...Reviews of a few Tarot decks at the philosophical heart of Christine's
collection.
Tarot ArkLetter 1
Deck Reviews:
Rider Waite Tarot
Stairs of Gold Tarot
Tarot of the Stars
Ibis Tarot
Oswald Wirth Tarot
Marseilles Tarot
Medieval Scapini Tarot
Etteilla Tarot
Tarot Esoterico
Pierpont Sforza Tarot
Dali Universal Tarot
This is the deck, quite modern
though it is, that most of America thinks of as "traditional Tarot."
The designer was A. E. Waite, the artist was Pamela Coleman Smith, and
it was first published in 1910. A perusal of my essay on the Major
Arcana will serve to create perspective about this Tarot's place in
the historical stream. Being the archetype of modern Tarot, it serves
admirably as a stand-in for many decks which have drawn inspiration
from the English School.
The Royal Fez Moroccan Tarot looks very
much like the Waite Tarot, although it is just as amenable to being
used with the Spanish correspondences of Dali's Tarot as with the
English system. The uncolored Builders of the Adytum Tarot is another
variant. Wang's Golden Dawn Tarot, Dowson's Hermetic Tarot, the lovely
Tarot of the Spirit by Joyce and Pamela Eakins, the Thoth Tarot, and
more utilize the same astro-alphanumeric correspondences as the Waite.
Even decks which were not intending to follow the English School will
show its influence, due to its enormous popularity.
Be aware
that, due to my career-long concentration upon the older decks from
Europe , the descriptions of the cards which you will encounter in
future Arcletters will sometimes not correspond exactly with the
standard meanings that modern packs have take up from the Waite-Smith
Tarot. Tension between the earliest decks and the modern "tradition" is
inevitable with a Tarot as divergent from the historical precedent as
this one truly is. I have made it a habit over all these years to
crosscheck the Little White Books from all contemporary Tarots with
those of the Marseilles, Etteilla, and St. Germaine tarots, so I can
adjust my sense of the cards back to their historical roots. This has
produced the sensibility that registers to the reader as my “bias”,
woven throughout my work on Tarot.
Stairs of Gold Tarot
The Stairs of Gold Tarot is a
lovely and esoterically rich pack by Giorgio M. S. Tavaglione, a modern
Italian one-man Tarot renaissance. All of his Tarot decks were
published in the early 1970's. The Stairs of Gold Tarot stands out
among his others ( Porta della Stelle, the Enoil Gavat, and the
Sybiline deck) because it illustrates the richness of correspondences
built into the Tarot canon during the Renaissance.
This pack
contains the copious symbolism integrated into his designs,
particularly the Kabbalistic and Angelic information found on each
card. The Stairs of Gold Tarot provides a wonderful hand-lettered
booklet in English, detailing a wealth of traditional correspondences
including the Hebrew spelling and zodiacal degrees of the
Shemhamemphoresh -- the 72 Angels of the Zodiac.
One peculiarity
of Tavaglione’s decks is his enjoyment of the beauty of the human
figure, especially women. In this pack, the emphasis is mostly on the
beauty of the women, but in Tarot of the Stars (below), he develops his
appreciation for male beauty as well. One might characterize his
sensibility as “heroic”, which, along with his liberal use of golden
frames for the face-cards, creates a kind of visual optimism the reader
can use to advantage in a reading.
This Tarot is still in
print and available in America. Of Tavaglione's decks, both the Stairs
of Gold and the Porta Celeste; I Tarocchi delle Stelle, represent his
mature command of the European Esoteric astro-alphanumeric
correspondences. As such, this Tarot is identical with Papus, Wirth,
and Cagliostro -- all conforming with the scholarship of Eliphas Levi.
Happily, all this tradition and scholarship is overlaid with the lush
sensibility and intuitive insight of this unsung (in America) Tarot
prodigy.
The Porta Celeste; I Tarocchi
delle Stelle (or Tarot of the Stars) is a beautiful and esoterically
rich pack, being the fourth awe-inspiring Tarot by Giorgio M. S.
Tavaglione, a modern Italian one-man Tarot renaissance. All of his
Tarot decks were published in the early 1970's. The Tarot of the Stars
stands out among his others (the Stairs of Gold, Enoil Gavat, and the
Sybiline) because it provides the mainstream Continental Tarots with
an answer to the fully-illustrated packs of the English-model packs
that so proliferate today.
The Tarot of the Stars has pictures
on every card, a preference of many contemporary Tarot users. This
pack also contains copious symbolism integrated into his designs,
particularly the astronomical information illustrated above each
image. The main difficulties with this Tarot are that it is out of
print right now, and all the support materials are written in an
archaic Italian dialect, very difficult to translate because it is
loaded with magical and alchemical double entendres.
Tavaglione's
Stairs of Gold Tarot fills in the missing pieces, providing a wonderful
hand-lettered booklet in English (from which we have taken the
descriptions of the individual cards in both decks) detailing a wealth
of traditional correspondences including the Hebrew spelling and
zodiacal degrees of the Shemhamemphoresh -- the 72 Angels of the
Zodiac.
The art of the Tarot of the Stars is rightfully classed
as “comic-book style”, and is sometimes extremely inventive to make its
point. Witness the 6 of cups, wherein the protagonist is both male and
female, both naked and dressed, both looking back and stepping forward
across the stream of time simultaneously – symbolizing the
linked-opposite meanings of “past” and “future” quite excellently. This
deck makes more blatant magical and alchemical references than any of
his others (in what looks like a nod to the Thoth Tarot), but it also
ties the divinatory meanings even closer to the Continental tarot
tradition.
Of Tavaglione's decks, these two represent his
mature command of the European Esoteric astro-alphanumeric
correspondences. As such, this Tarot is identical with Papus, Wirth,
and Cagliostro -- all conforming with the scholarship of Eliphas Levi.
Happily, all this tradition and scholarship is overlaid with the lush
sensibility and intuitive insight of this unsung (in America) Tarot
prodigy.
We include this Tarot not only
on its own merits, but also because it represents the lineage of
Egyptian-style, which seem to be woven into the skeletal structure of
European Tarot images and conceptions. The historical stream of images
which make up the Major Arcana shows that the prototype of this Tarot,
which was more likely a manuscript than a formal deck of cards, was
probably the "Egyptian Book of Thoth" that de Gebelin and de Mellet
were lauding in their publication Le Monde Primitif,(pub. 1781).
This
same manuscript, attributed to Iamblichus but more likely having a
later pedigree (which may or may not have possessed pictures) is the
standard against which the Marseilles family of decks was corrected in
the mid 1660's (essay on The Major Arcana). We can even see its
influence on the Lovers and the Devil of the Etteilla family of decks,
despite the fact that the Etteilla were made to represent a Greek
expression of the Alphanumeric Gnosis.
The first public printing
of a deck from this lineage was called the Falconneier/Wegener Tarot of
1896. Although it did not remain long in print, the
currently-available St. Germaine Tarot is reputed to be nearly
identical. The Sacred Tarot from the Brotherhood of Light is also
quite similar, although C. C. Zain reorganized the astrology to suit
his course on Medical Astrology. The Egypcios Kier has Alexandrian
Major Arcana, as does the Cagliostro Tarot, although the Kier is
organized around Greek numerology rather than the Hebrew.
The
Baraja Egipcia Tarot, made in Mexico (no date; see Kaplan's
Encyclopedia, vol. I, p.236), is also related to the Ibis. The author
of the Ibis Tarot, Josef Machynka claims to have studied them all to
come up with the "definitive" Egyptian-style Tarot, and I for one think
he did a magnificent job. The Minor Arcana are particularly brilliant,
because they provide elementally-keyed color and lively scenes of
nature as backdrop to the traditionally plain geometric formations of
suit-symbols. The astro-alphanumeric correspondences on these major
Arcana align with what I call the "Old Alexandrian" pattern, before the
subtle reforms of Levi.
The Oswald Wirth Tarot is the
product of a remarkable confluence of mystical insight and esoteric
scholarship, embodied in the persons of Oswald Wirth and Stanislas de
Guaita. Both men were French esotericists of the late 1800's and early
1900's, students of Levi and peers with him; de Guaita followed in
Levi's footsteps as Supreme Grand Master of the Fraternitas. The book
accompanying this Tarot is a masterpiece, even translated into English.
The
title, unfortunately, does not resonate in translation. The original
could more accurately be read as "Tarot of the Image-makers of the
Middle Ages." Citing the icon-making craft so common throughout
Europe in the epochs before the invention of wood engraving, this Tarot
proposes to embody the esoteric tradition inherited from Alexandrian
culture, through the Kabbalists, the Alchemists, the Iconographers,
the Gnostics, eventually becoming the Tarot in Italy.
Tarot
Magic highlights this line of descent in the accompanying chapters on
the bookshelf, and this Tarot can be viewed as the distillation of this
illustrious lineage, assembled in the heady years of the late 1800's,
but unpublished until 1927. This Tarot is the product of mature
contemplation and a refined Continental sensibility. The golden
background is unfailingly optimistic and the deck is uniquely
representative of the French Esoteric tradition at its historical peak.
The Marseilles Tarot, the
Spanish edition of which was published in 1736, is one which present
scholars most often think of when discussing "traditional" Tarot
decks. But in truth, it emerged in Paris in the middle of the 1600's
with the Jean Noblet Tarot, rather late in the game to be called a
"root" deck. However, it does epitomize an entire stream of decks
which took their form in the response to the so-called "Iamblichan"
document called On An Egyptian Initiation, (later associated with the
Fratres Lucis) For a detailed treatment of this manuscript and its
impact, see the essay on The Continental Tarot decks, the review of
the Ibis Tarot, and Dr. Keizer's chapter on Esoteric Tarot. This
version of the Marseilles represents a number of similar decks.
A
few Tarot decks made an adjustment to the Marseilles Arcana in the
lead-up to the French Revolution, as in the Marseillaise Tarot by
Arnoult, 1748. In those, the Empress and the Emperor are replaced with
Juno and Jove, but otherwise the decks are the same. We have chosen
the Spanish Marseilles to represent the entire lineage, because of its
more beautiful coloration. It was published in 1975, but was based on
the classical Italian-Piedmontese tarot of Giusep Ottone of 1736,
(says the entry in the Fournier Playing Cards encyclopedia.)
The Medieval Scapini Tarot is a
modern creation by the eminent Tarot artist Luigi Scapini. This is the
man who in the 1980's was entrusted with the challenging task of
restoring the missing cards from several of our earliest extant Tarot
decks, one of which appears in the Tarot Magic lineup -- the
Visconti-Sforza Tarot. His self-portrait can be seen upon the Eight of
Coins, along with his wife and their first daughter, surrounded by
portraits of the seven Planetary Major Arcana, each labeled to show
their correspondences. In this way Scapini declares his esoteric
affiliation with the Continental decks, despite the lack of
astro-alphanumeric symbolism on his Major Arcana.
What is
visible on this Tarot is the insightful wit and knowledge of detail
that marks a Renaissance mind. It is clear that Scapini is not just
parroting received wisdom about historical Tarot. He has investigated
the history, politics, and pivotal characters of the Renaissance,
capturing it all in his slightly-hallucinated style. His Major Arcana
are masterworks on their own, displaying the iconographic sensibility
of the late Middle Ages. There is much to learn by studying the
detail in his images, drawn as they are from the rich milieu of
Italian court life, and infused with the spirit and the controversies
of the times. Scapini's other Tarot, the Romeo and Juliet deck, extends
his range into the esotericism associated with Shakespeare's Globe
Theater, drawing imagery from the many plays and characters created by
the Bard.
The Grand Etteilla Tarot was
first published at the end of the eighteenth century by a Frenchman
named Alliette (which backwards spells "Etteilla"). An ardent follower
of Court de Gebelin. Alliette was apparently an active, popular, and
respected person within the system of Lodges that linked the Masons,
Rosicrucians, and other esoteric Orders of Europe (see the essay on
The Continental Tarot decks.) In a departure from previous decks,
Alliette shows the first twelve Major Arcana (according to his own
unique numeration system) with the symbols of zodiacal signs on them.
This
deck was subsequently published in different countries by different
houses, and the alpha-numeric correspondences on the cards became
jumbled. Stuart Kaplan has published a list of Correspondences for the
Etteilla Major Arcana which matches nearly identically with the ones
that Levi and the Martinists used in the following century (see essay
on The French School.) They follow what I have identified as the "old
Alexandrian" correspondences (see Chart in the Continental Tarot
article.)
Recent research shows that in making the departures
that he did with the Major Arcana, Alliette was drawing from Hermetic
book, the Poimandres, a treatise on the creation of the world from a
Greek rather than a Hebrew perspective. This becomes his basis for
picturing and reordering the Arcana in a way unusual to other Tarot
decks of his times. (See A Wicked Pack of Cards by Dumett et. al.)
Alliette
must have been doing something right, because this Tarot became the
most famous in France from its inception. An offshoot, the Catalan
Tarot, became the first 78-card Tarot deck published in Spain, in
1900, according to the Fournier Playing Card Encyclopedia.
Etteilla-style decks became more ornate in the 19th century (see
Kaplan's Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p.140-144; also Vol. II, p. 398-410).
In Italy, the Cartomancia Italiana (a modern reproduction of a 19th
century fortune-telling deck) was the homegrown response to Etteilla,
and it has done us the service of unscrambling the order of the
Arcana, and giving them back their more usual titles. The version which
Tarot Magic showcases is the Grimaud Etteilla Tarot, first published
in 1890. A more thorough exploration of the variant images belonging
to this family of decks, along with their esoteric explanations, is
long overdue.
El Gran Tarot Esoterico was
published in the mid-20th century, making it a latecomer in the
birth-order of decks, but its presence in this list is essential.
There is only one "esoteric" Tarot available today which matches
with what Hebrew scholars assert were the most probable
astro-alphanumeric correspondences the Hebrew nation associated with
their sacred book the Sephir Yetzirah. El Gran Tarot Esoterico is the
deck which represents these correspondences. (There is another called
The Tarot of the Ages, which also repeats these correspondences on its
Egyptian-Style Major Arcana, but the Minor Arcana are not "esoteric"
according to our definition. It is, however, a fine Tarot for
divination as the four suits each represent the different races and
cultures of the ancient world.)
The Esoterico includes amazing
visual details which refer the user to goddess-based cultures that
came before the triumph of monotheism. One scholarly source for
applicable commentary on the imagery in the Esoterico Tarot is Raphael
Patai's groundbreaking work The Hebrew Goddess. Esoterico's Minor
Arcana are faithful to a pack described by Eudes Picard in 1907, and
the Majors show their origins in the Marseilles stream, although with
many fascinating divergences. It's pedigree as the Tarot commissioned
by the venerable playing-card publisher Fournier on the 600th
anniversary of Tarot in Europe, as well as the renown of its author,
Marixtu Guler, make it essential for the esoteric Tarot collector to
possess. There will also be readers who find that its spare,
evocative, and intensely magical images are the perfect antidote to the
modern excess of symbol-overkill.
The Pierpont Morgan-Bergamo
Visconti-Sforza Deck is the oldest Tarot in this collection
chronologically. It is standing for the handmade and woodblock decks
which first appeared in Europe in the late 1300's and the early
1400's. We have all but two of the Major Arcana from this deck intact,
and the brilliant artist Scapini has supplied us with substitutes
which complete the deck for use.
Not only is this Tarot
incredibly beautiful, but it suggests that from the first, the 78-card
form was known and used, although other packs had more or fewer,
depending upon the game one was to play with them. I take this to be a
sign that even in the late 1400's, there was a fairly firm collective
assumption in place about the template from which the varying
different Tarot versions were struck. The Pierpont Sforza Tarot does
not show Hebrew letters, numbers, astrology, or titles printed upon
them, which after the 1700's define the esoteric decks for us.
Nevertheless, these earliest decks demonstrate a depth of associations
that leave the question of infiltration from Gnostic, Free Spirit,
Grail Quest, classical mythology and Image-Magic considerations open
for futher speculation.
In the centuries between 1100 and the
late 1400’s, a multipronged challenge to both the Christian and Hebrew
standard canon infiltrated into churches, synagogues, mosques and
Lodges in Germany, southern France, and Northern Italy. This challenge
filtered into European society along many different vectors, including
trends in art, Church teachings, the Crusades, and guild traditions.
The mixing and cross-pollination was driven by interfamily religious
synchretism, migrations from Africa and the Middle East, and the
contingencies of cultural war. This Tarot and its variants continues
to raise a wealth of questions due to the multiple valences which can
be read into its ostensibly-Christian surface.
The Dali Tarot is a modern deck
representing a tradition originating in Spain, presumably during the
last decades of the 1800's. The historical sources which help us type
this Tarot are found in The Encyclopedia of Occult Sciences, with
introduction by M. C. Poinsot, published by Tudor Pub. Co. in 1939.
Within it are excerpts from several Tarot and magical manuals from the
earliest 1900's, detailing Spanish Tarot traditions which mirror or are
variants of the pattern demonstrated on the Dali Tarot. In the
aforementioned volume, a table is shown from a book by Pierre Piobb,
outlining Hebrew letters, numerical values, usual meanings, titles
(according to the Alexandrian/Hermetic, Egyptian-style decks first
publicly exemplified in the late 1800's in the Falconnier Tarot,) and
zodiacal and planetary correspondences which exactly match the Dali
Tarot pattern. The Euskalherria Tarot, a wonderful modern
Basque-inflected Spanish Tarot by Marixtu Guler also carries these
correspondences, which adds to the reasons we should be investigating
this Lineage.
Dali, of course, takes the traditional Arcana to
another dimension, introducing visual ideas which occasionally
illuminate and occasionally confound the older sense of any given
Arcanum. His art is distinctly hallucinated, showing ectoplasmic
entities and breakthroughs between visible and invisible dimensions.
The deck is obviously informed by some type of Magical or shamanistic
experiences. The imagery, especially that of the Minor Arcana, also
reflects close association with the Royal Fez Moroccan Tarot, another
modern pack with historical associations. More information can be
gained about Dali's Arcana by consulting Rachael Pollack's little
volume about this Tarot, entitled Salvador Dali's Tarot.
*Christine Payne-Towler*
Research: Esoteric Tarot, Literature and Practice;
Bishop, Gnostic Church of St. Mary Magdalene
Founder: Tarot University;
Author: The Underground Stream;
The Tarot ArkLetters are a publication of Christine Payne-Towler, founder of Tarot University Online. Christine offers classes, readings, and private sessions.
*copyright 2005 christine payne-towler all rights reserved*
I have 72 images which can induce the 72 Shemhamemphoresh spirits or forces in a safe way. I have been experimenting with them for 11 years. I am very sensitive to magnetic field changes around me and have used this ability to fine tune color,image and thought. I have come up with something so simple yet so powerful. By using the images I have been able to induce for ex. Mahashiah and laylahel by using Jupiter in Aries and contacted the Mother force of Laylael and the Father force of Mahashiah. Laylael felt hidden, yet moving good things behind the scenes. Mahashiah was extrovert like and relied on the workings of Leylael. I felt the concepts of fame and fortune in Laylael but in a hidden and underhanded way. to make things short it felt like a command that can not be disobeyed. I know I can go deeper, but i am touching the others on the surface. It feels good to sense these forces, i have never felt like king as when sol in Aries. I felt gold and good luck. Mars in Aries gave me a feeling of fearlessness. I know that if I had someone to direct my experiments to and if questions were directed at me about them I would be able to induce them within me, then project them infront of me and receive a response. Any way I am developing these acrds/images that will make it easier for others to contact these forces in a safe way. I believe this is revolutionary. Thanks for listening.
Posted by: Luis Matos | Saturday, 07 April 2007 at 07:43 PM
Fascinating, Luis!
The question is, how do other people get access to these images? Do you have them on a website somewhere, or are they personal and private to you? Where did they come from?
Readers, all you have to do is click on Luis' name (above), and an e-mail will be generated that will be sent back to him. It sounds to me like an invitation is being extended for people to help Luis deepen his connection to the Shem Angels. Would anybody like to help him?
By the way, a friend sent in a link to a set of seals that are purported to be the "dark side" of the Shem Angels. You'll find them at the end of this article:
http://www.tarot.org.il/Seventy%20Two/
As the author states there, these were included for completeness, not to recommend them for modern use!
Thanks for your contribution Luis. These Shem Angels represent a long-forgotten tool of consciousness that moderns could use to tap into our astral inheritance.
Christine
Posted by: Christine | Sunday, 15 April 2007 at 06:06 PM