Greater Arcana Study Group—The Fool

INIVEA

My question would be, who was Waite trying to keep the secrets of the Golden Dawn from? The regular public wouldn't care about any of it, and if he had revealed secrets they wouldn't have recognized it or had any use for it. Is he trying to conceal info from and/or deliberately mislead ....... adversaries? The Golden Dawn doesn't want competitor occultists to find out their revelations?

I'll have to read through that closer when I get a chance.

Maybe in the bold text below ( I will re post from the quote) I will look into those tonight. see if anything is there, might not be anything relevant. who know. again I don't want to go off topic either.

This does not dispose of the problem, however, for efforts to assign a Hebrew letter to each Tarot trump in sequence produce an effect far from convincing. Mr. Waite, who reedited the Tarot, expresses himself thus: "I am not to be included among those who are satisfied that there is a valid correspondence between Hebrew letters and Tarot Trump symbols." (See introduction to The Book of Formation by Knut Stenring.) The real explanation may be that the major Tarots no longer are in the same sequence as when they formed the leaves of Hermes' sacred book, for the Egyptians--or even their Arabian successors--could have purposely confused the cards so that their secrets might be better preserved. Mr. Case has developed a system which, while superior to most, depends largely upon two debatable points, namely, the accuracy of Mr. Waite's revised Tarot and the justification for assigning the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet to the unnumbered, or zero, card. Since Aleph (the first Hebrew letter) has the numerical value of 1, its assignment to the zero card is equivalent to the statement that zero is equal to the letter Aleph and therefore synonymous with the number 1.
 

Abrac

Waite became head of Isis-Urania Temple of the Golden Dawn in 1903, several years before the Waite-Smith tarot was published. If he was creating a tarot that would prove useful for GD members, one has to assume he had the more mystically-minded people, who had fallen under his influence, in mind. This quote is from Waite’s autobiography Shadows of Life and Thought:

“I am not of course intimating that the Golden Dawn had any deep understanding by inheritance of Tarot Cards; but, if I may so say, it was getting to know under my auspices that their Symbols—or some at least among them—were gates which opened on realms of vision beyond occult dreams.”

The tarot he had in mind was to be a tool for mystic contemplation, not Hebrew letter associations and the like, which he refers to as “occult dreams.” He didn’t print Hebrew letter attributions on the Greater Arcana or try to explain them in the PKT, giving as one of his reasons, “. . . nearly every attribution is wrong.”

One has to wonder how concerned he was about guarding GD Hebrew letter attributions. He took his oaths of secrecy seriously, no question there. But Hebrew letter attributions didn’t seem to play much of a role in the overall scheme of things.
 

Teheuti

Waite became head of Isis-Urania Temple of the Golden Dawn in 1903, several years before the Waite-Smith tarot was published. If he was creating a tarot that would prove useful for GD members, one has to assume he had the more mystically-minded people, who had fallen under his influence, in mind. This quote is from Waite’s autobiography Shadows of Life and Thought:

“I am not of course intimating that the Golden Dawn had any deep understanding by inheritance of Tarot Cards; but, if I may so say, it was getting to know under my auspices that their Symbols—or some at least among them—were gates which opened on realms of vision beyond occult dreams.”

The tarot he had in mind was to be a tool for mystic contemplation, not Hebrew letter associations and the like, which he refers to as “occult dreams.” He didn’t print Hebrew letter attributions on the Greater Arcana or try to explain them in the PKT, giving as one of his reasons, “. . . nearly every attribution is wrong.”

One has to wonder how concerned he was about guarding GD Hebrew letter attributions. He took his oaths of secrecy seriously, no question there. But Hebrew letter attributions didn’t seem to play much of a role in the overall scheme of things.
There's a GD paper "The Tarot and the Rosy Cross" by Waite (circa 1910) which shows that he did, at least for a while, use the GD Hebrew letter attributions (High Priestess is attributed to Gimel), even if he wasn't happy with them.


It was only when he created the Trinick images that he professed a very different set of Kabbalistic correspondences.
 

INIVEA

Waite became head of Isis-Urania Temple of the Golden Dawn in 1903, several years before the Waite-Smith tarot was published. If he was creating a tarot that would prove useful for GD members, one has to assume he had the more mystically-minded people, who had fallen under his influence, in mind. This quote is from Waite’s autobiography Shadows of Life and Thought:

“I am not of course intimating that the Golden Dawn had any deep understanding by inheritance of Tarot Cards; but, if I may so say, it was getting to know under my auspices that their Symbols—or some at least among them—were gates which opened on realms of vision beyond occult dreams.”

The tarot he had in mind was to be a tool for mystic contemplation, not Hebrew letter associations and the like, which he refers to as “occult dreams.” He didn’t print Hebrew letter attributions on the Greater Arcana or try to explain them in the PKT, giving as one of his reasons, “. . . nearly every attribution is wrong.”

One has to wonder how concerned he was about guarding GD Hebrew letter attributions. He took his oaths of secrecy seriously, no question there. But Hebrew letter attributions didn’t seem to play much of a role in the overall scheme of things.

I am thinking, I maybe wrong, who knows, but I think that the Fool and the Tarot are as one and as a whole, is that he (Waite) wants you to get to the root, find what god / divine means to you. In order to find the root (God / Divine) you need to investigate all secret doctrines (secret traditions) of all traditions (religious, or estoteric) go to the root, then come back and define what the root is for yourself.

"The fool knows where he comes from, and knows where he is going" Begin and end and end and begin, to begin and end.

This is also The Fool is the Will you must have and be Willing. To explore all those things, they are neither good nor evil. The Will, drives you forward, into the unknown places, to explore and to expand.
 

Zephyros

There's a GD paper "The Tarot and the Rosy Cross" by Waite (circa 1910) which shows that he did, at least for a while, use the GD Hebrew letter attributions (High Priestess is attributed to Gimel), even if he wasn't happy with them.

It was only when he created the Trinick images that he professed a very different set of Kabbalistic correspondences.

I agree, there are too many clues in the deck for there to be too much debate on whether it uses the GD attributions or not. Could the deck have been made during a transitional time in his life, when he was combining different things to arrive at what would late be the Trinick attributions?

However, considering he was also protecting secrets that were long past remaining secrets, one has to wonder. The attributions, and much more, had already been published years before with the collapse of the original order. So could it be that he's protecting secrets we don't know about, since they're not what we assume?
 

INIVEA

I agree, there are too many clues in the deck for there to be too much debate on whether it uses the GD attributions or not. Could the deck have been made during a transitional time in his life, when he was combining different things to arrive at what would late be the Trinick attributions?

However, considering he was also protecting secrets that were long past remaining secrets, one has to wonder. The attributions, and much more, had already been published years before with the collapse of the original order. So could it be that he's protecting secrets we don't know about, since they're not what we assume?

Yeah, I am wondering the same thing. Waite had a hard time when he first joined the GD he banged heads, he was off and on. He started 2 groups of his own, both declined / deteriorated. He was an intelligent man, he wasn't shy to explore, he was more fascinated than anything else. I feel he knew a lot in his own discoveries, and due to his oath, that he stayed loyal too. I feel there is more to this man and his discoveries that we will be in wonder about (What Waite is really Protecting). Unless we travel the same paths he took.

This remind me of Coral Castle, Edward Leedskalnin (1887–1951), he knew the mysteries of the Egyptians, yet never told anyone. and Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943).

Both these men knew stuff, Waite did too. just what, who knows.

I would like to know what the Trinick attributions are? These may shed light on to RWS deck.
 

Richard

I'm joining this phase of the discussion rather late, but I would like to make one point. Has no one else ever joined an organization which has initiatory oaths? The "secrets" which one is sworn to keep are intrinsically unimportant. The reason for oaths is not primarily to keep the public from knowing certain information. In the case of the Freemasons, the so called secrets are merely certain gestures and words which serve basically to identify one as a member with a certain rank. The Golden Dawn's "secrets" were perhaps more elaborate, but the fact that they had been revealed by the time Waite wrote PKT is unimportant. If one is bound by an oath, it merely means for the initiate not to broadcast certain information. It is essentially a disciplinary thing whose main intention is not necessarily to keep information from the public. Waite was not the only one who felt reluctant to talk about certain GD matters. In Dion Fortune's Qabalah book, she acknowledges that secret information to which she was privy had been revealed, but that still she felt honor bound by her oaths not to discuss it. Never mind the practicality of this. An oath is an oath, a contract if you will, that one is honor bound to keep. I don't see why people have such a hard time understanding this simple idea.
 

Yelell

I do recognize that Waite was following an honor bound duty. My own question was more about who they were concealing information from, not as much why. I didn't figure they'd find it necessary to take such steps with the average public who wouldn't catch on anyways, but maybe so.
 

Richard

I do recognize that Waite was following an honor bound duty. My own question was more about who they were concealing information from, not as much why. I didn't figure they'd find it necessary to take such steps with the average public who wouldn't catch on anyways, but maybe so.

I think they took seriously Jesus' admonition in the Sermon on the Mount:

Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces. [Matthew 7:6]​
 

Yelell

Then I have to wonder, why write books on tarot and get an artist to draw a deck intended for the public at all? So much people can't be privy to, or comprehend, or handle, or be worthy of, etc. Why have a deck that's either too compromised or risk revealing too much? Seems like there'd be less stressful ways of making a living.