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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It is so bitterly cold outside, that it must be New Year’s Eve. Chinese New Year is here, heralding the year of the Ox. So I thought I’d switch gears a bit and analyze the image of the Ox to get an insight as to what this symbol means and what we can expect from an “ox year”.

Dictionary tells us that the ox is a castrated version of  bull (1). In other words, it is a bull whose wild, unpredictable energy has been converted to useful, manageable strength. Therefore, I will proceed by taking a look at the religious image of the Bull to decipher its general meaning.

Today, we associate bulls with energizing drinks, company logos, the astrological sign and rising financial markets. Chances are, unless you live on a farm, there will be very few instances in your life where you would actually meet a bull. Probably the only places that can still give you an idea of the force and stamina of the bull are rodeos and Spanish bullfighting. Therefore, we can only imagine the type of religious awe that this animal exercised in the early days of human history. The bull was an image of brute, untamable force that could destroy anything or anyone in its path. Thus, it was one of the first, and most pervasive religious symbols of mankind.

The Bull first appears on the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux in France, and most scholars accept that the images implied a cult of the bull (2). During the High Neolithic period, stylized bulls appear on pottery from the so-called Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey (3). In Sumerian-Assyrian culture, god Gugalana, the “Bull of Heaven”, is slain by hero Gilgamesh; the deity was no doubt associated with the Taurus constellation (4). The bulls are also prominent in Egyptian and Minoan Greek culture. The cult of the Apis bull was widespread in ancient Egypt, being associated with the slain god Osiris (5). The Bull also figured prominently in the religion of ancient Crete. The famous myth of the Cretan Labyrinth and the Minotaur must be a pale recollection of an earlier bull-cult. The Minotaur, the half-bull half-human creature destroyed by Greek hero Theseus, appears to have embodied the underworld god Minos, the archetypal king of Crete. Significantly, Minos was the offspring of the love between virgin Europa and Zeus in the shape of a bull god (6).

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These days if you turn on National Geographic or the Discovery channel you can be sure to run into a program that talks about ancient Egypt and the Pyramids. It is fairly obvious that Pharaonic Egypt continues to exercise a profound fascination on people’s minds. Modern folk are not exception, but the rule, for almost every period in history was mesmerized by the mystery of ancient Egypt. Starting with the Greeks, continuing with the Romans, Islamic culture, the Renaissance down to the present, Egypt continues to embody the mystery of the beginnings of civilization. For most people, the legacy of Egypt is a dead culture buried deep within the sands of the Valley of Kings: but for many of those studying or practicing Hermeticism, it is still very much alive. Today, it is becoming more and more likely that at least part of the ancient Egyptian heritage passed through the figure of the god Thoth to an offshoot of him, Hermes Trismegistus, and then on to the modern times.

Ancient Egyptian religion is still shrouded in mystery, despite the translations of the hieroglyphs. Today we associate this religion mostly with the cult of Osiris and Isis, as well as the sun-god Re. However, it now appears that the god Thoth was an equally, or eventually more important god than these.

I must confess that I have encountered problems trying to unearth the mysterious figure of Thoth. There’s hardly anything up-to-date written about him: my main sources had to remain at the level of 1922’s classic by P. Boylan (1) and a 1973 book by J.C. Bleeker (2), none of which cover the late antique transformation of Thoth into Hermes Trismegistus. For Hermes and Hermes Trismegistus there is quite an enlightening book written by the founder of Western Esotericism research, A. Faivre (3). Yet in the end the information on Thoth is sadly disjointed, not updated and fragmentary, as if destined to perpetuate the myth and mystique of this shadowy god!

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