‘Taschen to release Waite-Colman Smith tarot collection’

    

Taschen has done it again. This time the publisher of lavish books and other sumptuous treats is poised to release its take on the A.E. Waite/Pamela Colman Smith tarot deck. You know, the one we all get started with, although it is more than enough for a lifetime of contemplation. Coming soon, and open for pre-ordering now, is a box of book and deck. From the publicity:

Doors into Our Uncharted Depths

The Story of the World’s

Most Popular Tarot

A unique edition of bright texts, brilliant images, and historic reprints, this kit provides everything that both beginners and advanced Tarot users might need and want to read cards for themselves and to study and experience this cultural gem in all its beauty and significance. The valuable collector’s box includes a complete deck of the Waite Smith Tarot cards and Waite’s famous companion book The Key to the Tarot. In this illustrated book, with texts and images compiled by Johannes Fiebig, the Tarot cards become psychological mirrors and signposts leading toward new answers and personal solutions. The fact that this works well can be attributed to certain advantages inherent to the Waite-Smith cards, and these points are illuminated in an essay by Rachel Pollack.

All 78 cards are presented individually and in detail. The explanatory texts provide several dimensions and levels of interpretation, including concrete practical tips. Further, the book offers a new feature: the quick check. This presents a concise hint regarding the meaning of each card in each possible position of all the spread patterns featured in the book.

When Arthur E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith developed their Tarot deck in London in 1909, nobody could have predicted that it would have an overwhelming renaissance starting around 60 years later. What were the lives, works, and passions of these creators like? Pamela Colman Smith and Arthur E. Waite are brought vividly back to life in essays by Mary K. Greer and Robert A. Gilbert.

The authors

Johannes Fiebig is one of the most successful authors in the field of Tarot and a leading expert in the psychological interpretation of symbols. He published his first book in 1984. Since then, his books have sold more than 2 million copies, translated into more than a dozen languages. In 1989, he co-founded and co-owned Königsfurt publishing house, which later became the publishing houses Königsfurt-Urania and AGM-Urania, of which he was managing director until 2018. Since then, he has been an independent writer based in Kiel.

Mary K. Greer is one of the world’s leading Tarot scholars and experts, famous by her outstanding, both exciting and useful Tarot blog. She is an author, teacher, and professional tarot consultant known for her innovative teaching techniques. With an M.A. in English Literature, she taught Tarot in colleges for fifteen years. Since the 1980s and her book Tarot for Your Self (1984), Mary belongs to the pioneers of the tarot as self-experience and as a tool of personal transformation and empowerment. She is a co-author of Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story (2018). She lives in California.

Rachel Pollack is the author of 46 books, including two award-winning novels, a book of poetry, a translation, with scholar David Vine, of Oedipus Rex (2012), and a series of books about Tarot known around the world. Her first book, Seventy-Eight Degrees Of Wisdom, was published in 1980 and has been in print ever since. Her work has been translated into 15 languages, and she has taught and lectured on four continents. She also is a visible artist, creator of The Shining Tribe Tarot, and has collaborated with artist Robert M. Place to create the Raziel Tarot, and the Burning Serpent Oracle. She lived in Rhinebeck, New York for many years, where she died in 2023.

R. A. Gilbert is a retired antiquarian bookseller and a prolific author and editor in the field of Western Esotericism, specializing in the life and work of A. E. Waite and in the history and lives of members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. His books include A.E. Waite: Magician of Many Parts (1987); The Golden Dawn Scrapbook (1997); Gnosticism and Gnosis (2012). Gilbert read Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Bristol, and received his doctorate from the University of London for a thesis on the publication of esoteric literature in the Victorian era. He lives a Somerset Village, England.

Click here to explore the pre-order process. Treat yourself or someone else important to something extraordinary for the holidays.

     

‘Reprints of Secret Teachings coming to market’

    

Taschen

I hope you are enjoying this unique time with the people and in the traditions that are most important to you.

Speaking of people and traditions, new editions of Manly Palmer Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages are hitting the market courtesy of both the Philosophical Research Society and Taschen. There’s something for everyone.

PRS

From the PRS come reprints of the classic hardcover and paperback versions you know well. This is the 1977 Diamond Jubilee edition as reprinted this year. The hardcover is available for $110, and the reduced size paperback is yours for $95.

What’s new—well, not exactly new, but newly made available to us—is A Study Guide to The Secret Teachings of All Ages. $25 per copy.

Originally simple mimeographed pages shared with students at the PRS in Los Angeles, the text now is in book form for your edification as you approach the daunting and dense volume from 1928.

Taschen

From Taschen comes a Secret Teachings in a lavish format that you would expect from this publisher in a run of 5,000 copies at $500 each. Actually, this isn’t due out until next month, but orders are being taken now. What you get for the money is the hardcover (356 pages) inside a slipcase and with foldout art; a companion book (256 pages); and four prints in a folio.

The companion book contains summaries of the chapters in the main text, plus art you’ve never seen, photos taken by Hall, and essays by Mitch Horowitz and Jessica Hundley. Those four special edition prints are based on art created by J. Augustus Knapp and M.K. Serailian, Hall’s collaborators, and come from the PRS archives. Read all about that here.

     

‘Taschen launches Library of Esoterica with Tarot book’

     

Click to enlarge.

I prayed this day would come, and, well, it’s almost here.

The “it” is the launch of a Taschen series of books on esoterica. I have no information on what this group of books will address, but the first volume, due out next month, will be titled simply Tarot.

Maybe you recall me telling you years ago about Taschen’s The Book of Symbols and Alchemy & Mysticism?

Anyway, from the publicity:

Trace the hidden history of tarot in the first volume from Taschen’s Library of Esoterica, a series documenting the creative ways we strive to connect to the divine. Artfully arranged according to the sequencing of the Major and Minor Arcana, this visual compendium gathers more than 500 cards and works of original art from around the world in the ultimate exploration of a centuries-old art form.

To explore the tarot is to explore ourselves, to be reminded of the universality of our longing for meaning, for purpose, and for a connection to the divine. This 600-year-old tradition reflects not only a history of seekers, but also our journey of artistic expression and the ways we communicate our collective human story.

For many in the West, tarot exists in the shadow place of our cultural consciousness, a metaphysical tradition assigned to the dusty glass cabinets of the arcane. Its history, long and obscure, has been passed down through secret writing, oral tradition, and the scholarly tomes of philosophers and sages. Hundreds of years and hundreds of creative hands—mystics and artists often working in collaboration—have transformed what was essentially a parlor game into a source of divination and system of self-exploration, as each new generation has sought to evolve the form and reinterpret the medium.

Author Jessica Hundley traces this fascinating history in Tarot, the debut volume in Taschen’s Library of Esoterica series. The book explores the symbolic meaning behind more than 500 cards and works of original art, two thirds of which never have been published outside of the decks themselves. It’s the first visual compendium of its kind, spanning from medieval to modern, and artfully arranged according to the sequencing of the 78 cards of the Major and Minor Arcana. It explores the powerful influence of tarot as muse to artists like Salvador Dalí and Niki de Saint Phalle and includes the decks of nearly 100 diverse contemporary artists from around the world, all of whom have embraced the medium for its capacity to push cultural identity forward. Rounding out the volume are excerpts from thinkers such as Éliphas Lévi, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell; a foreword by artist Penny Slinger; a guide to reading the cards by Johannes Fiebig; and an essay on oracle decks by Marcella Kroll.

The editor and author: Jessica Hundley is an author, filmmaker, and journalist. She has written for Vogue, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times, and has authored books on artists including Dennis Hopper, David Lynch, and Gram Parsons. Hundley often explores the counterculture in her work, with a focus on metaphysics, psychedelia, and magic.

The designer: Thunderwing is a Los Angeles-based multi-disciplinary studio co-founded in 2007 by Nic & J. B. Taylor. Collaborating on a diverse array of projects, Thunderwing creates branding and design for film, publishing, fashion, food, music, and interior design.

The contributing authors: Johannes Fiebig, born in Cologne in 1953, is one of the most successful authors on tarot and a leading expert of the psychological interpretation of symbols and oracles. His main field of interest focuses on the use of tarot and other symbolic languages as humanistic, psychological tools.

Marcella Kroll is an artist, tarot reader, metaphysical teacher, and host of the podcast Saved by the Spell. She is a program director for the Los Angeles Public Library, leading public classes for teens on Tarot and other divination subjects, and is the creator of two popular oracle decks.

Library of Esoterica explores how centuries of artists have given form to mysticism, translating the arcane and the obscure into enduring, visionary works of art. Each subject is showcased through both modern and archival imagery culled from private collectors, libraries, and museums around the globe. The result forms an inclusive visual history, a study of our primal pull to dream and nightmare, and the creative ways we strive to connect to the divine.


The book is divided into four chapters:

Stepping into Oblivion: The Evolution of the Arcana
Magic & Manifestation: The Attributes of Archetypes
Visionary Exploration: The Progression of a Practice
Speaking in Symbols: The Cards as a Tool

Tarot will be a hardcover book of 520 pages and measuring 6.7 by 9.4 inches. $40.
     

‘The Book of Symbols at Mythology Café’

     

At the meeting next Tuesday of Mythology Cafe, the New York City Roundtable of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, the group will discuss that wonderful publication The Book of Symbols. Written and compiled by skilled hands of the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, and published by Taschen in 2010, The Book of Symbols runs more than 800 pages and delivers hundreds of illustrated lessons on how man has harvested meaningful symbologies from the natural world and ages of human culture. It’s difficult to describe; I’ll have to dig up the review I wrote of it four years ago for some magazine or other. The book is a masterpiece, and I have found it useful countless times in aiding my own understanding of symbolisms in various esoteric contexts. It’s all here: the mystical, the practical, the mythological, the factual, the astral; animal, mineral, vegetable; the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s an amazing document.

The meeting will take place April 1 at Caffe Dante, the historic nook on MacDougal Street near the corner of Bleecker in the Village. Just a block west from our old haunt. Will begin at 7 p.m., and likely conclude at nine. (I am a little anxious to see this new Dante. It closed for renovations three months ago, and I have not seen the new look yet. It was such comfortable and comforting space, with its incredible, illustrious history.... Well, we shall see.)

Courtesy Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York

The organizers ask that we bring our books along, as there will be group discussion. “Choose 3 to 5 images from The Book of Symbols. Subjectively engage with each image/symbol. Prepare to share your critical and intimate encounter(s).”

It’ll be a great night.
     

Alchemy Journal

     
The new (as above: spring/so below: autumn) issue of Alchemy Journal is hot off the presses!

Vol. 10, No. 1

Northern Spring/Southern Autumn

(March 2009)

Theme: Alchemical Feminine

• The Modern Mystery School by Gudni Gudnason
• The Influence of Women in Alchemy by Abigail McBride
• The Mother-Space, the Ultimate Alchemical Feminine by Dr. Bruce Fisher
• Anima Mundi, Soul-Filled World by Iona Miller
• The Seed in Spring by Steve Kalec
• The alchemical feminine in new works by Michael Pearce
• The Salts of Life by Karen Bartlett
• Shekhinah, the Feminine Presence of God by Dr. Theresa Ibis
• Beyond Passions by Tamara Nikolic and Jay Hochberg
• Mater Alchemæ by Rubaphilos Salfluere
• To Pursue Their Full Measure of Happiness: Sex, Gender, Politics and Alchemy by Andrew Minkin
• Twenty-First Century Turba Philosophorum: the 2008 International Alchemy Conference by Dennis William Hauck
• Hymn to Kali by Ramdulal Nandi
• A profile of Modern Magister Jeannie Radcliffe
• Russell Burton House, plus Nicki Scully and Linda Star Wolf reviewed by Rubaphilos Salfluere; Dr. Ross Mack reviewed by Iona Miller; Paul Foster Case reviewed by Darcy Kuntz; Russell Burton House reviewed by Mike Ridpath; Ruth Rusca and Dr. Christine R. Page reviewed by Alexander Price; and Alexander Roob reviewed by Jay Hochberg.

Through the kind offices of Paul Hardacre, editor, my review of Alchemy & Mysticism appears here:

The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy & Mysticism
By Alexander Roob
Taschen, 2006, 575 pp., US$14.99
ISBN 978-3-8228-5038-1

In celebration of Taschen’s 25th anniversary, the world-renowned publisher of artistic and sumptuously illustrated books proceeded to create a line of titles covering all manner of iconic and symbolic messages, from movies and photography, to art and architecture, to tattoos and even chairs. Inevitably the publishing spree would touch on esoteric arts. The result is The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy & Mysticism by Alexander Roob. Formerly a professor of fine arts at the University of Hamburg, before joining the faculty at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart in 2002, Roob is not identified anywhere in the text as an Alchemist, Rosicrucian or Freemason, and yet he obviously is well attuned to those sciences’ hidden wisdom and the innumerable symbols communicating occult knowledge.

“A rich world of images has etched itself into the memory of modern man,” Roob’s Introduction begins, “despite the fact that it is not available in public collections, but lies hidden in old manuscripts and prints.” Medieval art depicting Christian mysticism leads to the Romantic work of William Blake, and along the way the symbols of Kabbalah, Alchemy and Freemasonry are seen as very closely related, and themselves often shown to be parallel to teachings in medicine, chemistry and color theory.

It is not easy to write a review of this book. If a picture really is worth a thousand words, then this book has a million things to say. There isn’t a single page past the Introduction that does not feature at least one esoteric illustration, and it is that 26-page Introduction that contains most of the paragraphs of text to read. The majority of text throughout the book consists of the detailed captions to the many illustrations and other descriptions for context. This book really is a museum, as in “a place of the Muses,” in that it gathers the studies of the Arts and Sciences, and more.

Roob does not play favorites. Both spiritual Alchemy and the work in the laboratory are explored. Their histories, mechanics and relevance are presented in detail, and it is shown that knowledge of both is necessary to succeed in the Great Work. And so, Roob’s goal is to define the many symbols one would need to undertake those labors. Perhaps an Alchemist with many years of experience could find deficiencies of this book, but this reviewer cannot believe a detail has been omitted.

The first chapter, titled ‘Macrocosm,’ begins with this admonition taken from an Enlightenment era French text: “I assure you that anyone who attempts a literal understanding of the writings of the hermetic philosophers will lose himself in the twists and turns of a labyrinth from which he will never find the way out.” That’s a daunting signpost to find at the outset, but if nothing else, this author shows that to be true. And that must explain the exhausting compendium of facts, speculations, myths and artistic samplings that are submitted to the reader via the hundreds of color and black-and-white illustrations, sometimes with incongruent results.

It is the fall of Adam and the banishment of Lucifer to the dark abyss – “two cosmic catastrophes” – that produced the “primaterial chaos of the elements” needed for the Work. Indeed the fall of Adam (the Hebrew name means “red earth,” as in the red of the lapis) marks the end of “inner unity” for man, casting him into the “external world of opposites.” The earliest understanding of a first man is shown as androgynous. “The feminine that was essential in Adam, before it was separated from him in sleep, was his heavenly spouse Sophia (wisdom).” The narrative explanation continues, decoding many plates from Hieroglyphica Sacra drawn by the theosophist Dionysos A. Freher:

“Adam, created in a state of purity and perfection, is at the point of intersection between the divine world of angels and the dark world of fire. Three creatures make claims on him. 1) Sophia, the companion of his youth. 2) Satan, below him. 3) The spirit of this world…. In order to force him to a decision, there follows the temptation of the Tree of Knowledge. The two S’s, Sophia and Satan, are the two contrary snakes of the staff of Mercury (Caduceus) and must be united.”

Many concepts, including Chaos, Saturnine Night, Torment of the Metals, and Resurrection lead up to Aurora, the sun, or “the final maturity of matter after it has passed through all seven spheres.” Gold.

One important service this book renders that cannot be ignored is its demystifying of Masonic symbols, especially those of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite. The double-headed eagle, which to my knowledge never really was satisfactorily explained in AASR rituals as an esoteric symbol, is shown here connected to Apollo, the sun. The pelican of Rose Croix Masonry is symbolic of the lapis, an agent of regeneration. Other Masonic symbols explained in the Alchemical context are the Pillars in the Porch of the Temple, as Sun and Moon and fire and water; the Winding Stairway, as the “slow and organic course of the process of spiritual maturity;” and the Sun – where the Master of the lodge presides – of course as the “imperishable spirit, immaterial gold.”

Author Roob devotes considerable space to explaining the role of the feminine in Alchemy. It is shown that the word “matter” comes from the Latin root “mater,” as in “maternal.” But perhaps to allow for different points of view, seemingly varied interpretations of the feminine role are given. In one instance, Eve represents the element mercury, complementing Adam’s sulphur. Under the heading ‘Conjunctio,’ we learn “Woman dissolves man, and he makes her solid. That is, the spirit dissolves the body and makes it soft, and the body fixes the spirit.” An early 16th century painting is narrated thus: “I am hot and dry Sol, and you Luna are cold and moist. When we couple and come together… I will with flattery take your soul from you.”

A German engraving from 1628 depicting “coitus,” shows King Gabricius and his sister Beya who want to embrace “to conceive a son whose like is unknown to this world.” This union causes Gabricius’ death, after which he is “enclosed in her womb, so that nothing can be seen of him. So great is her love that she has absorbed him entire into her nature and divided him into indivisible parts.” A 17th century color painting shows a royal couple seeking to give birth to a son with a red head, black eyes and white feet, those colors serving as crucial symbols.

The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy & Mysticism is an encyclopedic work that unites centuries of religious, mythological, artistic and literary traditions to explain many complicated nuances surrounding Alchemy. For its overwhelming beauty it is highly recommended, but its step-by-step decoding of so many arcane or misunderstood symbols will prove to be its enduring value to students of the esoteric arts. This book could be improved only by making it larger – not thicker, but larger – in a coffeetable size. Perhaps for the publisher’s golden anniversary.

This issue of Alchemy Journal is available for USD$15 plus postage.

Take out a subscription for 2009 and receive two issues (March and September) for only USD$30 plus postage.

Archived issues, submission guidelines and advertising rates available here.

Alchemy Journal is published by Salamander and Sons for the International Alchemy Guild