The Illustrated Key to the Tarot: The Veil of DivinationDe Laurence, L. W. (Lauron William)
Religion
The Illustrated Key to the Tarot: The Veil of Divination
De Laurence, L. W. (Lauron William)
Fortune-telling by cards; Tarot
The Trumps Major have also been treated in the alternative
method which I have mentioned, and Grand Orient, in his
Manual Of Cartomancy, under the guise of a mode of transcendental
divination, has really offered the result of certain illustrative
readings of the cards when arranged as the result of a
fortuitous combination by means of shuffling and dealing. The
use of divinatory methods, with whatsoever intention and for
whatever purpose, carries with it two suggestions. It may be
thought that the deeper meanings are imputed rather than real,
but this is disposed of by the fact of certain cards, like the
Magician, the High Priestess, the Wheel of Fortune, the Hanged
Man, the Tower or Maison Dieu, and several others, which do
not correspond to Conditions of Life, Arts, Sciences, Virtues, or
the other subjects contained in the denaries of the Baldini emblematic
figures. They are also proof positive that obvious and
natural moralities cannot explain the sequence. Such cards testify
concerning themselves after another manner; and although
the state in which I have left the Tarot in respect of its historical
side is so much the more difficult as it is so much the more
open, they indicate the real subject matter with which we are
concerned. The methods show also that the Trumps Major at
least have been adapted to fortune-telling rather than belong
thereto. The common divinatory meanings which will be given
in the third part are largely arbitrary attributions, or the product
of secondary and uninstructed intuition; or, at the very most,
they belong to the subject on a lower plane, apart from the original
intention. If the Tarot were of fortune-telling in the root-matter
thereof, we should have to look in very strange places for
the motive which devised it—to Witchcraft and the Black
Sabbath, rather than any Secret Doctrine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account