SHUFFLING THRU HISTORY III: Western Occultism & the Smith-Waite Deck

Welcome to one of the most highly documented periods in Tarot history: the codification of western occultism, the rise and prominence of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the creation of the Smith-Waite Tarot deck. It's a time marked by problematic syncretism, in which initiatory fraternities invented stories and misappropriated spiritual knowledge in an attempt to make their version of the Tarot more "legitimate." Although many of these practices have been cloaked in secrecy for centuries, we're bringing them to light in today's chapter of Tarot history!

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Today's Sources: Etteilla, or A Way to Entertain Yourself with a Deck of Cards byJean-Baptiste Alliette, "The Four Cardinal Virtues and How Freemasonry Came to Influence Tarot" by P.D. Newman, The Primeval World, Analyzed and Compared to the Modern World by Antoine Court de Gebelin, Promethean Ambitions by William R. Newman, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance by Leah DeVun, Talking to the Gods by Susan Johnson Graf, Witchcraft Today: An Encyclopedia of Wiccan and Neopagan Traditions by James R. Lewis, "Practical Occultism" by Helena Blavatsky, Theosophy and the Golden Dawn by David Reigle, Modern Ritual Magic: the Rise of Western Occultism by Francis King, Book of the Artists by Henry Tuckerman, The National Encyclopedia of American Biography, "The Deck of Cards That Made Tarot A Global Phenomenon" by Laura June Topolsky for Atlas Obscura, "The Jewish History of Tarot" by Zo Jacobi, Pictorial Key to the Tarot by A.E. Waite

Music by AJ Ackleson. Thanks AJ!