Pathology of the Poet

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A lot of people read A. E. Waite's famous yet hardly discussed or understood paragraph, containing the phrase "pathology of the poet", in "Pictorial Key" and just put it aside along with most of the stuff they don't have time to decipher. After all, the only thing most people care about are the fortunetelling meanings and those are intentionally segregated in the slim scullery of the book. I think the paragraph that contains that phrase is useful for understanding how Waite approached the whole project.

So I deciphered it for those who have better things to do. Please check it out.

Re: Pathology of the Poet

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Thank you for this excursus on A. E. Waite. I don't know much about him. Pictorial Key was probably the first book on the Tarot that I bought, when I was 13. Obviously it was going to be impenetrable. Eden Gray's easy style spoiled me thereafter, taking the place of the unrewarding Waite; then came Golden Dawn and Crowley, and I could never squeeze much out of Pictorial Key no matter how many times I tried. Not that his syntax is difficult, but, like you show, he is subtle to the point of obscurity. Unlike the criticism he received from Regardie, echoing his master Crowley from long before, that Waite's scholarship or historiography was somehow flawed, I found it to be very thorough and helpful, in places like the "Bibliography" in the Pictorial Key, or when I began to research the term “Konx Ompax,” where his entry and bibliography for this term in A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry from 1921 (pp. 454-457) was my initial guide.

But mostly, I just used Waite, I didn't study him. Hence, I don't remember being in the slightest bit curious about the opening lines of the main body of Pictorial Key. So it's delightful to see what you uncovered by digging for what was, after all, a quotation. I assume most people assume he just made it up, intended to give some color the following banality that average people think geniuses are mad.

I agree with you fully that he usually knows what he is talking about, but that his opaque style and cryptic prose makes understanding him challenging, even if, chewing on it a little more than most authors, the rewards are there.

I love that he wrote copy for Horlick's!

But, to the point. I have never heard of Edward Young or his Night-Thoughts. I'm more familiar with the context of the reception of Newton's ideas, which, while they threatened the creation impelled and sustained by God, proved far more easy to accommodate than Darwin's ideas would a little over a century later. Newton's universe, while it may be a clock, is at least a majestic clock, worthy of the God who created it.

The image of Sovereign Reason moderating the extremes brings to my mind the image of the occult Tarot's High Priestess. A sovereign is a crown, so the middle pillar descending from the crown, Kether, seems an apt metaphor. I suppose most people consider the High Priestess to be intuition or inspiration, but maybe Waite here is making a different interpretation, that of enlightened consciousness.

As an amateur astronomer myself, who's been to a few “star parties,” I don't think I've ever met any who could be called “undevout.” But a lot has happened since Young was worried for the souls of those who might fall into atheism because of the universe's self-sustaining perfection. These days it is the scientists who are devout and awestruck by the universe, Carl Sagan-like, while Christians are busy regulating morality and grasping for money and political power.

Re: Pathology of the Poet

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Ross Caldwell wrote: 08 May 2022, 09:21 ...Waite; then came Golden Dawn and Crowley....
Ah, the cursus [strikeout]honorum[/strikeout] descensus. I think we all arrived to tarot by a similar route. I just don't understand what the abiding attraction is for those who staked out a permanent abode in the land of Thelema.

But that was another interesting contribution from Glenn.

Re: Pathology of the Poet

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Phaeded wrote: 10 May 2022, 02:34
Ross Caldwell wrote: 08 May 2022, 09:21 ...Waite; then came Golden Dawn and Crowley....
Ah, the cursus [strikeout]honorum[/strikeout] descensus. I think we all arrived to tarot by a similar route.
I'd take it that we all have in common the "Tarot mystique," certainly. Like Dummett, whose interest was the card game, but had an analytic desire to both understand the origin and history of the game, as well as a polemical interest in proving the occultists wrong, and Michael Hurst, who had no occult background, and never learned much about it. He didn't play, either, and I can't remember what lured him into the study, besides the mystique and maybe a polemical debunking angle as well. Thierry Depaulis' area is games in general (among other things), and I think he got an interest in Tarot from Robert Klein's 1967 article in L'Oeil, "Les tarots enluminés du XVe siècle." He too has no interest in occultism or esoteric Tarots per se.

Before 2001, I had no interest in the history of Tarot, or understanding of it in any other way than as an esoteric artifact. I worked at Barnes and Noble in Fresno 1996-1997, when A Wicked Pack of Cards appeared on the shelves. I took it home and began reading it. I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. They didn't even get to the Golden Dawn era. It wasn't the kind of history I was used to reading, I just couldn't get interested. None of these exotic French theories really registered with me. I didn't learn anything from the book at that time.

The book that started it for me was Tarot: jeu et magie, edited by Thierry Depaulis. When I arrived in France in late 2001 I went to the library and looked for subjects that interested me, naturally including Tarot. For some reason, *this* time the historical claims lit a flame of indignation in me. It was the assertion that Charles VI was 15th century Italian that really irked me. I guess I had a fascination with those cards, unconsciously. I was convinced that I could prove they were what the traditional name implied: French, and probably Gringonneur's cards from 1392.

It took less than two years for me to unburden myself of the occultism entirely, and to get my feet solidly on the ground of real history and interpretation. Much of that often embarrassing development can be followed on the old TarotL Yahoo group. But I needed a spark, which I didn't get in 1996. That, and perhaps the romantic environment of the Pays Cathare instead of the desert of central California.

Re: Pathology of the Poet

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Ross Caldwell wrote: 10 May 2022, 08:33
Phaeded wrote: 10 May 2022, 02:34
Ross Caldwell wrote: 08 May 2022, 09:21 ...Waite; then came Golden Dawn and Crowley....
Ah, the cursus [strikeout]honorum[/strikeout] descensus. I think we all arrived to tarot by a similar route.
I'd take it that we all have in common the "Tarot mystique," certainly. Like Dummett, whose interest was the card game, but had an analytic desire to both understand the origin and history of the game, as well as a polemical interest in proving the occultists wrong...
In the mid-80s I went through a drug-induced (MDMA, Ecstasy, molly, whatever it is called these days) search for the "meaning of life" before I made it out of college (of course I returned) and devoured every piece of new age nonsense that was printed; ironically, given JvR, I decamped to Freiburg im Breisgau for half a year in '86. Tarot was always just a book or two I picked up but never really got into it, but in the meantime I developed towards Dummet's position towards occult matters in general (my true guilty pleasure has always been Jung's Aion).

I only dove into tarot when I began writing a novel loosely connecting four characters to the horsemen of the apocalypse, going through various scenarios that mirrored the sequential trumps in some manner (so each of the 22 chapters would at least have easter egg referents to the relevant trump). Like you being infuriated about the dating of CVI, I was wondering why any tarot deck I might use to inform my novel really meant anything that was being written about them; not having come across Dummett, every book about any deck looked suspect (and Crowley tells you up front he's making his up) so I started wondering why was the first deck even made as that would be the true meaning of each card. Novel got backburned (it still sits 3/4ths written) as I went into that rabbit hole. I was just glad to have found this board where people interested in actual history posted (that Aclectic tarot board just looks like a intellectual quagmire, but understand why you and Huck posted there as not everyone was a new ager - random searches will still sometimes lead there with valid info).

Phaeded
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