Esoteric Coffeehouse

I have mentioned in my previous articles about the influence of Eliphas Levi on the Rider-Waite tarot, the most common tarot pack in the world today. Today, I want to look slightly more in depth at how Levi’s Kabbalistico-Egyptian theory of tarot origins blended together with A.E. Waite’s own interpretations to yield the well-known cards of modern tarot. To do so, I will look at the symbolism and meaning of the 10th Rider-Waite tarot card: the Wheel of Fortune.

The Wheel of Fortune is usually considered a good card, bringing about luck, change, and good fortune (1). Yet other people deem it is a bad card, because it signals major change, even if usually of a good sort (2). Obviously, the value that we bestow on this card is linked with the perception we have of change in general.

A.E. Waite, the spiritual author of the Rider-Waite tarot, openly attributed the conception of the Wheel of Fortune card to Eliphas Levi (3). Therefore, a good starting point to understanding this card would be to delve into Levi’s vision of the Wheel of Fortune.

Levi built an entire philosophy surrounding the word “Rota” which means “wheel” in Latin. He believed that Rota stood for the enigmatic Labarum, or the monogram of Christ, and that it hid the whole of magical science within it (4). He furthermore affirmed that Rota was transliterated into Taro by esoteric adepts. He also played with the letters in the tradition of the Kabbala to form the word “Tora” as well – the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. This word play is clearly visible on the card’s wheel spokes: you can read clockwise Taro, counterclockwise Tora and starting on the bottom Rota. This is of course, not all there is, because the four letters also point out to the cardinal signs. Thus one can also imagine the movement of the sun from east (Alpha) to west (Omega). Interspersed between this circulatory movement is the name of God (YHWH) inscribed on the wheel, to suggest that all this change is overseen by the divine will. Also on the spokes of the inner wheel (there are three enclosed wheels one into the other) are the alchemical symbols of sulphur, salt and mercury as well as water. This reflects Levi’s desire of combining all esoteric knowledge, including alchemy, into the “Taro”. Nevertheless, these particular symbols were introduced by Waite according to Golden Dawn imagery (5).

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Hi everyone,

I have decided to expand the scope of my Esoteric Coffeehouse blog and to provide Esoteric news through Twitter. Hence I will try to send any interesting Esoteric news, links, articles etc I hear about on my Twitter account which you can follow at http://twitter.com/johedesan . If you don’t have an account, it’s really simple to make one at http://www.twitter.com.  Once you’re on, you can click on ‘Find other people’ and type johedesan; it should come up. Note that the Esoteric news I will send will be headlined as Esoteric (I’m saying this because I sometimes twitter about other things I’m involved in).

See you on Twitter

Jo

I have written, about two articles ago, about French occultist Eliphas Levi’s contribution to tarot mythology. I have decided to go farther and show how the tarot was taken up by the Golden Dawn circle at the end of the 19th century and turned into a major spiritual guidance tool.

The Golden Dawn movement per se surely deserves another article, but for now I will just summarize it as a nineteenth century magical movement that drew heavily on the ‘occultist’ strand as defined by Eliphas Levi, Bulwer-Lytton and the Rosicrucian movements. It was founded by William Westcott and Samuel MacGregor Mathers. Mathers was a brilliant thinker with a particular talent at consolidating occult knowledge floating in esoteric circles at the time. As an example, he drew up the first Golden Dawn tarot deck (now lost), whose Arcana corresponded not only to Kabbalistic paths (as in Levi) but also to the initiatory levels of the Golden Dawn system (1). In Golden Dawn terms, the gradual mastery of the Tarot became similar to the novice’s journey of spiritual awakening. It was probably part of this concept of adept progress that novices were encouraged to reproduce their own sets of cards from Mathers’ templates for quite a long time (2).

The importance of the Golden Dawn tarot is also emphasized by the fact that the scroll containing Mathers’ writings on the Tarot was sometimes presented during the Golden Dawn ceremony. The four suits (wands, coins, cups and swords) were also sometimes used as ceremonial props (3).

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