Abrac
What Waite seems to be saying is the Secret Doctrine is found in random combinations produced by shuffling. The numbered sequence has little to no meaning for him. Starting with the end of line 17 and continuing into the next paragraph:
There are two possibilities, (1) numbered sequence, or (2) random assemblage. He then proceeds to analyze Mathers’ and Papus’ numbered sequences and rejects them both. [Edit: More likely he's rejecting their conclusions and methods not the numerical sequences.]
Then skipping ahead to the first sentence in the next paragraph:
Grand Orient is Waite; it’s an alias he used sometimes. Manual of Cartomancy was published in 1889, so this type of “transcendental divination” was something Waite had been using for quite awhile. It doesn't seem to me that he would have been satisfied with any numerical sequence really, [Edit: His arranging the order of the trumps to suit himself proves this statement doesn't hold water.] as he was looking at things through an entirely different lens.
I’m getting ahead of things but it seems necessary to try and clarify line 17.
“. . . but, as I have said, it is the presentation of universal ideas by means of universal types, and it is in the combination of these types—if anywhere—that it presents Secret Doctrine.
That combination may, ex hypothesi (theoretically), reside in the numbered sequence of its series or in their fortuitous assemblage by shuffling, cutting and dealing, as in ordinary games of chance played with cards.”
That combination may, ex hypothesi (theoretically), reside in the numbered sequence of its series or in their fortuitous assemblage by shuffling, cutting and dealing, as in ordinary games of chance played with cards.”
There are two possibilities, (1) numbered sequence, or (2) random assemblage. He then proceeds to analyze Mathers’ and Papus’ numbered sequences and rejects them both. [Edit: More likely he's rejecting their conclusions and methods not the numerical sequences.]
Then skipping ahead to the first sentence in the next paragraph:
“The Trumps Major have also been treated in the alternative method which I have mentioned (i.e. shuffling), and Grand Orient, in his Manual Of Cartomancy, under the guise of a mode of transcendental divination, has really offered the result of certain illustrative readings of the cards when arranged as the result of a fortuitous combination by means of shuffling and dealing.”
Grand Orient is Waite; it’s an alias he used sometimes. Manual of Cartomancy was published in 1889, so this type of “transcendental divination” was something Waite had been using for quite awhile. It doesn't seem to me that he would have been satisfied with any numerical sequence really, [Edit: His arranging the order of the trumps to suit himself proves this statement doesn't hold water.] as he was looking at things through an entirely different lens.
I’m getting ahead of things but it seems necessary to try and clarify line 17.