Masonic & Occult Symbols Illustrate

“Etteilla’s students passed the practice of fortune-telling with cards to Alphonse Louis Constant (better known under his penname, Eliphas Levi). LEVI, THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD OF MODERN RITUAL MAGIC, INTEGRATED THE TAROT INTO HIS MAGICAL TEACHINGS AND ALIGNED IT WITH THE MASSIVE BODY OF OCCULT SYMBOLISM. Through Levi’s very popular writings, the use of the tarot flowed into the occult groups which flourished in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, and the MASTERY OF THE SYMBOLISM OF THE TAROT BECAME A STANDARD PART OF THE TRAINING OF A MAGICIAN. The most famous of the accomplished masters of the tarot in France was Dr. Gerard Encausse (1865-1916), who wrote several influential books on the tarot and who was most responsible for lifting up an idea first proposed by de Gebelin, but given some expanded treatment by J. F. Vaillant, of tying The Tarot to the Bohemians (1889), written under the pseudonym Papus. “In England, the tarot was integrated into the symbolism of that most famous of magical orders, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. One degree of the order’s program of advancement included the member’s construction of a complete tarot deck. Two of the order’s members would create the two most popular decks used in the twentieth century. Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1942) was the most scholarly member of the Golden Dawn. He was responsible for the English translations of several of Levi’s works and he revised the first English translation of Papus’ text. More importantly, with the help of an artist, Pamela Coleman Smith, he devised a new tarot deck complete with all 78 cards (i.e., both the major and minor cards), the first such comprehensive revision in more than one hundred years. He also authored an instruction book, The Pictorial Guide to the Tarot (1910), with which anyone could take a deck of cards and master their use as a basic fortune telling instrument. It was the combination of the deck and the instruction book which gave the Waite deck its dominance in the field through most of the twentieth century. “The second accomplished student of the tarot was Aleister Crowley (1875 1947), the order’s nemesis. In 1909 Crowley began publishing the order’s secrets, including their teaching on the tarot, through an independent journal,