Footnotes - Chapter 2

11 At least until the XV century it was assumed that the gypsies came from Egypt. Today they are more popularly thought to be of Indian extraction.

12 Jacopo da Varazze, or da Varagine, was born in 1228 and became a Dominican friar and later, Archbishop of Genoa. He was the author of the Legenda aurea (the Golden Legend ). This text, a reference for many painters of sacred art, gives information and details relative to the lives of the Saints and evangelical episodes.

13 Monuments inédits sur l’apostolat de Sainte Marie-Madeleine en Provence, et sur les autres apotres de cette contrée: Saint Lazare, Saint Maximin, Sain Marthe (Unknown shrines of the apostolate of Saint Mary Magdalen in Provence and of the other apostolates of this region: Saint Lazarus, Saint Maximin, and Saint Martha) . Published by Abbot Migne, editor of the Universal Clerical Library, France 1865.

14 Il Messaggio di Pitagora ( The Message of Pythagoras ), Vincenzo Capparelli, vol. I Edizioni Mediterranee 2003.

15 Ibid .

16 The school of Alexandria.

17 One of the models typical of Gnosticism was the Valentinian School, founded in Rome by Valentine, of Egyptian origin, in 140 AD. He had numerous disciples who brought into being two great schools of thought: the Western (in what are now Italian and French regions, including Provence) and Eastern. To Valentine, or to members of his School, are attributed some of the more important writing found near Nag Hammadi, for example, the Gospel of Truth , the Tripartite Treaty , the Gospel of Philip , the Epistle to Reginos on the Resurrection and, above all, the Pistis Sophia . The texts are written in Coptic, although most of them (perhaps all) were translated from the Greek. Thanks to this discovery, scholars have identified traces in the citations, of writings of the Fathers of the Church. The manuscripts have been dated to the III and IV centuries AD, while for the original Greek texts, however still controversial, a period between the I and II centuries Ad is generally accepted.

18 The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of philosophical-religious writings of the late Hellenistic Era, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus (the Latin Mercury, identified also as the Egyptian Thoth, the God who gave hieroglyphics and writing to man), which represented the source of inspiration for Renaissance Hermetic and Neoplatonic thought. The fundamental thought of these texts is summarized in the esoterical doctrine of a “divine revelation” given to men by Hermes, not through rational demonstration and logical deduction, but rather through some mysterious initiation. Marsilio Ficino, translator of the Corpus into Latin in 1471, indicated Pythagorus and Plato as the latest representatives of the ancient Wisdom contained in it.

19 According to Christian tradition, Eastern monasticism originated with Saint Anthony (ca 251-356 AD), considered the “Father of Friars” but as we will demonstrate in chapter 8, it is actually far older.

20 The Cenobia were communities of monks and Saint Pacomius the Great was considered their first true legislator. He, in fact, dictated a Rule for his brother monks according to which they should “ put all of their earnings from all activities into a common fund, be it for food or for the hospitality of pilgrims. ”

21 John Cassian, Cenobitic Institutions 1, 36.

22 John Cassian was never canonized by the Catholic Church (which in any case celebrates him on July 23) but by the Orthodox Church, which celebrates him on July 29. He was, however, considered a saint by several Popes, among whom Urban V (1362-1370) and Benedict XIV (1740-1758).

23 Inside the monasteries, the place dedicated to the copying of texts and antique codes was called the scriptorium .

24 Domini Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis , Charles du Fresne 1678; Henry René d’Allemagne (1863-1950) in the work Les cartes a jouer du XIV au XX siecle ( Playing cards from the XIV to XX century ).

25 Storia dei Tarocchi ( Story of the Tarot ), Giordano Berti, Mondadori edition, 2007.

26 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1469-1533) in his De rerum praenotione counts the images in playing cards as one of many forms of sorcery: “ Sortium multa sunt genera ut in talorum iactu in tesseribus proijciendis/in figuris Chartaceo ludo pictis ” ( Many are the types of sorcery, painted in the figures of card decks, as also in the throwing of the dice. or the game of shells ). Strasbourg (Argentoraci) 1507, without page numbers, Bk VI chap. VI.

27 Storia dei Tarocchi ( Story of the Tarot ), Giordano Berti, Mondadori edition, 2007.

28 The I Arcanum, the Magician (the Bateleur), symbolizes the Will; the II, the High Priestess, Science; the III, the Empress, Action; the IIII, the Emperor, Realization; the V, the Hierophant, the Master of the Arcana; the VI, the Lover, the Two Roads, the Ordeal; the VII, the Chariot, Victory; the VIII, Justice, Equilibrium; the VIIII, the Hermit, the Veiled Lamp, Prudence; the X, the Wheel of Fortune, Fortune; the XI, Strength, the Tamed Lion, Strength; the XII, the Hanged Man, Sacrifice; the XIII, the XIII Arcanum, Transformation; the XIIII, Temperance, the Solar Genius; the XV, the Devil, Typhoon; the XVI, the House of God, the Tower; the XVII, the Star, Hope; the XVIII, the Moon, Twilight, Delusion; the XVIIII, the Sun, Well-being; the XX. Judgement, Renovation; the XXI, the World, Recompense; the Fool, Expiation.

29 Papus, Le Tarot divinatoire ( The Divinatory Tarot ), Librairie Hermétique, Paris 1909, p 15 .

30 Joseph Maxwell, Le Tarot, le symbole, les arcanes, la divination , page 13, ed. Libraire Félix Alcan.

31 Basically, these Besançon Tarot, edited by Grimaud in 1898 were copied from the more ancient Tarot of the cardmaker Lequart (which the editor Grimaud had acquired), of which an example may be seen today at the French Museum of Playing Cards in Issy-les-Moulineaux, in France.

32 William W. Westcott, 1848-1925, was another member of the SRIA. Around 1888, Westcott presented Mathers with a recent English edition of the Steganografia , a work on magic cryptography written in the 1400’s by Abbot Tritemius (1462-1516). The white pages of the book, which according to Westcott had belonged to Eliphas Levi, described the twenty-two steps of a self-initiation into High Magic: these steps corresponded to the Triumphs of the Tarot. Westcott’s volume was published in London in 1896 with the title The Magical Ritual of Sanctum regnum and reprinted in Paris towards 1920. Historians of the Golden Dawn maintain that this work should not be attributed to Levi. Today it is certain that the fraud was Westcott’s idea, not the only one of his career.

33 The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Rides & Co., London 1910, page 59.

34 From The Great Symbols of the Tarot b y A.E.Waite, extracted from Shadows of Life and Thought, Selwin & Blount, London, 1938, p 186.

35 Nicolas Conver founded his Maison Conver, in 1760.

36 Among the tints, black and white are not numbered, being considered “non-colours.”