Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot: Ace of Cups...A Comment

Abrac

In Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot, the authors suggest the upside-down M on the Ace of Cups is related to the so-called Miraculous Medal which is related to the Virgin Mary and depicts a cross with the letter M below it. I'm not quite sure though.

1. It doesn't explain why the M on the card is upside down.

2. They use Waite's comment in PKT, "House of the true heart" as further evidence that he means the Immaculate Heart of Mary which is represented twice on the Miraculous Medal. If you look at the IHM compared with the Sacred Heart of Jesus you can see something interesting.

Hearts

The Immaculate Heart of Mary on the left and the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the right. The SHJ looks very much like the design on the AoC. There's a cross above and a heart below in the same position where the chalice is on the card.

Waite's comment "House of the true heart" could just as easily refer to the SHJ as it could the IHM.

3. There's a picture in the book showing a shrine to Mary at Ellen Terry's house, with a woman offering flowers to it. It doesn't say if the woman is Pamela and I can't tell, it's a side view. It doesn't really look like her though and if it is I'm sure they would've said something. The whole point is to show that within Ellen Terry's circle (which included Pamela), reverence was being paid to Mary. But according to the authors' own timeline, Pamela didn't convert to Catholicism until around 1913. A lot of the book makes references to Pamela's use of Catholic ideas in her illustrations of the cards. She could have been familiar with Catholic symbolism and imagery before her conversion, but we know Waite was a hardcore Catholic so it seems much more likely that any Catholic symbolism that appears in the deck came from him.
 

Lee

But according to the authors' own timeline, Pamela didn't convert to Catholicism until around 1913. A lot of the book makes references to Pamela's use of Catholic ideas in her illustrations of the cards. She could have been familiar with Catholic symbolism and imagery before her conversion, but we know Waite was a hardcore Catholic so it seems much more likely that any Catholic symbolism that appears in the deck came from him.
I agree. I had the same thought when I read sections of the book on Amazon's "Look Inside." It reinforced my impression that there's a lot of conjecture being stated as fact. It seems to me that when the known facts are few, it doesn't serve the cause of historical accuracy to offer an interpretation of those facts without sufficiently acknowledging that it is indeed an interpretation.
 

Teheuti

we know Waite was a hardcore Catholic
Wherever did you get that impression? It was a sin for Catholics to be a Mason, there's no reference to his attending Mass, his comments on organized religion are quite scathing, his references are all to a "mystical Church" which is Christian but certainly not Roman Catholic. I would never have called Waite a Catholic (except perhaps when he was quite young and attended a Catholic school).
 

Lee

Wherever did you get that impression? It was a sin for Catholics to be a Mason, there's no reference to his attending Mass, his comments on organized religion are quite scathing, his references are all to a "mystical Church" which is Christian but certainly not Roman Catholic. I would never have called Waite a Catholic (except perhaps when he was quite young and attended a Catholic school).
I do think that Abrac's main point is still valid, that from what we know about both of them, it seems more likely that Waite would have been the source of the Catholic symbolism and not Smith.
 

Abrac

Waite refers to himself specifically as a "Catholic Mystic." He always was Catholic and never was anything else. He consider the "outer" or the Roman church to be but a formal institution as opposed to the "hidden" church which is the true church, or at least the spiritually enlightened one. He wasn't a "Roman" Catholic, but a Catholic Mystic, at least that's what he calls himself in 1921 when he wrote A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry.
 

Abrac

Waite grew up Catholic, served as an altar-boy, went to Catholic schools, and wrote papers defending Catholic dogma. Later he became disillusioned and took up mysticism and the supernatural but he never dropped his Catholic identity. He felt the Eucharist and many of the Sacraments of the Roman church were Holy but had fallen into the wrong hands.

See Waite's Shadows of Life and Thought or R.A. Gilbert A.E. Waite, Magician of Many Parts.
 

Teheuti

He felt the Eucharist and many of the Sacraments of the Roman church were Holy but had fallen into the wrong hands.

See Waite's Shadows of Life and Thought or R.A. Gilbert A.E. Waite, Magician of Many Parts.
He converted to Catholicism when offered an education through them. He felt the sacraments were holy but "had fallen into the wrong hands" - of the institutional church. He also believed in the marriage of priests and in many things which the Roman Catholic church would never have condoned. At that time he could not have been a Mason and a Catholic.
 

Abrac

I don't know what to tell ya. He said it.