Page:The Illustrated Key to the Tarot.djvu/180

176 predict the hour and the day when the dark young man will meet with the fair widow, and so forth.

An exceedingly complex work, which claims to present an absolute key to occult science. It was translated into English by Mr. A. P. Morton in 1896, and this version has been re-issued recently under my own supervision. The preface which I have prefixed thereto contains all that it is necessary to say regarding its claims, and it should be certainly consulted by readers of the present Pictorial Key to the Tarot. The fact that Papus regards the great sheaf of hieroglyphics as “the most ancient book in the world,” as “the Bible of Bibles,” and therefore as “the primitive revelation,” does not detract from the claim of his general study, which—it should be added—is accompanied by numerous valuable plates, exhibiting Tarot codices, old and new, and diagrams summarizing the personal thesis of the writer and of some others who preceded him. The Tarot of the Bohemians is published at 6 s. by William Rider & Son, Ltd.

Here is yet one more handbook of the subject presenting in a series of rough plates a complete sequence of the cards. The Trumps Major are those of Court de Gebelin and for the Lesser Arcana the writer has had recourse to his imagination: it can be said that some of them are curious, a very few thinly suggestive and the rest bad. The explanations embody neither research nor thought at first hand; they are bald summaries of the occult authorities in France, followed by a brief general sense drawn out as a harmony of the whole. The method of use is confined to four pages and recommends that divination should be performed in a fasting state. On the history of the Tarot, M. Picard says (a) that it is confused; (b) that we do not know precisely whence it comes; (c) that, this notwithstanding, its introduction is due to the Gipsies. He says finally that its interpretation is an art.