One One
n this age of postmodern uncertainty, foundational studies of wisdom need to be established. Civilization in the twenty-first century cannot afford to abandon the great wisdom traditions of the past five thousand years. This book elucidates the metaphysical history of one such tradition. It is a history close to the heart of humanity. It is a history of vitally essential Principles; a history based in the Just, or what the ancient Greeks called Diké – the radiant “Way.” It is a history of nondual emanation: the Way emanating as the World. It is a history of wisdom ultimately summarized in the form of twenty-two Image-Exemplars, popularly known as the Tarot.
The Tarot is a visual explication of spiritual ascension affirmed perennially in both Western and Eastern cultures. Such ascension traditionally involves a retracing back to the Source of the universe and consciousness. Paradoxically, that Great Return simultaneously embodies integral stages of evolution, realizing the Source through its own Destiny. Through the ages, it has been understood that the One as both universal source and destiny – whether known as God, Allah, Brahman, Buddha Mind, or Tao – constantly manifests reality by descending through emanated domains embodying immortal principles.
For most of European history, this classical cosmology has been elegantly imagined as a nested series of ten spheres of principle-realization. These spheres can be cognized as domains and attributes of universal existence forming a Great Chain of Being. In this worldview, the One is felt and known by the human Heart through a creative hierarchy encompassing a continuous process visualized as cosmic descending and conscious ascent. The Tarot was created as an epitomized representation of that vertical hierarchy, addressing in particular the corresponding horizontal realm of humanity’s psychosocial existence.
Throughout this book, we will view examples of hierarchical emergence. The Great Chain of Being will be interpreted through ten great universal Principles. We will come to see how it is that each principle, attribute, or stage of the One emerges from those preceding it. We will explore emergent hierarchies as developed amongst Kabbalists, ecstatic Sufi dervishes, and heretically powerful Templar Knights. Moving east, we will discover the role that Genghis Khan and his Mongol lords filled in fusing Buddhist and Taoist hierarchical realization with Islamic Sufi mysticism. The Eastern Orthodox Church of Byzantium will appear prominently in our studies. In addition, the yet-older Greek metaphysics of Neoplatonic philosophers will shed a clear and bright light upon genuine origins and meanings of the Tarot Arcana’s esoteric hierarchy. We will gain an appreciation for the nondual concept of gnosis and its appropriation by dualistic Gnostic sects. We will have cause to explore exotic tantric practices of yogic alchemy. Fusing it all together will be a glorious tapestry of Wisdom-myths revealing the origins of Indo-European spirituality and immortal realization. At the end of our study, we will review Tarot principles through a lens of modern thought, including recent advancements in scientific theory.
Before we begin our investigation into the origins of the medieval Triumphs, as they used to be called, a word must be said about the occult history of the cards.
As we will shortly see, the Tarot cards made their first European appearance in Italy during the mid-fifteenth century. It was not until the 1780s, over three hundred and fifty years later, that Antoine Court de Gébelin published a theory suggesting the Tarot pack originated in ancient Egypt. Soon after, a French fortune-teller known as “Etteilla” created a variant Tarot deck fashioned under concepts contained in The Book of Thoth (Thoth being an Egyptian god often associated with the Greek god Hermes). It was at this time that the occult age of Tarot cartomancy (the art of fortune-telling with cards) commenced. France in the following century served as fertile ground for what is now known as the modern occult movement. French variants of the original Tarot decks were imparted great significance by students of the occult. What is of primary interest to our current study is that there are no documented Tarot references to occult history or meaning (be it Gypsy, Egyptian, Italian, etc.) before the eighteenth century.
Naturally settled at the beginning of the process, the Questor dwells at a station where change comes most easily.
Few people in the Western world have not heard of or seen reference to the Tarot cards. Invariably, the pack is associated with occult practices. The history of what is commonly associated with the “occult” is long and varied. It encompasses tribal rituals, magical cults, mythical beliefs, inscrutable revelations, fantastic claims of divinity, orgies, drug taking, and dangerous experiments in alchemy. It is important we distinguish between occult beliefs and forms of spiritual esotericism as they exist in the great traditions (i.e., Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Neoplatonism, Christianity, Islam, etc.). We will reserve later chapters for much of our discussion regarding this. For now, the following may suffice to help clarify these terms.
In every great spiritual tradition, there are exo-teric or outward forms of representing communion and, ultimately, unity with the Divine, and there are eso-teric or inward forms of representing such. Understanding esoteric transmissions or conveyances (meaning “communicative logic involving intuition and spiritual awareness”) requires one to be actually undergoing processes of spiritual realization. This most effectively occurs via initiation in, and conscious self-authentication of, teachings and practices transmitted by those who have already trod the path of such realization.
With comfortable authority, the Empress eases her physical domain so that the commons’ potential may begin to be realized through proper initiation.
Occult teachers claim to know unique ways of power hidden from or within the great traditions. The word occult literally means “concealed.” In our definition (with sincere apologies to readers who identify with the occult under a broad definition while genuinely adhering to a nondual worldview), occultists view the world in dualistic terms – light versus dark, true self escaping a fallen world, “control or be controlled.” Dualism sets a stage for belief in separative, egoic power. This readily leads to acts of dishonest concealment and claims that secrets of the supernatural are not comprehensible to common humanity, but are to occultists. An occultist will purposefully remain egoically separate or spiritually alienated in order to build powers hidden from others. This tends to reinforce schizophrenia, not holistic love. Spiritual psychology needs to develop as integral psychology if it is not to become sick or unconsciously demonic. Ego-mind identifying with the occult readily believes it is greater, smarter, and beyond the yogis, saints, and sages who know otherwise.
Authentic esoteric traditions require self-surrender and devotion to a spiritual heritage. Esoteric knowledge is not concealed per se, for it arises through a view of the world as it essentially, vitally, and really is. Anyone may see this, if she simply opens her eyes and looks beyond the view of her own self. Looking beyond the self, however, requires surrendering attention to a greater One. Culture, community, and law are the traditional agencies for abetting this. As an example, a genuine Hermeticist will directly perceive into and reasonably translate an internal alchemical manual. It will make immediate sense in the context of an authentic practice. A hermetic occultist, on the other hand, after laborious troubles will construe meanings in a confused manner, believing that he is deciphering arcane analogies that cannot be clearly stated for “mysterious” reasons (as if true Mystery does not embrace, and grow from, actual Reason). Even Isaac Newton, under the consumption of mercury, fell into this trap.
The ego perceives its own confusion; the presence of a larger whole cannot be avoided – it is best to allow grace to show the direction.
Esoteric practice, communion, and study are built upon historical transmission and continuity. To the unstudied, that continuity may well seem unknowably mysterious. It was only in the latter half of the twentieth century, for instance, that developmental stages of spiritual realization in Sufi tradition were recognized by Western scholars of religion. It is now understood that the wisdom ways of Sufism have been coherently and continuously passed down or authenticated from masters to disciples over the centuries. That there may appear to be discontinuities in the form and content of spiritual knowledge transmitted generation by generation in any particular tradition does not mean esoteric teachings are irrational or non-verifiable. Such teachings develop and change in complex but explicable ways. On the other hand, occult doctrines inevitably contain nonsensical gaps in their heritages.
Importantly, independent occult revelations and techniques of power do not stand in a context of nondual hierarchical emergence, which is found in all of the great spiritual traditions. How both cosmos and consciousness emerge and evolve through hierarchy (the Greek root of which means “spiritual rule”) is what the medieval Tarot and this book address. That which is Independent ultimately must submit to that which is Universal.
In the following chapters, it will become clear that the original Tarot represented a ten-stage procession of enlightenment (closely paralleling the famous ten-stage Zen Oxherding Quest). This procession involved realization of beauty, goodness, and truth through the intelligent insight that humankind naturally exists in Unity with the World. Sages and saints often had to risk their lives in order to make public these stages of spiritual hierarchy. It has historically proven to be most challenging for a Transcendental (a heroic saint or sage who has entered the realm beyond Death) on the path of immortality to maintain an ordinary public persona. In the Tarot, the post-Death Devil/Tower stations (seventh out of ten stages) of spiritual development represent the realization that transformative power inheres in a flux of chaos. In dualistic religions this awareness or mindfulness has been frequently and mistakenly equated with “demonic” occult practices. That has led to extensive persecution of truly enlightened (even if not fully so) individuals.
The Questor’s journey will surely meet with dangers; motivation dwells in the how of resolution and progression.
Although there exists between the communities of occultism and esotericism some common ground (for instance, great saints have a general tendency to hide their powers), the camps have always been, in fact, widely divergent. The mountain between them can succinctly be called rationality. On the one side of rational maturity resides the occultist. The occultist regresses from rationality in order to make claim to a mythical ground of hidden secrets from an era of “golden perfection.” This era, it is alleged, far surpassed anything known to the living traditions of philosophy and spirituality. Occultists do not rationally acknowledge the application of metaphorical myths to a universal Quest. They thus mistake pre-rational magical/mythical states of mind for intuitive/transpersonal states that emerge out of mature rationality. In later chapters, we will cover these cultural, sociological, and psychological stages of development in detail. We will see how the Tarot Triumphs sprouted, developed, and flowered from a bed rich in intelligence – far from any occult tendency to avoid the philosophy, theosophy, and metaphysics of the day.
On the other side of the mountain of rationality dwells the esotericist, deeply involved with discussing perennial wisdom that appears as transpersonal awareness and brightly transparent clarity. Esotericists make no claim of exclusive spiritual possession, for they recognize an essentially natural hierarchy of spiritual realization. They do not emerge or naturally progress into previously unrealized states with the intention of controlling those “below” them. They have no need to obscure their newfound being, knowledge, or bliss, for it is evident that only he who has emerged on a comparable level will be able to existentially understand their own realizations. On the other hand, anyone with a sincere interest may comparatively study authentic esotericism by regarding the great traditions of spiritual realization. This obviates any need for occult belief or practice. (The practice of shrouding one’s charisma, spiritual radiance, or beauty so as not to be accosted or harmed is a different matter altogether. Psychic obfuscation and manipulative “cloaking” cannot be compared to enlightened diplomacy and intelligent tact.)
Peace must be valued for growth to be sustained until fruition; the concentrated passions of polar form are needed to nourish the original seed.
Let us now examine known facts regarding the original Tarot cards. We find our first references to the Tarot appearing in Italy during the fifteenth century. The word Tarot is a French derivation of the Italian word Tarocco. The earliest recorded use of the word occurred in 1516. Up until that time, the cards were called Trionfi, which translates into English as Triumphs (later shortened to “Trumps”). For the past century, the twenty-two Triumphs of the Tarot deck have generally been referred to as the Major Arcana.
The obsolete meaning of a Triumph is:
A public celebration or spectacular pageant; [Middle English triomfen from Old French triumpher from Latin triumphare from triumphus (probably via Etruscan) from Greek thriambos: hymn to Dionysus].
By the end of this book, we will have discovered a profound continuity between the initiatory Way of Dionysus and the Quest portrayed in the Tarot Triumphs.
That the Tarot cards were, and still are in some European countries, used in trick-taking card games as a trump suit (a suit that wins over any other) is well documented. Playing cards have been popularly known since the Islamic Mameluke era of Egypt. The Mamelukes were originally a military caste formed via training and educating Turkish slaves. The caste eventually ruled Egypt between 1250 and 1517, remaining powerful until the early nineteenth century. The standard deck of playing cards found its way into Italy during the fourteenth century. A thorough review of the history of playing cards leads one to the conclusion that the Trionfi came into being conceptually distinct from, but culturally and practically associated with, the set of cards commonly used in game-playing.
The gift of intelligent and Tempered alchemy is extrication from the problematic dilemma of dualism; so begins the secret channeling of vital life.
Although there are a few odd exceptions, every known Tarot deck includes a standard deck of four card suits, each suit numbering Ace through 10 and including either three or four court cards: King, Queen, Knight, and Page. The earliest European suit-system was Italian, comprising Cups, Swords, Coins, and Batons. These, in turn, were derived from the Islamic suits of Cups, Swords, Coins, and Polo-sticks. Polo was an important game in the Islamic world but was unknown in Italy; thus, the suit-symbol was changed to the more understandable “Baton.” The regular playing deck did not change its suits to the modern-day version of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs until 1470, an innovation of French card makers.
Tarot suit cards are popularly called the Minor Arcana. Along with these, the Tarot deck contains twenty-two Major Arcana cards numbered in a meaningful sequence. Neither the twenty-two Triumphs nor fifty-six suit cards were referred to as “Arcana” in the Tarot’s pre-occult period. The term arcanum was given to each card by the famous nineteenth-century occultist Papus. He argued that the suit cards should be used along with the twenty-two archetypal cards for divination purposes. Each card, he declared, held a secret to the arcane (from arca, meaning “chest”). Renderings from three sets of the earliest painted court deck of Triumphs, the Cary-Yale Visconti, Este, and Charles VI decks, can be found facing the chapter heads of this book. Also found on many pages are digitally processed, redrawn Triumphs from the earliest set of Tarot woodblock prints. The original sheets of these prints resided for many years in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. Some of the sheets were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as part of the Brisbane Dick Collection. Often called the “Dick sheets,” this deck will be referred to in our discussion as the “Metropolitan deck.”
We find Trionfi cards first mentioned in 1442, in the account books of the D’Este court of Ferrara. The earliest recorded description naming the whole set of twenty-two cards is found in an anonymous sermon against gaming (Sermones de ludo cum aliis, or “Sermons of games with dice”) written by a Dominican friar. Its manuscript has been dated to between 1450 and 1480. Published by Robert Steele in 1900, it now resides at the Cincinnati Art Museum. The twenty-two cards mentioned in the Friar’s description were listed in a precise order. We will return to the Steele manuscript when we reconstruct the original sequence of the Tarot deck.
Love is the vision of reality that can only be spoken in truth; chaste Love, real Love, continuously develops through the wholeness of Union.
Given that the Major Arcana set of cards was developed separately from the Minor, a question arises: Who invented the twenty-two cards of the Tarot, and to what purpose? It is known that the Triumphs fulfill the requirements of a trump suit in card games involving trick-taking. If, in fact, the Triumphs embody a coherent, meaningful system beyond that, how is it that they have always been joined by the regular playing deck?
Every early mention of the Tarot pack comes from Italy, and all of the oldest decks contain a suit-system identical to the Italian system. Unlike the Spanish and French, Italians retained the curved swords of the Islamic suits. There is little doubt that known Tarot cards were first printed in Italy. However, they evidently were designed in conjunction with the Islamic world. It is the thesis of this book that the twenty-two images conceptually originated in Sufi circles trained in Greek studies. An unknown Eastern Christian–influenced artist then portrayed those concepts via playing cards similar, if not identical, to the iconic images shown in this book. Those cards emerged out of a merchant-class society focused on understanding and influencing the forces of Fate and Fortune. That multicultural class included Italian cosmopolitans, Sufi sages, and Byzantine literati. We will see that Venice, Alexandria, and Constantinople were primary urban centers involved with creating the original Tarot cards, concepts, and symbols.
The author is unaware of any treatise before this that has put forth the above statements regarding Tarot origins. That the standard pack of suit cards was invented in the Islamic world and entered into Europe via Italy is well attested. That the twenty-two cards referred to explicitly as the Trionfi made their first known appearance in Italy during the first half of the fifteenth century cannot be doubted. That the Eastern Christian world of Byzantium, masters of the art of spiritual and Greek iconography, culturally merged with the Islamic Ottoman Empire in the years preceding the Tarot’s creation is familiar history. That Islamic metaphysics was steeped in Neoplatonic philosophy has been known in the West since medieval times. That the coherent, hierarchical worldview represented by the Trionfi was transferred to Italy through the Islamic world under Greek influence, both Orthodox (be that Greek or Coptic) and Neoplatonic, is an obvious theory worth consideration.
Fate is master, the Questor is servant; maintaining humility at the feet of the Master is the spiritual charge of the Questor.
However, remarkably enough, this theory has never been seriously forwarded by Tarot occultists, card historians, or scholars of comparative religion. While Sufi influences have been mentioned in the odd book, the merging of Eastern Christian and Sufi metaphysics and the transference of resultant cosmological worldviews into Italy via Venice (and subsequently Ferrara) in the form of Tarot Triumphs has not previously been examined. It may not be an overstatement to say that in the original Tarot we have found the essential seed that gloriously grew into a tree of Renaissance knowledge and a cornucopia of enlightenment: truly, the principles of immortality.
In every branch of our inquiry into the real origins of the Tarot, we will discover evidence pointing to a trunk grafting Eastern Christian and Sufi metaphysics. A trunk rooted in the ground of Neoplatonism and, via Central Asia, Tantric Alchemy. We will examine the source of Kabbalism (esoteric Jewish tradition), and come to appreciate how universal the Neoplatonic tree of knowledge truly was. Although it at times has been conjectured that the Tarot was originally derived from the Kabbalah, both Judaic and Islamic scholars maintain that Sufi understanding of spiritual hierarchy was prior to and not derived from Judaic studies. We will peer deeply into the times and places where the metaphysical fields of these communities crossed, resonated, and resolved in a Triumphant agency. Toward the end of our quest for the Tarot Grail, a core foundation of ancient Greek and Indian spiritual realization will be revealed.
Rest within your primal nature, your vital instincts; ally yourself with the animal kingdom, respect all sentient beings, and surrender only to the Force of Life.
All of the documented Tarot references between 1450 and 1500 directly state or clearly imply a gaming use for the pack of cards. Many references to the deck in the sixteenth century also indicate it was used for entertainment. Tarot as a game was more popular in France than chess in the seventeenth century. Yet despite this popularity, there is a paucity of French references to the actual pictures and symbols of the cards. In Italy, we find interest in the subject of the Trumps to be much higher. A number of social games were played, generally involving women, having as their basis identification of individual players and court figures with particular cards. A reading of verse associated with the meaning of each card was an important element of such play.
Thus, we have examples of the Trionfi subjects being associated with court personas, with multiple Triumphs being composed via verse into “readings” that elevated the personal/mundane into the transpersonal/divine. Nevertheless, we do not find an explicit example of the Triumphs being used for the purpose of divination as a tool of fortune-telling. Considering that divination was branded by the Church in the late fifteenth century as the worst form of magic, incurring the severest of punishments, it is not surprising that court patrons did not document such use. In any case, the Trionfi were evidently used by educated women in the context of psycho-social play creating and mimicking archetypal personas.
Identification with the Triumphs led to an understanding of spiritual hierarchy within European courts influenced by Greek and Sufi thought. In later chapters, light will be shed upon an esoteric understanding of cosmological emanation referred to by Sufis through the Names and Attributes of Allah. Contemplative Sufis identified their stages of spiritual development with these Attributes.
In the West, emanation theory was first developed by Platonists. Concomitantly in the East, a version of it was elaborated rigorously by Buddhist academies. It was broadly popularized by Gnostics, who bridged Near East Christians and Central Asian Buddhists. As briefly mentioned earlier, it held that the cosmos began in a unified, non-differentiated state and proceeded to manifest as a corporeal, solid world. The stages of that cosmological process were viewed to be humanly discernible.
To go high, you must first go low; the meek shall inherit, the clever shall lose – do not be deceived by surface appearances.
Neoplatonic and Gnostic teachers differed as to how the process of cosmic emanation occurred. Was its eventuation good or bad? How did time factor in? Did cosmic manifestation only happen during a limited period of creation, or was it ongoing? In addition, perhaps most importantly, was the original cosmic state really the original divine state? Alternatively, was there a totally non-cosmic God who created an initial cosmic being-state – call it a lesser god or demiurge – which then actually emanated the cosmos? All of this must be left to later examination. We will do our best not to be bogged down in the many possible theological, speculative positions and philosophical arguments.
Sufi teaching holds to the position that all is Allah. Every thing and every relationship exists because of Allah’s Emanation. The world is Allah, and every essential aspect of it can be understood through Allah’s Names and Attributes. The Divine Names invoke images. However, depicting the Divine via anthropomorphic imagery has always been heretical in Islamic religion.
In Greek Byzantine tradition, on the other hand, creation of sacred icons was highly respected. We will see that any form of divination implemented by the medieval Tarot would have had as its basis an understanding that the Divine One, humankind, and the world are naturally arising from the same source, proceeding upon the same path, and realizing the same destiny. Such Source, Path, Destiny, and World are in fact the Divine One. This implies, of course, that so inherently is Humankind.
The Tarot Arcana visually represent the unity of God, World, and Human. Through these images of unification one can thus divine the meaning of life and the direction of truth at any given time. This sheds a whole different light on the art and meaning of divination and the Trionfi as they were meant to be read or played. It is this fundamental aspect of medieval wisdom that both playing-card historians and tarot occultists appear unaware of; thus are they at a loss to place the Image-Exemplars in their appropriate historical context.
The soul of humanity draws on the purity of synchronicities, the concordance of organisms, and the assurance of tools.
For now, we need only consider that because the Triumphs represent hierarchical and transmutative states, to identify with any given combination of cards is to determine a set of relations that is never stagnant. Similar in nature to the Chinese I Ching (an ancient system of divination found in the Book of Changes), the Triumphs depict a constantly changing reality. Like a dream of the gods, the Tarot lends itself to a game of shifting meaning, with varying degrees of import and profundity arising from the divining of (in the sense of “making divine”) those meanings. This is a far more sophisticated method of divination than looking at cave pools, tea leaves, or positions of the planets in the zodiac (all being potentially valid ways of instilling psychic awareness).
The key to understanding the Tarot is realizing the spiritual hierarchy of the Triumphs. That key is found in the cosmological process of evolutionary development that the Tarot hierarchy represents. The key is turned by realizing the universality of those stages through alchemical union of one’s vital life and essential nature. The lock is our conscious self-authentication of such stages as we realize the truth of nature, relationship, and the Heart. But let us pull back for a little while longer, lest we get ahead of ourselves. It is time to inquire into the earliest order of the Triumphs.
All of the surviving packs of Tarot cards based on Italian suits but produced in another country have their names and numbers printed on them. Early painted Italian packs, on the contrary, never had their names printed on them. It was not until the development of eighteenth-century Italian decks based on the French Tarot de Marseille pack that names were printed on Italian cards.
Through settled mind and healthy body, awareness evolves via a cosmic cycle of six stages, returning to the Keep of universal consciousness, where in becomes out, low becomes high, and the edge becomes the center.
Of the fifteenth-century cards in existence, two packs are numbered: the Metropolitan/Budapest deck seen reconstructed in this book and the Rosenwald Collection deck residing in Washington’s National Gallery of Art. Both are woodblock sheets and are most difficult to precisely date. The Metropolitan deck is commonly dated circa 1500. Consequently, its images are given less attention than other decks of the fifteenth century in regards to origination.
Two other decks from this time had numerals written on them after their printing. It is also quite possible that the Metropolitan Triumphs were copied from an original deck that had numbers later drawn on them. There also exist seven numbered Triumphs from a sixteenth-century pack housed in the Leber Collection of the Bibliothèque Municipale of Rouen, France. The Rouen cards are numbered with Arabic numerals.
There remain extant several poems composed prior to 1600 detailing people of the court playing Tarocchi (the early name for Tarot card games) by assuming and imparting the cards’ personas. From these, historians have made lists of the Triumphs’ names. Two of the poems list the Triumphs in an order. The earlier of the two dates from around 1550, the later from the second half of the same century. These are generally referred to respectively as the Bertoni and Susio poems. The Trionfi were also listed in a manuscript from the late sixteenth century by Tomaso Garzoni entitled Piazza Universale.
This quick synopsis leaves us aware that there exist only a handful of early attestations informing us of the names and order of the original Tarot cards. Three out of our four early literary references, including by far the oldest – the previously mentioned Steele manuscript – list orders that correlate with the Metropolitan deck. The Rosenwald deck is evidently aligned with several nonstandard decks appearing later in time, about which we will not go into detail. The order of those decks is not affirmed by any early literary source. It is very possible, if not likely given the evidence, that the Rosenwald deck was in fact created in the sixteenth century.
The true heart, the good soul, the settler in the land of beauty, radiates simplicity in a daily life of natural exhaustion; do not confuse this with a friction-filled effort to materialize immortality.
Cutting to the chase, we have three possible original orders, listed earliest first:
| Steele MS | Metro & Rouen | Bertoni & Garzoni |
| 21. World | World | World |
| 20. Justice | Justice | Justice |
| 19. Angel | Angel | Angel |
| 18. Sun | Sun | Sun |
| 17. Moon | Moon | Moon |
| 16. Star | Star | Star |
| 15. Tower | Tower | Tower |
| 14. Devil | Devil | Devil |
| 13. Death | Death | Death |
| 12. Hanged Man | Hanged Man | Hanged Man |
| 11. Hunchback | Hunchback | Hunchback |
| 10. Wheel | Wheel | Wheel |
| 9. Fortitude | Fortitude | Fortitude |
| 8. Chariot | Love | Love |
| 7. Love | Chariot | Chariot |
| 6. Temperance | Temperance | Temperance |
| 5. Pope | Pope | Pope |
| 4. Popess | Emperor | Popess |
| 3. Emperor | Popess | Emperor |
| 2. Empress | Empress | Empress |
| 1. Magician | Magician | Magician |
The Fool is unnumbered in all.
The only difference between these orders involves the placement of the Love/Chariot pair and the Popess/Emperor pair. For reasons that will be argued later, the Triumphs in this book have been presented with the Popess preceding the Emperor as in the Metropolitan order, and Love preceding the Chariot as in the Steele order.
Nourished by the psyche, complex autonomies form – projected and possessed beyond the Questor’s alchemy as psychophysical demons, or extended and seduced within such alchemy as soulful daimons.
As for the Anglicized Italian names of these cards:
The Magician early on was called Il Bagatella. Any direct translation of this is speculative. Modern Italian usage identifies it with the selling of trivial goods. Attempts have been made to derive the name from an Italian word for stick, giving us “wand user” and consequently “Magician.” However, upon consideration of the early images of the Bagatella, one readily comes to the conclusion that he is a mountebank of sorts, a hawker of games including the classic shell game and other games involving money and slight of hand. We will retain the title of Magician, for in modern parlance that implies formidable talent in a variety of associated skills, including sleight of hand, hawking, mimicry, risk-taking, gambling, hypnosis, and entertainment. These attributes have similarities to those found in the traditional court Fool, who risked much to gain the attention of rulers and courtiers while informing and manipulating their minds in ways likely beyond them. Combined with skills in martial and virile arts, this pan-cultural trickster archetype influenced the creation of massively popular modern heroes such as Robin Hood, Zorro, Don Juan, James Bond, et al.
Except for the Tower and Magician, all of the names are direct translations from the Italian names and are agreed upon in early sources. The Wheel was commonly recognized as the Wheel of Fortune and named thusly in later decks. The Tower is originally referred to by various titles, most commonly Thunderbolt, Fire, and House of either the Devil or God, with Pluto (Greek, “Hades”) being a favorite combination of the two. It literally translates as “Arrow” in the Steele manuscript. We retain the name Tower because it is so widely recognized as such. More will be said about this when we unearth the symbolic meanings of both the Devil and his House from ancient mythology and medieval theosophy (literally, “god-wisdom”).
The Hunchback, a direct translation from the early sources, also went under the guise of Father Time (a persona often imaged in history with an hourglass in hand, figuratively similar to the Hermit and his lantern) but became widely known after the Tarot de Marseille as the Hermit. The Metropolitan’s Hunchback visually integrates these related personas. It includes a spinal hump and a staff of life, both having substantial psychophysical connotation in terms of a Hermit’s spiritual practice. Given the intuitive resonance between Hunchback and Hermit and the iconography of the Metropolitan Triumph, we have elected to hold to the latter name as an accurate interpretation of the Triumph’s original signification.
The uniting of heaven and earth is the work of Yoga: Hatha-yoga (physical), Karma-yoga (emotional), Mantra-yoga (mental), Bhakti-yoga (devotional), Jnana-yoga (ancestral), Raja-yoga (radical), and Tantra-yoga (alchemical).
The Love Triumph is generally referred to as the Lovers, for obvious reasons, and the latter designation is at times used in our text. It is worth noting, however, that “Lovers” puts emphasis on the mundane personas represented in the image, while “Love” is more inclusive of transcendent Eros and his arrow, completing the circuit of vision and communion that the Triumph represents. More will be said about this in conjunction with the placement of Love before the Chariot.
In almost all decks early and late, when the Magician is counted as card one, Death falls as card thirteen. Several of the earlier decks, however, begin numbering with the second-lowest Triumph. In both our earliest order of cards and the later order delineated below, the World is the last card.
A third common order (the Rosenwald and nonstandard decks represent our second order) to the cards was developed in the sixteenth century, as attested by the Susio poem. This is the order found in the French Tarot de Marseille, which became the base deck from which later decks were largely derived. Significantly, the three “virtue” cards are allotted different positions in this modern hierarchy. Temperance is placed between Death and the Devil. Justice is dropped to either the position just after Lovers or one step higher, just after Chariot. Fortitude either remains after the Chariot or advances to the station after the Wheel of Fortune.
The set residing by the set does not involve duration, for the essence of duration is flow; it is such flux, such continuity of transition, such change, that constitutes Reality.
The position of Justice appears to mark the most significant difference between the varying orders. Only in the original orders was it elevated to the highest rank between the Angel and World Triumphs. It is of significance that Venetian paintings from the early fifteenth century depict Justice with the Archangels Michael and Gabriel on either side of her. In paintings from other Latin Christian cities, it is Jesus who serves to mete out justice in accordance to the great angels’ judgments. Venice was singular in its cultural focus upon the traditional Greek archetype of Justice, supplanting Jesus in this role, which indeed originally belonged solely to Justice herself.
Justice was closely identified with the Throne of Allah in Sufi tradition, the highest of Allah’s corporeal emanations. The Throne in Islamic, Judaic, and Hellenic traditions often symbolized divine judgment and law. The Indo-European root meaning of just is “law.” Justice served an important role in Plato’s thought, associated with that Truth upon which all wisdom and learning inevitably had to be based. Justice upon Her Throne (as primary daughter of Zeus) was a very old Greek concept combining Fate, Death, and Eros as Universal Law. In Greek, the word frequently used to connote Justice, Diké, originally meant “the Way,” similar to the Chinese concept of Tao.
Such an understanding of Justice was not easily assimilated by Judeo-Christian beliefs in Jehovah. The god of the Jews was known as a dominant, exclusively male god, who judged the world while maintaining a bias toward his chosen people. In the Christian world, both clerical and lay, Divine Justice was to be measured and meted (as Justice’s scales and sword represent) during a Final Judgment. This was represented not by the Goddess Justice, but by the Second Coming of Jesus the Christ. It was thought in the Christian world that at the time of Jesus’s second coming people would be judged in accordance with their faith in Him. In political reality, such faith was defined by adherence to the laws of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Moon has the strength to reflect upon its object indefinitely; such sympathy is unparalleled on earth, and yet remains realizable in the form of concentrated insight.
The Church housed the newly chosen people of God, and its priests interpreted God’s New Testament, which contained His updated laws. Temporal or earthly justice was meted out by the Church and its aligned rulers, in accordance with these divinely revealed laws. The rising up to a Final Judgment, essentially already determined, was a stage and act more readily represented by the trumpeting call of triumphant Angel Gabriel, God’s messenger, or by Archangel Michael, who in Venetian paintings may be found delivering Justice’s sword and scales to the Doge, ruler of the Venetian Republic. Thus did the Angel Triumph come to be called Judgment. Outside of Venice, Justice as the Goddess intimately identified with the Great God of old (Zeus, meaning Deiwos, the “Shining” or “Sky God”) lost her high place in the Western Christian interpretation of Tarot hierarchy.
It is of interest to note that not a single fifteenth-century painted card depicting the Devil remains in existence. This lends special import to the Devil of the Metropolitan deck. Although there is no evidence of the Catholic Church condemning the Tarot during its popularization in Italian and French courts, it is reasonable to conjecture that placement of the Devil after Death, high in the Triumphant order of the cosmos, was not appreciated by the Church hierarchy. Imagine courtesans using the Triumphs for entertainment or enlightenment. Expeditious disposal of the Devil card to appease religious authorities would have been a small price to pay for avoiding an inquisition. Such is the likely cause of the Devil’s total disappearance from the twenty extant hand-painted decks. Closely related, the Tower, paired with the Devil and at times called the Devil’s House, is found in only a single court deck, the Charles VI pack. These cards were painted during an era when any accusation of psychic association with the Devil could be enough to warrant Church arrest.
Hierarchical placement of the Devil followed a Sufi understanding that he serves a divine purpose as guardian to the Deathless realm and Abaser of all else. In chapters 5 and 7 we will consider this along with early, and crucial, Greek judgments concerning whether Hades lived in an underground home of fire or roamed in the sublunar realm of disembodied spirits (what we might call a confused space of wandering dead). A fiery, underground view of the Devil was transmitted through Pythagorean cults into dualistic Gnostic circles. It then became accepted exoteric Christian doctrine.
Enjoy the favors of the lord, the Bright adept, for such is the quickest way to dispel unnatural identities and to realize the innocence of innate attraction in blissful, blue-sky awareness.
Through Heraclitus and early Platonists, an airy, sublunar view of the Devil was transmitted by Neoplatonists into nondual circles of Christian mystics and Sufis. Heraclitus, a contemporary and significant critic of Pythagoras, was evidently the first Greek metaphysician to state a nondual view of the world, unifying heaven and the underworld. Again, more will be said about this in later chapters.
Having uncovered the names and positions of the Trionfi in their most credible original form, we next need to locate the most probable place in Italy that the first Tarot deck was printed.
Pictorially, there is a large difference between the four early decks shown in this book. Yet, there are also remarkable similarities. Clearly, there was an original set of images that served as a common foundation for early Tarot packs. Variations of hierarchy and imagery amongst the Triumphs became established within the first decades of their known existence. However, our evidence suggests that for at least one hundred years, variances in the Triumphs’ names and order were minor. We can reasonably suggest that differences arose according to the regions in which the cards were produced and the patrons for whom they were designed.
The twenty or so hand-painted court decks of playing cards that have survived up to the present day have been extensively studied by card scholars. At least one Triumph plus one suit card have survived in eight decks. Of these, it is uncontested that the three most complete decks were painted in the shop of Bonifacio Bembo, most likely during 1445–50. Bembo was born in 1420, lived to be sixty, and was under the commission of the Dukes of Milan – first Filippo Maria Visconti, then his successor Francesco Sforza. The most complete of these packs is called the Visconti-Sforza deck.
That which is worthy of eternal life is the simplest of states, the ground of being, the heart of Judgment – the beautiful, the good, the true.
Two of the earliest court decks are found in the Cary Collection of Playing Cards at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Black and white samples of both face our chapters’ title pages. The Empress and similar Triumphs come from the Visconti deck, circa 1445, which is arguably the most beautiful of the extant packs attributed to Bonifacio Bembo. The Fool and similar cards come from the Este deck of Ferrara, dated by the Beinecke Library at circa 1450 but which may indeed have been closer in both time and style to the original Tarot than the Visconti Triumphs. The Este Trionfi retain an Eastern flavor, similar in ways to the intuitive, fluidly natural style of the Metropolitan/Budapest Triumphs. The overt, unabashed organic sexuality of the Este Fool is strikingly Dionysian.
The Este Moon, with its navigational theme, powerfully speaks of Venetian and Muslim knowledge. Both Moon and Star Triumphs contain a crescent moon and star combination, evoking the mighty Ottoman battle-banner, which was at that time conquering Constantinople. This later came to be identified with Islam in general. The Star and Moon in intimate relationship with one another is one of Sufism’s most fundamental symbols; this bears consideration regarding the names and positions of these two Triumphs. The iconography of both Este and Metropolitan Trionfi is remarkably different than the often stilted work and labored symbolism evident in the Visconti images. This is worthy of close study by Tarot scholars.
Dating to the late fifteenth century, the infamous Charles VI pack was also produced in Ferrara (infamous because of a conjecture by an antiquities dealer made in 1842 that this deck was painted by one Jacquemin Gringonneur in 1392 for King Charles VI of France). This hypothesis was thoroughly disproved early on, but it was widely and unwittingly, up until recent years, propagated by Tarot writers and occultists. (The Tower Triumph from this deck, the only hand-painted Tower that has come down to us, can be seen heading chapter 7. As stated, no hand-painted Devil card remains extant; accompanying the Tower, therefore, is a classical image of Hades.)
What is the Mother of God, the source of primal chaos, the cause of causality, the measure of all truth, the sacrifice of all love – mundane and sublime, earthly and heavenly – the Dharma of Tao?
We have mentioned two courts involved with early production of Tarot cards, namely those of Milan and Ferrara. The courts of Bologna and Florence also developed associations with certain types of Tarot decks. Florence was home to most of the nonstandard, elaborate decks along with the Rosenwald pack mentioned earlier. Florence was Europe’s primary center for the exploration and reinterpretation of Greek philosophy during the early Renaissance. Far more than in other Italian cities, Florentine scholars reinterpreted the Greco-Sufi symbolism of the Triumphs. However, their elaborations never displaced the primary position held by the original twenty-two Triumphs. Readers interested in a thorough discussion regarding all known early Tarot decks and the territories they were most probably associated with are referred to Michael Dummett’s The Game of Tarot (1980).
Although the Bembo packs are often presumed to be the oldest, no historian has seriously suggested that Bembo was the original designer of the Tarot. Much evidence points to Ferrara as the original court source of the hand-painted images. As we will discover in the next chapter, Ferrara was host to a rare and great ecumenical council of churches in 1438, creating a multi-year colloquium that brought together Greek Orthodox scholars from Constantinople and Alexandria and their Roman Catholic peers from Italy and elsewhere. Venetian elites diplomatically and culturally bridged the two otherwise distant communities. The existence of the Trionfi is first documented in the royal account books of Ferrara in the years that the ecumenical council initiated there was being held.
That which is ordinary beyond definitions of physical, emotional, mental, psychic, subtle, causal, or enlightened realization is that which is extraordinary as only the Nondual World can be.
During this period, Ferrara was under Venetian influence even while it closely associated with Milan. Venice and Milan were in the middle of a long war with one another. Milan during the first half of the fifteenth century attempted to take control of Northern Italy. Florence enlisted Venice’s assistance to halt Milan, which it did. The Dukes of Milan were known for their ruthlessly domineering policies. In contrast, Venetian involvement with the East, and in particular Greek Orthodox Byzantium and Muslim and Coptic Orthodox Egypt, carried with it a great deal of diplomatic (and romantic) cachet. Chapter 2 will detail the history of this time, including Venice’s primary position in terms of trade with lands east.
Of note presently is that Ferrara was an open and neutral conduit in which Venetians could mediate between their Eastern friends and the rest of Italy. Relations with the Greek visitors were soon taken up by the literati, artisans, and scholars of Florence, to where the Council shifted after a year of meeting in Ferrara. (Florence offered more lavish housing and hospitality, and less plague.) Initially, it was the young court women of Ferrara and Milan who were drawn to the Trionfi that emerged from Ferrara’s hosting of Venetian-mediated Byzantine parties. By commissioning the hand-painted Trionfi, female nobility spurred exotic Eastern symbolism into fashion throughout northern Italian courts.
Returning to our inquiry into the order of the cards, one of the literary sources attesting our earliest order addresses a game of Tarocchi as played by the noblewomen of Ferrara (the Bertoni poem). One of the sources was published in Venice in the late sixteenth century (Garzoni’s Piazza Universale). Several other poems from the sixteenth century name the Triumphs, although not their order. These were all published in Venice. Venice was Italy’s major center for playing-card imports. Venetian merchants both printed and purchased cards in association with designers and producers in Alexandria, Egypt. The Steele manuscript, which is our most important source of playing card names and order, has a completely unknown geographical origin.
Collaborate with the goddess current of love, but do so consciously; the Fool cares not about the projections, possessions, and delusions of others, for he holds his sacrifice for all to see.
Our search for territorial origins of the Tarot ends with an examination of the Metropolitan pack. The key to discovering the birthplace of the woodblock deck lies not with its twenty-two Triumphs, but rather with its suit cards. These cards are not to be found in the sheets housed by the Metropolitan Museum. The Metropolitan sheets were originally acquired from the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts in Hungary. The Budapest Museum’s almost identical set of sheets includes a number of suit cards. These show strong stylistic affinities with a set of standard playing-card sheets in the Cary Collection at Yale. Several court cards between the two decks are identical or very similar. Furthermore, identical stylistic elements between the decks’ numeral cards in the suits of Swords and Batons clearly evince common design roots. A four-sheet set of early playing cards in the Fournier Museum in Vitoria, Spain, demonstrates the same similarities with the addition of almost identical Aces to those in the Tarot sheets.
Where did these playing cards come from? A singular Three of Cups discovered in Egypt is identical to one on the Cary sheets. It dates back to the Mameluke era of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Another significant clue can be found on the Budapest Museum’s Ten of Batons. As was pointed out by Melbert Cary himself, the form diexe (signifying “ten”) used on the card belongs to a Venetian dialect of the fifteenth century. The Budapest Museum has always adhered to the position that its Tarot sheets were printed in Venice.
Unique Venetian usage of the letter x, along with other dialectal and nominal peculiarities found upon a most interesting fifteenth-century educational deck of Tarot-like images, indicates that Venice was at the forefront of Neoplatonic, Greek-inspired card production. The so-called “Tarot of Mantegna” is thought to have been created by one or more students of the famous Italian artist Andrea Mantegna, circa 1460–70. This fifty-card non-Tarot deck is based on five sets of ten stations each, many of which hold strong similarity to the Triumphs, indicating Trionfi were circulating in Venice previous to this time. A deck comprising uncut sheets depicts engravings not unlike the Metropolitan Triumphs, though of a more refined quality. Each set of ten stations represents a universal hierarchy of diverse themes, such as Apollo’s Muses and the Heavenly Spheres. The latter are represented by the seven planet-forces encircling the Earth plus traditionally held divine spheres that emanated as World Soul, First Cause, and Divine One.
Each suit set of the Mantegna deck was defined broadly in accordance to the perennial ten-stage cosmological hierarchy that we will be addressing throughout our study. They support arguments presented in these pages regarding the importance and primary position of this system in the Tarot, as it was in medieval philosophy and Greek studies. The original Trionfi truly exemplified a highly sophisticated, multicultural study of that core Indo-European wisdom-structure.
It is of interest to note that there exists no evidence that Tarot was ever popular as a game in Venice. It is herein suggested that the Triumphs were not originally purposed toward game-playing. The conceptual hierarchy of Islamic playing cards involved the perfect series of one through ten, representing the wealth and social structure of a land, including its commoners. (One of the Mantegna sets of ten images this.) Royalty were depicted via three or four hierarchical court cards. Similar to the Magician and Fool Triumphs, Aces came to simultaneously represent both the lowest and highest hierarchical values of the deck. Like the pieces of a chessboard, these icons put into play a simulacrum of the world. This is how Mameluke and Moorish Muslim intellectuals, and previous to them Indo–Central Asian nobility, thought and played with the world, in a context of governance, trading, and war.
However, beyond secular rules and contingencies of chance involved with mundane hierarchies that were readily simulated through games, there existed in the Greek-educated Islamic mind an always-present sacred hierarchy. That hierarchy began with the exemplars of empire and religion, where the mundane hierarchy left off. It then encompassed Neoplatonic ideals of virtue and Greek archetypes of spirituality. Finally, it ended with ancient concepts of immortal and paradisiacal domains and World Law.
The Triumphs were a metaphysical advancement beyond the mundane world order portrayed in the suit cards. This book delineates the philosophical development of archetypal concepts and principles that generated the Tarot. Through integration into games of rationality, probability, and insight, Tarot images as a set of hierarchical symbols became embedded in popular culture throughout Europe. They composed an esoteric teaching unfettered of Church dogma even while incorporating the essential foundations underlying Christian metaphysics. Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean schools based in Marseilles, France, were responsible for much of the Tarot’s future popularity and symbolism. Their epistemic significance was progressively lost, however, as they became solely identified with games of chance and fortune.
There is good reason to date the Metropolitan/Budapest Triumphs earlier than 1500. That commonly suggested date is apparently based upon little more than guesswork by card historians unaware of the cards’ early association with Venice and Alexandria and their elements of eastern symbolism. The beauty, subtlety, and medieval iconography reflected in these simple woodblock prints have not garnered the attention they deserve. The poor condition of extant sheets is no doubt in part to blame. However, card historians have apparently assumed that the high philosophy contained in Greek studies was only known to privileged scholars, patrons, and artisans of Roman Catholic European or even solely Italian courts. This most certainly was not the case.
Spain had largely been Moorish for hundreds of years and Southern France was enormously affected by Muslim and Gnostic cultural, artistic, and intellectual influences developed during the Crusades. Sufi-influenced thought affected both Kabbalistic and Christian theosophy and contemplative practice in Spain and France. This put both countries closer to Greek studies than were the courts of Italy. Only the Venetians had closer contact with the Greek East.
Perhaps meaningful symbolism readily perceived by Western scholars orients toward the highly Romanized and formally represented images found in decks such as the Visconti-Sforza. The woodblock deck cannot be attributed to an Italian court painter. Overlooked by historians have been the Islamic and Byzantine milieus of the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries, along with the cosmopolitan Venetian merchant class and its appreciation of Greek knowledge openly studied, shared, and developed in those milieus. It has been simply assumed that the Metropolitan deck was an impoverished “reduction” of the exalted court decks, made after the latter had become popular enough to attract attention amongst the lower Italian classes.
It is apparent that the Metropolitan/Budapest Tarot pack was a merchant class or non-court deck circulating in Venice, Ferrara, and quite likely Alexandria and/or Constantinople at the time of, or perhaps earlier than, the hand-painted decks of the Italian nobility.
Our inclusion of Ferrara is prompted by notable similarity between the Metropolitan’s Chariot card and a singular painted card, discovered in recent years, thought to be from Ferrara circa 1450–55. That dating, if correct, establishes that Triumph’s deck as one of the oldest known. Called the “Issy-sur-Moulineaux Chariot,” it depicts a chariot with young passengers and a female driver. Chapter 7 examines the Greek mythology behind this symbolism; here we simply mention its association with Artemis (also portrayed with her chariot in the Mantegna pack introduced above), who was the ancient virginal and militant protector of children. After the earliest decks, the Chariot is depicted with a male driver. Only the Metropolitan and Moulineaux Chariots include the traditional symbolism of children. Perhaps the goddess iconography was not understood or appreciated by Italian Catholics, as the Chariot is one of the few Triumphs whose position seems in question from early on.
There is reason to suggest that printed merchant-class Tarot decks likely preceded the painted decks of royal courts, and furthermore, that Venice was the original channel for those decks (or a singular, original deck), which were introduced to artisans and intellectuals in Ferrara during or soon after the city hosted an extraordinary and historically critical meeting between Eastern and Western Church philosophers and artisans. The importance and uniqueness of that Council cannot be overstated, for it was tied directly to the process of Christian lands losing Constantinople to the Ottomans. It is likely that the Metropolitan pack of Triumphs closely reflects the original set of Tarot images. From a fifteenth-century Venetian merchant’s point of view, its Byzantine and Oriental elements of style would speak of the Tarot’s original frame of reference far more than Bembo’s official Romanization of the Tarot’s esoteric Greek symbolism.
In chapter 3 this conjecture is made sound, as we identify the twenty-two Trionfi with the great cycle of corporeal emanations of Allah as the immortal World. This was expounded by a network of traveling, philosophically advanced, merchant-class Sufis spanning the lands between Spain, Egypt, Turkey, and Central Asia. Many of those Sufis, though widely respected for their international learning, were deemed heretics by the fundamentalist rulers and exoteric mullahs of the Islamic world and paid for the teaching of their knowledge with their lives.
Further investigation of the intellectual climates and multicultural environments that gestated the hierarchical system behind the Tarot Arcana propels us into the dawning of the Renaissance and the world of Venetian merchants, encountered in the next chapter.
A book on the Tarot would not live up to expectations without provoking a little incredulity. Therefore, the true secrets of power, wealth, and status will now be unveiled. Naturally, esoteric information uncovered by reading Tarot cards in accordance with their traditional significance reveals these secrets. Once primed with the fuel of ancient wisdom, we will stoke our minds with the Principles of Immortality!
As we shall see, by the fifteenth century, a confluence of Eastern and Western metaphysics had been brought about through Silk Road traders; sacred orders of Crusading knights (the Templars in specific); wandering bands of mendicant Islamic mystics and scholars; Greek patriarchs of international renown (both Orthodox and Neoplatonic); well-traveled Buddhists (of the Theravada branch in the time of Jesus, Mahayana in the time of Mohammed, Vajrayana in the time of Rumi and St. Francis); international Jewish Kabbalists; and politically adroit merchants, notably from Venice and Constantinople. This historically documented, complex, and continuous merging of Eastern and Western bodies of knowledge served to inseminate, gestate, birth, and transmit the Tarot Trionfi: the most famous, if not the richest and most powerful, esoteric summary of spiritual evolution in all of history.
To understand the authentic esoteric roots of the Tarot, we must first immerse ourselves in a pool of concepts regarding Neoplatonic metaphysics and cosmological hierarchy upon which the Tarot is based. Should the reader find these concepts overwhelming, know that the proceeding chapters clarify, elaborate, and soundly give a reasoned and historical basis for them. The rest of this chapter summarizes in a considerably condensed form the philosophical underpinnings of Western esotericism. Understanding the ten stages of spiritual evolution represented by the Tarot requires a deep exploration into metaphysical territory. This book serves as a summary introduction to precisely that.
Neoplatonists between the third and seventh centuries conceived the world at every level as emanating from the One. With awakened enthusiasm, they contended that it did so via ideal triunes (literally, “three-in-ones”). Christian theology positing a Holy Trinity was influenced by this Neoplatonic notion of perfection. Conception of the Divine as Three in One has been foundational to Indo-European spirituality and wisdom since ancient times. The sacred Triune has been the primary vehicle by which Indo-Europeans have understood the domains that transcend Death. As we shall see, this was carried into the Tarot. The Tarot’s after-Death cards inform us of the Divine Triune from which the world is continuously created.
Platonic philosophy postulated three states toward which the world was purposed: Beauty, Goodness, and Truth (the latter was also known as Justice and the Way). Contemporary with Plato’s school of thought, nondual Indian philosophy referred to as Advaita Vedanta (Advaita literally means “nondual”; Vedanta refers to Hinduism’s broad, foundational corpus of myths and philosophies recorded in the Vedas) held that all humans were attracted to states of greater Being, Consciousness, and Bliss. Later, Neoplatonism maintained that the One was composed of a trinity: World Soul, Light Soul, and Radiant Intelligence. World Soul correlated with the ancient Greek concept of Chaos becoming the Cosmos; Radiant Soul correlated with pure Being and Beauty; Kosmic Intelligence correlated with radiant Consciousness and Goodness; and the One correlated with absolute Bliss and Truth. For Neoplatonists, Plato’s Good epitomized the realm of Logos or Radiant Ideals. Source to all was the One, which could be known solely through ecstatic bliss.
Corollary triunes we may appropriately associate with the above include science-oriented Chaos, Space, and Time realizing Law; Taoist-oriented Man, Earth, and Heaven realizing Tao; and Buddhist-oriented Teaching, Culture, and Community (Dharma, Buddha, and Sangha) realizing Nirvana.
Readers intent on enquiring into profundities of the Tarot are addressed in our work as Questors. During their esoteric Quests, six stages of self-actualization emanating from a self-organizing and self-transcending principle of Chaos will be discovered. Constantly affecting and qualifying each of the Questor’s six stages of holistic development will be the aforementioned Triune of universal principles. Throughout history, in all of the great traditions, these principle-states have been referred to as Divine, Immortal, Deathless, and Transcendental. In Indo-European tradition they are called the supreme Spirit, Goddess, God, and ineffable Unity. In our study of the Trionfi, we will come to understand the meaning of these powerful traditional concepts of spirituality, wisdom, and ecstasy.
The Tarot is without doubt a coherently spiritual set of images. It reveals and addresses humanity’s potential to harmonize, integrate, and understand one another. Seen in the light of authentic spirituality, the Triumphs are discovered anew as a truly brilliant treasure of sacred knowledge. They will serve and guide every Questor in the process of actualizing a golden alchemy.
Through the Principles of Immortality, Questors will learn how to gain Power via spiritual existence, the cultivation of which enables naught but the power to be Beautiful. Questors will discover that knowledge of the Good is alchemical gold – the incomparable Wealth of spiritual communion. Encompassing all, bliss will then come through acknowledgment of spiritual performance; realms of beings, from demons to animals to humans to angels, will admit every Questor’s Status as a dignitary of Truth.
The Tarot assists us in becoming aware of spiritual development as a way of existential realization, beyond idealistic or romantic beliefs. Each of us exists regardless of circumstances or fortunes. To exist in a yet-greater state of beingness, consciousness, and bliss is the enlightened wish of everyone. Each of the Triumphs represents a progressively greater state of such realization.
Death, for instance, is a wish of many. It is twelfth in a universal hierarchy of twenty (not counting the Magician or Fool), the transitory state between cosmic manifestation and the Afterlife. Once Death is seriously known, that which is greater becomes radically desired. There is nothing bleaker than to believe there is no principle greater than Death. To see that all of life, and indeed reality, is naught but impermanence ultimately ruled by Death is to discover totally pervasive suffering in the world. To be aware of such as illusion, being conscious of the Way of Life beyond that, is to be in the ecstasy of Nirvana. This is not only the core teaching of Buddhist wisdom; it is also the core teaching of Neoplatonism and the Tarot. Although every cell of our body is continuously dying, it is in the moment-to-moment rebirth or resurrected state of our whole being that true identity and happiness are found.
Ultimately, the Tarot reveals the Way beyond momentary and continual annihilation or Deathly Chaos. Contemplation of the post-Death Triumphs, representing states of a sacred and ancient Triune, is crucial to a true understanding of the great wisdom-way portrayed in the Arcana. Before Plato’s time, these were known as Strife or Chaos (Devil and Tower), Love or Eros (Star and Moon), and the Bright or Shining (Sun and Angel) upholding the Way, which was Just (Justice) and One (World). Viewed as a whole, the Tarot is a series of existential signs directing the Questor upon a path of Freedom, Happiness, and Liberation in a golden dawn of enlightenment.
How do Questors transform themselves and the world about them via Beauty, Goodness, and Truth?
Firstly, to cultivate Beauty one must turn over one’s heart in a surrendering of existence. Thus, a Questor approaching Death does not become bound by the terrible masks of decay, decomposition, and destruction. For a Questor’s Heart is identical to her Beauty and not bound to her face or egoic persona. How beautiful is the two-armed form when wedded to the Heart. One’s sentient being defines Beauty through its whole existence. The quality of such beauty is inevitably dissipated when the ego attempts to possess it. The Questor who attempts to cultivate ideal existence via physical beauty will not engage the ten stages of evolutionary development revealed in this book unless psychological identification with temporal form is surrendered through service and devotion to the beauty of spiritual growth and That which is Beyond. Such growth will include not only Love, Fate, and Fortune; it will also embrace the Devil, Sun, and Justice.
To succeed in realizing beauty, goodness, and truth, Questors must adhere to an intuited vision of Unity through Diversity. This requires not holding dear (i.e., believing in) the myriad egoic reductions of the world. Questors will thus find power in the beauty of existing moment by moment. They will not be compelled to seize their freedom in vain attempts to secure existence as separate manifestations of beauty. Self-possessed egos, limited in their self-interpreted, self-centered diminution of beauty, must be surrendered. A wonderful vision of Being Beautiful opens in the awareness that one just is, inseparable from all else, which also just is. One no longer grasps at the ever-so-limited self-reflections of one’s existence. Then a Questor can truly proceed along the way of grace and compassionate freedom.
Secondly, consciousness must encapsulate true Beauty with a radiant sheath of true Goodness. To be good to others is to commune in knowledge of essential Unity. Here, knowledge is referred to as wisdom-consciousness, not limited by separative facts or the discursive mind. Mature forms of understanding found in all great traditions point to nondual awareness of ultimate, universal Unity.
Many think of the Taoist symbol of Yin/Yang as representing the cosmos as a duality. Quite the contrary; it represents the nondual Tao, which includes all apparent polarities. It is often presumed that Platonic philosophy addresses a dualistic world composed of ideal forms and laws existing apart from manifested reality. The latter realm is thought of as inferior, both metaphysically and morally, to the former. Abstraction is glorified over common sense. Plotinus and like-minded Neoplatonists rectified this misunderstanding by basing all knowledge of Truth upon the ineffable One and its continuous, nondual emanations as the Myriad of manifested forms and processes. Form is Empty: Samsara is Nirvana, say Buddhists in confirmation of Neoplatonists. Atman is Brahman, say Advaita Hindus. Everything Is Tao.
Nondual wisdom views sentient beings in all forms as emanating moment to moment in, from, and as the One, the Tao, Allah, Brahman, Buddha Mind, or the very Ground of Being. This forms the basis for esoteric gnosis in Sufism, Hermetic Catholicism, and Judaic Kabbalism, along with Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. We will be thoroughly reviewing this global understanding of the Unity of All Being and will have occasion to compare it to dualistic Gnostic and exoteric stances of religious and philosophic, including scientific, belief systems.
The Tarot is an epitomized representation of nondual knowledge. It is equally objective and subjective in relevance. It addresses both physical and psychological worlds. It posits that outer cosmology and inner spirituality are wedded realms through which Truth is realized as Beauty and Goodness. Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss are neither materially reducible nor ego-determined. Rather, body (existence) and mind (consciousness) always arise in unity (bliss).
Thirdly, it must not be doubted that Truth addresses hierarchical bliss. The Tarot depicts an ecstatically lawful, hierarchical world, which immanently embodies change and transcendental reality. Each Triumph of the Tarot portrays cosmological evolution emerging from and as essentially vital Principles destined ultimately toward blissful consciousness and being. In this Triumphant view, emergent order at every level of manifestation – be that cellular, human, or galactic – inherently realizes a logos (indicating “wisdom gathered and spoken”) or consciousness of Bliss. Perennial wisdom refers to Logos and Word as primordial and celestial harmony – sound not limited to human vocalization or earthly noise. Such is the vibratory and radiant nature of everything.
The Trionfi enable us to identify hierarchical principles of order ruling our naturally complex, chaotic, and impermanent world. By so doing, it Liberates us to be Freely Happy. Reading the Triumphs is a process of envisioning the hierarchy of forces and influences at play in one’s life and world. Done with an understanding of the Triumphant stations, greater Being, Consciousness, and Bliss can be obtained. This is way beyond “having your cards read” in the hope of possessing more egoic power, material wealth, or self-serving status.
The fundamentally actualizing nature of hierarchy can be arrested through egoic and pathologic craving to manipulate, dominate, and subjugate. Utterly displacing sacerdotal (“of the sacred”) realization of in-depth Beauty via spirited Goodness with temporal possession of surface beauty via material goods can significantly arrest sustainable growth, whether personal, social, or environmental. Rather, the two need to evolve hand in hand. Put more broadly, it is best to holistically relate spirituality, governance, science, and capitalism via contextually studying, communicating, and becoming conscious of universal hierarchy. The Tarot is an excellent tool to assist us in that work and play.
This treatise challenges us to review, recognize, and actually rectify the most critical issue of our day: the world’s conflicting insights regarding hierarchical, evolutionary development. Matters concerning authority and control are inherent to this issue, as are beliefs regarding racial, religious, cultural, or national superiority. In its worst appropriation, hierarchy arrogated by dualistic conceits can be used as justification for self-propelling prophecies promoting apocalypse. The potential for globally catastrophic conflict will remain until this issue is fully admitted, appreciated, and addressed. Abetting resolution to such conflict requires championing recognition of hierarchical and evolutionary development universally found in cosmic, earthen, human, and microcosmic realms.
Dominating power and control are often viewed as prerequisites to material and social success. However, the medieval Tarot shows us how to realize power, wealth, and status – and thereby lasting happiness – in the context of wisdom. These are found in the immortal states of beautiful being, good consciousness, and true bliss. Nothing less can compare. What use is power if control of others inevitably produces hatred, defiling Beauty at the end of the day? What value is money if one is too ignorant to use it in service of the Good? What satisfaction is status if it leads to greed and denial of harmonious Truth? Only Beauty, Goodness, and Truth will suffice as an antidote to malice, delusion, and craving.
The above vision of a spiritually universal way that involves becoming conscious of world Unity is neither a modern invention nor an arcane, obsolete point of view. Nor is it an unrealizable ideal. Traditions East and West have thoroughly conveyed processes into our present day by which every Questor may gain the means necessary for successful actualization of a true spiritual path.
The Tarot originated in esoteric circles cultivating what has traditionally been termed alchemy. Practiced under wise guidance, psychophysical-social alchemy can quicken the realization of nondual awareness. Such alchemy does not go beyond vital life and essential nature. Living naturally requires being vitally essential, and alchemical practices enable a Questor to be exactly that. Alive, natural alchemy embraces polarities cycling, networking, emanating, modifying, and otherwise hierarchically transforming as the One. These terms and practices will be clarified in chapter 6 when the tradition of internal alchemy is fully addressed. The stages of such a spiritual and yogic way proceed exactly in accordance with the medieval Tarot.
Transformation as Chaos – Being as Space – Consciousness as Time – Bliss as Law: these are immortal principles permeating all cosmic cycles. Chaos serves to manifest these Deathless states first as Flux and then as an ever-changing universe simultaneously arising on many different levels of scale, from quantum to galactic. Earlier, these principles were identified with the Neoplatonic Triune of World Soul, Soul, and Intellect upholding the One. Extending that model further, Neoplatonism posited six stages of sentient soul simultaneously descending from and ascending to World Soul:
1. Perceptual Soul (Establishes Self-identity)
2. Emotional Soul (Produces Pleasure and Pain)
3. Imaginative Soul (Reveals Significant Images)
4. Conceptual Soul (Relates Positions of Others)
5. Logical Soul (Aligns to the Virtuous)
6. Creative Soul (Reasons beyond Self-sense)
Ascending to:
7. World Soul (Transforms through Chaos)
8. Divine Soul (Loves through Eros)
9. Radiant Intellect (Transcends through the Bright)
10. The One (Unifies through the Way)
In modern terms, the cosmological process of life and evolution emerging from Chaos can be efficiently understood through the following six-stage cycle (italicized words contain the principal definition of each stage):
1. Inertial identity, being both whole and part, and potentially vibratory
2. Separates as a polarity in symmetrical extension
3. Organizes as a field-system cycling through and as these poles, resonating with other fields
4. Transcends limited polar definition via hierarchical relationship, emerging both within and without
5. Synchronistically aligns contingent relationships interdependently arising through the universal field-polarity of emptiness and infinity (space and time)
6. Transforms via holistic catastrophe (chaos) the whole causal process
Such transformation:
1. Vibrates the original identity
2. Extends its polar symmetry
3. Non-linearly resonates within a group of interdependent fields
4. Reinforces traces of an emerging hierarchical pattern
5. Breaks symmetrical formation and then vanishes through nonlocal but synchronistic contingencies
6. Holistically regenerates through transformative chaos a similar but uniquely changed, causally self-organizing duration of coherent identity
The always-evolving cosmos is manifested through these six primary spatial-temporal processes transforming, dimensioning, and radiating the aforementioned four transcendental and fundamental Principles (with the First being the principle of Law itself). Such serve to define the means, source, destiny, and reality of every holon or whole/part identity in the universe. Every thing, process, or state exists both as a whole made up of parts and as a part in the context of a larger whole. This is true for every level of manifestation, be it that of atoms, cells, humans, suns, or galaxies.
Each of the above soulful emanations and principles of Unity is represented in the Tarot by two adjacent Triumphs. The ten stages of spiritual realization and cosmological manifestation are conveyed most essentially through pairs of twenty Triumphs: from Empress/Popess to Justice/World. The Fool/Magician pair represents the Questor proceeding through the ten stages of conscious evolution. Each Triumphant station has its own whole identity, while simultaneously imaging a symmetrical half of a larger stage or principle identified by the unique union of that pair of stations.
Ten universal stages and their respective processes and principles are hierarchically nested within the twenty Trionfi. Cultural, social, and psychological aspects of stages one through six are elaborated in the next few chapters. They are given scientific definition as Great Principles (highlighted in the above model) of cosmic evolution in chapter 8. Chapter 9 collates in summary format the essential meanings and definitions that are applied to the Triumphs and their respective stations throughout the book. The present chapter finishes with a focused introduction to the last four stages, for they serve as a spiritual foundation to the metaphysical cosmology of the Tarot.
According to the Tarot, cosmic evolution of Unity is dependent upon Death (catastrophe in all forms), Chaos (vitally essential impermanence), and those principles of reality that transcend them: immortal existence (matter/dimensionality/space), eternal consciousness (energy/frequency/time), and perpetual bliss (purpose/unity/law). It bears repeating that genesis, transformation, regeneration, and all temporal causality are a priori preceded by the unconditional causes of Chaos, Space, Time, and Law. As will be outlined in chapter 5, these were known by early Greeks as Strife, Eros, the Bright, and the Way. Later, Neoplatonists called them World Soul, Light Soul, Radiant Intellect, and Just One. The changing cosmos comprises the means through which these Great Causes realize their intrinsic unity of Blissful Plentitude.
The four stages of the Deathless (transcendental reality as cosmic unifier, creator, sustainer, and destroyer) become consciously known through the enlightened stages of spiritual realization. Such is the transformation of psychophysical identity into the Three upholding the One: Chaos, Space, and Time upholding the Way. Manifesting as Deathless Reality, these Principles are immortal, absolute, universal, and omnipresent.
This book argues that the Tarot is composed of eleven pairs of archetypes, ten of which are hierarchical, one of which is the Questor amidst the stages. The first six stages of the Quest serve as Initiation to Awakening; the following stages serve as Enlightenment, even while the Questor is undergoing initiation! The Trionfi, thereby, form a Great Circle of Consciousness.
Each stage is realized both externally and internally, communally and individually. For instance, as outlined above, the third stage manifests a cycling field between two poles. The medieval Tarot represents this stage through the archetypes of Temperance and Love. Socially, the Questor experiences this stage through tempered and tolerant exchanges in relationship with others. It is necessary to develop such outgoing temperance in order to personally mature in intimate responsibility, which accompanies revelatory love.
To give another example, in the sixth stage, the root-state or heart-cause of self-existence severs all identity with and as that very self. What internally feels like Death to the Questor may externally appear to others as the Hanged Man. For the Questor personally transits a passage into the Deathless (inevitably commencing with the Chaotic Devil) while socially seeming to be hung-up in a witnessing state of impending catastrophe.
Schizophrenia and psychosis may grip a mind when this stage and the preceding one become pathologically disconnected from the first four stages of human development. Although some might thereby interpret these Triumphs negatively, they are not natively pathological, but rather are surrounded by Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. Indeed, they are relatively high in the hierarchy of vital life and essential nature. Until the witnessing position of the Hanged Man is fully incorporated in the Questor’s heart-state of awareness, Death cannot deliver consciousness to the gates of enlightened transfiguration. In Buddhism, this practice of insightful witnessing is called Vipassana.
The portal to the Deathless realm is guarded by the Devil. In Christian Hermeticism and Islamic Sufi mysticism, the Tarot Devil corresponds to the potent angel placed as guardian at the Gates of Paradise after man’s “fall” from Grace. The Questor may pass through only after a completely sacrificial effort (i.e., Sainthood). Such effort must become effortlessly mindful – as if it is truly of one’s essential nature. In its fully vital essentiality, the Effort of transiting Death, bearing the sacrifice of all causality, inherently involves spontaneous Emptiness. This is the Crux of authentic Mysticism.
Crossing into the Deathless – the Angelic Realm of the Saints – does not occur consciously without perfect timing or what may be viewed as the providence of divine accident. Even then, the Deathless is realized only through the assistance of one who is already immortally transcended. This is referred to in the great traditions as Divine Grace, often occurring within a synchronistic, communal process of lineage succession, such as Buddhist Dharma Transmission. It is difficult to rectify this process with that of political election, democratic or otherwise. Effortless-effort and authentic spiritual leadership do not arise from egoic strategies serving determined stakeholders, moral or not.
The sixth-to-seventh-stage passage into Enlightenment and Divinity is the cornerstone of the Tarot. Later, we will give extensive attention to the historical station and theological development of the Devil. Fascists, psychotics, and fanatical fundamentalists have unfortunately perverted the actual significance of this station throughout history.
Following Death, the transition stage represented by the Devil and Tower is felt in every preceding stage as a wild build-up of inscrutable complexity. Put shortly, it is the stage of Chaos. In dualistic schools, this seventh stage has been historically referred to as either the “secret and real demiurgic power” or the “evil antithesis to the one true God.” However, Tao, Allah, Nirvana, Holy Trinity, or Supreme Unity is actually That which emanates as all ten universal spheres. The tenth stage of Blissful Truth is not essentially or really degraded by the limitations of its emanated or manifested states – although for the unenlightened it may appear to be.
The first of the four Deathless stages is like an extraordinary, unfathomable pressure phasing into primordial transformation. The permeation of this seventh principle throughout each of the six stages of cosmic cycling catalyzes all change and empowers every processional aspect of existence. However, neither the seventh state of Chaos nor the six stages of manifested cosmos “below it” self-sufficiently create Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. Prior to, greater than, and always as these seven universal spheres, processes, or stages are absolute Space, Time, and Law: the eighth, ninth, and tenth principles of unlimited realization.
Thus, the preceding seven spheres emerge from and are encapsulated by the dimensionality and space of Beingness. In essence, reality simply IS. It is not fundamentally limited by temporal states of being or non-being. The eighth-stage principle is Space itself, which exists regardless of any other analyzable state of cosmic development.
Temporal Cosmos, radical Chaos, and all spatial Existence itself (be that of three, ten, or infinite dimensions) is emanated from, encapsulated in, and pervaded by the eternal, infinite frequencies and energy of Time, referred to in our text as Light, Radiance, and Consciousness. Energy is the bridge-state between Space and Time. Historically, such has been called the Angelic Domain. We will elaborate upon Matter and Energy, Space and Time, when we consider Tarot cosmology in light of holistic scientific theory.
In turn, Time, Space, Chaos, and localized, temporal cosmic manifestations of Unity are all encapsulated by the very principle of universal Law itself. Beyond understanding this Ultimate Principle through concepts of Unitive Law, human consciousness can only identify this One Source and Destiny as Bliss or the Way itself. The ultimate principle of Unitive Law cannot truthfully be referred to as time, space, chaos, or cosmos. As Lao Tzu said, True Tao cannot be spoken. This is because of its utterly nondual nature. In any case, ineffable Unity first emanates as its own Law, the Just Way of the World. In terms of human consciousness and spiritual realization, this principle is the Law of Bliss.
The Cosmos embodies fundamentally true laws of nature. These laws, these truths, are its Bliss, its Nirvana, its Tao. For Questors to be true to their Tao is to keep to their Bliss, the law of their Soul – small or big, humble or glorious. Always remember: Bliss is Plenty.
Now that we have uncovered the essential stages of World development and conscious realization in terms of Tarot cosmology and spiritual hierarchy, how are we to put our new knowledge to use? What are the secrets to empowerment through the six universal stages of self-actualization? How can Self be remembered after total dismemberment by the scythe of Death? Is there Authority beyond the Devil’s control of chaos? Is it possible to experience the Deathless truth of Beauty and Goodness during the course of one’s ordinary and mortal life? Such questions can indeed be answered. The success of every true Quest is, in a way, guaranteed – for that is how the World works.
Let us now clarify the historical origins of our oracular keys, the medieval Tarot Arcana. We must flesh out an esoteric understanding of the Tarot so that its occult interpretations and concealed uses are outshined by its authentic message of realized Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. There can be nothing hidden from that view which sees liberation in Unity-awareness. May every sentient being have the common sense to exist in such consciousness of bliss.
