Mysticism [modify] By the early 18th century Masonic authors and Protestant clerics had established the tarot trumps as authoritative sources of ancient hermetic knowledge and Christian gnosis, and as revelatory tools of magnificent cartomantic inspiration, but they did not stop there. In 1870 Jean-Baptiste Pitois (much better called Paul Christian) composed a book entitled Historie de la magie, du monde surnaturel et de la fatalit travers les temps et le peuples.
Christian provides an extended analysis of ancient Egyptian initiation rites that includes Pyramids, 78 steps, and the initiatory revelation of tricks. Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett compose: At one phase in the initiation treatment, Christian tells postulant climbs up down an iron ladder, with seventy-eight rungs, and enters a hall on either side of which are twelve statues, and, in between each set of statues, a painting.
Each corresponds to a "letter of the spiritual language" and to a number, and each reveals a reality of the magnificent world, a truth of the intellectual world and a reality of the real world. The secret meanings of these twenty-two Arcana are then expounded to him. Christian's efforts to provide authority to his analysis by falsely attributing an account of ancient Egyptian initiation rites to Iamblichus, but it is clear that if there is any initiatory significance to the tarot surpasses it is Christian who is the source of that details.
Papus (a. k.a. Dr. Grard Encausse). Subsequent to this activity the initiatory importance of the tarot was firmly developed in the minds of occult specialists. The development of the tarot as an initiatory masterpiece was coincident with, and healthy completely into, the blooming of initiatory esoteric orders and secret brotherhoods throughout the middle of the 19th century.
g. Dr Papus, Franois-Charles Barlet, and Josphin Pladin). This Article Is More In-Depth put fantastic emphasis on secrets, advancing through the grades, and initiatory tests therefore it is not unexpected that, currently having the tarot to hand, they check out into the tarot initiatory significance. Doing so not only lent an air of divine, mystical, and ancient authority to their practices but permitted them to continue to state on the magical, mystical, significance of the probably ancient and hermetic tarot.