Hi, Jean-Michel,
jmd wrote:I wonder how the term 'Origin' in the title is to be understood: is it more a case of 'origin' in the sense that tarot's impulse takes its rise from the common human spiritual striving?
Among the interesting comments are the following:
It is the thesis of this book that the twenty-two images conceptually originated in Sufi circles trained in Greek studies.... The author is unaware of any treatise before this that has put forth the above statements regarding Tarot origins.... That the coherent, hierarchical worldview represented by the Trionfi was transferred to Italy through the Islamic world under Greek influence, both Orthodox and Neoplatonic, is an obvious theory worth consideration. However, remarkably enough, this theory has never been seriously forwarded by Tarot occultists, card historians, or scholars of comparative religion.
From that, it
sounds as if he is talking about a specific "coherent, hierarchical" content related to historical Tarot rather than a hodge-podge of vaguely conceived mystical analogies with contemporary New Age Tarot. This would certainly not be the first time someone had made such a card-by-card argument.
John Dyson Blakeley's
Mystical Tower of the Tarot (1974) made such a detailed case based on specific trump subjects, following the general indications of Idries Shah's
The Sufis (1964, pp.449-450) and the detailed fiction, (which Blakeley took as a genuine Sufi text), presented by Sir Fairfax Leighton Cartwright in
The Mystic Rose from the Garden of the King (1899). This was discussed in some detail in Decker & Dummett's
A History of the Occult Tarot (2002, pp.304-6), Mary Greer has written about it in
Tarot for Your Self (2002, p.50), and John Meador posted on it to Aeclectic a couple years ago. (There are additional posts on the subject in this thread.)
possible Sufi origin of the Tarot (6/18/06)
http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... stcount=44
Unfortunately, both Blakeley and Cartwright's books are unavailable via Google Books, even though Cartwright's is over a century old and therefore public domain. However, the crucial passage of Cartwright's book is online in a couple places.
The Mystic Rose from the Garden of the King
http://www.greylodge.org/occultreview/g ... icrose.htm
The Mystic Rose from the Garden of the King
http://www.blackcrescent.org/g3Deva.html
In 1988, William C. Lammey wrote
Karmic Tarot which, according to Decker & Dummett, generally follows Cartwright: "Arranging the trumps to symbolize seven stages leading to enlightenment, Lammey finds parallels in a variety of other septenaries, such as the spectrum of colours, the sequence of chakras, and the stages of life."
Best regards,
Michael
We are either dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, or we are just dwarfs.