The Babel of Tarots - Giordano Berti Lecture at the 2002 World Tarot Congress
Between
1855 and 1856, a French esoterist, Eliphas Levi, a pseudonym for Alphonso Louis
Constant, published, in Paris, a work in two volumes: “Dogma and Ritual of
High Magic”. From here the game of tarots acquired the esoteric connotations
that then became traditional.
The
first volume, which referred to the magical dogmas, was organized in 22
chapters, each one dedicated to a specific branch of esotericism, and at the
same time, to one of the 22 Triumphs of Tarot, nicknamed “Major Arcana” by
Eliphas Levi.
The
second volume relates to magic rituals. Here Levi defines the tarots as “keys
to the art of magic and to all of the ancient religious dogmas”. He confirms
that the use of this key was transferred over the centuries within the
restricted circle of initiates, and that the erroneous theories of Court de
Geblin and of Etteilla made new revelations indispensable.
These
new revelations consisted in the joining of the 22 Major Arcaba with the 22
letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Levi was then able to explain the significance
of the tarots from a cabbalistic cosmological base, that identified in the Words
of God the origin of every visible and invisible element.
Whoever
accepted this theory clearly also had to believe that the 22 triumph cards were
also the 22 pathways that were themselves linked to the 10 sephiroths of the
Tree of the Qabbalah, and that by following those pathways backwards it would be
possible to know the Words of God.
Another
important point was that Levi had confirmed that the tarot figures represented
the spiritual body of Adam and the first language of Adam on the earth.
As
the figures had been completely changed over the course of the millennium it was
necessary, according to Eliphas Levi, to modify them and to return them to their
primordial state, that is, to the perfect esoteric language that embraces all of
the eastern and western doctrines.
From
that moment on, the illustrations of the tarots were seen as the hieroglyphics
of a sacred language that only temporarily coincided with the Hebrew language.
In
fact, during the same era as Eliphas Levi, another French esoterist, Jean-Baptiste
Pitois, alias Paul Christian, invented a new magical alphabet, called “Teban
Alphabet” or “Alphabet of the Magi”, and he linked this with a new deck of
tarots inspired by the Egyptian religion.
SLIDES
36: The Alphabet of the Magi and some of the Egyptian tarots created by Paul
Christian. This page is taken from his book History
of magic, pubblished in Paris in 1870 (Collection of Associazione Le Tarot,
Faenza).
SLIDES
37: In his History of Magic,
Christian-Pitois described a new deck of Tarot wich was realized some years
later by Otto Maria Wegener; the 22 figures appears for the first time in the
booklet Les XXII Lames hermétiques du
Tarot divinatoire written by René Falconnier and pubblished in Paris in
1896 (Collection of Associazione Le Tarot, Faenza) .
essential bibliography
Giordano
Berti, The Esoterical Tarot in France,
from Court de Gebelin to Papus (Il Tarocco esoterico in Francia: da Court de
Gebelin a Papus, Faenza, Le Tarot, 1987).
Ron
Decker, Thierry Depaulis, Michael Dummett, A
Wicked Pack of Tarot. The Origins of the Occult Tarot (London, 1996).
Ekhart
Graf, Myths of Tarot. Historical facts (Mythos Tarot. Historische Fakten,
Param, 1989).
Text © 2002 Giordano Berti