SECTION 4

THE TAROT IN HISTORY

Our immediate next concern is to speak of the cards in their history, so
that the speculations and reveries, which have been perpetuated and
multiplied in the schools of occult research may be disposed of once and
for all, as intimated in the preface hereto.

Let it be understood at the beginning of this point that there are
several sets or sequences of ancient cards which are only in part of our
concern. _The Tarot Of The Bohemians_, by Papus, which I have recently
carried through the press, revising the imperfect rendering, has some
useful information in this connection, and, except for the omission of
dates and other evidences of the archæological sense, it will serve the
purpose of the general reader. I do not propose to extend it in the
present place in any manner that can be called considerable, but certain
additions are desirable and so also is a distinct mode of presentation.

Among ancient cards which are mentioned in connection with the Tarot,
there are firstly those of Baldini, which are the celebrated set
attributed by tradition to Andrea Mantegna, though this view is now
generally rejected. Their date is supposed to be about 1470, and it is
thought that there are not more than four collections extant in Europe.
A copy or reproduction referred to 1485 is perhaps equally rare. A
complete set contains fifty numbers, divided into five denaries or
sequences of ten cards each. There seems to be no record that they were
used for the purposes of a game, whether of chance or skill; they could
scarcely have lent themselves to divination or any form of
fortune-telling; while it would be more than idle to impute a profound
symbolical meaning to their obvious emblematic designs. The first denary
embodies Conditions of Life, as follows: (1) The Beggar, (2) the Knave,
(3) the Artisan, (4) the Merchant, (5) the Noble, (6) the Knight, (7)
the Doge, (8) the King, (9) the Emperor, (10) the Pope. The second
contains the Muses and their Divine Leader: (11) Calliope, (12) Urania,
(13) Terpsichore, (14) Erato, (15) Polyhymnia, (16) Thalia, (17)
Melpomene, (18) Euterpe, (19) Clio, (20) Apollo. The third combines part
of the Liberal Arts and Sciences with other departments of human
learning, as follows: (21) Grammar, (22) Logic, (23) Rhetoric, (24)
Geometry, (25) Arithmetic, (26) Music, (27) Poetry, (28) Philosophy,
(29) Astrology, (30) Theology. The fourth denary completes the Liberal
Arts and enumerates the Virtues: (31) Astronomy, (32) Chronology, (33)
Cosmology, (34) Temperance, (35) Prudence, (36) Strength, (37) Justice,
(38) Charity, (39) Hope, (40) Faith. The fifth and last denary presents
the System of the Heavens: (41) Moon, (42) Mercury, (43) Venus, (44)
Sun, (45) Mars, (46) Jupiter, (47) Saturn, (48) Eighth Sphere, (49)
_Primum Mobile_, (50) First Cause.

We must set aside the fantastic attempts to extract complete Tarot
sequences out of these denaries; we must forbear from saying, for
example, that the Conditions of Life correspond to the Trumps Major, the
Muses to Pentacles, the Arts and Sciences to Cups, the Virtues, etc., to
Scepters, and the conditions of life to Swords. This kind of thing can
be done by a process of mental contortion, but it has no place in
reality. At the same time, it is hardly possible that individual cards
should not exhibit certain, and even striking, analogies. The Baldini
King, Knight and Knave suggest the corresponding court cards of the
Minor Arcana. The Emperor, Pope, Temperance, Strength, Justice, Moon and
Sun are common to the Mantegna and Trumps Major of any Tarot pack.
Predisposition has also connected the Beggar and Fool, Venus and the
Star, Mars and the Chariot, Saturn and the Hermit, even Jupiter, or
alternatively the First Cause, with the Tarot card of the world.[1]But
the most salient features of the Trumps Major are wanting in the
Mantegna set, and I do not believe that the ordered sequence in the
latter case gave birth, as it has been suggested, to the others. Romain
Merlin maintained this view, and positively assigned the Baldini cards
to the end of the fourteenth century.

[1] The beggar is practically naked, and the analogy is constituted
by the presence of two dogs, one of which seems to be flying at his
legs. The Mars card depicts a sword-bearing warrior in a canopied
chariot, to which, however, no horses are attached. Of course, if
the Baldini cards belong to the close of the fifteenth century,
there is no question at issue, as the Tarot was known in Europe
long before that period.

If it be agreed that, except accidentally and sporadically, the Baldini
emblematic or allegorical pictures have only a shadowy and occasional
connection with Tarot cards, and, whatever their most probable date,
that they can have supplied no originating motive, it follows that we
are still seeking not only an origin in place and time for the symbols
with which we are concerned, but a specific case of their manifestation
on the continent of Europe to serve as a point of departure, whether
backward or forward. Now it is well known that in the year 1393 the
painter Charles Gringonneur--who for no reason that I can trace has been
termed an occultist and kabalist by one indifferent English
writer--designed and illuminated some kind of cards for the diversion of
Charles VI of France when he was in mental ill-health, and the question
arises whether anything can be ascertained of their nature. The only
available answer is that at Paris, in the Bibliothèque du Roi, there are
seventeen cards drawn and illuminated on paper. They are very beautiful,
antique and priceless; the figures have a background of gold, and are
framed in a silver border; but they are accompanied by no inscription
and no number.

It is certain, however, that they include Tarot Trumps Major, the list
of which is as follows: Fool, Emperor, Pope, Lovers, Wheel of Fortune,
Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, Moon, Sun, Chariot, Hermit, Hanged Man,
Death, Tower and Last Judgment. There are also four Tarot Cards at the
Musée Carrer, Venice, and five others elsewhere, making nine in all.
They include two pages or Knaves, three Kings and two Queens, thus
illustrating the Minor Arcana. These collections have all been
identified with the set produced by Gringonneur, but the ascription was
disputed so far back as the year 1848, and it is not apparently put
forward at the present day, even by those who are anxious to make
evident the antiquity of the Tarot. It is held that they are all of
Italian and some at least certainly of Venetian origin. We have in this
manner our requisite point of departure in respect of place at least. It
has further been stated with authority that Venetian Tarots are the old
and true form, which is the parent of all others; but I infer that
complete sets of the Major and Minor Arcana belong to much later
periods. The pack is thought to have consisted of seventy-eight cards.

Notwithstanding, however, the preference shown towards the Venetian
Tarot, it is acknowledged that some portions of a Minchiate or
Florentine set must be allocated to the period between 1413 and 1418.
These were once in the possession of Countess Gonzaga, at Milan. A
complete Minchiate pack contained ninety-seven cards, and in spite of
these vestiges it is regarded, speaking generally, as a later
development. There were forty-one Trumps Major, the additional numbers
being borrowed or reflected from the Baldini emblematic set. In the
court cards of the Minor Arcana, the Knights were monsters of the
centaur type, while the Knaves were sometimes warriors and sometimes
serving-men. Another distinction dwelt upon is the prevalence of
Christian mediæval ideas and the utter absence of any Oriental
suggestion. The question, however, remains whether there are Eastern
traces in any Tarot cards.

We come, in fine, to the Bolognese Tarot, sometimes referred to as that
of Venice and having the Trumps Major complete, but numbers 20 and 21
are transposed. In the Minor Arcana the 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the small cards
are omitted, with the result that there are sixty-two cards in all. The
termination of the Trumps Major in the representation of the Last
Judgment is curious, and a little arresting as a point of symbolism; but
this is all that it seems necessary to remark about the pack of Bologna,
except that it is said to have been invented--or, as a Tarot, more
correctly, modified--about the beginning of the fifteenth century by an
exiled Prince of Pisa resident in the city. The purpose for which they
were used is made tolerably evident by the fact that, in 1423, St.
Bernardin of Sienna preached against playing cards and other forms of
gambling. Forty years later the importation of cards into England was
forbidden, the time being that of King Edward IV. This is the first
certain record of the subject in our country.

It is difficult to consult perfect examples of the sets enumerated
above, but it is not difficult to meet with detailed and illustrated
descriptions--I should add, provided always that the writer is not an
occultist, for accounts emanating from that source are usually
imperfect, vague and preoccupied by considerations which cloud the
critical issues. An instance in point is offered by certain views which
have been expressed on the Mantegna codex--if I may continue to dignify
card sequences with a title of this kind. It has been ruled--as we have
seen--in occult reverie that Apollo and the Nine Muses are in
correspondence with Pentacles, but the analogy does not obtain in a
working state of research; and reverie must border on nightmare before
we can identify Astronomy, Chronology and Cosmology with the suit of
Cups. The Baldini figures which represent these subjects are emblems of
their period and not symbols, like the Tarot.

In conclusion as to this part, I observe that there has been a
disposition among experts to think that the Trumps Major were not
originally connected with the numbered suits. I do not wish to offer a
personal view; I am not an expert in the history of games of chance, and
I hate the _profanum vulgus_ of divinatory devices; but I venture, under
all reserves, to intimate that if later research should justify such a
leaning, then--except for the good old art of fortune-telling and its
tamperings with so-called destiny--it will be so much the better for the
Greater Arcana.

So far as regards what is indispensable as preliminaries to the
historical aspects of Tarot cards, and I will now take up the
speculative side of the subject and produce its test of value. In my
preface to _The Tarot Of The Bohemians_ I have mentioned that the first
writer who made known the fact of the cards was the archæologist Court
de Gebelin, who, just prior to the French Revolution, occupied several
years in the publication of his _Monde Primitif_, which extended to nine
quarto volumes. He was a learned man of his epoch, a high-grade Mason, a
member of the historical Lodge of the Philalethes, and a _virtuoso_ with
a profound and lifelong interest in the debate on universal antiquities
before a science of the subject existed. Even at this day, his memorials
and dissertations, collected under the title which I have quoted, are
worth possessing. By an accident of things, he became acquainted with
the Tarot when it was quite unknown in Paris, and at once conceived that
it was the remnants of an Egyptian book. He made inquiries concerning it
and ascertained that it was in circulation over a considerable part of
Europe--Spain, Italy, Germany and the South of France. It was in use as
a game of chance or skill, after the ordinary manner of playing-cards;
and he ascertained further how the game was played. But it was in use
also for the higher purpose of divination or fortune-telling, and with
the help of a learned friend he discovered the significance attributed
to the cards, together with the method of arrangement adopted for this
purpose. In a word, he made a distinct contribution to our knowledge,
and he is still a source of reference--but it is on the question of fact
only, and not on the beloved hypothesis that the Tarot contains pure
Egyptian doctrine. However, he set the opinion which is prevalent to
this day throughout the occult schools that in the mystery and wonder,
the strange night of the gods, the unknown tongue and the undeciphered
hieroglyphics which symbolized Egypt at the end of the eighteenth
century, the origin of the cards was lost. So dreamed one of the
characteristic _literati_ of France, and one can almost understand and
sympathize, for the country about the Delta and the Nile was beginning
to loom largely in the preoccupation of learned thought, and _omne
ignotum pro Ægyptiaco_ was the way the delusion to which many minds
tended. It was excusable enough then, but that the madness was continued
and, within the charmed circle of the occult sciences, still passes from
mouth to mouth--there is no excuse for this. Let us see, therefore, the
evidence produced by M. Court de Gebelin in support of his thesis, and,
that I may deal justly, it shall be summarized as far as possible in his
own words.

(1) The figures and arrangement of the game are manifestly allegorical;
(2) the allegories are in conformity with the civil, philosophical and
religious doctrine of ancient Egypt; (3) if the cards were modern, no
High Priestess would be included among the Greater Arcana; (4) the
figure in question bears the horns of Isis; (5) the card which is called
the Emperor has a scepter terminating in a triple cross; (6) the card
entitled the Moon, who is Isis, shows drops of rain or dew in the act of
being shed by the luminary and these--as we have seen--are the tears of
Isis, which swelled the waters of the Nile and fertilized the fields of
Egypt; (7) the seventeenth card, or Star, is the dog-star, Sirius which
was consecrated to Isis and symbolized the opening of the year; (8) the
game played with the Tarot is founded on the sacred number seven, which
was of great importance in Egypt; (9) the word Tarot is pure Egyptian,
in which language Tar = way or road, and Ro = king or royal--it
signifies therefore the Royal Road of Life; (10) alternatively, it is
derived from A = doctrine; Rosh = Mercury = Thoth, and the article T; in
sum, _Tarosh_; and therefore the Tarot is the _Book Of Thoth_, or the
_Table Of The Doctrine Of Mercury_.

Such is the testimony, it being understood that I have set aside several
casual statements, for which no kind of justification is produced.
These, therefore, are ten pillars which support the edifice of the
thesis, and the same are pillars of sand. The Tarot is, of course,
allegorical--that is to say, it is symbolism--but allegory and symbol
are catholic--of all countries, nations and times; they are not more
Egyptian than Mexican; they are of Europe and Cathay, of Tibet beyond
the Himalayas and of the London gutters. As allegory and symbol, the
cards correspond to many types of ideas and things; they are universal
and not particular; and the fact that they do not especially and
peculiarly respond to Egyptian doctrine--religious, philosophical or
civil--is clear from the failure of Court de Gebelin to go further than
the affirmation. The presence of a High Priestess among the Trumps Major
is more easily explained as the memorial of some popular
superstition--that worship of Diana, for example, the persistence of
which in modern Italy has been traced with such striking results by
Leland. We have also to remember the universality of horns in every
cultus, not excepting that of Tibet. The triple cross is preposterous as
an instance of Egyptian symbolism; it is the cross of the patriarchal
see, both Greek and Latin--of Venice, of Jerusalem, for example--and it
is the form of signing used to this day by the priests and laity of the
Orthodox Rite. I pass over the idle allusion to the tears of Isis,
because other occult writers have told us that they are Hebrew _Jods_;
as regards the seventeenth card, it is the star Sirius or another, as
predisposition pleases; the number seven was certainly important in
Egypt and any treatise on numerical mysticism will show that the same
statement applies everywhere, even if we elect to ignore the seven
Christian Sacraments and the Gifts of the Divine Spirit. Finally, as
regards the etymology of the word Tarot, it is sufficient to observe
that it was offered before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and when
there was no knowledge of the Egyptian language.

The thesis of Court de Gebelin was not suffered to repose undisturbed in
the mind of the age, appealing to the learned exclusively by means of a
quarto volume. It created the opportunity of Tarot cards in Paris, as
the center of France and all things French in the universe. The
suggestion that divination by cards had behind it the unexpected
warrants of ancient hidden science, and that the root of the whole
subject was in the wonder and mystery of Egypt, reflected thereon almost
a divine dignity; out of the purlieus of occult practices cartomancy
emerged into fashion and assumed for the moment almost pontifical
vestures. The first to undertake the role of _bateleur_, magician and
juggler, was the illiterate but zealous adventurer, Alliette; the
second, as a kind of High Priestess, full of intuitions and revelations,
was Mlle. Lenormand--but she belongs to a later period; while lastly
came Julia Orsini, who is referable to a Queen of Cups rather in the
tatters of clairvoyance. I am not concerned with these people as tellers
of fortune, when destiny itself was shuffling and cutting cards for the
game of universal revolution, or for such courts and courtiers as were
those of Louis XVIII, Charles IX and Louis Philippe. But under the
occult designation of Etteilla, the transliteration of his name,
Alliette, that _perruquier_ took himself with high seriousness and posed
rather as a priest of the occult sciences than as an ordinary adept in
_l'art de tirer les cartes_. Even at this day there are people, like Dr.
Papus, who have sought to save some part of his bizarre system from
oblivion.

The long and heterogeneous story of _Le Monde Primitif_ had come to the
end of its telling in 1782, and in 1783 the tracts of Etteilla had begun
pouring from the press, testifying that already he had spent thirty,
nay, almost forty years in the study of Egyptian magic, and that he had
found the final keys. They were, in fact, the Keys of the Tarot, which
was a book of philosophy and the _Book Of Thoth_, but at the same time
it was actually written by seventeen Magi in a Temple of Fire, on the
borders of the Levant, some three leagues from Memphis. It contained
the science of the universe, and the cartomancist proceeded to apply it
to Astrology, Alchemy, and fortune-telling, without the slightest
diffidence or reserve as to the fact that he was driving a trade. I have
really little doubt that he considered it genuine as a _métier_, and
that he himself was the first person whom he convinced concerning his
system. But the point which we have to notice is that in this manner was
the antiquity of the Tarot generally trumpeted forth. The little books
of Etteilla are proof positive that he did not know even his own
language; when in the course of time he produced a reformed Tarot, even
those who think of him tenderly admit that he spoiled its symbolism; and
in respect of antiquities he had only Court de Gebelin as his universal
authority.

The cartomancists succeeded one another in the manner which I have
mentioned, and of course there were rival adepts of these less than
least mysteries; but the scholarship of the subject, if it can be said
to have come into existence, reposed after all in the quarto of Court de
Gebelin for something more than sixty years. On his authority, there is
very little doubt that every one who became acquainted, by theory or
practice, by casual or special concern, with the question of Tarot
cards, accepted their Egyptian character. It is said that people are
taken commonly at their own valuation, and--following as it does the
line of least resistance--the unsolicitous general mind assuredly
accepts archæological pretensions in the sense of their own daring and
of those who put them forward. The first who appeared to reconsider the
subject with some presumptive titles to a hearing was the French writer
Duchesne, but I am compelled to pass him over with a mere reference, and
so also some interesting researches on the general subject of
playing-cards by Singer in England. The latter believed that the old
Venetian game called Trappola was the earliest European form of
card-playing, that it was of Arabian origin, and that the fifty-two
cards used for the purpose derived from that region. I do not gather
that any importance was ever attached to this view.

Duchesne and Singer were followed by another English writer, W. A.
Chatto, who reviewed the available facts and the cloud of speculations
which had already arisen on the subject. This was in 1848, and his work
has still a kind of standard authority, but--after every allowance for a
certain righteousness attributable to the independent mind--it remains
an indifferent and even a poor performance. It was, however,
characteristic in its way of the approaching middle night of the
nineteenth century. Chatto rejected the Egyptian hypothesis, but as he
was at very little pains concerning it, he would scarcely be held to
displace Court de Gebelin if the latter had any firm ground beneath his
hypothesis. In 1854 another French writer, Boiteau, took up the general
question, maintaining the oriental origin of Tarot cards, though without
attempting to prove it. I am not certain, but I think that he is the
first writer who definitely identified them with the Gipsies; for him,
however, the original Gipsy home was in India, and Egypt did not
therefore enter into his calculation.

In 1860 there arose Eliphas Lévi, a brilliant and profound _illuminé_
whom it is impossible to accept, and with whom it is even more
impossible to dispense. There was never a mouth declaring such great
things, of all the western voices which have proclaimed or interpreted
the science called occult and the doctrine called magical. I suppose
that, fundamentally speaking, he cared as much and as little as I do for
the phenomenal part, but he explained the phenomena with the assurance
of one who openly regarded charlatanry as a great means to an end, if
used in a right cause. He came unto his own and his own received him,
also at his proper valuation, as a man of great learning--which he never
was--and as a revealer of all mysteries without having been received
into any. I do not think that there was ever an instance of a writer
with greater gifts, after their particular kind, who put them to such
indifferent uses. After all, he was only Etteilla a second time in the
flesh, endowed in his transmutation with a mouth of gold and a wider
casual knowledge. This notwithstanding, he has written the most
comprehensive, brilliant, enchanting _History Of Magic_ which has ever
been drawn into writing in any language. The Tarot and the de Gebelin
hypothesis he took into his heart of hearts, and all occult France and
all esoteric Britain, Martinists, half-instructed Kabalists, schools of
_soi disant_ theosophy--there, here and everywhere--have accepted his
judgment about it with the same confidence as his interpretations of
those great classics of Kabalism which he had skimmed rather than read.
The Tarot for him was not only the most perfect instrument of divination
and the keystone of occult science, but it was the primitive book, the
sole book of the ancient Magi, the miraculous volume which inspired all
the sacred writings of antiquity. In his first work Lévi was content,
however, with accepting the construction of Court de Gebelin and
reproducing the seventh Trump Major with a few Egyptian characteristics.
The question of Tarot transmission through the Gipsies did not occupy
him, till J. A. Vaillant, a bizarre writer with great knowledge of the
Romany people, suggested it in his work on those wandering tribes. The
two authors were almost coincident and reflected one another thereafter.
It remained for Romain Merlin, in 1869, to point out what should have
been obvious, namely, that cards of some kind were known in Europe prior
to the arrival of the Gipsies in or about 1417. But as this was their
arrival at Lüneburg, and as their presence can be traced antecedently,
the correction loses a considerable part of its force; it is safer,
therefore, to say that the evidence for the use of the Tarot by Romany
tribes was not suggested till after the year 1840; the fact that some
Gipsies before this period were found using cards is quite explicable on
the hypothesis not that they brought them into Europe but found them
there already and added them to their stock in trade.

We have now seen that there is no particle of evidence for the Egyptian
origin of Tarot cards. Looking in other directions, it was once advanced
on native authority that cards of some kind were invented in China about
the year A. D. 1120. Court de Gebelin believed in his zeal that he had
traced them to a Chinese inscription of great imputed antiquity which
was said to refer to the subsidence of the waters of the Deluge. The
characters of this inscription were contained in seventy-seven
compartments, and this constitutes the analogy. India had also its
tablets, whether cards or otherwise, and these have suggested similar
slender similitudes. But the existence, for example, of ten suits or
styles, of twelve numbers each, and representing the avatars of Vishnu,
as a fish, tortoise, boar, lion, monkey, hatchet, umbrella, or bow, as a
goat, a boodh and as a horse in fine, are not going to help us towards
the origin of our own Trumps Major, nor do crowns and harps--nor even
the presence of possible coins as a synonym of deniers and perhaps as an
equivalent of pentacles--do much to elucidate the Lesser Arcana. If
every tongue and people and clime and period possessed their cards--if
with these also they philosophized, divined and gambled--the fact would
be interesting enough, but unless they were Tarot cards, they would
illustrate only the universal tendency of man to be pursuing the same
things in more or less the same way.

I end, therefore, the history of this subject by repeating that it has
no history prior to the fourteenth century, when the first rumors were
heard concerning cards. They may have existed for centuries, but this
period would be early enough, if they were only intended for people to
try their luck at gambling or their luck at seeing the future; on the
other hand, if they contain the deep intimations of Secret Doctrine,
then the fourteenth century is again early enough, or at least in this
respect we are getting as much as we can.




Part Two
THE DOCTRINE BEHIND THE VEIL