Qabalitic Tarot of A. E. Waite

foolMoon

In the book, "The Mystical Qabalah", Dion Fortune points out,

"Concerning the Tarot cards there are three modern authorities of note: Dr Encausse, or Papus, the French Writer; Mr A E Waite; and the MSS. of MacGregor Mathers' Order of the Golden Dawn, which Crowley published upon his own authority. All three are different. Concerning the system Mr Waite gives, he himself says, "There is another method known to initiates." -pp.23. The Mistical Qabalah. 1935 copyright. The Society of The Inner Light.

So I gather the three are all different, and this is perhaps why some of their Tarot cards meanings are different? But how, and why?

Maybe they just wanted to be different for the sake of establishing their own identity in the systems, or there had been reasonable grounds for the difference, which could be supported by theories? Whats your thoughts on this especially focusing on the Waite's system compared to others?
 

Abrac

This doesn't directly address the question of why the meanings differ, but in the sentence immediately after the last one in your quote, Dion Fortune says, "There is reason to suppose that this is the method used by Mathers." (referring to Waite's "method of the initiates") I vaguely remember hearing that Waite quote somewhere but I can't locate it now, and I don't think Fortune gives a reference. I wish I could remember where it came from; the context could help clarify where Waite's coming from.
 

Michael Sternbach

In the book, "The Mystical Qabalah", Dion Fortune points out,

"Concerning the Tarot cards there are three modern authorities of note: Dr Encausse, or Papus, the French Writer; Mr A E Waite; and the MSS. of MacGregor Mathers' Order of the Golden Dawn, which Crowley published upon his own authority. All three are different. Concerning the system Mr Waite gives, he himself says, "There is another method known to initiates."

I wonder if this could be a reference to the Waite-Trinick system?

-pp.23. The Mistical Qabalah. 1935 copyright. The Society of The Inner Light.

So I gather the three are all different, and this is perhaps why some of their Tarot cards meanings are different? But how, and why?

I am not sure in what way the meanings of the cards in those systems would be different.

Maybe they just wanted to be different for the sake of establishing their own identity in the systems, or there had been reasonable grounds for the difference, which could be supported by theories? Whats your thoughts on this especially focusing on the Waite's system compared to others?

Waite "officially" always used the GD system, for all I know. Papus' "French school" system however assigns both different paths and Major Arcana to the Hebrew letters.

But neither of them uses the order that seems the most obvious to me: Linking the three mother letters with the three horizontal paths, the seven double letters with the seven vertical paths, the twelve single letters with the twelve diagonal paths.

The Sepher Yetzirah doesn't help us figure things out; for it is only clear as far as what letters belong to what zodiacal signs, whereas regarding the letter attributions to the planets, different editions of the Sepher present different schemes. And the mysterious author of the Cipher MS (which the Golden Dawn is based on) didn't hesitate to custom design a scheme of his own.

But even though the Sepher talks of 32 paths, the Tree of Life as such hadn't even be invented yet at the time it was written - much less the particular version introduced by Kircher we are so familiar with today.

None of the different Kabbalah/Tarot schemes that have been presented so far is self-explanatory. It's hardly surprising that different individuals reached different conclusions. To me, all of them are little more than working hypotheses. There may be others, and even other versions of the ToL, to consider in the future.
 

Abrac

I'm not positive, but I think Fortune may have misquoted Waite. In The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal [1909] Waite says:

"The keys are allocated by interpretation in various orders to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and herefrom as a root many instituted analogies with Kabalism have been devised by the divergent schools which have devoted their attention to the pictures. The Sephirotic attributions which have been obtained in this way are especially remarkable. I offer my assurance, as one who has more to lose than to gain by making the statement, that certain secret schools have developed their scheme of symbolic interpretation to a very high point by the allocation of these cards according to a system which is not known outside them."​

In 1909 it would be more likely he's talking about the GD than the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. But I could be wrong about Fortune misquoting Waite so it's an open question.

In the PKT, Waite avoids Kabbalah altogether. His meanings come from a variety of historical sources that may or may not have been influenced by Kabbalah. In the GD, the meanings are a synthesis many different occult correspondences along with historical references on the Decans.
 

Michael Sternbach

I'm not positive, but I think Fortune may have misquoted Waite. In The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal [1909] Waite says:

"The keys are allocated by interpretation in various orders to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and herefrom as a root many instituted analogies with Kabalism have been devised by the divergent schools which have devoted their attention to the pictures. The Sephirotic attributions which have been obtained in this way are especially remarkable. I offer my assurance, as one who has more to lose than to gain by making the statement, that certain secret schools have developed their scheme of symbolic interpretation to a very high point by the allocation of these cards according to a system which is not known outside them."​

In 1909 it would be more likely he's talking about the GD than the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. But I could be wrong about Fortune misquoting Waite so it's an open question.

Yes, it seems more likely. But in that case, Fortune was plain wrong about Waite's system being different from the GD one.

In the PKT, Waite avoids Kabbalah altogether. His meanings come from a variety of historical sources that may or may not have been influenced by Kabbalah. In the GD, the meanings are a synthesis many different occult correspondences along with historical references on the Decans.

Yes, in this blur, it seems difficult to establish clear differences between the various schools regarding card meanings, much less attribute them to different takes on the Tree.
 

Abrac

Good point. When she says "Concerning the system Mr Waite gives" it does sound like she means a system specific to Waite and contrasted with the others.
 

foolMoon

When I saw the passage from the Fortune's book, I was under impression that Waite's interpretation of Qabala was different from that of Mather's and Crowley's, hence his Qabalistic attribution to the tarot must have been different, rectus, the RWS deck has different book meanings from the GD and Thoth deck.

But as Abrac noted, Fortune does not elaborate further into the details to what Waite was talking about in her book The Mystic Qabala. Maybe it could have been her misquote, as indicated?

Moreover Waite seems to had have added extra divinatory meanings of the RWS deck in the PKT as appendix, which is vastly different from the GD system as well.

Acoording to Paul Hughes-Barlow, Waite has taken the attributions from the Liber777 for the RWS deck, as Crowley had, but if he did, how could the book meanings of these decks be so different?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fmRN0jiRZRw
 

foolMoon

Yes, it seems more likely. But in that case, Fortune was plain wrong about Waite's system being different from the GD one.



Yes, in this blur, it seems difficult to establish clear differences between the various schools regarding card meanings, much less attribute them to different takes on the Tree.

Good point. When she says "Concerning the system Mr Waite gives" it does sound like she means a system specific to Waite and contrasted with the others.



Ok, it is getting clearer now. Thank you for your feedbacks.
 

Abrac

Fortune's comment re Waite is obscure and puzzling. I've never known Waite to have his own system of correspondences between Kabbalah and Tarot until the FRC. If he did he never wrote publically about it. What it sounds like is Waite talking about some system or method known only to initiates, not necessarily one of his own making, though it could be. This example from Waite's 1902 Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah is typical:

"I may go further and say that the true nature of Tarot symbolism is perhaps a secret in the hands of a very few persons, and outside that circle operators and writers may combine the cards as they like and attribute them as they like, but they will never find the right way."​

This probably isn't the reference Fortune is talking about but something similar where Waite is describing a system known only to initiates.
 

foolMoon

Fortune's comment re Waite is obscure and puzzling. I've never known Waite to have his own system of correspondences between Kabbalah and Tarot until the FRC. If he did he never wrote publically about it. What it sounds like is Waite talking about some system or method known only to initiates, not necessarily one of his own making, though it could be. This example from Waite's 1902 Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah is typical:

"I may go further and say that the true nature of Tarot symbolism is perhaps a secret in the hands of a very few persons, and outside that circle operators and writers may combine the cards as they like and attribute them as they like, but they will never find the right way."​

This probably isn't the reference Fortune is talking about but something similar where Waite is describing a system known only to initiates.

I kept reading the Fortunes book, The Mystical Qabala, and she talks about Waite's book PKT again.

She says that Waite does not say anything about Qabala in PKT, unlike Crowley in his BOT. She suggests that it could have been Waite's intention not to disclose the Qabalistic connections to his Tarot, whereas Crowley wanted to reveal it all.