SECTION 1

DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE GREATER AND LESSER ARCANA

In respect of their usual presentation, the bridge between the Greater
and Lesser Arcana is supplied by the court cards--King, Queen, Knight
and Squire or Page; but their utter distinction from the Trumps Major is
shown by their conventional character. Let the reader compare them with
symbols like the Fool, the High Priestess, the Hierophant, or--almost
without exception--with any in the previous sequence, and he will
discern my meaning. There is no especial idea connected on the surface
with the ordinary court cards; they are a bridge of conventions, which
form a transition to the simple pretexts of the counters and denaries of
the numbers following. We seem to have passed away utterly from the
region of higher meanings illustrated by living pictures. There was a
period, however, when the numbered cards were also pictures, but such
devices were sporadic inventions of particular artists and were either
conventional designs of the typical or allegorical kind, distinct from
what is understood by symbolism, or they were illustrations--shall we
say?--of manners, customs and periods. They were, in a word, adornments,
and as such they did nothing to raise the significance of the Lesser
Arcana to the plane of the Trumps Major; moreover, such variations are
exceedingly few. This notwithstanding, there are vague rumors concerning
a higher meaning in the minor cards, but nothing has so far transpired,
even within the sphere of prudence which belongs to the most occult
circles; these, it is true, have certain variants in respect of
divinatory values, but I have not heard that in practice they offer
better results. Efforts like those of Papus in _The Tarot Of The
Bohemians_ are strenuous and deserving after their own kind; he, in
particular, recognizes the elements of the Divine Immanence in the
Trumps Major, and he seeks to follow them through the long series of the
lesser cards, as if these represented filtrations of the World of Grace
through the World of Fortune; but he only produces an arbitrary scheme
of division which he can carry no further, and he has recourse, of
necessity, in the end to a common scheme of divination as the substitute
for a title to existence on the part of the Lesser Arcana. Now, I am
practically in the same position; but I shall make no attempt here to
save the situation by drawing on the mystical properties of numbers, as
he and others have attempted. I shall recognize at once that the Trumps
Major belong to the divine dealings of philosophy, but all that follows
to fortune-telling, since it has never yet been translated into another
language; the course thus adopted will render to divination, and at need
even to gambling, the things that belong to this particular world of
skill, and it will set apart for their proper business those matters
that are of another order. In this free introduction to the subject in
hand, it is only necessary to add that the difference between the
fifty-six Lesser Arcana and the ordinary playing-cards is not only
essentially slight, because the substitution of Cups for Hearts, and so
forth, constitutes an accidental variation, but because the presence of
a Knight in each of the four suits was characteristic at one time of
many ordinary packs, when this personage usually replaced the Queen. In
the rectified Tarot which illustrates the present handbook, all numbered
cards of the Lesser Arcana--the Aces only excepted--are furnished with
figures or pictures to illustrate--but without exhausting--the
divinatory meanings attached thereto.

Some who are gifted with reflective and discerning faculties in more
than the ordinary sense--and I am not speaking of clairvoyance--may
observe that in many of the Lesser Arcana there are vague intimations
conveyed by the designs which seem to exceed the stated divinatory
values. It is desirable to avoid misconception by specifying definitely
that, except in rare instances--and then only by accident--the
variations are not to be regarded as suggestions of higher and
extra-divinatory symbolism. I have said that these Lesser Arcana have
not been translated into a language which transcends that of
fortune-telling. I should not indeed be disposed to regard them as
belonging in their existing forms to another realm than this; but the
field of divinatory possibilities is inexhaustible, by the hypothesis of
the art, and the combined systems of cartomancy have indicated only the
bare heads of significance attaching to the emblems in use. When the
pictures in the present case go beyond the conventional meanings they
should be taken as hints of possible developments along the same lines;
and this is one of the reasons why the pictorial devices here attached
to the four denaries will prove a great help to intuition. The mere
numerical powers and bare words of the meanings are insufficient by
themselves; but the pictures are like doors which open into unexpected
chambers or like a turn in the open road with a wide prospect beyond.