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The Great Symbols of the Tarot
Arthur Edward Waite
Published in The Occult Review January 1926:
pp11-19
(transcribed June 2003 by Jean-Michel David from an original copy)
On the hypothesis that there is or may be a deeper meaning
in the chief Tarot Symbols than attaches thereto on the
surface, it becomes necessary to establish certain preliminary
points as an initial clearance of issues, and I will premise
in the first place that by chief Symbols I mean those found
only which I have been in the habit of denominating Trumps
Major in other writings on the subject. First among the
preliminary points there is the simple fact that we know
nothing certainly concerning the origin of Tarot cards.
As usual, however, in matters belonging to occult arts
and so-called science, the place of knowledge has been
occupied by uncritical reveries and invention which is
not less fraudulent because the fraud may be frequently
unconscious. When the artist Gringonneur, in or about the
year 1393, is affirmed to have to have produced a set of
picture-cards for the amusement of King Charles VI of France,
it has been affirmed that some of their designs were identical
with Tarot Trumps Major. The evidence is the fact of certain
beautiful and antique card-specimens - in all about twenty-six
- which are scattered through different continental museums
and were attributed in the past to Gringonneur. They are
now held to be of Italian origin, more or less in the early
years of the fifteenth century, and there are no extant
examples prior to that period. But to establish this point
on expert authority at its value is not to fix the origin
of Tarot cards in respect to date or place. It is idle,
I mean, to affirm that Venetian, Bolognese and Florentine
vestiges of sets allocated to 1400-1418 are the first that
were ever designed. In view, however, of the generations
of nonsense which we have heard testifying on the subject,
it must be said that it is equally idle and mischievous
to affirm that they are not. When, towards the close of
the eighteenth century, Court de Gebelin first drew attention,
as a man of learning and an antiquary, to the fact of Tarot
cards, he produced sketches of the Trumps Major in the
eighth volume of Le Monde Primitif. In the form
that he had met with they were not priceless works of art
like those in the Bibliothèque Nationale, but rough,
primitive and barbarous, or precisely of that kind which
might be expected to circulate in country places, among
lower classes of players and gamblers, or among gipsies
for purposes of fortune-telling. Supposing that they had
been designed and invented originally about the period
mentioned, nearly four centuries had elapsed, which were
more than ample time for them to get into general circulation
throughout the countries in which they were traced by Court
de Gebelin - namely, Southern France, Spain, Italy and
Germany. If the Trumps Major were originally distinct from
the minor emblems, there was also full opportunity for
them to be joined together. But alternatively the designs,
perhaps even in several styles, may have been old already
in the year 1400 - I am speaking of the Trumps Major -
in which case they were married much later to the fifteenth
century prototypes of our modern playing-cards. It will
be seen that the field is open, but that no one is entitled
in reason to maintain either view unless evidence should
be found to warrant it in the design themselves, apart
from the real or presumptive age of the oldest extant copies.
Having done something in this summary manner to define
the historical position, the next point is to estimate
the validity of those speculations to which I have referred
already. It is not possible on this occasion, nor do I
find that it would serve a purpose, to do more than recapitulate
my own previous decisions, reached as a result of researches
made prior to 1910. The first and most favoured hypothesis
concerning Tarot cards is that they are of Egyptian origin,
and it was put forward by him who to all intents and purposes
may be called their discoverer, namely, Court de Gebelin.
It has been set aside long since by authorities apart from
predispositions and ulterior purposes in view. De Gebelin
was an Egyptologist of his day, when Egyptology was in
its cradle, if indeed it can be said to have been born,
and that which he did was to excogitate impressions and
formulate them in terms of certitude. They have not been
borne out, and their doom from the standpoint of sane scholarship
may be said to have been sealed when they fell into the
hands of French occult dreamers and were espoused zealously
by them. The most salient and amazing elaborations were
those of Eliphas Lévi in 1856 and onward. The designs
were for him not only Egyptian in the sense of the earliest
dynasties, but referable to the mythical Hermes and to
the prediluvian wisdom of Enoch. They formed otherwise
the traditional Book of Adam which was brought to him in
Paradise by an angel, was removed from him at the Fall,
but was restored subsequently in response to his earnest
supplications. Eliphas Lévi did more, however, than
theorize on the subject. He gave pictorial illustrations
of the cards restored to their proper primeval forms, in
which they appeared as pseudo-Egyptian designs, the work
of an amateur hand. The same practice prevailed after Lévi
had ceased to publish. It was developed further by Christian,
while long after him, under the auspices of Oswald Wirth
and others, the Trumps Major appear in all the panoply
of imitative Delta art. These things are to all intents
and purposes of dishonest device, but very characteristic
unfortunately after their own manner, for the marriage
of speculative occultism and intellectual sincerity has
hardly ever been made in France and seldom enough elsewhere.
These are the preliminary points Which are placed here
for consideration - as I have said, to clear the issues.
In the complete absence of all evidence on the subject,
we must be content to carry an open mind as to where Tarot
originated, remembering that the earliest designs with
which we are acquainted do not connote antiquity, unless
possibly in one case, and unless the early fifteenth century
may be regarded as old enough in the absence of a parti-pris.
The statement obtains also respecting cards of any kind,
including the Baldini emblems, which are neither Tarot
nor counters for divination, or games of chance.
I satisfied myself some years ago, and do not stand alone,
the Trumps Major existed originally independently of the
other arcana and that they were combined for gambling purposes
at a date which it is possible to fix roughly. I am concerned
only on the present occasion with what may be called the
Great Symbols. They are twenty-two in number, and there
is no doubt that some of them correspond to estates and
types. The Emperor and Empress, the Pope and Juggler belong
obviously to this order, but if we put them back speculatively
even to mediæval times we cannot account in this
manner for the so-called Pope Joan or High Priestess. She
must be allocated to another sequence of conditions, another
scheme of human community at large. It is to be noted that
though Venetian, Florentine and French packs differ somewhat
clearly, between narrow limits of course, Pope Joan has
never been called the Abbess in any, nor can I recall that
she has been so depicted that such a denomination could
apply and thus include the design among ecclesiastical
estates in Christendom. She comes, therefore, as I have
intimated, from another region and another order of things.
This is the one Tarot Trump Major which suggests a derivation
from antiquity, not however in the sense of Court de Gebelin,
who referred it to Isis, but to an obscure perpetuation
of Pagan faith and rite in Italy which the inquiries of
Leland seem to have established as a matter of fact. In
this case, and at the value of his researches, on which
I have commented elsewhere, Pope Joan represents not improbably
a vestige of the old Astarte cultus. I do not pretend to
be satisfied with the explanation, but it may be accepted
tentatively perhaps and does not necessarily carry the
question of antiquity behind mediæval times. In the
midst of all the obscurity, one only point emerges in all
certainty: whatever the card may have stood for originally,
it was not the mythical female pope, an ascription which
arose as a leap in the dark of ignorance on the part of
the people - whether in France or in Italy - who knew the
Pope Joan legend but had never heard of Astarte and much
less of Isis. I should regard it as a rather old leap.
I have spoken of classification under types, estates or
classes, but it obtains only in respect of a few designs,
seeing that the majority of the Trumps Major are occasionally
allegorical and in several cases can be understood only
as belonging to a world of symbols, while a few are doctrinal
in character - in the sense of crude Christian doctrine.
The Resurrection card and the Devil belong to this last
class. Death, on the other hand, is a very simple allegorical
picture-emblem, like the Lovers, Justice and Strength.
The symbolical cards, which must be so termed because certainly
they do not correspond to the admitted notions of allegory,
are the Hanged Man, Chariot, the so-called card of Temperance,
the Tower, the Star, the Sun and Moon, and that which passes
under several names, one of which is the World. The Wheel
of Fortune is seemingly of composite character, partaking
of both allegory and symbolism, while the Fool is very
difficult to class. On the surface he may be referable
to that estate which inhabits the low-life deeps - the
mendicant and vagabond type. He suggests the Italian lazzaroni,
except that he carries a wallet, as if he were on his way
through the world. He recalls, therefore, the indescribable
rabble which followed the armies in crusading and later
times. He is the antithesis of the Juggler, who flourishes
at the expense of others by following a knavish trade,
or who profits alternatively by the lower kind of skill.
When Court de Gebelin described the Trumps Major in connection
with the rest of the Tarot pack, he gave an account of
their use in games of hazard, but he had heard also of
their divinatory value and was at some pains to ascertain
the process by which they were adapted to this purpose,
in which way he is our first authority for the traditional
meanings of the cards as counters in the telling of fortune.
He represents in this manner another landmark in the obscure
history of the subject. It is to be assumed that his knowledge
was confined to the practice in France, and there are no
means of knowing whether Spain, Italy and Germany followed
other methods at that time. I believe that Alliette or
Eteilla varied the divinatory meanings on the threshold
of the nineteenth century in accordance with his own predilections,
as he altered the Trumps Major themselves in respect of
their arrangement and changed the original names in certain
cases. In the year 1856, as we have seen, Eliphas Lévi
began to issue his occult revelations, based largely on
the Trumps Major, developing their philosophical meanings
in a most elaborate manner. They are at times exceedingly
suggestive and always curious, but it must be understood
that in occult matters he depended solely on personal intuitions
and invention. There was a time, over twenty years since,
when I was led to think otherwise, in view of evidence
which has proved worthless on further and fuller investigation.
Lévi said on his own part that he owed his ̉initiationÓ only
to God and his personal researches, but some of his French
admirers have not hesitated, this notwithstanding, to affirm
his direct connection with Masonic Rites and Orders. The
question does not signify, for initiations of this kind
would not have communicated occult knowledge. It follows
that his Tarot system - if such it can be called - is at
best a work of ingenuity but often a medley of notions,
and it owes, so far as can be ascertained, nothing whatever
to the past which extends behind Court de Gebelin. The
point is not without importance, because he speaks with
an accent of great authority and certitude. When P. Christian
went still further in L'HOMME ROUGE DES TUILERIES and in
his HISTOIRE DE LA MAGIE, the same criticism applies, as
there is no need to say that it does in the laboured excogitations
of Papus, Stanislas de Guaita and others of the French
school.
Now, there are twenty-two Trumps Major arranged more or
less in a sequence but subject to certain variations as
the packs differ respecting time and place of origin. There
are also twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and
it occurred to Eliphas Lévi that it was desirable
to effect a marriage between the letters and the cards.
It seems impossible to make a combination of this kind,
however arbitrary, and not find some accidents in its favour,
and there is better authority in Kabalism than Eliphas
Lévi ever produced in writing to connect the Hebrew
letter Beth with the so-called Pope Joan or Sovereign
Priestess of the Tarot. But he was concerned very little
with any root in analogy, or he might have redistributed
the Trumps Major, seeing that their sequence is - as I
have said - subject to variation in different sets and
that there seems no particular reason to suppose that any
arrangement of the past had a conscious purpose in view.
In this manner he might have found some curious points
by taking the old Yetziratic classification of the Hebrew
letters and placing those cards against them which corresponded
to their conventional allocations. It was sufficient, however,
for his purpose that there are twenty-two letters and twenty-two
palmary symbols, and if he remembered, he cared nothing
apparently for the fact that the numerical significance
of Hebrew letters belies his artificial combination after
the letter Yod. We can say if we choose that the
eleventh Trump is that which is called Strength, though
it depends on the arrangement adopted in the particular
pack; but the letter Caph is not eleven in the
alphabet, for it corresponds to the number 20. Death is
the thirteenth card and seems placed well in the Tarot
sequence because thirteen is the number of mortality; but
the letter Nun is 40 and has no such fatal connection.
The folly of the whole comparison is best illustrated by
the card which is called the Fool and is not numbered in
the series, the cipher Nought being usually placed against
it. In Lévi's arrangement it corresponds to the
letter Shin, the number of which is 300. But wherever
it is placed in the series the correspondence between Trumps
Major and the Hebrew alphabet is ipso facto destroyed.
It is to be noticed further that Lévi allocated
meanings to each letter individually of the Hebrew alphabet,
but they are his own irresponsible invention, except in
two or three very obvious cases - e.g., that Beth,
the second letter, corresponds to the duad, Ghimel to
the triad, and Daleth to the tetrad. It may be
interesting to note that his number 15, which answers to
the Tarot symbol of the Devil, is explained to be so-called
occult science, an eloquent tribute to his own fantastic
claims in respect of the subject which he followed. As
an explanation unawares it is otherwise of some value,
for there is of course no ordered occult science, though
there are certain forms of practice which bring into operation
those psychic powers of which we know darkly in the way
of their manifestation only, and it is a matter of experience
that they are more likely to open the abyss rather than
the Path of Heaven.
Lévi's instituted connection between Tarot cards
and the Hebrew alphabet has proved convincing to later
occultism in France and elsewhere. He is also the originator
of another scheme which creates a correspondence of an
equally artificial kind between the four suits, namely,
Clubs, Cups, Swords and Pantacles, which make up the Lesser
Arcana of the Tarot, and the Ten Sephiroth of
Kabalistic theosophy. Because of the number four it was
inevitable that in a mind like his they should be referred
to the four letters of the Sacred Tetragram - Jod,
He, Vau, He - which are commonly pronounced Jehovah.
It is the uttermost fantasy as usual, as exhibited by his
attempted identification of Jod with Clubs, while
Cups and Pantacles or Deniers are both coerced into correspondence
with the letter He. As regards the constituent
cards of the four suits, even his ingenuity failed to discover
a ground of comparison between the Sephiroth and the Court-cards,
so he offers the following couplet as a commentary on the
King, Queen, Knight and Knave or Squire:
The married pair, the youth, the child, the race:
Thy path by these to unity retrace.
But this comes to nothing, for the Knight is not necessarily
a youth, nor does the ancient or modern Jack correspond
to the idea of a child. Had Lévi understood Sephirotic
Kabalism better, again he could have done better by affirming
- as it would have been easy for him - that the French damoiseau had
replaced a primitive damoiselle, the Squire Court-card
being really feminine. He could then have allocated correctly
as follows: the King to Chokmah, the Queen to Binah,
the Knight to the six lower Sephiroth from Chesed to Yesod inclusive,
governed by the semi-Sephira Daath, and the Damoiselle to Malkuth.
He would have found also in this manner a complete correspondence
between these Trumps Minor and the four letters of the
Tetragram. Finally, he would have established the operation
of the Sacred Name in the four Kabalistic worlds and would
have exhibited the distinctions and analogies between Shekinah
in transcendence and the Shekinah manifested in life and
time. But Lévi was the magus of a world of fancy
and not of a world of knowledge.
He found his opportunity, however, with the so-called
pips, points or numbered cards, for he had the clear and
talismanic fact that there are ten numbered cards in each
suit, while the Sephiroth are also ten. But because there
is no other correspondence in the nature of things he did
badly enough in the development and produced the following
nonsense rhymes, which are borrowed from the literal translation
that I have made elsewhere.
Four signs present the Name of every name.
Four brilliant beams adorn His crown of flame.
Four rivers ever from His wisdom flow.
Four proofs of His intelligence we know.
Four benefactions from His mercy come.
Four times four sins avenged His justice sum.
Four rays unclouded make His beauty known.
Four times His conquest shall in song be shown.
Four times He triumphs on the timeless plane.
Foundations four His great white throne maintain.
One fourfold kingdom owns His endless sway,
As from His crown there streams a fourfold ray.
In this manner the four Aces correspond to Kether because
it is the first Sephira in the mystery of coming
forth from Ain Soph Aour, the Limitless Light;
the four twos to Chokmah, four threes to Binah and
so forward till the denary is completed. But what is to
be understood by the four proofs of Divine Understanding,
the four Divine Benefactions and the sixteen sins which
are avenged by Geburah or Justice we know as little
as of the reason for believing that the Divine Victories
shall be celebrated only four times in song, or how in
the philosophy of things it is possible to triumph four
times on a plane where no time exists. If Eliphas Lévi
could have furnished the omitted explanations, it is certain
that Zoharic Kabalism knows nothing about them.
At the back of all these reveries is the well-known fact
that the Ten Sephiroth are inter-connected in
the Kabalistic Tree of Life by means of twenty-two paths,
to which the Hebrew letters are attributed, Kether communicating
with Chokmah by the Path of Aleph, with Binah by
that of Beth, and so downward. A diagram showing
these allocations was published by Athanasius Kircher in ŒDIPUS ŒGYPTIACUS.
The allocation of the Tarot Trumps Major to the Paths of
the Tree of Life is obviously the next step, and attempts
have been made in this direction by blundering symbolists,
but they have forgotten that in the Mystical Tree the Sephiroth are
also Paths, making thirty-two Paths of Wisdom, from which
it follows that in the logic of things there ought to be
thirty-two Trumps.
The study of the Tarot has been pursued since the days
of Lévi in France, England and America, the developments
being sometimes along lines established by him and sometimes
the result of independent departure. Speaking generally,
he has been followed more or less. I have shown that his
allocations are for the most part without any roots in
the real things of analogy, while as to later students
of the subject all that they have to offer is ingenuities
of their own excogitation. We have to recognize, in a word,
that there is no canon of authority in the interpretation
of Tarot symbolism. The field is open therefore: it is
indeed so open that any one of my readers is free to produce
an entirely new explanation, making no appeal to past speculations:
but the adventure will be at his or her own risk and peril
as to whether they can make it work and thus produce a
harmony of interpretation throughout. The sentence to be
pronounced on previous attempts is either that they do
not work, because of their false analogies, or that the
scheme of evolved significance is of no real consequence.
There is an explanation of the Trumps Major which obtains
throughout the whole series and belongs to the highest
order of spiritual truth: it is not occult but mystical;
it is not of public communication and belongs to its own
Sanctuary. I can say only concerning it that some of the
symbols have suffered a pregnant change. Here is the only
answer to the question whether there is a deeper meaning
in the Trumps Major than is found on their surface.
And this leads up to my final point. If anyone feels drawn
in these days to the consideration of Tarot symbolism they
will do well to select the Trumps Major produced under
my supervision by Miss Pamela Coleman Smith. I am at liberty
to mention these as I have no interest in their sale. If
they seek to place upon each individually the highest meaning
that may dawn upon them in a mood of reflection, then to
combine the messages, modifying their formulation until
the whole series moves together in harmony, the result
may be something of living value to themselves and therefore
true for them.
It should be understood in conclusion that I have been
dealing with pictured images; but the way of the mystics
ultimately leaves behind it the figured representations
of the mind, for it is behind the kaleidoscope of external
things that the still light shines in and from within the
mind, in that state of pure being which is the life of
the soul in God.
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