THE TAROT OF THE BOHEMIANS: THE MOST ANCIENT BOOK IN THE WORLD FOR THE USE OF INITIATES
Book Details + Condition: William Rider & Son (London). Second Edition Revised, 1919. By Papus (Gerard Encausse). Translated by A.P. Morton. With Preface by A.E. Waite. 8vo hardcover with unique and attractive variant binding, including royal purple cloth boards, and blind stamp astrological symbols and gilt title to the front and spine. 355 pages, with Index. Includes several black-and-white engraved vignettes and illustrations throughout the text, including two vignettes for each of the tarot trumps and many Kabbalistic, astrological and other diagrams (the last one being double-paged). The book was first published in French in 1889, and an English translation followed in 1892. The first Waite edition was published in 1910, and reissued in 1914. It was then reprinted in 1919 in a somewhat larger format - this is that edition. The 1919 and earlier editions are considered to be the "best" editions, as they include the short "Preface to the French Edition" by Papus which was omitted from later printings. Gerard Encausse (1865 - 1916), whose esoteric pseudonym was Papus, was a Spanish-born French physician, hypnotist, and popularizer of Occultism, who founded the modern Martinist Order. In this work, Papus discusses advanced topics of the tarot deck, and espouses theories of its ancient origins.
A solid and clean copy of this very scarce title, with normal light aging and wear to cloth boards, mainly at edges and corners; chafed spine ends; interior front hinge cracked with old tape present, and binding remains firm (tape also present to hinge at title/frontis pages); interior is clean and free of markings, save inked name to reverse of title page.
"Tarot of the Bohemians, along with the Pictorial Key to the Tarot, constitute the core literature of 19th and early 20th century 'Tarotism'. However, PTK is to the TOB as arithmetic is to differential calculus. If you have no experience reading occult literature of this period, you may find yourself profoundly lost after the first couple of pages, staring at the abundant and profoundly esoteric tables, charts and diagrams, trying to get a clue as to what Papus is talking about. Papus is after a 'Theory of Everything', and finds evidence for it in the Tarot and a set of correspondences with everything from the tetragrammaton to numerology and astrology. His claim that the Tarot preserves ancient, profound knowledge by way of the Romany/Gypsies (i.e. 'Bohemians') all the way back to Egypt, India and Atlantis is unsubstantiated. There is no evidence of any kind of playing or fortune-telling cards prior to the thirteenth century, either in literature or folklore. Note that playing cards could not have become popular until the introduction of printing in Europe. The Tarot is believed to have originated from an elaborate deck of cards invented in Italy in the fourteenth century. The Romany people probably started to use this deck for cartomancy (fortune telling by cards) about a century thereafter. As Papus notes, all of the early cards depict people dressed in the costume of this period. Late in the book, Papus condescends to pen a section, in his words, 'for the ladies' (cue Barry White music here), which gives some basic instruction in cartomancy using the Tarot deck. However, this is by far the weakest portion of this book. Papus is at his best when he is spinning elaborate webs of correspondence between the Tarot and the Macrocosm. This book is hard work, but if you master it you will have a profound grasp of the inner life of the Tarot deck." [FROM ESOTERIC ARCHIVES]
