Thursday, June 16, 2005
UNPACKING THE AFTERWORD continued...
Part I is online, Part II is not, so you will have to take my word for it that what I quote is actually in von B's Afterword, unless you have a copy.
From the Afterword:
It is remarkable that the MEDITATIONS take the ancient symbolic pictures of the Tarot cards as their point of departure. Naturally the author knows about the magical-divinatory application of these cards. However, although he does not feel inhibited about using the milti-meaning word "magic", in the MEDITATIONS he is not at all interested in the practice of "laying the cards" (cartomancy). For him it is only the symbols or their essential meaning which are important--individually or in their mutual reference to one another.
The symbols in "reference to one another"...That pretty much sums up the process of "laying the cards". Minus the actual laying them out on a table, that is. Once they are laying on the table, the process of reading them is noting their "mutual reference to one another" so this distinction is something of a straw man.
From the Afterword:
Since he often refers to C. G. Jung, we may tentatively designate them as "archtypes". However, we must guard against interpreting them simply as inner psychological facts of the collective unconscious--which Jung, also, does not do categorically. They can just as well be understood as principles of the objective cosmos; and here we touch upon the sphere of the "powers and mights", as they are called in the Bible.
"Powers and mights" in the Bible. There are many references to "power" which refer to Christ. The "power" is His. I don't think we could say this is the same as the "principles of the objective cosmos," however, since these "archtype" "principles" are plural. Remember Eph. 6:12, "For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens."
Also consider 2 Thess. 8-10, "And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord [Jesus] will kill with the breath of his mouth and render powerless by the manifestation of his coming, the one whose coming springs from the power of Satan in every mighty deed and in signs and wonders that lie, and in every wicked deceit for those who are perishing because they have not accepted the love of truth so that they may be saved. Therefore, God is sending them a deceiving power so that they may believe the lie, that all who have not believed the truth but have approved wrongdoing may be condemned."
Why would von B choose to cite C. G. Jung, who is known to have been involved with the occult, in an effort to put a Catholic spin on MEDITATIONS?
From the Afterword:
The origin of the Tarot is obscure, as is the historical background of its symbols--representations of which, moreover, have varied markedly in the course of the centuries. The attempt to trace them back to Egyptian or Chaldean wisdom remains fantastic, whilst to explain the use and spread of the cards by way of wandering gypsies is plausible. The oldest surviving cards date from the end of the fourteenth century. Correspondences between the Tarot symbols and the Cabbala, astrology and the Hebrew alphabet were established relatively late, towards the end of the eighteenth century--supposedly first of all by the French archeologist Court de Gebelin (1728-1784).
The history of the Tarot has been researched by Robert V. O'Neill who has published a book on the subject of tarot symbolism. The tarot history website--the work of O'Neill and others--rejects the Gypsy theory:
TOPIC: THE GYPSIES AND TAROT
Inaccurate: The gypsies brought the tarot to Europe and spread its use.
Current Historical Understanding: This idea was popularized in the 19th century by several writers, notably Vaillant and Papus, without any basis in historical fact. There is no evidence that the Rom (gypsies) used tarot cards until the 20th century. Most of their fortune-telling was through palmistry and later through the use of ordinary playing cards.
Papus was a well-known Paris occultist. In fact it can be said that he was a leader in the movement. The O.T.O. looks to Papus as a Catholic looks to a saint.
De Gebelin is described this way at the "Tarot and Playing Cards" website in an explanation given by Bro. Michael John Nisbett, Christian Resource Centre:
"The tarot, however, began to take on occult associations and to be used predominantly for cartomancy, divination, or fortune-telling with cards. The person primarily responsible for the new developments in the tarot was a French Huguenot pastor, Antoine Court de Gebelin (1719-1784). In the 1 770s, de Gebelin became active in Parisian freemasonry circles and joined the Philalethes, a French Masonic occult order order [sic] derived from the teachings of Martines de Pasqually (d. 1774). He became an accomplished occult scholar. This French occult perspective came to be an essential building block in the revolutionary thought that would bring down the French government in a few years.
One thing this does seem to indicate is that von B was familiar with the writings of the Paris occultists. Does he mention them in any other examples of his theology? Or perhaps does this commentary come from the mouth of von Speyer, and von B doesn't really know what he is writing here?
Why is von B citing occultists in order to spin Tarot as acceptable to a Catholic? Why is he citing occultists in a favorable light when the occult is directly opposed to the religion he claims to embrace? This makes absolutely no sense at all. Frankly, I find it scandalous that a man who can write enthusiastically about MEDITATIONS would be the favored theologian of the man who has been pope...and the one who currently is. This is like inviting the robber into the Vatican storehouse of artistic treasures and saying "help yourself."
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
