AUTHOR'S NOTE: With the numbers One through Ten, Papus (Gerard Encausse) found major inspiration in the quaternary paradigm, by which he managed to turn ten "pips" into a triad of four-card arrays. (See my previous essay.) With the trump cards he adopted a septenary model instead, and strove to bring the two onto the same … Continue reading Papus and the Trump-Card Septenaries
Historical Tarot
Papus and the “Formula of Tetragrammaton”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In The Tarot of the Bohemians, Gerard Encausse (aka "Papus") spends the first 20% of the book playing with the numerology of the cards and relating them to the four Hebrew letters of the "ineffable Name of God" (euphemized as "Tetragrammaton"). Papus stacked up the trump cards in "quaternaries" (four-card sets) following the … Continue reading Papus and the “Formula of Tetragrammaton”
“Midnight Dew and Golden Sunflakes”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In 1962, Canadian folksinger Bonnie Dobson wrote and recorded Morning Dew, an anti-war song in which the "dew" was nuclear fallout. In this essay, the analogous but hardly-as-lethal condensation is the "midnight dew" shed by the Moon in the Tarot de Marseille card of that name. In 1969, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd … Continue reading “Midnight Dew and Golden Sunflakes”
Last Waltz: The Universe and Beyond
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The World card of the tarot (aka "the Universe" in the Thoth and other esoteric decks) prompts endless questions from beginners who are not yet versed in its symbolism. Is it in fact a "good" card that portends success for the seeker because it displays a dancing woman who seems serene and utterly … Continue reading Last Waltz: The Universe and Beyond
Rolling Back the Golden Dawn’s Syllabus
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've known for some time that those who prefer classical decks like the Tarot de Marseille to the esoteric reveries of the post-Occult Revival don't subscribe to the conflation of Hebrew letters and trump cards in general, and particularly not to the model proposed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Rather … Continue reading Rolling Back the Golden Dawn’s Syllabus
The Tarot of the Bohemians: First Thoughts
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Now that I've finished Sallie Nichols' Tarot and the Archetypal Journey I'm setting off in an entirely different direction, having just begun reading The Tarot of the Bohemians (third edition) by Gerard Encausse (aka "Papus"), which will surely generate as many brief essays as the former work. I'm only part-way through the preface … Continue reading The Tarot of the Bohemians: First Thoughts
“Teach It To Talk”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: These four words jumped out at me from Sallie Nichols' text in Tarot and the Archetypal Journey as a perfect summary of how we must engage with the tarot if we're going to get the most out of its metaphysical abstractions. Tarot is a language but it isn't necessarily one with which we're … Continue reading “Teach It To Talk”
Revisiting the Tirage en Croix: “Hold the Woo!”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The excellent tirage en croix (aka "French Cross") spread originated in Continental Europe and it offers an ideal alternative to the modern three-card and five-card line. It is a straightforward predictive layout that I understand was developed by Swiss occultist Oswald Wirth. I recently came across a description of it on the r/tarot … Continue reading Revisiting the Tirage en Croix: “Hold the Woo!”
“. . . By Any Other Name . . .”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Current divination culture shuns as unethical any attempt to forecast the death of an individual, even when it is clearly imminent due to a terminal illness. (After all, it doesn't make sense for amateurs to overstep the legal and professional bounds of a medical diagnosis.) The final "moment of truth" is usually the … Continue reading “. . . By Any Other Name . . .”
“Name Your Poison”
(For lovers of useless minutiae, June 8 is "Name Your Poison Day.") AUTHOR'S NOTE: Among modern tarot enthusiasts there exists a fundamental dispute regarding proper use of the cards that has been smoldering since the Jung-besotted 1970s. It typically surfaces in the divide between those who believe that a tarot deck should be employed solely … Continue reading “Name Your Poison”
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 