THE
PICTORIAL KEY TO THE TAROT
By Arthur Edward Waite
Illustrations By Pamela Colman Smith.
[1911]
2. The High Priestess, the Pope Joan, or Female Pontiff; early expositors have sought to term this card the Mother, or Pope's Wife, which is opposed to the symbolism. It is sometimes held to represent the Divine Law and the Gnosis, in which case the Priestess corresponds to the idea of the Shekinah. She is the Secret Tradition and the higher sense of the instituted Mysteries.
3. The Empress, who is sometimes represented with full face, while her correspondence,
the Emperor, is in profile. As there has been some tendency to ascribe a
symbolical significance to this distinction, it seems desirable to say that
it carries no inner meaning. The Empress has been connected with the ideas
of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity.
4. The Emperor, by imputation the spouse of the former. He is occasionally
represented as wearing, in addition to his personal insignia, the stars
or ribbons of some order of chivalry. I mention this to shew that the cards
are a medley of old and new emblems. Those who insist upon the evidence
of the one may deal, if they can, with the other. No effectual argument
for the antiquity of a particular design can be drawn from the fact that
it incorporates old material; but there is also none which can be based
on sporadic novelties, the intervention of which may signify only the unintelligent
hand of an editor or of a late draughtsman.
5. The High Priest or Hierophant, called also Spiritual Father, and more
commonly and obviously the Pope. It seems even to have been named the Abbot,
and then its correspondence, the High Priestess, was the Abbess or Mother
of the Convent. Both are arbitrary names. The insignia of the figures are
papal, and in such case the High Priestess is and can be only the Church,
to whom Pope and priests are married by the spiritual rite of ordination.
I think, however, that in its primitive form this card did not represent
the Roman Pontiff.
6. The Lovers or Marriage. This symbol has undergone many variations, as
might be expected from its subject. In the eighteenth century form, by which
it first became known to the world of archæological research, it is
really a card of married life, shewing father and mother, with their child
placed between them; and the pagan Cupid above, in the act of flying his
shaft, is, of course, a misapplied emblem. The Cupid is of love beginning
rather than of love in its fulness, guarding the fruit thereof. The card
is said to have been entitled Simulacyum fidei, the symbol of conjugal faith,
for which the rainbow as a sign of the covenant would have been a more appropriate
concomitant. The figures are also held to have signified Truth, Honour and
Love, but I suspect that this was, so to speak, the gloss of a commentator
moralizing. It has these, but it has other and higher aspects.
7. The Chariot. This is represented in some extant codices as being drawn
by two sphinxes, and the device is in consonance with the symbolism, but
it must not be supposed that such was its original form; the variation was
invented to support a particular historical hypothesis. In the eighteenth
century white horses were yoked to the car. As regards its usual name, the
lesser stands for the greater; it is really the King in his triumph, typifying,
however, the victory which creates kingship as its natural consequence and
not the vested royalty of the fourth card. M. Court de Gebelin said that
it was Osiris Triumphing, the conquering sun in spring-time having vanquished
the obstacles of winter. We know now that Osiris rising from the dead is
not represented by such obvious symbolism. Other animals than horses have
also been used to draw the currus triumphalis, as, for example, a lion and
a leopard.
8. Fortitude. This is one of the cardinal virtues, of which I shall speak
later. The female figure is usually represented as closing the mouth of
a lion. In the earlier form which is printed by Court de Gebelin, she is
obviously opening it. The first alternative is better symbolically, but
either is an instance of strength in its conventional understanding, and
conveys the idea of mastery. It has been said that the figure represents
organic force, moral force and the principle of all force.
9. The Hermit, as he is termed in common parlance, stands next on the list;
he is also the Capuchin, and in more philosophical language the Sage. He
is said to be in search of that Truth which is located far off in the sequence,
and of justice which has preceded him on the way. But this is a card of
attainment, as we shall see later, rather than a card of quest. It is said
also that his lantern contains the Light of Occult Science and that his
staff is a Magic Wand. These interpretations are comparable in every respect
to the divinatory and fortune-telling meanings with which I shall have to
deal in their turn. The diabolism of both is that they are true after their
own manner, but that they miss all the high things to which the Greater
Arcana should be allocated. It is as if a man who knows in his heart that
all roads lead to the heights, and that God is at the great height of all,
should choose the way of perdition or the way of folly as the path of his
own attainment. Éliphas Lévi has allocated this card to Prudence,
but in so doing he has been actuated by the wish to fill a gap which would
otherwise occur in the symbolism. The four cardinal virtues are necessary
to an idealogical sequence like the Trumps Major, but they must not be taken
only in that first sense which exists for the use and consolation of him
who in these days of halfpenny journalism is called the man in the street.
In their proper understanding they are the correlatives of the counsels
of perfection when these have been similarly re-expressed, and they read
as follows: (a) Transcendental justice, the counter-equilibrium of the scales,
when they have been overweighted so that they dip heavily on the side of
God. The corresponding counsel is to use loaded dice when you play for high
stakes with Diabolus. The axiom is Aut Deus, aut nihil. (b) Divine Ecstacy,
as a counterpoise to something called Temperance, the sign of which is,
I believe, the extinction of lights in the tavern. The corresponding counsel
is to drink only of new wine in the Kingdom of the Father, because God is
all in all. The axiom is that man being a reasonable being must get intoxicated
with God; the imputed case in point is Spinoza. (c) The state of Royal Fortitude,
which is the state of a Tower of Ivory and a House of Gold, but it is God
and not the man who has become Turris fortitudinis a facie inimici, and
out of that House the enemy has been cast. The corresponding counsel is
that a man must not spare himself even in the presence of death, but he
must be certain that his sacrifice shall be-of any open course-the best
that will ensure his end. The axiom is that the strength which is raised
to such a degree that a man dares lose himself shall shew him how God is
found, and as to such refuge--dare therefore and learn. (d) Prudence is
the economy which follows the line of least resistance, that the soul may
get back whence it came. It is a doctrine of divine parsimony and conservation
of energy, because of the stress, the terror and the manifest impertinences
of this life. The corresponding counsel is that true prudence is concerned
with the one thing needful, and the axiom is: Waste not, want not. The conclusion
of the whole matter is a business proposition founded on the law of exchange:
You cannot help getting what you seek in respect of the things that are
Divine: it is the law of supply and demand. I have mentioned these few matters
at this point for two simple reasons: (a) because in proportion to the impartiality
of the mind it seems sometimes more difficult to determine whether it is
vice or vulgarity which lays waste the present world more piteously; (b)
because in order to remedy the imperfections of the old notions it is highly
needful, on occasion, to empty terms and phrases of their accepted significance,
that they may receive a new and more adequate meaning.
10. The Wheel of Fortune. There is a current Manual of Cartomancy which
has obtained a considerable vogue in England, and amidst a great scattermeal
of curious things to no purpose has intersected a few serious subjects.
In its last and largest edition it treats in one section of the Tarot; which--if
I interpret the author rightly--it regards from beginning to end as the
Wheel of Fortune, this expression being understood in my own sense. I have
no objection to such an inclusive though conventional description; it obtains
in all the worlds, and I wonder that it has not been adopted previously
as the most appropriate name on the side of common fortune-telling. It is
also the title of one of the Trumps Major--that indeed of our concern at
the moment, as my sub-title shews. Of recent years this has suffered many
fantastic presentations and one hypothetical reconstruction which is suggestive
in its symbolism. The wheel has seven radii; in the eighteenth century the
ascending and descending animals were really of nondescript character, one
of them having a human head. At the summit was another monster with the
body of an indeterminate beast, wings on shoulders and a crown on head.
It carried two wands in its claws. These are replaced in the reconstruction
by a Hermanubis rising with the wheel, a Sphinx couchant at the summit and
a Typhon on the descending side. Here is another instance of an invention
in support of a hypothesis; but if the latter be set aside the grouping
is symbolically correct and can pass as such.
11. Justice. That the Tarot, though it is of all reasonable antiquity, is
not of time immemorial, is shewn by this card, which could have been presented
in a much more archaic manner. Those, however, who have gifts of discernment
in matters of this kind will not need to be told that age is in no sense
of the essence of the consideration; the Rite of Closing the Lodge in the
Third Craft Grade of Masonry may belong to the late eighteenth century,
but the fact signifies nothing; it is still the summary of all the instituted
and official Mysteries. The female figure of the eleventh card is said to
be Astræa, who personified the same virtue and is represented by the
same symbols. This goddess notwithstanding, and notwithstanding the vulgarian
Cupid, the Tarot is not of Roman mythology, or of Greek either. Its presentation
of justice is supposed to be one of the four cardinal virtues included in
the sequence of Greater Arcana; but, as it so happens, the fourth emblem
is wanting, and it became necessary for the commentators to discover it
at all costs. They did what it was possible to do, and yet the laws of research
have never succeeded in extricating the missing Persephone under the form
of Prudence. Court de Gebelin attempted to solve the difficulty by a tour
de force, and believed that he had extracted what he wanted from the symbol
of the Hanged Man--wherein he deceived himself. The Tarot has, therefore,
its justice, its Temperance also and its Fortitude, but--owing to a curious
omission--it does not offer us any type of Prudence, though it may be admitted
that, in some respects, the isolation of the Hermit, pursuing a solitary
path by the light of his own lamp, gives, to those who can receive it, a
certain high counsel in respect of the via prudentiæ.
12. The Hanged Man. This is the symbol which is supposed to represent Prudence,
and Éliphas Lévi says, in his most shallow and plausible manner,
that it is the adept bound by his engagements. The figure of a man is suspended
head-downwards from a gibbet, to which he is attached by a rope about one
of his ankles. The arms are bound behind him, and one leg is crossed over
the other. According to another, and indeed the prevailing interpretation,
he signifies sacrifice, but all current meanings attributed to this card
are cartomancists' intuitions, apart from any real value on the symbolical
side. The fortune-tellers of the eighteenth century who circulated Tarots,
depict a semi-feminine youth in jerkin, poised erect on one foot and loosely
attached to a short stake driven into the ground.
13. Death. The method of presentation is almost invariable, and embodies
a bourgeois form of symbolism. The scene is the field of life, and amidst
ordinary rank vegetation there are living arms and heads protruding from
the ground. One of the heads is crowned, and a skeleton with a great scythe
is in the act of mowing it. The transparent and unescapable meaning is death,
but the alternatives allocated to the symbol are change and transformation.
Other heads have been swept from their place previously, but it is, in its
current and patent meaning, more especially a card of the death of Kings.
In the exotic sense it has been said to signify the ascent of the spirit
in the divine spheres, creation and destruction, perpetual movement, and
so forth.
14. Temperance. The winged figure of a female--who, in opposition to all
doctrine concerning the hierarchy of angels, is usually allocated to this
order of ministering spirits--is pouring liquid from one pitcher to another.
In his last work on the Tarot, Dr. Papus abandons the traditional form and
depicts a woman wearing an Egyptian head-dress. The first thing which seems
clear on the surface is that the entire symbol has no especial connexion
with Temperance, and the fact that this designation has always obtained
for the card offers a very obvious instance of a meaning behind meaning,
which is the title in chief to consideration in respect of the Tarot as
a whole.
15. The Devil. In the eighteenth century this card seems to have been rather
a symbol of merely animal impudicity. Except for a fantastic head-dress,
the chief figure is entirely naked; it has bat-like wings, and the hands
and feet are represented by the claws of a bird. In the right hand there
is a sceptre terminating in a sign which has been thought to represent fire.
The figure as a whole is not particularly evil; it has no tail, and the
commentators who have said that the claws are those of a harpy have spoken
at random. There is no better ground for the alternative suggestion that
they are eagle's claws. Attached, by a cord depending from their collars,
to the pedestal on which the figure is mounted, are two small demons, presumably
male and female. These are tailed, but not winged. Since 1856 the influence
of Éliphas Lévi and his doctrine of occultism has changed
the face of this card, and it now appears as a pseudo-Baphometic figure
with the head of a goat and a great torch between the horns; it is seated
instead of erect, and in place of the generative organs there is the Hermetic
caduceus. In Le Tarot Divinatoire of Papus the small demons are replaced
by naked human beings, male and female ' who are yoked only to each other.
The author may be felicitated on this improved symbolism.
16. The Tower struck by Lightning. Its alternative titles are: Castle of
Plutus, God's House and the Tower of Babel. In the last case, the figures
falling therefrom are held to be Nimrod and his minister. It is assuredly
a card of confusion, and the design corresponds, broadly speaking, to any
of the designations except Maison Dieu, unless we are to understand that
the House of God has been abandoned and the veil of the temple rent. It
is a little surprising that the device has not so far been allocated to
the destruction Of Solomon's Temple, when the lightning would symbolize
the fire and sword with which that edifice was visited by the King of the
Chaldees.
17. The Star, Dog-Star, or Sirius, also called fantastically the Star of
the Magi. Grouped about it are seven minor luminaries, and beneath it is
a naked female figure, with her left knee upon the earth and her right foot
upon the water. She is in the act of pouring fluids from two vessels. A
bird is perched on a tree near her; for this a butterfly on a rose has been
substituted in some later cards. So also the Star has been called that of
Hope. This is one of the cards which Court de Gebelin describes as wholly
Egyptian-that is to say, in his own reverie.
18. The Moon. Some eighteenth-century cards shew the luminary on its waning
side; in the debased edition of Etteilla, it is the moon at night in her
plenitude, set in a heaven of stars; of recent years the moon is shewn on
the side of her increase. In nearly all presentations she is shining brightly
and shedding the moisture of fertilizing dew in great drops. Beneath there
are two towers, between which a path winds to the verge of the horizon.
Two dogs, or alternatively a wolf and dog, are baying at the moon, and in
the foreground there is water, through which a crayfish moves towards the
land.
19. The Sun. The luminary is distinguished in older cards by chief rays
that are waved and salient alternately and by secondary salient rays. It
appears to shed its influence on earth not only by light and heat, but--like
the moon--by drops of dew. Court de Gebelin termed these tears of gold and
of pearl, just as he identified the lunar dew with the tears of Isis. Beneath
the dog-star there is a wall suggesting an enclosure-as it might be, a walled
garden-wherein are two children, either naked or lightly clothed, facing
a water, and gambolling, or running hand in hand. Éliphas Lévi
says that these are sometimes replaced by a spinner unwinding destinies,
and otherwise by a much better symbol-a naked child mounted on a white horse
and displaying a scarlet standard.
20. The Last judgment. I have spoken of this symbol already, the form of
which is essentially invariable, even in the Etteilla set. An angel sounds
his trumpet per sepulchra regionum, and the dead arise. It matters little
that Etteilla omits the angel, or that Dr. Papus substitutes a ridiculous
figure, which is, however, in consonance with the general motive of that
Tarot set which accompanies his latest work. Before rejecting the transparent
interpretation of the symbolism which is conveyed by the name of the card
and by the picture which it presents to the eye, we should feel very sure
of our ground. On the surface, at least, it is and can be only the resurrection
of that triad--father, mother, child-whom we have met with already in the
eighth card. M. Bourgeat hazards the suggestion that esoterically it is
the symbol of evolution--of which it carries none of the signs. Others say
that it signifies renewal, which is obvious enough; that it is the triad
of human life; that it is the "generative force of the earth... and
eternal life." Court de Gebelin makes himself impossible as usual,
and points out that if the grave-stones were removed it could be accepted
as a symbol of creation.
21--which, however, in most of the arrangements is the cipher card, number
nothing--The Fool, Mate, or Unwise Man. Court de Gebelin places it at the
head of the whole series as the zero or negative which is presupposed by
numeration, and as this is a simpler so also it is a better arrangement.
It has been abandoned because in later times the cards have been attributed
to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and there has been apparently some
difficulty about allocating the zero symbol satisfactorily in a sequence
of letters all of which signify numbers. In the present reference of the
card to the letter Shin, which corresponds to 200, the difficulty or the
unreason remains. The truth is that the real arrangement of the cards has
never transpired. The Fool carries a wallet; he is looking over his shoulder
and does not know that he is on the brink of a precipice; but a dog or other
animal--some call it a tiger--is attacking him from behind, and he is hurried
to his destruction unawares. Etteilla has given a justifiable variation
of this card--as generally understood--in the form of a court jester, with
cap, bells and motley garb. The other descriptions say that the wallet contains
the bearer's follies and vices, which seems bourgeois and arbitrary.
22. The World, the Universe, or Time. The four living creatures of the Apocalypse
and Ezekiel's vision, attributed to the evangelists in Christian symbolism,
are grouped about an elliptic garland, as if it were a chain of flowers
intended to symbolize all sensible things; within this garland there is
the figure of a woman, whom the wind has girt about the loins with a light
scarf, and this is all her vesture. She is in the act of dancing, and has
a wand in either hand. It is eloquent as an image of the swirl of the sensitive
life, of joy attained in the body, of the soul's intoxication in the earthly
paradise, but still guarded by the Divine Watchers, as if by the powers
and the graces of the Holy Name, Tetragammaton, JVHV--those four ineffable
letters which are sometimes attributed to the mystical beasts. Éliphas
Lévi calls the garland a crown, and reports that the figure represents
Truth. Dr. Papus connects it with the Absolute and the realization of the
Great Work; for yet others it is a symbol of humanity and the eternal reward
of a life that has been spent well. It should be noted that in the four
quarters of the garland there are four flowers distinctively marked. According
to P. Christian, the garland should be formed of roses, and this is the
kind of chain which Éliphas Lévi says is less easily broken
than a chain of iron. Perhaps by antithesis, but for the same reason, the
iron crown of Peter may he more lightly on the heads of sovereign pontiffs
than the crown of gold on kings.