The Case for Esoteric Syncretism
AUTHOR’S NOTE: In The Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley went to great lengths (15 pages) to relate a number of primitive cultural rites to his understanding of the Fool, with much of his inspiration coming from Sir James George Frazer’s anthropological tome, The Golden Bough. This conceptual melding is known as syncretism, and as one who has repeatedly attempted to absorb (never mind understand) both Crowley’s and Frazer’s observations, I’ve come away convinced that Crowley, at least, was simply trying too hard. (While lucid, Frazer is exhausting in his minute and ultimately tedious detail.) However, the syncretic use of different forms of divination in a single reading is certainly a valid pursuit.
Perhaps — setting aside the established tenets of sympathetic magic and religious ritual as well as the appearance of sociopolitical and spiritual iconography in early Italian tarot decks — the most systematic example of blending metaphysically-congruent traditions arose in the assignment of astrological, qabalistic, mythological, numerological and chromatic correspondences to the cards of the tarot, which began with Jean-Baptiste Alliette (aka “Etteilla”) in the late 18th Century and reached its zenith with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at the end of the 19th Century. I’ve used the latter approach since 1972 and can vouch for the fact that at least some of the attributions work as intended; however, in an actual tarot reading I treat them as secondary, to be used only when my storyteller’s instincts falter. Few clients are well-versed in astrology and esoteric number theory, so if I bring those insights to bear I keep them to myself and rephrase them in more generic language. However, I do employ horary astrology in tandem with tarot reading because the two are perfectly attuned in their pragmatic focus.
A sidelight to this topic is the custom of applying psychological jargon to the practice of divination. This emerged as a dominant feature in natal astrology, first with Alan Leo in the early 20th Century when he was trying to avoid criminal prosecution as a “fortune-teller” (he failed), and after him astrologers Marc Edmund Jones and Dane Rudhyar were its most prominent proponents. The “New Age” movement of the 1970s grafted this terminology onto both “humanistic” astrology and tarot reading. Personally, I steer clear of most psychological uses of the tarot (specifically, character analysis and personality profiling) as being too anecdotally “squishy” and instead stick with action-and-event-based predictions that leave a more obvious trail of evidence.
Another popular combination is the use of clairvoyance with the tarot cards serving as “visual prompts,” although psychic readers will swear they are just reading the cards and aren’t getting “all mystical.” This is the premise behind almost all “intuitive” tarot interpretation, which in my estimation is mostly guesswork, particularly when the matter involves what someone else “thinks or feels.” YouTube readers love this concept because they don’t have to prove anything at the personal level, they can just speak to the “collective” and let their followers figure it out for themselves. (Talk about a “fishing expedition!”)
I’ve also put some effort into the use of binary, odd-or-even tools like dice, dominoes and coins in connection with the cards as part of my tarot-spread development, mainly as a way to choose the best course to follow among two or more options. As long as they are limited to a supporting role, they work just fine. Another imaginative approach is to use the cards as “sortes” or “lots” in a manner similar to those common to sortilege and lithomancy, in which they are “cast” rather than shuffled and dealt; this is a lot of fun even if it is something of a chore to pull off. Some people pair oracle cards with the tarot in a single layout, but I’m not a fan of oracle desks in general and haven’t found much use for the technique.
However, the main attraction for me at the moment is examining the syncretic links between the tarot and the I Ching. I had already spent some time creating spreads based on the Tao as explained in The Tao of Thoth by Ethan Indigo Smith, which has more of a “Tai Chi” or martial-arts slant to it. Here is an example:
https://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com/2022/03/15/the-power-of-yes-and-no/
But now I’m taking on the sprawling content of the Book of Changes itself through the Wilhelm-Baynes translation, Anthony Clark’simpressive I Ching Pack of oracle cards, and Benebell Wen’s more recent volume I Ching, the Oracle: A Practical Guide to the Book of Changes.
I may never resurface.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on May 24, 2024.
