Celtic Cross Created By William Butler Yeats

Teheuti

My correspondence with Kenji recalls a kind and long time fellow fan of tarot history, art and related times.
I agree. both Kenji and Roppo have been more than generous with their tarot materials. We all have our pet theories. Discussions like this can only increase our knowledge of what was most likely.

Personally, I'm fascinated by the idea that the so-called Celtic Cross spread was an adaptation of an old spread technique used by folk cartomancers. the term 'Celtic' used by Waite in Pictorial Key, but not the original key, suggests he was clarifying a source at could well have been Irish. The later 'Cross' designation probably refers not just to the two center cards placed on top of the Significator, but to laying out the next four cards in a similar way to crossing yourself in the Catholic Church - above, bellow, behind, before - also used as a sign of protection and acknowledgement of the primordial directions.

In my strongly feminist days, I, of course, changed the order to that of a circle to acknowledge wholeness instead of the cross of sacrifice - a private affirmation of the circularity of Nature. ;-)

Charles, I eagerly await your next post.
 

Charles Darnay

We don't want to get too far off topic.But we have found both Charles Williams in "War in Heaven" and A.E.Thierens in "General Book of the Tarot" using "Fun" as what appears to be
a coded word.A couple of months ago we accidentally ran into Kenji on the web and saw that he was talking about Pamela actually being the creator of the pack and we noticed that he said that while he had founded many magical groups he was only having fun. We couldn't find the quote a second time but we thought it possible that he actually had a magical group called "fun" related to some PCS group.
We aren't Tarot experts but Roger had very bad cataracts for about three years and we did a lot of work arranging his files for him and he uses a lot of high grade visionary work in our literature and art lessons.He is not giving us any Tarot or Shakespeare to publish which we are not able to understand.
It would be very exciting if Pamela were shown to actually have had some sort of occult connection but the evidence,right now,is all against it.When Roger started his researches
back in the 1960's he was filled with hope that he could find Pamela alive.He talked to at least seven people who knew her (two kids with whom she used to babysit!) and became very well acquainted with Geoffrey Watkins and Padraic Colum both of whom knew her over decades.
No one had any supernatural stories at all.She was a lot of ,well,fun,very humorous,very adaptable,really good at impersonations and story telling,no one had one unkind word to say about her.She was a good friend to all.
But there were two things he noticed out of all this:(1) No one had a specific personal quote or a personal biographical anecdote.There were the wonderful folk stories she told,all the kind things she did,the charming art she improvised on short notice;but nothing about what she believed, that she ever studied anything,that she ever talked about other people she knew or things that happened in her own life.
None of the many friends who knew her reported ever hearing from her again after 1917 or 1918(the year varied). Roger met three different people who gave the same vague smile and asked, very pleasantly,"Whatever did happen to Pixie?" If he found her they'd like to be in touch too.
It seems she had a habit of simply not being seen for periods of time and then one day she'd be back and start right in where she left off with them.He got exactly the same story in New York,London and Dublin.
One day she just never came back at all, but,due to her irregular visiting habits, it was years before everyone realized that she was actually gone .
Roger once saw a drawing collection dating from the twenties for a projected book of Scottish Folk Tales with a known London publisher;but she never went back.She needed money in latter years but she never wrote back to any of the many friends who would have been happy to get her work.
She never claimed the art work she left with the Yeats brothers who adored her.
She was the ultimate mysterious person because it didn't appear that there was anything mysterious at all about her.
The Scottish folk tale drawings and letters belonged to Waite editor Leslie Shepherd of Dublin,Ireland.
 

Teheuti

Charles, what you say about Pixie accords with everything else I have heard about her. If there was another side to her she kept it very private. There's no mention anywhere about any other work she did with tarot or about her doing any work at the British Library (not that she couldn't have). Whereas Waite spent much of his time at the British Library, knew the librarians and museum curators very well, and probably knew as much as anyone else about their Tarot collection.

I'm not sure what "fun" could have been a code word for, but Pixie's form of fun appears to have been a light-hearted approach to life that may have covered for a kind of depression or loneliness, given her conversion to Catholicism and her characterization of it as being "fun."
 

Cerulean

Okay, will try to ask Kenji and Roppo to check out your question

These kindly gentlemen have kept in touch in Spring 2011 even when regions near them were suffering and still in very recent recovery from nucleur reactor problem.

Hopefully they can help you if your question is do they have a code word, pun or some esoteric reason for "FUN"--although I remember only magic and joy is part of an email address--which to me gives a delicate nuance of a friendly play on English words. The poetic play probably does not have secret meaning among those gentlemen, but I have seen a kind of funny humor in some of their posts and videos on you-tube.

Anyway I will link to this thread and perhaps there will be more information that perhaps Kenji or Roppo can contribute. I am sorry your teacher has cataracts-my mother's recent surgery helped immensely, and should your Mr. P. be able to do this, he will be likely be able to recover ability to see better.

In the meantime, this information of P.C.S. from circa 1917 is wonderful. Your good teacher is kind to share this and many of us are delighted to hear of the charming memories. I would recommend Mary Greer's Women of the Golden Dawn if you would like more specific biographies of Golden Dawn personalities and also an interesting glimpse of George Steiglitz's sponsoring Pamela Colman Smith in her early years in the book Modernism and the Feminine Voice by Kathleen Pyne. The stories of the remarkable artists and activists of an earlier era might be of interest and certainly different for research papers out of the norm.

I will send a pm and hopefully someone will have time to assist...
 

Charles Darnay

Roger's cataracts have been cured but since we know how to run his data bases it lets us work them when he doesn't run controversy or is traveling as he has been recently.He is
investigating reports which have been circulating for some years that Lesser Arcana designs which Florence made for W.B. Yeats survive and that they parallel lesser arcana designs that later show up in the Waite Smith pack.Roger has pointed out elsewhere (many times over the years) that it is on record in a large unpublished note book that Yeats had Florence design a set of Tarot court cards for him in the late fall to winter of 1897-1898.
Ms. Greer prints an account in her "Women of the Golden Dawn"(which Roger has studied and has placed some sections on his machine for us) of Pamela and Florence staying together
at the same time in the Martha Washington Hotel in New York in 1907 .Yeats also wrote "Pixie Smith is the only one who understands what I want" that same year.It is quite probable that she would have seen the Yeats Farr designs.
Roger believes the "Waite" 4 of Cups,4 of Swords,10 of Pentacles, and 10 of Wands,among others, existed at that time.He knows that the 10 of Wands is usually said to have come from the Sola Busca pack which didn't get into the British Library until 1907 or 1908(no date on Roger's papers); but he is investigating the alternative possibility that it came from the collection of a friend of J. B. Brodie-Innis.
 

Teheuti

Exciting information! I hadn't heard the rumor that Yeats and Farr worked on a deck together, although it makes sense. Florence was sometimes called upon to copy drawings in the notebooks of other members who did not have the time or drawing ability. However, I've only seen a bit of her work and, while meticulous, it was mechanical things like the Enochian Tablets in color, etc. Many more people back then learned basic drawing skills.
 

Charles Darnay

We agree.If Florence did Tarot designs she would have done them under Yeats' instructions. She was recruited in London to furnish designs to WBY's Celtic Students.

However when Brodie-Innis and Charles Williams published their charges that the Lesser Arcana were stolen (in 1919 and 1931 respectively) they directly cited Florence as being the injured party,not Yeats.

However,there are enough hits at Waite in "A Vision" (once one knows where to look) and enough hits at both Yeats and Farr in Thierens(1930,preface by Waite) to make it plain that Yeats did not want to quarrel in public with Waite but was in no way displeased at what Brodie-Innis and Williams did.

In case anyone has missed it,there is a Waite Florence Farr thread in the Waite Ryder
section.We likewise posted some fresh Waite-Yeats Celtic Cross material in the new thread about it ,again in the WR section.
 

Teheuti

We agree.If Florence did Tarot designs she would have done them under Yeats' instructions.
Why under Yeats' instructions? Who was it that taught classes for GD initiates in Tarot? Who was it who created the Sphere Group and devised the sphere working? Who was in direct contact with an Egyptian master? Who was the 2nd person initated into the Inner Order? Who was chosen to head the London GD temple because of her expertise? This is not to say Yeats couldn't have had input, but the person who GD initiates went to to learn about the tarot was not Yeats.
 

Charles Darnay

We would not be surprised if Florence made an Egyptian pack now missing .In fact we would be surprised if she did not except we were relying on your statement,as we interpreted it,that Florence wasn't creative in her Tarot work but took work from other members.
In late 1897 she took a order from Yeats for court cards to be used in his Celtic order.As so far as can be known Florence was never part of this group and she therefore would have given him what he wanted.
On the other hand, there is an extended series of magazine articles called "Far and Away"
which Yeats wrote in later 1897 on Celtic Mythology. Nothing on Tarot cards but the title is plainly a tribute to Florence and it was used again by Arthur Machen in a book which featured Yeats and other magicians as character s.
Thierens is still using "Farr" and "a way"(1930) in the infamous Tarot book which he published in celebration of her death.So she definitely did contribute heavily to Yeats Tarot studies but certainly she would have deferred to him in Celtic studies. The one Arthurian reference Roger has found respecting Florence states that she turned Joseph of Arimethea into an identifiable Egyptian sub-deity. As the witness (who was an Egyptologist) states that he has seen GD Egyptian Rituals of which he approves,it is not unlikely that Florence did an Egyptian Grail Ritual.
There are,or were until recently, Egyptian Magical groups in Britain(at least one in Ireland)that claimed descent from Florence Farr.May be we will yet hear something first hand.
A trunk of Yeats material was stolen after the death of George Yeats before Anne Yeats ever saw it. This included a large amount of Yeats-Farr material which,in turn, was sold by the Irish book seller Darrell Figgis to an extremely dubious American client.The guy was embezzling funds which his institution gave him to purchase Yeats materials and hording them himself.There were also some extremely important annotated Yeats occult books.As he may still be alive(though nearing an hundred) nothing more can be stated.
George Mills Harper once wrote a letter to Roger denying that there was any magical material relating to Florence in the Michael Yeats collection.The catalog at the Irish National Library indicates Dr. Harper failed to see what was under his nose.
Roger is now correlating this with his Irish contacts.
We will not be writing any more for the next couple of weeks as this means a lot of e-mail back and forever and Shane,who is doing full time university studies, is the only one who can handle the complicated stuff.But,we can all run the computer better than Roger!
Who was Florence's Egyptian adept and when was he on the scene?
 

Teheuti

we were relying on your statement,as we interpreted it,that Florence wasn't creative in her Tarot work but took work from other members.
I meant only that she had a drawing ability and precision, which many others did not. I also don't know if any deck she did would have been 'Egyptian' or not—unless it came from her Egyptian studies.

In late 1897 she took a order from Yeats for court cards to be used in his Celtic order.
Is this from a letter or a journal entry and others can follow up? Why court cards but not trumps or number cards? Could they have been copies of Westcott's Court Cards that she was being asked to make?

As so far as can be known Florence was never part of this group and she therefore would have given him what he wanted.
On the other hand, there is an extended series of magazine articles called "Far and Away"
which Yeats wrote in later 1897 on Celtic Mythology. Nothing on Tarot cards but the title is plainly a tribute to Florence and it was used again by Arthur Machen in a book which featured Yeats and other magicians as character s.

Thierens is still using "Farr" and "a way"(1930) in the infamous Tarot book which he published in celebration of her death.
Why would Thierens write a book in celebration of her death 13 years after the fact, and 17 or 18 years after she left England?

So she definitely did contribute heavily to Yeats Tarot studies but certainly she would have deferred to him in Celtic studies./quote]
Agreed.

The one Arthurian reference Roger has found respecting Florence states that she turned Joseph of Arimethea into an identifiable Egyptian sub-deity.
Where is this mention?

As the witness (who was an Egyptologist) states that he has seen GD Egyptian Rituals of which he approves,it is not unlikely that Florence did an Egyptian Grail Ritual.There are,or were until recently, Egyptian Magical groups in Britain(at least one in Ireland)that claimed descent from Florence Farr. May be we will yet hear something first hand.

The "Sphere" had Grail aspects as the three dimensional Tree of Life was also depicted as a Grail cup. And, of course, people are still performing her Egyptian play.

Who was Florence's Egyptian adept and when was he on the scene?
There is discussion of him and a photo of her drawing of him in my book Women of the Golden Dawn. Not much is known about him in particular other than that she 'met' him at the British Museum near a mummy, who at the time was believed to be a priestess. Other than that Annie Horniman deeply disapproved. I think that some felt that the Sphere Group was detracting from attention to the general GD workings. It would have been in the late 1890s.