Incidentally, here's a review of Agrell's Die pergamenische Zauberscheibe und das Tarockspiel from 1937 since he seems to be the forgotten Tarot theorist of the moment.
The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 57, Part 1. (1937), pp. 103-104.
""This very interesting monograph is part of the Bulletin de la Societe' Royale des Lettres de Lund for 1935-36. Its author is an authority on the Runic alphabet, concerning the origins of which he holds original theories : these it is not necessary to discuss here, even if the present reviewer were competent to do so. But all forms of hieroglyphic, magic or secret writing seem to attract him, and here he gives the fruits of most ingenious research on two apparently disconnected series of mystical signs.
The first is found on a piece of divinatory apparatus discovered at Pergamon in the closing years of the last century and published with a full commentary by the late R. Wunsch in 1905. It is a triangular plate of bronze, decorated with reliefs of the three forms of Hekate and having in the middle a sort of large stud of the same metal, topped by a circular cap. The upper surface of this seems to be the important part of the whole appliance, the triangle being merely the base ; for it is elaborately divided into zones, four in number, whereof the three outer ones are further divided by radial lines into eight equal sections each, the central circular portion again into eight, four larger and four smaller. These are inscribed with sundry magical letters (the most familiar group is the name of Yahweh in one of its many forms, IEAO, also with mysterious signs; the other sectors have no letters, but signs only. Since there are 24 of them in all, it is no wild conjecture that they correspond to the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet ; and accordingly Agrell, by a series of interpretations which he adopts or originates, finds that the marks in each, often distorted Greek characters or Egyptian hieroglyphics, do compose an alphabetical list. For instance, the second compartment contains a fish-like sign and what seems to be an elaborated T ; remembering that the Egyptian fish hieroglyphic means ' horror, disgust,' and the fish is connected with Set, Agrell, following Wunsch, supposes that we are to understand the name Bipov, BaPus or Babo, one of the magical equivalents of Set, and see in the T-shaped sign the initial of Typhon. In like manner all the 24 fields are interpreted, always with plausibility, sometimes with a very near approach to certainty. Even if some details are wrong, as is highly likely, the general conclusion may well be accepted; each compartment stood for an idea or group of ideas which could be epitomized by some Greek word. By the help of these, complicated no doubt by the figures of the central area, the inquirer could have his answer given him. Presumably the expert who owned the apparatus would bid him throw dice, or touch the surface at random with a pin, or in some way indicate a division; it remained then only to interpret for him the signs contained therein; for instance, the segment which Agrell numbers 10 contains a sickle, the emblem of Kronos, and so is to be lettered K and might signify, e.g., that the malignant influence of the planet Saturn was hindering some project.
The author now pursues his researches into more modern times. The tarot or tarock-pack of cards is the oldest known; it is perhaps more widely used for telling fortunes than for playing any game; and its most important cards number 22, each having a traditional figure upon it. Thus we have the possibility of another alphabetic series, this time Latin, and it is not hard to show that some at least of the figures will fit this interpretation, if, that is, we suppose that behind the cards there lies an older apparatus, not a game but purely divinatory in its use, and historically connected, not of course with the Pergamene appliance itself but with the order of ideas which produced it. Thus, No. 6 has the figure of a Pope. It is nowise impossible that this was once a pre-Christian priest, a flamen, giving the necessary F. No. 9 is Justice, precisely where, on Agrell's theory, the I should come; and so on. By no means all the equations are so easy as these, but that a case has been made out cannot be denied. We thus have at least a plausible origin for one of the oldest of modern pastimes and the outline of a chapter in the extremely complicated history of European magic."
H. J. R.
It's worth noting that Agrell's Mithraic theory about the Tarot (and his Uthark ordering of Runes as well) rests completely on his reading of the abovementioned Pergamum bowl from 200 AD...
