Waite's Christianization of Tarot

Richard

Crowley explains initiation (as a graded series) in an analogy as a 'point event' or journey. The end is the beginning but the point has accrued experience.

Also the idea is expressed in another way in 'The Naples Arrangement' in the Book of Thoth.
At the Still Point
 

Rosanne

Thank you both (LRichard and ravenest) (Gotta love T.S Eliott) but you are mistaken with what I asked. I asked.....

....if this tradition is found in every culture for thousands of years...."whom is the God within?


My question, although Mary did bring it about (that they all were teaching the same thing - the marriage of the Hierophant and the Shekinah (Priestess) in one's heart that gives birth to God within)., the answer would not be on this thread topic; so I guess I had better leave it alone.

~Rosanne
 

Richard

Thank you both (LRichard and ravenest) (Gotta love T.S Eliott) but you are mistaken with what I asked. I asked.....




My question, although Mary did bring it about (that they all were teaching the same thing - the marriage of the Hierophant and the Shekinah (Priestess) in one's heart that gives birth to God within)., the answer would not be on this thread topic; so I guess I had better leave it alone.

~Rosanne
I was answering "Whom is the God within?" (Maybe that should be "Who is the God within?" the verb 'is' being intransitive, the object of the preposition being understood as 'you' or 'me.') You started the ball rolling with your poem. The answer is probably taboo, even in our 'enlightened' times. (It is too easily misunderstood as a symptom of megalomania.)

I don't know about Mary, but Waite apparently believed that Christian mysticism, according to his understanding, does go back to ancient times, under different names. However one may mythologize it, the basic idea is that the Truth is found within, not without. I don't think it is the sort of thing in which historians are particularly interested, although I may be wrong.

Are you specifically asking about the Hieros Gamos? As a mythological theme, it obviously goes back a long way, and as Jung and Campbell theorize, such themes reflect inner truths.
 

Zephyros

My question, although Mary did bring it about (that they all were teaching the same thing - the marriage of the Hierophant and the Shekinah (Priestess) in one's heart that gives birth to God within)., the answer would not be on this thread topic; so I guess I had better leave it alone.

~Rosanne

If I understand your question aright, I would like to know the answer as well. If Waite saw Christianity as a more effective version of the Secret Tradition, what was it that made him Christian? Do all roads lead to Jesus, or is Jesus a generic term for the Holy Guardian Angel? Is the other-cheek eroticism of pain that I think of when I think of Jesus the same Waite saw? Did he eat fish on Fridays? Church on Sunday? Christmas pudding?

How was Waite actually Christian?
 

Rosanne

Well if it is alright to continue. Closrapexa has my question down pat.
~Rosanne
ps You are right for me personally LRichard...likely it is taboo.
 

Richard

If I understand your question aright, I would like to know the answer as well. If Waite saw Christianity as a more effective version of the Secret Tradition, what was it that made him Christian? Do all roads lead to Jesus, or is Jesus a generic term for the Holy Guardian Angel? Is the other-cheek eroticism of pain that I think of when I think of Jesus the same Waite saw? Did he eat fish on Fridays? Church on Sunday? Christmas pudding?

How was Waite actually Christian?
He wasn't Christian in the usual sense. He didn't believe in Jesus as the unblemished lamb, sacrificed as atonement for the sins of the world, which is the theological foundation of what is usually understood as Christianity.

God is the absolute reality, and there can be but one means of seeking Him, and that is through the reality which is in ourselves.
............
Its foundation should be also in the principle that man must inevitably work out his own salvation. Help he may have from beyond and outside himself, but the help from within is essential — it is the essence of conscious progress. It is not by the vicarious sacrifice of a Christ crucified on a Cross, but by the personal immolation of the lesser and meaner man, crucified on the altar of the heart, that the sins of the world will be washed out. [Azoth]​

I don't know exactly how to justify Waite's claim that he was a Christian. His idea of the incarnation of God on earth is the birth of the Christ in the human 'heart.' The basic concept is in the New Testament Pauline letters to the churches (which are suspected to have been influenced by Gnosticism). However, Waite did not accept Paul's theory of salvation (God's forgiveness of sins) by grace through faith (which had its inception in John's Gospel).
 

Rosanne

I don't know exactly how to justify Waite's claim that he was a Christian.

Neither do I. So really I do not see how he could Cristianize Tarot.
Dress ups and ritual do not make you Christian.
You can aspire to Christian ideals, but when the census comes around I cannot put down a Christian demonination, to be truthful. I do not think Waite would be able to either.
~Rosanne
 

Richard

Neither do I. So really I do not see how he could Cristianize Tarot.
Dress ups and ritual do not make you Christian.
You can aspire to Christian ideals, but when the census comes around I cannot put down a Christian demonination, to be truthful. I do not think Waite would be able to either.
~Rosanne
He didn't Christianize Tarot, as I attempted to prove, although I tried to be objective. I should have entitled the thread like this: Waite's "Christianization" of Tarot. My title was tongue in cheek. The thread came about from something in another forum in which there was a quotation from someone who spouted all sorts of nonsense about Waite rather than citing the known facts. Among the nonsense was the claim that Waite Christianized Tarot. That stirred me up a bit. })
 

Rosanne

Yes, I understood your motives; Waite a Christian, I dunno without offending anyone, is like saying an active IRA member is Catholic, or a terrorist is a Muslim..it is a generalisation.
English=Christian Protestant for example.
~Rosanne
 

kwaw

Waite a Christian, I dunno without offending anyone, is like saying an active IRA member is Catholic, or a terrorist is a Muslim..

That's a bit OTT I think in relation to Waite - though it would be a closer analogy to the 'Roman Catholicism' of Levi though perhaps!

I don't know exactly how to justify Waite's claim that he was a Christian.

A useful summary of Waite's faith is in the very short Afterword on 'The Faith of A. E. Waite' in 'A. E. Waite - A Magicain of Many Parts' by R. A. Gilbert.

I suppose, at a stretch and for the sake of argument, that to an extent it might be said that he Re-Christianized the tarot, by his rejection of some of the Egyptianization of the Tarot of former Tarot esotericists that concealed or ignored and on occasion blatantly twisted its original Christian content.

How was Waite actually Christian?

While he acknowledged 'there have been many saviours' he believed 'Christ was the last and the first'. He was sacramentalist (his book on the Holy Grail is at root about the Christian mysteries of the Sacrament of the Eucharist). He believed in Atonement (albeit like Levi his belief was unorthodox, believing in the Origen 'heresy' of Universal Atonement).

As far as I know he didn't follow any particular denonimation, didn't eat fish on Fridays or go to Church on Sundays- but thereagain of many people who do, there are to be found many who I would count as far less 'Christian' than A.E. Waite!

On the Hermeticism of the Christian Mystic - what such may believe and practice, here is an interesting little essay on Evelyn Underhill, who was a member of Waite's off-shoot of the Golden Dawn:

http://www.evelynunderhill.org/articles/2003_spiritualtransformation.pdf

(that they all were teaching the same thing - the marriage of the Hierophant and the Shekinah (Priestess) in one's heart that gives birth to God within).,

This is a theme he explores in several of his works (The Secret Tradition in Israel for example), along with that of the pilgrims journey (in tarot for example, the Fool's as Prince in exile traveling through this world - a theme later to inspire Eden Gray's concept of "the Fool's journey' in tarot) and alchemy. Common themes of Hermetic Christian Mysticism:

"In Mysticism, Underhill distinguishes three narratives
by which Christian mystics have traditionally
tended to express their spiritual journeys.
These are: i) the craving for home -- the narrative
of the pilgrim or wanderer; ii) the craving for
one’s beloved -- the narrative of the spiritual marriage;
and iii) the craving for regeneration, transmutation,
purity, and perfection -- the narrative of
the Christian Hermeticist or spiritual Alchemist."