The Tree of Life Tarot appears to be the ultimate development of occult Tarot. Occultists claim that Tarot is a book of metaphysical wisdom disguised as a game of picture cards. In the Tree of Life Tarot there is no disguise. The Medieval Christian allegory of historical Tarot is gone, and what remains is the graphical embodiment of the most abstract and universal elements of occult Tarot.
Occult Tarot in general is a paradoxical puzzle. By the term, “occult Tarot”, I mean the combination of Western astrology, elements of Hebrew Qabalah(1), and Tarot cards into a relatively unified system of metaphysical theory. These elements are not particularly compatible, which is hardly surprising, given their disparate origins and purposes. Astrology is truly ancient, dating from roughly 2,500 years ago, and it was and remains pagan, i.e., outside of and often opposed by the Judeo-Christian tradition. The historical foundation of Qabalah is considered to be Sepher Yetzirah, which was written (again, roughly) a thousand years after astrology took its present form. Qabalah is an intricate, many faceted elaboration of Hebrew mysticism. The earliest known Tarot decks are dated roughly a thousand years later, and developed as a card game for over three centuries before being connected with the occult. Historically speaking, these inventions are unrelated.
Then came the 18th-century and later occultists. They developed the notion that all metaphysical teachings should be conceptually(2) and historically(3) related, and made the claim that they are. Moreover, they decided that the Tarot was itself a metaphysical textbook, so they created links to certain parts of Qabalistic cosmology and numerology they had co-opted, and they made more-or-less arbitrary(4) correspondences with astrology. Thus began the occult Tarot, a mere two hundred and some odd years ago(5), at the dawn of the modern occult era(6). It is only in occult mythology, created by these masters of metaphysical fiction, that the otherwise unrelated inventions have a common, ancient origin.
Within that mythology, the putative source of all wisdom is often designated as Egyptians(7) of great antiquity, at least several thousand years ago. In the Tree of Life Tarot, this mythological origin is acknowledged by the image of Thoth on the back of the cards. Thoth is the ancient Egyptian god of knowledge and writing, magic, mysteries and wisdom, whose image predates and thereby symbolically unites all Western esoteric traditions.
The essence or goal of occult Tarot might be called a mathematics(8) of the metaphysical universe. In The Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley contrasts the utility of arithmetic versus algebra, noting that, “Advance only came when they [scientists] wrote down their equations in general terms.” (p.42) Crowley continues, comparing Tarot to an algebra of the occult. “These considerations apply to the cards taken from the Tarot. What is the meaning of the Five of Wands? This card is subject to the Lord of Fire, because it is a wand, and to the Sephira Geburah because it is a Five. It is also subject to the sign Leo, and to the planet Saturn, because this planet and sign determine the nature of the card(9).” He concludes, “The Five of Wands is therefore a personality; the nature of this is summed up in Tarot by calling it Strife”. (p.43) The card can also be considered an equation: a name on one side, its meaning on the other.
“Strife” is an abstract concept, so it can be illustrated with an endless number of concrete images. Five men fighting with sticks, as shown on the Waite-Smith Five of Wands, is a good example. This is like an arithmetic equation, completely defined. Any concrete illustration will be particular, not universal. A concrete illustration is like blinders, tending to limit our range of perception by suggesting a specific meaning, a particular kind of strife.
In the Tree of Life Tarot, this complex personality called Strife is illustrated with abstract images: clear, graphical images of the element Fire, the fifth Sephira, and Saturn in the influence of Leo. The card shows precisely what Crowley described about the Five of Wands, and is like an algebraic equation, with infinite possible concrete realizations. An abstract illustration of Strife is a gesture pointing toward a constellation of potential meanings.
Does this make the Tree of Life Tarot easy to use for divination, immediately obvious? Yes, to someone with sufficient background in astrology and hermetic Qabalah. If you remember the quadratic formula, then an equation of the form f(x) = ax2+bx+c is easy to solve.
Conversely, if you don’t know algebra, that formula is just gibberish. Likewise, the Tree of Life Tarot is not for most card readers. Most people want concrete and intuitively evocative imagery, especially when reading for others. If you have no idea what Saturn in Leo suggests, if the Sephira Giburah sounds like something from Jabberwocky, and if you have no interest in learning about these arcane systems, then this deck probably has nothing for you.
Attributions and names are Golden Dawn oriented, leaning toward Crowley, with a significant exception noted below. The Majors show a large Tree of Life illustration, with the path and active sephira indicated in colors. The astrological correspondence (color coded: signs according to element and planets to sephiroth) is shown in the upper left corner. The Hebrew letter is in the lower right, with its number and a pronunciation. The cards are named (English and German) and numbered.
The Minors show a zodiac wheel, with the elemental signs highlighted in the appropriate color. A small Tree of Life is shown in the center of the zodiac, with the active sephiroph’s path from Kether highlighted in the same color. The suit’s element is shown in the upper right corner, again color coded. Court cards replace the Tree with a Tetragrammaton, partially highlighted appropriate to each rank. They also have the elemental designation, i.e., Water of Air, at the top of the cards. Cards 2-10 show the planet next to the astrological sign, and also include the “Angels of the Decans” names at the top of the cards.
The booklet is about as useful (not!) as most. It directs you to a book titled Mindmirror: Close Encounters with Your Self. (Robert Wang’s Qabalistic Tarot would be a useful companion volume: It’s the most intelligible and comprehensive occult-oriented text.)
There is one notable anomaly in this otherwise excellent deck. For reasons perhaps explained in Mindmirror, Strength and Justice follow the traditional placement, rather than the Golden Dawn “rectification.” A paragraph in the LWB notes this discrepancy in some detail, but offers no explanation. This isn’t Crowley’s influence, either, as the LWB notes. Crowley did use the traditional numbers, but he also used the Golden Dawn Key attributions: Justice was assigned the traditional number eight, but was used to illustrate Lamed, path 22.
One minor complaint: The colors of the paths are not what might be hoped for in a deck where they have such prominence.
If you are familiar with the correspondences, and are reading for your own insight, this might be a useful deck for you. The Tree of Life Tarot’s focus on the underlying system emphasizes elemental dignities, for example, making them inescapable. If you are a magician(10) using the cards to focus your consciousness and energies, this could be a very powerful deck(11) which dispenses with gratuitous historical baggage. If you are an experienced Tarot reader who wants to learn more about astrological or Qabalistic Tarot, this will be a very valuable deck, connecting what you already know with those traditional correspondences. And it would be an excellent study companion to almost any book on astrological or Qabalistic Tarot. The primary contraindication, of course, would be for someone religiously committed to one of the French systems of correspondence.
Tree of Life Tarot
Copyright ©1983 AGM AGMuller
Rufus Camphausen and Apolonia Van Leeuwen
Booklet by Rufus Camphausen
ISBN 3-905017-15-6
Published by AGM AGMuller
Mindmirror: Close Encounters with Your Self, Rufus Camphausen, 1981, Amsterdam.
1. Most notably, the theory of divine emanation as embodied in the Tree of Life itself.
2. In the physical sciences, physics does not mirror biology, nor are mathematical systems, based on different postulates, capable of being mapped onto one another, etc. Descriptive systems can differ in fundamental ways, but the occultists insisted otherwise.
3. This nonsense came from the Romantic belief that at one time a perfect or nearly perfect civilization existed, and the pieces of arcane lore we have today are corrupted fragments of a once-whole system of metaphysical wisdom. Collating and correcting the pieces could recreate the pristine teachings.
4. Not “incorrect”, not unreasonable, but based on judgement calls. More or less arbitrary.
5. The beginning of this new understanding of Tarot has been variously dated, but 1781 is common. This is the date of Antoine Court de Gebelin’s vol. VIII of Monde primitif. This volume included, among various other “bizarre speculations”, an essay claiming Tarot to be an ancient Egyptian book, “that contained in a pure form their doctrines concerning interesting subjects”.
6. Oddly enough, the resulting Frankenstein hybrid, stitched together two hundred years ago and raised to life by the Golden Dawn at the last turn of century, has remarkable vitality even today. In addition, other eclectic monsters, such as Wicca, new age mysticism, Satanism, and ecumenical neo-paganism have adopted much of the resulting mythology in our current fin de siecle milieu.
7. Sometimes the ancient source is identified with India, China, or even Atlantis.
8. “Every true magician knows that all his practice has a mathematical, geometrical basis.... He uses geometrical formulae and diagrams in his practical work.” P.F. Case, The Tarot, p.41.
9. Blatantly circular reasoning goes around a lot in occult circles.
10. Virtually any kind of magic, from the most arcane, formalized tradition to the most casual and idiosyncratic neo-pagan, and even the mundane magic of NLP can be facilitated with the consistent use of astrological or Qabalistic tools, including occult Tarot. As Arthur Waite noted, not all seekers are helped by symbolism and ritual, but those who are may find this deck as magical as any.
11. This deck has the highest “signal to noise ratio” of any occult Tarot, unencumbered by the historically unrelated Tarot trump images.
