2014 January Meeting of the Owen Society: Development of the Occult Tarot

On Sunday, January 26, 2014 we heard from the mysterious Dr. Dragonfly for a thorough and historical presentation on the Development of the Occult Tarot.

Most people would think that cards of any sort would come as second nature to me given that I’ve made the majority of my financial wealth playing cards in the saloons of the Wild West and even internationally. However, I privately confessed to the good Dr. Dragonfly that I preferred my cards without pageantry. In poker, a spade is a spade (unless you’re cheating). At the risk of Miss Dion smugly discovering this musing of mine I must admit that I find the complex symbology of the tarot rather intimidating.

My intimidation might be lessen with time; rather that if my travels through time happen to land me in the late 1400’s I might do well as a professional “tarock” player as long as I have the coinage to have the cards commissioned for me. I was impressed to learn from Dr. Dragonfly that contrary to popular belief, the modern tarot deck did not come from Egypt or from the Gypsies. It was just a card game, although an elitist one because before the introduction of Gutenberg Press, cards were very expensive little works of art. The beauty of some of these decks can be viewed in fine museums.


It makes one wonder where the association with the occult began. In his notes, Dr. Dragonfly mentions that in 1589 a trial in Venice associated the game of cards with witchcraft, but it is of course the 18th century that really fuses these cards with the mystic. The French occultist Eliphas Levi worked with the tarot and the Kabbalah and his work later inspired the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

With all of time at my disposal, it might still not make me a master of the tarot. Although that American game that has treated me so kindly has little to do with the physical cards in your hand and more to do with the people with whom you are playing. Perhaps in that regard, tarot is not so different. Symbols are meaningless until an initiate breathe life into them.

Approximately 37 people were in attendance at Dr. Dragonfly’s (*) lecture; including at least seven people new to an Owen Society meeting: Oktyater Khaboror, Oswin Bernerd McGuinness, Arnell Ando, Fiona Cook, Beth Dougherty, Nicholas Efrosinis, and Micheal McAteer. Additional attendees included Oracle Alexandria, Jean Julien Brumaire, Lady Lavinia Cavigndish, Dr. Xavier Day, Delores Dion, Lady Elsa Fairfield Flatstone, Reginald Flatstone, Britney Gears, Aria Healy, Lord A. Kamion the Earl of Oxbridge, Captain Rheinhardt Krieger, Mr. M., Catherine MacPherson, Lady Marmelade, Daria Melnikova, Cardinal Hymie Aloysius Pederasium, Marie Gross, Janet MacDonald, Elmo Gene Painter, Alan P. Salmi, Rory "Aquabear" Sunderland, Televte Sunderland, Eitel August Graf Von Pappenheim, Joseph C.R. Vourteque, Hildebrandt Wilberforce and as always Professor Marius Mandragore and myself, Amber McCoy(+).

(*) Dr. Dragonfly is the Steampunk Persona of Paul James Lewis an occult researcher, astrologer, witch and pianist. He has been involved in the world of the occult since 1979 when he was initiated into a Gardnerian coven. He was also a member of a ceremonial magickal order, but at this time is affiliated with no particular tradition and is a solitary practitioner of the occult arts. As an astrologer he is associated with the NCGR.

As a pianist, he is the Principal Pianist for The Joffrey Ballet. A position he has held since 2002. A champion of contemporary piano music, he has played for Leonard Bernstein, Sir Michael Tippett, and Olivier Messiaen. His performances have been broadcast on PBS radio and television; has recorded 11 CD's of ballet class music and portrayed himself in the Robert Altman film, "The Company".

(+) Amber McCoy is the Steampunk of Persona of Ame Kesa Morghan a pagan activist, ritualist, performer and Steampunk Enthusiast. 

 

Book Review: Aradia or the Gospel of Witches by Charles G. Leland

Charles G. Leland was an America Folklorist of the late nineteenth century who became enamored with the folk and specifically witchcraft traditions of Italy and made an effort to preserve them. He believed that that he was preserving a dying tradition. While there is documentation that he was a hermetic, I do not believe that he was a devotee of Diana, Aradia or regularly practiced the incantations or charms collected in his work. If he did attempt to use the charms, I think that he would find that they didn’t work to his liking. Dr. Mario Pazzaglini points out in his essay “Leland and the Magical World of Aradia” included in this edition of Mr. Leland’s work that it is unlikely that an actual “Witches’ Gospel” really existed. Dr. Pazzaglini does not discount the truth of what Mr. Leland collected; only that it was not universal. I am inclined to agree. What Mr. Leland did not realize that this old tradition of witchcraft is not dying out, quite the contrary; over a century after his own death it is still being practiced by people like me.

I have my own growing collection of charms and incantation. While I might use pieces of those that worked very well for me, what is true of living witchcraft is that it is ephemeral. A spell is designed for a specific moment in time. It is also clear to me that this “Gospel of Witches” has been heavily influenced by Christianity and that it is an example of old folklore and ancient Pagan practices bleeding through into a more modern time dominated by the Christian religion. Here the Moon Goddess Diana (She of night and darkness) has Her Divine Brother named Lucifer (He who brings the light). Diana has another name in the Greek pantheon of Artemis, and Her brother, the Sun God (he who brings the light) is Apollo. It is through an incestuous mating of these two divine forms that Aradia in conceived. She then becomes a female messiah, helping the oppressed women of the country change their lot in life through witchcraft. Diana is depicted in this work as a very wanton, sexual being and at first I was offended by this image of my patroness Goddess. I had an image of her as the powerful and chaste Goddess of maidenhood who eschewed the company of men. The idea of her having a child with Christianity’s Lucifer was inconceivable. However I realized that I was judging this work of myth with tainted eyes. In older times, the idea of Virginity did not necessarily mean a woman who did not have sex; to be a virgin meant to be a woman who held power in her own right.

I was forced then to consider the idea that this was Diana’s definition as Divine Virgin. To see my Goddess as a sexual being forced me to reconsider sex as a divine act and not as an act of subjugation to men. This was a valuable lesson that perhaps I would not have processed, if not for the reading of this work. I do think that Aradia was an important figure to the impoverished women of the Italian countryside, and perhaps still is. She is a figure of hope. Her stories show a way beyond oppression. That said I am not moved to evoke her, or to utilize the incantations of this work that are lost in my world.