The Tarot of the Bohemians: First Thoughts
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Now that I’ve finished Sallie Nichols’ Tarot and the Archetypal Journey I’m setting off in an entirely different direction, having just begun reading The Tarot of the Bohemians (third edition) by Gerard Encausse (aka “Papus”), which will surely generate as many brief essays as the former work. I’m only part-way through the preface by Arthur Edward Waite* and already I’ve encountered a few gems that are worth mentioning. Although the expository style is exhausting as was typical of that era and of Waite in particular (I think they all wanted to be Dickens), I’ve gleaned a few worthy insights to share, in some cases only because Waite was so sardonically arch about the subject of tarot history.
The first nugget of interest is Waite’s observation that the tarot historians of that period were largely “makers-in-chief of reverie” (in other words, fantasists of the first order who invented most of their claims). He was somewhat sympathetic toward occult pioneer Antoine Court de Gebelin in the latter’s understandable ignorance of ancient Egyptian culture, but less so to those who came along after Egyptology was an established academic discipline. Although working with much the same raw material, modern historians have come a long way from that early assessment.
The second insight (which is not surprising given Waite’s opinions stated elsewhere in his writing), is that the “school of vulgar divination” is predicated on the “traditional lines of printed books or uninstructed intuition,” neither of which benefits from a “canon of criticism.” Waite was never shy about taking potshots at divination (although for some unfathomable reason he felt justified in publishing the “kitchen-sink” tome, A Manual of Cartomancy, under the pen-name “Grand Orient”). Although I don’t entirely share his staunch aversion to “fortune-telling,” I do agree that “uninstructed intuition” is still rampant among tarot-readers today, and many people swallow it whole with no thought of critical analysis.
In dismissing the “fact-free” vision of Court de Gebelin, who postulated an origin for the tarot in ancient Egyptian mythology and religion, Waite makes the entertaining point that “. . . it is obvious for Court de Gebelin that (the high priest and high priestess) are husband and wife — I know not why, unless it is that they have done what they could to get away from each other in the series.” Score one for Waite on that sly jibe!
Finally, Waite contends that, in addition to the specious claim of an Egyptian origin for the tarot, the assumption that it has a direct correlation to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet is “factitious and apart from final warrant in the highest world of symbolism” (his convoluted way of saying “It’s artificially-contrived bunk!”) Although Eliphas Levi believed there is a legitimate connection, later historians have unequivocally sided with Waite: it’s nothing more than a cobbled-together (and often strained) fabrication at worst and an intriguing coincidence at best. As one who makes little use of these correspondences in my routine tarot practice, I don’t have an opinion either way; some of the attributions work from a symbolic standpoint, others don’t without adopting an extreme “suspension of disbelief,” but they’re all incidental to practical use of the cards.
Waite thought very little of the other authorities whose writing prefigured the work of Papus and served as his “masters,” primarily J.A. Vallaint, Eliphas Levi, William Postel, Jerome Cardan, and L.C. de Saint-Martin (inspiration for the Martinist Order that Papus later headed). Levi and Saint-Martin are the only names I recognize in that group; regarding Levi, Waite notes that “his opinion on any question of fact was sometimes more than worthless, and occasionally a little bit less than intellectually honest” (my italics). It seems that Waite felt he was being charitable by damning the much-revered magus with faint praise. According to Waite, Saint-Martin mainly followed in the wake of Levi. He commends Papus the philosopher (who apparently had no credentials in tarot scholarship) for not contributing to the confusion by “adding historical considerations of his own,” but instead “simply reproducing his precursors.”
I have yet to reach the “text proper” of The Tarot of the Bohemians, but I suspect Waite has a few more bon mots waiting for me if I don’t first drown in his pedantic Victorian verbosity. More to come . . .
*For the record, I’m no great fan of Waite. He was a self-avowed obscurantist committed to keeping high-minded esoteric matters away from the public and out of the gutter, and he was at least partially deserving of the unkind jabs he received in print from his contemporary, Aleister Crowley. But he wasn’t nearly as harsh in his estimation of the uninitiated as was Crowley in The Book of the Law. (OK, tell me you’re convinced it was the disembodied “Aiwass” and not Crowley talking and I’ll offer to sell you some prime swampland in Florida; the Brooklyn Bridge has already been “sold” multiple times.)
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on January 6, 2024.
