a more limited number than were to be found on the earlier, handcrafted cards. Thus, in the new editions, tied to this sort of production in an effort to optimize the costs of a great number of decks, there remained only red, blue, yellow and flesh-tone36; green and light blue disappeared and much was subverted, including the allocation and the disposition of the remaining colors. This led to the creation of an edition of total fantasy, fashioned according to the necessities of the new manner of production, which was substituted by the more innovative offset machines only after the second half of the XX century. These last, although printing in quadrichromic thanks to a system of rollers, allows the possibility to print all the tonalities.
However it may be, apart from these vicissitudes, in the last century the Tarot have awakened an ever-growing interest, inducing researchers to formulate more serious questions, in particular regarding the Marseilles variety. They have (naturally, we think) directed much attention and investigation to the deck of Nicolas Convers, whose version most respectful of the original coloring has always been the one in blue, light blue, green, pink, yellow and red.
Unfortunately, in the various editions of these images, one of which is conserved in the Paris National Library, the colors have changed, losing the brilliance and the original tonalities and, simultaneously there has been a total disappearance of certain nuances present at the time of printing with the pochoirs, for example, the lighter and darker shades of green and yellow.
Despite all, these illustrations are to be considered the maximum model of perfection reached in the more recent history of the Tarot and although some alchemical symbols needed slight graphic re-elaboration, the relationship with the Coded Structure forms an nearly impeccable whole.
Nicolas Conver in fact, having recuperated, thanks to his former masters, the initiatic tradition of the Marseiles Tarot, re-established it by reintegrating the codification of the colors, the numbers and the symbols. This tradition, until 1631, the year of the liberalization by King Louis XIII of the printing of playing cards, forbidden until then, had been handed down by a confraternity which, manufacturing the cards illegally, conserved its secret.
The considerable increase in production, a consequence of this decree,with the appearance of dozens of decks lacking the authentic tradition, generated a definitive loss of the true initiatic message. This is also the reason for which the decks that have come down to us are so many but are all from the mid-1600’s on...
Therefore, Conver’s deck may be considered the continuation of an original source;
and its recovery, implemented by the author, allows us to fully use again this metaphysical instrument known as Tarot. The reader will find the technical explanation of this restoration in the Appendix.
Footnotes - Chapter 2
11 At least until the XV century it was assumed that the gypsies came from Egypt. Today they are more popularly thought to be of Indian extraction.
12 Jacopo da Varazze, or da Varagine, was born in 1228 and became a Dominican friar and later, Archbishop of Genoa. He was the author of the Legenda aurea (the Golden Legend). This text, a reference for many painters of sacred art, gives information and details relative to the lives of the Saints and evangelical episodes.
13 Monuments inédits sur l’apostolat de Sainte Marie-Madeleine en Provence, et sur les autres apotres de cette contrée: Saint Lazare, Saint Maximin, Sain Marthe (Unknown shrines of the apostolate of Saint Mary Magdalen in Provence and of the other apostolates of this region: Saint Lazarus, Saint Maximin, and Saint Martha). Published by Abbot Migne, editor of the Universal Clerical Library, France 1865.
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