Hey Herm,
Many thanks for the clarification, but as fate would have it
I've actually done a fair amount of research on the history of astrology, both as hard science and esoteric tradition. And I know "The Tree of Life as projected..." and the other Golden Dawn astrological material well.
As I said in my post above, precession has been known to astrologers for over 2000 years, and though recent advances in technology have made many mathematic and mechanical problems simpler, the entire operation of astrology involves the calculation of stellar positions. Also, I have never and would never suggest that Agrippa knew anything about Tarot. I would however point out that the Golden Dawn knew a LOT about Agrippa, albeit via Barrett's plagiarized material. And Agrippa used Albumasar and Ptolemy's
Tetrabiblos and the
Picatrix for his astrology: lots of hard cold facts for him to chew on. Your astronomer's ability to date astronomical positions that the Golden Dawn culled from Agrippa and point back to Agrippa's time doesn't actually tell anyone much.
While it may seem strange to us now in our unscholastic, Babbitt-y era, an educated Victorian with an interest in celestial mapping would have been able to calculate star positions pretty accurately with little more than an ephemeris and an astrolabe. With such simple technologies was the world navigated. Additionally, the Golden Dawn material to which you're referring was printed in the midcentury... well within the bounds of modern technology that could be applied to material from less mechanically blessed times to produce helpful visual aids for a long-ago lecture by a GD founder.
I have to point out: those star maps don't say a single thing about the Tarot; they merely suggest a placement for the Otz Chiim across the celestial globe. They don't indicate anything about Qabalistic theories of Tarot in the 15th Century, because Tarot (and Qabalah) was not seen or used that way in the 15th century. There is fragmentary evidence of Tarot's early use in hearth magick and divination, but not one of the extant occultists (Trithemius, Agrippa, Ficino, Bruno, Fludd, Kircher, or any of the anonymous compilers, etc) mentions Tarot, even in connection to divination... a topic about which most of them wrote at length. (K,C,)Qabalah and Tarot were not connected in the Renaissance, and small wonder: Judaism is fundamentally and morally opposed to divination
and depiction of the supernal. It's the Christians who like holy comic books. Barring a cursory mention by the Comte de Mellet in
Monde Primitif about there being 22 Hebrew letters and Trumps, the Qabalah/Tarot hookup doesn't happen 'til Eliphas Levi. And bottom line: even if those maps had the heavenly sphere pocked with an entire deck like paper stars, it wouldn't prove
anything because the document to which you're referring was created BY and distributed TO the Golden Dawn... the very folks who popularized the use of Tarot as a magickal item.
For the record,
several occultists attributed the Tarot minors to astrological divisions before during and after the lifespan of the Golden Dawn. Etteilla mapped the minors (differently than the GD) across the decans over a
century prior. Paul Christian had a very strange decan system that found little traction (though his coining of the terms Major and Minor
Arcana to refer to the Trumps and pips caught on). And Papus pursued something similar to Etteilla's decan system, and published it in 1889, less than a year after the GD was founded. But... I still can't figure out why you believe that "
no one connected with the Golden Dawn... was up to the task of doing this, and there is no other document prior to the Golden dawn star maps that even hints at such a possible configuration." Huh? Do you have access to some long ago IQ tests we don't know about? The Golden Dawn included some of the most talented, intelligent, charismatic people of their time. If their incapacity in the face of all the evidence is just your personal opinion, fair enough... but
back it up. More importanlty, if you
aren't aware of these other astrological traditions then you are revealing more about your ability to do basic research than anything about Tarot or its history.
Most critically, you should be aware that the Tree of Life used by the Golden Dawn (& depicted on those charts) has not
ever been the standard glyph for traditional Kabbalists, and only became equated with "Hermetic Qabalah" after the GD appropriated it from Athanasius Kircher's 1653
Oedipus Aegypticus (the Kircher 2 Tree being based at least partially on d'Aquin's version in 1625). So IF someone from the early Italian Renaissance was mapping the Kircher2 Tree onto the celestial globe 200 years previously, then it must have arrived via time machine. Ergo the creator of that chart
must exist after Kircher's Christian Cabala has been adopted by Hermetic syncretists, which puts us back square in the 19th century.
But all of that is academic.
There is a basic logical leap I think most people will have a hard time making for you. The Golden Dawn founders bent over
backwards to fabricate an "ancient" link to the "Rosicrucian adepts." They cyphered and obfuscated and outright lied to their members. We know this. It's documented exhaustively. Hell, they cribbed material from every occult resource in the British Museum and forged letters in German from the ersatz "Frau Sprengel" and got busted for it publically before everything went south. If the Golden Dawn DID have legitimate ties to a secret occult order of remote antiquity, why fabricate all that other folderol? And if Mathers' Hermetic source was in Paris, how did he get conned in Paris there at the end by shameless scam artists like the Horos couple, dragging the Order into a rape and fraud case that exposed rituals to the newspapers?
The trouble with your theory is that it not only doesn't fit the known facts, it ties itself in knots (Error-boros) to create incredible conjectures that ALSO don't fit the known facts...
Isn't it sensible to look at the evidence and posit that the founders of the Golden Dawn synthesized a lot of esoteric material to create an occult order in the late nineteenth century? All the texts they used and hierarchy they adopted, all the "cutting-edge" science and archaeology that got incorporated, all of the comparative mythology and orientalist imperialism dates their curriculum to that exact moment in time. By insisting that Mathers
must have "accidentally found" the Golden Dawn material and it
must have been from a "Unfathomed Library" where shadowy "Rosicucian Adepts"
must have stashed it, you're ignoring the possibility that he was involved in or privy to its creation. Ditto Levi "finding" his singular ideas fully formed in an uncatalogued "Mysterious Manuscript." So these conjectures start to seem like a tissue of over-the-top Dan Brown credulity supported by scant research and
Alice in Wonderland reasoning: verdict first, trial after.
Scholars already
know what their sources were... that is to say, we know what they studied and the origins of the various strands of thought. Their occult syntheses were original and their own. Why couldn't these men have had the (contradictory, imperfect, strange, idiosyncratic, infectious) ideas themselves? Heaven knows they incorporated enough wacky, ridiculous, untutored mistakes in their writings indicative of people painting in bold strokes with partially comprehended material. If the knowledge was given to both of them by a "Secret Brotherhood" why is it so full of errors and contradiction? Unless in turn, that Rosicrucian order was populated by plagiaristic, deluded, semi-schooled megalomaniacs... and frankly where did THEY find it?
Someone had to think of it. Someone has to have the idea at some point. Situating something in antiquity only guarantees its age, not its accuracy. Personally, I'd rather give Mathers and Levi (and all their ilk) credit for what they accomplished. They changed the world.
All this starts to remind me of armchair scholars who've decided Shakespeare can't have written his plays because he didn't go to university... After all (I always think to myself), everyone knows that going to university makes you into Shakespeare.
But again, as I said, you're obviously working towards something preconceived; I just think you may be clinging to
post hoc ergo propter hoc logic in the absence of solid research. I love conjecture, but I also hold it to the same standard to which I'd hold any idea. I think you might want to consider less baroque possibilities.
Scion