Professional Documents
Culture Documents
таро англ магии20170112133717
таро англ магии20170112133717
таро англ магии20170112133717
l\ /[ agic, like coffee, wakes you up and helps you get things done. Like
lVI music, it is a universal with powers that exist
language that works
within each of us. Rituals, talismans, trances, spells-the tools and tech-
niques that magicians use to achieve their ends-are many and varied, but
there is one tool which has proved remarkably effective for both the sea-
soned magician and for those who have very little knowledge or experience
of the subject. You have it now in your hands-the tarot.
The tarot emerged out of Renaissance Italy in the fourteenth century,
but who knows how deep its roots lie? Theories abound-it draws on the
wisdom of the East, it originated in the ancient Egyptian mysteries, in the
lost continent ofAtlantis. \Therever the tarot draws its power from, whether
in this world or the Otherworld, what we do know for certain is that it was
in England, at the end of the nineteenth century, that magicians first began
to use the tarot in a precise, magical way that went beyond the use of it as a
fortune-telling device.
In France, during the Occult Revival of the nineteenth century, writ-
ers like ehph"s L6vi and Papus began to see connections berween the tarot
and the Jewish mystical system of the Cabbala. They associated the leners
of the Hebrew alphabet and the paths of the Cabbalistic Thee of Life with
the rwenry-rwo cards of the tarot's Major Arcana. Members of the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn in London took these associations, and created
out of them a powerful magical tool: a technique known as path-uorking,
which involves the magician strongly visualising tarot images to project
themselves along each of the rwenty-rwo paths of the Tlee of Life. In addi-
tion to using this technique to make contact with the inhabitants and pow-
ers of the Otherworld, the Golden Dawn magicians also believed that the
tarot could illuminate their understandirg of their own spiritual develop-
ment. Two members of the Golden Dawn in particular were responsible for
infuencing the way the modern world now works with the tarot: Aleister
vll
.t, Crowley who worked with the painter Lady Frieda Harris to produce the
Thoth Deck, with its powerful Art Deco images, and A. E. 'Waite who
inspired the artist Pamela Colman Smith to create the Rider-W'aite deck,
whose genius lies in the way each of the forty pip cards reveals an imaginary
scene. Before this deck appeared, tarots displayed only the relevant number
of symbols in each of the suits.
The English Magic Tizrot builds on the tradition established by the
Golden Dawn, and on the inspiration of Pamela Colman Smith and A. E.
\Waite in their use of illustrated pip cards, but it does somethirg more than
that. It invites into its book and deck of cards a whole host of images and
ideas, energies if you will, that come from the colourful history of English
magic.
\[hy the little country of England has come to be home to such a
rich and varied range of magics is a mystery. Perhaps it is simply because
of its history of empire and conquest. Perhaps it is because England has
been a meltirg pot of cultures from the very earliest of times. Or, perhaps,
somethirg more mysterious is at work-its very location acting like some
hidden magnet, its ley lines and stone circles drawing towards it every kind
of arcane discipline.
Here, with this deck and book, you have the chance to explore the
world of English magic directly, engaging with its peculiar charms and
eccentricities. And with what excellent guides! Andy Letcher offers mean-
ings for the cards, and ways of workitg magically with them, which are
exciting and original. Even if you know the tarot bachvards, his insights and
suggestions will surprise you. The images of Rex Van Ryt and Steve Dooley
play on the imagination, evoking memories of drearnS, of the past, of some
of the danger and fascination of a fairground in earlier times. Above all, The
English Magic Throt invites you to engagewith it, to enter into its world, and
to trust it to work its magic on you.
Carr-Gomm
-Philip
youth, Henry Tudor was muscular, athletic, and charismatic: very far from
the portly and irascible monarch we know from the portraits, and by reputa-
tion. He was a lover of music, kept a full-time Fool, and employed a Master
of Revels. It is possible that a joustitg accident, which left him Permanendy
lame, contributed to his change of personaliry. He is most famous for hav-
irg had six wives ("divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived"
as the rhyme has it) and for instigating the Reformation. Henry was married
first to Catherine of Aragon, but she was unable to provide him with a male
heir. \7hen the Pope refused ro grant him a divorce, Henry took the radical
srep of breaking from the Roman Catholic Church, and establishing himself
as the head of the new, Protestant, Church of England. (Those events were
vividly broughr ro life in the BBC's 2015 adaptation of Hilary Mantelt Wolf
Hall.) The religious turmoil that followed this decision had profound effects
on England, and the world, and we live with those consequences to this d^y.
However, with his marriage annulled, Henry was free to wed Anne Boleyn,
with whom he had a daughter, Elizabeth. Henry appears in The English
Introduction
v reign. He was followed by his half sister M"ry I in 1553 who was every bit
as zealous a Roman Catholic. She instigated a vigorous and bloody counter-
reformation. Her reign, too, was destined to be as short as it was turbulent,
and she died having ruled for only five years.
By contrast, the Elizabethan era (1558-1603) is regarded by many as
Introduction
v he did calculus: he appears in The English Magic Tarot as the Srar. There was
also a resurgence of interest in the magic of our prehistoric past. Antiquarians
like John Aubrey began to survey the ancient monumenrs of Avebrry and
Stonehenge and suggest that they belonged, nor ro the Romans, but to the
ancient British Druids. It turns out he was wrong-stonehenge predates the
Iron Ag. Druids by thousands of years-but his work led to the revival of
Druidry that is so prevalent in England, and around the world, today. Charles
II died in I 658 at which poinr our historical period ends.
That concludes the summary. Obviously, there's much more to know
about the period but I'll leave it for you to pursue. For no\ /, we need ro
move on to the question of whar, exactly, is English magic.
Innoduction
v and twentieth centuries and continues today. The list of famous English
magicians and occult orders from the last hundred years is impressive. The
Order of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley, Lady Frieda Harris, Dion
Fortune, the great tarot innovators A. E. 'Waite and Pamela Colman Smith,
Austin Osman Spare, Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente (who respec-
tively invented and shaped modern \Wicca), Ross Nichols and his succes-
sor Philip Carr-Gomm (who effectively created modern Druidry), Peter J.
Carroll (who invented Chaos Magick), and now the graphic-novelist Alan
Moore, to name just a few. To these illustrious names, w€ must add the
many, many people whose names we'll never know, who practised magic
away from prying eyes.
Two streams or currents run through English magic, as ennvined as
coiling snakes. One is high or learned magic, which traces its roots all the
way back to Hellenistic Egyp, and the texts attributed to the legend ary
Hermes Trismegistus. High magic incorporates astral magic, the Jewish sys-
tem of magic known as Cabbala, and a good smattering of Neo-Platonic
philosophy. Consequently, it requires much book learning and extremely
complicated rituals, performed with exacting precision at the correct astro-
logical time, with the correct incense, with the right ritual tools, and so on.
John Dee was a high magician, as was Aleister Crowley. High magic was
epitomised by the Order of the Golden Dawn.
By contrast, low magic, the magic done by ordinary folk, consists of a
body of lore and practices that have simply emerged through the passage of
time, handed down through the generations. These practices include wort-
cunning, charms, dowsing, divination, healing spells, the liftirg of curses,
and apotropaic devices to ward offthe evil eye. Practitioners of low magic-
who might have included your grandmother, curtseying to the new moon-
were called cunning men and women.
The streams of high and low magic cross repeatedly through the history
of English magic-Wicca, for example, mixes both-and they also cross in
the tarot. On the one hand, the cards have been traditionallv used in that
Introduction
v the world, mightnt we be better off doing it through the laws of physics?
Moore's answer is that magic, being an art, should be used in the service of
Art. As fellow storytellers, we agree wholeheartedly. \il7hen magic affects the
world, it does so as much through stories as through any occult forces. \7hat
the physicists forget is that stories are among the most powerful forces on
Earth.
\We ve already met some powerful stories. The idea that a complete
understanding of the world can be achieved through the scientific method,
through experiment, is one such story. It caught hold during the seven-
teenth century and utterly changed the world. Not for nothing do we call it
"the Scientific Revolution." Likewise, Henry VIII's break with the Roman
Catholic Church and his ushering in of the Reformation radically changed
the way the English saw themselves and their place in the world (not for-
getting the many people who died in the resulting religious conf icts). The
stories changed and so did they.
The tarot, too, is replete with stories. Some say that the cards emerged
in fifreenth century Italy as an exotic card game. Others say that the cards
contain the key to a secret tradition of esoteric wisdom that stretches back
to ancient Egypr. The truth, I think, is less importanr than the fact that the
cards affract stories.
\7e, too, are made of stories. \7hen we tell our friends about that l.g-
endary parry we went to at the weekend, we turn the events of a whole night
into a narrative that lasts but a few minutes. (Listen the next time you hear
someone doing it. I can guarantee that they'll tell the same story, over and
again, in exactly the same way every time). Ve tell stories about who we are ,
what we like doing, where we came from, how we grew up. \fle are Homo
nnrrnns, the storytelling creature.
But we also have a whole libra ry of inner stories that we tell only to
ourselves. Some are bequeathed to us by our parents. Some are the product
of our particular psychology and life-experiences. For the most part, these
inner stories are unconscious, to the extent that we are simply in them, like
Innoduction 11
.t, ON THE GENESIS OF THE ENCLISH MACIC TAROT
Let me tell you a story, the sto ry of how these cards came to be made.
I discovered the tarot when I was a boy, in the Nemesis strip that ran
in the British sci-fi comic, 2000AD. I ve been fascinated by the cards ever
since. I gave my first readingatthe age of eleven and over the years have used
a variery of packs, includirg the Rider-W'aite and Crowley Thoth decks. I
was therefore delighted when a mutual friend introduced me to the occult
artist and fellow tarot enthusiast, Rex Van Rytr, not least because Rex began
his career as an artist at 2000A.D. \7e got on famously. He invited me back
to his granite Dartmoor longhouse, where in front of his wood burner, and
over a bottle of fine whisky, we talked late into the night. Arranged around
the walls are portraits Rex has made of English magicians. He calls it his p,-t
"Hall of Magicians." With the firelight dancing about their faces, it proved
a most conducive atmosphere.
We both agreed that the tarot cards were like frames from a graphic
novel, or stills from a movie, but unlike either of these art forms, the
"viewer" has the power to move the cards, to rearrange them at will, and so
change how the story goes. Why couldnt a character from one card reap-
pear in another? Mightn't seve ral cards show the same scene from different
angles, or the same location at different times? Each card would be more like
a window onto a complete world than a static, standalone image.
Then, as the effects of the whisky began to be felt, our conversation
got more effusive. Ve started talking about how Isaac Newton had been
an alchemist and though we were quite sure he d never used the tarot,
we started wondering what a deck of cards used by Newton would have
looked like. I imagined Newton pickirg up a deck of well-thumbed cards
at some horse fair, and applying his quizzical mind to their strange imag-
ery.That idle notion was, I believe, the genesis of Tlte English Magic Tarot.
Rex, who d always wanted to make a tarot deck, thought it might be fun
to create Isaac Newton's non-existent cards-set, of course, in the heyday
Intoduction L3
v somethirg that ran through them all and bound them together, somethitg
unique to English magic. So the riddles do all point to szmething.It's a kind of
treasure hunt, if you will, and there is an actual answer at the end.
Here, we took our inspiration from the English artist, Kit Williams,
who, in the L970s, electrified the nation with his treasure-hunt book,
Masquerade. Readers had to solve the puzzles in the book to find some genu-
ine treasure, a beautiful and priceless golden hare that Kit had buried deep
within the English counrryside.
Well I'm afraid there's no actual treasure to be found by solvirg the
riddles of The English MagicTarot, other than the inner treasure of the magi-
cal quest, and a deeper, more nuanced understandirg of English magic. It
will takeyou manyhours of research to follow up all the pointers, but ifyou
do, your understandirg of both the tarot and English magic will undoubt-
edlv be enriched.
*lly the least important part, because what matters is the meanin gs lou dis-
cover for yourself, For example, you may find that a certain card appears,
without fail, whenever someone is about to change jobs. That should become
your default meaning fot the card, even if it rides roughshod over what the
book says. Or you might find your attention is drawn to some tiny detail at
the periphery of the card. No matter. Trust your intuition.
tVhat follows is simply
-y interpretation of each card. Although my
interpretations are based on long conversations with Rex, on many years'
study of the tarot, and a fair bit of life experience to boot, they remain my
interpretations. If what I ve written is helpful to lou, then that's great-read
on. But if any of my interpretations jar, dont hesitate to put yours first.
This approach makes sense, for if symbols were of the kind that image
'We
A has meaning B, *hy would we actually need them? could simply write
them down in a long list and read off their answers like a snippet of com-
puter code. A = B. No, symbols arent like that. They're supposed to catalyse
the imagination in ways that can't quite be put into words. That's why Rex
and I dont talk about doing tarot "readings." \7e prefer "tellings." We want
the cards to speak to you.
To reach the point where the cards "speak" requires putting yourself
in the appropriate magical state of consciousness. taditionally this has
been achieved in a number of ways: by sitting quietly or dancing to ecstatic
music; through the magical theatrics of dim lights, candles, and incense; or,
for the brave, the ritual use of power plants. The method is less important
than where it leads you and what you do with your experiences afterwards.
The magical state of consciousness is a kind of remembering because it's
somethirg we all know from childhood. Itt the state we were in when we
were lost in play, when, without a hint of self-consciousness, we could impro-
vise stories for hours at a time. Sadly, most of us lose this abiliry as the wild
shoots of our imaginations get hacked back by school, peer pressure, and the
that's fine. I recommend a fluid approach whereby you simply notice when
the less positive aspects of a card are comirg to the fore. Reversed meanings
can help in the beginni.g, but with time and practice you will learn to judge
a card's significance by the overall feel of the spread. Remember: every situ-
ation, good or ill, will change.
Here, without further ado, are my pointers to the cards of The English
Magic Tarot. I hope you find them useful. Itt time to take your part in the
endless story.