How to Think About Tarot and Myth

Tier one: documented imagery (attestable)

Lineage you can check against surviving objects and texts: what the early cards looked like, what they were called, which older visual tradition a design descends from. Claims on this tier can be supported — or overturned — by decks in museums and by books with known dates. Strength subduing the lion bare-handed descends from the medieval personification of the virtue Fortitude: that is tier one, a design with a physical chain of evidence.

e.g. Justice with sword and scales: the fixed form of the Justitia personification since Rome, attested by an unbroken run of objects — tier one.

Tier two: esoteric correspondence (written into a system)

The assignments the Golden Dawn and Waite wrote into their texts: the Magician answers to Mercury, Death to Scorpio, the Fool takes the element of air. This tier has definite sources you can look up — but the sources are the design documents of a nineteenth-century esoteric system, not historical evidence. "Has a source" and "is history" are two different things: the correct use of tier two is "the system assigns it so," never "therefore the card originated there."

e.g. The Magician "having the countenance of divine Apollo": Waite names a Greek god in his own words in the 1911 book — a definite source, but it is his own design note. Tier two.

Tier three: modern readings (twentieth century onward)

The Fool's Journey, the Hanged Man as Odin's sacrifice, the Moon as the Triple Goddess — these readings appear only in the twentieth century, some from popular handbooks, some carried over from psychology and comparative mythology. They often work very well as tools for understanding, which is exactly why they spread; but taking them for the card's origin is mistaking the ladder for the foundation. Whenever this chapter uses the modern tier it names the source and the date, so you can use these readings freely and know what you are using.

e.g. The Hanged Man: historically a traitor's shame-painting (tier one); Odin's sacrifice is a twentieth-century graft (tier three). One card, two tiers, each in its place.

The habit of checking: second-hand claims go back to the text

This chapter repeats one move over and over: hear a claim, check it against Waite's 1911 text. The source panel on this site carries the original book's entries for all 78 cards, and every card page can open them side by side. You will keep discovering that many widely repeated claims are ones the author himself rejected in the book — the Hermit is not "a wise man in search of truth" (Waite dismissed that by name), and he had little patience for the Star as "a card of hope." Checking is not pedantry: it tells you how much weight each sentence can bear when you read.

e.g. Someone tells you the Chariot depicts Plato's chariot of the soul — check the text: the sphinxes were Lévi's substitution, and Plato was grafted on later. Tier three: use it as a tool, do not cite it as an origin.

Key points

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Three tiers of evidence

Documented: attested by objects and texts. Esoteric: written into a system — sourced but not historical. Modern: twentieth-century readings — tools, not origins.

"Sourced" is not "historical"

Esoteric correspondences can be looked up, but the source is a nineteenth-century system's design document: say "the system assigns it so," never "the card originated there."

Second-hand claims go back to the text

Any "Waite said" or "this card comes from X" gets checked against the 1911 original first: many popular claims are ones the author rejected in the book itself.

Where modern readings belong

The Fool's Journey, archetypes, the Triple Goddess: use them freely as tools for understanding, never as the card's historical origin — the ladder is not the foundation.