Waite's Christianization of Tarot

ravenest

LRichard said:
That's true, but I wonder how many members of the SRIA took that as unconditional assent to the literal truth of the Nicene Creed as formulated by the First Ecumenical Council.
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I cant answer that without going back OT into ....
 

ravenest

Just for the record (and as a refresher ) I do not think Waite Christianised Tarot

What I DO think he did do it ... I cant post here.
 

ravenest

Except that he did make tarot decks VERY pop . There is a LOT on its surface that is very appealing to many.
 

Richard

Christian symbols speak to me as clearly as those of Egyptian mythology, and I don't need to read The Hidden Church to get their significance. Some day Christianity may be considered to be mythological, which, in fact, it is, as Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung (among others) understood, which enhanced rather than diminished its importance and value.
 

Zephyros

LRichard said:
Christian symbols speak to me as clearly as those of Egyptian mythology, and I don't need to read The Hidden Church to get their significance. Some day Christianity may be considered to be mythological, which, in fact, it is, as Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung (among others) understood, which enhanced rather than diminished its importance and value.
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They resonate even clearer than Egyptian mythology because Christianity's themes of suffering and redemption are embedded in our culture to such an extent that it is almost impossible, at this point in time, to extricate ourselves from them. Even saving up for your pension could be considered a Christian act of redemption (suffering now for a chance at bliss later). Practically all of Crowley's corpus could be thought of as railing against this perception, which he saw as false and as inherently flawed.

Apparently Waite didn't think so, but the GD itself was enmeshed in this type of "Osirian Aeon" thinking. It could even be thought of as a deeply Christian organization by idea if not by name, if only because of their adherence to the IAO formula. Sometimes it seems that they simply changed Osiris for Jesus, even though the basic message of life, death and redemption are the same. The RWS is loaded with this type of thinking. This isn't a universal concept; compare it to Greek myths through which creation evolves mainly through Zeus's romantic conquests.
 

Rosanne

closrapexa said:
Sometimes it seems that they simply changed Osiris for Jesus, even though the basic message of life, death and redemption are the same. The RWS is loaded with this type of thinking. This isn't a universal concept; compare it to Greek myths through which creation evolves mainly through Zeus's romantic conquests.
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This is what was niggling at me. Thank you. (the underlining is mine)
~Rosanne
 

Zephyros

Rosanne said:
This is what was niggling at me. Thank you. (the underlining is mine)
~Rosanne
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Be warned that the Dying God theory has received its share of criticism and (I think) that Joseph Campbell has at times a very obvious Western, especially American, agenda. Some of this may be due to advances in research methods, another part might be a change in perception due to the steadily setting power of the Church. Still, it is useful when trying to understand the minds of those 19th century occultists, since they themselves probably believed it. Crowley attempted to overturn it while Waite seems to have embraced it further than even the GD would allow him to.
 

kwaw

LRichard said:
The Ace of Cups is a Christian symbol, but Waite does not think that the Church has any conception of its esoteric significance, without which the Mass is just empty ritual. Read The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail. It explains pretty much everything.
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True, but I don't think (Ravenest) that one has to read the whole thing - the essential parts are the end of section IX in which he asserts that the four suits Swords, Coins, Batons, Cups are the four Hallows. To understand what this means in relation to his conception of the tarot then one also needs to read and understand section X (admittedly cicra another 200 pages!), in which he gives what he believes to be the mystery of the Graal legends, which basically boils down to being the mystery of the sacrament of the Eucharist.

In Christian Hermetic mystical terms the transformation of bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ may be alluded to in terms of an alchemical operation - the philosopher's stone is Christ upon the Cross. If we take his concept of the Fool being the soul,or 'prince exiled in this world' in search of its way home, then it may be for him the trumps were an expression common to Christian mysticism of the journey home; his identification of the minors with the hallows and the mysteries of the eucharist that other common expression of Christian mysticism identified by Underhill as the alchemical.

While Waite had lost faith in the church (and for him there was only one church that still contained the mysteries of the hidden church, the Roman Catholic), he still had faith in Christ. He acknowledged that that have been 'many saviours', but for him 'Christ is the last and the first' and he believed in the atonement*. He was a sacramentalist, he loved ceremony and symbolism and made use of them himself. For him the ceremony and symbolism of the outer church had lost its power because it has lost its contact with the inner church of which it was supposed to be a reflection; but it is possible for each individual to form a contact with the inner, spiritual church for him or herself. That is achieved through the mystic way of the mind, that is, through the love of God, the third manner of expression identified by Underhill (whose treatise btw has been acknowledged by many as being heavily influenced by Waite), the marriage of the soul with the divine. It is only through this, that the outward signs are transformed with the immanence of divine grace.

Kwaw
* re: The Atonement = that Christ died for our sins.
quote:
"the attitude of the mystics to the atonement, 'outside all doctrinal questions', was best expressed by Eckartshausen, who saw it as 'the great event of the Grand and Holy Assemblies which are leading the Churches'... 'it is certainly a great truth that the divine has made itself abased so that none at last shall be left out of the union'."

A letter of 1905 quoted in Gilbert's A magician of many parts, p.134.
 

SmokedMirror

Maybe this "christianization" in RWT is more about paleo-christian than church's Christianity?
 
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