Stephen E. Flowers - The Magian Tarok: The Origins of the Tarot in the Mithraic and Hermetic Traditions

A Note on Terminology

The terms Mithra, Mithrist, and Mithrism are used in this book when reference is being made to the cult of Mithra in the ancient Iranian world. In discussions of the later mystery cult of the Greco-Roman classical world, the terms Mithras, Mithraist, and Mithraism are used.

PREFACE

ORIGINS SHROUDED IN MYSTERY

N o part of the modern occult revival has held more general fascination than the tarot. Whole novels have been based on its symbolism, and hundreds of books written and published. There are no fewer than two hundred commercially printed tarot decks on the marketfrom a facsimile of the oldest nearly complete set (the Visconti-Sforza) to innovative and even fanciful versions such as the Tarot of the Cat People or the Native American Tarot. This unfortunate process of modernization and desacralization has gone so far that one can even now buy Teen Tarot packages.

Such general fascination must ultimately stem from some deepseated, archetypal validity. But the true source of this archetype has eluded, or has seemed to elude, most researchers. The deepest origins of the tarot have remained shrouded in mystery.

In this book, by using the postmodern methods outlined in my previous study titled Hermetic Magic, I explore for the first time for a lay readership the historical roots of the symbolism of the Major Arcana of the tarot. Many of the myths surrounding the cards will be confirmedfor example, there is indeed a deep-level connection with Egypt, with the Roma, and with the Semitic tradition. But these connections are only the tip of a greater iceberg. What for centuries has been lying below the surface of these myths has the potential for opening the understanding of the tarot to previously unknown levels of power.

I first got the idea for this book in 1981 when I was doing research in Germany. There I found many texts on the subject of magic in academic libraries. I have often remarked to students that the true occult literature of our time is not to be found in the occult section of our bookstores but rather in the halls of academia. The resources that lie there are often really hidden. Professors and doctoral candidates work for years on ideas. They research, document, and eventually publish them. But the finished product appears in obscure journals or even more obscure proceedings of conferences. Often they remain unread even by specialists in the field. And as often as not the significance of such works remains hiddennot only from the public but also even from the conscious minds of those who wrote them.

The groundbreaking research for this work was published in the 1930s by a Swedish philologist and professor named Sigurd Agrell (18851937). His single most important work for the object of this book is Die pergamenische Zauberscheibe und das Tarockspiel (The Magical Disk of Pergamon and the Game of Tarot), published in 1936. Agrell is perhaps better known for his somewhat controversial work in the field of runology. He published a series of works in the 1920s and 1930s showing a link between Mithraic cult practices and beliefs and the tradition of the older Germanic runes. This pursuit led him to study the symbolism of the tarot as well as that of Lappish shamans. Because certain technical details of his runological theories (i.e., his famous Uthark theory) were generally rejected by contemporary scholars, other aspects of his work, and legitimate dimensions within it, have often been unfairly ignored. With this study I take a fresh look at some of Agrells data and bring it up to date with many new perspectives.

This is not a book about divinatory practices using the tarot, although knowledge gained from these pages can certainly enhance the