General Book of the Tarot

BY A. E. THIERENS

INTRODUCTION BY A. E. WAITE

INTRODUCTION

IF ever a book should be written on the Romance of Symbolism, its hypothesis of interpretation, its traditional and imputed histories, a considerable space would be allotted assuredly to Tarot-cards; while seeing that at this day there is more concern in the subject than was felt even in the past, there would be a call not only to survey that which lies behind us, a strange field of speculation and reverie, but the prospect extending in front, since every year brings forth some new proposition and provides material for future imaginative flights. It is very curious to contrast those comparatively sober terms in which Court de Gebelin introduced his discovery of the cards, 1 though he sought to prove that their origin was in Ancient Egypt, with the fantastic declamations of Éliphas Lévi, who affirmed not only that they were the Alphabet of Enoch, Hermes Trismegistus and Cadmus but the Gospel of all Gospels, a synthesis of science and the universal key of the Kabbalah. . . .