Another was the fabrication of the Cipher Manuscript by some of the founding members of the Golden Dawn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cipher_Manuscripts
That the deception was revealed only a couple of decades later doesn't matter, since a generation of occultists already believed it and based their theories, and their spiritual lives, on the doctrines contained in it. These occultists and the order they founded or continued after the original's dissolution are the main inspiration for Tarot esotericism in the English-speaking world today.
You can see the Cipher Manuscript here -
http://hermetic.com/gdlibrary/cipher/
The first was a lie, the second a forgery, and since they promulgated what claimed to be authoritative teachings, they fit exactly the meaning of
propaganda, under most of its dictionary definitions.
...
... well, yes, and in this foundation party of the new Forum "Flights of Fancy" (I assume, a "working title") it surely is recommendable to point to ...
http://books.google.de/books?id=Krc...=y#v=onepage&q=kenneth mackenzie 1859&f=false
... Kenneth Mackenzie, in whose papers the Cipher manuscript once was found. Now Kenneth Mackenzie had a youth in Germany and his favored book as a child had been "Till Eugenpiegel". When he then found himself later in England, he translated his first literary love, and this was the first publication, by which he got some fame in literature himself.
This was relative short before he visited Eliphas Levi.
The literary father of this Till Eugenspiel, at least, what the printed edition concerns, had been Thomas Murner, a well known German humanist, who got the idea to use playing cards as a didactic method.
In the course of this development he got a favor for Fool's literature, following the roots of Sebastian Brant, who short before had made the bestselling "Ship of Fools", which became the greatest literary success in Germany before Goethe's "Werther's Leiden" (1776; which btw. also reflected the German Tarock game). So he (Murner) was indeed a well known Fool ... his greatest success became the Tyll Ulenspiegel.
When the reformation developed, Murner, always a man with some revolutionary ideas, astonishingly decided to stay a Catholic. More than this, he used his well known satirical charm against the protestants.
This didn't went well, cause the protestant had a very similar satiric spirit and made Murner to a preferred object of their own mockery attacks. Murner was painted as a cat, cause Mur- sounds in German like the sounds of cat (another literary figure developed from it: Kater Murr, also known in Micky Mouse ...
...) For Murner himself it looks (for instance) this way:
Murner tries to evocate the spirit of the Fool
The evocated Fool gulps Murner
************
One special prank should be mentioned.
The protestants wrote a letter to Murner "from the English king" and this fantasy king invited Murner to England to teach the English true Catholicism. And Murner believed this. So he appeared before the real English king (famous Henry VIII) and found out, that this king wasn't really informed. So he told the story to the king, and the king had an insight, and gave him some money to disappear back to Germany ... likely he realized, that Murner was dangerous.
But the English King recognized also the dangers of all the mockeries of the protestants and so it happened, that all England started to take the protestant perspective.
...
... well, it's really good, that I don't need to give references for all and everything. This opens new satiric possibilities.
***********
More to Kenneth Mackenzie:
http://autorbis.net/kenneth-mackenzie