This text is taken from my book Ideology of the Tarot.
If you want to buy this book, write to dorijan.nuaj@gmail.com
In this section, I will attempt to
shed more light on how the ideology of tarot developed. If we consider Milan of
the 14th century as the epicenter of tarot, we can more or less infer its
spread across Europe. In short, from Milan, tarot spread further across
northern Italy and the rest of the country, then crossed the Alps to
Switzerland and France during the 16th century, perhaps even earlier. Along the
way, it took on various forms, generally following a common pattern. There was
nothing esoteric about this entire process. The Marseille deck became the
standard for French and Swiss tarot makers by the late 17th and early 18th
centuries, with the pattern they followed possibly originating as early as the
beginning of the 17th century. This template was also followed by tarot makers
in Germany, Austria, and even Italy itself. This provided the standard raw
material or semi-finished product into which later occultism would imprint its
insignia, thus creating the occult tarot, which would primarily be interpreted
through Kabbalistic and astrological lenses. This process began in France
during the second half of the 18th century, when the Age of Enlightenment was
already entering its late phase. Alongside the rise of rationality, the spirit
of the modern age sought a substitute for lost religiosity, searching for
sources that would compensate for this loss, whether from spatially or
temporally distant cultures.
Mircea Eliade, in his book
Mephistopheles and Androgyne, noted that it is unlikely Western thought will
continue to exist in isolation. Eliade emphasizes that the modern era differs
from those preceding it in that it is characterized by confrontation with
foreign, unusual, exotic, or archaic ideological and cultural worlds. The
discoveries of depth psychology, as well as the arrival of non-European ethnic
groups on the horizon of History, truly signify the encroachment of the
"unknown" into the field of Western consciousness, which was
previously closed to them. Such an orientation reflects a changed worldview.
Regarding this change, Eliade states that the astronomical and geographical
discoveries of the Renaissance did not only completely alter the image of the
universe and the concept of space. Among other things, these discoveries
ensured, for at least three subsequent centuries, the scientific, economic, and
political dominance of the West, while simultaneously paving the way towards
the inevitable unity of the world.
Ancient Egypt, in this sense, is the
closest non-European, yet one of the most temporally distant models, which is
why the Enlightenment-era France's fascination with this culture is not
surprising. After all, Egypt had long been recognized as the source of Hermetic
wisdom and alchemy, and the still undeciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs posed a
special challenge. Nonetheless, this did not hinder French occultists from
incorporating Egyptian symbols and presumed mythological, magical, and
religious content into their schemes, including tarot. At that time, Europe
also discovered the wisdom of India. India attracted the following significant
European intellectuals: Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), Constantine Francis de
Volney (1757–1820), Richard Payne Knight (1750–1824), Godfrey Higgins
(1772–1833), and Sir William Jones (1746–1794) – a pioneer in the study of
Sanskrit in the West. This led European intellectuals to compare Christianity
with other religions, searching for similarities and parallels. Consequently, elements
of Indian culture became part of occult schemes in Europe. This development
occurred alongside the growing popularity and spread of Freemasonry, which, in
the eyes of many, provided an adequate substitute for ecclesiastical
religiosity and sociality. The Scotsman Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686–1743) was
the first to suggest that Freemasonry came into the Christian world from the
Middle East, embodied in Europe in the form of the Knights Templar.
Additionally, syncretic Masonic symbolism was entirely in harmony with the
spiritual and intellectual currents of the time, creating fertile ground for
the flourishing of enlightened occultism, which attracted literate,
independent, and free-thinking individuals from all social strata. Egyptomania
and Freemasonry went hand in hand.
During that time, several significant
figures emerged. Among them was the French writer, priest, and member of the
French Academy, Jean Terrasson (1670–1750). His most famous work is the
fantastical novel Sethos: histoire ou vie, tirée des monumens anecdotes de
l'ancienne Egypte, traduite d'un manuscrit grec (1731), which inspired Mozart's The Magic
Flute. Friedrich von Köppen (1734–1797) and Johann Wilhelm Bernhard von Hymmen
(1725–1786) anonymously published the treatise Crata Repoa in 1778, which
describes a fictional but detailed initiation into Egyptian mysteries,
containing seven rites (performed in crypts, secret chambers, and caves).
Shortly after, in 1784, the famous Count Cagliostro (Alessandro di Cagliostro,
also known as Giuseppe Balsamo, 1743–1795) founded the Egyptian Rite, a Masonic
order, whose first body, called the Temple of Isis, operated in Paris. At the
very end of this period, we can mention the intriguing figure of Antoine Fabre
d'Olivet (1767–1825), a French writer, poet, and composer whose biblical and
philosophical hermeneutics influenced notable figures in the occult world such
as Eliphas Levi, Papus, and Edouard Schuré. He regarded all religions as
fundamentally the same, as their purpose is identical—to unite with God, making
them different manifestations of a lost universal primordial tradition. His
significant work from 1816, La langue Hebraique Restituee, represents a
revitalization of the Hebrew language with a grammar based on Biblical Hebrew.
In that dynamic and colorful spiritual
atmosphere, and from his position as a member of the Masonic lodge Les Amis
Réunis, Court de Gébelin founded the research lodge Philalethes, which combined
Martinism, Swedenborgianism, and other esoteric currents in its work. He was
also a member of the famous Parisian lodge Neuf Sœurs, whose members included
Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. De Gébelin's extensive and significant work Le
Monde Primitif Analysé et Comparé avec le Monde Moderne (published in nine volumes
between 1773 and 1782) expressed the mentality of that era, which aimed to
unify all things in the search for the presumed lost unity that supposedly
existed in the distant past. The term "primitive" in the title of the
encyclopedia indicates something original and fundamental. This aspiration,
characteristic of the Enlightenment era, was embodied in the design and
interpretations of the tarot, continuing to our time, which has given rise to a
plethora of syncretic and highly specific tarots. These modern tarots share a
common basic structure but have only distant parallels to the original
Renaissance tarots.
Of significance to our topic is the
eighth volume of de Gébelin's work from 1781, in which a section is dedicated
to the tarot. In this section, he claimed that the cards, primarily used for
gaming, were actually of mystical origin and represented the remnants of the
ancient Egyptian pictorial Book of Thoth. De Gébelin recognized in the major
arcana of the tarot the disguised content of Egyptian religious doctrine. For
example, the card of the Popess represented the High Priestess, the Pope was
the Hierophant, the Chariot was actually Osiris the Victor, the Devil was
Typhon (Set, Osiris's enemy), the Star was the Dog Star, or Sirius, Judgment
was Creation, and the World was Time, etc. According to de Gébelin, the minor
arcana reflected the classes of Egyptian society. Swords expressed the Egyptian
sovereigns and military aristocracy; wands were farmers; cups represented the
clergy; and disks were merchants. The Egyptian priests supposedly hid their
doctrine in the cards, which they then entrusted to the Gypsies, who were
believed at that time to be of Egyptian origin. Thus, the Gypsy tarot was
actually Egyptian. Therefore, the secret Egyptian doctrine, disguised in the tarot
and entrusted to nomads, survived the ages to be finally uncovered by the
inheritors of the Enlightenment's syncretic esoteric ideology in 18th-century
France. This viewpoint resulted in the realization of the necessity to alter
the symbolism and design of the existing tarot, replacing the Christian symbols
and medieval European cultural signs with imagined content that was supposedly
Egyptian. However, the "Egyptianization" of the tarot was not
sufficient. In the same work, contributor Comte de Mellet linked the major
arcana with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, thereby opening the doors to a
grand mythological-astrological-kabbalistic tarot synthesis that emerged in the
19th century, with Eliphas Levi as its protagonist. Additionally, de Mellet divided
the major arcana into three groups representing three phases of humanity: from
arcana 21 to 15 was the Golden Age, from 14 to 8 the Silver Age, and finally
the Iron Age.
At the
same time, Etteilla went a step further than de Gébelin. He designed his own
tarot deck with the purpose of cartomancy. To recall, Etteilla is the pseudonym
used by the French occultist and the first popularizer of the tarot as a
divination tool, Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738–1791). In 1788, he founded a
study group called the Society for the Interpretation of the Book of Thoth,
whose prominent member was Charles Greille-Saint-Leger de Bonrecueille, a mason
and founder of the secret society Temple of the Sun in Lyon in the 1780s, whose
members called themselves the Unknown Philosophers, inspired by Louis-Claude de
Saint-Martin. According to Etteilla, the tarot was originally created by
seventeen Egyptian magi devoted to Hermes Trismegistus approximately 3,953
years before his time, or 171 years after the famous biblical flood. He blamed
the distortion of the original tarot design on uninitiated and profane card
makers throughout history. One of the innovations he introduced was marking the
cards with Arabic numbers instead of Roman numerals, as he considered the
Egyptians the inventors of the Zero from which Arabic numerals were derived. In
1770, Etteilla published his first book, in which he described methods of
divination using a standard deck of playing cards with four suits. However, he
briefly mentions the tarot on the list of divination tools. Since his book
preceded the eighth volume of de Gébelin's Monde Primitif, in which the tarot
is mentioned, this indicates that divination using the tarot was known in Paris
before de Gébelin discovered the tarot as a tool for transmitting ancient
knowledge.
Eliphas Levi made an extraordinary
contribution to the development of occultism and the occult ideology of the
tarot. Among other things, he connected the minor arcana with the sephiroth of
the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The idea to associate Baphomet with the Devil
card, as well as sketching that solution, originates from him. However, Levi
did not go as far as Etteilla; instead, he focused on the pattern of the
Marseille tarot with certain modifications, which apply to the Devil, the
Chariot, or the Wheel of Fortune. In fact, Levi was contradictory, as he aimed
to reconcile opposites and could simultaneously be progressive and
conservative, a good Catholic and an occultist. In the meantime, he became a
legend and the progenitor of the occult revival in the second half of the 19th
century, influencing both French and British occult circles equally strongly.
His significance lies in his success in creating the foundation of a magical
system, partially serving as a model for British occultists to establish a coherent
theoretical and practical syncretic doctrine, which developed within the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, where the tarot played a
crucial role as a magical tool for ritual, divinatory, and contemplative use.
The
realization of Levi's dream of a renewed tarot was attempted by his followers
in the world of occultism, founders of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross
(Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose-Croix) Stanislas de Guaita, Oswald Wirth, and
Papus. Guaita and Wirth created a tarot for divination that contains only the
twenty-two major arcana in 1889. It was the hyperactive Papus who did much to
popularize occultism, tarot, and Levi himself. Like his predecessors, Papus
also believed in the Egyptian origin of the tarot, but he expanded this idea in
the manner of the Enlightenment era, attributing universal human prerogatives
to the tarot, calling it, among other things, the Book of Adam. This
consequently opens the way for further intercultural syncretism through tarot.
Papus often cited details from Hinduism and established connections, for
example, relating the Christian Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to the
Egyptian trinity of gods: Osiris, Isis, and Horus, as well as to the Indian
Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Characteristic of Papus is also giving three types
of meanings to each major arcana: divine in the divine world, then astral in
the human world, and physical in the natural world. Thus, in Papus's
interpretation, the Magus represents God himself in the divine world, Adam in
the human world, and in the natural world, it is the expression of the active
universe.
