Waite's Second Tarot Deck - Originals Discovered

Debra

Cerulean, thank you.

I did read Mary's blog description. It's what raised these questions in my mind.

How can both the family and the Rosy Cross group claim the orginals? Are there more than one set of 22* path paintings? What "worn and damaged images" were on e-bay? Did Marcus and Tali buy them? And again...what's the relationship between the Rosy Cross paintings and these, whatever they are?

Tali's blog doesn't address these questions and I can't make out the story from Mary's brief description. I don't own "The History of Occult Tarot" so I can't see what Decker & Dummet say about them. Maybe someone with the book can help in this regard?


eta: *32 images total, apparently--thanks, Kwaw
 

Minotauro

Cerulean, thank you.

I did read Mary's blog description. It's what raised these questions in my mind.

How can both the family and the Rosy Cross group claim the orginals? Are there more than one set of 22 path paintings? What "worn and damaged images" were on e-bay? Did Marcus and Tali buy them? And again...what's the relationship between the Rosy Cross paintings and these, whatever they are?

Tali's blog doesn't address these questions and I can't make out the story from Mary's brief description. I don't own "The History of Occult Tarot" so I can't see what Decker & Dummet say about them. Maybe someone with the book can help in this regard?

as I understand the story so far the rossy group has a deck of cards or reproductions or photos of the cards , , BUT they ( the people who are gonna make the book) 've got the original paintings , the ones the family of the original artist owns.


is that correct?
 

Debra

No, Minotauro, according to this Golden Dawn blog, the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross claims the original paintings--Kwaw posted this earlier in this thread:

...

*Fellowship of the Rosy Cross - which I also presume will not be very happy at the publication of their 'symbols of the paths' (which I believe they still use) being published!?

Update - not only are they reported to be not very happy, it is claimed they still possess the original paintings...

http://order-of-the-golden-dawn.blogspot.com/2011/09/great-symbols-of-paths.html


From the Golden Dawn blog--reacting specifically to Mary Greer's description of the Trinick find--the bold emphasis is mine.
Waite’s esoteric tarot deck, called "The Great Symbols of the Paths" contained only the tarot trumps. The images were painted by John Brahms Trinick, an Australian artist who was also a member of the FRC. Trinick was an accomplished Art Nouveau illustrator in watercolor, pencil, pastel and crayon, and a collection of his watercolour copies of European stained glass windows can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

These were not cards for divination, but cards purely for meditation and ritual work within the FRC. The original color paintings, which we saw at the London headquarters of the FRC in 2005, were all framed and used, as they still are used today, in the ceremonies of the FRC.
 

Debra

And a bit more from the same site. So you can see that there are many unanswered questions about this discovery.

I first saw these cards by Trinick ("The Great Symbols of the Paths") when author and historian R.A. Gilbert gave a complete slide lecture on them at the 1998 International Golden Dawn Conference in Bayonne, NJ. With the owner's permission, I have been giving a slide lecture presentation of some of these cards (both black-and-white and color versions) as well as other Pre-Golden Dawn Tarot images, since 2006. For those who are interested, I plan on giving this same tarot lecture ("Images of Initiation: The Hermetic Tarot") at Pantheacon 2012.

It would certainly be intriguing to discover whether Trinick produced a second set of original watercolor paintings in addition to the ones owned by the FRC.

http://order-of-the-golden-dawn.blogspot.com/2011/09/great-symbols-of-paths.html
 

Minotauro

oh well... this thread really is confusing

I'll just blame it on my poor english


yo no speak-o english-o

;)


it will be interesting to see what its actually happening then , perhaps this could be some kind of preliminary test before the final one? or the rejected pieces maybe?

this keeps getting more interesting :)
 

kwaw

Trinick / Pippet created 32 images for the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross (A Mystical Christian off-shoot of the Golden Dawn created and led by Arthur Waite - if you look up the work of Trinick and Pippet you will see the majority of their work was for churches or other Christian organizations/publications) of the Great of Symbols of the Paths -

These are paintings of The Great Symbols of the 32 Paths of Wisdom of the kabbalistic Tree of Life -

That is the 10 paths of the Sefiroth and 22 linking paths - the sefiroth are also 'paths', thus for example in the Golden Dawn system of attributions the fool is on the 11th path, the magician on the 12th, etc,.

If one does wish to consider them a type of 'Tarot', then they constitute a tarot of 32 Trumps (hence my reference to Waite's statement that if the trumps are related to the Tree of Life, then there should be 32 trumps, not 22*), some of which include imagery related to a traditional tarot set, but in a unique order and sometimes with different names.

It appears Tali/Marcus do not have access to the full set of 32 paths / trumps - or have decided to only publish those that bear resemblance to the traditional 22 trumps + 1 other path/trump.

Are they Tarot? It will be nice to see if Waite defines them as such, and I look forward to hearing about what he writes in his notes (at second-hand unfortunately, as much as I would like a copy, there is no way I can afford the book).

If so, is it right to split them up and select only those images that are traditionally regarded as tarot?

B&W images of those printed in Decker are on the internet, as is (in colour) the High Priestess and a segment showing the towers, dogs and crab of the Moon painting (originally posted by Tali/Marcus).

Kwaw
* Of course, Waite very clearly states that in terms of its historical origins the tarot was NOT related to the Tree of Life - therefore there are no 'secret attributions' - if one wishes to associate the trumps with the Tree of Life, then feel free to do so according to ones own conceptions - there is no 'authority' nor any 'authoritive' tradition - hence there are no 'secret attributions' but rather whatever 'private attributions' each person or organization wishes to develop for themselves.
 

starlightexp

Would they even make sence with 1/3 of the art missing?
 

GryffinSong

I wish they'd publish all of them. If I'm understanding correctly, they were created as a series. It really doesn't matter to me whether he called them tarot or puddly-winks. It's a series, it should be published as a series. Messing with the content is messing with history.
 

nicky

If one does wish to consider them a type of 'Tarot', then they constitute a tarot of 32 Trumps (hence my reference to Waite's statement that if the trumps are related to the Tree of Life, then there should be 32 trumps, not 22*), some of which include imagery related to a traditional tarot set, but in a unique order and sometimes with different names.

Ok I can see that ...

* Of course, Waite very clearly states that in terms of its historical origins the tarot was NOT related to the Tree of Life - therefore there are no 'secret attributions' - if one wishes to associate the trumps with the Tree of Life, then feel free to do so according to ones own conceptions - there is no 'authority' nor any 'authoritive' tradition - hence there are no 'secret attributions' but rather whatever 'private attributions' each person or organization wishes to develop for themselves.

Thus calling it Waite's second tarot deck is basically wishful lying?

It appears Tali/Marcus do not have access to the full set of 32 paths / trumps - or have decided to only publish those that bear resemblance to the traditional 22 trumps + 1 other path/trump.

It appears they do not have access to much of anything - but if everyone gives them money then they can publish this 'deck' and book that everyone then can buy. Huh.
 

Teheuti

Of course, Waite very clearly states that in terms of its historical origins the tarot was NOT related to the Tree of Life - therefore there are no 'secret attributions' - if one wishes to associate the trumps with the Tree of Life, then feel free to do so according to ones own conceptions - there is no 'authority' nor any 'authoritive' tradition - hence there are no 'secret attributions' but rather whatever 'private attributions' each person or organization wishes to develop for themselves.
Kwaw - I agree. This is a really important point that is essential to an understanding of Waite's development of images associated with the Tree of Life and the mystical Christian Kabbalah.

It's also important to understand that the develop of the 'Great Symbols' was a continuing process in his life rather than a fixed one - although it seemed to have culminated in the set in use by 1927.

Waite made a bequest of a set of these images and accompanying text to the British Museum (i.e., the British people), which suggests he did not see them as belonging solely to the FRC but rather to the public—or at least anyone who cared enough to discover and work with them.