Tarot of the Bohemians

by Papus

Paperback, 1994

Status

Available

Call number

133.3

Genres

Religion & Spirituality

All Topics

Nonfiction

Collection

Your library

Publication

Fairmount Books Ltd Remainders (1994), Edition: New edition, 400 pages

Description

To the casual observer, they're just a pack of playing cards. But to initiates, the mysterious figures of the Tarot deck symbolize the keys to ancient wisdom. The 78 cards can be employed to unlock the secrets of the universe and to foretell the future -- but only by those who comprehend their esoteric truths. A pillar of occult science, The Tarot of the Bohemians provides a theological element to the work begun by Antoine Court de Gébelin, Etteila, and Éliphas Lévi, and advanced by A. E. Waite, the distinguished scholar and designer of the most widely known deck. Geared toward initiates, its topics include an introduction to the study of the Tarot as well as its symbolism and applications. This revised edition includes a Preface by Waite in addition to illustrative plates, charts, and tables.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member goosecap

I didn’t review this book right away because it is basically very prosaic rather than inspiring. I guess that the philosophy of the Tetragrammaton or whatever you’d call it is worth reading, but much of the symbolism or wrong—it is possible for a symbol or its interpretation not to correspond

to observation, reality, or experience, you know. It’s a famous name, for his field, the name of Papus—ooo! They were all, ~men~, back then: and they have since, ~died~, oh! What joy! 👻—but the correct correspondences between the Major Arcana and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet (and what those letters symbolize) wasn’t given out in books until about 1900: before then they publicized a system that was off by one for practically all of them in all printed material (which only existed for about a century or so, before 1900, even though tarot cards were published as early as I don’t know, I guess the 1300s or 1400s—but they were taboo, basically, much more so, even than they are today); out of fear, I guess, they only told the true system to people sworn to secrecy. A crazy story from a crazy time. I read one of Eliphaz Levi’s books and it seemed better than this—it was very flowery and prolix, and so I suppose there must be something in THAT book other than just, whatever he changed to keep himself safe, I guess. (I guess if the system seemed absurd to outsiders, it would attract less persecution? I guess that’s it, although I’m not sure that we today can necessarily get inside their head on that one.) But this book is mostly just tables and keywords and correspondences, and in a number of important places they are the WRONG correspondences, you know. (The Emperor is not the womb! The EMPRESS is the womb! A feminine man who succored people would be embodying Empress energy, not Emperor energy!) I guess it’s nice to be introduced to the idea of the Hebrew letter-Tarot Trump correspondence idea…. But it’s nice to get the fucking details right, wouldn’t you say?

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