A Commentary on the Tarot of Marseilles

Against Occult-tism, to Restore Magic

In the Whig narrative, the unenlightened crawled, through rationality, out of the depths of superstition to become the learned men with attendant modern objectivities. Eliding a darker truth than they realize, part of this narrative is often the portrayal of medieval alchemy as merely being incomplete chemistry. The obvious mistakes in this aside, the mask slips off, and the Whigs reveal the dark nature at the heart of many of the so-called mystics of post-Roman Europe. The alchemical or occult treatise, as in the form of the works of John Dee or Isaac Newton, does remarkably well fit into the Whig’s idea: primitive objectivity. The language of the text is always technical. The spiritual world exists as a series of facts, figures, names, identities with which the reader can manipulate and study as if they were the details of a train’s switchyard. The goal of these men of “magic” was always to study (read: imperialize) the spiritual world, not to embrace it. In the time of writing for the grimoirist, the reality of living in a world populated by angels, demons, fairies, gods, witchcraft, and all other manner of phenomena we have deprivileged today was woven into the worldview without the cruel separation of “religion” and “reality” we take for granted under their machines. The alchemist’s goal was, taking for granted the existence of these things, to then set out and map them in a rigorous, easily controllable, rational manner. Newton was performing the same fundamental action in his alchemical work and in his theories on calculus, that of quantifying, documenting, and hopefully controlling the unknown. In modern times, this is striking at our perception of those other aspects of reality with a vengeance. With no organic connection to any spiritual or mystic traditions, we have looked back upon the works of John Dee, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and the rest with the idea that these texts are written as an accurate and objective reflection of some reality which must be uncovered again. This illusion has had disastrous effects by reproducing again and again the very ideological sins that birthed the separation of ourselves from spiritual reality in the modern world. In order to genuinely interact with these lost traditions, the men of primitive science are of no help at all. Rather, the illuminating study is to interact with the very source material that these men were studying and to through these source materials, renew the same interaction they had, without making the same mistake of believing the spiritual to be ours to colonize and control with science and reason. For this reason, attention must be turned, in the study of magic, not to treatises, but to art and nature itself, learning through interaction with open ended systems of the Tarot, Zodiac, Bible, and through techniques as dreaming and astral projection that renew contact with the Outside. Through this contact, the purpose of magical writing should always be to document, interpet, but never control, systematize, or rigorously study. As the spiritual flows, so must our pens flow, writing with the Holy Ghost in écriture féminine. I therefore urge that this text not be taken as doctrinal or correct, but as source material for diverging interpretations.

O

The Fool

Being inherently referential to the degree of presence (quantity) all numbers are in reference to the threat of zero (absence). As such, numbers emerge and exist secondary to that which they reference. When the numbers become abstracted however, the referred can be alive without quantity, still retaining a sort of platonic presence when its physical presence is at zero, the zero keeping it alive by marking (and thus making present) its absence. When a=0, then all that exists is ‘a’ and in the same, the zero card, is the pure Tarot, the platonic ideal of a Tarot card. As the camera creates the movie scene by creating first the chemical strip upon which all things of the film are etched, the Fool creates the Tarot by setting forth the scene and concept of the card.

I

The Magician

By reduction of the world to a set of states, the doctrine of emptiness reveals itself. In the model of elemental-state systems (the Greek classical elements and Wu Xing as immediate examples), the world is drawn as Spinozist, with all things being flux of a single, universal reality which transitions across base states that express themselves at finer degrees through motion. Recognizing this, the Magician’s position is that of a surfer or sailor. Before him are props of the Tarot’s elements, the four suits of the Minor Arcana. He sits in recognition of all of them, with his task being to knowingly work atop and within the flows of the World.

Minor Arcana

The Sword and Baton both are present, projective, powers of the Magician, while the Cup and Coin both are absent, receptive powers. Dividing further, the Sword and the Cup are the present of their respective qualities while the Baton and Coin are the absent. The Sword as the present-present gains its power as the anathame or wand, the magician’s will being forced as cutting, as weaponry upon the forces, attacking. The Baton as present-absent is the Magician’s will being put out as a site of flow, for the Magician to attract and send out energies. The Cup as absent-present is offering, the container of transmission through which something is given - a vessel, with its nature being made by its absence, but one that is filled and used as a means of transportation. The Coin (as in the form of crystals, gems, etc) is the absent-absent, the power which exists only to attract and direct forms of energy, not to act as a vessel of specific intent or offering, but as a way to construct pathways and rhythms by whatever slots into it can travel.
Notable in this, the Coin and Cup both appear as pluralities while the Sword and Baton appear as singularities - the Magician carries one specific weapon as their wand/anathame, one specific staff as their Baton. At the same time the Magician has indefinitely many Cups, altars and rituals and grails, and the same for Coins, herbs and gemstones and talismans.

II & V
The High Priestess & the Hierophant

While both sit adorned with the papal tiara and some semblance of royal robes, the opposing male and female signs of the same idea show opposite trajectories of practice. The High Priestess has her hands firmly clasped within an open book, her gaze affixed both to it and away. The Hierophant has his hands occupied with sceptres of authority, the golden, three tiered cross and a hand gesture of authority, looking down upon the figures worshipping at his throne. The High Priestess sits amidst curtains, the Hierophant sits amidst pillars. Their robes are inverted, the High Priestess wearing red cloaked in blue, the Hierophant wearing blue cloaked in red. Importantly unifying them is the tiara, a symbol of some succession of the apostles, thereby granting them theological authority. Splitting them however are the horizontal and vertical paths of God in transmission to Earth. The High Priestess sits in channeling, the linguistic nature of the Holy Spirit flowing through her text. The Hierophant sits in regency, a monolithic sign that is unto itself, a surrogate for the spectre of “I AM” so desperately hoped to be reached.

III & IV
The Empress & The Emperor

The two visages of the state sit in contemplation of each other, their gaze meeting instead of diverging as in the High Priestess and the Hierophant. The Empress cradles the heraldic shield while the Emperor has it beside him, resting it against the foot of his throne. The Empress lets the Globus Cruciger rest on her body whilst the Emperor wields it aloft in one hand. The thrones of the pair diverge noticeably, the Emperor in a smaller, golden throne, the Empress in a larger, red throne. For the formation of the system of meaning (here symbolized in the form of a State), these two must be in codependence with each other. The Empress is the language itself, holding the heraldic symbol, the components of the system, for themselves, in isolation, as the family tree is the substance of the overall system of the aristocratic lineage. The Emperor holds the opposite, the symbols themselves cast aside for the symbol of the active cohesion of the system, in the direct wielding of the Globus Cruciger. The Emperor actively creates the system, the lineage’s borders and territories held in stability, the laws and rules which govern the system being able to act coherently, while the Empress is the system after its been created and defined through the actions of writing which make it.

VI
The Lovers

The yin-yang disc is a perfect closed system, with both opposites reconciled. An ellipse is formed by a pair of arcs with codependant and converging equations, graphed, forming the solid shape between them. Binary distinctions, make up a single whole which has an operation of its own (raw/cooked being both aspects of the single entity, the vegetable in-relation-to culinary-production). The lovers show this - two individuals of opposite principles (the male and female), are here twins committing incest - two opposite poles of the same entity unified. Both are holding, as if in counsel, the figure in the middle, significantly more androgynous than either of the twins. Here is their difference, the middle space of the ellipse or the enclosed circle made by the yin-yang symbol. The central figure is both the twins/lovers acting in concert, as one, as a binary, when fully deconstructed (aka, unified, the unification/deconstruction taking place in the nude figure above firing an arrow into the center of the operation), acts as one entity in concert.

VII
The Chariot

The term “chariot” appears in the bible most interestingly in 1 Chronicles 28:18, where the temple constructed by Solomon at the request of David is being described, in explicit reference to the central chamber where the Ark of the Covenant is held, aloft in a chariot. The direct reason for this is obvious, chariots being used in the Ancient Near East (as well as Europe and China) as a second, moving throne, developing from their usage in warfare. The King was able to stride effortlessly over his subjects as the Charioteer strides over infantry, his symbolic gestures projecting as the mounted archer is project violence over the battlefield. Here, the explicit link between Solomon and Chariots, as the apex of the temple, reveals, through this symbolic image, the true character of the regal structure and King Solomon himself. The regal structure of Solomon, his wealth and temples, come together to form a complete system of meaning built around the central signifier of the King. Solomon’s imagining as being the author of the majority of the Wisdom books, as well as any number of apocryphal and esoteric texts is in recognition of this. Such is contact with the Esoteric in the Solomonic tradition, the system’s purpose being the capability to pierce through, to contact the unknown, by means of the ritual-text, which spirals and prepares to the final center, the piercing-through that occurs at the throne, where God sits upon the Chariot of Cherubim.

VIII
Justice

Judgement, as in the scales, is the comparison of the alien text against a pre-existing text which inducts and baptizes the judged object into its new discourse by plugging the alien object into the law-text, thus making the alien operate on the same discursive plane as the law. The weighing of the soul is not an end, but a beginning, a bringing into a new order of the judged Soul or Object. Judgement is baptism.

IX
The Hermit

The lamp, illuminating spirit, emerges from beneath the folds of the heavy shadows and cloaks, thrust forward as the man’s head is. The person of the man is lost, instead he appears as shadows from them, protruding implements of the cane (support), head (self), lamp (illumination). The process of hermitage is that of a withdrawal of the self from the world, as a scouring. The body is cloaked and denied while the essential and pure aspects of the self are left to survive, emerging from the pain of isolation and denial. For the hermit, there is nothing which can make him impure, as only his soul has been left behind, a soul made by isolation, by marking out the entire surrounding as shadow and denying inputs of the external world.

X
The Wheel

With the wheel obviously demonstrating the Spinozist Doctrine of Emptiness in the same way as the Magician, the Wheel imagines the world as being capable of magic, through two framings. Firstly, the forces are personified as natural creatures. These personifications emerge out of the world as in Shen (神), fairies, sprites, that come as representatives, an inverse-Platonic-Ideal. Secondly, the force at the height is holding the symbols of projected power, the sword and the crown. These elements are the rituals of the Magician, their wand aloft into the tides of the world, the forces communicating with them through their manifestations.

XI
Strength

In the building of Dujiangyan, the first commission for the project was to construct a dam. When it failed, the builder was reduced to pieces and scattered. Li Bing, the successful builder, succeeded in the same aims through a series of channels, water diverted in several directions, based on different conditions. When the construction required boring through solid rock, it was done by crumbling the desired area, heating the rocks, and then unleashing river water onto the heated rock, causing it to burst enough to be broken. Such operations were able to create a marvelwork of harmony, several forces and systems acting in concert in order to achieve a stable system which survives to this today. As in the manipulation of the lion, Strength operates as the same subtle manipulation. Force is a neutral concept, which belongs to any number of conflicting and competing entities who project it in varying amounts depending on almost random contextual factors. Strength is conscious manipulation of this chaos, the ability to take hold of a Force, to take hold of Forces competing, and manipulate them to the ultimate end, whatever that may be.

XII
The Hanged Man

At one time, the penalty of exile was equal in severity to that of execution, with both performing the same act on the individual victimized. The victim is exiled in Augustinian fashion, from the ordered world into the open world of chaos. In exile, as in silent, slaughterous execution, this occurs directly, the condemned is made non-existent in one stroke. In hanging however, the community’s immune system is set to work in making the Outside present. The hanging makes the exiled visible, showing them to the public and making a conscious ritual of rejecting them. The hanging is a way for the morality of the group to be reinforced by the public reminder of what is outside and then showing the slow, painful exclusion/rejection of that outside.

XIII
Death

Holding the tool of harvest, death is here imagined as part of the completeness of life. Just as the seasons move around, so must death come to end all things, as part of the natural order, in the same way as the weather and world move in agricultural cycles which the human exists inside. Two paths can be taken here. Either all of life is identified with death in some way, with entropy being the eventual change that cannot be withstood (as humanity can withstand winters and summers) or death is identified with the body and physicality, as the weather is, allowing the human to assert transcendence beyond it. The latter does not propose however, that death can be defeated. Death can no more be defeated than the seasons can. What it proposes is that death can be withstood, just as the weather is, that it’s merely a phase change and not a force dimensionally above and superseding.

XIV
Temperance

Incorporating the lessons of Strength and The Magician, the divine figure performs the essence of magic: flow regulation. With wings, allowing perfect flight through movements of the Earth and with complete control over the flows in her hands, she has attained final mastery, becoming adept at manipulation and riding of all flows and currents.

XV
The Devil

Unlike under Augustinian civilization where evil is considered as the Outside, the Devil shows evil as a system isolated to itself. Evil occurs in structures, not Outsides, structures which exist on their own and not infinitely. The abusive family, the secret police, the roaming mob, all of these are evil due to being evil, with all outside being not-evil, as opposed to the model of evil where evil is everything excluded, everything not-good. Under imperial equalization, the two figures are kept in bondage to a structure beneath the singular Kingly sign of the devil, a great abomination colonizing all under its enclosing tyranny.

XVI
The Tower

With the Tower is so named as the monopresent object (The), its destruction in the image makes its nature shown. Supposed destruction reinforces and recreates the Tower, by reifying the Outside/Inside of it. By the destruction of Rome, the stratified degeneracy of Rome was purged and the reality of the Outside was made supreme. In doing so, Rome ascended to the Heavens in order to exist in pure form, in total contrast, between spiritual and physical, over the Outside which now roamed over its city walls. All physical dirt was scrubbed from Rome, and emerging from the bath is the white marble myth, existing solely in the world of purity of language. Towers are antifragile in this way, with their superstructure surviving long past the overthrow of their base, the true symbols gaining immortality long beyond that pathetic slavery which sustained them.

XVII, XVIII, XIX
The Stars, The Moon, The Sun

At the top-center of each image, the brilliant centerpiece grows, as the soul in the three-part progression. Three faculties of the human, operating in sequence, are shown here. Unformed and undifferentiated, nature pours into the inputs of the human. This grows into dreams, the towers, dogs, undercurrents of waters with mysterious lobsters crawling along occultic theatres of the mind. At the apex, the face evolves to the solar monolith in the act of speech, where thought is made sedimented to be poured again, as the fluid light-drops coming from the multicolored sun. The cycle loops over as it does in the Deleuzo-Guattarian narrative of stratification, where the finished product, the sedimented expression in speech/writing, is now flowing into the same circuits in order to be raw material for the next iteration of the cycle, becoming the waters which the woman pours into input.

XX
Judgement

Only at the end, does the text truly make itself known. The function of eschatological texts is to create a summary-text of the entire world fully submitted under the worshipped beyond. The angel makes itself known and finally proves Heaven’s supremacy over the material world, not only summarizing the full scope of Heaven, but in doing so through the description of Heaven’s relations to Earth, summarizes all of Earth, putting it under Heaven. Such is the purpose of eschatological fascination with exact names and places, with both the original text and subsequent re-interpretation being obsessed with the Revelation of Saint John mapping directly onto the world in which the reader exists. In this function, the angel heralding the arrival holds a flat and blows a trumpet down upon the naked worshippers, signifying the total supremacy, always recognized by believers, over the world.

XXI
The World

Positioned in the center of the Earth and the Heavens, the subject (carrying two batons) is made through expression from the flows of existence. Both wrap around to enclose the subject, with knots being made at the very lowest and at the highest. The subject here is feminine, flowing reality, the world/language itself, to be entered and consorted with by the viewer, in the same way that all other things enter and consort with the viewer. Through her, all things which form and tie the knots around her, which inform her, are accessible. Through her, through the linguistics in practice that is occult/magical practice, one is able to achieve movement. The final card is the entry into the World, the gateway to the Tarot.