Between the mid-15th century and the
second half of the 18th century, the assumptions of modern occult tarot were
formed. This period saw the decline of old operative mysteries and the birth of
new speculative ones, a time of religious disputes, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation,
the suppression of imagination, the rise of Puritanism, the emergence of
Rosicrucianism, and the birth of modern thought. Julij
Berkowski, in his book Tarot: The Ancient System of Symbols, wrote that in the
16th and 17th centuries, there were attempts to conceptualize tarot symbols
based on occult sciences. According to Berkowski, Nostradamus elaborated the
iconography of tarot symbols. In fact, Nostradamus is said to have revived
tarot iconography, most likely based on some ancient manuscripts he had access
to. So says Berkowski. I must admit, this thesis is entirely unknown to me,
just as the connection between Nostradamus and tarot is unfamiliar. Berkowski
informs us that these "revived" images by Nostradamus form the basis
of the Marseille tarot. Since then, tarot decks of this type began to be
produced throughout Europe. The first cards with Marseille tarot iconography
were recorded in Avignon in 1713, and by 1769 they were already known in
Marseille. From what Berkowski has written, it appears that the symbolic images
in earlier versions represented some sort of profanation, which was corrected
by unknown enlightened adepts at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th
centuries (with particular emphasis on Nostradamus).
The culmination of this development,
through the teachings of the French and British occult schools, is embodied in
the Thoth tarot deck by Aleister Crowley and artist Frieda Harris, as an
expression of a comprehensive occult doctrine based on the dictation of the
otherworldly, or the revelation of the Aeon Horus’s messenger. This gives the
deck an additional mystical dimension. This mystical dimension refers to the
fact that the entire deck represents a pictorial expression of magically
inspired verses and statements that Aleister Crowley wrote without clear
understanding of their meaning, which he uncovered years later. Essentially,
his almost new magical religion, Thelema, contains teachings about the
succession of aeons and, correspondingly, the shift in magical and religious
paradigms. The Aeon of Horus is the era of the Divine Child, which replaced the
era of the Dying and Resurrected God. This doctrine is depicted on card XX,
which in Crowley's tarot is called The Aeon rather than Judgement.
The god Horus replaced the god Osiris on the throne of the spirit of time, and
accordingly, new rules embodied in the Book of the Law apply in the new age,
whose illustrations actually represent the major arcana of the Thoth tarot.
This is an extraordinary development that has transformed beautifully adorned
pieces of paper into magically sensitive symbols.
In the book Fortuna’s Wheel, Nigel
Jackson notes that there was no mention of tarot in the works of prominent
Hermeticists of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. It is likely that, in the
eyes of the initiates of those centuries, tarot did not play as significant a
role as it did for later occultists. Nevertheless, he provides some examples
where tarot is mentioned. At the end of the 16th century, the French theologian
Pierre de la Primaudaye condemned the cards as an invention of the pagan god
Mercury. In 1651, in the English edition of Agrippa's Occult Philosophy, there
is a reference from Plato, mentioning the god Thoth as the inventor of cards
and dice. Nigel Jackson further mentions the treatise Kore Kosmu contained in
the Corpus Hermeticum, which describes how Hermes Trismegistus, before the
mythical Deluge, inscribed his secret wisdom onto tablets and hid them in the
world of imagination, which represents a true refuge that would preserve his
wisdom for future generations. There is also an allusion to tarot, referred to
as ROTA, as a divinatory tool in the text The Fame and Confession of the
Rosicrucians from 1612.
Paul Huson, in his book Mystical
Origins of the Tarot, pointed out a theory that includes the famous Italian
poet Petrarch among the sources of tarot. Allegedly, his poem I Trionfi
served as the inspiration for naming the earliest versions of tarot – trionfi
(triumphs). Indeed, Petrarch lived in Milan from 1353, where he enjoyed the
hospitality and favor of the powerful Visconti family, who ruled the city and
are associated with the first tarot decks. In 14th-century Italy, the term trionfi
was used to designate painted panels carried in festive parades during
religious or civic processions and festivals. These pictorial representations,
or triumphs, were depicted as allegorical themes, each triumphing over the
previous one in terms of the message it conveyed. Several of these pictorial
allegories from Petrarch's poem appeared in those processions. It is likely
that Petrarch used already established allegorical themes rather than being
their originator. The first shows the triumph of Cupid over humans and gods,
representing the triumph of love and illustrating Petrarch's love for Laura.
Cupid is followed by chastity, indicating Laura's rejection of Petrarch's love
because she was already married. The next triumph is death, as Laura died
during a plague epidemic. Over death, Laura's fame triumphs, and over fame, an
old man representing the passage of time. Ultimately, over time, eternity
triumphs, wherein Petrarch and Laura will be together forever. In Petrarch's
poem, we find motifs of the following cards: Love, Temperance, Wheel of
Fortune, Chariot, Pope, Emperor, Empress, Death, Hermit, Devil, Sun, Moon, and
World.
The example of Petrarch's poem
illustrates the already entrenched presence of motifs and concepts represented
by the major
arcana, which are neither recent nor arbitrary in their symbolism and order.
This is an expression of a deeper esoteric doctrine that also has profane
reflections, making it accessible to everyone on a general level of
understanding. This doctrine is rooted in medieval European civilization and
culture, which was rapidly forgotten and sidelined by generations inspired by
new trends from the 16th century onwards. The disdain for the European
Middle Ages is still very much alive and points to the tendency of modernity's
proponents to radically distance themselves from everything conservative,
backward, and past. Modernization has been a sort of mantra for half a
millennium, leading to increasingly dense mists and a narrowing of the scope of
intellectual perspectives. As a result, modernity finds itself in a state of
rootlessness, with this rootlessness expressed in a dive into an imagined
distant past and fantasies about ancient Egypt, Sumer, Atlantis, Sirius, and so
on. This need for connectedness and historical continuity often prefers distant
targets like Egypt rather than seeking its own roots in what was, until
recently, its immediate past. The widespread assumption in the 18th century
(which many still believe) that tarot originated from the Egyptian priests of
the late period of that civilization, who hid and thus preserved their
knowledge in the tarot arcana, is an expression of such a mentality. And these
secrets lay dormant for nearly two thousand years until they were recognized in
the 18th century by French enthusiasts, the most notable of whom was de Gébelin.
Enthralled by Egyptomania and
Kabbalah, we overlook the fact that the figures of the major
arcana of the tarot are present all over Europe through stories, processions,
theater, songs, legends, frescoes, paintings, sculptures, ornaments, and
imagination. They are part of the general cultural fame with ancient roots. We
could trace them back to Egypt, but we should not be surprised if we find them
elsewhere as well. These figures are part of the common heritage of a segment
of humanity and hold archetypal significance. Ultimately, they are a reflection
of the sacred, but the keys to that sacredness will not be found buried in the
sands of Egypt because, even if they were, we do not fundamentally understand
that Egypt, being separated from it by an abyss of time. We are not capable of
comprehending the purposes of many aspects of that culture and do not possess
the keys to the consciousness of those people. In fact, we do not even have the
keys to our own ancestors much closer to us in time, let alone to a completely
different world that inspires our imagination. The truth is that everything
builds on what came before it, yet if we want to be more concrete, the system
of basic tarot figures, their meanings, and order cannot be found anywhere
outside Europe and not before the Middle Ages. As archetypes, we can recognize
these figures and motifs almost everywhere, or as mythological figures;
however, only in Europe were they systematized and codified in a manner that
found its expression in the tarot.
In light of the previous paragraph,
Huson's remark is interesting that in the early Middle Ages, the Church in
Western Europe faced the significant challenge of converting illiterate
Germanic and Celtic peoples. Let us see what significance this has for this
story. Pope Gregory I, known as Saint Gregory the Great (who reigned from
590-604), besides Christianizing pagan customs, legends, beliefs, and sacred
sites, used art and architecture, poetry, music, church rituals, etc., to
penetrate the imagination of people. The task of developing instruments of
Christian influence and proselytism was given to the Benedictine monastic
order, founded in 529. Huson suggests that it is precisely in the 6th century
and in the role of Christian missionary work that we should look for the source
of tarot mysteries. One of the cultural forms of Christianization is the
so-called Mystery Plays (probably from the French word mystère, or the Latin
ministerium, which denotes church service), the most important form of medieval
drama that, along with music, brings to life biblical details from the creation
of the world and man, through the birth of the Savior to the Last Judgment.
These dramas were performed in churches, squares, and marketplaces and often
contained painted panels illustrating the themes of the performances.
Therefore, in these images, we can find the prototypes of the tarot arcana, as
they represent exactly that, only in a smaller format. The purpose of these
images was to impress the viewers' memory. They watch the performance, listen
to the music, hear the words of the songs, the dialogues of costumed actors,
and see the painted illustrations. If they forget what they watched, the simple
and colorful images will surely not be forgotten and will always remain in their
memory in the context of a certain lesson or message. These images and their
order certainly have a deeper doctrine, but the intention of those who used
them was not esoteric but exoteric, ideological, proselytistic, and
indoctrinational. The depth lies in the tradition from whose treasury these
images were shaped, and that depth leads us to Neoplatonism and beyond.
The sequence of the arcana tells a
story that could be compared to the alchemical process, as there is no
Christian content that cannot be explained by alchemy, nor any alchemical
content that lacks its Christian analogies. This very fact is what makes it all
mystical. The alchemical paradigm of Christianity or the Christian paradigm of
alchemy is the original doctrine of the tarot arcana. In the meantime, the
Christian and Eurocentric style of the tarot has faded, giving way to syncretic
contents, but it still fundamentally retains the ancient organic worldview,
outside of which the tarot system is meaningless. Naturally, we can ask how
much of the original and hidden aspects in the iconography and symbolism of the
tarot have disappeared due to this process. Occultists clearly did not care
about this, as they forced their ideas and desperately tried to weave their
contents into the tarot images, thereby modernizing these images in accordance
with the spirit of the times.
Paul Huson points out another
interesting connection, this time between the tarot and astrology. In this
context, he mentions the name of the German engraver and painter Erhard Schön,
whose work from 1515 depicts the houses of the zodiac, most of which have their
counterparts in the major arcana. For example, we see the Wheel
of Fortune in the fields of the Pisces and Aquarius houses, the Emperor in
Aquarius and Capricorn, the Pope in Capricorn and Sagittarius, Death in
Sagittarius and Scorpio, the Lovers in Scorpio and Libra, and the Sun in Leo
and Virgo. What this means and why only these arcana are considered, I find
impossible to investigate and decipher, but the trend is a gradual loss of
knowledge about the meanings of the cards, which coincides with the
disappearance of operative masonry and authentic alchemy from the European
continent.
The announcement of what was to come
followed in 1614 with the publication of the famous Fama Fraternitatis, the
alleged Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. I won't delve into who stands behind
this ideological pamphlet of universal intentions, obviously written by someone
closer to Protestantism. This document is addressed, as it states, to learned
men, estates, and rulers of Europe, and its writers (or writer) proclaimed
their goal to be nothing less than the general reformation of the entire world.
Isn't this a Protestant form of Lurianic Tikkun? A few years after this, the
devastating Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) broke out, affecting the territories
of present-day Czechia and Germany, after which peace was achieved, lasting
until it was disrupted by Napoleon. A little more than a hundred years after
the issuance of this proclamation, the Grand Lodge of Freemasonry was
established in London (1717). I emphasize this to indicate a general trend. The
Catholic Church fell into decadence and corruption, and with the discovery of
the New World, the focus of European civilization and development shifted from
the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Old masonry slowly disappeared, the original
meaning of the tarot was forgotten, alchemy waned, and a new trend
crystallized, symbolized by the rose and the cross.
The rose was a symbol of Martin
Luther, the father of the Reformation, around 1520. By approximately 1530,
Luther's seal had already taken the form of a black cross on a red heart
projected onto a white five-petaled rose. The five-petaled rose is undoubtedly
a pentagram. Luther's seal can be seen on a stained glass window in the church
in Cobstadt in the German region of Thuringia. Interestingly, the symbol is
depicted as being at the center of a cross-like structure planted on a stepped
triangular base. The cross on the triangle is precisely the fundamental symbol
of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Manly Palmer Hall states that the
original symbol of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood is a hieroglyphic rose crucified
on a cross. The cross is often erected on Calvary with three steps.
Occasionally, a symbol of a cross rising from a rose was used in connection
with Rosicrucian activities.
All the mentioned facts indirectly suggest that behind Luther's
religious rebellion, at the very ideological foundations of the Reformation,
lie the same esoteric circles that are also behind the Fama Fraternitatis.
These circles are the inspirers of the Masonic and Illuminati movements, as
well as the revolutions in England, France, and on the American continent. I do
not claim that these circles played any direct role in these historical events,
but they certainly influenced the shaping of the fundamental doctrines and
ideological directions of the revolutionary-reformist emancipatory worldview. I
would compare the role of these people to that of the instigators of an
avalanche, as they knew how to recognize the right historical moment and to set
a few key figures into action. The role of these anonymous initiates was
liberating and noble because they aimed to free Europe, primarily, from the
dogmatic chains of the Vatican hydra. They succeeded in that, but their success
was not complete. A utopian vision of what a Rosicrucian republic might have
looked like can be found in Francis Bacon's unfinished work New Atlantis. Look
around and see how the world we live in appears, and it will be clear that the
whole project has degenerated into a poisonous, vulgar-materialistic paradigm.
Therefore, let us ask ourselves: was this the idea, vision, and intention of
the instigators of the great historical current under the banner of the Rose
and Cross? Could they have known this? Could they have foreseen or overlooked
the outcome of their intention? Let everyone ponder this well.
I am somehow convinced that this entire noble liberation project
was infiltrated by hostile agents at some stage of its realization, which
influenced its corruption. Besides that, we must always consider the weakness,
instability, gullibility, stupidity, and wavering nature of human material. In
the clash with exotericism, esotericism will prevail, but the result will
always be distorted. If I know this, then the adepts of the Rose and Cross knew
it too, yet they still initiated a historical momentum. Without that work,
history would look entirely different. It's true that we have desolation around
us, but it's also true that there have never been such conditions for the
development of freedom as there are today.
A key transformation occurred during
the Renaissance, Reformation, and Counter-Reformation. Consequently, the old
world disappeared, and in the light of the Enlightenment and broader horizons
of the New Age, the Middle Ages suddenly became dark and ugly. The spirit of
the Renaissance spurred dual processes: one towards the development of a
scientific-logical worldview, which, combined with the Reformation and
humanism, ultimately prevailed, and the other, seemingly retrograde, actually
aimed to preserve and deepen the old organic model of the world. This model,
through medieval esoteric tradition, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Platonism, and
back to the times of ancient civilizations, represented a general viewpoint.
The Holy Scripture, being translated into vernacular languages, became
accessible to anyone who could read, producing specific phenomena. From that
moment on, we observe a development: Reformation – Rosicrucianism – Freemasonry
(and the Enlightenment associated with it).
It was precisely the milieu of
Freemasonry that steered the ideology of tarot towards Egyptomania, Kabbalah,
and the occult. Shortly after the Reformation movement began to spread, the
aforementioned medieval religious theater, which used images with the figures
of the major arcana of tarot, rapidly disappeared from Italy, France, and
England. Paul Huson mentions that in 1548, authorities in Paris banned popular
medieval religious plays. This illustrates the trend and fashion of the time,
as Italian nobility, influenced by the renewed interest in antiquity, turned to
Greek and Roman writers, while old religious dramas were discarded as medieval
rubbish. Along with them, the original meanings of tarot cards and the
doctrines from which tarot figures originated were thrown into the historical
trash heap. A new age was dawning. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, the essence of
tarot still contains the old organic model of the universe, and it is precisely
this that, despite all the changes, gives it its charm and allure. Its
structure demonstrates how everything is interconnected in the general harmony
of a cosmic hierarchy of forces, principles, natures, and beings. This is the
merit of the Renaissance spirit, which enabled a descent into the material, but
also preserved the core of the metaphysical and spiritual organic.
I would again refer to György Endre Szönyi,
who, in his book John Dee and the Doctrine of Exaltation, expressed the view
that occult philosophy and Renaissance magic, among other things, fostered a
subversive model of thought that prevented the final triumph of a
logical-rational view of the world. Had it not been for this subversion, almost
nothing of the ancient esoteric traditions in the West would remain today. Szönyi explains that Renaissance magic
arose from the idea of the great chain of being and the interconnectedness of
all its links. The metaphor of the chain of being did not disappear immediately
after the scientific premises on which it was based were discarded. The
aesthetic appeal of symmetry and divine order captivated the imagination of
intellectuals until the Enlightenment era. As Szönyi states, from the notion of
the chain of being came another important feature of the premodern world model:
its organic character. During the 17th century, the view was developed that the
cosmos was like a machine or a clock that God had wound up and then left to run
on its own. Shortly before that, in the late Renaissance, the cosmos was
imagined as a living organism driven and governed by sympathetic forces based
on similarities and analogies. The spiritus mundi filled the universe, within
which each hierarchical layer reflected the other layers, unified with them by
common functions. The angelic orders were duplicated and grouped into celestial
and planetary hierarchies, which governed the elemental spheres of the material
world. This complex system of mutual connections has origins in ancient times.
Szönyi noted and explained all of this well.
Essentially, I would add, this is the doctrine of emanations found
at the foundation of the Kabbalistic teachings on the Sephirot of the Tree of
Life, as well as in the tenets of modern occultism from which the meanings of
tarot images are derived. Although there is no evidence that tarot was used for
divination purposes until the 18th century, it is difficult to accept as truth
that this most famous divinatory instrument was not used for that purpose in
earlier periods. Helen Farley, in her book A Cultural History of Tarot,
mentioned a reference that connects tarot with divination. Merlin Cocai (known
as Coccalo), the author of the fictional work Il Caos del Triperuno (Venice,
1527), is a pseudonym under which the Italian poet Teofilo Folengo, a member of
the Benedictine monastic order (1491–1544), published. His mentioned poem
contained a set of five sonnets in which the names and motifs of all the major
arcana were used.
Besides being a card game, tarot certainly had a divinatory purpose, which added to its magical aura. If it had been just an ordinary game, it’s unlikely that anyone would have later thought to create an occult tarot without the connection to fortune-telling or predicting future events. The reason there weren't more records and notes about this in the past lies in the simple fact that engaging in divination at that time could bring trouble, not only from the ever-present Inquisition but also due to the stance of Puritan Protestants. Fortune-telling was considered the devil's work. Among other things, the cards serve this purpose. In principle, many instruments used for gambling also have the potential for divinatory application. Dice, as a gambling tool, simultaneously serve as a means for hazard and divination. Gambling and divination are interconnected phenomena. Gambling creates addiction, and the tarot among its arcana has one symbolizing hazard, which is the Wheel of Fortune, the expression of the goddess Fortuna. The logic of the sequence of triumphs points to the course of destiny. Memory and recall are part of vigilant attention, and as every good card player knows, they are crucial for successfully playing the game. Furthermore, memory is a tool of imagination used by those who read signs to predict the future. Interestingly, Helen Farley in her book mentioned the possibility that tarot serves the purpose of memory training, but she did not elaborate on this topic further, except for mentioning a deck created by the German Franciscan monk, satirist, poet, and translator Thomas Murner (Chartiludium Institute summarie, 1502), which contained logically consistent mnemonic images but also served as a game. The purpose of his memory cards was to facilitate the study of Justinian's code of Roman law.
Paul Huson draws another parallel between bibliomancy and cartomancy. In the past, it was popular to divine using a book believed to contain general wisdom, such as the Bible, the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, Petrarch’s sonnets, and so on. People would randomly open these books or use dice to select certain pages and then mark specific places with a small stick to read what the wise book had to say about their dilemma. Huson mentioned that some decks had accompanying books with quotes from wise books linked to each card and the like. Perhaps this practice explains why cards later acquired names. Additionally, Huson refers to the Dutch tarot historian Gerard Van Rijnberk, who discovered references to card divination in an epic poem from the 14th century, later published in Milan (1519) under the title Spagna istoriata (History of Spain). Canto XX describes how the famous hero Roland (Orlando) tries to discern the movements of Charlemagne’s enemies using cards. Although it was always common for military leaders to consult soothsayers and prophets before going to war, it is unlikely that Roland did so with cards, as he lived in the 8th century. Lastly, Huson mentions a study (Ruth Martin: Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650), which records cases of tarot use in witchcraft, a common occult practice associated with tarot today. Thus, tarot was already seen as a significant magical tool in the 16th and 17th centuries, but for understandable reasons, there were no authors writing about it or developing methodologies.
