Divinatory Syncretism: Synthesizing vs. Particularizing*
*Syncretism: The union of different practices whose features may be synchronized to good effect.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Before I get into my subject, I should acknowledge that I sympathize (that is, I agree in principle) with Ronald Decker’s criticism of the Golden Dawn’s application of “Chaldean” astrology (which I understand does not signify a geographic region but a set of archaic conventions and principles) to the cards of the tarot, specifically in the form of the 36 ten-degree “decanates” of the zodiac that Decker identifies as Egyptian in origin. He considers it a forced arrangement and calls it a “farrago” along with most other forms of syncretism that in his opinion have been foisted on the cards by misguided occultists. He strongly opposes the mingling of tarot with other esoteric concepts where there is no common metaphysical root, apparently believing that no “good effect” has been achieved by synchronizing them. But I must also admit that I’ve used the parallel tenets of astrology, numerology and Hermetic Qabalism with tarot, although in a guarded manner and with some reservations, for over 50 years.
Decker’s chief objection is that it doesn’t make any numerical sense. There are 40 pip cards but only 36 decans, and only 12 signs but 16 court cards and 22 trumps. In short, nothing combines seamlessly, requiring the Golden Dawn to gin up some imaginative kluges (an old computer programmer’s term for a creative workaround that uses cobbled-together code to resolve a glitch). The result is an arguably functional pastiche of correspondences that makes some internal sense while also inviting comparison to another programmer’s objective, this time from video-game coding: the suspension of disbelief that creates an immersive virtual experience, although here the suspension entails suppressing derisive laughter. (My own yardstick for successfully leaping the credibility gap is “passing the giggle test.”)
I’ve written in the past that none of these occult innovations are crucial to working with the cards in divination, even though they can be revealing from time-to-time when standard definitions come up short in a given situation. (I’ll once again quote my friend Dan Pelletier from the Tarot History forum: “Some guys made up a bunch of stuff, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.”) I’ll allow that it works “after a fashion,” and I keep its methods in the toolbox but seldom trot them out; it is even less likely that I will mention them to my clients. (Like Decker, I’ve come up with my own set of non-esoteric divinatory meanings for the Tarot de Marseille “pip” cards, although in my case they do partake of suit-and-number symbolism and graphical hints from the “arabesques.”)
But the larger issue here is one of syncretism in general. I think it is an error to condemn any and all forms that aren’t extensions of Decker’s twin pillars of Pythagoreanism and Hermeticism. Personally, I’m more inclined to tap into the mind’s “synthesizing” power when performing a reading than to stick entirely with its “particularizing” capacity. One perfectly suits the storyteller’s goal of narrative cohesion while the other is more likely to produce “laundry lists” of disparate insights that are more jarring than illuminating. Synthesis is, of course, a staple of astrological chart interpretation that is aimed at blending a range of factors into a coherent whole, and the technique is entirely transferable to the interpretation of cards in a tarot spread. (I like to call it the “gestalt theory” of card delineation.)
Nonetheless, syncretism can be taken too far. In The Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley drew relentlessly on the anthropological minutiae in Sir James George Frazer’s monumental (and ultimately exhausting) tome The Golden Bough in support of his efforts to conflate all manner of primitive religious belief under one heading that had the Major Arcana of the tarot as its focus. For the journeyman tarot practitioner, this kind of philosophical round-up adds nothing to the value of Crowley’s work other than to demonstrate his rarefied erudition to fellow scholars. Even though I’ve attempted to absorb this material four times to date, my eyes inevitably glaze over when reading it in the BoT, and you can imagine how I nearly went blind trying to extract Crowley’s line-of-thought directly from his voluminous source material. It wasn’t as daunting as wading through Knorr von Rosenroth’s Zohar to get at the mystical underpinnings of the Kabbalah (and by extension, the Qabalistic tarot), but it was close. I think I’ve cured myself of that obsession.
Here are a few more thoughts of my own on the use of esoteric correspondences:
https://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com/2017/09/01/correspondences-how-much-is-too-much/
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on April 14, 2024.
