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It seems rather of necessity than predilection in the sense of apologia that
I should put on record in the first place a plain statement of my personal
position, as one who for many years of literary life has been, subject to his
spiritual and other limitations, an exponent of the higher mystic schools. It
will be thought that I am acting strangely in concerning myself at this day
with what appears at first sight and simply a well-known method of
fortune-telling. Now, the opinions of some, even in the literary reviews, are
of no importance unless they happen to agree with our own, but in order to
sanctify this doctrine we must take care that our opinions, and the subjects
out of which they arise, are concerned only with the highest. Yet it is just
this which may seem doubtful, in the present instance, not only to those, whom
I respect within the proper measures of detachment, but to some of more real
consequence, seeing that their dedications are mine.
To these and to any I would say that after the most illuminated Frater
Christian Rosy Cross had beheld the Chemical Marriage in the Secret Palace of
Transmutation, his story breaks off abruptly, with an intimation that he
expected next morning to be door-keeper. After the same manner, it happens more
often than might seem likely that those who have seen the Occult Powers of
Nature through the most clearest veils of the sacraments are those who assume
thereafter the humblest offices of all about the House of Wisdom. By such
simple devices also are the Adepts and Great Masters in the secret orders
distinguished from the cohort of Neophytes as servi servorum mysterii.
So also, or in a way which is not entirely unlike, we meet with the Tarot
cards at the outermost gates—amidst the fritterings and debris of the so-called
occult arts, about which no one in their senses has suffered the smallest
deception; and yet these cards belong in themselves to another region, for they
contain a very high symbolism, which is interpreted according to the Laws of
Grace rather than by the pretexts and intuitions of that which passes for
divination. The fact that the wisdom of God (Nature) is foolishness with men
does not create a presumption that the foolishness of this world makes in any
sense for Divine Wisdom; so neither the scholars in the ordinary classes nor
the pedagogues in the seats of the mighty will be quick to perceive the
likelihood or even the possibility of this proposition. The subject has been in
the hands of cartomancists as part of the stock-in-trade of their industry; I
do not seek to persuade any one outside my own circles that this is of much or
of no consequence; but on the historical and interpretative sides it has not
fared better; it has been there in the hands of exponents who have brought it
into utter contempt for those people who possess philosophical insight or
faculties for the appreciation of evidence. It is time that it should be
rescued, and this I propose to undertake once and for all, that I may have done
with the side issues which distract from the term.
As poetry is the most beautiful expression of the things that are of all
most beautiful, so is symbolism the most catholic expression in concealment of
things that are most profound in the Sanctuary and that have not been declared
outside it with the same fullness by means of the spoken word. The
justification of the rule of silence is no part of my present concern, but I
have put on record elsewhere, and quite recently, what it is possible to say on
this subject. The little treatise which follows is divided into three parts, in
the first of which I have dealt with the antiquities of the subject and a few
things that arise from and connect therewith. It should be understood that it
is not put forward as a contribution to the-history of playing cards, about
which I know and care nothing; it is a consideration dedicated and addressed to
a certain school of occultism, more especially in France, as to the source and
center of all the phantasmagoria which has entered into expression during the
last fifty years under the pretense of considering Tarot cards historically.
In the second part, I have dealt with the symbolism according to some of its
higher aspects, and this also serves to introduce the complete and rectified
Tarot," which is available separately, in the form of colored cards, the
designs of which are added to the present text in black and white. They have
been prepared under my supervision—in respect of the attributions and
meanings—by a lady who has high claims as an artist. Regarding the divinatory
part, by which my thesis is terminated, I consider it personally as a fact in
the history of the Tarot; as such, I have drawn, from all published sources, a
harmony of the meanings which have been attached to the various cards, and I
have given prominence to one method of working that has not been published
previously; having the merit of simplicity, while it is also of universal
application, it may be held to replace the cumbrous and involved system of the
larger hand-books.
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