tarot and astrology

Hey,
I was just wondering if anyone has read Tarot and Astrology by
Muriel Bruce Hasbrouk ?
I've seen it on amazon, but i cant see any reviews for it!

Thanks
Sezo
x

Sorry, I've not read it - or even heard of it till your post

I'm always interested in such books and look forward to any reviews that are posted.

Hi Inanna! this book is in the library system here and i have read it and like it. What she does (i checked it out awhile ago so this is sketchy) is give one major arcana card for each sign and about a one to two page description of the association between the card and sun sign, for example scorpio is represented by the hanged man. Then she splits the sign into the decantes so there is a minor card for each decante of each sun sign, for example the first decante of scorpio is the five of cups (obviously i just remember my "cards") and the same one to two page description that seemed really accurate (i took it to work and read mine to a coworker and they felt it was an very accurate description of me). I think that was the majority of the book with (big guess) about 25? pages devoted to this system but i don't recall what that was about.

Here's a little review from Cynthia Giles, from her book "The Tarot: History, Mystery and Lore":

"This book, originally published as The Pursuit of Destiny, is a complete departure from typical Tarot books, but it is surprisingly interesting nonetheless. Hasbrouck discovered, in Israel Regardie's published version of the Golden Dawn papers, a document which inspiried her to identify the Tarot pip cards as the key to a system of ten-day cycles, based on the solar year, which she feels offers a more refined appproach to defining personalities and their interactions than that of conventional astrology. I was at first suspicious of the whole idea -- but every single birthdate I looked up there proved to be remarkably accurate in its description of the person in question. Hasbrouck supplies positive and negative tendencies, along with suggestions for methods of balancing the two. The style of the book is intelligent and appealing, for the most part, and offers an unusual way of using the Tarot."

Sounds like she agrees with scorpio!

-- Lee

Hmmm i'll have to have a think about it.
At the moment the astrology section at the back of Tarotlain and Simple is enough for me to be getting on with. Dont want to overload myself lol

Thanks everyone!
Sezo
x

I ordered a used copy of this book out of curiousity, and just received it.

Interestingly, the book was originally written in 1941, and published under the title "The Pursuit of Destiny." It doesn't say that it's been revised, but it's apparent from things written in the book that it has indeed been revised since 1941.

I was actually quite disappointed. Hasbrouck writes well, but the whole book is based on simply taking the Golden Dawn's astrology/tarot correlations and using them to just look up people's birthdays and arrive at a personality description based on what ten-day cycle, or decan, they were born in.

So, for each sign she has the GD-assigned major card (except for Scorpio, which she changes from Death to the Hanged Man, I presume simply to avoid the scary Death card), and then each ten-day section within that sign is illustrated with the GD-assigned pip card. So, for instance, within Libra (Justice), you have the first decan belonging to 2 of Swords, the second to 3 of Swords, and the third to 4 of Swords, just like in the GD system. So Justice describes your overall personality while the pip card goes into more detail.

Thus, only the majors to which the GD assigned signs are included in the system. The majors which the GD assigned to planets and elements are missing entirely.

She illustrates the cards with RWS pictures, saying that "the attitudes, actions, and expressions of the symbolic figures, in most cases, fit the general personality of the cycle rather closely, and thus the cards are of value, as well as of interest, in the interpretation of the symbols and descriptions."

There is some slight historical interest here, in that she must be one of the first, if not the first, author other than Waite to refer to and use RWS illustrations for a tarot book (this is assuming, of course, that she used the RWS cards for the first edition of her book in 1941; perhaps she only used them when she revised the book for its 1986 publication).

She goes to great pains to justify and defend her theory by referring to quantum physics and modern psychological methods.

Really the only thing one can do with this book is look up birthdays for generalized birth personality descriptions. No other use for the system is mentioned in the book. It might have been interesting, for example, to discuss how one's place in the present-day cycles might affect one, as in transits.

-- Lee