Guillaume Postel, the Clavis and ROTA

John Meador

Reflecting on the illustration of Guillaume Postel's Clavis as envisioned by Abraham von Franckenberg in 1646:
http://f3.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/cIAqP0...5KLwGKbuNVQofTzOEclL_x7Yg6U0QRk/postelkey.jpg
(archived in the files at tarotL- you must be a member to access)
In Franckenberg's centennial illustration of Postel's key,
we can detect the letters TARO/ROTA therein. This illustration
appears to be the source for later esoteric comment by various
writers concerning the Clavis Absconditorum's supposed relevance to
tarot.
This Clavis remains untranslated into English, however it is available in
Latin from the gallica website in PDF format. A French translation
(1975) is also available in print.

http://gallica.bnf.fr/metacata.idq?Bgc=&Mod=&CiRestriction=%
28@_Auteur%20postel%26guillaume%29&RPT=

Abraham von Franckenberg was well acquainted with Postel's works and
thought. Franckenberg was from Wroclaw(southern Silesia) in what was
Bohemia.
What was the tarot known as in 1646 in Bohemia(and Amsterdam)? How many cards were in the decks and what components did these contain?
Is it reasonable to assume the letters: *taro* would suggest, tarock,
or tarocchi to someone at that time and place?
Ronald Decker in his most recent work<<note #28, p. 352>> denies that Franckenberg intended this formulation to intend "tarot", but presents no evidence, or rationale for this conclusion. Decker also attaches the ROTA formulation to Eliphas Levi. J. P. Laurent, in an article: " Postel vu par le XIX siecle occultisant", in the volume: Guillaume Postel 1581-1981, ed. Guy Tredaniel, 1985; suggests Levi developed this from reading Court de Gebelin:
" Il commenta dans La Clef des Grands Mysteres une dispute Juifs-Chretiens entre Balthazar Orobio et Philippe de Limborch en les renvoyant tous deux aux hieroglyphes de l'Egypte et aux peintures symboliques de l'Inde, citant Court de Gebelin mais ignorant La langue hebraique restituee de Fabre d'Olivet et tout le courant qui fit des Egyptiens, avec Basnage, "les premiers cabalistes du monde". Postel est presente ainsi : "Un siecle deja avant Orobio, un homme d'une foi exaltee et d'une puissante erudition avait trouve la clef de tous les mysteres religieux, et publiait un petit livre intitule : Clavis absconditorum a constitutione mundi, La clef des choses cachees depuis l'origine du monde. Cet homme etait un illumine hebraisant et kabbaliste; on le nommait Guillaume Postel. Il crut avoir trouve la vraie signification du tetragramme dans un livre bieroglyphique anterieur a la Bible, et qu'il nomme la Genese d'Enoch, pour en cacher sans doute le vrai nom aux profanes ; car sur l'anneau de la clef symbolique, dont il donne la figure comme une explication occulte de son singulier ouvrage, il trace ainsi son quaternaire mysterieux: "
T
O+A
R
-ibid.

Franckenberg, immersed in the Rosicrucian milieu, seems likely to
have had the following in mind when executing the design:
"...after the death of the said A. none of us had in any manner known
anything of Brother R. C. and of his first fellow-brethren, then that
which was extant of them in our Philosophical Bibliotheca, amongst
which our Axiomata was held for the chiefest Rota Mundi, for the most
artificial, and Protheus the most profitable."
-Fama Fraternitatis, 1615

for more on Franckenberg and the Rosicrucians, see:
Johannes Bureus' Hyperborean Theosophy -Susanna Akerman
http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/~muehleb9/alrunaredivia.html
also
Helisaeus Roeslin, the New Star, and the Last Judgement
-Susanna Akerman
http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/~muehleb9/helisaeusr.html
 

John Meador

Postel's ROTA

The only explicit mention I could find of rota in the Clavis Absconditorum of 1546 was the following:
"Demum in codem medio est alia arbor scientiae boni & mali, uidelicet sacramentum communionis, ita est rota in medio rotae. In infiniate divinitatis, est inclusa anima animarum, angelis maiori in anima inclusum corpus corporum post glorificationem,
coelus latius & capacius, in corpore anima & divinitate est omnium umbilicus, Sacrosanctum Sacramentum..."
This was in the section following the final chapter, 15 entitled:
"Quae In Vetere"
around page 80(I think).
Anyone want to attempt a translation of the above?
here's the original:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/scripts/ConsultationTout.exe?E=0&O=N071391
 

jmd

Welcome too to Aeclectic, John Meador.

I don't know if it's the browser I use, but I cannot access the Latin pdf file of the Clavis (my Latin is, in any case, barely sufficient to make only general sense of the text, half-guessing some words).

As to J. P. Laurent's article quote, however, that I can read more easily - and will translate in time for those who do not have access to the French (unless the numerous better translators here take on the task :)).

I was not able to locate the mention of Orobio and Philippe de Limborch in Levi's The Key of the Mysteries [Rider, trans. by A. Crowley], but did not spend much time either. What I found especially interesting is the image of the Postel's key to which you refer (from the Files section of TarotL). I had not looked at it before as I had assumed it was the same as given at the end of Levi's book - but far from it: unlike Levi's rendition, this is both symbolically and visually a key!

Though I had seen the image before, I had never made the connection with Levi's. I wonder if, possibly, Levi had textual evidence of the Key, but possibly lacked the image. If so, it could be that the textual evidence was sufficiently ambiguous for his naming the image he gives 'Postel's Key' - though it looks nothing like the visual key of the one attached.

... a question to myself is where before had I noted Postel's key!?!
 

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Ross G Caldwell

I think this is alright...


"In the Key of the Grand Mysteries, he interpreted a Christian-Jewish dispute between Balthasar Orosio and Philippe de Limborch, by referring them back both to the Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and to the symbolic paintings of India, citing Court de Gébelin but ignorant of "La Langue Hebraic Réstituée" (The Hebrew Language Restored) of Fabre d'Olivet and of the entire current which made of the Egyptians, with Basnage, "the first (or foremost) cabalists in the world." Postel is presented in the following way: "Already a century before Orobio, a man of exalted faith and powerful erudition found the key of all religious mysteries, and published a small book entitled: 'The Key of things hidden since the origin of the world'. This man was a brilliant hebraist and kabbalist, called Guillaum Postel (=William Postel).
He believed he had found the true meaning of the tetragrammaton in a hieroglyphic book earlier than the Bible, and which he named the Genesis of Enoch no doubt to hide its real name from the profane; for on the ring of the symbolic key, the figure of which he gives as an occult explanation of his unique book, he traced in this manner his fourfold mystery:
T
O+R
A
"
Ross

John Meador said:
J. P. Laurent, in an article: " Postel vu par le XIX siecle occultisant", in the volume: Guillaume Postel 1581-1981, ed. Guy Tredaniel, 1985; suggests Levi developed this from reading Court de Gebelin:
" Il commenta dans La Clef des Grands Mysteres une dispute Juifs-Chretiens entre Balthazar Orobio et Philippe de Limborch en les renvoyant tous deux aux hieroglyphes de l'Egypte et aux peintures symboliques de l'Inde, citant Court de Gebelin mais ignorant La langue hebraique restituee de Fabre d'Olivet et tout le courant qui fit des Egyptiens, avec Basnage, "les premiers cabalistes du monde". Postel est presente ainsi : "Un siecle deja avant Orobio, un homme d'une foi exaltee et d'une puissante erudition avait trouve la clef de tous les mysteres religieux, et publiait un petit livre intitule : Clavis absconditorum a constitutione mundi, La clef des choses cachees depuis l'origine du monde. Cet homme etait un illumine hebraisant et kabbaliste; on le nommait Guillaume Postel. Il crut avoir trouve la vraie signification du tetragramme dans un livre bieroglyphique anterieur a la Bible, et qu'il nomme la Genese d'Enoch, pour en cacher sans doute le vrai nom aux profanes ; car sur l'anneau de la clef symbolique, dont il donne la figure comme une explication occulte de son singulier ouvrage, il trace ainsi son quaternaire mysterieux: "
T
O+A
R
-ibid.
 

Ross G Caldwell

Re: Postel's ROTA

A little rougher of a latin translation here -

"Finally in the middle of the codex* is another, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, clearly the sacrament of communion, that is a wheel in the middle of a wheel.** In infinite divinity, and including the soul of souls, the major angels being included in "soul", the body of bodies after glorification (=resurrection), the broad and capacious heaven, in body, soul and divinity it is the center of everything, the Holy Sacrament..."

Ross

John Meador said:

"Demum in codem medio est alia arbor scientiae boni & mali, uidelicet sacramentum communionis, ita est rota in medio rotae. In infiniate divinitatis, est inclusa anima animarum, angelis maiori in anima inclusum corpus corporum post glorificationem,
coelus latius & capacius, in corpore anima & divinitate est omnium umbilicus, Sacrosanctum Sacramentum..."
This was in the section following the final chapter, 15 entitled:
"Quae In Vetere"


*I think this is what it should mean, although I cannot find the form "codem"
** This image is taken from Ezekiel's vision of the four living creatures.
 

catboxer

Welcome, John, to our little parallel universe.

You asked a couple of interesting questions, and let me see if I understood them properly.

The question of what the tarot consisted of in Bohemia and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century can't be answered as far as I know, because there are so few surviving cards from that period. The few that do survive are mostly French, and either early versions of the Marseille tarot or its immediate predecessors: The Tarot de Paris, Jacues Vieville's deck, Jean Noblet's cards. It's likely, rather than just possible, that cards such as these made their way to the Netherlands, but that can't be proved, so it remains speculation. Bohemia in 1636 (right year?) was suffering the horrible ordeal of the Thirty Years War. It's safe to assume that the internationally constituted mercenary armies that crossed and re-crossed her territory carried playing cards, and probably tarocchi cards as well.

As for the question whether Postel's Key references tarot ("taro"), I seriously doubt it. The note from Ronald Decker's and Michael Dummett's "History of the Occult Tarot," v. II, p. 352, refers to the anagram formula which appears on the backs of the cards in the 1930's Knapp tarot deck: ROTA/TARO/ATOR etc. It says:

"The mutual source for the formula is "Le Dogme et rituel de la haute magie," Paris, 1856, by Eliphas Levi, who took the formula from A.V. Frankenberg's note in his edition of Guillaume Postel's "Absconditorum a Constitutione Mundi Clavis," Amsterdam, 1646. But Frankenberg did not intend any reference to the tarot: his complicated diagram involves a cross with each arm supporting a letter: R, O, T, A."

You're right. Decker and Dummett don't say why they've concluded that ROTA is not an anagram, but it's fairly obvious. If Postel/Frankenberg intended ROTA to be an anagram, then they also intended HOMO and DEUS the same way. The problem is that words like "Moho" and "Seud" mean absolutely nothing.

By the way, thanks, jmd, for the picture of the key.
 

John Meador

Catboxer, your point about HOMO as an anagram is well taken.
However, Postel's Clavis seems to be largely about HOMO becoming DEUS. He mentions Deushomo several times and presents Enoch and Elijah as prefiguring such a Mediator. The subject is difficult because we must guess at what Franckenberg culled from his reading of Postel and applied to the construction of the graphic under consideration.

Guillaume Postel -Clavis Absconditorum
chapt 14
"tandem unus fit in toto orbe pontifex, imperator, dux, iudex primarius, instar Adami...
una sit lingua tantum, una mens, unas cultus..."

also in the section: "Quae in Vetere"-
"Haec est Cabodielis & Razielis sententia, etiam monumentis secretioris tradita theologiae, in 72."

Waite has this to say about this edition:
La Clef des Grands Mystères. Par Eliphas Lévi. 8vo, Paris, 1861.
"The frontispiece to this work represents the absolute Key of the
occult sciences, given by William Postel and completed by the writer. It is reproduced in The Tarot of the Bohemians, and in the preface which I have prefixed thereto, as indeed elsewhere, I have explained that Postel never constructed a hieroglyphical key. Eliphas Lévi identifies the Tarot as that
sacred alphabet which has been variously referred to Enoch, Thoth, Cadmus and Palamedes. It consists of absolute ideas attached to signs and numbers. In respect of the latter, there is an extended commentary on these as far as the number ig, the series being interpreted as the Keys of Occult Theology.
The remaining three numerals which complete the Hebrew alphabet are called Keys of Nature. The Tarot is said to be the original of chess, as it is also of the Royal Game of Goose. This volume contains the author's hypothetical reconstruction of the tenth Trump Major, shewing Egyptian figures on the Wheel of Fortune."
-bibliography is taken from Arthur Edward Waite's The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Rider, London, 1911

TARO is discernible in the top of the key and the DEUS HOMO ROTA in the bottom of the key. It is the key of David(David identified with Malkuth/Shekinah by Postel according to Marion Leathers Kuntz: Guillaume Postel, Prophet of the Restitution of All Things: His Life and Thought, Books, 1981 )
O the left, is the name Eliakim:

"...the account given of Mary's parents in the so-called apocryphal
'Christian' work called Protoevangelium of James. This work is
undoubtedly ancient and is quoted or alluded to by a number of Church Fathers from the early fourth century onwards. They speak as though it were a work long familiar to their readers. It is attributed to James, the brother of the Lord. It was apparently written either in Hebrew or Syriac (Aramaic?), and a copy of it was brought from the Middle East by Guillaume Postel (1503 -
1581) and translated into Latin. It was sent to Oporimus, a printer in Basle, where a Protestant divine named Bibliander, a professor of divinity at the University of Zurich saw it through to publication in 1552. Postel asserts that it was publicly read as a* A translation of this work by Alexander Walker was published in the Scribner's edition of The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VIII, 1916, p. 361-367. canonical work in the Eastern Church but rejected as such in the Western.*

Now the Protoevangelium of James tells us that Mary's parents were named Joachim and Anna of Bethlehem. *

* See chap. I. v. i; chap. II. V. i; chap. V. v. 9.

The importance of this piece of information is that Joachim is a
shortened form of Eliakim (see, for example, 2 Chron. 36:4). Subsequently the name Eliakim seems to have been shortened to Eli/Heli. The two lines of tradition therefore appear to converge in their testimony to the fact that Mary was indeed the daughter of Heli and thus continued in her body the seed line of David. The early Church was almost unanimous in making this assumption
and the form in which Luke's genealogy appears is entirely concordant with what we know of Jewish practices in such matters."
http://custance.org/old/seed/ch22s.html

" Frankenberg also mentioned Rosicrucians in his writings, one of which includes a complicated mandala-like illustration of a definitely Rosicrucian character [7].<<[7] See my article "The Great Work in the Theatre of the World" in A Compendium on the Rosicrucian Vault, Edinburgh 1984>>He formed a group of students of Pansophia, which is the term earlier used in "the fourth manifesto" Speculum Sophicum Rhodo-Stauroticum. One of
his students became famous as the mystical poet Angelus Silesius."
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/lampado.html

"Thus explains the fact that Guenon, much more rigorous in other
circumstances, transmits this last without more examination in his
_Great Triad_<<La grande Triade, Paris, 1946, p.154 and 157>> in connection with the cosmic wheel and of a series of assimilated symbolic systems: "In certain works being attached to the hermetic tradition, one finds mention of the ternary : Deus, Homo, Rota.... which concerns the Absconditorum Clavis the keys of the things hidden, and the "Rota mundi" of the rosicrucians. "A
little further the notion of the unchanging center etait abordee by the image of Chinese Min-Tang and the expression of" Wheel within the wheel "by which, he tells us, G Postel describes the center of Eden. Some lines beforehand an allusion has the wheel of fortune brought back for us to the 10th card of the tarot. This new development A transforms Postel of indicator into temoin of the eternelle tradition, the texts etaient circumvent by another way." Jean-Pierre LAURANT Ecole Practises High-Studies
(V I section), Paris
-op. cit
my translation of:
"Ainsi s'explique le fait que Guenon, beaucoup plus rigoureux en
d'autres circonstances, transmit la derniere sans plus d'examen dans la Grande Triade a propos de la roue cosmique et d'une serie d'assimilations symboliques : "Dans certains ouvrages se rattachant a la tradition hermetique, on trouve mentionne le ternaire : Deus, Homo, Rota.... il s'agit de l'Absconditorum
Clavis les clefs des choses cachees, et la "Rota mundi" des
rosicruciens. "Un peu plus loin la notion du centre immuable etait abordee par l'image du Min-Tang chinois et par l'expression de "Roue dans le milieu de la roue" par laquelle, nous dit-il, G. Postel decrit le centre de l'Eden. Quelques lignes auparavant une allusion a la roue de la fortune nous ramenait a la dixieme
lame du tarot. Cette nouvelle elaboration a transforme Postel de voyant en temoin de la tradition eternelle, les textes etaient contournes par un autre chemin."
Jean-Pierre LAURANT Ecole Pratique des Hautes-Etudes (V I section), Paris
"Postel Vu Par Le XIXe Siecle Occultisant"
in:_Guillaume Postel 1581-1981_ ed. Guy Tredaniel, 1985

"Postel was acqauinted with the prophecies of Joachim, Roquetaillade, Beatus Amadeus, and Peter Galatinus... Postel mentions the prophecies of Joachim, Roquetaillade, Telesphorus, Amadeus, and Galatinus in Le Thresor des propheties de l'univers. Manuscrit publie avec une introduction et des notes
par Franqois Secret (Martinus Nijhoff: La Haye, 1969)."

"Postel divides universal history into four states ; he adds to the
tertiary scheme of Joachim<<of Fiore>> - nature, law, grace - a fourth state which is restitution. Postel indicates that the fourth age is not only the age of restitution in which all things are to be restored, but also the age which is superior to the other three. Postel state positively that until the fourth age of restitution comes and the unity of God is realized by His creatures, God's glory is a nothing. When He is not comprehended by His creatures, He is, at this point, an unknown treasure. << See the
British Library, Sloane ms. 1411, fol 326' ...et vere infinitus Amor est in mutuo trium diuinarum Personarum complexu, sed tamen donec in Naturae siue Animae mundi siue Primae intelligentiae Essentiam coecant veluti tres anguli in Vnum, vti Basis in Pyramiden, etiam ipsemet Deus quoad suam Gloriarn est quasi non sit, quia nondum est in Haberi, ut Thesaurus incognitus
adhuc"
In the fourth age of restitution God is known to man and is within man. In the language of the Zohar "the broken vessels are mended ", and man lives in his restored state participating in the Divine Unity as if he had never "broken the vessel" . "
-Marion Kuntz, op cit

on Rota:
Ezekiel 1:16
16. Aspectus rotarum et opus 1 stent aspectus Tharsis et strutlitudo unius ad quatuor, 2 et aspectus eorum, et forma 3 quemadmodum si rota esset in medio rotae.
http://www.ccel.org/c/calvin/calcom22/htm/v.xx.htm
 

catboxer

John:

I don't wish to belittle or denigrate the studies of Rosicrucianism or Christian Kabbalah, subjects to which you have obviously dedicated a great deal of effort, passion, and erudition. I'm not prepared to evaluate or speak to these studies, since I have no Latin, little French, and practically no knowledge of the subject at hand. And it's in the way of a simple observation rather than a criticism when I tell you that I have almost no interest in them.

However, the question of the connection of everything you've cited above with the tarot deck is a simple one which all rests on a single point: Eliphas Levi's assertion that the diagram drawn by Frankenberg to illustrate a principle postulated by Postel one hundred years earlier contains the word "TARO." I emphatically assert that it does not contain that word, because if those letters are meant as an anagram, then so are the letters composing the other words on the key's circular terminus, Homo and Deus. If "Rota" is meant to also be read "Taro," then Deus is also meant to be read "Usde" and "Homo" is also meant to be read "Moho." In this matter, as in many others, Eliphas Levi was taking the evidence where he wanted it to go rather than going where it was bound to take him.

In "A Wicked Pack of Cards," Michael Dummett (I can tell it's him rather than either of the other two authors by the style) deals with Levi's interpretation of Frankenberg's key at length on pages 173-174, and comes to the same conclusions. He adds, "Levi could cite no authentic instances of occultists from before the XVIII century who had so much as alluded to the Tarot, since there had been none; but, in the their eagerness to suppose that they were being made privy to secrets handed down through many centuries, readers disposed to believe Levi's theories were ready to accept his assurances that such instances were manifold."

In other words, if you've already reached a conclusion about the nature or meaning of something, but you don't know its history, you can always make up a history that conveniently suits the predetermined conclusion. This is what's known as verdict first, evidence afterward.
 

John Meador

My focus is upon Abraham von Franckenberg's intention for his emblem illustrating Postel's Clavis, and whether the letters that appear reading clockwise from the top of the emblem as TARO were perceived as indicating tarocchi to Franckenberg's acquaintances. I am unfamiliar with the rules for the interpretation of notariqon and temura that would have held for Franckenberg's kabbalistic expressions, but I should not be surprised if they violated our reservations concerning the proper applications of anagrammatic techniques. It is apparent that Franckenberg and his *Rosicrucian* acquaintances applied cryptogram techniques to their emblems. There are aspects included in the text of Postel's Clavis that suggest characteristics Franckenberg might have recognized in tarot trumps, for instance World Emperor, Angelic Pope, the Holy Spirit as a woman; the *Papess* definitely reminds one of Postel's significations regarding the Venetian Virgin, Johanna who tutored him concerning the Zohar, who herself was alledgedly so instructed by Francesco Giorgi. Postel believed this woman was the incarnated Holy Spirit. Rene Guenon's comments regarding the Wheel of Fortune/Rota Mundi of the Rosicrucians/ Clavis absconditorum also give us pause for reflection, "...the expression of" Wheel within the wheel "by which, he tells us, G Postel describes the center of Eden..."- integrating what Ross has kindly translated from the Latin text of the Clavis: "...clearly the sacrament of communion, that is a wheel in the middle of a wheel..."
These words likely would picque the attentions of post-Lutheran Paracelsians of 17th C. Breslau!
We might look in on gentlemen of 17th C. Bohemia playing tarocchi, and engaging in provocative theological banter over the images on the cards. It would be nice to know whether these had the Tower, Devil, Sapientia as-the-World/Universe etc. Nicer still to know the number of cards in their decks.
I did notice this:
Combined Index of IPCS Publications 1972-1997
Breslau, Discovery of playing-cards in (Sabela) XIX/4/142-143
http://www.pagat.com/ipcs/tpcindex.html
-which I do not have access to. Has anyone come across this article?
P.A.Redpath in "The Nature of Woman and Her Role in Religion According to Guillaume Postel" in the 1985 volume ed. by Guy Tredaniel: Guillaume Postel 1581-1981, characterizes Postel's mystical theology as comprised of Franciscan symbolism. With this in mind, Redpath says of Postel's belief: "...the most perfect work one can suffer for God is to undergo very unfitting disrepute, very great dishonor and very unworthy contempt." This reminds us of St. Francis's image of himself as God's fool.
Marion L. Kuntz in "Journey as Restitutio in the Thought of Guillaume Postel" in :History of European Ideas Vol. 1 #1, 1981, pp.1-15; says: "Postel constantly states that action not words are necessary for reformation or the restitution of all things. Postel summons the wayfarer with restored reason to an active life of charity and good work." Is this the story that 17th C. Rosicrucians heard in the tale of tarot's trumps?

Concerning Philippe de Limborch and Isaac Orobio:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~pvrooden/Peter/publicaties/1987ap.htm
 

jmd

What a great read!

How to add to this thread I am not sure - so let me add some comments picked up and gleamed as I read the thread.

Firstly, I tend to concur with John Meador that both the rotary and linear writing of 'ROTA' would have been read in myriad and anagrammatic forms. As to whether this would have been connected to Tarot (whether in its 'tarocchi' or 'tarau' appelations) seems, I tend to agree with catboxer, a little far... yet the term would have been considered, and it would only be a matter of time before the full connections, as suggested by Eliphas Levi, would have been made (and they may certainly have been made prior to Levi's publication of the same).

When it comes to the way of thinking found in more esoteric circles - and which, after having read Horapollo, catboxer would be somewhat aware - I find Dummett too easily dismissive. Analogic thinking from anagrammatic considerations was certainly part of the picture.

Incidentally, the 'Key' depicted in Papus, though having similarities to Postel's, and undoubtedly derived from it, is different, and of course post-dates Levi's also quite different rendition.

Again John Meador makes important comments when mentioning that 'we must guess' what was 'culled from' reading other authors - having, it should be noted, esoteric interests more strongly than analytic historical ones. These are some of the many informed guessworks which need to supplement the excellent work produced from historical sources.

The Rosicrucian, K/Q/Cabalistic and alchemical considerations of the whole intermingled esoteric scene forms part of the spiritual-religious framework for not only Postel, but for the social conditions in which Tarot arose or developed.

Postel's Key may have been designed without any Tarot considerations - and very likely was so. Equally, however, anagrammatic considerations would have caused it to bring to the attention to those who may have had esoteric interests any item, tool, symbol or other denotation of ROTA's anagrammes.