I've let go of the email. I guess I'm just shocked that, with all the information available on the internet, anyone would badly put together a fantasy about tarot and present it publicaly as the true history of tarot. Why do people think that their uninformed intuition is so much more correct than the years of hard work and discipline of the historian?
To me the vision, intuition or unanswered question is a seed or starting place for discovery. It revs up the emotions and thoughts to give energy to do the work involved in exploration.
When I wrote _Women of the Golden Dawn_ I was answering a couple of questions I had. One was "Why has the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn have more of a lasting and far-reaching impact than other magical orders?" A second thing was my "intuition" that the women involved had a lot to do with what made it different than so many other magical organizations.
It led me on a six-year journey - much of it involving all week ten hour days plus weeks in libraries in England and Ireland. That's what it takes to have any idea whether your intuition has any validity or not.
To be scornful of the place and results of such work seems like total nonsense to me, although maybe I simply want to see all my hard work as worthwhile.
OTOH, armchair intuitionists also want to see their musings as a worthwhile, but as an endpoint. I see them as merely a starting point on a great journey.
To me, history is a great journey that never ends, requiring sudden changes of plan, maps to be redrawn, deadends, and lots of hard work. And it really needs the input of others who have covered the same ground to verify that what you've perceived 'is,' and is perceptible to others. To have something else masquerading as history is not the real thing.
Myth is just as valuable in its own way—and essential to the human soul. I also love fiction. But, it's really important to understand the difference among them.
Sorry for the rant.