Another TdM Book

Patrick Booker

I have both volumes, and thought that I had read it. When I looked at it, I realised that I had not - I bought another Tarot book at the same time, and had confused them in my memory. The other book was this, which I did read and which makes a lot of questionable claims:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00RXITY1I/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The Le Gall book looks quite good, and I shall now read it some time. It is strongly influenced by the work of Jean-Claude Flornoy, and uses the images of his Dodal deck.

Patrick
 

Barleywine

Thanks! The Kindle edition is quite inexpensive and I need a new book right now, so I'll get it and report back when done.
 

_R_

The other book was this, which I did read and which makes a lot of questionable claims:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00RXITY1I/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Bear in mind that C. Bozelli is/was (?) a student of P. Camoin, or at the very least, was heavily influenced by Camoin's work, including the myths and legends we have all come to know and love...

Be that as it may, I recall someone (Yves, perhaps?) saying that they had done a course or workshop with Camoin and co. in order to learn the reading method proposed, and nothing more.

I think this is worth bearing mind for those members who like to "read" the Tarot as opposed to "read about" the Tarot: it is perfectly normal, in my view, that a writer might have a serviceable and useful cartomantic or tarological methodology without possessing any rational historical insight into the Tarot itself.

These two matters are not mutually inclusive.
 

Richard

Bear in mind that C. Bozelli is/was (?) a student of P. Camoin, or at the very least, was heavily influenced by Camoin's work, including the myths and legends we have all come to know and love...

Be that as it may, I recall someone (Yves, perhaps?) saying that they had done a course or workshop with Camoin and co. in order to learn the reading method proposed, and nothing more.

I think this is worth bearing mind for those members who like to "read" the Tarot as opposed to "read about" the Tarot: it is perfectly normal, in my view, that a writer might have a serviceable and useful cartomantic or tarological methodology without possessing any rational historical insight into the Tarot itself.

These two matters are not mutually inclusive.

Thanks for this very diplomatic post. It is important to keep this in mind when considering anything which might have been influenced by Camoin.
 

Barleywine

think this is worth bearing mind for those members who like to "read" the Tarot as opposed to "read about" the Tarot: it is perfectly normal, in my view, that a writer might have a serviceable and useful cartomantic or tarological methodology without possessing any rational historical insight into the Tarot itself.

These two matters are not mutually inclusive.

This is a fine point of discussion that warrants due consideration. Since we have no reliable information about how early cartomancers may have used the tarot for divination, any predictive methodology is necessarily rooted in more recent assumptions and biases. When I started exploring tarot in 1971 as a component of my hermetic studies (independent of any desire to "read" it), all I had in hand to "read about" it was Aleister Crowley's brief and characteristically skeptical historical musings. When I set out a year later to read the cards, with some of the qabalistic writing of Israel Regardie, Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight under my belt, with Crowley, Waite, Eden Gray and Paul Foster Case as my compass and with the Thoth tarot as my deck, I didn't think too much about its origins. So I was basically "uncontaminated" by any deeper historical insights that may have existed in other source material at that time.
 

_R_

This is a fine point of discussion that warrants due consideration. Since we have no reliable information about how early cartomancers may have used the tarot for divination, any predictive methodology is necessarily rooted in more recent assumptions and biases.

Agreed. However, the thorny question of which came first, the folk cartomantic tradition or the occultist interpretation is a moot point, certainly one worth exploring further. As an aside, as I recall, Maxwell was somewhat surprised to find that many of the folk divinatory meanings, to use the current terminology, agreed with his rather rational or analogical explanations of the cards.

To return to the thrust of my earlier point, to give an example, let me cite the well-known French book by J.-G. Bourgeat, "Le Tarot", from the early 20th century. It's a fairly short, concise and quite readable book on Tarot by an occultist author. (Let's face it, they're not exactly renowned for their clarity of writing, are they?)

The divinatory meanings are quite often seemingly arbitrary, but the proposed spreads and methodologies are clear and functional. (Contrast with Papus' excruciatingly complicated "Divinatory Tarot" for instance...) And I must say I found it rather useful, and dare I say "operative", in my experience, despite its bad history and mystery; Gypsies, Egyptians and what not.

Its value is therefore limited overall, but as a "cookery book", as I've heard this type of literature described before, it is helpful. I'm sure that there are many other books, both old and new, which fit that criterion also.

And no doubt these remarks could equally apply to a course of studies or a workshop as well as to books.
 

Barleywine

Agreed. However, the thorny question of which came first, the folk cartomantic tradition or the occultist interpretation is a moot point, certainly one worth exploring further. As an aside, as I recall, Maxwell was somewhat surprised to find that many of the folk divinatory meanings, to use the current terminology, agreed with his rather rational or analogical explanations of the cards.

To return to the thrust of my earlier point, to give an example, let me cite the well-known French book by J.-G. Bourgeat, "Le Tarot", from the early 20th century. It's a fairly short, concise and quite readable book on Tarot by an occultist author. (Let's face it, they're not exactly renowned for their clarity of writing, are they?)

The divinatory meanings are quite often seemingly arbitrary, but the proposed spreads and methodologies are clear and functional. (Contrast with Papus' excruciatingly complicated "Divinatory Tarot" for instance...) And I must say I found it rather useful, and dare I say "operative", in my experience, despite its bad history and mystery; Gypsies, Egyptians and what not.

Its value is therefore limited overall, but as a "cookery book", as I've heard this type of literature described before, it is helpful. I'm sure that there are many other books, both old and new, which fit that criterion also.

And no doubt these remarks could equally apply to a course of studies or a workshop as well as to books.

The "cookbook" approach to astrological interpretation was rampant in the "New Age" 1970s; coherent synthesis of all the "bits-and-pieces" was the "Holy Grail" of natal horoscope reading among those who chose to look deeper. It was a precursor to the populist approach to tarot, that of stacking up keywords into a semblance of blended meaning. Maybe "training wheels" is a better analogy in the case of tarot.
 

Barleywine

Started reading this today. The translation isn't very thorough-going but, while I would call it "haphazard" at best, there is never (or at least not much) doubt about what is meant. It's the kind of translation I would do with my French-English dictionary. So far it's mostly a philosophical treatment. I'm up to the part about the role of prophetesses in the Middle Ages, and the symbolism of the tarot "triumphs" as examples of the "monads" of the universal language of Leibnitz. Interesting stuff so far.