Tarot: Three Gods in One?
Yesterday I came across a brief discussion of the Qabalistic numerology of the tarot. It involved an analysis of the Hebrew four-lettered “name of God,” Jehovah, and the fact that its letters, Yod, He, Vau, He (written right to left) enumerate to 26. The premise was that since the number of cards in a tarot deck is 3×26, or 78, there really should be a pantheon of three deities connected with it. The writer believed that, because the tarot is part of the Western Mystery Tradition, those gods should be Jehovah, Allah and Christ, although he didn’t go into which “god” gets which cards or whether they all share an equal presence in each one.
But I said to myself, “Wait just a minute!” Jesus Christ has always struck me as an extension of the original theological concept of Judaism; he arose in the same place among the same people and acknowledged the same supreme authority, but his followers and later chroniclers transformed the vengeful, fear-based rationale into a mild, merciful and hopeful one. Numerous classical artists may have painted Jesus looking like a gentle, kindly northern European, but as Kinky Friedman once sang “They ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus any more.” Islam is also a branch of the same Abrahamic tree since it appeared in the same (now contested) region among an opposing faction of the same historical population, so I don’t really distinguish when it comes to the origins of the three patriarchal religions (although fact-checkers may refute my observations here, my main point is that I don’t believe any of the faiths places much store in fortune-telling).
There is some evidence that the tarot has roots in India, and even further back in Chinese playing cards. This begs the question “Why wouldn’t the Hindu hierarchy of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva have at least a piece of the action?” even though it seems to me that divination in India has evolved more along the lines of sidereal or Vedic astrology. For their part, the Taoists have had the I Ching for that purpose across many centuries so they don’t require representation, and I’m not quite sure how Buddhism fits in if at all. Since the ancient Egyptian religions are long defunct, there is probably no place in the current model for Osiris and Isis, despite the fact that there are decks based on Egyptian mythology.
Although it comes down to hair-splitting, I would probably settle on Jehovah, the Brahman trinity, and Allah as the three primary patrons of the modern tarot, even if that last mention might land me in the same theocratic predicament as Salman Rushdie. (Note that I’m not going to get into examining the various angels and other spirits here). But in all honesty, as a “Spinozan sympathizer” I’m not convinced the tarot needs a personification of godhood associated with it. I see its archetypes more as spontaneous and organic products of the human psyche that stand apart from any theological distinctions. For me, religious orthodoxy has always left a philosophical vacuum (the kind of void that “nature abhors”) that is nicely filled by my study and practice of the esoteric arts.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on December 14, 2022.
