The Platonist/Volume 2/Number 8/The Taro

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The Platonist, Volume 2, Number 8
edited by Thomas Moore Johnson

The Taro

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2760313The Platonist, Volume 2, Number 8 — The Taro

The Taro is a series of leaves or an unbound book coming down to us across the ages from a primitive epoch. The name is merely a disguising transportation of the Latin word, Rota, or Wheel. We shall presently see in what respects the name of Wheel is applicable to it.

By ordinary men, whose reasoning powers are ruled,—rather should we say, are thrown into disuse, warped, or even obliterated by the mists of prejudice, the extreme antiquity of this book would be sufficient to cause them to consider it merely as a venerable toy played with in the infancy of the world, and not to be seriously considered in this highly enlightened nineteenth century. The true occultist, divesting himself of'every prejudice, as of a garment which would impede him in the race he has to run, investigates all things; old or new, purporting to appertain to the Occult Sciences, however absurd, uninviting or difficult they may at first sight appear. We only care to invite the attention of such as these to the subject of the Taro.

To get a precise idea of its import, we must first know something of the remote period in which it was invented. In this short paper we cannot pretend to give sufficient proofs of what we advance. Were we to do so, we should require to displace Plato altogether from this journal. We can only indicate the path, and leave the student to trace out for himself whether or not it leads him to the goal he would reach.

This so-called primitive epoch was in reality a time of the greatest intellectual activity in a race of men who had for many generations been in the ascending scale of civilization, scientific culture, and attainment of knowledge. This race had gradually discovered that to gain knowledge by the external senses only, as even the lower animals do, was a very slow process, and that the life of man was too short to enable him, however great his natural genius might be, to achieve more than a very limited and uncertain result having only some remote relationship to the great truths of the universe. What led them to avail themselves of the joint use of the male attribute of reason and the female attribute of intuition is beyond our limits to enter upon. This process was then called inspiration, and those who practised it were called munis or inspired men. By way of illustration of our meaning we may mention what is known to mathematicians as a matter of history. About 300 B. C., there lived in India one Arya Bhatta, who has the credit of being the inventor of algebra. He was one of the first of the uninspired philosophers, when the race had entered on the descending scale. Before him was a whole series of munis or inspired men. They had invented mathematics and algebra. Arya Bhatta, only, in all probability, collected, and put in some kind of form, a small portion of the discoveries of generations of munis, as their knowledge was fast dying out, and so got the credit of having invented algebra. This Arya Bhatta also knew the diameter of the earth, or squaring of the circle, to within a few decimal places, and we know no more now. The munis had, at their culminating point, penetrated all the mysteries of creation and mathematics followed as a natural consequence. The orbits of the sun, moon, and planets, were to them familiar knowledge. The mysteries of polar motion and its dependent “procession of the equinoxes,” with the vast changes it had made in the course of ages in the earth’s cycles and seasons were all fathomed and esoterically symbolized by them, which symbols remain to this day. Not only had they arrived at an intuition of the mechanism of the macrocosm of great world, but also that of the microcosm or smaller world of man, and the intimate analogy, mutual relationship and interdependence of the two.

It was from the very sublimity of their knowledge of this interdependence that they conceived the idea of the rota or wheel, i. e., the sun, moon, and planets moving in their orbits, on wheels within wheels, expressing the cosmogony and continuance of creation, and symbolising it in such a form that the microcosm could by using it according to nature’s laws, discover his own relation to it in his daily life, beginning at any point of time, and tracing it backward or forward from that time. They knew that nothing whatever happens by chance, and that if, under certain conditions, man’s imagination and will are concentrated upon any subject he wishes to know, what may appear as a fortuitous disposition of the leaves of the Taro, becomes to the seer an open book in which he may read an answer to the question seriously occupying his mind. The leaves or cards are placed in the form of a circle, which consists of four trines. 4x3=12, or the 12 signs of the zodiac, or 12 houses of heaven. In the center are placed the four modes of conceiving creative unity or the four aces. These bear a relation to the four trines, and they must be considered in relation to the subject proposed and to each other. The colours also of the aces and the trines correspond. There are seventy-eight cards, of which twenty-one are keys or seven trines. There are really twenty-two, but the additional one is 0 or zero and not counted as it represents the primordial chaos. Wherefore it is 7x3 plus 1. The cards having been placed according to the rules around this zodiacal circle, the apparently fortuitous collocation of them is in reality a movement analogous to planetary motion, inasmuch as it proceeds from the will or word of the microcosm. As the learned P. Christian says, “The science of will, the beginning of all wisdom and source of all power, is contained in twenty-two Arcana, or symbolical hieroglyphs, of which each attribute veils a sense, and of which the whole composes an absolute Doctrine, which is summed up in the memory by its correspondence with the letters of the sacred language and with the numbers which appertain to those letters. Each letter and each number, as they are contemplated, or as the word utters them, expresses a reality of the divine world, the intellectual world, and the physical world. Each arcanum, made visible and tangible by one of these pictures, is a formula of the law and of a human activity in its relation with the spiritual forces and the material forces the combination of which produces the phenomena of life.” The student will therefore perceive that it is an astrological system. In fact, the science of astrology is a part of the Taro, and was taken from it, in all probability, and is therefore not so perfect as the system of which it forms only a portion.

It is a well known saying in India that an Astrologer without clairvoyance is like a wife without a husband. So it is with the Taro. In order to use it with complete success, the artist must have attained to lucidity. It is also said that this lucidity comes with daily Taro contemplation with a mind earnestly concentrated on a particular subject.

How far empyreal intelligences intervene to help the earnest student who presents to this work a pure mind in a pure body, we do not enter upon here. As to these planetary intelligences, see Cornelius Agrippa! The presumption is that they are the adjutants, whether in the Taro, in Astrology, or in the use of the Magic Mirror.

We have said there are 78 cards, of which 22 are keys but these are only the exoteric keys. It is known to adepts that there should be 22 esoteric keys, which would make the total number up to 100. We have not ourselves yet seen these 22 esoteric keys, and we know of no one possessing them. On this point, an earnest English neophyte, who has attained to a considerable degree of lucidity, suggests that when the artist has arrived at a certain stage of perfection, these supernal intelligences themselves furnish the 22 esoteric keys, or impress their symbolic signature on 22 blank cards prepared by the student. On this point, we presume not to speak positively. If it be so, it would account for the Esoteric Keys not being seen, as, no doubt, the possesser of them would be constrained to carefully guard them from every eye but his own. We only throw this out as a suggestion to the student.

“Corruptio optimorum pessima” is an ancient saying, and it applies especially to the Taro. As the Aryan race degenerated and fell away from their primeval purity, so did their very knowledge become an evil to them. The misuse of the Taro for mere worldly purposes soon led to the loss of the knowledge of its true use, and it became a mere fortune-telling instrument. Even in this its degenerate use, so true is its mechanism to the powers of nature, that enough of truth can be told by it to sustain the faith of oriental nations in its thaumaturgic efficiency. All nations have had or have a Taro. Even the Gypsies, who were an oriental Pariah race, brought a Taro with them when they first appeared in Europe. Hence, their fortune-telling proclivities. With them, it has become mere trickery and fraud, though, formerly at least, some of their women were clairvoyantes, and able to tell enough to astonish those who sought to learn the future of them. It was brought by the Moors through Spain to Italy, and it is still in daily use there with the full number of 78 cards, but only as a harmless game called Tarocchi. The wily priesthood there, took good care it should be nothing else. The ordinary pack of 52 playing cards is simply a modification and perversion of it. Even in this its mutilated and imperfect condition, in many villages even in England, there are still elderly women who by it do foretell, accurately enough, small events about to happen in the lives of simple village folk. These small predictions are of vast importance to them. The only explanation of this is, that these women by constantly contemplating the cards and concentrating their attention on a certain class of subjects do become clairvoyantes sufficiently to foresee some small events, aided by what remains in this imperfect Taro, of what may be called its once divine origin. In Paris, an elaborate pack of Taro cards may be bought for eight francs with a book. of instructions by the notorious and illiterate whilom barber, Etteilla, entitled, “Art de tirer les Cartes.” It is used by ladies and others “pour dire la bonne fortune.” It is a mere fortune-telling affair, of little or no use to the student of true occultism. It is almost needless to say that the French and Italian Taros, as now made, are very imperfect. The Italian was once made properly in Marseilles with the right colours, which is a very important part, but we are told that this manufacture has ceased. It would be desirable to have a manufactory of them in America, if the true forms and colors could be obtained. The importance of the colours will be better understood by a short reference to the Chinese Taro.

The Chinese do nothing like other people, and, as might be expected, their Taro is peculiar to themselves, though the same correspondence with nature’s law is its principle. It is composed of straight lines distinguished by different colours, instead of hieroglyphical coloured forms as in the Indian and Egyptian. The same English neophyte mentioned above, has attained a great insight into it, and we will quote some of his words upon it.

“The Chinese Tarot.”

“If you desired to represent the pure Masculine principles