PKT Manual of Cartomancy Reference

Barleywine

I actually find the PKT a highly annoying read. Published almost ten years after the secrets of the GD were revealed, it is strangely anachronistic, hinting at things that would already have been common knowledge to anyone with half an interest in them. The things he so famously hints at can easily be derived from other sources, while he refrains from discussing what is really important, the things unique to this deck and his own worldview. All of the GD stuff is a piece of cake compared to that, and he hardly mentioned it.

I always thought so too, and in many ways I still do - or at least I find it wanting in useful detail compared to the work of people like Crowley, Paul Foster Case, Robert Wang, and many others. But I decided to read it again after more than 40 years to see if anything's changed, and my thought now is "What was the big deal?" It just seems a bit tepid and skeletal now, and certainly isn't offensive enough to get me worked up, it's just mainly irksome and not really a wonderful source of illumination for the deck (reading the divination material, the words "hodge-podge" and "mish-mash" keep interrupting my train of thought). The deck kind of has to stand on its own, which it does admirably. (But, of course, for my purposes I don't see it EVER replacing the Thoth.)

By the way, although this is an interesting discussion, nobody has answered my original question about the Manual of Cartomancy. Perhaps nodody has made the effort to seek it out? The two sections on divination with the tarot certainly won't alter anyone's perspective if they've already read th PKT, I was just curious whether going after admittedly "damaged goods" is worth the effort.
 

Zephyros

By the way, although this is an interesting discussion, nobody has answered my original question about the Manual of Cartomancy. Perhaps nodody has made the effort to seek it out? The two sections on divination with the tarot certainly won't alter anyone's perspective if they've already read th PKT, I was just curious whether going after admittedly "damaged goods" is worth the effort.

If you can find in online, I would say it isn't worth the effort. If you've read the PKT then a better use of you're time, if you wish, would be to search for other Waite books that could shed more light.

It is also interesting to see previous views of great men. Crowley, too, had an earlier book about Tarot and while it is nowhere near the scope of his later work you can still see seeds of ideas.

It is like watching THX-1138. It has nothing to do with Star Wars, but its beginnings can be seen subtly through camera angles, characterization, general message, etc.

So, I wouldn't pay for it, but I would read it online.
 

rwcarter

I see it on Amazon, but there are a lot of disclaimers about damaged pages, missing pages, etc. and they want a lot of money for the bound version when it's available for free as an e-book elsewhere. I prefer print books because I don't sit at my computer ALL of the time (well . . .) :) In looking at it on-line, I see that Waite lifted some of his divinational meanings almost verbatim from it, so it might be interesting to have on-hand. There is also quite a bit of highly determinstic/fatalistic non-tarot divination stuff in it that appears to have historical value. (By the way, according to wiki, "Grand Orient" was often the name of a lodge, not a person.)

Does anyone have the print version, and is it as defective as I'm led to believe?
I'm guessing the damaged, missing pages comments are for specific copies of the book, not all copies of it. I bought a paperback copy off Amazon (ISBN 0-7873-0646-0) last year for under $20. I haven't read it cover to cover, but I don't see any issues with it.
 

Barleywine

I'm guessing the damaged, missing pages comments are for specific copies of the book, not all copies of it. I bought a paperback copy off Amazon (ISBN 0-7873-0646-0) last year for under $20. I haven't read it cover to cover, but I don't see any issues with it.

Could be. In looking at a facsimile copy that's available from one of the free on-line libraries, it appears that a few pages between 50 and 55 are missing. You might check those in your copy. Not all of the Amazon listings have the disclaimer but that might just be an oversight. Since it was published by Rider, I can't imagine there isn't a complete copy somewhere.
 

Barleywine

It is also interesting to see previous views of great men. Crowley, too, had an earlier book about Tarot and while it is nowhere near the scope of his later work you can still see seeds of ideas.

Yes, I have Crowley's earlier tarot work that was originally published in The Equinox and later reissued by Weiser as a booklet. It's definitely a GD-based effort with, as you say, the "seeds" of his later material.
 

Abrac

Barley, thanks for the link to the ebook. Waite goes into some stuff I've never heard of before. I think you're right about it having historical value.

There aren't any pages missing in the PDF. When I opened it and tried to view it, it kept freezing and jerking. Many of the pages look blank. I ran OCR on it with PDF-XChange Editor and that cured it, but it's now over 500MB. :laugh: I'm in the process of making a new PDF out of it but it's gonna take a while I think.

I would do what rwcarter suggests and get a decent paperback. The version that's online says it's the fourth edition revised and enlarged with plates, so I'd make sure to get that version at least, if not a later one.
 

Barleywine

Barley, thanks for the link to the ebook. Waite goes into some stuff I've never heard of before. I think you're right about it having historical value.

There aren't any pages missing in the PDF. When I opened it and tried to view it, it kept freezing and jerking. Many of the pages look blank. I ran OCR on it with PDF-XChange Editor and that cured it, but it's now over 500MB. :laugh: I'm in the process of making a new PDF out of it but it's gonna take a while I think.

I would do what rwcarter suggests and get a decent paperback. The version that's online says it's the fourth edition revised and enlarged with plates, so I'd make sure to get that version at least, if not a later one.

I think I'm going to tread carefully here. This is a reviewer's note that I found on one of the paperback "facimile" editions (the one with Maggie Mack as co-author) on Amazon:

"It's an interesting overview of a whole lot of different divination techniques but it doesn't give any in-depth explanations (only a few pages per technique). Some pages are missing (this is a regular bound book but the pages are scanned copies of the original text). I found it interesting nonetheless."

There is a 1969 Edition, 5th "Sprl." (Spiral?) Edition there as well, without the disclaimer but it has no page count and is only 0.2" thick. The facsimile is 302 pages and is 0.7" thick, so I'm kind of suspicious of the reprint. Rodney, can you tell me which paperback version you have?
 

rwcarter

Could be. In looking at a facsimile copy that's available from one of the free on-line libraries, it appears that a few pages between 50 and 55 are missing. You might check those in your copy. Not all of the Amazon listings have the disclaimer but that might just be an oversight. Since it was published by Rider, I can't imagine there isn't a complete copy somewhere.
My copy has those pages.
 

rwcarter

There is a 1969 Edition, 5th "Sprl." (Spiral?) Edition there as well, without the disclaimer but it has no page count and is only 0.2" thick. The facsimile is 302 pages and is 0.7" thick, so I'm kind of suspicious of the reprint. Rodney, can you tell me which paperback version you have?
I gave the ISBN in an earlier post, but my copy that I got from Amazon is from Health Research. There are 278 numbered pages ans this version was reprinted in 1969.
 

Barleywine

I gave the ISBN in an earlier post, but my copy that I got from Amazon is from Health Research. There are 278 numbered pages ans this version was reprinted in 1969.

Thanks! That's the one Amazon has that doesn't show a page count, so I wanted to be sure.