EGYPT & THE TAROT

There is no real sense in which we can call the Egyptian Tarot, Egyptian. Yet there is a lineage that can be followed, like the silver trail of a snail across a piece of black velvet. Besides this silver analogy, there is also the Golden Thread, or The Thread of Ariadne. Which can be traced through the ages, the millennia as an unbroken transmission, that still contains a message for us today, and most likely, a message for tomorrow. Why is the Tarot Egyptian, and how has it traced its lineage across time? Buried under the surfaces are other discourses. The outer form is exoteric . . .

For examples, Francis Yates writes:

"Giordano Bruno was to take the bolder course of maintaining that the magical Egyptian religion of the world was not only the most ancient but also the only true religion, which both Judaism and Christianity had obscured and corrupted."

Francis Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, p.11

An important book, recently published is:

Erik Hornung, The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West, translated by David Lorton, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001, 229 pp., hardcover. Read a review Lee Irwin, of Religious Studies, College of Charleston HERE.

Also important for following the thread:

Dannenfeldt, Karl H., Egypt and Egyptian Antiquities in the Renaissance, Studies in the Renaissance, Vol. 6, (1959), pp. 7-27

Griffiths, J. Gwyn, Allegory in Greece and Egypt, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 53, (Dec., 1967), pp. 79-102.

al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, and Leon Nemoy, The Treatise on the Egyptian Pyramids (Tuḥfat al-kirām fī khabar al-ahrām), Isis, Vol. 30, No. 1, (Feb., 1939), pp. 17-37.