The Fools Pilgrimage: Kabblistic Meditations on the Tarot - Chapter 1

The true origin of the images of the Tarot is shrouded in a seemingly impenetrable mystery. One of the earliest accounts dates back to ancient Egypt, where, according to legend, on the altar of the temple of Ptah in Memphis images were found engraved on plates of gold, which resembled certain of the greater Trumps, or Major Arcana, of the Tarot. The French scholar, Court de Gebélin, writing in his noted work, Le Monde Primitif, in 1781, asserted that the Tarot is, in fact, the one book of the ancient Egyptians that escaped the burning of the Alexandrian Library and that, moreover, it contains "the purest knowledge of profound matters" possessed by the wise men of Egypt. Numerous more recent students of the Tarot tend to regard the above account as an exaggeration and humbly confess their ignorance of the origins of the cards. Nevertheless, the Egyptian hypothesis has numerous illustrious followers, including Eliphas Levi, Paul Christian, Papus, and others. In the view of many, the Tarot originated in the mysterious, long-lost Book of Thoth, attributed to the god of secret wisdom, Thoth, better known under his Greek name of Hermes.

By the fourteenth century, Tarot images had reached Spain, Italy, and France and were transported to other countries by the Romany, or "Gypsy," people, who appear to have used the images mainly for purposes of fortune-telling. There are shadowy indications, however, to the effect that images resembling the Tarot were circulating in various forms long before the fourteenth century.

While historical inquiry into the origins of the Tarot leads us at best to the Gypsy caravans and, at worst, nowhere, the area of myth and legend yields far more promising results. It has been rightly said that myth is of greater authenticity than history because it deals with the timeless realities of the soul, instead of with the pale reflections of these realities on the illusory screen of time and fact. Thus we find that the myth of the origins of the Tarot is, indeed, far more revealing than its history. Mystical tradition tells us that after the final destruction of the great library of Alexandria and at the beginning of the Dark Ages, certain wise men who met in the city of Fez, Morocco, decided to create a medium whereby the initiatory wisdom of antiquity might be preserved for future generations. In their prophetic foresight, these sages knew that the tyrannical medieval Church would destroy any such device if it were apparent that it contained ideas and symbols inimical to what was regarded as Christian orthodoxy. These sages also knew that illiteracy would be the order of the day for many centuries and that, therefore, a verbal and written transmission of the wisdom would be useless. The old adepts, so the legend tells us, then decided to construct a picture book of universal knowledge that would escape the attention of the inquisitors and continue for countless years to remind men and women of the deeper truths of life and of the essential character of their own being.

If, indeed, this tale has any basis in fact, it indicates the profound psychological knowledge of the sages in question. A picture is worth many thousands of words, and if the picture corresponds to the archetypal or primordial images resident within the unconscious of humankind, the study and contemplation of such a picture can give rise to outstanding transforming experiences within the psyche. Depth psychologist C. G. Jung aptly stated that "He who speaks in primordial images speaks to us as with a thousand trumpets, he grips and overpowers, and at the same time he elevates that which he treats out of the individual and transitory into the sphere of the eternal."*

* Jolande Jacobi, ed., Psychological Reflections (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), 181.

If the Tarot cards are, indeed, the product of a consciously designed effort on the part of some unknown individuals designed to stimulate the powers resident in the primordial images of the unconscious, these author-artists would have to be gratefully and reverently congratulated. If, on the other hand, the Tarot was not devised but evolved according to some mysterious inner plan of its own, this possibility would only deepen the mystery and make our hearts beat even faster when approaching it. Whether the small acorn of a deck of cards was planted ages ago by spiritual giants, or whether it fell fortuitously from an unknown height into the soil of the psyche of Western civilization, it has grown into a mighty, sacred oak tree, giving shade, comfort, and delight to countless men and women for generations without number. Like a tree, the Tarot lives and grows; rooted in earth, nourished by water, warmed by the solar fire, it reaches with its crown into the airy space of limitless eternity. As an instrument of cognition, it has almost no equal; the knowledge gained by its study extends from cosmology and cosmogony, through philosophy, astrology, alchemy, and magic to psychological analysis and self-knowledge. Wherever and whatever its beginnings, in a very real sense it is still for us the Book of Thoth, a scroll of pictures brought from the high heavens of wisdom by Hermes, messenger of gods and teacher of men.

The wise alone know how to employ vice as well as virtue in order to advance the cause of good. On the surface, wisdom and gambling have little in common; they are antithetical in nature. Still, had it not been for the vice of gambling, the compendium of wisdom known as the Tarot might have been lost. The cards, which probably originally were made of leather or metal, were used as a means of gambling and amusement and thus were cherished by many who did not value philosophy or mysticism. The Tarot cards became playing cards. The mysterious images were unknowingly used by the ignorant and the frivolous as a means of transmitting the wisdom of the ages.

The complete deck of the Tarot consists of seventy-eight individual cards, which are divided into two groups: the fifty-six cards of the so-called Minor Arcana and the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana, the latter also being known as the Greater Trumps. The fifty-six cards of the Minor Arcana are the origin of our modern playing cards. They are divided into four suits—namely, Pentacles, Cups, Swords, and Wands—each of which consists of ten cards numbered one through ten and four court cards, which are King, Queen, Knight, and Page. The Major Arcana consists of twenty-two keys or trumps numbered zero through twenty-one.

Opinions differ as to which of the Tarot suits gave rise to which modern playing card suit, but the most likely classification runs as follows:

Pentacles, indicating interest, money:Diamonds
Cups, indicating love, happiness: Hearts
Swords, indicating strife, misfortune: Spades
Wands, indicating glory, enterprise: Clubs

In the course of time, the gambling inventiveness of mankind simplified the Tarot and reduced it to various more limited decks, consisting variously of fifty-four, thirty-two, and even twenty-four cards, which are used for such games as Whist, Bridge, Skat, Poker, Remy, Piquet, and others. The twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana were totally eliminated from most decks of playing cards, with the exception of the joker, a corrupted form of the Fool of the Major Arcana. Trump cards closely resembling the Greater Trumps of the Tarot can be found, however, in a deck of playing cards popular in Central Europe, called Tarock.

Hand in hand with the increased use of the Minor Arcana of the Tarot for gaming purposes went the neglect of these same fifty-six suit cards by occult students, who, beginning with Eliphas Levi in the nineteenth century, began to concentrate their attention almost exclusively on the twenty-two symbolic cards of the Major Arcana. The present writer regards this tendency as an understandable but unfortunate error. The universe and the human being (who is a universe in miniature) consist of two major dimensions. The first of these is the outer, or lesser, dimension, consisting of the aspect of things as revealed to us by our senses, as reacted to by our feelings, as evaluated by our intellect, and as apprehended by our intuition. As against this outer, comprehensible, operative world, we can also recognize the existence of another, far more mysterious, but infinitely richer sphere of being, which in terms of Jungian psychology we might name the abode of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. The first or outer realm is the one depicted by the fifty-six cards of the Minor Arcana, while the second or inner realm is indicated by the twenty-two symbolic cards of the Major Arcana. Together, they make up a complete, unobstructed, and undivided symbolic representation of macrocosmic and microcosmic reality. The attempt on the part of some occultists and mystics to ignore the fifty-six suit cards is for the most part indicative of their predilection to withdraw into the mysterious inner world of their secret selves and, at the same time, neglect the visible, intelligible side of the outer world and of their personal cosmos. It is our intention to show the nature and relationship of these two areas of existence as demonstrated to us by the Tarot.

As a general rule, we can say that the fifty-six cards of the Minor Arcana represent the outer self or personality of man, while the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana symbolize the secret kingdom of the inner self or individuality. The two follow separate but related laws of operation, as symbolized in the Tarot in several ways, of which the system of numbers may be mentioned here as a particularly interesting example. The Minor Arcana are constructed on the basis of the numbers four and ten, since there are four suits, with ten numbered cards and four court cards to each. The Major Arcana are based on the numbers three and seven, inasmuch as the twenty-two cards can most usefully be divided into three septenaries plus the zero card, which defies classification, or 3 x 7 = 21 + 0. It may also be noted that each suit of the Minor Arcana has fourteen cards, and that fourteen is the number given by H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine as the totality of manifestation: "The twice seven, the sum total." On the other hand, the numbers three and seven when added instead of multiplied give us the number ten, which is the number of the sephiroth on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. This might be taken to indicate that the principle of the numbers three and seven as manifest in the Major Arcana describes the structure of the god-powers in things, while the principle of the numbers four and ten as present in the Minor Arcana symbolizes the natural, or created, aspect of being; the former relates to life, while the latter indicates form.

Since the primary objective of the Tarot appears to be the facilitation of self-knowledge, it is necessary for us to look at the cards primarily in terms of their correspondences with psychological functions and principles within the human psyche. Thus the ten numbered cards and the four court cards of the four suits of the Minor Arcana together correspond to the four basic functions of consciousness as described by Jung; namely, sensation, feeling, thinking, and intuition. At the same time, we must keep in mind that the twenty-two symbolic cards of the Major Arcana are representatives of the primordial images, or archetypes, within the collective unconscious.

One of the most ancient, and also most useful, symbolic representations of the human personality is the circle, intersected by an equal-armed cross. This is the design used also for the Zodiac and for the yearly calendar, divided into the four seasons by the equinoxes and solstices, which, when connected by straight lines, form the cross within the circle. The alchemists and magicians of old employed this fourfold classification of being when speaking of the four magical "elements" of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air and when referring to the four alchemical substances of Mercury, Sulphur, Salt, and Water. This perennially recurring quaternary structure was also employed by Jung in his classification of psychological types and, even more importantly, of the functions of human consciousness.

In Jungian terms, it takes little imagination to recognize that the ancient "element" of earth, when psychologically understood, is analogous to the function of sensation, as water stands for emotion, fire for thinking, and air for intuition. The analogy can further be extended to include the four suits of the Tarot, thus correlating the suit of Pentacles with the function of sensation, Cups with feeling, Swords with thinking, and Wands with intuition. Similarly, the four court cards of each suit may in turn be equated with the aforementioned psychological functions. Thus we may consider the following analogies:

It is only fair to point out that when it comes to the attribution of the four ancient elements to the four suits of the Tarot, the authorities are in frequent disagreement with each other. Papus and Case make the suit of Wands correspond to Fire and Cups to Water, but Case connects Pentacles with Earth and Swords with Air, while Papus relates Swords to Earth and Pentacles to Air. The disagreement existing between these two eminent authorities may be taken as an example of the differences among Tarot students regarding attributions. It is almost universally recognized, however, that irrespective of whether it is related to Air or to Fire, the suit of Wands embodies a more subtle—and therefore more benign as well as more visionary—function of consciousness than does the suit of Swords. It is also almost beyond dispute that the suit of Pentacles relates to physical life and to material concerns, as against the emotional characteristics of the suit of Cups. With Pentacles, we are dealing with matters relating to perception through the senses; with Cups, we are involved in the weighing and reactive function of feeling; with Swords, we find ourselves in the realm of analysis through thinking; and with Wands, we move in the world of intuition, which is the inward apprehension of things in their totality. The usefulness of a system of attributions utilizing the four Jungian functions of consciousness to describe the qualities of the four suits of the Tarot is thus considerable indeed.

If we visualize the four suits of the Minor Arcana as the four sections of a circle, we might in turn envision the twenty-two symbolic Trump cards of the Major Arcana as links connecting the center of the circle with its periphery, not unlike the spokes connecting the rim of a wheel with its hub. The wheel is more than a fortuitous image when used in connection with the Tarot. Numerous students feel that the word Tarot represents an anagram of the Latin word for "wheel," rota. Using this analogy, we could liken the hub of the wheel to the zero card (the Fool) of the Major Arcana and the remaining twenty-one Trump cards to spokes, or portions of spokes of the wheel. The cards of the Major Arcana are, in fact, the carriers or transporters of the primordial psychic energy, proceeding from the center of our being to its periphery, where it becomes diffused and is allowed to circulate freely among the four functions. They symbolize psychological potencies that carry impressions from the outside of our personality into the unconscious, and conversely, conduct modifications of the inward power of the collective unconscious to the conscious level of our being. Thus the totality of selfhood, being a circle with its center everywhere and circumference nowhere, is represented to us by the structure of the great wheel, or rota, also known as the Tarot.

As stated previously, the Major Arcana consist of twenty-two cards numbered one through twenty-one and, in addition, having a most mysterious twenty-second card, a card without number, possessing the potency of zero and with the name of the "Fool." This card has been the cause of much disagreement among students of the Tarot. Some have placed it at the very end of the series of twenty-two, while others have inserted it between the twentieth and twenty-first cards. A seemingly much more logical position was assigned to the Fool by the Tarot scholars of the once-illustrious Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, who placed this card at the very beginning of the series of twenty-two, giving expression to the undeniable mathematical fact that zero comes before one.

The Fool or zero card is in many ways the most significant and most powerful of the cards of the Major Arcana, because it symbolizes the pristine spiritual source and ultimate destiny of all manifest powers and beings. It stands for the Alpha and Omega of manifestation, the No-Thing out of which all things proceed and into which they resolve at the end of the aeons. Being the symbol of this primal causeless cause, and thus utterly abstract and unsubstantial in nature, this card would spell foolishness to the worldly. From the vantage point of the spirit, all earthly gain is of no account; the road to earthly attainment leads nowhere, means nothing, and ends in nothing. The wisdom of the world is foolishness in the sight of the gods, and, conversely, the Divine Wisdom appears as foolishness in the sight of men, who, having become forgetful of their own divine heritage, have become mere men, instead of sons of the gods. It is quite easy to comprehend why to the uninitiated the Fool, or original spiritual potency, would appear as the embodiment of uselessness, silliness, and stupidity. All appearance is deception, and only at the center of the great circular dance of creation, where the Fool stands in still, motionless serenity, do we find that which no longer deceives by appearances, because it no longer appears, but is. Charles Williams, in his delightful occult novel The Greater Trumps, most insightfully describes the figures of the Tarot deck as performing an everlasting circular dance of great intricacy, within which the Fool occupies the motionless position of the pivot around which the entire dance revolves.

From the mysterious point of original and final unity, symbolized by the zero card, or the Fool, there proceed three streams, or spokes, each consisting of seven cards of the Major Arcana, together adding up to twenty-one. The first of these (one through seven, or from Magician to Chariot) stands for the area of creative powers, or of causes within the collective unconscious. The second septenary (eight through fourteen, or Strength through Temperance) consists of representations of the laws by which the primordial powers of the first septenary are channeled toward manifestation. Third, the last septenary (fifteen through twenty-one, or Devil through World) symbolizes the results or finalized concrete manifestations of the first seven powers, as they appear in their actualized or differentiated condition.

`