Waite's using General Book of the Tarot to take shots at Yeats & Farr

I have to say, I am disappointed in Arthur.

It is hardly Christian of him to be taking cheap shots at Florence Farr after her death via a book written under a pen name.

In addition, it does make me wonder how much of Waite's material on Tarot tradition and meanings is derived from research and experience, i.e., is useful to the student of Tarot, versus how much may be hidden/coded potshots at fellow occultists!

From a fascinating thread by "rparisious"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coinherence-l/message/9480


A.E.Thierens gives this unpleasant metaphor the ultimate work out in "The General Book of the Tarot" with Preface by Waite,pp.146-147,ostensably a commentary on the 6 of Swords.

"...emigration,though the later is somewhat far-fetched,and not in every instance will the way lead so far. But it is true...that may go far...the message in the sphere of matter...the message materialized...a vision,an apparition...Though tradition has not rendered it so,this card in many instances have the signifigance of passing away."

"...intestinal difficulies..If badly aspected,serious illness and the probability of the passing away of the patient."

Three puns on Far,the Sphere(group),Sothis(the initiating parent organization which Farr and Yeats appear to have alienated),"Serious illness" and a double reference to "passing away"(all in the space of an odd fifteen lines) leave no doubt as to who has entailed Thierens's wrath.

Florence Farr had died of cancer(1917) after emigrating to Ceylon and less than eighteen months before Waite-Thierens published their Tarot commentary,Yeats had brought out a six hundred copy edition of "A Vision",a work which undoubtedly embodies much of what he offered to the Sphere group between 1903 and 1912.

The Thierens-Waite publication(It contains over 140 quotations from Waite.) is a direct response to the recent Yeats publicaion,and to make matters worse "Thierens" has reanimated a "Cancer cur(s)e" reference from an obscure Waite publication of 22 years earlier.

This is as scandelous today as it was in 1905 and 1928.Never mind that it is still down right vicious.Anyone of the few hundred people who had carefully read "A Vision" and happened to buy Waite-Thierens could have no doubt this was a blood feud.
In case threre were any lingering doubts about his intentions, Thierens appends a "P.S" to the Swords Tarot suit stating that each one of the ten Lesser Arcana is to be equated with the breaking of one of the Ten Commandments and places the word 'sin' iin single quote marks. .The Six of Swords would apparently represent "Thou shalt not kill."

As I read General Book, I am impressed with what a very strange book it is.

Waite wrote an article in the Occult Review, The Great Symbols of the Tarot, 1926 repudiating the French occultists and attributions of Hebrew letters to the Major Arcana: http://www.adepti.com/adepti.orig/docs/greatsym.txt

He ends this essay with these sentiments so like our own here at Aeclectic:

The study of the Tarot has been pursued since the days of Levi in
France, England and America, the developments being sometimes along
lines established by him and sometimes the result of an independent
departure. Speaking generally, he has been followed more or less. I
have shown that his allocations are for the most part without any
roots in the real things of analogy, while as to later students of the
subject all that they have to offer is ingenuities of their own
excogitation. We have to recognize, in a word, that there is no canon
of authority in the interpretation of Tarot symbolism. The field is
open therefore: it is indeed so open that any one of my readers is
free to produce an entirely new explanation, making no appeal to past
speculations: but the adventure will be at his and her own risk and
peril as to whether they can make it work and thus produce a harmony
of interpretation throughout. The sentence to be pronounced on
previous attempts is either that they do not work, because of their
false analogies, or that the scheme of evolved significance is of no
real consequence. There is an explanation of the Trumps Major which
obtains throughout the whole series and belongs to the highest order
of spiritual truth: it is not occult but mystical; it is not of public
communication and belongs to its own Sanctuary. I can say only
concerning it that some of the symbols have suffered a pregnant
change. Here is the only answer to the question whether there is a
deeper meaning in the Trumps Major than is found on their surface.

And this leads up to my final point. If anyone feels drawn in
these days to the consideration of Tarot symbolism they will do well
to select the Trumps Major produced under my supervision by Miss
Pamela Coleman Smith. I am at liberty to mention these as I have no
interest in their sale. If they seek to place upon each individually
the highest meaning that may dawn upon them in a mood of reflection,
then to combine the messages, modifying their formulation until the
whole series moves together in harmony, the result may be something of
living value to themselves and therefore true for them.

It should be understood in conclusion that I have been dealing
with pictured images; but the way of the mystics ultimately leaves
behind it the figured representations of the mind, for it is behind
the kaleidoscope of external things that the still light shines in and
from within the mind, in that state of pure being which is the life of
the soul in God.



In General Book, the preface is written by Waite as Waite and asserts that (among other things) that he is privy to an occult order's tarot teachings but he hasn't revealed them and isn't gonna. Right: reference to Golden Dawn and his own Order.

In the book proper, Waite writing as Thierens announces that the occult tradition of tarotists are all full of nonsense; that the connection with Cabala is purely French invention; that the suit assignments between playing card suits and Minor Arcana has been all wrong; and that the astrological assignments are simple.

Yet he also says that "Mr. W"' (that's how he refers to himself in the third person, since dear reader you don't know that Thierens is Waite) has put out the best deck and book.

He then proceeds to happily make strange suit assignments (Hearts as Pentacles, really? Cups as Diamonds?) and elemental assignments; assign the 12 signs of the Zodiac and the Nine planets to the Trumps in order (Magician as Aries etc.) and proceed to assert that these are the appropriate correspondences while also asserting the correctness of the Key interpretations, and oh by the way, don't mind the wrong astrological symbols on the actual cards themselves.

Buh?

This is like the Pictorial Key's Evil Twin. Or maybe trying to stuff a cat back into a bag after that stinker Crowley published the Golden Dawn's Tarot materials. While junking the Golden Dawn Trumps correspondences, Waite keeps the decans assignments and the meanings of the Minors--and those meanings become quite curious as well, for some cards get more editorializing than others (as noted in previous post)--here may be another shot at Farr & Yeats in the Five of Pentacles:

It is the emanation of love, which makes practically the lover and the mistress, e.g. husband and wife, when regularised by civil law, and friends, when between persons of the same sex, sympathy and popularity, enthusiasm, hopefulness, love of travelling, roaming about, which in weaker cases easily leads to Bohemian habits, carelessness, disorder and so on. Society will call this in many cases bad conduct, and find much to criticise.

Oh those Bohemians and their Free Love... Florence Farr without shame and pretence carried on an unmarried love life with George Bernard Shaw and others.

It is sure to indicate love outside the lines of a legal marriage. Strong individualism, which however is probably ruled by a strong will and a good heart. Brilliancy, but sometimes lack of the sense of responsibility. Travelling or emigration will do much good.

Notice the reference to emigration.

All this winds up making General Book a very bad book on Tarot: nonsensical, misleading, puffing his own deck via what we now call a "sock puppet", and personally attacking others in an especially catty and mean spirited way.

Which begs the question: what prompted him to write it? Did Yeat's Vision tweak him that badly?

There is an A.E.Thierens

Thierens is a well known Dutch astrologer and you will find considerable references to him on internet.He did only four works in English.Three of them,including the "General Book of the Tarot", were published iin 1928.
A fourth on Babylonian astrology was published in 1935 from the prestigious firm of Brill.
However,none of the others,show the involved knowledge of English linguistic substructure found in the "General Book of the Tarot".Thierens has been revised word for word by AEW.
I became friends with Thierens' secretary,Madame vonMeurs of the Kaiserstrasse,Amsterdam, in the late fall to early winter of 1969-1970.She told me Thierens had been specifically sent to England at the request of certain continental associates of Waite.
Unfortunately,I didn't realize the sinister undertones contained in her remarks til many years later.Certain Dutch connections of Thierens played a vicious part in the destruction of the Yeats-AE(a third AE,George Russell)Theosophical Society of Ireland in the late seventies and early eighties.
The current Theosophical Society of Ireland (under obedience to Radha Bernier of Adyar) has absolutely no connection with an historical Irish succession to AE or Yeats or any Tarot or astrological knowledge deriving from the original founders,William Butler Yeats and Charles Johnson.The last heirs were Arthur Power,Arland Ussher,Ned Lysett,Arnold and Hilda Roberts Marsh,Victoria Hamilton,Sophie Jacobs, and(perhaps) a certain Miss Goodbody of Morehampton Road.
A claim of transmission through the late Dorothy Emerson posted on Google is absolutely fraudulant.Dorothy Emerson only saw AE twice in her life as she freely admitted to all and sundry.

Thank you Charles, and welcome to Aeclectic Tarot! This is fascinating information. Waite certainly seems to have held a grudge--my understanding is that by 1930 he was already at work on a second Tarot with more mystical Trumps and appears to have become disillusioned with the Golden Dawn attributions. Golden Dawn rituals have been made public and it as a magical order doesn't have the cachet that we accord it 100 years later. I wonder at such bitter conduct. I can understand piggybacking marketing his existing Tarot deck into a new book. I can understand Thierens adopting Waite's meanings for the Minor Arcana while rejecting the scheme for the Majors and also "force fitting" astrological meanings trying to get the decans assignments to work.
Now I wonder what Thierens original book was like; the card meanings as I read them have been so qualified with "here's a meaning, but sometimes it's the opposite or something else" that the overall impression is that any card can mean just about anything.
I also wonder if Waites was jealous of Yeats as a poet; Waite also wrote mystical poetry.

Not to mention the grudge (or loyalty?) evinced by Thierens in sinking Yeats' group forty years later...

This is off topic a bit, but it is a recurring challenge to practicing magicians to avoid sinking into meglomania, both as individuals and in groups. Being in a group should be a check on that as an individual: but it can also magnify it. When former partners fall out, it is just like the end of a marriage. As a counselor once told me, "People who love eacher can really hurt each other badly."

The 1930 edition of Thieren's book available here, with A.E. Waite as editor

http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/gbt/index.htm

I'll have to read the links and information later. Thanks for the posts.

Best

Cerulean

In earlier communications to co-inherence Mr. Parisious wrote:
Waite,like all the hierachs of dark powers,is using
Two Trees which stand in inverse relation to each other.Both the Tree
of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.In such case
the precise same series of terms can be used of one as is used for
the other.

To take three of the most obvious examples,Kether,the Crown is the
equivalent of Dante's last circle of Hell;the Ain Soph Aur denotes
the light of the dark Aleph,"the deeps below those deeps";Waite
assigns both the Archangel Michael and Satan( and the Beni Elohim,
Amalek,Nephilim) to the 8th Sephira,Hod.

I mentioned in an early despatch that I had seen the alternative
handcolored designs for Waite's pack of Lesser Arcana.This has never
been printed ....They are like
the printed pack except that each presents its shadow. For example,
the published Two of Swords is a blindfolded woman with a pair of cr
swords in a St.Andrew's Cross.In the alternative the swords cast a
shadowed reflection and form a pair of inverted triangles in the shape
of an Hourglass or,according to orientation a perfectly balanced Yeatsian gyre.
They are actually catalogued in a certain Masonic library but I am
apparently the first person in a generation who had ever requested
to view them.The keeper(and he was a very devout man in his way) said,"Are they
not beautiful?" and they were, actually,much more fascinating than
the printed set.
And he said to me with great feeling (if memory does not fail me
and it may)"There is one vision.Not a double way." And I felt the
extent of his emotion and sadness and why he would never write nor
speak openly on what had been entrusted to him."
This is specifically a Masonic pack correlated to a certain version of the Royal Arch and Waite's own rewrite(never published) of the rituals The Knights Beneficent of the Holy City of Jerusalem.
The Thierens text which is openly correlated to the ritual of a Masonic body (but which he never identifies) must certainly relate to this pack.
The Knights Beneficent were devout Roman Catholic Masons in the 19th century.Joseph de Maistre,founding theoretician of the doctrine of papal infallibility,was a leading member.But in the earlier 20th century the Catholics were expelled and Arthur Edward Waite(as recounted in his autobiography,"Shadows of Light and Thought),shortly thereafter obtined English custodianship of their rites.

Waite's 23 Plates Great Symbols of the Paths circa. 1923

For use in the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross established in 1916...FRC members John Brahams Trinick and Wilfred Pippet...they correspond to the 22 pathways of the Tree of Life.

Story of the Waite Smith Tarot pages 94-100.

This was referred to also in Decker and Dummet's History of the Occult Tarot, unless you are discussing another set..

Cerulean

Decker and Dummet have illustrations for, and discuss, only the trumps.

Nor do they mention Waite's translation/collaboration with Thierens at all...

The discovery of the Waite Thierens links are original to Mr.Parious as is the discovery of the Waite "Shadow" Tarot pack in the library of a closed Masonic study group.The members themsellves,save the keeper, were unaware of what they possessed.No one known in modern times had ever sent for it.
Both discoveries were effected within four months at the turn of the millenium. The first public announcement was given at the Fortean Society Annual Meeting in 2000.The illustrated speech (not illustrated by the Shadow pack as the custodians forbade any photography) was taped in somewhat truncated form and can be purchased from the Society who mis-spell his name as Paris.Title:"A Black Mass in Eden:W.B.Yeats and the Mystery of the Tarot Dance".
The entirely new set of Greater Trumps illustrated by Trinick and partially reproduced in Decker and Dummet' are an entirely different thing.
The Greater Trumps in the Shadow pack(which seem to be those that were provided to Thierens) are virtually identical with those published by Waite,except fpr the richer colorings.... and those Shadow designs.The sucinct manuscript comentary which accompanies them equates a number with various masonic high grades.